squally1313

Sounds like Kimbrel has left Iowa. Given the timing, probably makes it more likely it's for Alzolay right?

At the risk of sounding like a PTR defender...they already bolstered the bullpen, and they did it with straight cash. Sure it took too long, but they acted better than all the other contenders out there (the definition of faint praise). I think the decline, if you can call it that, was A. an inevitable (and part of any successful run), especially with the newer research saying most players come into the league essentially fully formed and just go downhill from there, and B. sped up by Heyward/Chatwood/Darvish more or less blowing up in their faces from the second the ink hit the paper. Heyward has been about 9 wins below a 4 WAR/season projection (conservative), Chatwood about 3 wins (-0.7 so far, would think about 2.3 for 1.5 seasons is fair), and Darvish about 4 (0.6 so far vs a conservative 3 WAR/season). That's money gone, and it's playing time taken up by formerly successful players who haven't performed to expectations. While I certainly expect Theo to know way more about this than I do, it's hard for me to criticize those signings because I liked them at the time. While the theoretical solution to this is taking more of the Ricketts clearly endless money to remake these holes in the roster, in reality we all know it's hard for any team to overcome three signings that backfired that badly. They weren't trying to settle for a putrid bench. Descalso was by all measures an upgrade on LaStella, and Bote was supposed to be the new Zobrist, not someone who needs to be playing every day. Benches are a crap shoot anyways, so I'm not going to hold someone to the fire for that. This thinness in the offense is in large part due to the position we've been in the last few years (and a disappointing failure to produce high velocity bullpen arms that other teams seem to find with ease). Vogelbach and Torres (and McKinney, who made it, but has been garbage) in 2016. Soler, Eloy, and Candelario in 2017. We've been trading future for present for 4 years now...and now we're in the future. It's just how this works.

Someone start this thread so I can appropriately express my rage and disbelief at Albert Almora batting lead off

But the Cubs were what the Yankees/Astros/Dodgers are now. Their kids came up and dominated and they hit on veteran players to complement that perfectly (and their pitching was 3 years younger and better). We struck gold with Dexter, and Zobrist as a happily married dude in his mid-30s is a lot different than current Zobrist...but you had to commit to current Zobrist to get 2016 Zobrist (just as you had to commit to current Lester to get 2016 Lester). We've averaged 96.75 wins the last four seasons. Houston is on year 3...if they're still throwing up 100+ wins in 2021, I'll be very impressed. The Dodgers have won 90+ games for 6 years in a row, and it will be 7, but we have what they don't. The Yankees have made the playoffs the last two years, but before that they were non-competitive to the extent that they got to reload by being sellers. It's really hard to do this for an extended period of time. Yes I wish our payroll was higher or that we could have picked up a Michael Brantley (doing an eerie Dexter Fowler impression) or whoever else. We didn't, and it's almost July now, so I'm tired of talking about it (not to mention the fact that we made the biggest in season acquisition thus far). We're in first place, and our offense is 8th in oWAR. The Astros went into the year with 35 year olds Yuli Gurriel (1.2 WAR in 2018) and Robinson Chirinos (0 WAR in 2018) penciled in the starting line up. I guess they should be ripped apart for settling at those positions too, right?

Keep it up, Rumpelstiltskin. I'm hardly the only one here talking about how many black holes the Cubs have in the line up. The plan was for Schwarber to be the 5th good hitter, because he was last year (115 wRC), and for Heyward to be an average hitter, like he was last year (99 wRC). Instead Heyward has been a 5th good hitter (108 wRC), and Schwarber has been the average hitter (100 wRC). Again, neither of these are 'black holes', the term you continue to use. And we haven't even mentioned David Bote (108 wRC), who was a career minor leaguer until a couple years ago, so credit should be due for that. Theo put together a truly horrendous bench, and we've had to pay for that with Zobrist out in the form of giving Almora/Descalso/CarGo/Zagunis/Russell semi-regular starts (and having put up a .540 OPS in team pinch hitting so far this year). But one bad spot in the lineup, due largely to totally unforeseen circumstances, and a terrible bench, does not make the offense or the team terrible. A hypothetical lineup featuring Schwarber/Heyward/KB, Bote/Baez/Zobrist/Rizzo, Contreras, given what we know of those players, is 8 hitters who are league average at worst, and has at least 3, probably 4 elite bats there. That is still a possibility come October (though who knows what you get out of Zobrist at that point).

We do this like once a week now. Sofa claims, repeatedly, that outside of 4 players the entire team is garbage (and sometimes even those four players are garbage too). We show why that's wrong, and then it turns into rehashing the terrible offseason that we all agree on, so...he wins? I know it's a bit at this point, but still gets annoying considering this started as a reasonable discussion about hitting with RISP.

