squally1313

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.

18.1% K rate, which is much higher than his career rate (13.8%) and still comfortably below the team rate (26.6%). Against these Peralta/Burnes/Woodruff, unfortunately with our options and their skill you have to hope you get a little bit of BABIP luck. More confused by Lobaton, tough to give Contreras a night off with Rizzo already down, but also Contreras has been ground down to nothing a few different seasons now, so it is what it is. Find a competent backup catcher. All that being said, Sogard is a garbage human and should be gone yesterday.

While Dame is definitely better, I don't know that that gets you where you want to go. The dream is to find a way to get them together, but there's basically no way to do that unless Portland thinks Pat Williams is going to be a star Figure out a way to facilitate Dame to Philly, Simmons to Chicago. Pretty unlikely unless Portland just commits to blowing it up, but if Dame forces his way out they might not have much of a choice.

Well, per FG, we have the lowest line drive rate, 5th highest FB rate, and 9th highest infield fly ball rate. We also, concerningly, have the highest HR/FB rate, which hurts BABIP as well. 13th in average exit velocity and 9th in barrel %, so that doesn't really support it, but everything else would lead you to conclude we should be near the bottom based on batted ball profile. Bottom by 40 points is obviously a little unlucky and will turn around. But with the highest K rate in the league by almost 2 points, we're going to have less balls in play and our results are more likely to be fluky in a small sample.

Last time I played 9 I had four pars, four triples, and a three putt bogey. Probably the best I’ve ever hit my irons, but the driver was a disaster. Lefty swing, and it was either on the next fairway to the left or OB. So that’s the project of the month. If the weather holds up, playing Dunes Club tomorrow, which I had never even heard of but sounds incredible.

Totally. Again, these are famous, rich, super religious white people. I get wanting to be sympathetic, but let's face it: these sorts of people almost always suck. And, if we're being honest, those kids have about a 97.8% of growing up just as horsefeathers, if not horsefeathers. 97.8% before all this. An absolute lock at this point.

Yes, it does, and yes, they don't. But as mentioned earlier, if we could somehow get to 4 wins in these 10 games, that's a solid run, keeps us near the top of the division, and probably eliminates any chance of a sell off in the next month or so. So now it's just 3 out of the next 9. Then 7 at home against two struggling teams with bad road records, the ASB, and it lightens up a lot from there in the second half.

That's 80% of the people here.

Think that would go against their other project of speeding the game up. Still seems like a very dumb approach. With such a harsh penalty, you can afford to make the actual checks pretty rare. Check one or two starters a night across the whole league, keep it random and unpredictable, should work just as well. All of this is just performance theatre.

He’s two weeks into one of the hottest stretches in baseball history and as of this exact moment his OPS is 1 point higher than his season numbers in 2019. He did plenty of proving here.

Ricketts has had this stretch of the schedule circled for weeks now. Just so pumped to use a 2-8 stretch as an excuse to go into sell mode. Sure would be nice to have a corner outfielder averaging a dong a game over the last couple weeks. Or a shutdown starter.

Simmons averaged 10 shots a game, making 55%. Rondo never shot more than 12 per game, and after age 29 never averaged double digit shots. Simmons shot 61% from the line this year, Rondo was a career 61% FT shooter, with some much worse years than Simmons ever had. The contract situation is obviously very different, but unless you think this playoff stretch is what he'll be going forward, I think he's definitely a second/third piece with 2 proven scorers and a Clarkson/idealized Coby White type off the bench. It's not necessarily what I expect going forward full-time, but it'd be nuts to assume this won't happen when the lights get bright again. Simmons is a worse FT shooter for his career than Rondo (59%). And his shot attempts have gone down from 10 to 8 and 11.5 to under 10 in the playoffs the last 2 years. The difference in shooting percentage can be summed up by 6'10 vs. 6'1, which is where Simmons maintains some value. 76ers had that blueprint you speak of with Embiid, Harris and Curry and it still wasn't good enough. I said in the Bulls thread though that i'd be willing to give Simmons a shot with LaVine, Vucevic and Coby White and hope having the top option be a wing instead of a C would help. But I wouldn't give up anything worthwhile to take that shot. Yeah, which I think you're just higher on Williams than I am. Still think there's a good chance he puts it together at some point, but the odds of that lining up with this two year stretch of Lavine/Vuc are pretty low, in my opinion.

Even Rondo has increased his willingness to shoot the ball later in his career. He's not great at it or at the FT line, but he's willing to get to the line or take an open shot. Prime Rondo didn't really shoot the ball much, but he also was not a max contract or a #2 option. He had KG, Pierce and Allen to do the scoring. With the money Simmons is making, you can't surround him with the 3 scorers you need to make up for his lack of shooting. Simmons averaged 10 shots a game, making 55%. Rondo never shot more than 12 per game, and after age 29 never averaged double digit shots. Simmons shot 61% from the line this year, Rondo was a career 61% FT shooter, with some much worse years than Simmons ever had. The contract situation is obviously very different, but unless you think this playoff stretch is what he'll be going forward, I think he's definitely a second/third piece with 2 proven scorers and a Clarkson/idealized Coby White type off the bench.

The issues are glaringly obvious, and the contract is huge, but even if it never gets fixed, Rajon Rondo but also a lockdown defender is still pretty valuable right?

I would trade Williams or Coby. Williams, Aminu, Sato, and Thad for Simmons and Gary Clark works on the Trade Machine. Don't think that's a final package that would work for the Sixers in win now mode, but they could flip Williams for a scorer.

This week definitely hurt the chances of the central getting a WC team, but whatever, go win the division.

So how much of an impact do we think this is going to have? Are we hammering overs for a few weeks here?

Plus we're in an era where really only the top handful of pitchers in baseball should be going more than twice through a line up. I have no idea if our bullpen will stay elite, probably not given the name recognition outside of Kimbrel, but if you're evaluating the team as it stands now, we basically just need our starters to give us 5 solid innings, which Hendricks is more than capable of, Azlolay has shown a lot of potential, Davies has had a great 6 weeks, pick up a starter, tell Jake to throw 96 for 50 pitches, etc, etc, etc. By the time we get to August/September we could have a few more high velocity arms ready to shut down the middle innings and turn it over to the back end. It's not the team we're used to, for sure, but we're here, take the shot.