squally1313

The Ballad of Starlin Castro continues.... Scoreboard Jorge.

Here comes coghlan here comes matheny here comes maness here comes soler or Baez god I love this team Edit: ignore all of this I'm an idiot

Why are they still leaving him in??? God this is great

God this team knows the strike zone

The thing you need to look out for is an innings limit. Honestly, I didn't read close enough to see how big your rosters are, but my league has a 1400 innings cap. At 21 starts a week, you're looking at probably at least 100 innings a week. Something to think about when you're going that strategy. We had a guy who essentially tried to do the same thing. He's been in first place the whole year, ran out of innings a week or so ago, and has been slowly dropping points. This is just full year roto as opposed to head to head, so again, might be different.

It's a one game playoff. The impact of home field advantage is tiny, and no, I don't really care about their home record. We're the second best road team in baseball. i do hate their giant outfield, tho Yeah our ideal outfield against Cole (Schwarber/Fowler/Coghlan) definitely has limited defensive ability. Arrieta has the 4th lowest FB rate in the majors (qualified) though, so it's not too much of a concern for me.

It's a one game playoff. The impact of home field advantage is tiny, and no, I don't really care about their home record. We're the second best road team in baseball.

Hm. Oh well. Pretty impressive resolve with that comeback. I'll trust Maddon to have the bullpen sorted out by October.

Yeah....while eye test will tell you that Coghlan is probably a better defender than Schwarber, I think Maddon is confident that Schwarber is probably at least the level of whatever kind of outfielder advanced metrics say Coghlan is. If that makes sense.

I love this team so god damn much. Let's go Baez. Dongswag.

All quiet on the AR front

Never doubt the dongsmen.

Jeanmar Gomez. Perfect.

I want this game so much more after the last few pages of this thread. Cubs thought it would be a fun game to see if they could win a 1-0 game with only the bullpen. Rizzo probably started drinking during the rain delay. Now they just have to win it for real.

Oh great....the party is really picking up for ARCubsFan

How is any of this fun for you? We've had like 49 come from behind victories. I have absolutely no idea who is in the bullpen for Philly (probably some like Bob Alfonseca or something), but I somehow doubt they're anything good.

This whole Phillies team is just a long of names where I see the last name and assume I know who that person is, and then I see the first name and my mind is blown. Hernandez, Morgan, Sweeney, Blanco, Herrera

There is no doubt we win this game.

I know I'm a little late on this, but I for one would welcome Travis Wood, effective lefty reliever, back to our bullpen.

Well Schwarber has been catching Hendricks lately, so it wouldn't necessarily be subjecting Montero to 1.5 games. The bigger point still holds though. The win would be nice, and a lot of wins would be even better....but this doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

After all the talk about the Cubs lining up their rotation to have Arrieta ready for Game 163, how would a rainout tonight affect this? You wouldn't want him throwing tomorrow and then against on Tuesday, and I think the plan was to get him in on Tuesday. Edit: I've brought this up before, but this could end up being a good time to just skip his start. I know he's been unstoppable, but I think you really need to watch his innings down the stretch.

I don't have much of a problem with not putting out Montero there. Day game after a night game and all that, especially if he already pulled Schwarber. The Bryant thing is weird. Given that we haven't heard anything about an injury, I assume it was just a day off. Just seems like a weird day to do it.

but the wins before it directly increased the significance Exactly. Here is why it's frustrating: Looking at things six days ago: "We need the Cards to crumble and for us to go on a run." *That starts happening in the series before we play them* "Ok, now we need to sweep them this series and there is a chance, seeing as how we have another chance to sweep them at home." *That starts happening and is almost fulfilled* Then, boom, the eighth innings hits. And that basically flies out the window. It was pretty unrealistic because we needed a lot to happen, but it was happening. Yeah of course each passing win made it more likely. I guess I was taking more of a 'don't get your hopes up until it actually happens' type attitude. Playing out what you guys are saying....winning today, taking the first two against them, and then losing the last game of the series would have been the 'worst' outcome? Or most frustrating at least? The two wins were great, and satisfying in a lot of ways. But they didn't move the needle that much.

Yep. The faint hope was in, "Well, we could just do it ourselves and knock six games off that lead head-to-head." So this reaction was essentially coming unless we swept all 6 games? If not today, then realistically some time next week? I love this team and wholeheartedly believe we belong in the playoffs. But I was going to need to see us get a lot closer than winning today to think we had a realistic shot at the division. Well losing today is a triple whammy of sorts, Cubs lose, Cardinals win, and one less head to head game to close the gap. That combined with blowing a late lead makes the reaction a bit more intense than if they had lost a reasonable shot by losing 3 of 4 to the Phillies or something like that. Put another way, if the Cubs had won today, all they'd have to have done is been 3 games better than the Cardinals over a 20 game span to have winning the division be entirely in their control(with that last series at Wrigley). Now the other Cardinals series isn't games 160-162 so the comparison isn't 100% true, but you can see how that seems like a reasonable hill to try to climb. Instead, now they need to be 5 games better in those 20 games, which requires a bit of a more pronounced Cubs streak or Cardinals collapse. I get what you guys are saying and I would love it to happen as much as anyone. Just seemed like a somewhat arbitrary (or incorrect) place to draw the realistic/not realistic line. Plus I'm not generally a fan of getting more upset at a loss because of the wins before it (in the regular season), which is essentially what happened here. It's just bad luck being in this division. We'll be the ones running away with it next year, and for years after that.

Yep. The faint hope was in, "Well, we could just do it ourselves and knock six games off that lead head-to-head." So this reaction was essentially coming unless we swept all 6 games? If not today, then realistically some time next week? I love this team and wholeheartedly believe we belong in the playoffs. But I was going to need to see us get a lot closer than winning today to think we had a realistic shot at the division.