UMFan83

You might have missed my post above where the White Sox starter has an ERA over 7 for the year (though has pitched better in his 3 White Sox starts)

And injury updates The Candelario bit is really not telling us anything insightful, but pretty clear that Adbert wouldn't be back until maybe Saturday or Sunday?

Here's the lineup tonight: Tauchman CF Hoerner 2B Happ LF Bellinger 1B Suzuki RF Swanson SS Morel DH Gomes C Mastrobuoni 3B I was one of the loudest screaming for Swanson to hit behind Seiya so great, but its funny that Ross finally started doing that AFTER Swanson started hitting again.

In other news, the White Sox give the Cubs the middle finger and place Luis Robert Jr on the IL prior to their series against the DBacks.

Just to deal with my nervous energy, I'm going to predict the week goes like this: CHC: WLLWWL MIA: LLWWWL ARI: WWWLLL CIN: not enough 5. ARI 85-77 6. CHC 85-77 Out. MIA 84-78 If that happened it would be a dramatic week with the Cubs increasing their lead to 2, then by the end of the Braves series back to just 1. They go into the final day needing a win or Marlins loss to clinch and a win + DBacks loss to finish WC2. In a fitting end to the WC race, everyone loses.

Tillman and Briggs were both top 10 at their position too

What should we expect from Steele tonight? Coming off 2 of his worst outings of the year, but before that was coming off his best 4-5 start stretch of the season. Were the last 2 starts an effect of being stretched to over 100 pitches 3 straight starts? Or is his arm just tapped out of the year? Hopefully he can put it together for at least 2 more starts.

I thought you were on the side of "you can greatly improve in 1-2 offseasons", or do you make an exception for especially talent deficient teams? Because I feel like outside of QB and coaching thats the team's biggest problem, little or no blue chip talent on the team. That's not something you can fix in one offseason with the draft and FA. If you already have a couple of elite players in place and your team sucks, then its much easier to build for a quick turnaround.

A look at the other games we'll be following tonight: 5:10pm CT - Reds (Greene 4.24 ERA) @ Guardians (Giolito 4.60 ERA) - Hunter Greene has been really solid of late and is coming off a 7 IP, 1 ER, 3 H effort against the Twins. Giolito has been pretty mediocre since going to Cleveland, his last start he gave up 4 runs (3 earned) in 5.1 IP 6:10pm CT - Marlins (Garrett 3.53 ERA) @ Mets (Lucchesi 2.88 ERA) - Garrett is probably (?) the Marlins best starter this year. He has given up 0 ER over his last 2 starts, 6 IP against these Mets and 6 IP against the Brewers. Lucchesi has only made 8 starts this year and has pitched solid but a after quick glance it looks like he's probably getting a bit lucky. This same pitching matchup occurred 1 week ago in Miami and the Marlins had a walk off 4-3 victory. 6:40pm CT - Diamondbacks (Davies 6.81 ERA) @ White Sox (Urena 7.27 ERA). Davies sucks. Honestly he even kind of sucked against the Cubs giving up 3 ER in 4 IP his last start. He has had a couple of decent starts in the past month but his ERA is his ERA. Urena is mostly terrible but has been solid in 2 of his 3 White Sox starts, his last being 6 IP, 1 ER, 4 H vs. the Nationals. 6:40pm CT - Cardinals (Thompson 4.57 ERA) @ Brewers (Houser 4.35 ERA). F it, I'm including the Brewers until we're eliminated, though I'm not including the Giants or Phillies.

I picked 1 and 2 without thinking but then researched 13 and 14 from last year. That's the 7-10 Jets and 8-9 Patriots picks. Lets be positive and say the Bears are 14. That means they finish the year 8-6. They couldn't possibly do that without significant improvements across the board including QB, coaching, defense, line, etc. Very tempting. I still feel like 1 and 2 would be better for our long term prospects but I'm sick of the Bears sucking and seeing them win 8 games this year would be better for my mental health. On paper I'm taking 1 and 2, emotionally I'm taking 13 and 14. I'll go with 1 and 14 with the 1 being the Panthers pick 🙂

Was looking for signs of slowdown since the Braves clinched and their batting line in 10 games since clinch (.844 ops) is almost identical to their pre-clinch numbers (.845 ops). Their lineups look mostly the same with maybe 1 guy resting per game Where the drop off comes is from pitching. 6.92 ERA compared to 4.08 for the season. That is why they are 4-6 since they’ve clinched. The pitching shouldn’t be too good this series for Atlanta, so we’re gonna have to outslug them to win in this series.

