Aaron_Kennelly

Yeah. The biggie with him is the long ball. He was great at keeping the ball in the park when he was his elite self. And that obviously hasn't been the case since he got hurt. It's been over a month -- in 11 innings of work -- since he's given up one. He'll need to limit the walks a little more, too, to get all the way back. But even this version is pretty solid if he's not giving up a ton of bombs.

http://i.imgur.com/Tw6pxwV.gif

Closers being bad with a three-run lead is the new market inefficiency Theo has exploited.

We should have gotten 12 back before the break and at least made it interesting.

That'll do.

So Russell can drive him in later on.

Just throwing this out there: Sammy Sofa hasn't posted since before the game Friday night. And we've scored infinity runs since then. And our starting pitcher has worked into the 7th in three straight games.

Nice play by our +2.9 UZR left fielder.

Ninnies, these are the 2nd Half Cubs. They aren't losing.

Show off them wheels.

Jonny's got it going tonight.

It's been too long without a dong.

Much better.

Ready to go.

Hell yes. Time to get him back and go on a run.

He won't cost much of anything because he sucks and he costs $17 million next season.

I saw on twitter that it was his second-best game score of his career.

Adam Jones turns 32 in a few days and has been trending down for years now. There is no upside there. He isn't good and won't be good again. He could survive his horrible plate discipline when he was hitting some homers and had more athleticism. Take away all his value from base running and defense and there's nothing there, particularly when everyone is hitting homers now. He doesn't really do anything well. Albert Almora is much better. Let alone Happ.

He was fantastic today. What a huge addition.

Nice job, Phils!

D.J. Wilson has gone 4 consecutive games without striking out.

Lackey is going to be overrated and Montgomery is going to be underrated by metrics that try to normalize batted ball profiles. Montgomery is very hard to square up and gets a lot of groundballs, while Lackey is a strike thrower who has lost a tick and is now in an environment where more strikes than ever end up at or over the fence. Montgomery isn't perfect, and he hasn't seized the starting chance like I hoped he might, but he is still easily the 5th best SP we have. Yeah, this era has kinda ruined a ton of stats. xFIP made a lot of sense when most guys were going to regress back to the mean in HR/FB. For some guys, it wasn't a great measure -- but only for a handful on the margins that could or couldn't suppress home runs. And, this is just me talking out of my ass, but I think the hitter had a lot more of the say when a home run was hit. These days, any schlub can take a ball out of the park. So I think a guy who gets squared up more often has his problems magnified, when a scrawny middle infielder is going to drive the ball out of the park if it's left over the plate. Mistakes will hurt you more, so mistakes are more important. Also, xFIP, FIP, etc. are definitely calibrated pretty well. But, if the calibration is even slightly off, then this wacky environment could exacerbate those flaws. Also, say, FIP used to able to measure batted-ball prowess, without actually accounting for it, because good pitchers were good at everything. So, maybe strikeouts and walks were over-calibrated, when weak contact went hand-in-hand with strikeouts and walks. Change the era to one where there are more strikeouts, more walks, and more homers, and things can get really weird. It could be that a pitcher's batted ball profile is more important than ever. That's not even getting into the stats that are fucked up because of ballpark adjustments. Everything is really weird.

The vaunted Phillies.

Not sure why I ever wavered on this team clinching with a full week left. What a ninny I was.