squally1313

As a Chapman guy I was keeping my eye on his numbers…he had 650 OPS through April, couldn’t even imagine the reaction there, but has been .880 in May. That said, morel has made significant strides and all the advanced metrics say he should be hitting a lot better than he is.

You guys he just doesn’t like the information that the stat is telling you. People were doing this with wRC yesterday. Let the people fit their narratives.

To be clear, if we're just basing this off of accumulated 2024 fWAR prorated out, that means the guy who goes to the bench is Morel (-0.1 fWAR). Tauchman has been our best player, Bellinger, Happ, Seiya are all positive contributors, Busch is our second best player. We all good with that? Struggling offense, Morel out, PCA in? Or do we want to mvoe the sample size again to fit arguments better.

Thought I saw 2.84 on the live page for FG but that’s been a little buggy for me. Also obviously was mostly joking and a little making a point about volatility and sample sizes.

Mason ‘we should trade multiple top 100 guys for him’ Miller: 2.84 ERA Hector ‘Cut his ass yesterday, he is the worst pitcher I’ve ever seen’ Neris: 2.50 ERA

Really couldn't have handpicked better weather for this series. First night was a little sticky/warm but got those awesome clouds and the really cool sky, the last two days have been absolutely perfect. Probably missing out on some of the boisterousness of the weekend crowds, but other than that, been ideal.

Nick Madrigal since May 1: .227/.292/.250, 62 wRC Luis Vazquez since May 1: .143/.273/.232, 39 wRC - goes without saying, but this is at a lower level of competition Madrigal put up an 83 wRC last year. ZIPs ROS has Vasquez at an 84, and who knows how often they rerun those numbers on minor league players but hitting at AAA league average probably can't help much. Madrigal is a bad hitter with one functional offensive skill set. Some guy running a hot month in AAA (Vasquez in April: .341/.418/.506, 142 wRC) does not automatically become a vastly better hitter just because he's new and different. You know who had a hot month in AAA? Nick Madrigal, when he had 70 PAs there last year and went .424/.514/.678, 203 wRC, more walks than Ks.

A game they probably deserved to win top to bottom turns into a win by some pretty fluky batted ball luck in extras. Assad was probably a little weary of attacking the strike zone given the wind, but managed to continue his high wire act with guys on base. Taxing night across both bullpens, Cubs had to use 5 guys, though Miller was the only one over 20 pitches. Wes has pitched two of the last three days so assume he is down. Cuas and Hendricks, I guess, haven't pitched since Friday, Hodge has yet to make an appearance. Steele doesn't get a soft landing as he tries to right the ship, hopefully doesn't let it bother him too much if/when some otherwise harmless fly ball ends up in the basket early on. For the Braves, assume Minter, Chavez, and Hernandez are down, along with maybe Bummer after 20 pitches last night. Which makes them a little light from the left side but unfortunately Fried is a pretty effective LHP and the Cubs will need to show some improvement there. Dansby/Nico should help there, it'll be a good sign of where the team thinks they are health wise if they both start tonight vs letting Vazquez slide in. Tomorrow is likely going to be Brown against a bad AAA pitcher and whatever is left of their pen, so let's try to get into it early and often. Can pay dividends even if we lose the HR/FB battle tonight. Go Cubs.

Through May 21 of last year: 14th in WAR and 24th in WPA. Which is really just to say like....no one really has any idea how to make this consistently work. I could point to like 6 different factors as reasons why they were bad and now why they are good (for now). Happy they generally avoided making snap judgements, churning through roster/40 man spots, etc. The margins are so small when you narrow it down to those types of sample sizes.

PCA bomb to center

xBA advantage of 90 points tonight, deserved the win even if it came that way

lol kinda?

Hoerner and Seiya have had some bizarre, Monstars type moments at the plate tonight

The cubs have 2 hits, 3 walks, and a HBP in 2 innings

Batting order doesn't matter, but, um, what is that

Is this anything?

Missed the Slaughter news and totally forgot about Davis. Other than that, I did great! But yeah, I just don't see tinkering on the edges of the roster to be a solution to the problems we've had in May (which, 8-10 is not a 'sky is falling' problem). Tauchman has the most PAs this month. Even with his incredible April, I can't imagine that was ever the plan here, and he's only put up a 78 wRC. Happ has been brutal given his normal level of production. The catchers have been brutal in like, a historical sense (64 PAs, 6 singles, 2 HRs, 2 walks). Seiya hasn't come around. I think it's too early to be making drastic decisions (the best 4 outfielders we have are the 4 outfielders on the roster, in my opinion, and a bad few weeks from one guy or a hot few weeks from another doesn't change that), burning options or 40 man spots or whatever to reallocate a fringe amount of PAs, often at the expense of consistent MILB PAs, doesn't seem like it's going to meaningful solve anything.

