squally1313

Yes, because catcher is a far more important position defensively, and because I think Willson in a corner OF spot is essentially an automatic upgrade over either the hapless bums currently taking up space. And I don't agree that finding a serviceable defensive-first catcher is some kind of dire financial burden the Cubs couldn't handle. Yeah, the 'pay more money' was referring to Grandal, which I covered above. I think it's a little naive to just assume 'replace Almora with Grandal' is some definitely viable option. Which leaves you with 'serviceable defensive-first catchers', which goes back to original point of 'like who?' Yes, catcher is more important defensively, but Contreras is much better offensively than the average catcher, which still matters.

are you talking about grandal? Fair...combining the two options. A (very hypothetically) defensively passable Contreras in CF and Grandal behind the plate is obviously an improvement over the current plan. But for all that to take place, the following would have to be true: 1. Grandal accepts our offer, which will be higher than the $16m someone tossed out considering he's making $18m this year and is on pace for his best offensive year (though, oddly, his defensive fWAR looks like it will decline for the fourth straight year). 2. The argument that catchers decline earlier doesn't apply to Grandal, since after this year he'll have 6 straight years of at least 115 games, and will be 31 years old. 3. The same front office who sees a pitching staff with 4 guys over 30 and zero viable backup plans, and a bullpen that is basically just a picture of a garbage fire, and also sees Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel wanting to play for contenders, and has yet to connect the very obvious dots, is cool moving their super cost controlled catcher to a brand new position to replace their cost controlled outfielder and add a $20m/year catcher in his 30s to an infield that is going to get expensive very soon.

You, me, and like half this board spend most of our time in the game threads complaining about our centerfielder who can't hit but grades out pretty well defensively and occasionally lucks into home runs. So your grand idea is to...move that problem to catcher, dramatically shrink the number of viable options, and pay more money to do it?

This is one of those 'here's a good idea' things that has no real answer to 'Ok, done, then what do you do next?'

Happ and Strop please and thank you.

So our best player is injured and two of our other top three hitters, who have been top 30 in baseball in offensive fWAR for the season, go through a tough stretch...and THIS is the 'team we actually have'? I thought the team we have counts on Bryant playing 150 games and Baez and Contreras putting up 4-5 WAR?

And of course 'protecting the plate' and 'putting the ball in play' would obviously still mean you would never do something like swing at ball four, which has a (checks notes) 100% success rate of getting on base.

Trading for Jesse Chavez, getting greatness from him, then being smart and not bringing him back on a two-year deal? The trade for Hamels worked out better than most people expected. Picking up the option could end up being a much different story.

Good call. They’re playing horrible baseball right now. It won’t be forever, but it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence if we have to play these guys in October. Counterpoint: This season will be an overwhelming success if we have to play these guys in October.

While I'd prefer to never play the Astros, this whole DH thing is nice right now given the state of disrepair seemingly half our roster is in. Let's hope the Baez/KB/Bote/etc. issues clear up soon.

Lot of weird blame going around for a terribly played defensive game that we lost by against one of the best pitchers in baseball.

This is far from a fully formed thought, but it seems like with Montgomery essentially piggybacking with Darvish for now, Chatwood is by default the long man, and needs to be saved for those situations where the starter doesn't go deep. With the way Lester, Hendricks, Q, even Hamels (besides last night) have been pitching, there hasn't been a lot of need for him. It's possible Chatwood isn't ready for/used to things like pitching back to back, as he's never had to do that in his career, so if you bring him in for an inning, he might be unavailable the next day, and trying to piece together 6 or 7 innings without Chatwood and Monty is pretty daunting right now. If he continues to pitch like this, he'll get more opportunities. And I think if Darvish shows he can pitch into at least the 5th or 6th consistently, that will free up Monty and give Joe more flexibility to use both of them.

Starting to look a little better

Well so much for that. Wacha up to 5.80. I don’t think he ever recovered from that 2015 playoff series. A big difference in his career stats before and after that series. As much as I'd enjoy that being the case, his best year came in 2017. He's been pretty worthless since then though.

Guys, these gifs/memes are a mess. Can we try to get some cohesion here?

