All you need to know about the last night of the first week of the 2019 NHL Playoffs.
Columbus sweeps Tampa: Holy fuck.
Islanders sweep Penguins: Fuckin’ whatever.
Jets tie Blues 2-2 in OT: Blues fucking up right on time.
Knights go 3-1 up on Sharks: That’s some fucking goaltending ya got there.
I’ve written this post a couple times in the past two seasons, at various outlets. Or at least it feels like I have. Maybe because I want so badly for Jason Heyward to be something. To be anything, which he hasn’t really in his time on the Northside. Or at least not at the plate he hasn’t. He’s always been great in the outfield and it seems like he’s a pretty damn good teammate to the point the whole team felt the need to create this narrative around him along with the greatest moment in the team’s history and most of our lives. It certainly didn’t help that Tom Ricketts not-so-subtly pointed a finger at Heyward’s signing as an excuse to turn his pockets out. And while Heyward isn’t the type to shove anything up someone’s ass, there has to be a part of him that’s thinking it. And every winter we break down the changes we think we see in his swing, and then there’s a really hot week or two and we think, “Yes, salvation!”
And then there’s 429 grounders to second.
So I’ve been holding out on J-Hey this time around, even though he’s basically been the Cubs’ best hitter on the young season. I won’t be fooled again. My heart is too scarred, and one more slice to it and I very well may never love again. I have to hold out hard, because I only have so many times I can give myself away again. I will not waste it on yet another false dawn.
And yet, this might actually be the time. You can follow my downfall into the pit of despair and disconnect and isolation again. That’s always fun for everyone else. But there are some things to suggest that this isn’t a mirage. It might be real, and I’m just as frightened as you are.
So generally, the first thing I look for when a player has a hot streak, or to see if changes are really helping or he’s just had a heater and will soon walk out of the casino with nothing but three cigarettes and a longing glance at what’s behind him and what’s lost is BABIP. Quickly, BABIP is Batting Average Of Balls Put In Play, and it’s akin to what we use shooting-percentage and save-percentage in hockey to measure luck. Almost always, a batter’s or pitcher’s BABIP will even out to somewhere around .300. There are exceptions, but generally 30% of the balls you put in play go somewhere where someone ain’t. So if someone’s carrying a .360 BABIP, it’s probably going to deflate and bring batting averages and slugging percentages with it.
Well, J-Hey’s on the year is a solid .306. Which is hardly abnormal. It’s not that much above last year’s .297, which helped him get to a better-than-I-realized, league-average 99 wRC+. So Heyward isn’t benefitting from a rash of flares and cracked-bats that just happened to land apologetically in the outfield to the bemused look of outfielders. He’s on course.
You could actually argue that Heyward has been a touch unlucky when it comes to BABIP, because he’s smacking eight different kinds of shit out of the ball. His hard-contact rate is 37.5%, which is way above the 29.7% he had last year. Now, 37% hard-contact is what baseball is doing as a whole this year, and last year the average was 35%. But for comparison, Javy Baez routinely carries a .340 BABIP or higher and his hard-contact rate is only a tick-higher than Heyward’s.
There’s definitely a change in approach. One, Heyward hasn’t shown much interest in pulling the ball this season. What he has done is up the amount of balls he goes gap-to-gap with, almost half at 42.5% (up from 32.% last year). It’s almost all at the expense of his pull-contact, which hints that he’s seeing the ball better, waiting on it, and not getting out ahead which results in rolled-over grounders to second which we can all see from memory at this point.
And when he goes up the middle, he’s getting the ball in the air far more than before. Half of his contact that way are fly balls, way over what came before. When he does let it loose and try to pull a ball, his hard-contact rate has doubled to over 60%. Which is the idea of pulling a ball, that you hit it the hardest you can. It’s somewhat the same story when he goes to the opposite field, though that doesn’t come with the same hard contact. But 80% of that is in the air, so clearly J-Hey is the latest member of the Launch Angle Revolution (opening for Russian Circles this summer). That’s borne out by his average launch-angle being 18 degrees this year, exactly double the season before.
You’ve heard Jim Deshaies reference that Heyward has taken something of a Yelich-like approach this year, which is he’s more than satisfied to eat your heart after a pitch or two. That’s true. On a 0-0 count, Heyward is swinging at 40% of the fastballs he sees, up from 24% in his first three years in blue. That’s also true on sliders and curves, which again, indicates he’s just seeing the ball better because he’s hitting them well when he goes after them. It’s the same case at 1-0 and 0-1. The pitches he’s seeing per plate-appearance are the lowest of his career. He’s not waiting around.
