Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Cardinals: They’re Going To Be Upset About A Fake Talk Show

By Sam Fels 1251 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 31-23   Cardinals 27-28

GAMETIMES: Friday 7:15, Saturday 6:15, Sunday 1:15

TV: NBCSN Friday, Fox Saturday, WGN Sunday

DON’T EVEN BOTHER: Viva El Birdos

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Yu Darvish vs. Miles Mikolas

Jose Quintana vs. Jack Flaherty

Cole Hamels vs. Adam Wainwright

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Kris Bryant – 3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Javier Baez – SS

Victor Caratini – C

Albert Almora Jr. – CF

Jason Heyward – RF

David Bote – 2B

PROBABLE CARDINALS LINEUP

Dexter Fowler – RF

Paul Goldschmidt – 1B

Paul DeJong – SS

Marcell Ozuna – LF

Matt Carpenter – 3B

Yadier Molina – C

Kolten Wong – 2B

Harrison Bader – CF

 

The Auld Rivals move down I-55 tonight and this weekend, where the Cubs and Cards will clash for the for the first time in front of the illiterate and toothless in West East St. Louis. Perhaps for the first time ever, most everyone will be paying attention to the Blues instead, at least tomorrow night. If you’re making the trip…what’s wrong with you?

The Cardinals haven’t burst out of the gates with the Cubs and Brewers, and currently are 4.5 games back and under .500. They can’t seem to get everything firing at the same time. The offense has had its moments, but currently Paul DeJong, Dexter Fowler, and Kolten Wong have been trying to shove the bat up their nose. On the flip side, Matt Carpenter is doing that thing again where he comes close to sucking you into the idea that he’s finished at the beginning of the season, and now is going nuclear (he’s slugging nearly .600 the past two weeks). Paul Goldschmidt has been good, but maybe not quite the MVP-candidate the Cards hoped they were getting this winter. Harrison Bader has also been molten the past couple of weeks, but overall has been defense-first. The offense has potential to really carry this team through the summer, but hasn’t yet.

It may have to, as we went over some of the rotation’s problems in the spotlight. The two kids have hit their speed-bumps, and at some point this goddamn team is going to have to admit the Wainwright is dunzo and it’s never going to happen for Michael Wacha. I mean, it’s fine with me if they keep sending Wacha out there to hang a curve or groove a fastball at the worst possible time, but you’d think that an organization that is still convinced it’s miles ahead of the curve would crack the code on two-fifths of their rotation turning odd colors in the sun.

The pen has gotten yeoman’s work out of John Gant and John Brebbia. You’ll hear all about the 102 MPH that Jordan Hicks throws, which always seems to ignore the fact he’s not that good. He walks too many guys, and as hard as that fastball is it’s string-straight and he doesn’t seem to have another pitch so hitters do get to it. Andrew Miller is joining Wainwright in the breeding farm these days, carrying a FIP near 6.00 as he also doesn’t seem to have any idea where the ball is going. Always a genius move to sign and aging reliever who has been worked like a mule the past four years to a multi-year deal, don’t you think? Let’s say the Cards are a touch short in the pen, but not like, Cubs-short.

For the Cubs, they’ll hopefully welcome Pedro Strop back sometime this weekend, and seeing as how everyone else in the pen is stepping on their tongue that will be greatly welcomed. Kris Bryant can look forward to being booed the whole weekend because he happened to speak a very unthreatening truth on a fake fucking talk show that was essentially a platform for aspiring bullhorn Ryan Dempster to get a show on Marquee. Not even joking, that’s what it was. But any slight is taken an a declaration of war down there, and don’t be shocked if Yadier just tackles Bryant in the batter’s box to defend the honor of his chosen hovel. This will be point #1 on his Hall resume according to St. Louis media and fans after the game, you watch.

It’s been a bit of a rough patch. The Cubs are 4-6 over their last 10, the pen is beaten down and dusted, and the rotation needs to reclaim its standing this weekend. They got a primer stopper effort from The Cerebral Assassin on Wednesday. Hopefully the rest pick up the baton. They swept these assholes last time. Let’s have that again.

Baseball

Cardinals Spotlight: He Can See For Miles And Miles…Because That’s Where The Baseball Is Going

By Sam Fels 1113 0

Most of the admittedly overly-puffy chested predictions before the season that had the Cardinals running neck and neck with the Cubs and Brewers were based on their rotation. It contained promising neophytes (they always are with the Cards) Jack Flaherty and Dakota Hudson. As always, there was hope that this would finally be the season that Michael Wacha didn’t shoot himself in the face repeatedly. And hey, maybe Adam Wainwright wouldn’t decompose on the mound…as quickly. And of course they returned scrapheap salvaged/hero Miles Mikolas, whom Phil Rogers definitely knew would work out better than Yu Darvish and he’ll tell you that again and again.

