Baseball

Series Preview – Nationals vs. Cubs: Fight Fire With Fire

By Sam Fels 1333 0

vs.

 RECORDS: Nationals 69-57   Cubs 69-58

GAMETIMES: Friday-Sunday 1:20

TV: ABC Friday, NBCSN Saturday, WGN Sunday

THOSE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS: Federal Baseball

While the Cubs have been scorching at home since the break, the challenges in front of them wouldn’t exactly be called daunting. The Pirates, Reds (as annoying as they’ve been), and Padres are all at bottom halves of cycles at best. The Brewers are most definitely stuck in neutral, and the Giants are probably more neutral than they are despite what they’ve convinced themselves. Only the A’s are genuine playoff contenders, and the Cubs did manage two of three from them. That will get tuned up again this weekend, as the Nationals have been one of the better teams in baseball in the past couple months.

And these teams mirror each other in more than just record. They have very good rotations. They have offenses that are capable of needing geiger counters to measure them, but can also go the other way on you for little reason. And both watch their bullpens from the safety of a panic room.

Still, the Nats have harnessed that to the tune of a 45-24 record since June 1st, which was about the time everyone was fitting them for a toe-tag and telling Dave Martinez to get his resume ready. Since that date, they have the second most runs in the NL behind the Braves, the second best average as a team behind the Rockies, and third-best slugging mark. It’s not hard to figure out why, because there are weapons at almost every spot. Juan Soto has become a mutant at age 20 and is having one of the best age-20 seasons in history. Anthony Rendon is gong to make himself very rich this winter…or he would in a market that made any sense. Adam Eaton and Trea Turner, two players who have battled injury or ineffectiveness/learning curve, have joined the fun. Howie Kendrick has mashed, which is a thing he’s done for a decade now. Asdrubal Cabrera showed up off the waiver wire and in 11 games has hit .327, for god’s sake. It’s a little obscene.

The Nats will roll up having scored 84 runs in their past nine games. And while racking up runs against the Brewers and Pirates isn’t all that hard, they did it to the Reds too and you’ve seen what their pitching can do.

Combine that with Stephen Strasburg, Patrick Corbin, and Max Scherzer, and you get this stretch, even with Scherzer missing some time. The Cubs will catch a break in that they’ll miss Scherzer and Corbin, though they’ll get Strasburg on Sunday. Anibal Sanchez has been able to dodge the raindrops again, three years after it seemed like he was finished.

Ah, but the bullpen. It was ever thus. And this one will show up with closer Sean Doolittle on the IL. Other than him, the Nats have had nowhere to go. No heavily used reliever has an ERA below 4.00, and they’re currently trying to survive with excavations Daniel Hudson, Fernando Rodney, and Hunter Strickland. It’s worked on a limited basis, but there’s a reason these guys were covered with sand and dust when the Nats found them. You’d like to think in the non-Strasburg starts, the Cubs will find some joy in the later innings if they need them.

Their offense has been an Earth-mover. The Cubs have won five in a row. Immovable objects and irresistible forces and all that. Except when the bullpen doors open on either side.

Baseball

Nationals Spotlight: Max Scherzer, The Best Righty Of His Generation?

By Sam Fels 1267 0

Everyone knows that Justin Verlander is the best right-handed pitcher of this era. What this post presupposes is…maybe he isn’t? Either way, it’s kind of funny that the Tigers had both Verlander and Max Scherzer and contrived to not win a World Series. And it would appear the Nationals are intent on imitating that pretty closely.

Anyway, whatever category you look at, Scherzer has Verlander, aside from length of career (Verlander has pitched for three more seasons). Strikeouts per nine innings? Scherzer 10.54 to 9.02. Walks? Scherzer again, 2.44 to 2.58. WHIP? 1.09 to 1.14 for Scherzer again. ERA? 3.17 to 3.55. FIP? Scherzer 3.12 to 3.43. ERA-? 76 to 79 in favor of the DC ace.

Now, the Verlander fans (or really, the Kate Upton fans because let’s be honest) will point out that Verlander has spent every year of his career in the AL, whereas Scherzer has been in the NL the last five seasons and his first full season with Arizona. And the AL is slightly tougher on pitchers, with the DH and all. Still, Scherzer has dominated in the AL as well, and racked up one of his Cy Youngs there. They’re certainly neck and neck, though it feels like Verlander is still the #1 in a lot of experts’ minds.

If it wasn’t for injury, Scherzer would be on track for a career season this year at age 35. Which is saying something given the avalanche of home runs that pitchers have been dealing with this year. He’s striking out more hitters than he ever has, his walk rate is the second-lowest of his career, and he’s produced more grounders this season than he has since he was a Diamondback.