Which of course, leads to discussion of his swing. Previously, Heyward seemed to have this big loop and dip to his swing, where his hands came out and around and were behind his body. This year, you’ve heard comments about how he’s using his legs far more. It’s all more congruous. Which is resulting in greater bat-speed, which is resulting in greater exit-velocity (91.6 average).
I told myself I wouldn’t be fooled again, and yet I feel myself slipping….
As the Lightning sit on the precipice tonight, I haven’t been able to shake this stat ESPN presented on Sunday night when they went down 3-0:
The Lightning are one loss from being eliminated and joining this list…
The teams with the most wins in the regular season in MLB / NBA / NFL / NHL history all failed to win a championship. pic.twitter.com/6CWFcNgqIG
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) April 15, 2019
This would seem an excellent time for me to get on my European soccer high horse and proclaim it to be superior because it has no playoffs (at least in a league season), and thus excellence is always rewarded. But let’s save that for another time (you know I’m going to at some point though). It’s just the most curious thing.
All of those teams are considered some kind of footnote, or shrouded in what came before and after, or an outright failure. If you were asked what was the best all-time regular season record in baseball, you’d probably remember the Mariners just because of Ichiro. But it would take you a second. And if you were asked the best baseball team of all-time, you’d probably refer to an “era” of the Yankees in the late 90s, without picking one out individually. And none of them managed the 108 wins the Red Sox did last year. There isn’t one that sticks out. You wouldn’t say the Mariners of 2001, but factually they are.
The Patriots’ “failure” gets shrouded in that they won three Super Bowls before that and then three after that. So their 16 wins just join a list of secondary yet impressive accomplishments, somewhere above their run of AFC East titles. They also did something unique, in that no team has won six Super Bowls in what you’d call one stretch. The Steelers are broken up between the 70s and then a couple more recently. And yet shouldn’t the 16-0 stand out more? We haven’t seen it since, and we might not see it again (until the Bears this year of course, my frent). But it doesn’t, because it didn’t come with the crown on top.
The Warriors are almost certainly the greatest team ever to play (sorry Jordan fans, but deep in your heart you know it’s true), and even after last night they’re going to waltz to their fourth title in five years and probably barely breathe hard to do so. Yet everyone still tries to beat them over the head with 2016, even though they did something no team has done and it took the greatest player of all-time (this time I’m not apologizing to Bulls fans) at the peak of his powers to thwart them at the absolute final hurdle. And yet for me, the 73 wins is what I’ll remember, but most don’t or even use it as a cudgel. That’s the team that wowed you on a nightly basis instead of bored you with their efficient greatness.
It’s even murkier in hockey, where the best team rarely wins. Of course, thanks to the goofy standings system, it’s hard to discern clearly who the best team is most of the time. Not this year, obviously, and look how that’s going. If you’d asked me the best team I’d seen or best team of the NHL’s history, again I’d probably wave at an era of Wings teams in the 90s or Canadiens in the 70s, without one sticking out. When the Hawks won their first Cup, they were third in the league that year standings-wise. Their third Cup saw them finish third in their own division. And yet no one points it out because of course, they won their last game. And they knew as well as anyone else that seeding didn’t really matter to them that much.
Only the ’13 team is seen as an all-conquering force that scorched the Earth behind it, and even that’s derided a bit because it was only a 48-game season. And it’s hard to think of another team that comes close to that label. The Penguins didn’t win their own division in their last two Cup runs. The Caps did, but that was mostly considered a footnote or outright fluke as no one else was any good in that division. The Kings never did either. Are we really going all the way back to ’13? ’10 before that? The ’08 Wings? And even the latter is considered something flat because they only had the one out of three or four truly great teams.
I suppose that’s the oddity of North American sports. Hell, people my age probably remember the 103-win Giants that didn’t even make the playoffs in 1993 than we do most champs (I have a certain friend who is going to murder me for mentioning that). Never mind that the ’93 Braves and their 104 wins were then stomach-punched by the drunk and hairy Phillies at the first jump. Did you immediately remember that the Jays won the Series that year?
