squally1313

Uneventful Javy AB, with first base open. Would be pretty funny to have 'Say goodbye to KB/Rizzo Day' also be a bench clearing brawl day, but looks like it'll stay calm.

There goes that LTIR money.

Hard to get too mad at losing to the best three innings/game of Vottos career. Wouldn’t think the cubs will retaliate for that pitch to KB, especially because it made no sense to be on purpose in that scenario, but we’ll see.

From my understanding, there is room during the offseason to make moves that put you over the cap You have to be under it once the season starts, but then the LTIR comes into play. Seabrook and Shaw immediately go into LTIR which allows for their salaries to no longer count against the cap, freeing up something like $11 mil. But free agency starts tomorrow morning. Do we know if he's even going to show up? Wouldn't it be nice to know if we have an extra $7m to spend or not? Do they really think they were Jones (minus Keith, minus Boqvist) and a goalie away from contending?

If Fleury reports, the Hawks are down to like $500k before agreeing to contracts with any of the restricted free agents. Goodbye Zadorov (which, awesome), probably DeHaan, Subban, Delia, etc. For one year, maybe of MAF. What are we even doing here.

Why am I still up watching this, I asked myself. Javy.

This is dumb

Athletics Cardinals Diamondbacks Mariners Nationals Orioles Indians To be fair to OMC, he can counter with 'Wahoos' as a shortened version of the name. Nothing wrong with that one at all.

Well you can't have it both ways. If he's not really a top 3 pitcher, which, fine, that means his numbers aren't really dropping off, right? He's just settling back to what you thought he was/is, which is still valuable? Maybe we don't get a Preciado, but maybe a Darvish in the rotation means less time the offense spends watching some garbage pitcher get knocked around and then have to chase leads, or a bullpen that isn't exhausted by July. But, whatever, all in the past at this point.

Sure, but he went from being a top 3 pitcher in baseball to a top 15 pitcher. At 2/39, that's still plenty valuable.

New filings/allegations are horrifying, and, while being far from the worst part of all of this, the reports that the abused players were taunted by their Blackhawk teammates after the incidents leaves me feeling pretty sick about following that team obsessively for six or seven years.

If he tweaked something, he wouldn't be out there. I think it's probably just overuse and a bit of arm fatigue. He needs 2-3 days off and then hopefully he'll be fine. Yeah, if you include the ASG he worked in 5 of 8 days. Most likely just that. Which raises the question of why the hell he was out there. That's not an unreasonable workload in general, but while we're being so shamelessly careful with KB's hamstring it seems weird to push Kimbrel that much. Well the alternative explanation there is that KB is much more hurt than they're letting on (he can't play the infield in the bottom of the 10th?). They just need to knock over the first domino at this point. Playing this series against a team with a similar record/skill set who is clearly not in a selling position is giving them too much incentive to win. Bring up those AAA arms and let's let them Marmol their way home the rest of the year.

Also no one is saying that they're that good. They're not! If you wanted to sell me on 'Cubs outperforming the Brewers the rest of the year', sure, maybe I would listen. But the Cubs are not 100 percentage points better than the Brewers, or really anywhere close. They played, and lost, too many games, which sucks because the division was very gettable until a few weeks ago. Now it's very much not. (Unless this whole thing is a bit, in which case, please stop. It's barely funny when the funnier people here do it.)

TWTW

1.5% per FG! Completely ignoring that the lead that have to maintain is, for our purposes, nine point five horsefeathering games. Completely ignoring the other two teams who have outplayed us, record wise, this year. Let's say he's right though, just for fun! Let's say the Brewers play the rest of the year like a mediocre team, like, say, the Cubs so far this year. That's 33-34 for the rest of the year, or an 89 win season. In what world do you see the Cubs going 43-25 to finish the year?

Wait, I'm confused. It was my understanding that Rossie was hired because he could communicate with the players and get the most out of them. Willy is a Taurus, he's basically saying it's in his nature to speak his mind and be honest. Let's relax here he's not subtweeting somebody. Yep, he probably got some horsefeathers either internally or on social media for throwing unnamed players under the bus with those comments a few days ago, so all he's saying is that he says it to their face too.

Not sure about everyone else, but I guess I'd be ok with Jose "17th in pitching fWAR since 2010" Quintana.

