George Hayduke
-
Posts
730 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Joomla Posts 1
Chicago Cubs Videos
Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits
2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking
News
2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
Guides & Resources
2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
The Chicago Cubs Players Project
2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker
Blogs
Events
Forums
Store
Gallery
Everything posted by George Hayduke
-
7/16 Cubs (Mills) vs Reds (DeSclafani) 7:05 WGN
George Hayduke replied to Brian707's topic in Fred Hornkohl Game Thread Forum
It is pretty nifty having a catcher again who can actually frame a pitch. -
Well, no. But then that wasn’t exactly my prediction.
-
POSITIVES: -Contreras bounces back big and puts up a 275/350/450 line -Darvish returns to form as well and is the clear staff ace -A quality pitcher emerges from the accumulated pitching depth NEGATIVES: -Injuries cause an already iffy outfield to become a huge weakness -Jon Lester ends up performing at near replacement level -Rizzo puts up an annoyingly average season
-
Anthony Iapoce Hired as New Hitting Coach
George Hayduke replied to Cubswin11's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
wow i spent more than a full minute on this After about 5 seconds I gave up hoping someone would post the answer for me. Chinese food yum -
i mean a pretty good player became prime barry bonds for the past month what the hell can we do And even after that they needed like a dozen different ridiculous things (STL falling on their ass on the way to a tying run, a 3-run wild pitch, Castellanos literally handing over the winning run) to happen to force this game. It was meant to be for them and that's just the way it happened. Yep, they literally played the final five weeks of the season at a 124 win pace. horsefeathers, I can't even be too mad about that. They earned the division.
-
Being set up better doesn't guarantee anything of course, but come on man it's not meaningless at all. Anything can happen but looking at these two teams if I had to pick who is probably going to be better next year, I'm taking the Cubs 9 times out of 10.
-
Oh hey, another ground ball single up the middle.
-
Lol, all you ninnies in here.
-
God these ESPN announcers are insufferable.
-
In March 2016, Fangraphs gave the Cubs preseason odds of 81.8% to win the division. Since then, there has not been a single day when the Cubs were not the favored team to win the NL Central. Until today. Cubs 49.4%, Brewers 50.6% Even more incredible when you think that a mere 12 days ago, the Cubs were still 95.1% divisional favorites.
-
And yet, there are people here who think the Cubs have absolutely no chance to beat that team 2 times out of 3 this weekend. Weird.
-
9/26 Cubs (Quintana) vs Pirates (Nova) 7:05 NBCSCH
George Hayduke replied to Andy's topic in Fred Hornkohl Game Thread Forum
Doubtful. MaddoningTM has tried just about every lineup possibility there is, both good and bad. Multiple players can’t even get “lukewarm” at the same time. And they can’t seem to bunch hits together to score runs (when they actually hit). I keep waiting for the offense to get back to normal at some point this year, and it really hasn’t happened. Hopefully, this is not the new normal. Herein lies the problem with not consistently having sane lineups. -
Willson’s 2nd half OPS now down to .589 and counting. It’s so painful to watch him bat now.
-
They really didn’t have a chance short of getting crazy hot like they did. We were at 70%+ at the division for a good amount of time now (think we even hit over 90% at one point). They aren’t the better team and I’ll die on that hill, let them have this year I guess. They still suck and are nothing to worry about long term. One week ago today they were 95.1% to win the division. If they miss it this won’t be an all time meltdown but it will be pretty high up there.
-
Why does this 90+ win team's season feel lacking?
