Aaron_Kennelly

As Duke's proxy going back to last year, it really isn't as bad as it seems. Duke'ster is too busy galavanting around the minor league system right now to care or be worried about anything involving the MLB team other than how many games above 90 they win. Bad news on that front: The minor league system is really freaking bad. I couldn't kill any of them because they're already dead.

We're fine. We're still 3 games over .500. +24 run differential. Only 1.5 back. And we've played like absolute ass. We'll get hot eventually and run away with the division. I hope for my sanity it's soon though.

Assad is 89-91 with his fastball. Struggling with his control. https://streamable.com/u7tb0 And... he just gave up a bases-clearing double.

Theo laid a trail of wine bottle leading into the bounce house and then locked Joe inside.

I'll wait until after the Cardinals series to post an article and officially kill him.

This is unquestionably a good thing. Even in the article, it points out that his wRC+ is higher than it's ever been. If this version of Kris Bryant continues this exact performance and hits 18 homers this year, he'll still be a better hitter than he's ever been. But he won't. He'll hit around 30 at least. We're still talking about a small sample size. He's going to hit more homers. He's been a little unlucky in that regard so far. He's hit three doubles that went 365, 366, and 389 feet. He hit a triple that went 400 feet. Some of those balls will start leaving the park. And I agree that he powered down some last year. His FB% went down. His avg. exit velocity went down big time from 89.3 mph to 87.1 mph. But it's back up this year to 88.7 mph. He's hitting the ball hard again. But he's not getting enough launch angle, for sure, to put out huge amounts of power. It'd be silly to think his avg. launch angle is definitely going to stay this low, though. Again, it's a small sample size. And, even still, guess who he is tied with in avg. launch angle right now? Joey Votto. He's still in the upper half of the league. Back in 2016, he had the 3rd highest avg. launch angle in the league. Being that high really isn't very conducive to maintaining a high BABIP. You'll see guys like Brian McCann and Todd Frazier up there, who are selling out for power and getting under a lot of stuff. A lot of lazy fly balls. In 2016, Bryant had 25 infield fly balls. This year, he has 1. He's hitting a ton of line drives. His batted-ball profile aligns with that of a BABIP god. He also hits more infield singles than just about anyone. And he still has the power to drive the ball out of the park. Plus, more balls in play = more chances for them to leave the park. The power will come around. And KB will be better than he's ever been.

I'll be at the South Bend game tonight. Hopefully Assad can replicate the performance I saw from Alzolay earlier in the week.

Albertos was better tonight than his last time out. Only walked 3 of 6 batters.

Yeah, that game was just awful. I know there has been a lot of boring baseball this year, but this game was by far the worst. Horrible offense, defense, and pitching. Even when we've been in funks before, it seems like one of the three was there. There was no redeeming quality to that game. Garbage. i thought he was making a joke about the lack of a themed thread cubs do suck though Flew over my head like I was an outfielder playing behind Yu Darvish.

So we all agree the Almora/Javy 1-2 thing should never happen again, right?

Yeah, that game was just awful. I know there has been a lot of boring baseball this year, but this game was by far the worst. Horrible offense, defense, and pitching. Even when we've been in funks before, it seems like one of the three was there. There was no redeeming quality to that game. Garbage.

I was really feeling myself after the 10-2 comeback, but this game and they Heyward article are all the confirmation I need to realize I am still a monster. Not sure what happened in that Atlanta game.

Just putting it out there: We're winning this.

Am I the baddie?

Fancy seeing you here, jamfan.

Serious? yeah it was awesome I guess it will be really awesome when we finish the season 17 games above them.

Serious?

Nice run, Cubswin11. Thanks for saving the rotation. Who is going to save the lineup?

When do we honestly start talking about Happ going down?

Too bad Kyle didn't have his command in the first.

Much better job keeping the ball on the ground that inning. More of that.

From now on, put Rizzo at leadoff after every 0-fer game so we never have to see him hit .115 for a full month again.

Here’s some video of Alzolay I took last night: https://streamable.com/6frb7 He works very fast. Surely an advantage in keeping guys out of sync. Some of his innings flew by.

I think Drinky Joe made that lineup by asking Javy to name all of his teammates and after Javy could only name Rizzo and Bryant, he just pointed at the next 7 guys who walked by.