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Outshined_One

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Everything posted by Outshined_One

  1. Outshined_One
  2. Outshined_One
    Regarding the lack of swing/miss in the rotation, if this pitching staff were fully healthy, it would have three guys in Steele, Horton, and Brown who'd fulfill that criteria. Granted, that opens another can of worms regarding pitcher health and whether the Cubs' approach to pitching has had anything to do with their injuries.
  3. Outshined_One
    I'd be shocked to see Hottovy return in 2027, so at least there will be a clean slate for whomever they bring in to replace him.
  4. Outshined_One
    Well, that sucked. Win tonight so you at least save face when you get eliminated, ya bums.
  5. Outshined_One
    He and Pham are afterthoughts to me. It's not like the days of Lance Lynn, TLR, AJ Pierzynski, Ozzie, Hawks, etc., where there were some truly loathsome guys who were constantly up front and center. It's nice turning on The Score and not having to listen to people guffaw over Ozzie's latest presser, ya know?
  6. Outshined_One
    I've been digging the team the White Sox are putting together, not gonna lie. Murakami is fun and no one on the team or in their booth is an outright douchebag.
  7. Outshined_One
    Last year, it was Wiggins and a big ol' pile of hope. Their best pop-up pitching prospect (Gallagher) was traded, Mason McGwire was out with injury, Birdsell was freshly injured, and their only notable pitching picks in the draft (Reid/Wing/Coppola) were relative unknowns coming out of the draft. Go back and look at the forum this time a year ago; prospecteers and people on this forum were seriously trying to talk themselves into guys like Nick Dean and Connor Noland. It was horrendous. This year, it is better, thanks in large part to the volume of picks spent on pitching compared to past seasons. You're correct that Wiggins was pushed down due to his injuries, but the guy is still going to be a fixture on every Cubs top 10 list in the offseason. Townsend is a known quantity and was a potential Top 10 pick before lingering injury issues pushed him to the Cubs, so he'll similarly feature on the lists, and you'll also see glowing writeups about guys like Jasa, Blomker, Meyer, and Alwood in the offseason around these parts if @Jason Ross needs material during the lockout. There also were notable steps forward from guys like Coppola and Caple, not to mention Wing (pre-injury) and McGwire (pre-trade). Is the system a world-beater in terms of its pitching quality and depth? horsefeathers no. It's still bottom third in the league and has a long way to go before we can even consider the pitching to be mediocre. But that's better than being deadass last or second to last, like it was last season.
  8. Outshined_One
    It's also worth noting that the best OF available in FA this offseason is Randy Arozarena. The market for OFs is not going to be a good one. What sucks is the Cubs' internal OF options are either better suited in other roles (Shaw/Ramirez) or are at least a year away from being MLB-ready (Hartshorn/Kepley). They might end up giving QOs to Happ and Seiya simply because they're the best options.
  9. Outshined_One
    The flip side to that argument is, "These teams did it without spending hundreds of millions of dollars, why can't big market teams do the same?"
  10. Outshined_One
    Multiple things can be true here.: The Cubs have had serious issues with pitching development since Theo took over; Jed Hoyer has been allergic to investing substantial resources into the bullpen; The Cubs have refocused and overhauled their approach to drafting and developing pitching internally over the last two years; The pitching situation on the farm is better now than it was this time a year ago; Injuries to their best homegrown pitchers (Steele, Horton, Wiggins, and Brown if you count him) have undercut any success stories; It's unclear if none, some, or all of those injuries are the direct result of Cubs coaching/development; The Cubs ended the season with one of the worst pitching staff performances in the majors, likely would have ended dead last if no trades were made at the deadline, and haven't had a top 10 pitching staff since at least 2023. I kinda think it's pointless to dig in over some of these arguments because we generally only see the results, rather than the processes and procedures that go into those results. Going further, the "bad" version of Holmes is likely a better option than most of the other options the Cubs currently have available.
  11. Outshined_One
    For the record, I went with eliminated in the NLCS. They should be able to handle business with the Padres, but the matchup with the Brewers in the NLDS will be reminiscent of the Cubs/Brewers NLDS last year, or Cubs/Nationals NLDS in 2017, where both teams slugged it out over a 5 game series, went to the well on multiple occasions, and emptied everything in the tank in Game 5, only for the winner to go into the NLCS completely gassed and easy pickings for the Dodgers in the NLCS. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar outcome to 2017 here.
  12. Outshined_One
    I'm sure this will be a reasoned discussion.
  13. Outshined_One
    The whole dumbass "Caleb isn't tough," narrative means either the Bears will gut out an ugly win with Bagent having like two good plays that will cause the meatballs to proclaim him the next Jim Miller, or Bagent gets hurt on the first drive and the team gets destroyed 45-10.
  14. Outshined_One
    Wild horses won't get me to moderate this thread. This is even better than the "sliding into 1st" debate.
  15. Outshined_One
    Sosa 2001 would beg to differ. The team around him was abjectly putrid, but he was the sole reason that team even came close to sniffing the playoffs.
  16. Outshined_One
    My (least) favorite part of the Derrek Lee season was that he won the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger for 1B, but Pujols won the MVP.
  17. Outshined_One
    As much love as 2016 (deservedly) gets, I feel like 2015 was the most fun Cubs playoff run I've ever seen. I remember entering the 2015 season with hopes that they'd be in contention at least into September, but hot damn did they catch fire. Bryant won ROY, Jake was in God Mode, Kyle Schwarber (seemingly) single-handledly ruined Pittsburgh and St. Louis for the next decade+, and once the Cubs reached the NLCS, it was basically like found money at that point.
  18. Outshined_One
    Only if you believe the ensuing schadenfreude from the forthcoming humiliation of Harbaugh and the Giants is worth celebrating, yes.
  19. Outshined_One
    My dad stopped watching baseball shortly after the Cubs won the WS. He texted me a handful of questions about Pete a few weeks back because he'd recently done multiple crosswords where "PCA" came up as a three letter solution.
  20. Outshined_One
    On the one hand, football is better as a whole with healthy QB1s. It sucks when a talented QB goes down because odds are (1) his replacement will be ass; and (2) his team will be borderline unwatchable while he's out. On the other hand, horsefeathers that guy.
  21. Outshined_One
    Crapping all over PCA for no discernible reason is certainly a thing to do on an off day.
  22. Outshined_One
    Welcome!
  23. Outshined_One
    We still have some stragglers who are convinced the Cubs are going to miss the playoffs despite the fact that we are in "safe to start using magic numbers" territory, so the zeitgeist is otherwise occupied.
  24. Outshined_One
    Unless Cristian Hernandez has an unexpected breakout in him, it doesn't look like anyone has won that trade.
  25. Outshined_One
    Before you all say anything, it's been handled.
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