Aaron_Kennelly

He had a poor junior season in college. Heading into his draft year, he was considered a potential 3rd-5th round pick. Interesting. I'll have to keep him on my radar going forward. He seems to have a nice approach, which I love. Any idea how he looks on defense?

What's the word on Zack Short? Anything there? I know nothing about him, but he walked a ton last year, and he's hitting for some pop this year, while playing some short, second, and third. He's a college kid, but doesn't turn 22 until next month.

I thought the rivalry with them was fun in 2015, with us both being good and us ripping their hearts out in the playoffs. But, them being a miserable, 95-loss bottom feeder is going to give me so much more enjoyment.

Not much better than sitting up top with the Pirates and Cards taking up the rear in the NL Central. The only two teams in the division with negative run differentials, too.

I hadn't thought of this occurrence before. But I definitely agree. You have the chance to lull batters to sleep with Hendricks' velocity and then bring 96 out of the pen with Carl or whomever. I'm not sure how much effect it would have on Koji, but there's a benefit to be had by going to Carl there.

I'm now looking for 165. Agreed. But the Jake Buchanan starts in September might test our mettle.

This game will be the start of a run of excellent starting pitching, after which the rest of the league is going to collectively go, "Oh horsefeathers..." because we'll also be averaging 8 runs scored per game.

Hendricks is fixed. 117 is too low.

Shout out to J-Hey for busting his ass in the off-season. He owned his problems, handled himself very well during his struggles, and he worked his ass off to get better.

Our #7 hitter is a career .280/.351/.484 hitter and our #9 hitter is a career .283/.325/.462 hitter. Is that good?

Oh horsefeathers, Joe's rolling out the A Team tonight.

You're not worried about Anderson? Nope. He sucks, but he gets ground balls. He can suck all he wants, but as long as he keeps piling up ground balls, he won't fare too poorly with this defense behind him.

But only third in RD. Gotta fix that We'll be looking up the RD record again within a week.

That being said, he's The Professor, and we're the Cubs, and everything goes well for us. So he's going to right the ship tomorrow. And we are going to dong the hell out of these scrubs.

The velo is concerning, but the HR/FB rate is slightly hilarious. I'm confident he'll get things figured out, he started slow last year too. He did start slow, but his peripheral stats looked good from the get-go. The walks aren't normal from him. And the velo dop -- when he's already so low -- concerns me, especially when it comes with a ton of hard contact, since soft contact is his forte. I'm not super concerned. But I think there is at least something to be concerned about. I don't think there really is with any other starter, though. Lackey and Arrieta share the same hilariously high HR/FB rates. But they aren't even actually getting hit harder on average. In fact, Arrieta's average exit velocity is the lowest in the league of any starter that's made 4 starts. It's an aberration. And it can easily happen in such a small sample. Make but a couple mistakes, and, boom, high HR/FB, high FIP, high ERA, high everything. Hendricks is the same, but he's been a little off in other areas, too.

I hope Kyle looks good. He's the only pitcher I'm actually worried about. And he's one of my favorites. So I hope he's back to normal soon.

I should make clear: I don't think he's any good. He sucks. And he hasn't been fun to watch. But if you were looking at this roster and trying to think of a way to exploit our strengths, he's the perfect guy to do it. Of all the things this team does well, turning ground balls into outs is probably what we do best. It's not the most important thing we do, but it's what we do best. And of all pitchers that have thrown 500 innings since 2010, Anderson's got the highest GB% in the league. It's a great allocation of resources to just throw a random, cheap ground-ball pitcher out there, especially when you know you are capable of scoring 14 runs on any night.

I'm fine with Brett Anderson. He's a perfect fit. I mentioned after his last start that we could take any random ground ball pitcher and he'd go like 16-7 with a 3.10 ERA. And he's proving it. He's been walking the tight rope and wiggling out of messes, but that's exactly the point. Keep the ball in the park, keep it on the ground, and you can walk a tight rope with this defense behind you. I know it's not an either-or situation, but Hammel wasn't the best fit after we added Addi and Javy, and after Bryant turned out to be a damn-near Gold Glover himself. Hammel's trended more towards an extreme fly-ball pitcher as he's gotten older, and I could see that leading to lots of problems for him. He walked 2.1 per 9 and struck out over 9 per 9 in 2015 and still could only manage a 3.64 FIP and 3.58 ERA. His success is tenuous. The walk-rate and K-rate started trending the wrong way last year, too. He's going to turn to suck in a hurry. Give me a cheap ground-ball guy on a one-year deal. Anderson needs to quit walking guys, for sure. But that hasn't been a problem for him in the past. He's also "only" at a 52% GB rate right now, with a career average of 58%. So if he could bump the GB rate up a little and quit walking guys, he's going to have a lot of success. This is assuming he's not a completely different pitcher after all the injuries. And he could go back down at any moment. But I say ride him out and hope he can give us some innings, because I bet they end up panning out well for us.

117

And I think he's got a little more power in him, and he's gonna walk more if he keeps up this plate discipline, as he'll be seeing fewer pitches in the zone than he has so far this year.

MVP?

According to Statcast data, based off of launch angles and exit velocities, Jason Heyward's been the most unlucky hitter on the Cubs this year. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2017%7C&hfSit=&player_type=batter&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=CHC&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&metric_1=&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=name&sort_col=wobadiff&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_abs=20#results

Jason Heyward's pretty good, too. The same thing, excepted for the difference between expected wOBA and wOBA on line drives and fly balls hit in the general vicinity of a RF: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=Fly%5C.Ball%7CLine%5C.Drive%7C&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2016%7C&hfSit=&player_type=pos9_person_id&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&metric_1=h_launch_direction&metric_1_gt=15&metric_1_lt=90&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=name&sort_col=wobadiff&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_abs=100#results

They just updated the search function on baseball savant and it is amazing. There is so much new stuff you can search for on there. I just did a search for xBA-BA on all ground balls hit at launch directions that are roughly in the shortstop's area of the field, and I set the minimum at 200 such ABs. That left 33 shortstops. Addi lapped the field in suppressing BA in 2016. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=&hfAB=&hfBBT=Grounder%7C&hfPR=&hfZ=&stadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfGT=R%7C&hfC=&hfSea=2016%7C&hfSit=&player_type=pos6_person_id&hfOuts=&opponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&team=&position=&hfRO=&home_road=&hfFlag=&metric_1=h_launch_direction&metric_1_gt=-25&metric_1_lt=0&hfInn=&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&group_by=name&sort_col=xbadiff&player_event_sort=h_launch_speed&sort_order=desc&min_abs=200#results The batting average on these balls hit towards Addi was .084 less than the expected BA (based on launch angle and speed). The next highest in the league was .040.