Transmogrified Tiger

Other half of the split squad [tweet] [/tweet]

Well right now the Cavs are the least healthy team in the East with no guarantee JR/Love can come back and be 100% when the playoffs start. Right now Love is due back right around the 1st round if there's no setbacks. Lebron is playing more minutes right now than he has in the past 2 years, he's right around 40 min a game over their last ~20 games and they can't totally afford to rest him if they want the 1 seed in the East with the injuries they have. I would agree it's incredibly probable they win the East and probably don't have any series go past 6 games at most. But you can see how they could be beat in the East and it's not going to take anything crazy happening, Love/JR not being entirely themselves, Celtics getting the 1 seed (forcing the Cavs to play better teams before the East finals) and the regular season min starting to stack up on Lebron that he isn't as rested as he has been going into previous playoffs. I said LeBron/Kyrie and not Love for a reason. Love and JR are useful and it'd be harder without them, but 1) the Cavs have already demonstrated the ability to ride LeBron/Kyrie through the East before and 2) Love and JR are the type of player that are easier to replace or have a more limited role in a specific series anyway, especially on a team that has two players as ball dominant as LeBron/Kyrie. The Cavs not getting the 1 seed isn't really a big deal either way(again, none of those teams are doing any more than the Hawks did last year), but if the Celtics play to their current winning percentage, the Cavs need to play at a 45 win pace(15-12) to stay ahead of them for the 1 seed.

You're putting too much weight into regular season basketball, which is nigh meaningless except for determining who is less healthy for the games that matter. There is no team in the East with the horses to win a 7 game series against LeBron and Irving. Odds are against such a team existing until LeBron starts really slowing down, like 3-4 years from now.

The simplistic but dirty truth is that no team in the East is beating the Cavs in a series as long as LeBron and Irving are both healthy, even if the Celtics had made a big addition.

Just had the thought 'oh yeah, we had a reliever hit a home run in a close playoff game' like that's not something that should have been burned in my brain forever.

That's awesome. Too bad we didn't go after Romo when he was available just for this reason. We could go the Calvin and Hobbes Get Rid Of Slimy girlS route I suppose. Montgomery Uehara Rondon Davis Edwards gRimm Strop

Kyle Hendricks, DDS It doesn't work out, but the pen is one Montgomery and one more R name from being a MURDERS anagram

This is also why projection systems are going to understate how incredibly good the Cubs' position players are. Outside of catcher and probably CF, the first 500 bench PAs due to rest/injury are going straight to Baez(a 3 win player), thanks to the flexibility of Baez, Zobrist, and Bryant. Montero is a super high quality backup C too. Compare to, say, the Dodgers, whose bench consists of 'well I guess if he has a good year he could be part of a platoon' guys, and whose starting 8 has more injury/performance concerns anyway. Also, in theory, you get a higher level/top line version of a player more often for 500 PAs vs 650 PAs if that player is "fresher." Yep, helps to prevent some injuries too. The Cubs insane youth is a big part of this as well, but Zobrist isn't getting even the 15 games off he got last year on a lot of teams.

Shorter games are a symptom of the fix, not the end goal. Pace of play is the phrasing for a reason, 3 hour games that are full of action are not a problem. The potential changes are all aimed at 'gameplay' where there is little but dead time. Mound visits, intentional walks, gaps between pitches, changing those are not going to turn the average game into a 2 hour affair, but if the time that remains chugs along and doesn't have tons of dead air, then it's a positive change.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/21/this-is-how-yankees-can-maximize-their-shortstop-studs/ This is also why projection systems are going to understate how incredibly good the Cubs' position players are. Outside of catcher and probably CF, the first 500 bench PAs due to rest/injury are going straight to Baez(a 3 win player), thanks to the flexibility of Baez, Zobrist, and Bryant. Montero is a super high quality backup C too. Compare to, say, the Dodgers, whose bench consists of 'well I guess if he has a good year he could be part of a platoon' guys, and whose starting 8 has more injury/performance concerns anyway.

