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squally1313

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Everything posted by squally1313

  1. squally1313
    My favorite thing (other than the obvious WS stuff) to watch from that run is the comeback in SF. I LOVE the comeback against SF. Javy, Zo, and Willy were so swaggy. It's tempered a little bit by the fact that Javy and Willy basically hit 17 hoppers that barely reached the center fielder, and this was after Matt horsefeathering Moore essentially shut us down for 8 innings. But yeah, that Zobrist double was definitely...the second coolest double he had.
  2. squally1313
    Honestly, if you give me 10 minutes to go back and watch highlights...give me Game 6 against the Dodgers every day. Outside of the fact that it ended with Chapman on the mound, it's pretty much perfect.
  3. squally1313
    I think leaving Chapman in was where my loathing of Maddon was cemented for life. Christ, what an insanely lucky maniac; that article is like a slow motion panic attack. Yep, especially coupled with bringing him in for game 6 in the 7th horsefeathering inning with a 7-2 lead because there were two on with two out AND THEN sending him back out for the 8th inning. Just a slow motion train wreck that Schwarber, Zobrist, etc bailed out.
  4. squally1313
    https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-inning-the-cubs-stole/
  5. squally1313
    Theo finally found out about the deleted alternate ending of Major League and decided to go ALL IN on that strategy.
  6. squally1313
    I think about that swing (and that gift of a pitch) probably once a week.
  7. squally1313
    Yeah all he has do is prove he's better than Descalso and this is a solid move. If he can show some signs of life and work his way into a Kipnis/Bote platoon at second, even better, though Bote also decided to pull an Almora and abruptly start sucking against LHPs in 2019, so who knows.
  8. squally1313
    The Barstool Chicago guys are saying something similar, for whatever that's worth. I do know that he lives in Chicago (my buddy sees him at East Bank most mornings), so might be a friend of a friend thing here.
  9. squally1313
    It's not a need, it's a reward. You want to incentivize trying, which is a problem in baseball right now. The difference between being the #2 seed and the # 5 seed can literally be the division you play in. How does a 1 game lead incentivize trying in that scenario, which happens nearly every year? Well in the first round, the team with the best record plays the wild card winner, so they would definitely have a better record than whoever they are playing, and then of the other two division winners, the team with the better record would get the advantage. In my head this only applied to round one. It creates level of incentives around having the best regular season possible and winning your division.
  10. squally1313
    that's why you make the WC a one game play-in, to really give the top teams an incentive to be great and not settle for just getting in. Wild cards team get the opportunity, but they have to go an extra step to make up for sneaking in on the cheap. Yeah I'm a big fan of making the WC teams play their way in, though I'd prefer a three game series (more baseball, wear out your pitching staff). Anything that rewards winning the division/having the best record. The proposed format, with only one team getting the advantage, I think is too small of a target for teams to go for. I'd be open to the weirder ideas that give advantages to the top teams. Give the higher seed full time home field advantage would be cool but never happen for ticket sales reasons. Hell, make the first round a best of seven, but give the higher seed a 1-0 lead. You're only really adding one game to that round then, and make it a lot harder for the worse team to sneak out of there.
  11. squally1313
    The argument for this kind of playoff expanding move, that it will reduce tanking by giving more teams a shot, is more than offset by the fact that the new target for wins will be like 85, and you'll see pretty much all the big market teams doing the same treading water horsefeathers that the Cubs have been doing for the last two offseasons.
  12. squally1313
    Definitely agree that the Red Sox were a little taken aback by the public reaction to the trade (not that that ultimately stopped them), but they went from picking up someone who was at least a major league reliever that could help the team on day one to a prospect named after Derek Jeter. Weird sequence of events, for sure.
  13. squally1313
    I was ready to hate this, but with the right specifics I think there are some things to like. In particular, since all the wild card games are at the higher seed, you could do the 3 game series with a double header one day and a Game 3 the next day/day after. That'd help preserve some of the current wild card's stakes, and optimize scheduling. It also paves the way for an 8 division setup if they decide to expand to 32, and preserves the importance of division winners gunning for the best record they can. The issue with the DH header idea is that the only way anyone would agree to that would be if it fell on the weekend, and then you'd have an round of playoffs going up against football, and there's no way anyone would agree to that.
