Since Scherzer is dominating us right now, I'm going to think back to the time he came in during Game 5 of the 2017 NLDS, the Nats fans were all acting like the Cubs were screwed, and the Cubs put up like 4 runs on him en route to winning.
Noticed that too...very odd
interesting, I didnt go beyond this year to see if he was consistently better vs lefties because when I saw 2025 I assumed that's why we got him. Good stuff, makes a lot more sense now that he's giving guys days off against both righties and lefties.
If it’s the ACL, we won’t see him until 2027. Could affect his entire Cubs career as the Cubs will have to figure out a longer term starting catching option
Red Sox too....they're like 8-3 since the deadline. This is a silly excuse. PCA has a .213 OPS in August because he's bummed out the Cubs didn't get a controllable SP at the deadline?
No they are doing what baseball players do, they slump. Tucker is the closest thing we have to a superstar bat....not sure wtf is up with him but PCA's bat has been solid until recently but while a very good hitter much of his value is what he does away from the batters box. We hoped Seiya might be having a breakout season but it seems like he's just a streaky guy and that mostly tracks with how he has hit in his Cubs career. Busch had us thinking for a second we had another Rizzo but in reality he's probably more of an above average bat than a star one. That doesn't mean the Cubs offense is terrible, but its not a relentless juggernaut either...it can pose as one for chunks of time though.
I fall back on the fact that Ben Johnson was one of the most in demand 1st time head coaching candidates ever, had teams backing up a brinks truck to sign him, and he chose to be bound to Caleb Williams. It's not like he just went on Caleb's pedigree. He surely did his homework and saw Caleb live twice last year.
(ignore the part where Ben Johnson was rumored to not sign with the Commanders because he insisted on Sam Howell being his QB and passing on Jayden Daniels)
Kind of crazy how quickly the Brewers series went from "Chance to take over 1st place" to "Chance to get back into the division race" to "Protect our WC spot with 5 games against a team that can't lose"
Reds play the Angels while that series is going on BTW.
Every day around this time I convince myself that the offense will get going again, the slumps are not forever and they are clearly better than they’ve played. And then the next game starts and we’re popping up mistake pitches over the heart of the plate and it feels like we’ll never get it going.
Even though the Brewers don’t even matter for us anymore their continued historic play makes it even worse as it just feels like the universe is conspiring against us for some reason. Then I think about what a cesspool Chicago sports has been for going on 8 years now and I wonder what we’ve done to deserve this. We did get 4 championships in the 2010’s which is better than most cities can say in a given decade but I think we’ve more than made up for that by having 2 total playoff wins (4 if you include the White Sox in the last 8 seasons). I don’t think the city deserves another playoff missing collapse so hopefully the Cubs get it together soon and make it, even if we just lose 2 straight games scoring 1-2 runs like we did in 2018 and 2020.