Transmogrified Tiger

This is probably a good time to bring up that the Cubs have a LOT of money freed up after this season. In starting pitchers alone(Arrieta, Lackey, Anderson) it's 35 million, plus Montero's 14 million, and upwards of 25 million in relievers(Davis, Uehara, Duensing, probably Rondon). The relievers will mostly need legit replacements, but given that there isn't much worth spending on in free agency, taking on a high dollar short term deal like Verlander's would potentially fit really well if it means the player cost is minimal. The complicating factor is that depending on how the calculation is done, adding Verlander might push the Cubs over the luxury tax, which is a non-trivial problem in the new CBA.

Between the 2nd half of 2015 and 2016 we got spoiled with the lack of adversity, because writing off the season is more than silly. Last year at this point the Dodgers were 6.5 games out of first, and they clinched their division a week early.

This is actually perhaps going to be accurate. The vaunted Brewers have done that thing this season where they never were worse than two games above .500. Now at like seven games over, they are one 10 out of 14 stretch from locking this up. The Brewers need to play at a 107 win pace for the rest of the year to win as many games as the 2015 Cubs, in a drastically inferior division.

4 ground balls, a K and a walk probably shouldn't be 2 runs. Sure it will be sometimes, but boy it'd be nice if we could have like, maybe consecutive days without this type of misfortune raining down on us.

Just slightly lower than his K%. According to milb.com his K% and average were both .343. That's what I get for looking at Fangraphs for MiLB numbers. His average was .343, K% uses PA as a denominator though, so his K% was 27%

I've never had a problem with crashing with Fangraphs on desktop or mobile(I don't use an adblocker mobile). Since I've always adblocked them on the desktop I did spring for a membership though. Need to get around to doing the same for BR, although I whitelisted their ads.

Schwarber had a .333 average in Iowa.

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Come on......[looks up Toronto's GM]...Shapiro, blow it up. You know you want to.

Lackey doesn't technically need to start again until Tuesday the 18th, I hope Hendricks is ready by then.

An acquisition at the Montgomery level shouldn't be the only deadline acquisition, just like Montgomery wasn't the biggest acquisition last season. I certainly wouldn't complain, and the details are where it matters. If Oakland wants to trade Hahn for Vosler then sure. Given the farm system not being in terrific shape(made "worse" by Happ unexpectedly having a necessary MLB role), the high cost of acquiring an established SP, and the relative stability in the pen, I'm not going to hold out hope for both.

My level of comfort in going the Montgomery/Arrieta route of buying low on someone who isn't currently pitching at an above average level is proportionate to my comfort in Arrieta returning to even 2016 levels. I'm not very confident Arrieta is going to return to 2016 levels.

Maybe something off the field was discovered, kinda like how Heimlich became draft poison?

Interesting idea. I did some Fangraphs filtering(SP, 60+ IP, 10+% curveballs, 3.5+ ERA or FIP to remove already good players) and also trimmed some teams that won't be selling pitchers and here's the names that jump out to me: Quintana Verlander Alex Cobb Martin Perez Bundy The problem with the Montgomery trade is he wasn't starting in MLB at the time of the deal, so filtering in a way that you don't have to comb through every person to get a few dozen IP is difficult.

I would like to submit that your(and my) ability to discern what a major league hitter is trying to do in a given at bat is wayyyyyyyyy lower than you think it is. Surely. It sure seemed like it that inning though. I am clearly frustrated at the lack of getting em over and getting em in and leadoff runners generally getting stranded at the base they originally reached. So I commented on it. However, if I (paraphrased) say, damn I wish Bryzzo wouldn't have tried to tie it with 1 swing and nobody out, and somebody says, so you want them to go completely against the approach they've used their whole careers... they deserve a smartass reply. It's as if there's no middle ground and people just want to invent reasons to talk sideways. As I posted this Bryzzo put together a couple excellent ABs In general, the tolerance here for people expressing their frustrations in the form of thinly sourced judgements of the team is pretty low. I don't think that means you're wrong, but I don't think that (lack of tolerance) is bad either.

