Aaron_Kennelly

I don’t remember the tired thing being a deal in 2015, just ran in to the one time all the Mets pitchers were firing on all cylinders and Murphy going god mode. Seems more like bad luck with last year and this year with some extremes happening with the running out of gas thing. We had the rain out game and the crazy game 5 in the DS, which any team is going to get gassed and then this year with this unfortunate situation of consecutive games. Any team would get gassed, I don’t think it’s unique to us. I just think it’s some bad luck to have the situation pop up. Agreed. The "running out of gas" theme is a little overplayed. I think it would be nice to just chill out for a couple weeks after clinching. But even when you clinch early, guys are still playing a lot down the wire. They can't just take two whole weeks off and then be ready to go. It's really about giving your starting pitchers a 2-inning start or maybe skipping their last start altogether, make a couple spot starts to give them all an extra day here and there, get the position players an extra day off per week the last few weeks, etc. There were honest, legit conversations on this very board about the Cubs being too rested heading into the 2016 playoffs. I remember people saying Joe was blowing the World Series for us by caring so little. Even horsefeathering Miggy called him out. I don't think this team is going to get worn out by being in a race through the last weekend. Teams do that horsefeathers every year and can still play for a few more weeks after it. horsefeathers, as far as rest goes, the playoffs provide ample rest compared to the regular season. The "worn out" part of last year had nothing to do with being in a tight race most of the year, either. It was nearly all because of that stupid horsefeathering NLDS. The rainout and Game 5, like you mention. We were already using pitchers on short rest just to get out of that series and then we just exacerbated the problem when we didn't in-effect punt Game 1 by starting Lackey. Arrieta and Lester had both suffered injuries within the final month-and-a-half. Quintana was pitching on short rest for the first time ever, if I remember correctly. We just weren't prepared to enter that series. We weren't at full strength and it had nothing to do with the Brewers hanging around like a gnat all year. Plenty of guys pitch 200+ innings or play 150+ games every year without running out of gas. It happens, sure, but we aren't really in danger of overusing many players this year anyway. We have a lot of depth and Drinky Joe is constantly giving guys rest and punting games. The starting pitchers haven't really been overworked, mostly because their own ineffectiveness has prevented them from working deep into games. The only reliever that is really approaching overworked status is Cishek. Right now, it's mainly been this awful stretch in the schedule wearing us thin. Going a whole month without a day off is crazy. But if we make it through the regular season unscathed, I think we'll have plenty of gas left in the tank.

You better not apologize for this after we clinch.