  14. squally1313
    I totally get the motivations behind the ideas (and the article does a good job of spelling them out)...more playoff teams, more clinching games, etc. I really don't know how you solve the main problem, which is that ultimately the 'fairest' way to award a champion is pretty much the opposite of the 'most exciting' way. 7 teams from each league making the playoffs is pretty much a dealbreaker for me, as much as I may like some of the other nuances. But on the other hand, the best idea I can come up with, on the spot, involves 6 teams per league, so...who knows. That idea is pretty close to the NFL set up, but also lets the teams with the better records pick their opponents. Three division winners, three wildcards, two best division winners get a bye and the third winner/three wildcard teams play two best of 3s (division winner picks their opponent), and then of those winners, the best record gets to pick their opponent. I'd also consider reducing the number of off days in the playoffs in order to add more games, assuming we can't get the season to end earlier. Edit: I thought about this more, and just leave it as is. As much as I like the 'pick your opponents' thing, baseball is pretty clearly the worst sport to try it in.
  15. squally1313
    https://nypost.com/2020/02/10/mlb-plotting-playoff-expansion-with-reality-tv-twist/ This is getting trashed by Baseball Twitter, and I definitely agree in terms of the new format/bracket. Have always thought that picking your own opponent would be a fun way to ramp up the intensity though, so that part I'm very intrigued by.
  16. squally1313
    Why would teams ask about Maatta?
  17. squally1313
    I had to look up who McNeil even was, and I for one am shocked that this Ryan Ludwick esque loser isn't on the Cardinals.
  18. squally1313
    That makes sense. They can likely get more for Lehner because he's youngerbut they'd be taking their chances on Crawford's health or that Lankinen is ready to step into an NHL role. Though Crawford might look more attractive to a playoff team as mostly a rental. A team like that would likely want to give up more draft picks than NHL players so that would be a good way to hedge their bets. But if they traded Crawford now they better extend Lehner the same day since he's likely the best available FA goalie. Yeah I don't know enough about evaluating the two of them, and can make arguments for both in the short term. Agreed that Lehner is the only one you'd really want to extend, though I'm not sure what he'd get on the market after having the year he had last year and having to settle for a one year deal again. Could also just keep Crawford around on a 1-2 year deal. Would probably depend on the offers for both of them too. But if you can pick up a top 4ish defenseman, well then....you'd only be like 3 D-men short of actually being a good team. But hockey playoffs are crazy, and we've wasted enough of Toews and Kane's years.
  19. squally1313
    As long as you're still reliant on Kane, Toews, and Keith as top line players, I think you need to take every chance at a playoff bid you can get. I can see a thought process for settling on one of them and seeing what you can get for the other, even if it's little more than a coin flip, because you'd only need one of them for whatever playoff run you make.
  20. squally1313
    Yeah most of my arguments for a Javy extension, you could probably do the same thing for a Rizzo extension, so I always thought it was weird that a Javy extension was assumed and a Rizzo extension had no chance/was really dumb.
  21. squally1313
    Throwing a Ronny Cedeno comp on Hoerner seems a little cruel.
  22. squally1313
    You only need a Q replacement if you require competent pitching. If you're basically taking a mini dive this season by unnecessarily cutting costs, some garbage guys filling in at that spot is just going to help your draft spot. Fair. Depressing, but fair. Now that the dust mostly has settled, I wonder if Ricketts is a little disappointed that Milwaukee got worse and St Louis didn't really do anything. The Reds made a bunch of moves, but had a ton of ground to make up. It's one thing to have a roster that needs things to break right and choose not to compete, it's another thing to go into the year with the best team on paper (at least, as currently constructed).
  23. squally1313
    Aren't we kinda running out of time to find a Q replacement? Especially after we basically decided to pass on filling Hamels' spot in the first place? Or are we just going to hope Hendricks and Yu throw up career seasons while Lester, Chatwood, and Mills do...whatever it is they do.
  24. squally1313
    That would definitely push Hoerner to AAA to start the year, which is fine. Would push Bote into essentially a roving back up as the short side of that platoon, with KB backing up Schwarber directly and Happ indirectly? Still don't really have a backup shortstop, but Javy doesn't really need days off. Would definitely fit their strategy of targeting guys who were once good, and more recently terrible.
  25. squally1313
    We'll have to wait and see what the actual numbers look like, but if I were to ballpark it I'd guess the current Cubs come out about 4 wins ahead on the position players, 1-2 ahead on SP, and probably 2 down on RP. I didn't get the specifics, but on aggregate it's about right, the Cubs projections are just under 5 wins better. [tweet] [/tweet] Yeah good call. Outfield: Cubs 5.7, Cards 4.6 Infield: Cubs 17.6, Cards 15.9 Starters: Cubs 13.1, Cards 11.6 Relievers: Cubs 3.3, Cards 3.8
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