George Hayduke replied to UMFan83's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I think part of it too is, a lot of the things that have gone wrong have been glaringly obvious whereas the things that have gone right have been easy to overlook. For example the defense has again been the best in baseball, which is easy to forget. The bats have been average or worse for a while, but they've derived value from good base running when they do get on. The pitchers have walked a lot of guys and not struck out a lot of guys, but they've induced a lot of weak contact. They've had big name injuries and regressions, but also a lot of quality depth on the bench. None of those pros are particularly flashy or exciting, but they have helped them keep winning. While there haven't been any great win streaks this season there haven't been any really terrible losing streaks either (that I can remember). They kind of just keep plugging along, though clearly this season in particular seems to be taking a toll and they're running out of steam. I'm just hoping they win the division and the crapshooty nature of the playoffs works to their benefit this year. -
The way too early, but I'm bored, Off-season Options Thread
George Hayduke replied to davell's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Man the Cubs have come a long way from 2015's "LOLOL, so many talented shortstops in the org, how will we ever fit them all on the field?!?" to 2018's "so do we think Zack Short can handle innings at short next year or?" -
He didn't miss significant time in either 2015 or 2016, it's not like he's never been able to stay healthy for a whole season. There's no reason to expect he's going to miss 6 weeks every season for the next few years unless you think he's just chronically broken now at age 24. it's about nagging injuries affecting his performance as much as it's about missing games. I mean I get what you're saying. I guess the simple way of putting it is, even though he's been injured a couple times the past two years, I don't really think he's any more likely than most other players to be injured going forward, since his injuries haven't been chronic things like recurring back spasms or something. With the exception of the past two months, he's been adequately productive during his career when he's playing. So unless the assumption is both 1) he's much more likely than not to suffer ongoing injuries in the future and 2) those injuries are much more likely than not make his performance resemble that of the past two months, then he's probably at a value low right now and I'd rather just hang on to him than sell low in the offseason.
-
He didn't miss significant time in either 2015 or 2016, it's not like he's never been able to stay healthy for a whole season. There's no reason to expect he's going to miss 6 weeks every season for the next few years unless you think he's just chronically broken now at age 24.
-
I'm hoping a lot of his really severe struggles lately have been due to nagging injuries. He suffered that hand/finger injury during the game vs Minnesota on July 1. Up to that point he had a 108 wRC+ on the year and was on pace for a 4-win season. When he went on the DL in Aug he admitted that he had been trying to fight through the hand injury plus a sore shoulder and I think something else as well (maybe a wrist thing?) I'm not saying I still expect Barry Larkin v2.0 to emerge but he is better than he's been the past couple months and I think he will have a moderate offensive bounce back next year. Even as a guy who's hitting 10% below league average he would be adequately valuable to this team as an elite defensive MI with some power. At least more so than whatever the Cubs would probably be able to get for him in a trade.
-
That Baez fella seems decent.
-
We'll, to be fair, literally everyone on that team is worse at baseball today (whether due to injury or age or whatever satanic forces have gotten Russell and Contreras) than then - except for Javy and somehow Zobrist - and there's no legitimate reason we should've seen that coming. Crap I was going to find 1-2 other exceptions but...you’re right I guess Schwarber and Heyward?
-
But unusual or not, that's exactly what happened until a month ago. And so because of that, by far the most likely scenario was that they would finish up at 83ish wins, because projections are progressive, not regressive. It assumes their 4 months of .500 ball would combine with 2 months of the slightly above average ball their true talent level suggested. The fact that they've instead played at a 110 win pace the past month is like the 98th+ percentile outcome. It wasn't at all wishful thinking to assume that wouldn't happen, given what we knew a month ago. To suggest that it was reasonable to expect their record to "even out" this much assumes they were "due" some hot streak, which is not how probability works.
-
This is using the Gambler's Fallacy though. If you thought they were truly an upper 80s to 90ish win team, you certainly shouldn't have expected them to play .500 ball the rest of the way. But it's much more unreasonable to have expected them to play far beyond .500 ball for the past month because that would now get them closer to "where they were predicted/'expected' to be". Said another way, it was much more likely they would now, a month later, still be closer to the .500 team they were a month ago and had been for 2/3 of a season than the upper 80s to 90 win team they were projected to be in March. All of this of course doesn't mean anything because the Cardinals have just been lucky and the Cubs are clearly better. I also don't believe them carrying a hot streak into the playoffs says anything positive about their chances either. But I do believe the playoffs are mostly a crap shoot, and to that end I am annoyed that the Cardinals are now much more likely to make it. Because ultimately their chances, should they get in, are mostly as good as anyone else's, and unluckily losing to your rivals in the postseason knowing that they're just not that great a team would be extra painful. I think this is basically the point Boombox and others were also making.
-
Every time this gif gets posted I watch it like 30 times in a row and it just never becomes any less majestic.