Geographyhater8888

Was looking for you. It’s better to have his upside on the bench than a useless Lopez, does this mean they’ll play musical chairs with the outfield a couple times a week to give some of the everyday bags a rest? It’s unfortunate our best farm talent are all left handed hitting outfielders/DH when we need right handed platoon bats.

i was expecting Mo to get the call up but not at all surprised. Cassie’s ability to play in the outfield I guess gives him in the edge on a team that needs life injected into a badly slumping outfield. Why not. Lopez is worthless. If the Cubs valued versatility then what purpose does keeping 3 catches serve? Seems odd they DFAd Berti unless it’s insurance for Amaya’s recent injury history. Who will Cassie replace and how often will he be in the startylineup?

Salute to Cade Horton and Matt Shaw.

What’s the point of keeping 3 catchers if they want versatility? They kept McGuire and DFAd Berti. I don’t see why they’d bring up Lopez for versatility when they had 3 catchers on the roster and Lopez is useless

Tucker Seiya and PCA aren’t due up for 7 at bats. There’s some hope even if barely any to add to the lead.

Hortons scoreless innings streak snapped by an a pitch someone else threw. Our big deadline bullpen acquisition to be exact.

He made average contact on fastballs right down the middle.

Maybe PCA was tight with Vidal Brujan and is bummed about him being DFAd. That’s just as plausible.

2032 can’t come soon enough.

Brewers haven’t lost since doing little at the deadline, Mets still stink. Unless Edward Cabrera or Merrill Kelly are part time hitting coaches I don’t think it makes a difference. They were 4-6 in 10 games before the deadline and 4-6 since.

I’ll give Tucker the benefit of the doubt thanks to body of work, although his bat speed has reportedly dipped, what can we expect from PCA Seiya and Busch? Obviously they’re slumping, but it seemed like they really turned a corner pacing to have breakout seasons and all of the sudden all 3 have no pop, the league has made adjustments and their wRC+/OPS are all nose diving back to a level of the caliber of player they truly are? I expect them to bounce back of course but this team is a World Series contender if we get the same guys from the first half and not complete stagnation after they climb out of slumps plateauing around a low 800’s OPS mark. And PCA is in mid first 200 PAs form.

I’m talking right now over the last month. He’s hit 1 home run since the all star break. He was brought in to pick up a slumping offense and he’s been a non factor relative to expectations for way too long.

We have pre August 2024 PCA without Mike Tauchman to pick him him up. The whole lineup is a carbon copy of the first 88 games, just replace a mediocre Bellinger with a mediocre Tucker and subtract Tauchman.

Nice catch dansby.

We took 2/3 vs Arizona back in april when we thought Arizona was good.

We'll always have those great memories of april and may as the glory days of Jed's time as Cubs gm.

Nice clutch hitting again from the top of the order

Meryl Kelly too. He’s 36 and doesn’t come with the extra year of control tax. They gave Suarez away for peanuts. I don’t know exactly what Texas gave up for him and what the equivalent cubs package would’ve been but it’s ridiculous we’re almost 5 months in and Brown is still in the rotation. I also don’t think Jed would’ve hesitated to outbid the Yankees for a sure thing Like Max Fried if he had the financial means, instead of hoping to strike to hit the moneyball jackpot in Boyd. It’s a chicken and egg kind of thing we’re looking at. I don’t know what the hell to make of the Brewers, we always hear about how lucky they are but they’re a perennial 90 win team with a recent history of folding in the playoffs, akin to the early-mid 2000’s Twins ground balling and duck snorting teams to death. Their rotation is what worries me. I’m more in the boat of asking which Michael Busch PCA and Suzuki will we be getting for last month 1/2. Is it just a slump or a slump coinciding with a regression to who they truly are as players over the course of 6 months? Because the rotation ideally has Horton in it come playoff time and that entails throwing more pitches than he ever has. And it won’t be the cubs path towards a deep playoff run, it’ll be scoring runs with all 3 trending closer to their first half performance, and that’s with the assumption that Tucker figures things out too.

Sure, if you’re referring to people telling you the season is over despite having a 7 game lead in the wild card standings, I’d agree that’s over the top. I think we’re all bitter rooting for a team third in net profit with mid-high 80’s win aspirations. Ownership and the front office by extension would rather have a 6% chance of winning a World Series on a budget over being in that 15% category.

What were his previous season totals?

Doesn’t help either when your competition is Jerry’s whitesox, 83-88 wins to keep Marquee subscribers content and money grows on the Wrigley Ivy. To be fair, Tom’s a little strapped after purchasing that soccer team.

Ricketts are competent. They just haven’t put in the effort to build a true winner since the Epstein days and even that was half assed with a lot of medium length safe free agent signings. The Heyward deal was a big splash but they also had the financial flexibility because of a young core on pre arb cheap contracts. And Max Scherzer would’ve been preferred over both Heyward and Lackey but that’s more on Theo. I’m confident the Cubs will be a “contender” for the foreseeable future, just on par with Reinsdorfs mid 2000’s whitesox with the hope of a fluky 2005 flash in the pan championship, because it won’t be with the help of a big name free agent winning a World Series MVP like Corey Seager or a Freddie Freeman. Etc With 6 playoff seeds he’s even less incentivized to go all in.

It’s not about being negative, we’ve pivoted from World Series contenders to just get in the playoffs and anything can happen. The bar is getting lower and lower. As it stands barring catastrophe the Cubs will be seeded in the playoffs but until they pass the eye test and Tucker is the big star bat who can pick up a slumping offense, they’re not that much different of a team from the last couple years. Better, but by how much if Tuckers finger is still ailing him? Will PCA Seiya and Busch find their home run stroke and their OPSs will start to climb back up or at least stagnate from nose diving since the all star break and all go on a heater in unison back to their breakout year paces, or will it continue to dip? We’re seeing a regression to the mean and Tucker hasn’t been able to pick up the slack until proven wrong. it’s healthy to question their capability of making a deep playoff run. They’ll have to slug and hit if they have any chance of going far. It’s not negativity for the sake of it.

We’re basically watching an offense without Tucker playing like a star and it’s similar to much of what we saw last season, which is a lineup without that dude to pick up other slumping bats. The power isn’t there and the lineup isn’t constructed to manufacture runs. When or if the pop comes back so will the runs on a consistent basis. We’re likely watching natural regression to the mean from Suzuki Kelly PCA and Busch and a lack sustainable production that will carry over through all 6 months. Unless of course all 4 are capable of sustaining OPSs of over 850+ and 921 in the case of Busch and are due for a huge breakout over the next couple weeks, I can’t confidently say that everything will be fine. things evening out is a common theme on this board, which direction will they go? Nothing but south so far.

Nice rally guys. You almost did the impossible. Maybe next month.