Transmogrified Tiger

DatDudeE4

A for Effort, C+ for execution

good to see TLS back in the lineup hitting rockets

Man, that hung in the air a long time for Heyward to need a dive that didn't even catch the ball.

No, but there are rumors that Twitter is going to stop counting links against character count in the future. Also, this post summarizes the @reply thing pretty well: https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-mistake

Rodney has been great this year. I mentally discounted him because I somehow thought he was in the AL until his trade last week, but no he was with the Padres.

Concepcion is eligible to come back either Thursday or Friday, and Richard looks close enough to healthy to be recalled, so healthy arms probably isn't a huge concern even if they bring La Stella back for a RP tomorrow.

He may very well have inside info, but "Cubs get exact all stars that you'd have guessed, please credit me for this scoop" is pretty funny. Maybe I'm biased because Barstool is a cesspool.

Yeah, I take 2nd half Hammel seriously. I also think guarding against injury is a good idea. well, hammel is probably coming back next season since he's on a $10m club option next year, which looks to be a bargain. if he comes back then they've already got 5 starters signed for 2017, plus guys like warren, cahill and wood can easily be stretched out to throw a few innings as spot starters and long relievers. i don't see how starter is remotely as urgent a need as a strong 7th/8th inning (preferably LH) reliever. I think Warren joining the rotation and the talk about a 6 man rotation after the break is a way to give them the chance to take a preventative measure against injury(specifically Arrieta/Lester) or a downturn in productivity(like second half Hammel). Relievers are probably the more immediate need, but the Cubs probably don't have to choose, and dealing for a starter is likely going to be more difficult to finagle than shoring up the pen.

An uncapped league in a sport where the top few players carry as much influence as the NBA would be one of the few outcomes worse for competition than the current NBA.

I am not an NBA capologist, but I imagine that FA allotments as you're describing them are probably a non-starter. The model my mind has gone back to a couple times is what MLS does with Designated Players. You have a couple spots(and they are tradeable) for DPs on the roster, maybe only 1 or 2 in the NBA. Those DPs count a set amount towards the cap, but you can technically pay them whatever you want. So in the salary cap sense you have something similar to a max deal, which everyone seems to be okay with, but now teams can actually differentiate on money. This won't make a huge difference to the elite of the elite, the LeBrons and Durants aren't going to be swayed to Sacramento by a few million bucks per year. But it could help add parity and curb the superteams a bit for the guys who would otherwise take the same money to go to better situations.

I agree he deserves to. I thought he might be a good final vote candidate as well but I think there are a lot of potential position player snubs in the NL so not sure if he makes it. Looking at the NL rosters from the last 5 years, the fewest number of relievers on a team was 4(last year) and in most years 5-6. With that backdrop I think Hector has a pretty good shot.

Rondon probably deserves to at least be on that list, although his biggest competition is probably token selections to satisfy the one per team requirement, so tough to know what his odds are.

I don't mind him, but he is hammered and babbling nonsense Guess I'd have to hear it to see how bad it is. I mean it's a blowout so I'm not sure why it's bothering anyone that much to have that going on for a couple innings. It would have to be him just rambling out racist offensive crap for it to really bother me. He started with a Pat Hughes Impression that was basically him just yelling the words Pat Hughes and then making a Seattle Sutton reference. He then did that same thing at least 5 other times while in the booth. It didn't get better from there.

lolllllll Rizzo "You suck, you horsefeathering suck"

All I want is someday to do something half as funny as Jeff Garlin thinks his Pat Hughes impression is.

please get the last out so I don't hear Garlin anymore

Why not just spend the summer punching yourself in the face until October gets here then? It sounds like it would cause you less aggravation because you'd at least see it coming. You're getting an old timey roll eyes smiley for this: :roll:

Do you think people with such fatalistic tendencies to think that one injury would end the season just have less of a filter than others? Or are they hiding even darker thoughts somehow? Do they constantly check FlightAware while the team is travelling to make sure there aren't any mid-air collisions? Do they look up the health inspection report of the hotel restaurants where the team stays? How is following the team enjoyable at all?

Awesome. If you're going to have big competitive balance problems, then push the dial to 11 on it I say. Maybe they'll win 80 games. EDIT: [tweet] [/tweet]

I am under the impression that the Cubs are largely near whatever limit they have on payroll. There's not a hard limit I'd imagine so it's not as if they'd have to shed salary to take on a guy making 7 million or something, but I don't think taking on salary to lower trade costs as a virtue is something they're super keen on doing. If and when Theo said that last year(and I do vaguely recall something along those lines), it was before they added 50 million in AAV with Heyward, Zobrist, and Lackey.

Yeah, I don't know if I totally buy the injury excuse. The SP's and Bryzzo have been healthy. It sucks not having Schwarber, but I don't think people really include him when they reference injuries since he only played 3 games. Contreras, Javy, and probably Almora are better than Soler. So that basically just leaves Fowler. It can be little things, too. Being able to start a Lastella rather than some dude up from the minors. Being able to pinch hit a guy like Lastella rather than somebody up from the minors. I mean, we have a lot of young guys in the lineup all learning at the same time. That has to lead to some uneven play. It's also not an explanation for the entire struggle. Having the first choice hitters might have only been the difference in a game or two, but that'd probably make people feel better about things going 6-8 in the stretch instead of 4-10. Regardless, these are the things that happen when you play 162 games. You have poor stretches, and in the Cubs case there's a confluence of circumstances that help to explain it too(a bunch of games against good teams clustered together, some injuries, some pitching regression, no off days for several weeks stretching the bullpen, etc). The Cubs were never going to win 125 games like they played in April, and they're much better than they've played in this stretch. It's baseball.

I'm arguing against the implications being made by claiming the team has been mediocre for months-long stretches. In a literal sense have they been average for that stretch? Yes, and they still have a stranglehold on the division and the best record in baseball. Since I know that stretch is almost exclusively driven by a horrible two weeks, I'm not going to extrapolate that performance for the rest of the season and worry about them losing the division lead or even keeping home field in the NLCS. So while the losing is aggravating(especially to the Mets), I'm not going to make it more than that, a short lived aggravation in a long and successful season.

Not playing at a 130 win pace isn't mediocrity. Prior to the Cards series the Cubs had played at a 108 win pace since May 1st, and at a 114 win pace since June 1st. just because the stretches you listed start on the 1st days of the month don't make them less arbitrary than the one i referenced. i really don't think it's making any kind of leap to say that a 26-24 run is a good stretch of mediocrity. Killing everyone for 6 weeks and then having a terrible 2 weeks and calling it a mediocre 2 months is pretty disingenuous. I chose those endpoints to illustrate that it's a slump, and because I didn't want to go further back into April where the Cubs were even better. The Cubs were other worldly in April, elite in May and the first 3 weeks of June, and garbage the last 2 weeks. Trying to imply that they've been less than very good for a super long stretch is fatalism for fatalism's sake.

i think it's the 2 months of mediocrity and the realization that we don't have a superteam Not playing at a 130 win pace isn't mediocrity. Prior to the Cards series the Cubs had played at a 108 win pace since May 1st, and at a 114 win pace since June 1st.