How has Scherzer gone about this? There doesn’t seem to be a huge change in usage or repertoire. Scherzer is using his fastball less than before, the least amount in his career in fact at just 48%. Which is a little strange, because it has even more juice on it than it did last year at 95.2 MPH. No other pitch has lost much either. And there isn’t much change in how any of his pitches move. And yet his slider and change have gotten more whiffs than before.

What gives?

It appears that Scherzer has decided to live on the hands of left-handed hitters, for one.

He’s getting a higher grounder rate against lefties than in the last five years. For righties, Scherzer is doing the opposite, going to the outside corner more and going away from righties’ hands. It’s resulted in a much higher ground-ball rate from righties for him.

The only problem Scherzer has run into this season is health. This will be the first season that Scherzer won’t collect at least 30 starts, as he’s only at 20 now and just got off the IL yesterday. Perhaps that will leave him fresher for the one frontier he hasn’t conquered, at least for the Nats, and that’s the postseason.

As strange as it sounds, Scherzer has only made three postseason starts for the Nationals. Two in the Division Series against the Dodgers in 2016, and one against the Cubs the following season when he dealt with health problems again and couldn’t appear until Game 3. And he made that one, ill-fated relief appearance in Game 5 against the Cubs. The Nats have lost all four of those postseason games, even though he was brilliant in two of them.

Verlander got to put his record straight with the Astros in 2017. Could it finally be Scherzer’s turn to match him there as well?

 

Baseball

Series Recap – Cubs Sweep Giants: Looks Like George Is Back On Top Again

By Sam Fels 1370 0

Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 5, Giants 3

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 12, Giants 11

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 1, Giants 0

And now back on top of the rollercoaster. The Cubs return home, where they’ve looked like a genuine class team all season, and though they did their best to drop one or two to the Giants, they also couldn’t break their own resolve. A resolve they only seem to have when donning the blue pinstripes. Still, they’ll enter the weekend in first place, no matter what the Cardinals do with the Rockies tonight. They won every type of game–a shootout, a pitcher’s duel, and your conventional one. Why does the rest have to be so hard?

Let’s…

-You wouldn’t suggest Cole Hamels is “back,” but he had at least enough stuff and enough savvy to kind of Forrest Gump his way through Tuesday’s opener. It was sort of the Jon Lester thing where you feel like he’s about to give at any moment, but gets through the inning and start simply because he wants to. After what he’d done his two previous you’ll take it, but we’d much prefer the dominating one from earlier in the season back.

-It had been a while since Rizzo had won a game for the Cubs on his own. You have to say though that a mark of a great player is that they’re still finding ways to help even when the power game goes. Rizzo has gotten on base consistently even if he wasn’t slugging, but a slugging binge is what the Cubs need.

-I was worried that with two recent starts for Tony Kemp that Joe Maddon had overreacted to two grounders that were outside Ian Happ‘s limited range during that collapse in Philly, but that fear has subsided since. And thank god for that.

-There isn’t much to say about Nick Castellanos at this point, but it is important to remember an unsustainable binge shouldn’t influence you or the Cubs on whether he should be re-signed this winter or not. There’s going to be a huge push to do so, and that may be the right decision, but just try to keep the whole picture in mind. He’s not a .400 hitter. He might be entering his prime right now and could be better than what he’s been before, but let’s try and keep reasoned here if possible.

-There is so much to say about Wednesday’s win I don’t know if I have time. We’ve been over Yu’s work, so we don’t have to go over that again. There were some curious decisions from Maddon, which he got away with because his offense decided they were going to win no matter what. He definitely got caught cold with how quickly it blew up on Darvish, which meant only Derek Holland was warming up. And when he got through two lefties who both got on, that meant he had to face a righty which he never should have to do. Secondly, Joe never seemed to realize that Little Yaz has been better against lefties than righties all season, even having Kyle Ryan deal with him today (which he also got away with).

In the 7th last night, Joe seems determined to make sure that Steve Cishek warms up and comes in double the amount now to make up for the appearances he missed while on the IL. Right into the fire. But there were runners on, lefties up, grounders needed, which is what Brandon Kintzler does. Cishek got out of it with only a sac fly given up, but you wanted things on the ground or Ks. Kintzler probably should have started the inning. Of course, Kintzler gets out of the 8th relatively cleanly. Coudl have used that in the 6th or 7th.

-Luckily, Kris Bryant is still a Cub. That’s three games in a week he’s pulled the Cubs’ ass out of a sling.