Well, the Cards are under .500, barely holding off the Reds in last, only one member of the rotation has an ERA under 4.00, and Mikolas’s is nearing 5.00. How could this clearly established rock of a rotation go off the boil?

It’s actually pretty strange. Mikolas’s numbers, almost uniformly, are pretty much the same as they were last year. Look for yourself:

K/9: 6.55 (2018), 6.65 (2019)

BB/9: 1.30, 1.44

WHIP: 1.07, 1.17

Left-on-base %: 76.2, 71.1

BABIP: .279, .274

Line-drive rate: 22.2%, 22.1%

Hard-contact rate: 32.6%, 35.9%

So the numbers this year are a smidge worse, except for the strikeouts, but no major changes. Is that enough to explain an ERA going from 2.83 and an outside Cy Young candidate to 4.76 and a FIP from 3.28 to 4.85? No, it’s not.

The big difference you’ll find is how the fly balls he’s giving up are turning out. Last year, he was about league-average in the percentage that became something that went over the mantlepiece for some red-clad palooka. This year, it’s 20.6%. That’s double the league-average (or at least the normal league-average, as this year with the golf balls being used it’s 14.6%). The flies that Mikolas is giving up are being hit harder this year, a 43.3% hard-contact rate on them as opposed to 37% last year. Still, a fifth of them landing out beyond the walls is a touch unfair.

There’s another issue Mikolas is facing. His slider, a definite weapon last year, is getting murdered this season. Last year, hitters managed only a .184 average and a .245 slugging against that pitch. This year it’s .302 and .561. That might be a reason he’s backed off of it this year. but that only results in more fastballs, which hitters will time up. Another problem Mikolas is facing is that his slider has lost about half of its tilt from last year to this one, making it more flat. He’s still getting the same amount of whiffs per swing when it’s offered at, but there’s a lot more loud contact on it, leaving Mikolas pretty much a fastball-curve guy. It’s hard to get by on two pitches alone. You can tell from the swing rates by zone that hitters are either recognizing it better, he’s having to start it outside the zone more, or both, because he’s not getting the swings down to his glove side that he did last year:

Mikolas will probably even out before too long. Even in this souped up era, that HR/FB rate is unjust. The Cardinals will need him to, because Wainwright and Wacha are too old to be saviors, and Flaherty and Hudson might be too young.

Everything Else

I’m Not Sure I’m Ready For A Corey Crawford Farewell Tour

By Sam Fels 1861 0

This is probably not the time to discuss it, as there will be plenty of opportunity starting in training camp. And whether Corey Crawford is Vezina-level again, or can’t find it at all, as the season moves toward the expiration of his contract at its conclusion, that question is only going to get bigger. But we’re not doing anything at the moment, so let’s at least get it started.

What prompts this is Kevin Lankinen’s gold-medal winning performance at the World Championships. Now, a hot two weeks doesn’t a prospect make. Lankinen only had 19 games at Rockford last year, and he wasn’t particularly good. He even spent some time in Indy. Then again, the year before, Collin Delia spent some time in Indy, had a hot few weeks in the AHL playoffs, and he’s something of the Hawks main prospect in net now.

Backing this up is that generally, Stan and his front office have been pretty good at identifying young goalies. That’s how I’m going to get around the whole Cam Ward thing. Stan has cycled through Antti Niemi, Crawford himself (only sorta but he did get the starting job under Stan), Antti Raanta, and Scott Darling, who have all had at least reasonable NHL success at times. They did salvage Ray Emery. A bunch of others haven’t worked out, but the ones that get to Rockford tend to be something.

Whatever, the Hawks likely will enter camp with Lankinen and Delia to battle it out for the backup spot. And anyone in the backup spot to Crawford these days has to be trusted to take the wheel for a stretch or two at least. This is a spot where the Hawks can save some cash, because any viable, veteran backup might eat up two to three million that can be used elsewhere.

But the question that will come with whoever wins the job (and you can see where they’ll rotate between the backup and Rockford and both gets starts on the top roster) is whether or not they’ll be ready to take over the following season. Or whether they’ll get the chance.

Crow is entering his age-35 season. And you’re hard-pressed to find too many goalies who go beyond that. I don’t think it’s fair to compare anything to Tim Thomas, as that appears to be a strange, tin-foil hatted, bunker-filling anomaly that won’t happen again. He came out of nowhere, which isn’t the story with just about anyone else, especially Crawford. Pekka Rinne just finished his age-36 season, and it was pretty all right in a total .918 and more encouragingly, he closed strong in March and April. Roberto Luongo had solid seasons at 35, 36, and 38. Beyond that though to find really good seasons past 35, you’d be hard-pressed. Good seasons, yes. Mike Smith had one (that’s not a name that will make you feel better though), Ryan Miller had one, one or two other names.

