Aaron_Kennelly

His ERA tonight is higher than his ERA this season.

Oh god I hadn't mentioned Schwarber's defense until tonight. Now I've jinxed it.

San Diego is up 4-0 in the first.

We're already giving the Brewers sweeps? Remember when the 68-win Padres beat the 103-win, World Champion Cubs at Wrigley Field twice in one day last year? Yeah, book it. Bump this if I'm wrong, but I won't be. ETA: Would love for this TO get bumped. Bump

This stupid horsefeathering park.

Is his DRS still abysmal? -4. But it's been at -5 since, like, the second week of the season. So it's going up, too.

Just a reminder: Our DH playing left has a 1.1 UZR this year. That's positive, by the way.

Joe traded in the wine for some harder stuff.

Looks like they've sealed the deal.

The new toys are fun.

Amaya is now 2/2 throwing out base runners. And he's 1-2 at the dish.

Mine looks a lot like this, although Candelario is on there begrudgingly. I see him only as a trading piece, for whatever value he has. I don't have much faith in him to ever be very productive in the majors. I've never been too high on him. But he's produced at the higher levels in the minors and is ready for a shot with some team, so he's above most of these guys by default.

Not sure what my top 10 is. I'll try to do one here in a bit. But I just want to say that Burks is definitely on mine. He's been great all year, and if anything is getting better as the year goes on. His OBP is up to .413 now. And I think he's been quietly trending up for awhile. He's done a good job of getting better in certain areas as he's moved up the ladder -- cutting down strikeouts, adding walks, then adding pop. Especially if he can handle some center, I think he's looking like a solid prospect.

Besides the Urias news, Rich Hill sucks now -- whenever he's able to actually pitch between bouts with blisters. I wanted to sign him. I was completely wrong about that.

Yeah, despite everything seeming bad, we've actually been pretty good in a number of areas. It's just that, when taken altogether, it has equated to us sucking. And even then, we're still average and not actually bad. We are definitely worse at just about everything. But we were also better than nearly every team in practically every facet of the game last year. So it seems worse in comparison. This year, we rank 5th in MLB in bullpen ERA, 7th in DRS, 8th in BsR, our offense is 1st in BB% and 10th in ISO. Our BB% and ISO are nearly exactly the same as last year, but we rank last in BABIP. That's been the major difference with the offense. It's pretty much the only difference. That's not to say we've just been unlucky. We have hit like horsefeathers. Too much weak contact. Too many balls on the ground. Not enough line drives. But that stuff is fluid. It's one of the reasons BABIP is fluky. Weird stuff just happens sometimes. We haven't suddenly become a bunch of weak hitters. They've got the same ISO, after all. They just aren't getting good things to happen when they make contact. But they have in the past. And if a couple of them figure things out, our fortunes on offense could change really quickly. The other stuff I mentioned above, where we rank well, still isn't quite where we thought we'd be in some cases. But it's certainly not bad. You can definitely live with being top 10 in those things. And that leaves the rotation. It horsefeathering blows right now. And it needs addressed. It will be. It will get better. And we just have to hope that Arrieta and Hendricks can at least be dependable.

Basically, even if they remain this festering turd all year, they aren't going to fall out of the division race. As horrible as it's been -- and it's been horrible -- we're two games out. And the team that is above us is horsefeathering garbage. We don't even have to turn anything around to win the division. We could just win it... by default, as Sammy said last night.

We need, like, three major things to improve to turn into the 103-win World Champions of last year, that ran through everything in their path. That was one of the better baseball teams you are going to see, any year, really, though. We are an about .500 team right now. Very average. By any way of looking at it. It is going to take an about .500 team to win this division. We don't need to improve that much to do that. And... practically everything imaginable had to go wrong for us to become this .500 team. So it'd also have to stay wrong for us to stay .500. Past performances and such are still important. Definitely not as important as, like, a month ago. But, it is possible that some guys are just slumping and will break out of it. And it would be hard to get much worse.

I still feel pretty much exactly as I did last week or whenever, when I said we'd win the division by 10 games. I still think we'll win it without much worry late in the year. Maybe drop a couple games off of that with the newfound worry about what we'll get from Hendricks and if/when he'll be back. We now have Eddie Butler and John Lackey both in the rotation, probably for awhile. That is bad news. But we'll trade for pitching. I'm not sure for what quality. But, at least enough to shoot Butler and/or Lackey into the sun. And I remain convinced that the rest of the division is even more trashy than we are. There won't be another team in the division over .500. We could seriously win, like, 85 games and not sweat it out in the last week. And, with an addition here or there, a few guys picking it up even just a little, and Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo on the roster, that's not going to be that hard to do.

Just last year, the Cleveland Indians were one win away from winning the World Series, despite resorting to starting Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin... on short rest. They even had something called Ryan Merritt start a playoff game. Trade for a starting pitcher -- any, really -- and pair him with some combo of Arrieta/Hendricks/Montgomery, while riding Lester hard, and we have more than a puncher's chance in the playoffs. And before we mention our shitty offense, that same Indians team hit .222, with a .288 OBP, in the playoffs last year. You could ride Lester, Rizzo, Bryant, and Wade Davis for a couple weeks, without much help even and win it all. Hell, multiple of them might even suck and you could get a randomly hot Schwarber or Hendricks or something and still skate by.

They might be able to lose every game until then and not be 6 out. Have you seen how horsefeathers this division is? Ain't gonna mean horsefeathers. It will when we are 77-85 World Series champions.

Or a weak ground out -- that probably makes more sense.

Grand slam to lose 9-8 would be almost too perfect.

They might be able to lose every game until then and not be 6 out. Have you seen how shitty this division is?

While we dong three times and only have 4 runs to show for it. Yep. Dumb horsefeathering game.