Stratos
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Everything posted by Stratos
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Bellinger DH'ing, Tauchman in CF tonight. Didn't think they'd do that much. Trying to keep everyone fresher I guess.
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Pitching against the Rockies should help him a lot and hopefully he does well and gets some confidence for future starts. Starting to like Assad, he gets the grounders given everything he throws moves well including a good sinker, so maybe the K #'s play up a bit.
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Watching home games vs the Rockies is very fun.
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It was nice that Assad had a longish start and that lead keeps the pen rested. Imanaga same, plus the off day Thurs, so we're in great shape for tomorrow.
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Post of the season so far
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That glass door.
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Early-season trends that may or may not end up meaningful
Stratos replied to Bertz's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Imanaga 00.0 GB% lol. -
I looked into Smyly's numbers a bit. His walks and HR/FB and GB% were the things he struggled with last year compared to 2022. His xwoba was actually the same both years. He had really good command in 2022. His K% actually went up in 2023. The curve was still very good per the stats, and the fastball was still bad. Not sure it's a stuff issue. I think he overachieved in 2022 and underachieved last year. Maybe he can be a 4.50 guy this year. He's looked bad though, might be a pen guy at this point. His velo goes up about 1 mph in the pen,
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I disagree with both points.
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I agree stats can hide issues in the minors. Not saying command wasn't an issue before, but I've never really seen BB/9 jump that much, almost double, simply because of going up a level, Even going from AAA to MLB it most often doesn't jump that much. The tacked baseball could be part of the issue, but that's totally different than players in AAA having better plate discipline than AA and below. Maybe his BB/9 rate won't fall back to around 3.00 consistently but it's hard to believe he'll stay up around 6. If he can manage around 4 he should be ok.
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Not saying he's Gred Maddux, but a pitcher doesn't have his BB/9 jump from 3.4 to 6.3 going from AA to AAA just because the hitters have better plate discipline. If it jumped to 4.5 then sure maybe.
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From Tom Skilling, WGN weather guy: "It can get windy in Chicago, but the nickname was placed on the city by the New York City press in the late 1880s in reference to our politicians, not to our climate. You are correct to observe that Boston has higher average winds that Chicago." https://wgntv.com/weather/weather-blog/how-windy-is-chicago-compared-to-other-cities/
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I once read that Chicago isn't actually more windy than the average city, so the "windy city" thing is a myth. Is this true?
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Brown has been really good pretty much his whole pro career besides last year where his control fell apart for whatever reason. He never had issues with walks before that. So seems pretty fixable. No idea of it's fixed as of now but I still like him as a prospect.
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I think Morel needs to stand at 3b during live BP before games if he isn't already. Fungos ain't gonna go it
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Old complaint but big shout-out to the Ricketts for slapping ugly ads all along the brick backstop behind home plate and not putting it back into payroll. I can forgive it if it's helping this team win but wtf
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Maybe they figure nobody is showing up on Tues and Wed in April either way and prefer the most tv ratings?
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Don't the Cubs have control here ultimately? I mean they can roughly dictate the # of day games at Wrigley right? Why would the league or schedule makers care if it's a night or day game?
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Tomorrow the weather says it's going to feel like below freezing temps with spitting rain at game time bahaha. Attendance: zero
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Why would they schedule games at Wrigley on April 2 and 3 as night games? Is the Cubs brass that stupid??? Are they trying to just straight up murder Cubs players and fans via pneumonia?
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Perfect through first 5 IP, then gave up 2 lazy singles and finished the outing with an inning-ending K. I think 20 swings and misses, which tied the MLB today with no-hitter from Blanco. Splitter which had a 80% whiff rate, FB had 15% whiffs, and slider had 50% whiffs.
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Yeah I have no issues with him playing 3B with Shota on the mound. But I think with Steele and also Hendricks (low, K%, lots of balls in play) they should consider Madrigal at 3B. Assad puts balls in play too and hard to say about Wicks yet. Not a lot of K's in our rotation besides potentially Imanaga so that doesn't help Morel. As a staff the Cubs were 19th in K/9 and 6th in GB%.
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He had excellent BB% in the minors, seems to have good swing discussions. I guess we don't know what the BA will be yet, but so far he's been K'ing a lot. Only 24.5% in ST for whatever that's worth. My guess is the BA will be average to below-average but remains to be seen.
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Yeah. The drop in defense between Morel and Madrigal is looking pretty substantial at the moment. Morel is letting 1 or 2 outs per game become singles at this rate. If that continues there's no way Tauchman makes up for that over Madrigal. Morel wasn't really even playing 9 innings in ST so his glove issues may not have seemed as blatant. But it is nice to give guys the day off in the field. I'm thinking Nico and Swanson and very likely Bellinger (unless PCA is called up) don't get regular rotation time at DH. Versus LHP they can get Busch time at DH by putting in Cooper/Wisdom, and Madrigal can play the field for Morel based on SP or matchups. With guys like Canario, Mervis, Caissie, Shaw, PCA, and hopefully Davis all as potential callup options at different points this year, I just don't see much need for the Cubs to have spent several million on a DH in FA, I think the pen & Bellinger/Imanaga was the place to allocate it.
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True, i'm fine with giving Morel a chance. At least show some improvement by end of April. But I also don't think swapping Tauchman for Madrigal in the lineup is the going to hurt us much.