So it’s kind of funny to me that teams like the Warriors now, one or two other NBA teams, the Hawks teams of a few years ago or Penguins now or whoever else get shit for taking some regular season games off. All of them have the scars of great teams that didn’t win, whose regular season accomplishments are labeled meaningless, and yet when they put the playoffs and titles over everything else they’re “cheating the fans.” It’s an impossible needle to thread.
I can’t help but think sports have become to binary. You either won the title or you failed, no matter if you did something literally no one else had done before. After all, the regular season is the largest sample we have of what teams are, and sometimes historic accomplishments are wiped away or dismissed because of a bad week? Seems strange.
Then again, maybe that’s what makes it special. We have this slog of a regular season in every sport, find out who the best is, and then ask them to survive this pressurized crucible right after it. It makes for a better story at times when these teams fall.
Still, it does make it feel pointless. We spent six months or more being wowed by all of these teams, having it proven they were five steps ahead of everyone else. And then it’s gone. So why did we bother? If those results don’t mean anything, why have them? On the other side, if the playoffs were just a confirmation of what we’d seen, there wouldn’t be much drama (the current complaint about recent NBA playoffs, which is easy to understand). Doesn’t seem to hurt the NBA’s popularity though.
I’m on the side of always rooting for greatness, for things I haven’t seen before. The Warriors winning four of five and 73 games in the one they didn’t is the kind of thing I’ll remember forever. Hell, it was only two days ago a lot of us were willing the greatest golfer of all-time to another victory, because he does things we hadn’t seen before. At least where I’m not emotionally involved, that is (so you can fuck off with all your City remarks, Hess).
Maybe it’s just a quirk. And yet we keep racking these up.
Toronto takes 2-1 lead over Boston: Fuck both these teams.
Carolina wins game 3 over Washington: Fuckin’ eh right.
Nashville takes 2-1 lead over Dallas: Fucking fell asleep.
Colorado takes 2-1 lead over Calgary: Oh fuck…
I know when the lights are brightest in the NHL that most analysts and media and players and coaches want to make it clear what makes their sport special. Or what they think makes this time of year special, even though no one has any idea. Or if they do they don’t want to tell anyone, for fear of…well, I haven’t any idea what they’re afraid of, but here we are. So the NARRATIVES flow like an open sewer downhill at this time. This spring, it seems that the amount of horseshit in every series has been especially amped up. Let’s keep it to this: the first night of the playoffs, during the first intermission of the Isles-Pens game, Liam McHugh set up professional hairpiece with a highlight of Brock Nelson’s power play goal and asked Eddie, “How did the Islanders score on the power play.” Eddie’s answer, “Confidence.” Jesus fucking christ.
So let’s start with the biggest story of the first round, the Lightning’s capitulation to Columbus. Last year, the story that everyone wanted to push was that the Caps intimidated the Lightning. That the Bolts were soft. They weren’t up for this kind of time of year, even though a great majority of this team has been to a couple conference finals and a Stanley Cup Final. Perhaps the main reason was that Braden Holtby was putting up a back-t0-back shutouts in Game 6 and 7 and John Cooper only used one puck-mover to bust through a Trotz trap. So those whispers and headlines were always bubbling underneath the surface waiting to be cracked open by anyone who didn’t want to bother to explain what was happening to Tampa should they not roll to victory.
Which apparently spread to the Lightning themselves, because there’s no logical reason that after just one loss, Nikita Kucherov and others should be running around doing a Tom Wilson impression instead of doing what they did all year, which is just score all the time. Now the Lightning are playing the wrong game.
And even then, really the only thing you need to know about this series are two numbers: .866 and .940. That’s Vasilevskiy’s and Bobrovsky’s save-percentages this series. Everything else is pretty much even, if not tilted to to the Bolts a bit. Vas is letting everything in. There you go. It doesn’t have to mean more than that. It doesn’t have to be more than that. One goalie is making stops.
Meanwhile, every series save the Flames and Avalanche and the Caps and Hurricanes has descended into a cesspool. The hockey has been pretty horrific to watch, and every goddamn whistle becomes a dick-measuring contest. We like our playoff hockey with passion and a bit of bile but this has gone beyond even a level of stupidity. Which is how you end up with Nazem Kadri, already a shithead, trying to be an axe-murderer. Or analysts trying to tell you how important Ryan Reaves is.