I'd say recent results matter more, but they matter much, much less than you'd imagine. Like, without context, they barely matter more than April results at all. The main context I'm looking for is the makeup of the team: who's been injured, who's been added, who's been subtracted? On that front, the main thing that's made them worse is KB being hurt. That's certainly a biggie. Throw Morrow in there, as well -- though I think his injury has hurt them a lot less. Same with Russell. Russell and KB are back, but I don't think either is 100% -- particularly KB. The Cubs have added pieces too, though. Hamels taking Chatwood's place has been huge. Chavez has been a big addition. Murphy hasn't been great, but he's helped out, especially offsetting the loss/ineffectiveness of Russell. Altogether, I don't think this team is much different talent-wise than they were in May. They've played worse, sure. But I still think they are a very good team overall. Maybe the recent results are more important. Maybe Willson Contreras is irreparably broken. But I do think it's silly to care so much about him having a .500 OPS over his last 40 games or whatever, when he's been much better than that for over 1,000 other PA. He's probably closer to his career self than what we've seen the last month. His last 50 games have been incredibly painful to watch and he's been horsefeathering garbage -- no getting around that. But let's be realistic; he's not really that guy. I think it gets even sillier when we start picking out a 50-game sample of RD when we have a much larger 145-game sample we can look at (not to mention the hundreds of games before that in which this same core has been very good). Picking and choosing which games matter is reminiscent of when people were saying stuff like "The Cubs are 27-29 over their last 56 games" in July of 2016 after they had a 5-15 stretch, coming on the heels of a 22-14 stretch. It was really just a bad 20-game stretch, though that stretch made any extended stretch that season look worse, especially when you removed the 25-6 start to the season. Larger samples are nearly always better than smaller samples. Looking at just the last 7 games or just the last 30 games or whatever doesn't make sense when we have a perfectly fine 145-game sample. There are a lot of extenuating factors that have went into this second-half W/L and RD stretch, too. There's the nightmare schedule, of course. We've also faced tougher competition. The Marlins' series were over by the break. We've only played the Reds once. We've seen a lot of the Cardinals, Nats, and Brewers. The easy stretch in the second half is the games we have remaining. Beyond that, we also had some bad matchups pitching-wise, like facing the Braves for one game and drawing Folty, facing Scherzer like 15 times, Nola, deGrom and Syndergaard, yada, yada, yada. That's not to make an excuse for our performance or anything. It's just... those things stick out more in a 40-game sample than they do when you add everything up over the whole season, when most of that stuff evens out or at least doesn't matter as much over such a large sample. Also, this stuff is absolutely cherry-picked, even if it happens to line up with a convenient break in the season at the All-Star Game. The second game back from the break, we lost 18-5. Two weeks before the break, we had 4 straight games with double digit runs scored. Does that 18-5 game two months ago really matter more than those 4 games two weeks before it? Also some weird things have happened since the break RD-wise. We've been blown out a few times and some of them have been games Joe's punted to keep guys fresh for this miserable stretch in the schedule. There were also several games we resorted to pitching position players. We also haven't really had many blowouts that we've won. The story in the first half was that our record was correct and our RD didn't matter because of all the blowouts. But now it's been the other way around. So which is it? Should blowouts count or not? (Yes, they should, but we should look at all of them, including those ones two weeks before the break.) Getting blown out frequently isn't a good sign that your team is doing well. But a few blowouts here and there will skew a 40-game sample a lot more than they will skew a 140-game sample. That and a variety of other reasons are why we shouldn't care so much about the last 40 or 50 games and throw out everything that came before it.

Hope you are right, Duker. Would be your greatest performance yet. That said, I think the undisputed heavyweight champion for predictions is finally going to get knocked out. It's not that great of a performance to pick the team with a lead to hold onto their lead over an inferior team.

Let’s be honest the Cubs have been extremely lucky in the second half. They have a negative run differential over a 60 game stretch. They have not played consistently good baseball and they have been an average team at best in the second half You keep saying this, but it's cherry picked and doesn't mean much. Our RD for the whole season is over +100. We had a bad week or two of RD right out of the break, then we played well for awhile, and now we've had a bad RD stretch the past week. Extend the time frame more or cut it smaller and you can make it say whatever you want. The Cubs are good. They've played well over the course of the season. No amount of SSS cherry-picking is going to change the fact that this is a mid-90 win team.

Horrible. Still winning the division, though.

Fantastic

horsefeathering never let Almora hit again.

Everyone in this thread:

We're 11-7 against them and have shut them out 6 times.

Seriously get the horsefeathers out of here with this nonsense.

It's 7 days. Who cares?

I'm about sick of Cain's fake outs.

horsefeathers you, Almora.

Kyle's got this. Cubs win another shutout, but this time they dong. 8-0. Division over.

One more gif: http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2/6/4/294278264/091118_chc_bote_reax_fix.gif

2017 trade deadline coming through huge tonight.

Fly that horsefeathering W!

Agreed. Zobrist should be put in the leadoff spot and stay there. That's been the case even before they got Murphy and Joe can't seem to figure it the horsefeathers out. Zobrist is like the perfect leadoff hitter. He's a good hitter, for one. He gets on base like crazy. He's patient and drives up pitch counts, giving others a look. Basically the only guys higher than him in OBP are Troutian and Bettsian uberbeasts that have to be hitting in the middle of the order. It makes no sense that he isn't leading off.

Holy horsefeathering horsefeathers.

De La Rosa has been worth as much fWAR as Darvish, Chatwood, and Morrow combined.

The drunker he gets, the better we are.

About time for Joe to detox.

Joe is sloshed.

That's my catcher!