That's fair, and I essentially agree with the last 75% of your post. Being fully aware this is the lamest possible hill to die on, I just don't want to throw out the (probably slim) chance that Brach (3.60 FIP, 1.49 in June) or Kintzler (2.18 ERA, 3.85 FIP) can play a reliable part down the stretch as a 4th-6th inning guy to get the marginal upgrade, at best, of Alzolay over Monty/Chatwood for a start or two.

Our better starters are all fragile/volatile and half the bullpen arms are trash. So, what exactly is the downside? Pitching our better starters less? If one of them gets hurt, absolutely let Alzolay go every 5th day. Adding a 6th fragile/volatile starter, who, again, didn't pitch that well in his 9 innings here so far, is something you do with a huge lead, not in our current situation. And I agree that our bullpen pitchers are pretty trash. They still have to pitch. Putting in a 6 man rotation, and keeping Monty/Chatwood around (see below), means you have 5 other relievers, and your best one just started pitching about a week ago. Your second best one has been fighting injuries the past few weeks. Your third best one, we've been complaining he's been overworked for the last year and a half. From above: If they want to just dump Chatwood and give that job to Alzolay, I'm totally ok with that. But given PTR, seems highly doubtful.

Because it's entirely unrealistic to expect any team to 'rise above the pack' at all 8 spots in the field. The Cubs are 2nd at C, 9th at 1st, 8th at SS, and 2nd at 3rd (and that's team wide, not just the starters). 12th in the outfield in total. 2nd is 18th, and I'm not sure how they should have prepared for their starter getting divorced and quitting the team 4 weeks into the year, although they did bring back a domestic abuser that no one wanted in the first place. All in all, that seems pretty good to me. You aren't going to roll 7s everywhere.

But he's not one of our best 5 starters, and we aren't exactly running away with the division. If a spot opens up, which is probably likely, given that the #NotAllPitchers thread is 800+ posts long at this point, then he should get the first shot. But having to potentially lose one of our middle relief options to upgrade from Monty/Chatwood to Alzolay and his 6+ FIP for one start seems pretty shortsighted. This is why I mentioned every 6th day. And on any given day, he might be top 5 depending on who is currently on the IL. But if we're pitching him every 6th day, that means our better starters are only pitching every 6th day. It means we have one less arm in the bullpen behind pitchers like him and Darvish who aren't going to go very deep into games with any regularity. If we were up 8 games or back 8 games, absolutely. But I'm not costing Hamels and Hendricks 4 or 5 starts in the second half when we're up one game in the tightest division in baseball.

I guess I just don't know how Alzolay fits into the plans for this year. Yes, it's exciting to have a potentially legitimate pitching prospect. And as good as Hamels has been this year, you'd have to think that spot in the rotation next year is Adbert's logical destination. But like I said, he only pitched 40ish innings last year...he's already pitched more than that this year. I have no idea what his restrictions are, if any. If we need him to start a playoff game for us, we probably have bigger problems. Would his stuff play up out of the bullpen for us this year? Is that worth it, given the risk it impacts his present/future as a starter?

Hey man, whatever we have to do to get Alzolay's 6.18 FIP in the rotation. The dude pitched all of 39.2 innings last year and hasn't gone longer than 6 innings in a start at any level since last April, so we should definitely just slot him in every fifth day for the next 3 months. I know I started all this discussion. I think Adbert’s looked good enough he deserves another start, I don’t want him permanently in the rotation necessarily. But him staying in through the break I think makes a lot of sense. It buys everyone some extra rest. After the break and when Hendricks is back I’m fine if he goes back down or moves to the pen (he probably should stay up in the pen, imo). I'm assuming you don't want to delay Kimbrel at all. Kyle Ryan, as much as he looks and sounds like a guy you face in AA in Road to the Show, now has a 3.58 ERA and 3.54 FIP. You could shuttle Barnette back down, but we're trying to see if he can be anything too. Then it's Kintzler or Brach, either of which you would probably lose if you tried to send down.

Hey man, whatever we have to do to get Alzolay's 6.18 FIP in the rotation. The dude pitched all of 39.2 innings last year and hasn't gone longer than 6 innings in a start at any level since last April, so we should definitely just slot him in every fifth day for the next 3 months. I'd prefer every 6th day, occasionally swapping roles with Montgomery and Chatwood. But he's not one of our best 5 starters, and we aren't exactly running away with the division. If a spot opens up, which is probably likely, given that the #NotAllPitchers thread is 800+ posts long at this point, then he should get the first shot. But having to potentially lose one of our middle relief options to upgrade from Monty/Chatwood to Alzolay and his 6+ FIP for one start seems pretty shortsighted.