It’s been accented because there haven’t been that many close games. And when playoff games have obvious winners in the 3rd period, there seems to be some tenet of hockey written by someone who struggled to breathe that you have to act like a petulant child. That you have to “send a message,” which doesn’t amount more than to losing like an asshole. Every other sport, if you were to clobber guys in the lane in the NBA in the 4th quarter or start throwing at guys heads in the 8th inning of a loss, you’d be mocked endlessly and probably suspended. In hockey it’s the thing to do. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, as hockey is filled with a bunch of rich white kids who tend not to react well when things don’t go their way. Taking it on the chin isn’t in the vocabulary.
This kind of thing tends to dry up as we get to the business end of series and moving on or going home gets awfully clear in the viewfinder. We can only hope. I already watch Monday Night Raw for my fill of bad booking.
vs. 
RECORDS: Royals 5-10 White Sox 5-9
GAMETIMES: Monday and Tuesday at 7:10, Wednesday 1:10
TV: NBCSN Monday and Wednesday, WGN Tuesday
WAITING FOR MAHOMES: Royals Review
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Heath Fillmyer vs. Ervin Santana
Jorge Lopez vs. Reynaldo Lopez
PROBABLE ROYALS LINEUP
Whit Merrifield – RF
Adalberto Mondesi – SS
Alex Gordon – LF
Jorge Soler – RF
Ryan O’Hearn – 1B
Hunter Dozier – 3B
Chris Owings – 2B
Martin Maldanado – C
Billy Hamilton – CF
PROBABLY SOX LINEUP
Leury Garcia – CF
Yoan Moncada – 3B
Jose Abreu – DH
Yonder Alonso – 1B
Eloy Jimenez – LF
Tim Anderson – SS
Daniel Palka – RF
Yolmer Sanchez – 2B
After getting Eloy Jimenez on the board, and taking two of three from the vaunted but decrepit (at the moment) Yankees, the White Sox have a brief pitstop at home to face the drain-scraping Royals before heading back out onto the road. Not that the Sox are all that concerned with “momentum” or getting on a roll this year, but this would seem an excellent chance to string a couple series victories together after having their brains scooped out by the Rays last week.
Of course, that task gets a little trickier when it starts with Ervin Santana and his magical gasoline-ball. Santana was clubbed hard by the Rays last out, giving up seven runs in less than four innings of work. Santana was his own worst enemy with walks last out, which were a major problem for him in a brief cameo in Minnesota last year. This is what happens when you have just a place-holder in your rotation, as until some kid comes up to claim that spot you’re just going to have to white-knuckle through a lot of his turns.
Reynaldo Lopez hasn’t been much better, as he’ll be seeking his first quality start of the season in a Lopez Battle on Tuesday. Lopez also has been allergic to the strikezone, walking four in each of his starts. And in a continuing theme, Lucas Giolito will also try to spasm the right arm of an ump again, as after a promising season-opening start in KC he’s put up eight walks in two starts since. Perhaps the sky blue of the Royals will rekindle something in him.
The problem for the Sox is that the Royals aren’t the soft-landing, at least for pitchers, that you would have thought. Six regulars are putting up 100+ wRC+ at the moment, led by Alex Gordon who I could have sworn misplaced his intestines two years ago and would fold in on himself at the sight of any half-decent fastball. He’s cut out a huge chuck of Ks and is hitting the ball harder than he has at any point in his career. The difference appears to be a great improvement in plate discipline, as he’s cut down on the amount of swings at pitches out of the zone while upping the swings and contact in it, and well a .640 SLG is the result.
He’s not alone as Merrifield and Mondesi are thwacking the ball everywhere, though with far less discipline. My former special boy Jorge Soler has cracked four homers, including a couple that should have probably counted double. Looks like we’re in the midst of a the few weeks per season when Soler is healthy and paying attention. Even Hunter Dozier is slugging near .500.
But that doesn’t mean the pitching staff can’t give away whatever the offense takes. Because they can and do. They’ve gotten decent work out of Brad Keller, who’s been able to dance his way around walking nearly five guys for every nine innings. That won’t last though. Fillmyer has only made one start but it wasn’t particularly pretty, as the unholy force that the Mariners are apparently tagged him for five runs in just three innings. Jorge Lopez has also benefitted from extreme luck on contact, and again, appears poised to go hurling over a cliff like Super Dave Osborne at any moment.
If the starters can get it to Jason Diekmann or Ian Kennedy, Royals fans can generally emerge from their bunker. When they can’t it’s time to stock up on canned food and bottled water. They’ve already tried 10 other goofuses, and it’s not going well. So you’re never out of it against the Royals.