On the flip side, Henrik Lundqvist, perhaps the best goalie of the generation and one that Crawford has, y’know, the same lifetime SV% as, started to go stale last year at 36. To be fair, he was behind a horrible Rangers team, and his actual save-percentage at evens was higher than his expected, so maybe he was just drowning thanks to his defense. We’ll see next year.

It’s not that I’m worried about Crawford turning bad in the next year or two. That’s purely tied to health, and as we saw in March last season that a healthy Crow still put up a .920 behind one of the worst defenses of the decade. Even that Crow is still going to leave the Hawks with a decision.

The scenario you easily see, given what you know about the Hawks’ operating history, is that Crow has a blistering October and November, and is handed a two- or three-year extension right then and there. We know the Hawks like to take care of their guys. We know they don’t like to let anyone important get into the last year of their deal at all. Only Crow’s health has allowed him to get this far into his contract without an extension, I’m sure.

In a vacuum, you’d let it all play out. You see how Crow plays, you see how the kids play, you decide next summer. But we know the Hawks don’t operate in a vacuum, and they’re utterly terrified of facing questions like this during the season. They never really have. Keith was locked up to prevent that ever happening. Toews and Kane were re-signed as soon as possible. Seabrook signed his deal before the last year of his previous contract ever started. Going back farther, Patrick Sharp was extended before getting close to free agency. Hjalmarsson was signed to his last extension before the last season of his previous contract started as well. The Hawks just don’t do this.

But none of them were 35, or going to be in-season. None of them had the health industry. None of them, pretty much, had the sometimes dicey relationship with the organization that Crow has had in the past.

As we’ve previously discussed, the Hawks will have some big checks to sign next summer to Alex DeBrincat and possibly Dylan Strome, with smaller but possibly not insignificant checks to go to Dominik Kahun or Dominik Kubalik (and possibly Erik Gustafsson if they want to make a huge mistake). Savings have to come from somewhere.

I’m just not ready for any of this.

 

Baseball

Series Preview – Indians vs. White Sox: Swapsies?

By Sam Fels 1251 0

vs.

RECORDS: Indians 28-29    White Sox 26-29

GAMETIMES: Thursday and Friday 7:10, Saturday and Sunday 1:10

TV: Thursday, Saturday, Sunday NBCSN, Friday WGN

PREPARING THE VIKING FUNERAL: Let’s Go Tribe

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Carlos Carrasco vs. Manny Banuelos

Trevor Bauer vs. Dylan Covey

Jefry Rodriguez vs. Ivan Nova

Zach Plesac vs. Lucas Giolito

PROBABLE INDIANS LINEUP

Francisco Lindor – SS

Oscar Mercado – CF

Carlos Santana – 1B

Jordan Luplow – RF

Jose Ramirez – 3B

Roberto Perez – C

Jake Bauers – 1B

Greg Allen – LF

Mike Freeman – 2B

PROBABLE SOX LINEUP

Leury Garcia – CF

Yoan Moncada – 3B

Jose Abreu – 1B

Yonder Alonso – DH

James McCann – C

Eloy Jimenez – LF

Tim Anderson – SS

Yolmer Sanchez – 2B

Charlie Tilson – RF

 

An actual torch-passing would be overselling it by a factor of three. And there are no torches for teams that aren’t leading the division, or even close, or even .500. So it’s not that. But there is something about the Sox being able to pass Cleveland in the standings at the end of this four-game set on 35th this weekend. They’re only a game behind, so any kind of series win would do it. That doesn’t mean that the Sox are in any way primed to charge at the Twins, and last weekend pretty much proved that. What it does signify is that Cleveland’s era of lording over the Central is almost certainly over, and their window of contention might be as well. What they do with that is going to become the main question on the Cuyahoga the next couple months.

The Sox have played The Tribe enough this year that you’re intimately familiar with the issues. Two-fifths of their rotation is on the shelf for an extended period of time in Mike Clevinger and Corey Kluber. Three if you wanted to count Danny Salazar among the starters, though that’s a stretch.

