UMFan83

lol. And they just attempted to pick him off 1 pitch before. To be caught that off guard like that is insane to me.

I look at it different in baseball than other sports. If a 15-1 NFL team needs a 20 point comeback to beat a 3-14 team, yeah that would be disappointing. but baseball is so different on a daily basis. Coming back from 5 runs down is great regardless of who they’re playing imo. I get it though, the Cubs have been extremely bad lately and so frustrations are heightened. Anyways, Cubs win. Glad I kept checking in and got to see the last couple innings. Hopefully this is the game that helps them start to build some momentum.

Well that is a good thing that happened

Neris gives up some hard hit balls so he decides to nibble and walks the 9th place hitter. now a PR is coming in to test our catcher who can’t throw anyone out. ugh

Robert Jr lingering just 2 batters away

Neris giving up some loud contact. Hasn’t hurt them yet.

I’m pretty down on the Cubs too but can we at least try to enjoy things a little bit? (pending 9th inning shenanigans)

Neris trying to bounce back from his first blown save (I think). Can he do it?

i'm not going to lie, I haven't followed the game in over an hour and was just coming back to this thread to read more angry posts. They actually tied it? lmao. It's kind of jarring, I'm so used to this team having no life at all after they get behind like this.

My guesses for a potential sell off. We're no where near close to doing at this point but this team is pissing me off so I'm in the mood to kick people off the team. Should look to trade in the event of a sell off: Mark Leiter Jr Tyson Miller Hector Neris Patrick Wisdom (power bat, might get small return) Cody Bellinger Mike Tauchman Julian Merryweather (if healthy) Absolutely dump if you can but probably either too bad or contract is too big/long: Drew Smyly Ian Happ DFA is the only way to get rid of: Kyle Hendricks Yan Gomes Keegan Thompson Nick Madrigal Miles Mastrbuoni Keep for the Next Great Cubs Team™: Javier Assad Ben Brown Porter Hodge Shota Imanaga Justin Steele Hayden Wesneski Nico Hoerner Pete Crow-Armstrong Jordan Wicks Undecided/Probably keep but not untouchable: Yency Almonte Adbert Alzolay Luke Little Daniel Palencia Jameson Taillon Miguel Amaya Michael Busch Christopher Morel Dansby Swanson Seiya Suzuki

To be fair to Steele, he's given up 1 total ER in his last 2 starts and while he did allow 4 additional unearned runs they were as unearned as an unearned run can get as they were all as a result of his RF dropping a routine fly ball.

At least in 2013 and 2014 we were losing games on purpose. Not that this was built to be a World Series contender, but this is Jed Hoyer attempting to win baseball games.

For those not in tune with how the White Sox are doing, they came into this game having lost of 15 of their last 16 games.

Is this rock bottom?

They may be bad but at least they've had some company lately:

Thanks for doing the research on this. For the record, that Biblical Losses dude (ok fine that's me) did add a response to the tweet you linked mentioning that despite the number of outs, their BsR is consistently high and surmised that we're likely just very aggressive at baserunning and that will lead to more outs, but of course everyone only picked up on the first tweet because it fit their rage for the Madrigal send. You took it 5 steps further with your analysis, good stuff.

Valid point about the contract, I always forget about that. I think if the Cubs finish around .500 and the farm system is still considered top 3-5 in baseball he'll be safe from heat. I'm not trying by cynical and suggest that Tom doesn't care about winning at all. He does, but I think whats most important to him from a baseball perspective is building a team that can develop players regularly to keep them from having to go into the luxury tax very often. (I mean to be realistic thats what almost every owner wants). Jed can still sell Tom on that vision even if the Cubs only win 78 games this year. - .500ish team baseline (in this hypothetical) - Top 5 farm system with many top guys in the upper minors - Under the luxury tax, so no concerns about paying repeater penalties in short term - Completely swagging it but something like $66m coming off the books from Hendricks, Bellinger, Smyly, Gomes, Bote, Neris and not a ton of arbitration raises I don't think (Steele is probably the only one that will be a significant raise) There are absolutely concerns and if I'm right and he's not on the hot seat, negotiations on an extension will be interesting. But I would guess Tom is pleased with the health of the organization overall, he's making money, he can sell the fans (and himself) on the dream of a sustainable winner. Unless has an in house option he really likes, Tom doesn't seem like the kind of guy that is going to overhaul the organization when its doing a good job developing pitching and seemingly doing a decent job of developing hitting. Ripping it apart with a new regime before really seeing if many of the guys the current FO has spent the last 4ish years trying to develop could be seen as too rash for Tom. I could be way off though. And of course I'm saying this from Tom's perspective, not my own. I have my own thoughts about the direction things are going but I have no say in it.

I think that there's enough of them that at least 2 of them are going to turn into above average major league players. I'm just concerned that none of them will turn into premium MLB players. PCA could but its going to be fielding/baserunning heavy vs. a dangerous middle of the order hitter type of player. This is why I was so dubious about making your one big money long term contract Dansby, a solid player who adds value but doesn't make the offense much more dangerous. So many premium bats have been made available in recent years or are available...not all of them had a chance to end up as Cubs but many could have if acted upon aggressively enough. Jed's rebuild should have been like the Phillies. Correct me if I'm wrong but they developed a decent chunk of their roster, but not a ton of superstar talent. They developed a solid core of players and then added guys like Harper, Turner and Wheeler to fill the gaps (combined WAR this year 6.2 and tht's with Turner missing a month) The Cubs comparable signings were Seiya, Swanson and Imanaga (combined WAR this year 2.6 with Seiya missing 3 weeks and Swanson 2 weeks)

I still dont think Jed is even anywhere close to the hot seat, but in case I'm wrong he might want to get some of those vaunted position player prospects up to Chicago by the end of the year to produce a bit and show that your plan isn't doomed for failure.

6 straight series losses, and there was a 4 gamer and a 2 gamer in there that were splitable 2-8-1 in our last 11

Brown threw more pitches than he was stretched out to do last time (I think). Possibly just doesn’t have it today but looking as good as he did last time it’s jarring to see him struggle a few days later.

Tauchman and Busch are much worse against lefties and Lodolo is death to lefty hitters this year (.406 OPS against). PCA has hit lefties better than righties in the minors but small sample size, perhaps they just don't love the matchup for him

I obviously wouldn’t go as far as to say the Cubs offense is hot now, but it’s definitely been a lot closer to expectations lately which is great to see. We know that this team is much better offensively than they were the last couple of weeks and that slumps don’t last forever but man it was starting to feel like a tailspin that would never end. new game starts in less than 13 hours!

Man we needed that so bad. Good job picking up Seiya. I have to admit I turned it off and put on a movie. Didn’t want to deal with another frustrating game on my Saturday night. Glad I thought to check the score on my phone and saw that there was 1 out in the 9th.

Please don’t blow this with 2 outs in the 9th. Come on Neris you got this