Aaron_Kennelly

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/6/2/4/290119624/081218_cubs_bote_rounding_homeplate.gif

first thing i thought too http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/idjut.gif

Holy horsefeathers that was amazing. I horsefeathering love that kid.

Future 5-time MVP

#EveryBoteIn

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS BOTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEee

horsefeathering snitch.

This guy fucks.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm sure Happ or Seal Boy would look great right now. the stupid cubs are so much of a percentage of your personality that you're looking up almora's exit velocity against 4-seamers so you can defend him batting 5th against max scherzer. To be fair, I looked it up last year before the NLDS to see who might matchup well with him and remembered it and posted it today.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm sure Happ or Seal Boy would look great right now.

Oh my god I agree with r_mack.

Almora crushes fastballs from righties, specifically 4-seam fastballs, more specifically 4-seam fastballs up, and most specifically 4-seam fastballs up at elite velocity. I think it's a good matchup for him. Scherzer throws a lot of fastballs and loves working up. Basically no one is a good matchup against Scherzer, but this is one specific skill that Almora has that might come in handy. Somehow.

We care about the Cardinals? We care about the Brewers? Not after we sweep them in a few days.

We care about the Cardinals? Well if we lost tonight they’d be 4.5 back and they are one of the hottest teams in baseball. Deserves to be in the back of our minds at least even if it’s unlikely they continue to play like this Their divisional odds are 2.2% on Fangraphs right now. They have a way tougher schedule than us or the Brewers the rest of the way. And they suck. I'm not going to worry about that shitty team until they are an actual threat. I guess we should root for them to not make the playoffs, because they don't deserve nice things. But they are far from being a legitimate concern to us.

Vaunted bullpen.

VBs VB'ing.

Barves up 2-0.

Here's my honest assessment of our pitching right now. We need Darvish back and we need him to pitch well. It would be huge. We obviously shouldn't count on it and we all should probably plan for him to never throw another pitch for the 2018 Cubs. But one can hope. Kyle Hendricks is completely fine. I trust him with my life. He's gotten off to slow starts before. He even did in 2016. Since the start of July, he's been really good. He was having a ton of problems with his K/BB and HR. He's not anymore. In his last 8 starts he has a 45/5 K/BB and has only given up 4 homers. His overall numbers (and mainly his periphs) are starting to come back to where they should be. His xFIP is at 3.88. Kyle is also a legitimate FIP-beater because of all the weak contact he induces. The one thing that is still out of whack is his HR rate. He's probably been a little unlucky there. Of 119 pitchers with at least 250 batted balls, he has the 8th lowest average exit velocity at 85.4 mph. For reference, he was 3rd-lowest last year at 83.9 mph and 8th-lowest in 2016 at 85.8 mph. The one problem he's faced is that that batters are hitting the ball harder when they get it in the air. His FB/LD avg. exit velocity is 91.8 mph this year, which ranks 32nd. In 2016, he was at 90.2 mph, which ranked 11th. Hendricks also ranks 57th in Barrels/PA. Last year he ranked 21st. In 2016, he ranked 8th. He also ranks 40th in avg. FB/LD distance. These things correlate very strongly to HR rates. Hendricks has the 11th worst HR/FB of all qualified starters. There's no reason for that to be the case. He hasn't been hit very hard. A few home runs in such a small sample will throws things out of whack. Kyle is good. He's the Game 1 starter. The rest of the guys suck. Montgomery has been fine and he's pitched well enough. We'd probably not want him starting in the playoffs if there are other viable options, but he'd suffice. Jon is getting old. He's not the same pitcher and won't be again. Right now he looks really bad and we can't count on him. If he gets back to where he was at the start of the season -- a 4.50 FIP-type of pitcher -- he could probably grind his way to around a 4.00 ERA with our defense. But that seems far-fetched right now. Cross him off the list for now. I've pretty much lost hope of Quintana turning it around this year, also. I think he'll be better next year if he gets some time off to rest and get his body right and work on some things. Sometimes guys just have bad years. His overall outlook has dropped a lot. But I think he can still be a viable starter in the future for us. For now... not so much. I don't know what to expect with Hamels. He's looked fine in his two starts with us. His periphs have been solid outside of his HR rate. Maybe pitching in Texas was holding him back. Maybe he's just toast. We'll have to wait and see. Until proven otherwise, he also sucks. The hope is that two of Q/Jon/Hamels find whatever they are lacking right now and can be trusted to start post-season games. Right now, it's probably Q and Hamels, and Q is a quick hook. You hope that Kyle can start and maybe give you 6 innings. The others you hope can go 4-5 while only allowing about 2 runs with the help of our defense. If they get in trouble in the 2nd, they're coming out. You'd basically be piggybacking Chavez with whatever starter decides to horsefeathers the bed. We are going to bullpen the horsefeathers out of the playoffs. We are deep in the pen. We have good arms at the back-end and semi-reliable guys throughout. I'd hope we add another pitcher or two by the end of the month if things don't improve. If we are able to move Monty back to the pen and Smyly gives us something, even better. The more multi-inning options, the better off we'll be. This is what we've done all year, to an extent, to the tune of a 67-49 record. We have a really good offense. They run the bases well. They play great defense. And the bullpen has been really solid. We'd crank the bullpen part into overdrive. There are more days off. There's nothing to hold guys back and rest them for. It's full bullpening. It can work. You just hope that one or two of the shitty starters randomly gave us 5-6 solid innings at some point -- which isn't out of the realm of possibility. We've been good in spite of our starting pitching in the regular season. We also can be in the playoffs.

Also, the 2006 Red Sox finished with a negative run differential and accrued the 22nd-highest position player WAR. We're not the 2006 Red Sox.

I really don't think the rotation was supposed to be our strength. Position players are more important. There are more of them. They play everyday. They are important to scoring runs and preventing them. We are filthy with good position players. Our rotation was supposed to be good, but this wasn't impossible to foresee. Some guys already dropped off last year. There are a lot of innings and long, grueling years extended into the post-season on some of these arms. Pitching is fickle as it is. The attrition rate of pitchers is always something to fear. This is why we built through the draft with hitting. You can build a good rotation but you never really know.

Fun game. Get 'em tomorrow.

Months ago The Cubs have scored more runs than any team in the NL and have a 3 game lead on every team in the NL.