this snippet fom taylor makes me feel a little better about him not starting yesterday....might have been a logistical issue more than any deeper decision about his playing time
Great work overall by Assad and then real solid by Wes inducing that type of contact. Could probably feel comfortable with him staying in until you flip back over to Yordan and Tucker.
Think the announcers mentioned pitch clock but, at least when the bases were loaded, I think he was worried about Hoerner trying to pull a fast one with him pitching out of the windup.
I remember one of the writers here putting something up early season about taking advantage of hitters completely losing all sense of patience in the extra innings. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a similar mental issue there, and that combined with everything being so three-true-outcome in modern baseball, the success rate in these types of situations has gone down a fair amount across baseball.
Thanks for this....didn't look too much under the hood. Believe it was TT at some point in the last couple days say something along the lines of 'given his MILB performance, he deserves an extended chance somewhere, but we are currently a really bad fit for giving him that chance'. Unless Busch continues this little swoon for a few more weeks, there just aren't the consistent ABs for Mervis to give him a fair shot. If he's here, he's probably going to have to earn it the hard way.
I think it comes down to how much you buy into the concept of guys capable of destroying AAA pitching but being completely overmatched in the majors. What he's done in AAA this year is even better than what he was doing in 2022 and 2023 pre-call up. I find it a little hard to believe that the pitching can be so drastically different, or that there's some mental block that occurs that he/others can't move past. But, I'm sure there are plenty of examples.
Also bad luck for him that Happ picked up this nagging injury and looks like he might be occupying the DH position for the next little while.
I understand the struggles PCA has had offensively this year, but I'm still a little skeptical that he'd be unable to essentially match Canario or Wisdom-as-RF's production on an overall basis. Would probably accept that there might be a slight step down, but to me it's not meaningful enough to outweigh turning PCA into a defensive replacement for like 6 weeks and robbing him of at least somewhat consistent ABs.
He does have a pretty great gig at the moment:
Bullpen blows the lead: these guys all suck and also Jed sucks for putting together this group of dudes that can’t get any outs
bullpen holds a lead: man, look at Craigy Ballgames pressing all the right buttons, what a genius!
Went perusing through various 'is this smoke and mirrors' stats:
15th in offensive BABIP
1st in however FG measures offensive clutch, which, as an avid game thread horsefeathers, lol
6th best record in baseball, 9th best RD
Our ERA (4.03) is right in line with our FIP (4.02) and xFIP (3.98)
14th lowest defensive BABIP
13th in pitching clutch
All in all...maybe a little bit of sequencing luck on offense? But not going to fret about that too much given how shorthanded we've been playing.
Eyeing the box scores, rough few game stretch for Busch, 0/11 with 7 Ks.
But hey, if we're going to collectively have an offnight offensively (and 8 hits, 10 baserunners isn't some crisis), at least we stacked a couple hits before the one big one we got.
I know it's not a unique to Wrigley thing or anyways, but in a good year you probably get like 40-50 of the 'and the crowd rises to their feet in anticipation' moments.
Really not a fan of giving canario or wisdom starts over PCA until PCA forces us to bench him. Happ/tauchman/one of those dudes is pretty dire defensively.
Happ
Hoerner
Busch
Swanson
Morel
Tauchman
Wisdom/Canario/Mervis - hopefully between the three of these guys you can put together, like, a .773 OPS or so
Amaya/Gomes
PCA
Not pretty, but not dire.