We already knew, man. You guys are damn geniuses. The Cubs should be trying to hit the ball in the air no matter the situation. It is, how they were raised, after all. I would like to submit that your(and my) ability to discern what a major league hitter is trying to do in a given at bat is wayyyyyyyyy lower than you think it is.

not really on board with Joe's trigger happiness with the late inning relievers

We're also talking about the theoretical future time when Hendricks is back and healthy and they've traded for a better guy and the other guys are still healthy. Lackey isn't getting DFA until things are realllllllly stable with the rotation. And rotations are rarely stable. They have 2 guys right now you can reasonably depend on to start every 5th day and last 6+ innings. Yes, I said in a previous post it's not happening tomorrow. But Lackey is 1) performing terribly 2) has no value beyond this year and 3) doesn't have an easy secondary role like his competition(Montgomery/Anderson can more easily go to the pen, and Butler can go to AAA), so he's not safe. Arrieta's arm could blow up this week and throw a wrench into any of today's plans, but what I'm saying is that today's plans should point to Lackey being the odd man out by August at the latest.

MLB.com's scoreboard has an autoplaying video that shows a couple quick highlights from each starting pitcher before illustrating the pitching matchup in a graphic. Lackey's highlights are exclusively from the world series.

We're not talking about someone like Frankoff being a Lackey replacment, it's guys like Butler(who is already outperforming Lackey at the MLB level) and Anderson (assuming he's healthy) that would be in line for starts if someone gets hurt.

If they trade for a SP, Lackey is somewhere between the 6th and 8th best rotation option. I think they can be pretty secure that they can get the production Lackey provides for 2 months with their existing options.

Those 2 quality starts are part of a run of having 4 quality starts out of 14. His ERA is 66th of 74 qualified starters, and his FIP is dead last. I agree they won't DFA him for Hendricks, but when they add another SP or maybe even when they get Anderson back he's not secure in his roster spot. EDIT: More to the point, I'd like to imagine that come 8/1 the rotation has Lester, Hendricks, trade acquisition, Arrieta, and Montgomery, with Butler back in Iowa in reserve and Anderson fulfilling Montgomery's previous role. The timing of Lackey's departure depends on several factors(when a trade happens, when Hendricks and Anderson are healthy), but I would hope that he's the one that doesn't have a home when the dust settles.

by my count that's now 137 baserunners that have stolen 2nd and advanced to 3rd on the throw this year

Angel Hernandez is suing MLB for discrimination, claiming Torre has it in for him after some dust-up when Torre was managing the Yankees: https://www.law360.com/sports/articles/941017/umpire-sues-mlb-claiming-discrimination-manager-vendetta

Perdomo is a decent option if the Padres are done with him as a starter. The deluxe option would be seeing if the Rangers want to give up on Martin Perez and turn him into another Wood/Montgomery. Maybe Tom Koehler? Going back to this...How about Patrick Corbin? Throws hard for a LHSP and has a couple useful pitches in his slider (whiffs) and changeup (groundballs). Pre-TJ Corbin might have become a first division starter. Maybe in a reduced role he could be an impact pitcher again? I also believe Anthony Banda from that org is going to be a quality ML pitcher. Arizona's got the kind of park I could see Almora doing well in full time. Trevor Bauer? I'm not sure he's a guy to quit on as a SP yet. I don't mind the idea of Corbin, but I'm not sure the Diamondbacks are interested in creating a hole in their rotation even if Corbin has been the worst starter so far. Plus even if you do trade for Corbin and he turns it around, he's a FA after 2018 so the risk/benefit is different than most people in that Montgomery/Arrieta mold. I liked Bauer this offseason and still don't think he's a bad target, but I don't see much motivation for the Indians to move him. They're still giving starts to Josh Tomlin after Salazar gets healthy so Bauer is no worse than the 4th starter on a team with competitive aspirations.