squally1313

7th most valuable player in baseball.

God I want this at Wrigley.

JavyWalk!

you probably won't want to compare Olt's stats to Baez's so far Yeah I obviously know the pedigrees are a little different, but I spent a depressing 10 minutes this morning switching back and forth from Baez's Fangraphs page and Olt/Vitters/BJax's FG page. Let's hope these next 100 or so PAs show that progress he's made at every other level.

Please just...don't strike out.

Great AB from Hendricks, big hit from Coghlan. Put one on Waveland Javi.

I keep forgetting we have him too. I automatically check Soler and then Almora every night, and then have to remind myself that we also have the best middle infield prospect in baseball, even though we just promoted the best middle infield prospect in baseball.

Not really. It's been like two weeks. It's going to take quite a bit longer for him to adjust to the majors. Yeah, it'd be great if next season could just start immediately after this season ends, because I think that would about the time frame needed for him to make his adjustments. As it is now, I'm hoping for some success in the next month or so just so he's got something to build on going into next year. Basically, I'm hoping that the 6 months off doesn't screw up his normal progression (200ish mediocre PAs, then the lights turn on).

Oh man, Javy and Starling joking with each other while the pop up was in the air. That moment...forever.

STOP.....BUNTING (Chris Traeger voice)

If we put out this line-up in front of a league average rotation for 162 games, we'd have to end up with around a 500 record, right?

Yeah this Ramirez guy and his 1.26 ERA sucks. OK? Just seemed like a weird time to make the comment. Especially given that our bullpen has been average to above average by most measures for the season (9th in FIP, 16th in xFIP)

Yeah this Ramirez guy and his 1.26 ERA sucks.

Mike Olt has the lowest batting average of any non-pitcher with over 250 plate appearances in baseball history. Not that that means much for his trade value or whatever, but just thought it was amazing. Only Olt doesn't even have 250 plate appearances he had 187 this year. Its all together possible that Baez puts up very similar numbers in the same number of plate appearances. Is everyone going to write him off to? I don't think people should be so quick to write him off. Id like to see him back up when the rosters expand and give him another shot. 212 this year, 40 with Texas a couple years ago. Again, not using it as justification for what kind of player he is, just showing his historically...unique (for lack of a better word) the start of his major league career has been.

Mike Olt has the lowest batting average of any non-pitcher with over 250 plate appearances in baseball history. Not that that means much for his trade value or whatever, but just thought it was amazing.

0% since his 5th at bat. The first 5 at bats were his adjustment period.

Len and JD trying hard not to openly criticize Renteria right now.

Wasn't CJ supposed to pitch sometime around now?

Maybe. But 1) Javy's got almost 400 AAA PAs 2) If they call him up soon, you are getting most of the "free" year still 3) The scouting reports have been pretty good on him lately 4) They sure do seem to be shoving Alcantara to CF pretty hard 5) Javy's changed positions, which is something you don't really need to do if promotion is still 9.5 months away 6) They just DFA'd the ostensible "starting" 2b and opened up a 40-man spot Maybe they want to get the "adjustment" period underway to help our chances in 2015. 1/3) Absolutely, Javy is getting very close to being ready 2) Unless you keep him down until June next year(defeating the whole purpose), you're losing a year of team control. 4) With Bonifacio on the roster that doesn't necessarily mean there's an opening at 2B. Also, Alcantara has 2 MLB games and 11 MiLB games in the outfield. 5) It's something you want to do to get a guy familiar with his future home if he's ~50 games and a ST away from being the MLB 2B too 6) The roster spot is for Bonifacio(or Alcantara depending on your perspective), they still need to send someone down tomorrow just so there's a 5th starter. Maybe they bring up Baez, but to me the service time reason overshadows all the others. There's no benefit to forfeiting an entire year of service time at this point, he hasn't so thoroughly mastered AAA to think it's at all needed to bring him up to advance his development. I think Kyle's last, unnumbered point deserves some consideration as well. With Alcantara already up, Soler having no contract concerns, and Bryant being seemingly ready, we're looking at having that first wave all be here next year. If they think we can compete next year with those guys and the money we have, maybe they think it's worth it to avoid having Javy's adjustment period (if that's an actual thing) take place in the first 2 months of next year.

Underwood six scoreless so far.

On Fangraphs, if you hover over the Search box, they'll show you a list of the top 10 most searched players in major and minor league baseball. This morning, the Cubs had 9 of the 10 for the minor leagues. 1. Russell 2. Bryant 3. Baez 4. Alcontra 5. Wada 6. Schwarber 7. McKinney 8. Joey Gallo 9. Soler 10. Almora

No offense, but....no. We're not going to outmuscle the Blues. We need to put someone with Kane who can keep up, and hope Toews continues his dominance of Backes. Most importantly, we're going to need big games from our D. Blues forecheck is nasty, but they go for the hit and leave gaps to exploit. The D, Hammer and Oduya especially, need to be willing to take that hit to get the puck out. Forwards staying deep to help out will help that.

Now that totally sounds like the kind of move we make at the deadline. How many bottom six guys do we need? Kruger has turned himself into a good faceoff guy, and then we've got Shaw and Regin already that can slot there. Yeah, you move Shaw back to wing, turn Kruger into 3C, and make Malhotra your John Madden, but that makes the Regin deal pretty irrelevant.

I keep coming back to Bickell, Teuvo, and some combination of picks. We'd need to throw in some other NHLer to make the money work. Unfortunately, I can't see someone like Tortorella having a lot of interest in a player like Teuvo. He'd probably love Kruger, but we're pretty thin at center as it is (and we'd need to throw more in if that was the case).

Carlos Martinez's Twitter follows are....interesting. https://twitter.com/Tsunamy27/following