What is healthy hasn’t been any damn good, at least not with lumber in their hands. Lindor appears to be emerging from his early season malaise, but other than Santana everyone else has looked like the guy playing the Gashouse Gorillas before Bugs took over. Jordan Luplow has ground the Sox bones into his bread but hasn’t done jack or shit against anyone else. Another kid in Bauers has been given the first base job to win, and he’s hitting .215. Put plainly, they rank third-from-last in runs in the AL and team wOBA, which is at a gruesome .298. Even a reclamation of Ramirez probably isn’t enough to save this team. Luplow and Bauers converting their promise to tangible might be enough, but there probably isn’t time to wait for that.

Which puts Cleveland on the precipice of having to cash in on what they can and start over. They have both Ramirez and Lindor through 2022, which is a start (assuming Ramirez isn’t a smoldering corpse permanently). What could they turn in at the deadline and try and collect chips on? Kluber has two team option years left, neither of which are even $20M, which would make him awfully attractive. Though he may not want to go unless teams guarantee they won’t pick those up. Trevor Bauer has one more arbitration year left, and even though he’s Captain Space Brain some team will find that attractive. With Clevinger and Bieber around for a while, those are blows the Tribe could soak up and survive, you would think. Carrasco has an extremely team-friendly deal and could net them a Quintana-like package. Except he’s already 32, though he did just have a 2.94 FIP last year. There are pieces.

The Sox will see another kid who could make up for the blow of whatever pitchers the Indians move along, and that’s in Zach Plesac. Plesac rocketed through the system this year, starting in Double-A but needed only six starts there with a 0.98 ERA to move up a level. Then in three AAA starts he struck out 22 while walking one, so here he is. The only let-up for the Sox is that Bauer hasn’t been all that good, they’ve already lit him up once, and then Gasoline Alley Jefry on Saturday afternoon.

It’s not a torch passing. But it is one team watching it all close while the other is trying to jimmy theirs open (phrasing?). What we’re saying is there’s symbolism here if you want to find it. Or don’t. We don’t are.

 

 

Baseball

Indians Spotlight: All The People That Died Died Are Jose Ramirez

By Sam Fels 1255 0

To give you some idea that the NL MVP debate last year was kind of silly, Jose Ramirez had a season that completely dusted both Christian Yelich and Javier Baez, but didn’t come close to getting the award in the American League thanks to Mookie Betts and Mike Trout being alive and playing there. And Ramirez did that even though he stopped being counted among the living somewhere in August ’18. Sadly for the Tribe, he hasn’t located the Village Of The Oxygen Breathing again this year either.

The fact that Ramirez put up an 8.0 fWAR season last year despite going into the tank for the last six-to-eight weeks clues one in  just how good he was before. Going by just the first half, JR went .302/.401/.628 for an OPS of 1.028. That’s alien type stuff, and at just 25 he and Lindor looked set to anchor the right side of the Cleveland infield from here until the Earth melts (like, literally. It’s not that long and they could easily play until then).

But something happened in August, and Ramirez has yet to recover. He hit .245 last August, and then .174 in September. He just stopped hitting line drives, or the ball hard at all. Where did it all go?

There doesn’t seem to be one answer. Did pitchers start treating him differently? Yes, that’s for sure. Ramirez definitely saw significantly less fastballs in the season’s last two months, and last year those were replaced by change-ups and splitters and various other offerings that are considered “off-speed.” Combined with sliders and curves, basically not-fastballs, pitchers found something to exploit. In the season’s last eight weeks last year, Ramirez hit .083 on sliders, .115 on curves, and a Blutarski-like .000 on splits.

Ramirez has seen just about the same diet starting this year, and looks to have come in prepared for that. His batting averages on splits, curves, and sliders are all above .280. He hasn’t really hit them for a ton of power, but it hasn’t been embarrassing. But now he’s hitting .141 on fastballs. He’s popping up more fastballs by far than he did last year, which lets you know he’s behind. So in a sense, it looks like Ramirez has been caught in between for four months spreading over two seasons. Which is really hard to do.

Injury has to be a part of it though, doesn’t it? Ramirez did hurt his knee at the end of spring training this year, and it was later claimed it wasn’t serious. But can this trainwreck be explained by a completely healthy body?

Because the contact Ramirez has been making has been declining as well. Last year in July, Ramirez’s average exit velocity on fastballs was 90.6. In August it was 88.1. In September it was 86.5, which honestly is Heyward-like. This year started out back at over 90 MPH on fastballs in April, but has sunk back down to 87.5 in May. Offspeed pitches are on the same downward trajectory, whereas his force on breaking pitches (sliders and curves) is actually trending up. It’s clear what he’s sitting on, but it’s leaving him vulnerable to fastballs and pitches that are supposed to look like fastballs until they aren’t.