Probably shouldn't look at how Schwarber and Heyward are doing this year, relative to the rest of baseball. I mean...we've already done this.

Hey man, whatever we have to do to get Alzolay's 6.18 FIP in the rotation. The dude pitched all of 39.2 innings last year and hasn't gone longer than 6 innings in a start at any level since last April, so we should definitely just slot him in every fifth day for the next 3 months.

Well, then the Cubs have been having "bad luck" hitting w/ RISP for multiple seasons now. I don't think it's just random noise at this point. Theo has mentioned it many times about needing a better approach and needing to do better in situational hitting. I don't agree with Maddon very often these days, but he's right about this issue. I'm still mostly on team 'bad luck'. The Cubs are OPSing .852 this year with runners on, good for fourth in the league. Highest OBP in the league. .316 BABIP (5th in baseball). With RISP, their K rate actually goes down (21.4% with men on, 20.6% with RISP), but their OPS drops to .793, 15th in the league. BABIP is .276 (3rd worst in baseball). Beyond that, I can see getting pissed off at someone like Almora or Russell or Schwarber (who is historically bad in these situations) for not changing their approach. But you lose me when you start talking about the four elite hitters on our team, who I want hitting just like they always do pretty much all the time.

We've got 11 games until the ASB with a day off on 7/5. All evidence says that Hendricks is back by then. So we're talking one start. This is just complaining to complain, unless you want to go full meatball and have take starts away from someone like Q or Darvish.

Montgomery has been trash in the role Joe has been using him in this year, but he’s never really struggled when given the chance to be a long man or spot starter. If we needed someone to fill a rotation spot for the rest of the year, I’d want to see more from Alzolay in AAA before I pick him over Monty, because what he showed in his two appearances so far doesn’t cut it long term. But that’s a hypothetical because we (hopefully) don’t have a rotation spot in a couple weeks with Hendricks coming back. We don’t need a 6 man rotation until the ASB. If Adbert dominates for another month down there, then bring him back up. Until then, it’s fine.

Counterpoint: Unless you think that Alzolay has somehow solved BABIP, I’m not going to get too worked up over stashing a kid (with a bright future) who put up a 6.18 FIP and a 5.42 xFIP in his two appearances up here. He’s going to be back up, and unless you want him taking starts from one of our five regular starters, which he definitely hasn’t shown yet, not going to lose sleep over the difference between him and Monty/Chatwood for a start or two.

It’s hard for me to see it as anything other than a win for the blackhawks, seeing that it comes off like a trade you’d make in NHL 19 that still assigns some value to a player (Anton Forsberg) who really doesn’t have any in order to make a clear upgrade in an otherwise 1 for 1 trade. But I don’t think I can get to ‘huge steal’ as de Haan is pretty much who you see when you google ‘replacement/serviceable d-man’, and there really isn’t any upside to hope on at this point. It’s an upgrade, but one that they were almost required to make, not one that’s going to move the needle on any playoff aspirations for me.

If anyone cares, a quick storm blew through there about 20 minutes ago, and took most of the wind with it. Don't think it'll be a crazy night there in terms of that.

Hell, just play him and Almora no matter what so that Heyward stays in RF and Russell stays out of the lineup (with Bryant back at 3B and Bote at 2B). The only way Russell should be in there at this point is to give Baez a day off. It's so frustrating that this line up is pretty interesting top to bottom with the exception of one black hole we have to fill with garbage, and there are at least two players in AAA who would fit in the field and at least make it a 'well it's not a great solution, but I'm at least paying attention' situation. I mean, this Garcia dude can't be worse than DD at second base.

This is also a good thought exercise.

Eh. it's a something for nothing trade, so sure. He really shouldn't be higher than a third pairing guy on a team that has any playoff aspirations, and right now he's probably on the second pairing (with Jokiharju, behind Keith/Murphy), neither of which inspires a ton of confidence. Seabrook remains the $8m elephant in the room. There were rumors of them trying to trade down to 10th in the draft just to dump his contract. Sounds like this guy is fine, but at $4.5m for three more years at his age, he could be a cap liability in a hurry. He's not that old though....just turned 28 in May. He's proven he can play consistently for a contending team, and sadly that pretty much guarantees he's one of our 6 best defensemen right now. Going into the offseason we had two guys who should/would play (Keith/Murphy), someone who should definitely play but didn't for much of last year (Joker), someone who definitely shouldn't play but did and probably will (Seabrook), and then like 6 dudes who either weren't ready yet or weren't ever going to be ready. At least with de Haan and to a lesser extent Maatta, we have NHL caliber players to fill those holes while we figure out which of the kids can step up.