squally1313

Most of this makes sense apart from Bote in the OF. If he isn't playing 3B or 2B, his value is close to nil. Bote is the guy you want as the backup infield guy, though I don't know what he'd be like at SS. Prob not good. Bote's greatest value to the Cubs is as a trade chip. Unfortunately, there aren't many Jim Hendrys around anymore who would value him incorrectly. Yeah David Bote will be 26 by the first week of next year, and finished with a 95 wRC+, which would place him 16th out of the 20 third basemen with enough PAs to qualify. I have no idea if his stellar defensive numbers are indicative of his actual ability there. Just from the eye test I remember a handful of great plays, and a couple bad ones. But I think his value is a league minimum backup who can put up league average production.

Most of this makes sense apart from Bote in the OF. If he isn't playing 3B or 2B, his value is close to nil. Bote is the guy you want as the backup infield guy, though I don't know what he'd be like at SS. Prob not good. Good point, and I guess the easier solution is to just keep him as a solid third baseman, and send KB out to the corner outfield spots when needed. Bote isn't going to pass as the backup SS, but that should be an easy enough position to fill.

It could be tricky to improve the offense without hurting the defense, which dragged our team offensive WAR to 5th in baseball despite being 13th in just the offensive portion of that. Then again, we still put up the top defensive numbers in September after essentially going from Russell to Murphy, so maybe that's more a team approach that's leading to those numbers more than the defensive skill sets.

Almora and Heyward is your center field platoon next year. Sign Harper. Spend a month trying to get Happ to play a Zobrist level second base, if not, he's pitching bait. If he can, he's valuable in a post-Zobrist era and can bounce around the field in 2018. Get Bote to passable in the corner outfield positions, he becomes the bounce around guy (maybe even the platoon with Schwarber in left). Sign some defense first backup catcher (Caratini to AAA or for a bullpen flier) and a backup shortstop/middle infield guy who can spell Zobrist a good amount and Baez for ten games. Darvish covers up any regression from Lester, Hendricks and Q will be fine, tell Chatwood/Monty/Smyly they're competing for one spot.

I might contradict myself like 4 times here, but whatever. Anti-Joe: Basically the whole purpose of this thread. His bullpen decisions that at the seem made no logical sense, sticking with Almora as leadoff hitter for a month too long, Murphy as leadoff hitter in general, potentially screwing up the Morrow plan, definitely screwing up the Russell response, etc. Pro-Joe: Basically the Rizzo quote. This was a team that was projected to win around 95 wins this year. None of those projections included 6 weeks of garbage from Rizzo, essentially a lost season from KB, 40 ineffective innings from Darvish, Chatwood doing what he did, and basically having to patch together a bullpen of castoffs (without your closer) for the last 6 weeks. And yet....95-67. Maybe he deserves a share of blame for a couple of those issues, but if so he also gets credit for a team where the skill players weren't on the field nearly as much as anticipated. Anti-Joe: Seems like his main skill set isn't really needed with this group anymore. I see the Chavez quotes, and I know the confidence this team generally has, and I give him all the credit in the world for developing that over the last four years. But this is a team that's going to have Lester, Rizzo, Baez, Heyward, Contreras, and Strop (plus a few others) in the locker room for a good amount of time. They're the ones leading this team, and setting the expectations for success and for the atmosphere. Get someone in there who is tuned in with Theo/Jed in terms of in game decisions, and stays out of the way otherwise.

I was at the game last night and not a chance I'm reading through all of this, so apologies if this was already discussed. But from what I remember Schwarber pinch hit for Strop when Gore was already in left field, and then Hamels came in Schwarber's spot, not Gore's. From all accounts, Gore is a terrible defensive player too, and I'd honestly have more confidence in Hamels at the plate than Gore. It just stuck with me last night for a while that Maddon essentially decided Gore was a better fit in left field than Schwarber for a tie game going into the 10th inning.

Good news! Williams has been pitching great in general for at least a month now. He's been good, yes, but looking at his second half numbers, seems like there's quite a bit of luck involved. 1.08/3.02/4.13, .243 BABIP, 94.4% LOB%, 4.4% HR/FB. His September has been really strong, shutting down Milwaukee his last two outings, a rough outing against St Louis, and then two more scoreless outings against Cincy and St. Louis going back to 8/29. But he hasn't pitched past the 7th inning all year, so hopefully we get patient Cubs back and can get into a bullpen that had to pitch 6 innings last night.

