squally1313

It's got to be pretty high. I went and got myself riled up about the fact that we're on pace to be the 3rd best offensive group in the last ten years but the reason we're fighting for home field advantage in the play in game is that we're inconsistent or whatever. Then you factor in that teams that have elite talent on one side of the ball usually manage to put together some sort of production on the other side.

Kevin Gausman has pitched 23 innings for the Cubs this year. He's 4th on the staff in fWAR. It's such a top to bottom travesty.

The meme honestly probably undersells it. Offense: 1st in baseball, 93 offensive runs above average, the next best time is at 61. Defense: 1st in baseball, 44 runs above average, next best is 16. Pitching: 29th in fWAR, 3.6 fWAR today, ahead of the Nationals by only 0.1. Basically a bad Boyd start away from being the worst. But hey, in August we're only the 4th worst pitching team in baseball, so...positive steps!

especially at horsefeathers midnight or whatever it was on a tuesday

lol my bad guys

2 out no one on is incredibly low leverage. Wouldn’t be surprised if there were some sort of guidance on a spectrum from ‘push your luck’ to ‘you better be 150% sure’

88.6 off the bat there. Looking scary with the tomahawk swing but that was harmless.

If you’re going to swing on 2-0 with the runner going you better at least tie the game.

Yeah I’m coming out of it thinking his control isn’t good at the moment, because rust and also a little bit because he has those patches, which contributed to throwing that nightmare pitch. But once that happened, you have to let him get back on the horse but I’m not going to judge the outputs too much because it’s clearly going to affect him.

Yeah giving up a double that bounced off the outside of 1st base on its 14th hop is just completely unacceptable.

Oh man

This isn’t directed at you but generally opinions shouldn’t change start to start. On the whole, they were good pitchers when we got them, they were good pitchers after they had bad starts, and they are good pitchers now.

https://www.mlb.com/news/cubs-nico-hoerner-remarkable-year-by-year-consistency

29 straight runs for the cubs. no idea that the record is, but know it's more than that since a quick google search reminded me of the single game in 2007 where the rangers scored 30 unanswered

that's as good as nico can hit a ball you'd think.

I’m sure you’re right on at least the generals of the rules, if not the specifics. But you keep implying that we’d be trying to do something nefarious here, and I think the general idea was more ‘hey man, you had a good year, maybe come pick Carson’s brain and sit in on planning sessions for a few days’ which I don’t see anyone having a real problem with. Like, there’s no one being harmed in this scenario.

Well no one was saying he’d be serving as some disallowed active player. There’s plenty of uniformed people in the dugout (and probably more in the clubhouse) who aren’t allowed to play, that’s why you have to submit an active roster every game. that and I distinctly remember non-active roster players in the dugout (szcur, the guy with the googles) during the World Series. it’s more idle curiosity on if there’s an explicit rule or not. Don’t think there’s a limit on number of coaches? Is there on, say, bullpen catchers?

Is that true though? Like is there a specific rule that someone like Ben Brown can be in the bullpen (saw him walking out, presumably while rehabbing, a couple weeks ago), but an undressed prospect can't? Don't they always bring out the first round draft picks for signing and batting practice and stuff?

Yeah I'd probably lean that way. There's part of me that still thinks if you find a team that puts 'Team Controlled Starting 2B/3B' type value on either one of them, you pull the trigger and get equivalent pitching or outfield value. Dansby/Nico/Bregman are all here through 2030, and are all still clearly superior players. While on one hand it's good to have a reasonably effective backup for an infield made up of over 30 guys, even with Dansby's injury this year there have been 168 infield PAs going to guys not named Busch/Nico/Dansby/Bregman, so if you can get swap one of them (or both, honestly), for an actual outfield bat or SP, you do that and live with Triantos/Murray/league minimum veteran util guy in limited duty.

I don't know honestly, would lean towards the latter. AAA goes through 9/20, so it would be a very unlikely circumstance to thread the gap in the wrong way, but also, a Ryan Rolison DFA isn't going to keep me up at night.

Organizing my thoughts a little, I'm ideally looking for something like this in terms of the 14 man pitching staff on September 2nd, and then September 16th or whatever Gausman/Gausman Holmes/Holmes Boyd/Boyd Shota/Shota Peterson/Peterson Webb/Webb Palencia/Palencia Zeferjahn/Zeferjahn Civale/Civale Cabrera/Cabrera Miller/Miller Milner/Milner Thornton/Brown Rolison/Steele Which implies Thielbar and Rea gone by next week with Cabrera/Miller/Milner up, and then in a few weeks, Thornton being cut for Brown and Rolison being sent down to see if Steele can give you anything. Assad is there if/when any of the guys we give looks to implodes. Realizing I forgot about Wiggins, but think he needs to keep things up in AAA for a couple weeks and wait for a spot to open up. Apologies for the novels.

He's definitely trending in the right direction, but it's currently at the point where his bat looks like it can play an infield position (which we don't have), but still has a ways to go to be a reasonable contender for a corner outfield spot. Now, obviously we need a backup infielder, either for an injury (which have been rare for the Bregman/Swanson/Nico group but not unprecedented), and just as they continue to age to need a little more maintenance. But if the rest of the league starts looking at him as a starting infielder making the league minimum.....don't you kinda feel like they have to cash in and swap out that asset for a need? You've already got Shaw floating around that same level for next year (and beyond)....hanging on to both of them and hoping one of them can find another level offensively (the xwOBAs for both are both still hovering around .300) seems less likely than just giving someone an infield bat and taking back an already ready outfield one.

Moving the bullpen decision over to today's thread, because what else are we going to do before the Cubs go 6 up 6 down in 12 hours or whatever and people start talking offensive slump. Mostly assorted thoughts: I love Steele, but I've mostly written him off for this year. Feel like we would have heard more by now, he hasn't thrown a pitch in a game setting in like 16 months now. Free agent after last year, so squeeze the juice while you can, but think it's just too late. Beyond that, while he's a very good starter when healthy....I don't really see the stuff playing up too much in the bullpen? Never been a big strikeout guy. Brown you can see it for sure, but not as much here. I feel bad for Colin Rea, but there's just no way he can keep a roster spot with all the potential moving pieces. Civale, Assad, Cabrera will all be some form of stretched out, there's less need for length now with Holmes and Gausman stabilizing the rotation. Rolison has an option left, he's been fine but seems to be an easy guy to hide for a couple weeks to go see what you have with Miller or Milner. Thielbar can go whenever someone else earns their spot back. Peterson looks fine as the lefty out of the pen to pair with Rolison or Milner. It's looking very unlikely that we play the Diamondbacks in the playoffs, but if it ended up playing out that way, I'd be very nervous if I were Shota (and honestly maybe Boyd, he needs to snap out of it) making the roster against their second best in baseball against LHP offense. I can maybe buy the velocity improvements on Thornton turning him into a 6th inning guy, but think he's fine to go if there's a reasonable upside bet to be made on Brown/Cabrera/Steele as multi inning beasts. Assad is injury depth for the time being.

This offense rocks

We’re going to be really screwed when all those good playoff teams (checks notes) decide to start bad starters and leave them in for too long