UMFan83

Bulls get: Durant, Gobert Jazz get: Vucevic, DeRozan Nets get: Williams, White, 2022 1st, 2023 POR 1st, Rudy Gay (to make salaries work) The Nets say no because they can probably do better than the young chips the Bulls have and 2 non-lottery 1sts, the Jazz might say no (though it does change their dynamic while keeping talent level at roughly the same spot to keep Mitchell happy), Jerry Reinsdorf says no. But that's the closest deal I can put together where the Bulls end up with both guys haha. Bulls would still have biannual MLE (i think) and LLE but it would clearly be a very thin team unless we grabbed some ring chasers on minimum salary

Extra innings suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

wait its tied? lol

I know, FIFA rankings are whatever, but its an interesting visualization. Every other WC group has two teams that are lower ranked than the worst team in our group

Should be an interesting night for the Bulls

Pirates are up 1-0 in the 3rd. Steele has struck out 4 of the 7 batters he's faced but the one base runner was a home run. Discuss. Or don't discuss, it doesn't really matter

Smart move by Robertson to strike out. If he took a walk he would never have an official AB.

Keegan Thompson has pitched at least 2.2 IP in 15 of his 16 appearances this year. He has allowed 1 ER or less in 12 of those 15 appearances. Also while it makes no sense to just throw out his 2 worst starts, it does seem like he had a velo drop and some weird stuff going on and has bounced back. So if you did remove those 2 bad starts, his ERA in the other 56.1 IP this year is 1.73

I love how they have to pitch Givens and Robertson in a 10-1 game simply so their arms can stay fresh

Figures that after all the 2016 heroes were cast aside, Heyward is the one Cubs management stays loyal to until the very end.

To add to the above, the Blue Jays manager got thrown out before the game started this afternoon presumably for complaining about the calls last night:

This is some of the worst umpiring I've ever seen

Tanking is a much more prevalent and obvious thing now. Jed wants to lose games. Heyward makes that more likely. He’s fine with it. This doesn't make any sense. It's not the NBA. Playing Velazquez over Heyward isn't going to improve the Cubs record, and if by some miracle Velazquez put up 3 WAR or something then the value of that would massively outweigh the difference between the 6th and 7th pick. I miss thinking that the Cubs had competent management. We're back to the days where I feel like the manager and GM have no idea what they are doing

10-63 with 0 XBH and 1 walk. Amazingly inept

This Shwarma dude sucks

that's basically what ross said yesterday. Velazquez is taking the role that Frazier had when he was on the team, which is basically occasional starts against LHP and pinch hitting. I don't see the logic behind this at all and would rather him play every day at Iowa, but Heyward has to play full time for....reasons. The logic gets worse the more time I spend thinking about it so I'm not.

How are they so bad at this year after year?

I know the Cubs want to keep him in the rotation while our top 3 starters are hurt but he’s making it difficult on them

What a ridiculous inning so far. -Walk -Walk after a dropped ball on a foul ball -Grounder directly to 2B that’s bobbled for no outs -2 run single

What exactly does Villar do around here?

Did Ortega just got a bad jump on that play in the 1st? Since I don’t expect anyone to have been watching, 2 outs with Ortega on 1st. Happ hits one to dead CF and it bounces off the wall. 3B coach sends Ortega and he’s thrown out by 20 feet. Assuming he would have taken off on contact with 2 outs, seems like he should have scored easily

2 pieces of rumors

Im rather skeptical that Cincinnati will ever make it back to the SB with their current build. Even with massive upgrades to the OL and skill players on offense, talent wise they would only start to be online with the together AFC leaders like Buffalo or KC. They were a fluke, and LA showed the world that in end such a weird comment. they maybe did go on a bit of a fortunate run but they have a ton of great skill players and won at KC in the playoffs. You make it seem like the Rams exposed the Bengals and crushed them in the Super Bowl when the Bengals were leading the game the entire second half and didn't lose the lead until 90 seconds were left in the game, but even still were within 8-9 yards of a FG to send it to OT. Burrow got sacked 7 times so it did expose their OLine issues...no one is disputing that this was a glaring weakness for them, but it doesn't make them a fluke

As bad as he is, I'd much rather have him than KB or Javy right now. Broadly though this is exactly why I was okay letting everyone walk. The 2016 warm and fuzzies only last so long when guys aren't producing. The cardinal sin of the last five years wasn't not committing to the core enough, it wasn't not starting the process of breaking them up much sooner Or supplementing the core and preparing for potential departures. It’s both fair and unfair to use the example of the Dodgers because they spent way more money than everyone else but the Cubs could theoretically spend in their range but choose not to. But they lost Corey Seager in the offseason but had Trea Turner ready to slide over. Bellinger has been hot garbage the last couple years but they traded for Mookie. They were ok with Grandal leaving because they had Will Smith ready to break out. Hardly anyone noticed that key guys from the early part of their run like Seager, Grandal, Puig, Ethier, Gonzalez, Joc, etc are gone because they didn’t let the team atrophy around them and then trade them all right before they went to FA, they continued to build around them. Helps that their developing system is light years away from the Cubs too. What if it was the Cubs that traded for Machado and then resigned him? Or Harper? Or simply developed a few above average players. We’d be sad guys like KB were gone but there would not be the level of anger and now apathy that Cubs fans feel now.

Reminder that Hendricks is the one member of the 2016 core that we managed to extend