Aaron_Kennelly
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Everything posted by Aaron_Kennelly
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Similar, but Zobrist is going to walk more and I think Heyward will hit for more power if he keeps hitting the ball like this. Heyward's been really unlucky with his ISO. And it's coming from bad luck on balls in the air. He ranks 178 of 202 batters with 200 PA in HR/FB. But he's hitting the ball hard when he gets it in the air. He ranks 95 of 244 batters with 50 fly balls and line drives in FB/LD average exit velocity. And he ranks 96 of 244 in average FB/LD distance. Those things correlate really strongly with HR/FB and ISO. For reference, Heyward's HR/FB is 5.4% this year. It was 4.8% in 2016 and 9.4% last year. Between 2016 and 2017, Heyward ranked 221 of 252 batters with 200 FB/LD in average FB/LD exit velocity and 219 of 252 in average FB/LD distance. Heyward ranks 229 of 251 in xSLG-SLG for all hitters with 25 fly balls this year. He's hitting the ball with power, but it's not showing up yet. Somehow the dongs are going to come next for Heyward.
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On pace for a 3+ WAR season, and that's with a probably deflated defensive contribution (relative to his ability) because he was temporarily blind or concussed or something. Yep. And the defensive numbers are starting to get back in order as he’s played excellent defense since then. Obviously, he’s going to finish a few runs worse than he’d like defensively because of the two-week blindness, but after 162 games that stretch won’t be dragging his numbers down as much as it is now.
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[tweet] [/tweet] http://mlb.mlb.com/images/6/0/6/279543606/060218_gif_zobrist_stare.gif
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When is the last time you heard opposing announcers talk about how fun it is to watch another team? And when their own team was in the World Series the previous year? i mean, i'm sure the cubs are generally known around the league as a fun team to watch because of all the fun players they have. that doesn't mean the games themselves this season haven't been boring an unusual amount of the time. i don't see why this needs to be an argument. people calling the 2018 cubs season boring shouldn't bother you. You'll never have fun watching baseball again.
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When is the last time you heard opposing announcers talk about how fun it is to watch another team? And when their own team was in the World Series the previous year?
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Two days ago, they won on a walk-off. Yesterday they made like 5 highlight reel plays on defense and had the Dodgers announcers drooling on air, thinking about how fun they are to watch. I find myself viscerally agreeing with 17 Seconds, but if I take a breath my brain can explain to me that it's just this extended limp dick stretch on offense. 2 runs against Harvey, all the shut outs, the occasional majestic Schwarber dong being our only sustenance. It's very frustrating watching so many good hitters hit like Jason Heyward used to hit. I know it will end, it just doesn't feel like it will ever end. Yeah, the offensive struggles are frustrating. But you're right; they won't continue. And the good thing is that they aren't always boring when the bats go cold because they play amazing defense and have good starting pitching and a good bullpen. The bats struggled the whole Dodgers series, and the opposing announcers still went viral talking about how fun it is to watch us play baseball. The whining about them being boring is nonsense.
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Two days ago, they won on a walk-off. Yesterday they made like 5 highlight reel plays on defense and had the Dodgers announcers drooling on air, thinking about how fun they are to watch. the cubs are boring a lot. we talk about this a lot when they're being boring. stop being so defensive about it, damn Yeah, baseball is a long horsefeathering season. The 2016 Cubs were boring a lot, too.
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The sequencing may be annoying but I’d bet all 3 of those AL teams finish in the mid 90s range like we are on pace for. okay i'm not going to get into an argument about the cubs being good (i said is that they're boring, and they are boring a lot), but those teams are projected by fangraphs to win like 10 more games than the cubs right now. you can't just play the sequencing thing ahead of time like that. So we can't have fun watching our 95-win team because other teams are having more fun watching their 100-win teams? Also one of the reasons those teams are winning so easily is because the rest of the AL is dreadful outside of the top teams. The NL is a lot deeper. Also, the Cubs rate favorably compared to them in stuff like RD and BaseRuns. Just because those teams are like 10 games better right now and are projected to remain 10 games better doesn't mean they are actually 10 games better talent-wise.
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Two days ago, they won on a walk-off. Yesterday they made like 5 highlight reel plays on defense and had the Dodgers announcers drooling on air, thinking about how fun they are to watch.
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Why is it so hard to enjoy this franchise's best 4-year stretch in a century? i don't know, probably because we have plenty enough talent to do what ny/bos/hou is doing, so our steady 90-95 win pace and see-saw battle with the brewers feels pretty lifeless God forbid we stay at our 95-win pace and don't win 100 games.
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Why is it so hard to enjoy this franchise's best 4-year stretch in a century?
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Games remaining against teams over .500 until the break: Cubs - 4 Brewers - 7 Games against teams within 1 game of .500 until the break: Cubs - 7 Brewers - 12
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Joe is so confident that Harvey isn't lasting more than 2 innings that he split them all up L/R.
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I was just teasing you. We're good in my book. The complaints were fine. I just thought the thread seemed like everyone was attending the 2018 Cubs' funeral. Just wanted everyone to not forget about all the good stuff.
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That was a fun game. We just outclassed a pretty good squad.
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There should be a 2-hour window after any game thread is started to allow Schwarber Fan to make the first weather-related comment.
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Fly it!
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#wearegood
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I think Lester's been extremely lucky, but he's also a legit soft contact guy. His ERA is in the low 2's, but I'd guess he's "earned" an ERA in the low 3's while FIP puts him in the low 4's. Oh I mean he’s not a sub 3 era guy, but he’s been plenty fine. Today is the first game in a while I’d say he’s getting really lucky, he clearly doesn’t have it and is giving up some very hard contact the wind and defense is saving his ass on. Yeah Lester's performance is hard to judge. On the one hand, he stunk early on and had good results which has skewed his overall numbers. But I also think he did everything he could to succeed outside the confines of FIP -- nibbling, picking his spots to attack, knowing which batters to work around, when getting donged it was because he only threw dongable pitches when nobody was on, etc. It also limited how deep he could work into games. But strictly ERA-wise, I think he has enough savvy to survive when his stuff isn't there. I think he's a lot closer to what he's been his last 8 starts or so, though -- around a 3.7 FIP with contact-management skills that let him maintain an ERA around 3. As long as his velocity stays where it's at and he shows the command he's had the last couple months, he can probably put up a sub-3 ERA with this defense behind him, though.
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Boring team.
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Jon's worth all the money Theo's given to any free agent ever.
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Yay! But also: why!?
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Yeah, Adrian Gonzalez was good enough that the Red Sox were able to completely get out of his contract and Crawford's -- though that was a stupid trade by the Dodgers. So, 1 worked out fine. 1 was really bad. 1 was fantastic. 1 looks bad, but somehow might be fine. And the other is to be determined.