squally1313

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.

Their start was so putrid, I'm still having difficultly grasping that they've essentially been the 2016 team since. It's getting pretty close to them just being the 2016 team to be honest. 2019: .254/.349/.450, .341 wOBA, 113 wRC, 11th in defensive value (cumulative stat), 20th in baserunning 2016: .256/.343/.429, .333 wOBA, 106 wRC, 1st in defensive value, 3rd in baserunning 2019: 9.09 K/9, 4.08 BB/9, 1.03 HR/9, .279 BABIP, 3.44/4.02/3.87 ERA/FIP/xFIP 2016: 8.88 K/9, 3.05 BB/9, 1.10 HR/9, .255 BABIP, 3.15/3.77/3.74 ERA/FIP/xFIP Defense and control are down, but the offense is up. +54 RD through 38 games translates out to +230. 2016 was +252. We were -10 through the 1-6 start, which means since then we've played at +64 in the last 31 games.

Strike him out

Hader must be hurt right?

So, B2B, since I can't quit you apparently, is it your opinion that Hendry drafted Willson Contreras, or is it a fact that Hendry drafted Willson Contreras? Just want to make sure we all understand you.

So much fun how I now have someone besides Almora to get much angrier about when I see them in the line up. Almora leading off, Russell batting 8th. Everything else fairly normal.

I was thinking the same thing, and his May numbers (143/240/190) are obviously awful. But his rates aren't terrible...walk rate is up, K rate is just a little up, batted ball is about the same, if not better. BABIP is way down. Obviously this is before today, but hopefully just a small blip rather than something bigger/related to an injury/whatever.

You know he had to scratch out Almora first after he realized Almora was already in the lineup. Well Almora would have been perfect, given the situation. Lester would have probably been your best option.

Obviously SSS, but this makes me think that this is fixable and is an approach thing. When he has to throw strikes, he does.

Complaining about the spacing of scheduled off days is something we would (rightfully) mock endlessly if other teams tried to do that to us. If we get a bunch of rainouts and end up with something like last year, sure, but even then it's pretty soft. Given that we played like complete garbage coming out of the gate, all those off days probably benefited us to some degree in righting the ship.

And really, going into this weekend, it'd be nice to let Darvish relax (if that's even possible for him) and not stress the high end bullpen guys (if we have any of those still). I want Rizzo pitching the 8th and 9th.

If anyone inexplicably wants to go to this game, two free bleachers if you want to PM me.

Yeah late February/early March is right about in line with when he was late to Spring Training, back when we were all young/naive enough to think it had something to do with a Harper signing. That being said, I've probably done more than enough essentially baseless speculation on the personal life of two people with a family. Hope he/they get through whatever is going on.