squally1313

The Braves are bad. We should win. We might not, but we should. This applies to most of the rest of the year.

Eh....he's had a lot of short outings this year, but from 2014 until now he's 9th in baseball in innings pitched. We'll let Jake do the Harden impression, Quintana can just be a Lester clone.

Fine, let's work this out. I'll assume you aren't dumb enough to think there are 60 starters better than him in baseball (even though mathematically that's what you are saying). How many pitchers is it? Per Fangraphs, in 2017, his underwhelming year, he's been the 18th best pitcher in baseball. 10th in 2016. 15th in 2015. Do you mean like, a good #3 on an All Star team?

Jump in K rate and walk rate, both career highs, and a weird uptick in HR/FB with no corresponding change in batted ball profile (also has doubled his infield fly ball rate). The walk rate is concerning, but he's proven he can be a top 10 pitcher with a 7-8 K/9, and he's at 9.4/9 now. Focus on the strike zone a little more against weaker hitters with a better defense, hope the HR rate drops back down to his norms, and he should be just fine.

SOMEONE TELL ME HOW I SHOULD FEEL

Russell was #40. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2017-trade-value-31-to-40/ And Schwarber was an honorable mention, though Cameron took a shot at him by putting his position of OF in quotes ("OF")

The answer is 'this is why neither of Russell or Baez is getting traded', but if we go along with the hypothetical, odds are it would be someone currently outside the organization. There's a lot of reasons to not trade Russell, but 'we have to have a player of Baez' ability as our backup shortstop' has to be pretty far down the list. It was great last year when our pitching staff was shutting everyone down and then we also had the ability to plug in a 3 WAR 23 year old top prospect all over the infield, but things have changed a little bit since then. If Baez or Russell lets us go from Lackey (or Butler) to a quality starter, I'm going to be worried about the trade...whether we got damaged goods, picked up a rental, gave up a future stud, etc. Not so much about letting Happ take over the util role and having to trade a lottery ticket pitcher for Jose Iglesias or whatever.

Their fanbase would eat them alive, although Baez probably looked pretty amazing to them in the NLDS. Yeah the PR is probably one of the main issues, but 34-56 is 34-56, especially in what looks to be a ridiculously competitive division going forward. Even with Lester looking more mortal lately, having those two at the top of the rotation this year and through 2019 would be pretty intimidating, and wouldn't break the bank at all. Edit: And part of me wonders if his reputation among the fanbase took a hit when he put himself out for 2 disastrous months with an avoidable injury.

I'm sure this name has been brought up and dismissed but....any chance the Giants make Bumgarner available? He'd cost a ton, but two more cheap years after this, and the pieces we seem open to trading (Schwarber, Happ, Baez) allows them to frame it as more of a retool than a rebuild.

To get meatbally for a second, his body language is pretty piss poor for someone is in theory the most respected veteran on the team.

In 2016 the team fly ball rate was 36.2% and right now it's 36%, but, yes, they have sold out to hit only fly balls this year. This is definitely a factual statement.

I believe in luck and BABIP etc but when you see it fail you day in and day out you start to question it even though you shouldn't I mean, we have the fourth lowest BABIP against so far this year. And that's with being a pretty heavy groundball team (5th in the majors). I know it's a regression from best of all time, but we're still turning a lot of balls in play into outs. Offensive BAPIP is a different story, obviously.

Lackey* Schwarber* Russell*

Yeah I hate this relatively new concept of "Pitch framing" or "Disceiving Umps" or "Stealing Strikes" -- whatever you want to call it. It's dumb and makes fans angry when it happens against your favorite team. Some fans actually like this and claim it's part of the "human element" of the game, but again that's a dumb argument. You wouldn't argue for a system like that in society where you can fool a cop or judge some of the time. Get a horsefeathering Automated Strike Zone and I don't really care what technology you use if it's accurate and reliable. It's going to be better than human Umps, will reduce the game length because managers and players will complain less about the strike zone, and will benefit players (like Rizzo and Zobrist) who know their strike zones really well. Oh, and the last thing is we won't have arguments about acquiring crappy backup catchers and debating whether they're good at "pitch framing" or not. I agree with 99% of this, but anecdotally I feel like Rizzo probably gets favorable calls more than most other players given that his hands start about an inch from the defined strike zone.