I think he was never going to make the team out of Arizona next spring (no matter how good his stats are). It sounds like the plan is to keep Nico at AA for the whole year, and let him start next season in Iowa. He'll probably get called him sometime next year in May/early June is my guess. The best chance for Russell finally being excised from this team now is a trade. We just need to pray some team needs help at SS/2B before the trade deadline and is willing to take the PR hit/bad press to acquire him. The hard trade deadline (can't make trades in August anymore) could help us here in that regard. Unfortunately, given the current situation, the team that might need help at SS/2B is us.

Please come back Javy

Two days in a row going with Descalso over Bote. I get the bloop triple last night, but don't see how this makes sense long term.

There is a gif response that is just out of my grasp right now, but trust me...no one has ever doubted your persistence around these parts.

True, though this seems like the epitome of the "why not both?" meme. Absolutely. But spending all your energy being mad at Ricketts and their budget, when it's pretty abundantly clear that the owners got together and decided to do this all together, is getting pretty close to tilting at windmills (or maybe I just like using that phrase). They are garbage people that are falsely crying poor. Them and pretty much every other ownership group in baseball. We only 'needed' Harper because Heyward has been a bust, Schwarber hasn't developed, Almora is your classic try-hard player who isn't actually good, etc. We 'need' Kimbrel because we slotted Morrow in as a key piece of this bullpen (which is very dumb), and we've spent the last 5 years drafting pitchers in bulk precisely to take care of this problem (and the ever present lack of rotation depth), which hasn't helped us at all, and because our other big FA signing Darvish has thrown all of 98 innings in 18 starts for us. I put 'need' in quotes because it's May 21, and we have the second best record/run differential in the NL. I'd rather debate the magnitude of the problems, and the potential solutions to those problems beyond "take money from Tom Ricketts". Would that be the most satisfying option? Probably. But it's pretty clear it's not going to happen.

No one is using that argument to defend the owners. I could spend an hour listing things to blame the Ricketts for. Using their dishonestly imposed budget as an excuse for why aren't beating the Brewers by more than what we are is glossing over some real issues with how this team was put together, and how some of the players (and management) have been performing. Yes, we all hate the Ricketts. Yes, they should be spending more money. But why is a team with a $200m payroll potentially struggling to fend off a team with a $120m payroll? Would it help if our payroll was $250m? Most likely. But the issues go beyond the ownership group, and I think it's more constructive to discuss how to fix those.

I'm trying to imagine gripping a baseball hard enough to get a blister on your pinky finger like 65 innings in to the season. As someone who pitched (poorly) through high school, I don't think my pinky touched the ball on anything that I throw. Edit: On second look, definitely not his pinky. Please ignore.

Anybody want to fill in the gaps on Underwood being listed as the 'SP-LF' for the game? All I can find on Twitter...Underwood got sent to LF with two outs in the first, having thrown 30+ pitches. Not wanting him to reach his first inning pitch count max, they brought in Hannemann from the outfield, who struck out the only batter he faced. Then Underwood back out to the mound for the rest of his outing. Interesting way around those rules. At first I thought they were trying some weird strategy here...first thing that came to mind was maybe them bringing in an infielder in an obvious bunting situation, which is probably a dumb idea, but could be cool to try.

The Cubs ownership is cheap just as much as every other ownership in baseball is cheap. Maybe more so. The players are getting less and less of the share of total revenue. We all know that, and I think everyone did their share of complaining during the offseason. The fact that the Ricketts are pretty clearly a garbage family certainly doesn't help. However, I think the point the 'bootlickers' are trying to make is that the Cubs opening day payroll was $80m more than the Brewers. For us to complain that the Ricketts being cheap is the main thing holding us back from being better than the Brewers rings a little false. Yes, it would be great to have Harper and Kimbrel on the roster, especially because we all know the Cubs can pretty easily afford both. But it's certainly not a necessity to compete in this division. That being said, as Cubswin and soccer have pointed out, the Cubs have outplayed the Brewers, and I expect them to continue to do so, either with this roster as is or with whatever additions they can find.

Kyle Ryan vs Harper for the game huh. Of course.