-Today’s game looked a lot like one where both teams played too late last night. The sun was the offensive MVP, and the Giants only real chance came after Castellanos got pretty dizzy chasing what would have been a homer from Crawford on 75 other home dates. Still, the Cubs got six outs from the pen to protect a one-run lead without needing Kimbrel or Cishek. That’s an upset.

-Those two outings were the best Kimbrel has looked since becoming a Cub. I won’t count on it to be a trend, as it’s just going to be a weird season for him given the preparation, but 98 MPH is 98 MPH.

Onwards…

Baseball

Series Preview – Rangers at White Sox: Lone Star Falling

By Andy Jonathan 1313 0

VS

RECORDS: Rangers 63-65 / White Sox 57-69 (nice) (not really)

GAMETIMES: Thursday/Friday 7:05,  Saturday 6:10,  Sunday 1:10

TV: Thurs/Fri/Sun NBCSN,  Saturday WGN

BECAUSE GOOD IS DUMB:  Lone Star Ball

 

Hot damn that was an awesome game to take the series from the Twins yesterday. Gi0lito was absolutely dominant in mowing down 12 Twins, who are the league leaders in team slugging percentage. Lucas truly has gotten his ship righted and the home stretch here should feature the Sox having a chance to win anytime he starts. Unfortunately for us, he’s not going to be starting at all this series, so hopes for a series win or split rest with Reynaldo Lopez and Ivan Nova. Thankfully this is not the same Rangers team the Sox faced back in June.

Since the last series with the Good Old Boys from Arlington, things ain’t so good no more for the Rangers. Turns out the team everyone thought was smoke and mirrors was actually comprised of smoke and mirrors. In the first few months of the season, the Rangers were 8th in the AL in hitting and 8th in the AL in pitching. All in all not a bad place to be, as with a little luck being in the middle of the pack everywhere allows you to compete.  They weren’t able to stay there however, as since July the Rangers have slid considerably down the Hill O’ Regression. They dropped to 11th of 15 in hitting, but managed to only slip to 9th in pitching. Some of the slide in hitting was (unbelievably) Hunter Pence hitting the IL, as he had miraculously been able to kick Father Time in the dick and post the type of numbers that hadn’t been seen since he first showed up in the Bay Area eight years ago. The other dagger was Joey Gallo hitting the injured list as well with a fractured hamate bone in his hand. While that sucks for him (and if I’m being honest, baseball as a whole as he was basically the AL’s version of Cody Bellinger before he went down) and the Rangers, it did result in this quality Twitter thread when TR Sullivan accidentally typed “hamster bone” instead of “hamate.”

Since the All Star game, the Rangers have had the same type of success as the White Sox, going 17-27 in that stretch, and now find themselves way outside of the playoff picture looking in. Much like the White Sox, they largely stood pat at the trade deadline. One of their only moves was to acquire Nate Jones on a flyer from the Sox for a couple of low-A minor league players. Veterans that could’ve fetched something at the deadline such as Pence and Shin-Soo Choo have stayed. The younger players here are somewhat of a mixed bag, as Danny Santana and Delino DeShields have been playing pretty well, but Rougned Odor and Nomar Mazara have shown to be only slightly above replacement level. Elvis Andrus is still a plus-level player at shortstop, but has entered the dreaded Year 30 season and we all know it’s a rocket sled to obscurity from here on out.

On the pitching side, Lance Lynn and Mike Minor have been able to continue their solid run and keep the rotation afloat for the most part. The other trade the Rangers made at the deadline was to acquire Kolby Allard from the Braves for the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin. Allard was a pretty highly ranked prospect arm for the Braves, but they have a lot of those and Allard was deemed expendable. He’s been decent for the Rangers so far going 1-0 in his first three starts, two of which featured him giving up three or less runs. The other was six. He’s similar to Dylan Cease in that he features a plus fastball and curveball, and an above average changeup. When he can control his fastball up in the zone his stuff is pretty unhittable. Allard will go on Saturday against Nova in what I guess will be the marquee pitching matchup for this series?

As for the Sox, after their solid series victory against the Twins they come home having gone 3-4 on the seven-game road trip. Some very good starting pitching, and some very not good bullpen pitching makes that number what it is. The Sox bats have come alive as well, with Jose Abreu hitting .345 with four home runs and 15 RBI in that span. The Sox should also get Yoan Moncada back from his hamstring stint on the IL, which will hopefully move Ryan Goins over to 2b and planting Yolmer firmly on the bench, waiting for his chance to come in and bunt. Ross Detwiler gets the 5th starter spot this time around, and if he can replicate what Hector Santiago did in his start against the Angels I’d be OK with that. Dylan Cease gets another shot to keep the ball in the park, as he tries to straighten the learning curve out (pun intended).

