champaignchris

I've decided off days suck. Rosters should be expanded to, like, 35 guys and there should never be an off day. Ever. Perpetual baseball.

I've long been completely fascinated by those Cubs teams of the late 20s and early 30s. Four HoFers in Hartnett, Kuyler, Hack Wilson, and Hornsby. Plus some really good all-star caliber players in Charlie Grimm,Woody English and Riggs Stevenson. Two very good starting pitchers in Charlie Root and Pat Malone. As that crew started to age out, they were able to bring up more great players like Billy Herman (HoF), Stan Hack and Lon Warneke. They really should have won a World Series (got to two, were victims of Babe's called shot in '32), but could never seem to get their three best players - Hornsby, Hartnett and Wilson - on the field at the same time due to health and sobriety.

If it were pretty much anybody besides the Mets, I'd feel bad.

Does anyone know if it's the Bereavement List or the "Bereavement" List? I don't want to make a crack about his goldfish passing if he lost a family member.

I kind of liked having someone other than the pitcher in front of Schwarber. Maybe that will be only for when Jay or Almora are in the lineup?

Syndergaard left today's game with a blister. Likelihood it's a chronic Rich Hill-type thing? Given that it's the Mets, I'm thinking pretty high.

Baez was moving toward the bag with the runner and the ball was hit between him and the 2b umpire. That's why he didn't see it.

Yes.

I thought it was because Gyrko and Diaz actually managed to turn the double play. They might not see that again all year.

We all have our quirks.

Chuck Berry is the only good thing to ever come out of St Louis.

On ESPN2

I'm calling it right now... Gyorko boots a relatively easy ground ball leading to a Cubs run.

Mad Bum perfect through 5, with 7 Ks. Also hit a home run. Stud.

I am a horrible person.

I couldn't remember which Baker that was. It's neither Scott nor Jeff. It's John. The Cubs sure ran through the Baker brothers there in the early '10s. (They're not brothers.)

I predict both Jay and Heyward have higher WARs for the Cubs than Fowler does for the Cardinals.

Not to reignite the WAR discussion, but Rivera has a higher career WAR (per B-R) than Red Ruffing, Three Fingers Brown, Whitey Ford, Schoolboy Hoyt, Sandy Koufax, Al Spalding and Early Wynn, all of whom are in the HoF as starting pitchers. Rivera arguably deserves to be in the Hall because he was just that good period. And that's even before getting into his completely absurd post-season record. I'm fine with relievers getting into the Hall if Rivera is your standard.

I don't think either should be in the Hall, but I don't understand how you can vote for Hoffman and not for Wagner. I especially can't see how the difference can possibly be 74% to 10%. Wagner's rate stats are better than Hoffman's across the board.

The farther I get away from it (and Buck's incessant blathering on the subject) the more reasonable Chapman's workload for the Series looks to me. Beginning at the end of the NLCS, his work load was - 3 days off- 1 inning - 3 days off - 1.1 innings - Day off - 1 inning - day off - 2.2 innings - day off - 1.1 innings - 1.1 innings. He'd pitched 7 times in 17 days and it was the first time he'd been asked to work two days in a row in that stretch. And it's not like he'd pitched 90-some innings heading into the Series. It was 66. If he's going to demand that kind of money, he's got to want the ball when the stakes are high. As inflexible as Chapman seems to be about when and how he's pitched plus the fact that he looked gassed before ever hitting the 75 inning mark on the season for the first time in his career, I think I've become ok with not dumping that crap load of money on him. His value doesn't come from being the best 60-ish inning pitcher during the regular season. The difference between him and maybe the 15th best guy in the league at closing out games is two games in the standings at most, which isn't going to be the difference between the Cubs making the playoffs or not. His value, if he's going to make that kind of money, is rather to shorten games in the playoffs. It's unfair to compare him to Mariano Rivera, but if he's not going to be Mariano Rivera - if he's going to be just another really good reliever - there's really no reason for the Cubs to pay him that kind of money when they can pay Wade Davis - a really good reliever - significantly less.

I've seen a couple places that the Cubs should try to trade for and then extend Duffy. Why do people think he'd be willing to extend considering he'd likely be the third best starting pitching free agent behind Kershaw and Arrieta and younger than both of them?

There are so many different baseball players. It's hard to keep track of them all.

So how does this work? Milwaukee drafted Smith in the Rule 5 and then traded him to the Cubs? We know for what? Same Rule 5 rules apply even though he was traded? If he doesn't make the Cubs roster, the Yankees can take him back?

I'm not objective about this since I've never loved Soler and Davis is (was?) one of my favorite non-Cubs. We're trading our fourth or fifth outfielder for what will be our best bullpen arm. Yeah, Davis only pitched 45 innings last year, but Soler missed two months of the season, too. Really, Davis just needs to be healthy come playoff time.

They might be good in a couple years, but they are really going to be a special kind of awful this year. Fangraphs is projecting their position players to put up a 6.5 WAR combined. And that's before they inevitably trade Braun.