Depends on where the runners are, and yes, I know the Cubs anecdotally and also in reality love getting thrown out at home on going on contact plays, but in that even more hyper specific case a 6 hopper to SS is better than a rope right at a corner infielder. I will now, for an abundance of reasons, take myself off the Nick Madrigal hill. It's certainly not an optimal situation, but...I don't know, what else do we got? The best hitter in AAA is Mervis. Do you throw Caissie into the outfield blender and take away a bunch of PAs from him? Jake Slaughter can't really be a thing, can he? That's the list of AAA guys with wRCs over 100 (Vazquez barely qualifies but trending hard in the wrong direction). Realize the easy answer here is just PCA. But think they're kicking the can down the road a few weeks on him and whether he can just glove his way to a 3 WAR production while very much an unfinished offensive player.

I think they realized they didn't actually have any backup middle infielders nor a first baseman capable of bailing them out. Tauchmann is your fourth outfielder (call it a 4 man for 3 spot platoon if you want to trash Happ), Vasquez is your backup infielder, Wisdom is there if you need a dong and Madrigal is there if you need contact. The starters all just got healthy, there's no way they can get hurt again (right? right?!?). Think Counsell is going to lean on the every day line up pretty hard for the next few weeks here.

Repeat of the game from last Wednesday, let's hope we get the same result. In the meantime both teams struggled, with the remains of the Cubs roster dropping three of four to Pittsburgh and their annoyingly good pitching and the Braves having the same results at home against San Diego. Tomorrow we'll see Steele and Fried, and I don't think anyone has any idea who is going on Thursday (FG and ESPN has Hendricks vs TBD). We'll see on Hendricks and it looks like the Braves just called up something named Darius Vines, who has made two mediocre starts for them in spot duty already this year and has been similarly mediocre in AAA. Cubs pen is pretty well rested after the day off yesterday, would assume only Brown is unavailable, though they'd probably like to avoid Wesneski as well. The Braves are a different story coming off a doubleheader yesterday that had their top four relievers all throwing, though none of them threw on Sunday so it's possible they're all likely for game 1 of this series. Even if that's the case, important to get to the pen today because it could open up the underbelly in games 2 and 3. It looks like the final roster moves yesterday are Dansby and Vazquez up, Miles and PCA down. Probably not the place to get too in the weeds on those, but would guess Vazquez gets a start or two at second here assuming Dansby can hit the ground running. Generally pretty optimistic about the state of things, but....been a rough stretch here and the Braves remain Very Good and Scary. Hoping the warm weather in Chicago can wake up the bats and we can figure out a way to get two out of three here before this Cardinals/Brewers road stretch coming up here. Go Cubs.

Cade HortonPete Crow-ArmstrongOwen CaissieBen BrownMatt ShawMoises BallesterosJames TriantosJefferson RojasKevin AlcantaraAlexander CanarioJaxon WigginsLuis VazquezBJ Murray JrBrennen DavisJosh RiveraDerniche ValdezHaydn McGearyCristian HernandezMichael AriasDrew Gray

Perfect, I got this one, thanks!

I don’t think Hendricks is one of our best 5-7 starters right now and I don’t think whatever he has left plays up in the pen and we need everything we can get from the starters given all the injuries and underperformance on the offensive side and we cant stash him in Iowa, so…fine. It sucks, and holy horsefeathers people around here have short memories and a weird amount of hatred here, but whatever. Make the call here and let him enjoy his well earned retirement. Morel is fine. Happ is fine. The catchers have been bad but like 80% of the catchers around are bad so I don’t know how you fix it besides hoping for some babip luck (and Amaya progression). Madrigal is a guy who should get the one ‘we need contact’ AB a game (because he’s good at it), should not ever start. Mastro…I don’t know, whatever, let’s not churn through 40 man decisions trying to fix his role because it should go back to being minimal pretty soon here (or he’s likely back at Iowa with this Vazquez news, whatever). Busch is cheap and fine, but doesn’t seem likely to be that guy who gives you outlier offensive production. Which we need.

Like can we get madrigal back at the plate now

Wisdom makes sense, PCA makes sense, Wisdom and PCA seems a little bit in conflict