I suppose that is possible, but when you get outliers like that, I think you have to start assuming that he has a different (and very bad) approach in situations with men on base and late in close games. I really wanted to refute this, and still don't really believe it based on the thousands of data points we have across baseball that say there's no such thing as clutch, etc. But um...then I looked at 2017 and 2015. Not good. Career Low Leverage: .824 OPS (120 wRC+) 655 PAs Medium Leverage: .891 OPS (133 wRC+) 493 PAs High Leverage: .434 OPS (-4 wRC+) 118 PAs

It’s honestly absurd how the Cardinals and the Dodgers both choking down the stretch, something that would have caused me infinite joy pretty much every other year, is somehow hurting the cubs.

Seems like an odd time to give Zobrist a day off. Heyward at cleanup is also pretty perplexing. I get that Nova is terrible against lefties, but that's what Schwarber is for.

Or, you know, we could just win more games in our five games than the Brewers do in their four.

I'm....fairly sure that you're joking, but given the amount of work you put into that, on the off chance that you aren't...no.

I will refuse to doubt Baez until he proves doubtable, but it is dubious that he is the only person in the history of the world to have his particular skillset. I will say that his patience has ticked up the last couple months (13 walks the last two months [lol that's an improvement]) so maybe he can Sammy Sosa himself into 50 walks next year? He had to do that this year to keep this team competitive w/o Bryant. He will not do that next year, but Bryant and Harper will make up for it. Yeah I'm already dreading the inevitable 'what happened to Javy' takes next year when he isn't getting 100% out of his abilities. But Javy and KB are going to combine for a little over 8 WAR this year...I'll take the over from those two going into 2019.

That was more a rallying cry than anything else. I'm a bit past the whole 'we got this' thing at this point, although I think a lot of that is just reduced enthusiasm coming from the Russell story and the team's response. Then again, if people are looking for reassurance something, like, 58 times over the course of a 157 game stretch where the team had the best record in the National League...maybe that's on them too.

[bbvideo=560,315] [/bbvideo]

[tweet] [/tweet] Yeah, he can go.

Let's circle back to the top here. Yeah I know...first time leaving early this year. I screwed up my knee last week and I'm still hobbling around, wanted to beat all the foot traffic leaving at the end of the game, and could kinda tell from the results on the field some grand comeback wasn't very likely.

I was sitting in this section but left at the end of the 7th (wanted to watch Brewers/Cardinals). The racist dude and his bro buddy holding him back showed up in the top of the fifth with four other people, each of them carrying two beers each, walked right down to the front row, stood in front of a family trying to take seats that were clearly already taken (coats, food, etc), and then stood blocking the family for about 90 seconds before finally moving elsewhere. Class guys, all around.

2018 KB would actually make a pretty solid top of the order hitter. He's still going to take his walks and he's still a very good baserunner. Zobrist KB Rizzo Baez Murphy Schwarber Contreras Pitcher Happ/Heyward

Yeah at this point I'm regretting saying anything because it's turned into this whole thing. Again, all I said was 'Do better', which I 100% believe he could have, both because I think there were better options and because he's been a really high character guy publicly the whole time he's been with the Cubs. Ultimately, this looks like we won't be seeing Russell in a Cubs uniform the rest of the year, which is a good thing.

It would have been pretty easy for him to just not answer given how new this information is. Instead, the one person/party he was critical of was the person/people doing the investigation. It's not a big deal, relative to Russell, obviously. That clip just reminded me of all the Trump Mueller criticism and Paul Ryan doing his standard 'well I haven't heard anything about that' crap. Probably overreacting though.

Do better, Rizzo. Eh, I kinda get it from a player perspective. He can only really say so much here. It's above his paygrade, so to speak. That should have been his answer, not criticizing the people doing the investigation. Came very close to 'I have no idea why this hasn't been wrapped up already'.

Do better, Rizzo.

Yeah, and from what I remember, even the people that didn't like Milton Bradley...they didn't like him because of his glaringly obvious character issues, they didn't like him because he didn't hit for average or he 'wasn't a good team player' (hint hint). I think everyone has come a long way since then, but similar to what was echoed earlier, I'll give this board a lot of credit for pushing me in the right direction.

We've got 2, hopefully 3 years left on Lester's deal, and Hendrick's has two more arbitration years. If Arrieta goes down as the best/most memorable pitcher of this era, things will probably have gone pretty badly in the next few years. No one is going to top Jake's 2015, but ultimately what happens in October is going to stick around for me, and I think Kyle and Jon have quite a few big playoff games left ahead of them.