squally1313

Obviously his point is the roster is deficient not that Almora will get better. I get that. The roster is deficient. But Maddon's insistence on using Almora as much as he's done makes it even more inefficient. Saying you'd play Almora everyday is nonsensical. It's not a solution to anything. You can critique the roster all you want but that still doesn't justify Almora's playing time. With the way Heyward has played pretty much all year, even with the Descalsos of the roster, you could still kinda look at it as Bote vs Almora. The fact that Almora has 33 more PAs of putting up a 70 wRC vs Bote's 100 is pretty inexcusable.

What? At some point you almost have to use them? That's not been the issue with Almora. He's been used early and often. That sentence is not specifically about Almora, but about the dead weight in general. The bench has been trash all season. Joe doesn’t have a 25 man roster. He can’t keep trotting our the same 8 position players everyday. Because, less face it, a couple of those guys aren’t everyday players. "I'd play Almora everyday until he gets better"

Those stats look nice. But this isn't Statis Pro Baseball; at the end of the day all that really matters is that they win more games than they lose, and that's something they've struggled with on the road all year. On paper we should be running away with this division, not locked in a tight pennant race with the Brewers and Cardinals. I definitely wasn't disputing that. More the argument that this team, which is 8th in OBP, 8th in slugging, and 10th in home runs is somehow overly dependent on hitting home runs.

Feel free to throw me in the rotation. I'm not sure what kind of pythag record a -10 run differential per game gets you but um....that KB dong was sweet, right?

Just got home...how'd I do? Some of you were worse than Edith in this thread tonight, good god. The Cubs are 8th in OBP. The Cubs are third in OPS with runners on base. Both of those things are good.

Yeah I know the right/left part doesn't line up. I was more commenting on how they started an announcement about Tommy John surgery with "JAMO UPDATE".

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12 years on this board (jesus christ, 12 years?), and finally getting into the game thread business. Since the pretty half assed attempt at Sunny gifs didn't seem to work out too well yesterday, we're going in a different direction. Hamels takes the mound in what looks like his first start in Philly since he pitched for them back in 2015 (the start before he no hit us). Aaron Nola on the other side, who has been surprisingly...not as good as I thought he would be? Home runs are up, BABIP has normalized from last year...he's still very solid, but an ace? If we continue to be Road Cubs, we risk falling into a tie for first place again, so let's not do that. We're going up against Cubs legend Drew Smyly and his 6.96 (nice) ERA tomorrow, so a win today and we would be in danger of actually winning a road series. Maybe see how that goes. Rumors of Modzilla floating around (gee, I wonder why that could be?), so I'll leave you with a suggestion. Go Cubs.

I didn't watch last night (and wasn't around here), and given Happ's performance at second I thought the thread was going to be a disaster and it was surprisingly...not terrible? I'm sure it won't last.

Oh man. Alright, it'll be up by noon. Can't rush mediocrity.

You idiots honesty think the Cardinals are worse with Molina on the roster? This thread is going to look really dumb if he's healthy and they take off getting a leader back. When Addison Russell has two years of being garbage, it's "well look at his last 30 games." When Molina has 71 games this year of being sub-replacement, it's "well look at his career." Molina is projected for 0.4 WAR in 128 PAs the rest of the year. Matt Wieters is projected for 0.1 WAR in 88 PAs. None of this matters, we just like proving you wrong because most of don't like you.

How much do you want to bet the Cardinals pitchers don't feel that way? Every single one wants to have Molina back there of the other two guys they have. I love how you will ride or die on whatever segment of games you highlight on Baseball Reference until it stops supporting your narrative, and then you go full meatball (Molina makes the team better, eye test...players try harder on new teams).

Eh...where you going to play him right now? Right now it's hard to sit any of Schwarber/Castellanos/Happ. Obviously given their track records at least one of those guys is going to cool off (and soon)...but given the time off, I'd rather Zobrist get a week or two of consistent ABs at AAA. The interesting part is for who. We haven't seen Kemp in CF at all yet. The most popular answer is Almora, but that would leave Heyward playing CF every day (and give them a lot less options for late inning defense). Bote is another option.

