CubUgly

Yeah, I think because we see him every day we don't realize how many tough chances he makes look routine.

I thought that curious as well. And I know every team goes through this not just the Cubs, but man when we go through these stretches were no one is hitting for a sustained period of time, it seems like it will never end.

Yes, it's just a matter of time before this all catches up with us. It could well happen on this upcoming road trip.

Yes, this ai about as good as it gets, we need to hold on to this feeling as long as we can - there will be times, and likely multiple, later this year where we want to DFA everyone and fire everyone.

The Giants Park is really nice - of the trendy new parks folks started building around in the 90's I like that one and the Pirates the best. But nothing beats the Wrigley experience.

Yeah, they smoked about 5 or 6 balls at least that found gloves last night. We had some good fortune and them not so much in that regard.

That's the third game you could say he made a huge contribution to winning for us already this year. If he does nothing else that's pretty valuable.

I think he was at 102 pitches, that's probably the reason.

He got ALOT of swing and miss today.

Gallen's ERA is good but his underlying numbers are not. 1.36 WHIP. Hard hit rate is pretty high. He's a candidate for regression - hope it starts today. Weather may help him though.

Agreed, they always reference soft factors for catchers like calling games and how they work with pitchers. Can't be quantified which kills some but it's relevant and fairly significant. It's IMHO why Contreras isn't catching anymore, moreso than pitch framing.

I didn't say it was a flawed model - just said we've seen teams even through a full season that belie the metrics and end up finishing better than teams that have significantly higher run differential even over 162 games - and it's why some folks don't lean all in on analytics. It's a good predictive tool you are correct and it's not a flawed model, it's just not perfect. None are. There is just nuance and baseball is about as random a sport as there is and as much as we try to boil it all down to numbers and stats, that randomness rears its head constantly. But it gives us endless points of discussion, which is what makes baseball so great to me.

Of course, I was not saying that either.

I was speaking more about the run differential thing than Busch actually.

You would think water will find its level eventually in this regard, but we've seen years and examples where it never does. Which is why some folks have a hard time leaning all in on analytics.