The dude walks what, 3 guys this inning and he's still getting those types of calls? horsefeathers off blue

Incredibly impressive from Happ there, especially after the bad swing to get to 0-2. Let's go Jason.

Come on kid

I'm mostly on board with this idea but there would be a notable level of increased enjoyment of seeing them win 10 more games this season, lose 10 less games, and go three straight seasons over 95 wins. 95+ win team teams are fun to follow because there is a noticeable difference in how good they are compared with the 86ers. Plus they could get homefield advantage in the NLDS. I get the day to day enjoyment of watching a win vs watching a loss. I'd be a hypocrite to sit here today and say I didn't really care about how many wins they had in the season after getting pretty anxious watching the end of the game last night. But right now we're 84.4% to win the division. If that number were to dip below like...70% (nice), I might start to have some big picture worry, but as of now I have no doubts we'll start the playoffs in more or less the same spot we were last October. The regular season last year incredibly satisfying to watch, a culmination of a lot of dark years and of a very well executed plan. But I realize how rare those types of years are, even for a team as good as the Cubs. We did it last year, and we followed up in the ultimate way in October. Trying to strive for, or expecting, that type of dominance from April-September just seems like you're setting yourself up for disappointment. The team is better than how they've played so far, but how they've played so far is good enough so....whatever.

Rizzo back in the leadoff spot, Sealboy at #2 which will surely piss off a bunch of people here, Baez at short again, Bryant in the outfield again, you can figure out the rest.

Getting to 90 wins means going 51-35 the rest of the year. I wouldn't expect much more than that from this version of the Cubs. As other have said, it's more than enough, and I still like our chances as much as anyone else come October.

I was in a weird spot where I loved the process they were going through of building a perennial winner from the ground up, but I didn't enjoy actually watching them play baseball. I'd sit at work and click around Fangraphs pretty much daily, check the minor league posts religiously, see how all the contracts lined up on Cots, etc....but then I'd get home from work and have absolutely no interest in watching like...Chris Volstad or something. I understood the process, but the byproduct was in no way appealing to me. Part of that was probably just my personality...every sports game I got I always gravitated towards picking the worst team to start a franchise with and seeing how quickly I could turn it around, and so it was cool to watch it happen in real life. But I was also the guy who would simulate months at a time to get to the trade deadline/free agency/etc.

yeah, but that's good. it means the world series didn't make cubs baseball. the season after the blackhawks won their first cup, i found it really hard to be invested. i haven't really felt that way about the cubs at all. It became pretty clear to me over the course of 2016 that the Blackhawks dynasty was pretty much a perfectly timed distraction from the worst Cubs years of my adult life. If you would have asked me in like 2012 if I were a bigger Hawks or Cubs fans, I might have even said the Hawks, even though I'd only been seriously watching them for like 4 years (along with most of the rest of the city). After the 2015 Cubs season, I found it really hard to get invested in the 2015-2016 Hawks game, and our October run last year had me at levels of excitement/anxiety/etc that I never came close to experiencing with the Hawks. This year's Hawks team was the same thing. I still love seeing them live, but the last couple years reminded me what a lifetime of rooting for a team does to you.

We're fine. Also, I had a thought that Davis and happ would be best friends, but then I remembered that Lester and lackey fit right in too. We have a lot of pissed off looking white guys.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jon-lester-might-be-beating-the-yips/ Pretty good article/interview on Lester's pickoffs. It really is amazing how effective they've become, in a total team effort, in shutting down the running game when he's on the mound.

Interesting timing, given his .849 OPS in June. Granted, it was with a .196 batting average, and only 46 PAs, but still.