The shift isn't doing much to curb baserunners. BABIP has stayed between .295 and .300 since 2010. The walk rate for 2010 and 2019 are also exactly the same (8.5%). The K rate has gone from 18.5% to 22.8%, which I think is a big part of it. And then the fly ball rate has decreased, but HR/FB% is way up (9.4% in 2010, 15.3% now, next highest is 13.7% in 2017). Fix the ball first, and then figure out a way to lower the K rate. Though all of these solutions go against the desire to cut down on game time. Need other solutions for that. I think this might be a stupid question, so don't make fun of me. With the juiced ball, would we see a higher BABIP than that range of .295 to .300 without shifts? Or nah? I just look at guys like Schwarber and think they'd be getting on base via a hit so much more often. That's a fair point, and something I didn't really think about when I was looking through the yearly stats. I saw hard hit% was up and just kinda wrote that off as the juiced ball. However, the juiced ball thing is a 2019 only issue, and BABIP has stayed pretty much entirely flat for 10 years in a row now. I know shifting has continued to increase (although if I recall correctly the Cubs have gotten away from it somewhat)...but it's been pretty prevalent for 4-5 years now without seeing any increase at all. I've seen the argument that the shift decreases offense because it gets into a hitter's head, and makes them try to do things they aren't comfortable with (leading to striking out, or soft contact, etc). But I don't know if I totally buy it, and even if it were true, I don't think you should be making a rule to prevent something like that.

horsefeathers people are worse than people who support horsefeathers people (though the line is getting increasingly blurry). Also Addison Russell has made more money in his life than probably 99.9% of other 25 year olds, so we can probably stop with the whole 'food on the plate' narrative. If he's that worried about his kids, he can go find a job like everyone else does. Who would hire him? There's between 1m and 3m cases of domestic abuse reported every year in the United States. I hardly think it makes someone unemployable, especially not long term. But keeping him in the public eye, selling his jerseys, etc...it's pretty gross to me.

Shitty people are worse than people who support shitty people (though the line is getting increasingly blurry). Also Addison Russell has made more money in his life than probably 99.9% of other 25 year olds, so we can probably stop with the whole 'food on the plate' narrative. If he's that worried about his kids, he can go find a job like everyone else does.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yu-darvish-makes-a-trade-off/ TLDR: Trading walks for home runs, but to the extent that it's still a worthwhile trade. Getting a bit lucky that most of his home runs lately have been solo shots. The change in approach is throwing a lot more cutters than sliders.

Exactly. I don't necessarily want to increase scoring to the level at Coors Field (I don't hate that idea, but it's not a necessary component) but greatly increasing the number of hits and baserunners would be my goal. Just eliminate the shift. The shift isn't doing much to curb baserunners. BABIP has stayed between .295 and .300 since 2010. The walk rate for 2010 and 2019 are also exactly the same (8.5%). The K rate has gone from 18.5% to 22.8%, which I think is a big part of it. And then the fly ball rate has decreased, but HR/FB% is way up (9.4% in 2010, 15.3% now, next highest is 13.7% in 2017). Fix the ball first, and then figure out a way to lower the K rate. Though all of these solutions go against the desire to cut down on game time. Need other solutions for that.

It's just...imagine dying on these hills. I'm all for wasting an afternoon debating minutiae, but cherry picking a sample size to debate the relative merits of one washed up catcher vs another to try and decide who will be the 17th best player on another team for 6 weeks of baseball, and then like...quadrupling down. Jesus. And that's to say nothing about the disaster that the Russell thread has turned into.

He's basically just Baez insurance at this point. Which...whatever.

I MUCH prefer the idea that he's being kept down because he's a shitty person.

KB seems to be coming out of his slump. Not sure if the injury went away (or was even the cause for it in the first place).

Which Yu Darvish have you guys been watching the last month or so???

You guys are both being dumb, can at least pick another dumb topic to inevitably sidetrack this entire thread?