squally1313

This team definitely has flaws and definitely has areas to improve to maximize their chances going into the fall. As mentioned earlier by maybe you, this was a team that even the optimists were expecting to top out around 88-90 wins, and that was before losing Steele for the year and Shota for a while. But I think what frustrates me about these types of criticisms, is that, at the risk of putting words in your mouth, the venn diagram of 'people complaining about their record against over .500 teams' and 'people disgusted by them dropping a game/series to a bad team' is basically just one circle. And from there it's like....where are these 60 losses supposed to come from? Should they just go winless against the 4-6 78 win teams they're going to face this year? The team needs pitching, I think they need it more than others do. The offense ran historically elite for a while there, and has come down to being some form of mediocre/average/good, depending on how you want to slice up the samples. Skubal is the best pitcher in baseball, Gore and Wheeler have been top ten this year, we've faced all three of them in the last week. Luzurdo is 13th, though he's struggling, and we get Skenes two days after that, so it's not letting up yet, but....there's only so many top 20 pitchers in baseball. It won't last.

Highest on base percentage and slugging in that stretch if you were looking for something less ‘nerdy’ but I get the sense I know where this is going and will just say that yes, clearly they don’t have the Clutch Gene or The Will To Win and there can be no recovery from those flaws.

Well thankfully there’s no ghost runner in October so no need to include this game in the otherwise normal ‘games since April 23rd against teams over .500’ sample.

12 games scattered over 6 weeks with elite performance in the rest of the games? Pretty textbook ‘looking for something to worry about’

As mentioned earlier, the cubs are 17-17 against over 500 teams this year, so they are doing exactly what you are saying in the last sentence.

The cubs since 5/15 have the most offensive fWAR in baseball. I don’t know what sample size we’re slicing and dicing in this argument but it’s probably fine.

Makes you wonder why those other teams struggle so much to beat bad teams as consistently as we do

Good for them? I guess we’re bad?

The cubs are playing at a 100 win pace 40% of the way through the season while receiving, due to injuries, 0.3 fWAR from their top two starters. understandably, people are very upset about this.

Wait, we’re going to extras? I was told we ‘bent over’ and lost.

Ok you take the Mets I’ll take the rest of the NL

Why do the games since April 23rd lead you to conclusions about how they’ll play in October but not the ones before?

17-17 against over 500 teams this year. Dodgers are 15-14, Phillies are under 500. But sure, fun with arbitrary end points I guess.

Whatever keeps you angry man. This team is awesome and fun.

The cubs are 24-15 since April 23rd

Do you want a 120 wRC hitter who plays generally positive defense for $20m a year or no

Avg, OBP, slug, wOBA, xwOBA, wRC

He’s inconsistent

I think that if your expectations for three road series against the three best records in baseball are 4-5, if you were to add up all your 'expectations' based on the talent level of the opponent based off the expectaion of these series you'd end up with like 105 wins.

(Three road series against the top three records in baseball, a combined 45 games above .500) Well, I guess I would take 4-5

the dumbest game

I know thielbar got the K but I wonder how many times this century a team has had zero offensive strikeouts and lost the game.

That was a fun pitch

The problem is Colin Rea sucks

Despite what you’d believe browsing these threads, occasionally the cubs get lucky and the other team can’t get anything to fall (they’re beating us in xBA by like 55 points)