squally1313

I meant Zobrist, and was obviously thinking more of the 2018 123 wRC version than the Juan Pierre lite version we've been getting this year. It's probably a toss up between him and Schwarber. And given that your top four hitters are currently 6th, 13th, 20th, and 29th in baseball in wRC, it's not really at the top of my list of concerns.

A lineup without three of our top five hitters. And also a domestic abuser. Not sure which part you were referring to.

Caratini in for Contreras, so I guess they're going to keep Yu with the back up catcher. Makes sense in terms of getting Contreras his needed time off. However, I saw Caratini batting 4th and got really annoyed at the Dusty-esque move of just batting the back up in the same spot as the starter. Then I looked at the rest of the lineup and realized he might be our best option there, which...is not great.

Yeah, that was overall entirely terrifying.

I mean, it's essentially a leave of absence, which most salaried workers with any sort of tenure are entitled to. I don't think anyone is really sure if he's getting paid or not (which obviously isn't a huge deal for someone who's made around $70m in his career). Obviously the company can let it impact their decision on whether to keep employing you, but again...don't really think it's an issue in this scenario.

Whatever year Rich Harden engaged.

Well assuming you're talking about 2016, we were 29th in shifts that year at 4.6%, only ahead of the Marlins, who I'm guessing didn't even teach the concept. Since then we've gone 29th, 28th, and this year we're at 23rd, 14.2%. Astros are somehow at 50% for the year. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/team-positioning?teamId=117&venue=home&firstBase=0&shift=1&batSide=&season=2016 We shifted a lot in 2015, did we not? It seems 2016 we just went super defense so it didn’t matter, but as things slipped by the pitching/defense it doesn’t seem like we’ve adapted by trying to shift more, like David said. That site only goes back to 2016, unfortunately. I remember that being the narrative, but I would have thought that also occurred in 2016 as well, so who knows.

Well assuming you're talking about 2016, we were 29th in shifts that year at 4.6%, only ahead of the Marlins, who I'm guessing didn't even teach the concept. Since then we've gone 29th, 28th, and this year we're at 23rd, 14.2%. Astros are somehow at 50% for the year. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/team-positioning?teamId=117&venue=home&firstBase=0&shift=1&batSide=&season=2016 Man, I never know this horsefeathers; I'm just piggybacking on other people here smarter than me who keep complaining like the Cubs stopped shifting as much or got horsefeathers at it or whatever. Trust me, it surprised me too. Obviously this is subject to how they define shifts, which is 'three infielders on one side of second base'...which doesn't seem too controversial. Honestly I don't remember being too enamored with that kind of shifting back then, or thinking we were leading the pack on it. I remember being really impressed with Rizzo's bunt defense and throwing behind runners, which are things I think we all kinda take for granted now. I honestly don't know what led to the historic BABIP beyond luck. We had the second lowest hard hit %, but it wasn't some outlier. I think it was just a young, uber athletic, very defensively talented team combined with pitchers good at getting soft contact.

I think getting rid of max salaries could make things a lot more interesting. We've seen how important superstars can be, but right now they can only be a certain % of the cap. If someone like Lebron knows he can get a max offer from every team in basketball, of course him and all the other stars are going to flock to the big markets. But if a Detroit or a OKC or whatever wants to throw 75% of their cap space at him, could make the decision a little different.

That still induces a pretty good incentive to tank really hard for a good chunk of the season. Isn't the worst team still not mathematically out of it until like February usually? There aren't many teams that are going to tank straight out of the gate. And if you're bad enough to get eliminated super early in the season, you probably aren't suddenly going to become good enough to rack up enough wins to get much of a head start.

Before we go too crazy are we sure "has been guilty of inappropriate marital conduct which render further cohabitation impossible." actually means anything specific and bad? Also, she filed for divorce on the same day. So maybe let's hold off on any sort of character trashing for the time being.

Same horsefeathers that happened last year with him. Is it as common with other teams to intentionally shorten their bench by refusing to put them on the injured list as it is with us? I swear we have a 'on roster but unplayable' player in like 60% of our games the last year-plus. It's right up there with, "we used to shift a ton and it worked great, but then inexplicably we knocked it WAY down for reasons," as the new market inefficiency. Well assuming you're talking about 2016, we were 29th in shifts that year at 4.6%, only ahead of the Marlins, who I'm guessing didn't even teach the concept. Since then we've gone 29th, 28th, and this year we're at 23rd, 14.2%. Astros are somehow at 50% for the year. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/team-positioning?teamId=117&venue=home&firstBase=0&shift=1&batSide=&season=2016

The only good draft idea is the one where, from the moment you are mathematically eliminated, you start counting your wins, and whoever has the most wins under that rule gets the number 1 pick in the draft. Also would be fine getting rid of it. You'd have to eliminate individual salary limitations, but would make it super interesting.

4-1*. Need one of those KB games.

This sounds really messy.

They did it. They found the worst lineup.