Royals and then Tigers and Orioles. Only for the diehards, but also a fertile ground to harvest some wins.
vs. 
RECORDS: Cubs 5-9 Marlins 4-12
GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 6:10
TV: WGN Monday, NBCSN Tuesday and Wednesday
WELCOME TO MIAMI: Fish Stripes
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Yu Darvish vs. Trevor Richards
Jose Quintan vs. Pablo Lopez
Cole Hamels vs. Sandy Alcantara
PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP
Ben Zobrist – RF
Kris Bryant – 3B
Anthony Rizzo – 1B
Javier Baez – SS
Jason Heyward – CF
Kyle Schwarber – LF
Daniel Descalso – 2B
PROBABLE MARLINS LINEUP
Curtis Granderson – LF
Brian Anderson – 3B
Neil Walker – 1B
Starlin Castro – 2B
Jorge Alfaro – C
Miguel Rojas – SS
Lewis Brinson – CF
Austin Dean – RF
Nothing like a sojourn down to the former Orange Bowl for a team to get healthy. Or to escape the snow. Or both, and hopefully it’s both for the Cubs.
They’ve caught a break in that even the gods didn’t want to see a Tyler Chatwood so badly they provided Chicago with a blizzard in the middle of April, which is a choice. Seems a touch exuberant on their part, but you understand the emotion. Because of that, the Cubs can stick with a four-man rotation thanks to off-days for the next two weeks, not bringing Jon Lester back until the 27th or so if they so choose. Which would give him nearly a full two weeks of recovery. Although they have two off-days on either side of a trip to Seattle, so they could hold their nose, close their eyes, and plunge into a singular Chatwood start and give Lester yet another week. Questions for down the road.
The only other questions are just lineup rotation. Will Albert Almora Jr. get to show off his hitting-grounders skills in his hometown? Or is the shifting of Heyward into center just something we’re going to have to get used to? Is Kyle Schwarber’s recent slump just a bad week or his inability to recognize breaking pitches going to raise Almora back into the lineup, with Zobrist shifting over to left? Didn’t Kris Bryant used to play outfield? Why is that a thing that doesn’t happen anymore to give Bote more looks? Does Bote need more looks? I don’t even know anymore.
The other boon of playing the Marlins is that you can declare the bullpen officially a Hazmat site if they can’t get the Marlins out. There’s no one here, so if they still refuse to puncture the strike zone, you can leave the lot of them down there and return to Chicago with a fresh batch. Darvish, Quintana, and Hamels will all seek to build on good starts (to varying degrees) against a lineup that were all paid $20 on the corner to come pose as MLB players for a few days while Derek Jeter steals more stadium cash.
And that’s really the story with the Marlins, a chance for Derek Jeter to do Yankees cosplay where it’s warmer and no one cares. They’re supposedly in a rebuild, which they’ve been in for at least 15 years and started when they had the best young outfield in the game (Ozuna, Yelich, Stanton) and traded it because…they felt like it? It was never quite clear. Of those trades, only Lewis Brinson is in the every day lineup and he’s striking out a third of the time and when he’s not doing that the contact he makes is more of a timid question. The only player hitting anything you would want to hide behind several curtains is Jorge Alfaro, who was once traded for Cole Hamels and more recently was part of the J.T. Realmuto deal. Miguel Rojas is literally the only other regular hitting over .230. If Darvish gets nibbly with this lot…
The rotation shows a little more promise. Pablo Lopez has nearly a 10-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and Sandy Alcantara’s high groundball ways are paying off. Both have been let down by the Marlins tendency to play defense like it was jai alai (local joke!). Trevor Richards has a plus-change-up but that’s about it, and is currently riding an incredible save of luck by seeing a .209 BABIP against while stranding nearly 90% of the runners he lets on. The crash is going to be hard on this one. The pen has been extremely walk-heavy, and basically if Sergio Romo and his walker are in your bullpen, you know you suck. But hey, he’ll come in and frisbee up some sliders for you. You wouldn’t know these guys if they came into your house and shit on your floor, which isn’t a bad representation of what they’ll be doing out of the pen soon enough.
It’s baseball, so you can never say the Cubs should win all three games. But the Cubs should win all three games, and then get just as healthy agains the strip-mined Diamondbacks and Bob Brenly and his less and less veiled racism show up for the weekend.
This year, we’re going to cut right to the heart of what’s going in each series instead of dressing it up. We’re on the go, you’re on the go, this just saves everyone a lot of mishegas.