It makes yet another question for the Tribe, who very well might be facing blowing it all up at the trade deadline. The offense is a puddle. the outfield is a mess, they’re already 9.5 games behind the Twins, and Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger are already on the shelf. Ramirez is remarkably cheap, signing an extension $40M over the next four seasons and that’s if the two team options at the end are exercised. He’s only 26, and this can’t be forever, right? That contract certainly buys Cleveland a bunch of time to let him figure it out…or makes him awfully attractive for a team that thinks it can reclaim the soul he lost.

Clearly the Indians aren’t going anywhere (nor my fantasy team) if Ramirez doesn’t ever hit again. Can you rebuild around the guy who had a major hand in putting you in the rebuilding spot in the first place?

Everything Else

Stanley Cup Final Game 2 Recap – Oh For F–k’s Sake

By Sam Fels 1900 0

I suppose on a day when yet another professional sports team gets in bed with BarfStool it’s only right they get their dicks kicked in at home, which is essentially what the Bruins did despite the game going to overtime. This series is certainly make everyone taste their own bile, with the Bruins off the ice and the Blues on it, but here we are and now the Blues have won a Final game for the first time and nothing feels right and pretty much everything sucks. They should just cancel this thing tomorrow and the overwhelming majority of people would be happy.

I guess I have to clean it up.

-The Bruins aren’t going to win many games, if any, when their top line is getting turned over by the other team’s top line. Which is exactly what happened last night, as Schenn-Swartz-Tarasenko turned that trick. Not helping the cause at all, and the one thing we pointed out the Bruins had to do from Game 1 to 2, was sending out Zdeno Chara behind Bergeron to deal with that threat, because he isn’t up for it. Check out Tarasenko’s goal for further proof if you need, where he looked like your elderly neighbor trying to get a weed out of the yard. It’s trickier after Grzelcyk got hurt and the Bs were down to five D and still only gave Clifton 16 minutes, but you know you’ve got a matchup wrong when the other team is going to go running for it when they get the home ice on Saturday. And you can bet your ass St. Louis will. If Chara ever starts a shift anywhere but the offensive zone, fire Bruce Cassidy into the nearest landfill, which in St. Louis is always right down the block.

-Torey Krug is the only blue-liner to come out with any credit and in the black possession-wise for Boston, and that’s mostly because he’s already driven the Blues into frothing madness and they spend his entire shift trying to hunt him down like it was a fox hunt. This will only get worse in front of the braying rabble and their truck nuts, and the Bruins will score off a rush through that space at least once.

-To pin it all on Chara and the Bs ineptness isn’t fair. I thought the Blues would have to step back and basically trap, and they did so at times. They also were able to turn up the volume on their forecheck, which you can do once or twice but not convinced for a whole series. If anything, the rust everyone was worried about looked like it was more present in Game 2 as adrenaline got the Bruins through Game 1. They definitely looked too relaxed at points and it was no match for the fury of the other group.

-David Krejci showing up at some point would be nice.

-Schwartz threw up a 78% Corsi and an 81% xGF% going out there against Chara, if you’d like to know the scope of the problem here.

-Tuukka Rask made some of his own messes last night, as his rebound control was less than stellar. It prolongated too many Blues possessions and the overtime winner, though on a delayed call, was an example of something that could have been smothered earlier.

-Curious to see what Anointed Genius Berube does Saturday, as Pietrangelo was used exclusively in the offensive zone last night. If they’re going to choose to send Parayko and Edmundson at Bergeron every shift in St. Louis, I think that will go well for those of us who want this to be over quickly.

-Oskar Sundqvist’s hit was bad, I don’t know if it’s suspension bad but then again if you’re trying to eliminate this thing from hockey it has to be. There was never a point where he didn’t see Grzelcyk’s numbers, it was also late and useless, and the NHL is going to have to start erring on the side of harsh instead of lenient if it ever truly wants change. Which it probably doesn’t.

-Sammy Blais doesn’t do anything but run around like an idiot and get knocked on his ass. What a perfect representation of everything it is to be a Blue. He’s Tom Wilson without any of the whimsy.

Let’s just hope that was a one game belch.

Baseball

Series Wrap – Cubs Lose Two Of Three To Astros: Below Class

By Sam Fels 1226 0

Game 1 Box Score: Astros 6, Cubs 5

Game 2 Box Score: Astros 9, Cubs 6

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 2, Astros 1

Earlier today, Sahadev Sharma on The Athletic wrote a piece about the contrast about how the Astros pitching staff, rotation and pen, is built on missing bats and striking everyone out, and the Cubs is built on soft contact and grounders. And he stated how the difference was the ‘Stros “outclassing” the Cubs. Which I objected to at first, because hey, the Cubs could have easily won both of the first games and once they revamp the pen later in the year they’ll be more set to do that.