This is interesting, from John Dewan's weekly email/newsletter thing. Especially interesting is that all 3 regular catchers are dealing with especially slow pitchers, the fastest of which is 16th slowest of 95. Montero's placement both validates my thought that Arrieta hurts him(relative to non-Cub catchers) and invalidates that thought(relative to Cub catchers). What is pretty indisputable is that Contreras is a weapon against the running game.

We tried to let Derwood pitch his way out of trouble, but it's time to go to the bullpen.

I don't have an opinion one way or another but I still laughed way too hard at Bukie's reply.

Probably trying to get a DL stint to start the year so he doesn't have to face Rizzo.

If I had to distill it to a single point, I think the Cubs want to invest resources in starting pitchers who easily repeat their deliveries. Those are the guys who are going to be both successful and healthy in higher quantities than guys who might not be as consistent but have better stuff or guys who have really high highs and low lows. They aren't afraid to take chances on someone who might not make the adjustment needed to reach that point(Arrieta, Butler, Anderson), but you won't see them staking chunks of starts to a guy who hasn't shown that ability for an extended stretch.

The surgeon is the Cardinals team doctor.

CARL SO GOOD TO SEE YOU

Not that it particularly matters, but aren't they able to cut Duensing without paying his salary before a certain pre-opening day date? They certainly don't *need* Wood, but throwing him on the pile of Duensing/Smith/Zastryzny/Leathersich/NRI isn't a bad idea.

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For those who aren't big podcast people like me, this was a very good listen. Not only is it very informative to hear Sharma, Sullivan, and Lindbergh talk about the 2017 Cubs, but it was really entertaining to hear Sullivan ask Sharma to explain the 8 win PECOTA gap between the Dodgers and Cubs, and then incredulously exclaim "8 wins" over and over as Sharma and Lindbergh tried to give serious answers.

The Cubs played 13 extra inning games, and 6 of those were 10 or 11 innings. They played a total of 37 extra innings, or about an extra inning per week or so. The Dodgers had the same number of extra innings. The Yankees and Red Sox played 31 extra innings combined all season. This is a solution in search of a problem.

One of the Iowa rotation will periodically replace Montgomery (he'll be on an inning count)...right? I bet you'll see a 6 man rotation and a 7 man pen as long as all 6 of Lester/Arrieta/Hendricks/Lackey/Montgomery/Anderson are healthy. But if someone is hurt or there's poor performance, then Butler/Mills/Kelly/Williams are definitely options.

This is a bit bittersweet because Dewees is one of my favorite types of draftees to follow, but I like this. Dewees needs to hit a fair bit more than he has to be an MLB starter, and Longenhangen's review of his swing didn't fill me with confidence that he'll be able to do that. He could still be useful as a deluxe 5th OF even then, but you also don't weep for deluxe 5th OFs either. Mills is an optionable arm that appears to be free of major injury problems, throws strikes, gets K's, and has decent reviews of his stuff. He had some problems with HR in AAA but that appears to be a short lived problem whatever the cause(6 HR his first 29 IP, 2 HR his last 29). He doesn't have much of a platoon split, whether you consider that a positive or negative. Really, once they let him start he's been on a pretty consistent trajectory until he hit that AAA rough patch, so letting this org's player development work on him while he gets some extended Iowa time could have some nice results.

The Dodgers' problem is less that they can't hit LHP(some of that will correct itself), but more that for a team that most expect to easily clear 90 wins, they're surprisingly light on people good at hitting.

waiting for TT to remind me that PECOTA sucks (seriously, though, dodgers with 98 wins on that projection system? wtf?) [tweet] [/tweet] yeah, they seem to love the dodgers excessively and *slightly* under-love the cubs (or they wayyyyy over love the dodgers, depending on how conservative you expect it to be) I'm not a BP subscriber, but this seems to be the same LAD offense = CHC offense nonsense that we were laughing at before. Also it seems likely that PECOTA weights historical performance a bit too heavily. You can see that in LAD's offense being propped up by older performance(Puig, Gonzalez, etc) and in the Mets forecast in that tweet(Granderson, Wright, etc)