Blue Jackets lead Lightning 3-0: What the fuck?
Islanders lead Penguins 3-0: Fuck me.
Maple Leafs and Bruins 1-1: Fucking stupid.
Capitals lead Canes 2-0: Fuck.
Flames and Avs 1-1: Fucking fine.
Predators and Stars 1-1: Boring as fuck.
Blues lead Jets 2-1: Two fucks, one will fuck up.
Knights lead Sharks 2-1: Fucking Jones.
Thank you for your time.
It only ended up being a two-game series, as Game Of Thrones marketing has gone completely overboard and unhinged and decided to promote tonight’s season premiere with THUNDERSNOW. It was a series that saw Mike Trout stay home, Trevor Cahill not take the bump, and yet the Cubs only got one win. It doesn’t quite feel like enough, as two wins were certainly on offer. Let’s run through it.
-No point in moving any farther along without addressing the bullpen, once again. The Cubs will have a streak soon, or they will need one to get back comfortably over .500. And yet it feels like to do that, they’ll have to overcome a “bullpen game,” or two, like they almost did yesterday.
I’m something of a hypocrite, which you knew by now. I’m a proponent of not really breaking the bank for relievers, because the scenery is layered with palookas and punters who throw 95 and show up for 45 pitches per week. You can find them anywhere. You’re supposed to be able to produce them relatively easily, because your system is littered with hard-throwers who can’t find a third pitch or the stamina to be starters. The Cubs so far have produced only Carl Edwards Jr. and his mind full of spiders, but that’s another talk for another time.
But it’s still galling the relievers the Cubs have tried to move forward with on the cheap. Brad Brach has been declining for three years. Randy Rosario was terrible last year, and pretty much just given a job this year even though there’s no discernible stuff. Tim Collins is the name the EA generator gives to some player that’s too far in the future in franchise mode to be real. At least he appears to have stuff, somewhat, unlike Rosario.
These aren’t guys the Cubs thought they saw something to unlock that other teams didn’t. Pitchers that if they leaned on a pitch or hadn’t before or a tweak to a motion to get more movement or velocity. They’re seat-fillers. Rosario is especially galling, because he didn’t strike anyone out or get grounders last year and yet here we are still trying to make fetch happen.
There’s not much Joe can do, because these are the guys he has to go to.
-Hendricks’s slow start continues. He couldn’t find his fastball at all, and when he has to throw only change-ups that pitch isn’t as effective as it’s not playing off anything. He also hasn’t mixed in his curve at all which he said he wanted to do, but that just might be a good thing. Nothing to see here, yet.
-On the opposite side, Cole Hamels put on his second-straight strong start, never in trouble after the Cubs gave him three runs in the firs. His velocity wasn’t where it was last year, but with a good mix of changes and curves and cutters, and dotting that fastball, it doesn’t matter.
-Fuck off forever, Pujols.
-Contreras carried them on Friday, but he had a woeful AB in the ninth yesterday. With a base open and your run not mattering at all, you have to know you’re not getting anything in the zone. Especially as the Angels had been going to sliders out of the zone on him all day with Stratton. Know time and place and all that.
-Schwarber can’t catch a break, but he also looks as lost as he has in his career. He was just fighting off fastballs yesterday, and still ahead of the breaking stuff. In the end, it only amounts to a bad week, and now a new one.
Onwards…
vs.
RECORDS: Angels 7-6 Cubs 4-8
GAMETIMES: Friday-Sunday 1:20pm
TV: NBCSN Friday, ABC Saturday, WGN Sunday
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Chris Stratton vs. Kyle Hendricks
Trevor Cahill vs. Tyler Chatwood
Probable Angels Lineup
David Fletcher – LF
Andrelton Simmons – SS
Albert Pujols – 1B
Jonathan Lucroy – C
Taylor Ward – 3B
Kole Calhoun – RF
Zack Cozart – 2B
Peter Bourjos – CF
Probable Cubs Lineup
Albert Almora – CF
Kris Bryant – 3B
Anthony Rizzo – 1B
Javier Baez – SS
David Bote – 2B
Mark Zagunis – RF
Kyle Schwarber – LF
Note: Against right-handed starters Sat. and Sun. expect to see Heyward in center with Descalso at 2nd and Zobrist in right
After winning their first series of the year, the Cubs turn right around and host the Angels of Somewhere, a team shorn of all that makes it interesting. Which is fine, because the Cubs need wins so they’ll take boring as they can get for now. And they’re not without drama themselves.