But then you remember the Astros were running out the B-team, and it feels a lot more apt. No Springer, no Altuve, no Correa, missing Verlander, and you realize the Cubs didn’t come close to seeing the real force of this team. Which hurts. Maybe it’s a bad stretch, and doesn’t mean anything. That’s generally how baseball works. And did we learn anything new? The Cubs offense is good, but when the rotation goes odd colors in the sun the pen isn’t anywhere near in a condition to pick up the slack. You knew that going in.

But hey, there’s Kyle Hendricks.

Let’s clean it up:

The Two Obs

-Let’s get it out at the top. I am heavily tempted to blame the lack of netting from foul pole to foul pole on the richest, asshole-iest customers who would say something like, “Well I pay the most money so I don’t want a net in my view!” for the kind of abomination that Albert Almora, and really both teams as a whole, had to go through tonight. But the thing is, if that kind of thing had been stated by season ticket holders in the first few rows, or corporate entities as they mostly are today, I feel like we’d have heard more about it. I think this is something ticketing departments around the league assume would happen but really don’t that often.

I know there are plenty of industries where it takes a disaster for things that seem so simple to change actually to change. I can’t say hockey got this right, because it took a little girl dying for them to do so. But with the netting behind the nets in hockey arenas, it’s the same reaction as the extended version in parks now. You walk in, see it, and say, “Oh, that’s new.” Then you sit down and don’t notice any difference in the view you had before after two minutes. My season tickets at the UC for the Hawks has been behind the netting, and I’m in the 300 Level where I would be in next to no danger without it. I’ve never noticed it making any difference in my viewing experience, and I honestly only think about it when something like this happens.

If there’s honestly any collection of ticket holder who throws a bitch at the idea of netting in front of him (and I’m sure it’s a male if they exist), do us all a favor and put cayenne pepper on his balls and leave the rest of us alone. Players have been screaming for this for decades now, and it’s specifically so they don’t have to go through what Almora went through tonight. Think about why this happened, and how truly stupid it is at its base level, and then wonder about how anyone goes about their day.

-All right, to the baseball. We’ve been through Hamels and Lester’s problems already, which makes it all the more impressive that Hendricks stood there and turned everything away in a place where every baseball looked like a Top Flite. The Cerebral Assassin has been sprinkling in his curve more and more as the season has gone on, and tonight he dropped his coup-de-grace when he put Marisnick down in the 7th with two on and two out on an 0-2 count. He’s never thrown that pitch in a big situation before, and if this is a new thing he can count on…well, the mind reels. It’s time Cubs fans accept that if the Cubs don’t have an ace. Hendricks is as close as they’ll get right now. He’s the stopper for sure.

-Javier Baez had a rough series, and he’s going through that phase where he’s pulling off everything. It’s frustrating to watch, because when he was leading the league in opposite field hits and homers he’s been an MVP candidate. So why try to pull everything?

-I’ve had enough of Alex Bregman, thanks.

-While I wasn’t looking, Addison Russell suddenly has representative offensive numbers. It doesn’t make anything ok, but as we live in a world where Daniel Descalso died, Russell probably is gong to get the majority of starts at second now.

-Unless David Bote can, who might actually be a major leaguer which I never would have guessed.

-Brad Brach is not going to happen.

-Me, I’m pounding Dillon Maples until it works. Because he’s my guy, he’s got the best stuff, and this is his now-or-never. He either gets it now or he’ll never. Fuck, Chatwood got there, maybe, right?

Onwards…

Baseball

Let’s Try And Feel Better About Jon Lester…And Probably Fail

By Sam Fels 1231 0

Ok, so it was less than a month ago that I was writing about being hopeful about Jon Lester. I never said I would ever make sense or be consistent. Lester might have said he would be, in some ways, but I’m just following him. Also, wasn’t it just yesterday I was here trying to make myself and maybe one or two others feel better about Hamels’s last three starts? This one is a little more dispiriting, as Lester had the Astros’ B-team lineup in front of him last night and still gave up seven runs. I was particularly galled in the 6th, with the Cubs have clawed back into the game, Lester wouldn’t give in to Derek Fisher ahead of Alex Bregman, clearly the biggest weapon the Astros had last night. I know Lester’s whole thing is that he never “gives in,” that “giving in” is for weaklings, and “giving in” is what’s ruining this country and whatever else. Still, it’s your last batter of the game, and it’s Derek Fisher. I’m finding out what he can do instead of what whatever clown comes out of the pen can do against Bregman (which took one pitch to find out and the conclusion wasn’t good).

