squally1313

We all love Zobrist, but I'm not sure how much he can help the team. He's 38 years old, was terrible early this season, and hasn't faced live ML pitching since he left. He might help inspirationally, but I'm not expecting much on the field. Hopefully he will prove me wrong. Counterpoint: Unless Robel Garcia is the real deal (which, given the K rate, I don't see it as anything more than a hot month that we should enjoy/take advantage of before the league stops throwing him fastballs), we throw out at least one complete zero in the line up on a daily basis. Zobrist didn't show much earlier this year, but I'll gladly take him over Russell/Descalso at second or Almora in the outfield.

It should KB or Heyward. Robel is much closer to a Baez type hitter right now (and probably going forward).

So what are the odds we get to see a 'perfect' lineup at any point this season. Obviously opinions differ, but right now I'd love to see Schwarber/Heyward/KB, Bote/Baez/Robel/Rizz and then Willy. Hopefully when Happ gets promoted in the next couple days, it's for Descalso or Russell. You'd think Robel has shown enough in his small sample size to not get sent back down.

I would go with Russell. His ceiling was higher. It’s (highly) debatable that it would have worked out without the injury, but schwarber still having the ability to play catcher once or twice a week would have helped his value quite a bit. Schwarber has pretty much plateaued, which I don’t think anyone expected given how quickly he moved through the minors. Russell has gotten actively worse.

Agreed on the first part, but where are you getting the second part? KB seems pretty solid against changeups this year, and over his career. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=7&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31&sort=7,d I'll admit it's pretty anecdotal. I looked at those stats and it doesn't show up as an obvious effect. I *think* it's because he can hit the hell out of a B- changeup but suffers disproportionately as the quality improves, but I don't have rock solid evidence to back that up. I'm guessing you're probably right, but I'm not sure how much of that is a KB thing vs an everyone in baseball thing. Which goes back to your earlier point...opposing managers are going to make the move to get their top pitcher in against KB more often than they would someone at the bottom of the order. (Though that theory would imply he would see more plus pitches, and yet his numbers remain solid). It's been frustrating for sure, but still think it's mostly noise.

Agreed on the first part, but where are you getting the second part? KB seems pretty solid against changeups this year, and over his career. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=7&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31&sort=7,d

It's actually worse than that. The players held a players only meeting on Monday (typically hitters and pitchers will meet in two groups before each series, this one was all together)....which led to the 18-5 game. Then Joe had his ASB meeting last night before the game...which led to this one. In the grand scheme of things, Joe's management of Monty this year is like 37th on my list of complaints. But it's getting incredibly frustrating how poor his decisions are in that area. Joe's management of the bullpen has been bad, but he's also had to deal with a really bad bullpen situation, personnel wise. His management of the position players has been similarly bad, but he's also been given zero bench. Why put Maples in the fourth inning the night after our bullpen got wrecked if you're going to have that short of a leash on him (groundout, walk, strikeout, single). And how many times does it have to be proven that Monty is not a loogy, has been much worse against lefties this year, and is much better coming in for a clean inning. It was a really bad decision that led to the game getting put away. And Theo deserves most of the blame for putting players of no value at the end of the bench. Joe deserves the blame for giving Russell essentially the same amount of PAs as Bote since Russell came back. Play your best players.

I'm out of town through next weekend, but when I come back, I'll let you know and you can throw me on the list. Might as well sprinkle some...well, not optimism, but not overt pessimism into the mix.

I think that was just Joe’s annual midseason team meeting unless I missed something Yeah it was like his annual “State of the Team” type thing he does every year going in to the break/half way point. It's actually worse than that. The players held a players only meeting on Monday (typically hitters and pitchers will meet in two groups before each series, this one was all together)....which led to the 18-5 game. Then Joe had his ASB meeting last night before the game...which led to this one. In the grand scheme of things, Joe's management of Monty this year is like 37th on my list of complaints. But it's getting incredibly frustrating how poor his decisions are in that area.

Jesse got rightfully ratio'd to hell on this one, and honestly it made me even angrier to realize it was essentially 50/50. I was made thinking it was 65/35. And that's before all the other ways to get Bote in the line up.

Remember when Randy Rosario was a terrible pitcher his entire minor league career, then drastically outperformed his peripherals for 22 whole innings in AAA last year (0.79/3.79/4.66), and then continued outperforming just long enough when he got called up to become a 'trusted' member of the bullpen, even though it was clear to anyone he remained terrible, and then he put up a 6.16 ERA and a 1.79 WHIP in the second half? Anyways, after he was terrible for the Cubs earlier this year, he's put up a 2.25/4.47/4.60 in AAA. So this should go well.

This is actually a fitting typo. Autocorrect has gotten smart enough that when they detect 'Rosario' and 'no worries' in the same sentence, they assume it must be a typo of some sort.

Bote had a rough June from a production standpoint. You can tie most of it to BABIP (.235), but that also follows a May where BABIP helped hide some pretty rough rate stats (30.5% K%, .378 BABIP). Additionally, his batted ball profile dropped off a little bit in June (hard hit by month: 42%, 45.8%, 29.6, although he posted his best LD% so I continue to be confused by those stats). Regardless, he should be playing a lot more than he is, especially given the garbage we're putting out there instead.

Does this put Corey Crawford on trade watch? Or...retirement watch?

I just hope they aren't rushing him back after the Hamels injury. Me too. I was going to write the same thing. I prefer he come back after the All-Star break. Eh, I trust Hendricks isn't going to do anything to make this worse. With the off day Friday, he's going to have like 10 days off before his next start.

Better pitcher than Chris Sale, obviously

Everyone get their Starlin phew gif ready....

Give him the hook!

He hasn't pitched for the Braves in like 7 years There are 2 position players in this game that were on the Braves the last time Kimbrel pitched for them, and one of them is Jason Heyward to be fair, they just pinch hit the other one

Kimbrel should throw the first pitch behind Flowers, just for fun. Really set the tone.

You have your hands full defending his .6 war, 52nd of war ranking, 12th on the cub and 7th among cub position players. Oh, and his defensive war of - 3.6. I’ll let you chew on that for a while. I could care less about yet another meaningless solo homer by one of the most overrated players in baseball. I'm fairly impressed how you have that war/ranking/position/defensive war thing so memorized. But how is a solo homerun meaningless in a game you lead 9-7? He's obviously pissed no one got on in front of him.

You have your hands full defending his .6 war, 52nd of war ranking, 12th on the cub and 7th among cub position players. Oh, and his defensive war of - 3.6. I’ll let you chew on that for a while. I could care less about yet another meaningless solo homer by one of the most overrated players in baseball. Clouding the issue with stat overload, nerd. Go check out his dong today.

Did he not see all the defenders on the right side?

Oh shoot, he pulled another ball in the air just now. What about all the defenders over there???

[bbvideo=560,315] [/bbvideo]One or a handful of at bats doesn’t change anything. His overall approach is to pull everything and to lift everything including when runners are in scoring position or when the pitch is outside or when there are eight guys right of second Schwarber: 40.9% Pull %, 41.8% fly ball %, 6.6% infield fly ball %, 48.4% total fly ball % Rizzo: 43.9% Pull %, 35.8% fly ball %, 9.8% infield fly ball %, 45.6% total fly ball % Before you move the goal posts to strike out rate, I assume you want to trash Rizzo's batted ball profile too?