squally1313

But it doesn’t necessarily answer the question on why the Mets have a higher WS % than us, right? Which, from my quick viewpoint, seems to come from a very low ROS winning percentage (.511 for the cubs vs .588 for the Mets), which, I assume, means whatever projection system is driving that is currently pretty down on the cubs. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into it, there’s a bunch of different options you can use for that input and I think the default one has been previously discussed as bad, but think it is impacting the final percentages a little bit.

Yeah it’s actually shaping up to be a fun last couple weeks of the season in terms of teams going for a playoff spot or at least positioning. Feel like it looked pretty boring a few weeks ago. I would very much like to be excluded from the party.

Without doing a year by year comparison, that seems to be heavily driven by his catching defense. Santana played catcher from 2010-2014 and through those years FG had him at 7 wins and BR had him at 17. I know at least FG has overhauled their catching metrics lately and it's certainly more an art than a science, but they have him as like horrifically bad defensively (his 2011 season is the 6th worst defensive season of this century per FG, which is shocking considering the bonus catchers typically get).

Road series win in a Taillon v Sale matchup.

Santana being a gold glove first baseman is something I was made aware of at some point, but is something that is so at odds with the rest of what he brings to the table these days that that was a shocking play

I had a thought that Nico was either striking out more lately (actually down in the second half) or that they were just sticking out more to me because they came in bigger situations but then I remembered how clutch he’s been. This is a pretty amazing split of stats for him.

Yeah it’s not hard to come to the conclusion, given their recent performance, that this is going to be a one and done team. Unsustainable hot streak early in the season.

Lollllll

haha come on man, don't let that bleed in here. been miserable enough lately.

We doing a themed gif thread?

Hey, I'll take being Lou Brown over Major League 2 Randy Quaid every day.

Ian Happ has basically singlehandedly dragged us to a 105 team wRC in the last 14 days. I don't know....there's signs of life here: That being said, this is an ugly matchup tonight and I'm all for shielding Busch and PCA to avoid them having to go through some potentially bad ABs.

Expanded rosters, seeming indifference to actually carrying a full set of healthy players....just let him suit up Saturday and get a PA or an IP.

Another day off tomorrow too, so this makes sense to me (in addition to what Bertz threw out last night). I don't know. I think the difference between Horton and Taillon starting a playoff game is so vast that you want to do everything you can to make sure he's healthy in 3 weeks. But I also think playing 3 games in Wrigley is much preferrable to playing 3 games in San Diego, so I understand some effort to keep pushing for wins. And obviously we can win with Taillon or lose with Horton or push Horton and have him stay healthy or Horton can blow his arm out in the first inning next week. Ultimately just trust the 'keep Boyd/Horton healthy' process because it's worked so far.

I mean, I had someone asking what their playoff odds were in this game thread.

To calm fears, over the last 10 games the cubs increased their lead on the padres, Mets, and reds. In those ten games, the giants made up 2 games on us. For them to pass us, they would need to make up 8 games in the final 18 games (and San Diego and NYM, again, playing worse than us, would also need to pass us)

Feel like anecdotally when Kelly has bad days he has very bad days

PCA OBP machine, obviously

I’m not watching too closely and I’m very aware they have much more advanced tracking mechanisms than just ‘how many innings has he thrown this year’…but he’s also maybe the most important player for the cubs to make a run in October so I’d prefer to lean on the cautious side with him whenever possible.

They are 99.6%

That’s pretty ugly from Nico, uncharacteristically

Tucker to the IL (retroactive to 9/6), Ballesteros up, not starting tonight, fairly normal lineup with Castro in RF.

Bored on a long call. September records: 2024 Dodgers 16-10 2023 Rangers 15-13 2022 Astros 18-8 2021 Braves 18-11 So....not really. But 3-4 on 9/9 leaves a lot of finishing possibilities. Here's a slightly dated article if we're trying to talk about the second half as a whole. https://www.mlb.com/news/worst-second-half-records-for-postseason-teams

Those are numbers since June 1. The league wide gap between xwOBA and wOBA is currently 11 points (xwOBA is higher), so pretty much every one of those guys above besides Tucker is theoretically not getting the results they deserve to an extent that is, sometimes pretty significantly, beyond league average. If you don't buy into this stuff, fine, to each their own. But also, the expectation doesn't need to be 'return to the historic stretch of production'....it can just be 'marginally better than the 84ish win pace they've produced during this stretch'. There's a middle ground there. Yeah, but if the rules are that the tallest guy in the room is the World Series champion, and those are the guys that show up, then the 5'10" guy gets a parade at the end of the year. And if you're making the argument that there are no 'great teams', whatever that means...maybe the grading scale is a little thrown off? We've both been here forever, do whatever you want but like...feel free to scroll right past my horsefeathers too then? Someone else called me out for thread copping or whatever, and so I wasn't even replying to anyone in the post that set you off. If people are 'allowed to overreact a bit' but I get called out for saying the 80-60 team playing .500 ball is not pathetic, trash, going to miss the playoffs, like....what are we doing here? The amount of vitriol, some of it increasingly gross lately, towards a team that we're all supposedly fans of pisses me off, I'm going to push back on it.