Much like Hamels, Lester’s last three starts have been bad. 14 innings combined, 16 earned runs, four homers, 25 hits. That’s a whole lot of woof. When we last looked at this, we noted that Lester’s BABIP on the season was a hilariously low .231. Well, now it’s .333, which is also way above his career-average. The last three starts, that number is .411. That’s not just a violent market correction. That’s a market correction that is zippering open your chest and feasting on your liver nightly.

But it’s not like some or most of that isn’t deserved. If Lester qualified through innings, he’d had the third-highest hard-contact rate against right now. That’s not necessarily a death-sentence, as the one right behind him is one Madison Bumgarner, and he’s having at least a respectable season. Though Bumgarner also resides at Oracle Park, which requires a bazooka to get a ball out of most nights. Shane Bieber, Cleveland’s hot new thing, is also around this mark, and he’s got a 3.11 ERA that’s real. So does Robbie Ray, but both ray and Bieber strike out more hitters than Lester does. Still, it’s much higher than it’s ever been and that’s worth worrying about.

We also noted in that last post that Lester has gone to his cutter far more this season, and is trying to use it on both sides of the plate instead of just in on the hands of righties. It hasn’t always worked, and the last three starts…well…

Lester has gone away from using the outside corner with his cutter the last three starts, and when he hasn’t gotten it low and inside, he’s getting murdered. Lester has decreased the use of his cutter the last three starts, upping the use of his change and fastball. But the fastball hasn’t been doing much better, with a .571 slugging against in those three starts. He’s also getting next to now whiffs on it.

Lester had made reference to Sahadev Sharma in The Athletic that he just feels off, and this searching for a release point the past three starts speaks to that a bit:

On the plus side, Lester’s velocity has been climbing a bit in the past few starts. On the downside, it’s still down overall this year. It might just be that Lester doesn’t throw hard enough anymore to miss his spot at all, and that righties seem to be getting to fastballs off the plate inside suggest that.

We’ll have to see what Lester does in the next few starts to change, whether that’s more cutters trying to nick the outside corner or junking it up a bit with curves and changes. The Cubs are going to need something.

Everything Else

Bettman’s Address Is Always Good At Saying Nothing

By Sam Fels 1676 0

I don’t expect to get much out of Gary Bettman press conferences. His address at the start of the Final is never quite like Roger Goodell’s at the Super Bowl, though he never says anything much ever either. Something about being a commissioner, you just have to be really good at saying nothing. Unless you’re Rob Manfred, and you end up saying the wrong thing a good portion of the time. But hey, better than Bud Selig… I think?

ANYWHO…

A good portion of Bettman’s presser was about replay, as apparently we’re supposed still be in a rage over Timo Meier’s hand-pass even though the Blues didn’t lose another game that series (like they were supposed to). Bettman hit all the right notes about “balance” and “pace and rhythm” of the game and such. But you know, the more I think about it, the more there is a limit to what you can review and how it might not be something that keeps expanding until infinity. Maybe.

One, I still pretty much think that the challenge system is ridiculous and far inferior to an additional official in a box with a bank of screens communicating with the refs on the ice via headset. However, the challenge system has kind of relegated the offsides review to the hail mary that it usually is. Coaches banking a delay of game penalty on it has kept them from just throwing any challenge out there and losing just a timeout. That really shouldn’t be discounted. As far as losing that timeout of goalie interference, well, one would actually have to define what goalie interference is and they haven’t gotten there yet.

Still, when it comes to goals, what are we really talking about here? Kicked in, goalie interference, crossed the line, high stick (which seemingly never gets called). Right now, that’s it. That doesn’t seem a huge scope of things that adding hand-passes and whether the puck went out of play before a goal would make this a mountain that a bunch of rich people will die on of possible reviews (Topical!). And the puck going out of play could probably mostly be solved with the nets above the glass being white instead of black, as the lighting in most arenas makes a ripple on a black net really hard to see but much easier on a white one.

That seems possible. Restrict it to hand-passes in the offensive zone and let’s go. All goals are reviewed anyway, we’ve already gotten accustomed to that. I still don’t know why all sports haven’t employed a 30-second limit on reviews (well, I know why the NFL did because they figured out they could cram in another ad or two). If I can tell on my couch after a look or two if something is clear or not, so can they.

As far as reviewing delay of game calls or shots to the head…again, a 30-second clock or simply a video ref radioing down without the need of the refs to go to a phone would solve a lot of this. Yes, NHL arenas can’t get loud but if European soccer refs can manage, so can NHL ones. But that would depend on how seriously the NHL wants to crack down on hits to the head.

I also still contend that moving one ref or both off the ice and to a perch above the glass would solve a lot, as they would spend no time protecting their face or trying to get out of the way of play and could actually watch the action full-time. But I’m not going to sit on a hot stove waiting for that one.