Huh? The entire year he was out rehabbing his knee I swear he was the most talked about trade chip in the game. Im pretty sure NYY wanted him for Andrew Miller? I could be misremembering but it feels like that entire season he was hurt every trade leak or rumor involving the Cubs was that AL GMs still wanted him badly. He didn't really lose his value until the failed leadoff experiment and minor league demotion IMO. Fair, but even with the benefit of hindsight, that would have been a really bad trade.

I mean, if we’re talking about most likely outcomes... In an athlete/civilian divorce, that's probably true. In an athlete/popstar?singer?pseudo celebrity situation, I'm not sure those numbers add up. Bigger picture: Why should we give a horsefeathers? If we hear some Russell-esque details come out of this, then it warrants discussion. Until then, it's just a sad story that you'd hope we could do a lot better than 'here's a dumb baseball pun'.

Can we please not create a new topic for someone going through a divorce? Much less one with a shitty joke in the title.

That's my take on the whole thing; like, let's say he turns it around and starts playing well again for a while. How realistic is it to say he's an actual trade asset? His whole rep right now is as an abusive scumbag, so how many teams are going to actually give up anything of value for him? Yeah, I know teams have been more than happy in the past (including the VERY recent past) to gloss over this type of thing, but it does definitely feel like things have changed and are changing in terms of how fans and the media approach players like this. It seems like complete BS for the Cubs to be trying to shape this like they either want him to be good enough again to be a viable trade chip OR a useful player on the Cubs, because there's essentially no way for him to get out from under the stain (and rightly so) of what he did multiple times. This guy is NEVER going to be of any real value in a trade, and it's a horsefeathering farce for the Cubs to essentially act like he still needs to be on the team along those lines. The only thing that made/makes sense to me is that right now he's insurance for any sort of significant Javy injury. No one else on the roster can play SS consistently, and the couple names down in AAA, while performing pretty well now (Adames, Dixon Machado) were essentially complete unknowns going into this year. That doesn't explain at all why he got called up for Zobrist, outside of maybe it was just fluky timing with Zobrist leaving for an undisclosed length of time and Descalso being old and slow and having a nagging injury, which left you with basically KB, Javy, and Bote as infielders. This is all from a pure baseball perspective by the way. Big picture, as always, horsefeathers Addison Russell.

Porter has two years left (second year is a player option), and I think with that trade the Bulls pretty much took themselves out of contention for any top FA in this offseason and next. 2020, just from skimming the list, looks like AD and Ben Simmons with player options are the only real game changers, and I'm stretching that term for Ben Simmons, the third best player on a team that just lost in the conference semis. All this to say that the current version of Otto Porter should absolutely not impact this draft pick in any way. We can more than afford to carry his contract for the next two years as a really expensive lottery ticket.

Fowler posted a .393 OBP in 2016. I'd be VERY curious to see if the Cubs' leadoff spot has topped that in the 2 full season since. I can try and figure it out tonight, have to head out to golf league soon. I’m almost positive I’ve seen tweets or mentions in articles our leadoff spot has been better than Dexter every year since he’s been a Cardinal. If someone wants to dig in to it before then feel free. I'm guessing no, but pretty easy on FG, so here goes: 2019: .303 OBP, 72 wRC 2018: .366 OBP, 121 wRC 2017: .324 OBP, 94 wRC 2016: .381 OBP, 123 wRC So, in conclusion, no.

Well I can tell you with some degree of certainty that he will not maintain a 1.16 ERA the rest of the year... It kinda depends on how deep you want to go into the numbers. His K/BB rates are essentially both the best he's had since he joined the Cubs, the walk rate being especially encouraging after watching it increase every year the last four years. That's giving him a career best FIP of 2.72. The BABIP looks normal, one point off his career average. Those are all the good things. His line drive rate is down from last year, but above his career average. His hard hit rate is a career high by a pretty significant margin, which is the big concern (previous high was 32.6% in 2007, 31.9% last year, 40.5% this year). As you'd expect, that's leading to a career low in soft hit % besides the 81 innings in his first year. His velocity looks to be down about 1 MPH across the board, but if memory serves me correctly he usually picks up a little bit as the year goes on and it warms up. He's throwing a lot less 4 seamers and a lot more cutters, which seems to be helping. Overall it's encouraging, especially if you had (not unreasonable) thoughts after last year that he wasn't going to be anything more than a mid-rotation guy going forward. Would like to see more soft contact, but the control has been great, especially because it hasn't come at the expense of strikeouts.

I'm less interested in 'who has done well in the leadoff spot' than I am 'players who get on base a lot'. Descalco and Schwarber essentially put up the same numbers for that last year, but I'll take Schwarber's potential going forward as the player more likely to get on base. That being said, if I wasn't feeling lazy and if I didn't unconditionally love our large adult son, this is where I'd recalculate his season OBP/last 20 games OBP without those 4 IBBs he got in the last few days thanks for him batting in front of trash like Russell, Almora, etc.