We’ll start with the Northside Nine, who last night lost their backup catcher Victor Caratini to a broken hand for at least a month, and more likely six weeks. Of course this turned Cubs twitter, always anxious to paint their lives as a dark, dark room, in to the most obnoxious Cure fans around. Why oh why they pontificated, didn’t the Cubs sign a third catcher? Why must we suffer with Taylor Davis for a month? Please, unleash me from this hell and give me the sweet release of the great darkness beyond!
Fuckin’ eh, shut up.
One, almost no team has three catchers. Any catcher goes down, you’re almost certainly going to have to toss some tomato can out there once a week. Yes, I remember 2016 as well. That was an accident, because Montero and Ross were signed the season before you’ll recall, which is also the season Willson Contreras started tearing up the minors out of really nowhere. He didn’t give the Cubs much choice. That’s generally how you end up with three catchers.
Third, even the max six weeks time frame, that’s probably at most 12 Caratini starts. How much value, even with how well he was playing, do you think Victor Caratini has over 12 starts? Yes, Taylor Davis blows and he’s got a little league swing, but he’s also not a double-amputee. I’m fairly sure he can catch the ball. This isn’t the disaster Cubs fans are so desperate to make it.
Anyway, other than that, after getting Jose Quintana on track and at least moving Yu Darvish toward it, it would be lovely if Kyle Hendricks followed the trend on Saturday, especially with Lester out, and especially as the Chatwood Experience awaits on Sunday. A battery of Tyler Chatwood-Taylor Davis. Remember kids, the Cubs have new executive suites!
To the Angels. Before the year, you probably thought, “Hey! Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani at Wrigley! That’s exciting!” Well sorry, fucko. Ohtani isn’t back until May and Trout tweaked a groin earlier in the week while the Angels were stuffing the Brewers. He won’t play today and is iffy for the weekend.
Those aren’t the only injury concerns for the Halos. Andrew Heaney went boom again, and Justin Upton ended up with turf toe in the season’s first week and is out until possibly July. Certainly June. So yeah, stripped of all that, this becomes a very ordinary outfit. Unless watching Albert Pujols try and scramble his unorganized collection of bones around first base in an NL park entertains you, and it should. The grounds crew should have a large dustpan nearby.
That hasn’t stopped them from winning six in a row over the Rangers and Brewers, mystifying the Cubs I’m sure. But it can also be inspiration, as the Angels started 1-6 and this early that’s how quickly things can look rosy again. It’s hard to know what the expectations were for this team, as they look to be well behind the A’s and Astros in the division, which doesn’t put you anywhere near a wildcard.
Without Trout, absolutely no one in this lineup is hitting. As you know, Pujols died five years ago, Kalhoun is striking out a third of the time, Simmons might as well go up there with a coloring book, and Justin Bour seems to only have mastered two of the three true outcomes so far, and that’s the two where nothing happens. Tommy La Stella had a nice half-week there for a minute, but that’s been about it offensively for the Angels. Zack Cozart is hitting .033. That’s a thing.
Which means they’ve had to do it with pitching, though it’s also hard to see how. They’re getting more miracles out of Trevor Cahill, who looks like he struggles to actually throw the ball 60 feet but here we are. Matt Harvey has gone back to being the utter disaster he was for two years before a half-revival in Cincinnati, but don’t worry it’s not like anyone can party in Southern California or anything. He’s given up 14 runs in his last two starts. Skaggs has been ok, but he doesn’t strike anyone out nor does he get a ton of grounders so one wonders how long this will last. That puts them praying for the safe return of Heaney, which is Beckett-ian.
Which means it’s been yeoman work from the pen, and that is the case. Hansel Robles (who uses the Undertaker theme and hence is now my favorite player), Ty Buffrey, and Cam Bedrosian have been unhittable so far, and Justin Anderson and Cody Allen are carrying 0.00 ERAs as well. They’re already third in the AL in appearances, and fifth in innings. But they also have the best pen ERA and fifth-best FIP. They don’t want to go to this well too often but while it’s working no one’s going to bitch.
If there’s a team that Hendricks can find it against, it should be this one. The offense probably needs to do its work in the first five innings, and that might be harder than you’d first think with both Skaggs and Cahill going. But then again, it’s fucking Skaggs and Cahill. Let’s get a move on already.