-Bettman also addressed the CBA, which is looming. I’ll give him that he doesn’t pin peace on the NHLPA exclusively, while still firing an opening salvo, saying that both sides have things they’d probably like to change but overall everyone is doing well.

For the most part, you’d have to say both sides are doing well. The owners have the 50-50 split they’ve craved. and players at the top of the chain are getting theirs. Young players, except for the truly elite, are still eating it, but that’s more a fight between players before it even gets to the owners.

So a couple simple things I would want the players to try and get without a lockout, as if there’s any hope of avoiding that. One is an NBA-style mid-level exception or two. It’s vets that are getting squeezed out by teams only concentrating on top end talent and then young, cheap talent. We see a raft of players on PTOs come training camp that really should have contracts. Something like $3-$4 million, or two $3M slots, for players that are over 27 or have seven years in the league or thereabouts.

Second, get rid of the cap recapture penalty. It was a stupid idea in the first place that I can’t believe the union went along with, and punished teams and players for what they did under a different system. It’ll open up flexibility for some teams, and end this ridiculous saga of players having to be on LTIR for four years or whatever that is just silly. Those are two things I would want, which wouldn’t break any owners.

Of course, the owners, if they were ever to agree to any of this, would want something in return. But fuck ’em. They’ve got enough.

Baseball

Why Is Hole Camels Getting His Whole Ass Kicked?

By Sam Fels 1840 0

When the PECOTA projections and others came out before the season and sent greater Cubdom into a Burning Man-like fit, a lot of what those systems saw was questions about the Cubs’ rotation. Well, not questions exactly, because computers don’t have questions they generate answers and this could turn into a philosophical debate that goes on forever about man and machine and that’s not really what we do here. ANYWHO, the Cubs starting rotation is definitely on the old side, definitely contains pitchers (other than Hendricks) who have had dips the past two years and who had peripherals that were a touch worrying.

These questions were basically not considered the first six weeks of the season, or the six weeks after the first one, where the Cubs rotation was probably the best in baseball and took the Cubs from 2-7 to multiple games up in the division. But now the Cubs have had a rough two weeks or so, a .500 road trip and a sub-.500 homestand before losing yesterday to the Astros (which tends to happen). There’s been an iffy couple trips through the rotation, which starts setting off alarm bells and if it doesn’t stop pretty soon will have bonfires and effigies and weird clothing in a desert somewhere (I’ve never been to Burning Man and don’t intend to, so I’m just going to have this very limited and comedic view of it).

Perhaps the most worrying part of the starting staff’s struggles of late is Cole Hamels. His past three starts have basically seen his nuts get kicked up into his throat. He’s only managed 13 innings, and in them he’s given up eight extra-base hits, 11 earned runs, nine walks against just 11 strikeouts, and 23 hits overall. That’s a 2.46 WHIP and a 7.61 ERA. So yeah, that’s not good. On the plus side, he remains extremely handsome.

So what’s been the issue? Clearly the control is something to be looked at, as Hamels had only walked 17 hitters in the previous 49 innings this season But we can go a little deeper.

On the plus side, Hamels hasn’t lost any velocity. His fastball has actually been at a higher MPH the past three starts than it was before, up over a 92.5 MPH average where it has been 91.2 in the three starts before. Hamels hasn’t seen any change in movement either, as no pitch has lost its drop or horizontal movement. His curve flattened out a little in his start against the Nats, but that was a one-off and has been where it has been all of the season for the most part.

There hasn’t been much of a change in usage, either. His last good start, against Milwaukee, he threw his fastball basically 70% of the time, but that was also an outlier and he’s been where he’s been all season, throwing it about just half the time.

But it’s the fastball/sinker where this issues seem to be. Or could be, if three starts are enough to go on. Check out his release point on his the fastball/sinker (which are basically the same thing for Hamels) over the course for the season:

Something of a dip, and his curve has seen the same though it was back to normal in Houston yesterday, it just didn’t get him saved from getting shelled.

Where does that result? Well, accuracy. Here’s where Hamels’s fastball was in his first eight starts of the season:

Pretty much in the strikezone, and when missing it was outside which is away from power for most righties. Basically zoning in on the outside corner, and when he did come inside it was low. Now the last three starts:

Whoops. All over the place, inside more than he’s been, not in the zone, and not surprisingly it’s inside and high in the zone where he’s getting mushed but good lately. It would seem the lower arm angle has cost him control and has led to pitches carrying inside and high to righties more often.

Once Hamels gets back to zeroing in on the outside corner again, or his arm-side corner, things should be fine. Let’s just hope he gets back there sooner than later.