On one hand, this is a team that has either been in the playoffs or been in contention until the last week of the year every year since 2015, so 6 years and 7 if they somehow turn it around. Third most wins in baseball going into this year over that stretch. Runs end, and this was always going to be a tough stretch after bringing up so much talent within a 12-18 month period. On the other hand, the failure to draft/develop top end talent after that group is a main reason why I'm sitting here on an increasing empty boat saying that we should hope this group of aging, injured, maybe just bad? players can somehow turn it around in the next few months because the future sucks anyways. That's a failure of the organization, especially on the pitching front, where it's depressing to think about the amount of dollars and prospects we had to utilize to try and stay competitive. On the third hand, we've lost 6 games in a row and we're still 3 games over .500 halfway through the year, and we have a semi-decent chance of making the playoffs again, where anything can happen. Honestly, I agree with the overall picture that the Cubs are fucked over the next few years. But I don't think anything that can be done between now and 7/31 will change 2022-2024 (especially relative to comp picks), so...why not let these dudes fail one more time?

But what's the alternative? You really think mystery injury/OPSing like .300 in the last month KB is going to bring back some future difference maker for a couple months of games? What contender is looking for a shortstop hitting league average and on pace for a career high in errors? These are unique players in that they have a track record of high performance, enough to garner a somewhat substantial contract (and a comp pick) who don't have a whole lot of trade value when getting acquired just for the next 3 months. You do a fire sale in the next month, you forfeit whatever chance you have left this year, and you set the table for Ricketts to roll out some big rebuild until the 15 year olds from the Darvish trade hit puberty. That's....better than taking a shot, even a long shot, at backing into a coin flip playoff? If these guys all actually suck, we're going to suck next year regardless. Tossing away the rest of this season for a few prospects that can maybe crack our top 20 is even dumber.

Which one

Bullpen game for the Brewers most likely, assuming the Cubs did any sort of prep work and will let this guy walk them. But then again, no Rizzo, no KB, etc etc. Would be nice to get this one to stop the bleeding before going down to Cincy.

This might not exactly be what you're talking about, but I remember a very hobbled Rizzo and Baez taking ABs in that godforsaken series against the Cardinals in 2019 where Kimbrel gave up like 6 dongs. Granted that was September so there wasn't a roster crunch, but Rizzo led off and could barely walk, and then Javy PH with like, a broken wrist or something? I was so pissed at the team for blowing that year, but at least they showed some sort of effort. Yeah, I was venting but I do remember Javy coming off the bench limping and having a walk-off hit I think last year or the year before. Rizzo miraculously came back and started some games late in 19, don't remember him coming off the bench. It's just incredibly annoying. I actually said to my wife when Boog and JD mentioned that Bryant and Rizzo were supposedly available off the bench that we would probably send up Jose Lobaton instead of them later, and lo and behold. I've always kinda wondered if that's one of those things that we think is unique to the Cubs, but in reality it's just that we're much more attuned to their day to day injury issues and a lot of teams are dealing with the same issues. Outside of annoying us, it doesn't make sense for the Cubs to rule them out publicly before the game. I just wish they'd do the Iowa shuffle with the bullpen more than the short bench.

Not sure, last I heard he was about to start a rehab assignment. It’s pretty sad that I’m pining for Matt horsefeathering Duffy to return Either the Cubs Athletic guys or the Marquee broadcast mentioned a while ago that whatever it is isn't progressing well. He's been gone long enough now that throwing him on the 60 day DL doesn't really change much at this point. He's going to need some rehab assignments, and I think he's eligible to come off the 60 like, next week.

Yep, and the assistant GM at the time is now the GM of Winnipeg. For a team that was that successful for that long, I'm guessing there are people all over the league that were in the room at the time. You can tell the NHL is going to try and ignore it during the finals, but hopefully people keep digging and the people who fucked up have to face consequences, starting with the ones still employed by the Hawks.

This might not exactly be what you're talking about, but I remember a very hobbled Rizzo and Baez taking ABs in that godforsaken series against the Cardinals in 2019 where Kimbrel gave up like 6 dongs. Granted that was September so there wasn't a roster crunch, but Rizzo led off and could barely walk, and then Javy PH with like, a broken wrist or something? I was so pissed at the team for blowing that year, but at least they showed some sort of effort.