Small update of relevance: the Astros and Rangers both won tonight. This means that the Astros have opened up a 1.5 game cushion over the Mariners for WC3, while the Rangers have a 2.5 game lead in the division (which comes with a ALDS bye) Ideally the Astros can straddle the line where they are close enough to the playoff cut line, but not too far from the division to make their final 3 games vs ARI very meaningful. Best case scenario: they have 2 more against Seattle (the first team out) If Seattle somehow wins the next 2, Houston will be 0.5 games out of the playoffs heading into the final series and they will be in desperation mode ideally Texas also loses the next 2 so the division is still in play Worst case scenario: Houston wins the next 2 games and virtually clinches a playoff spot while the Rangers also win their next 2, making it difficult for the Astros to be in the division race. They will absolutely still try because the difference between WC 2/3 and a bye to the ALCS is that important but they could be eliminated from the division race by Saturday and decide to rest everyone heading into the WC round which will give the DBacks a MUCH easier series. TL;DR: need to root for Seattle and LAA the next 2 days to ensure maximum motivation for the Astros series in Arizona

More Carter:

Doesn’t help that we are paying about $18m to Mancini, Barnhard, Heyward and at least Hendricks’ buyout Speaking of Heyward, $5m of his salary is deferred until 2024, does that count against the tax?

Jalen Carter has a sack and 2 forced fumbles on MNF. He’s been one of the better defensive players in the entire league so far. Wright may end up being very solid and I get the character concerns with Carter and the argument that he had to be in a structure like Philly or whatever but Poles may have massively fucked up. Traded out of number 1 overall to 9th and still had the chance to draft the best non-QB in the draft.

Someone asked about Candelario yesterday, forgot that I saw this: Maybe Candelario comes back this series and Alzolay back before Milwaukee?

Obviously, there's virtually no chance, but there's certainly a better chance when there are 3 H2H matchups left. The hard part is getting a sweep in ATL and getting STL to sweep MIL. If by some miracle that happens, we then control our destiny. What an amazing story that would be to be 8 games out with 8 to play and still win the division. OK time to stop day dreaming and come back to reality.

Cubs playoff odds at 59.1% now after Arizona's loss. A couple of days ago they had the Cubs division odds at 0.0%, we've managed to increase it to 0.1%! Arizona drops to 76.9%, Miami 55.8%, Reds hanging in there at 8.1%, and SD/SF each have a tragic number of 2 so are now at 0.0%

I'm sure they've lost some fluke ones, but yeah they are one of the major outliers with their ridiculous record in 1 run games.

There are so many with Miami. I believe all 4 of the losses against them were by 1 run. Win 1 of those and we're up 3 games instead of 1 AND we'd own the tiebreaker over them (season series tied 3-3, Cubs have clinched better intradivisional record thus winning the tiebreaker). We'd be basically 4 games up with 6 to play and probably at like 96% playoff odds right now. Or win that extra inning game we were 1 strike away from winning in Arizona (or the extra inning game in Chicago where Gomes missed a walkoff HR by a couple of inches) and we're 2 games ahead of them and Miami. We won some fluke ones too, that stuff tends to even out for most teams over 162, but yeah kind of painful to think about, so I won't after hitting Submit

Yeah thats what I get for rushing the post out. Correct if the Cubs go 3-3 Cincinnati has to go 5-0. There's also 3 and 4 team tiebreaker scenarios to consider but the Cubs don't win any of them unless San Francisco or San Diego is involved and...thats not happening.

The White Sox do get to face the ****** part of their rotation that only the Cubs can't hit for the first 2 games. Chance they can steal one but not counting on it.

THHEEEEEEEE YANKEES WIN OK, so this is how we will enter do-or-die week.... 3 teams separated by 1 game, playing for 2 playoff spots. Current Standings: WC2: ARI 82-74 (tied but win tiebreaker over CHC) WC3: CHC 82-74 -- -------------------- OUT: MIA 81-75 1 GB OUT: CIN 80-77 2.5 GB Schedules: ARI: 3 @ CWS, 3 vs. HOU CHC: 3 @ ATL, 3 @ MIL MIA: 3 @ NYM, 3 @ PIT CIN: 2 @ CLE, 3 @ STL If the Cubs go 3-3... Arizona needs to go 2-4 or worse to finish behind Cubs (magic number to eliminate is 7) Miami needs to go 3-3 or worse to finish behind the Cubs (magic number to eliminate is 6) Cincinnati needs to go 5-0 (magic number to eliminate is 5)

Good to see some teams are actually able to take advantage of the Diamondbacks terrible bullpen. 6-4 now

Seriously, not sure if it was the wind or the wetness but that dude couldn't throw a strike consistently.