Much like the past few series, if the Sox can keep the ball in the park they stand a decent chance of at least taking half these games. Getting Yoan back at the hot corner should provide a boost to the Sox offense, and hopefully it can carry them to a series win.

Don’t Stop Now Boys.

Baseball

Rangers Spotlight: Joey Abs

By Andy Jonathan 1591 0

What to make of Joey Gallo? When the Rangers drafted him in the late stages of the first round in 2013, they were hoping they had found their power hitter of the future. The rock they could build their roster around for years to come. During his trek through the minors, Gallo looked to be exactly that, averaging well over a 120 wRC+ throughout multiple levels of their system. Parallel to that was his extraordinarily high K-rate. Through his 3 1/2 years in the Rangers minor league system, the lowest K-rate he ever posted was  29% in high A ball, and that was with less than 250 plate appearances. The highest was in AAA where he spiked to 39.5% with 228 plate appearances.

So the Rangers had found their power threat, and when they called him up full time in 2017 he proved just that, swatting 41 home runs in his rookie season to go along with 80 RBI. The thing that stands out about that is that more than 50% of Gallo’s runs batted in that season came from the long ball. That’s inordinately high, as the MLB average in 2017 was just under 40% for the top 20 leaders in home runs. He also carried over his penchant for striking out at a hilariously high rate, with his K-percentage sitting just under 37%. These trends showed up the following season in 2018, with his K-rate again in the upper 30’s, his home runs in the low 40s, and his RBI totals in the upper 80s.

Then this year happened. He started out the season on an absolute tear, hitting 16 home runs with 42 RBIs. His K-rate was still high, but his walk rate spiked as well, going up to almost 20%. Gallo was attempting to buck the narrative that he was a true “three outcomes hitter” by displaying doubles power to the opposite field all of a sudden. Gallo also showed some maturity in the field, matching his career high for assists in a season (8) within the first two and a half months. Had he continued at that pace, he would’ve easily passed his season records for singles, doubles, home runs and RBIs. Unfortunately, he also spent a considerable time on the IL this season, most recently fracturing the hamate bone in the palm of his hand. Based on most projections pertaining to healing times, he’s probably done for the season.

So who is Joey Gallo, really? Is he the dinger/strikeout/walk guy from 2016-2018? Or is the complete player that appeared this season? Looking at his advanced stats from this year, his BABIP sits at .368, which is fairly high but not to the point where you would think regression would cut his progress so far off at the knees. When you combine his BABIP from the previous two seasons it sits at .250, which is .118 lower then his BABIP this season. It’s also way below the league average, even for a power hitter such as him. If you split the difference between the two you get .309, and looking at Gallo’s numbers he put up before the hamate injury that seems to be just about right. His wRC+ for 2019 was at 144, with it being around 120 the previous two seasons.

Looking at the big picture for the Rangers it seems like Gallo has turned into exactly what they were hoping for: a gigantic lefty power hitter who the club can build around for seasons to come. The main question for them now is are they doing a good enough job with it? Danny Santana has busted out in a big way this year, but a peek at his advanced stats shows a lot of smoke and not much fire. Delino DeShields started slow but appears to be coming on now. Elvis Andrus is still awesome, but at 30 years old now is he going to be a part of this rebuild the Rangers now find themselves in? Nomar Mazara was supposed to be a thing, but he’s just a guy. Rougned Odor throws a mean right and is good for 25 home runs, but can he bat above the Mendoza line?

These are all questions the Rangers need answered if they’re gonna build around Joey Gallo. He’s definitely the kind of guy you can build a contender around, but I don’t know if they’ve done a good enough job so far to make use of him properly.

Sounds a lot like Jose Abreu.

Baseball

Yu Darvish Is Incredibly Weird

By Sam Fels 2155 0

But you knew that. He’s also a hero, because he’s dunking on David Kaplan in a second language, when Kap can’t even manage his first.

Darvish’s entire Cub career has been hard to get your arms around. His first was ruined by an injury that at first even his own team wasn’t sure was actually there, until he proved it. Remember the whole Alex Rodriguez play-acting journalist thing? The eight starts he did manage weren’t all that impressive. Then this year started, and there were flashes of everything, from brilliant to helpless to utterly confusing. It was an amazing Javy Vasquez cosplay. It was infuriating, as Darvish couldn’t seem to harness any of his pitches, nor decide which ones to throw when.

And then there’s this recent strange of what should be insane dominance. And yet it’s not, because the thread through all of this season at least has been giving up home runs. And to most people, that means there must be a problem. We’re looking for something that isn’t there, or it’s just right there in front of us and we can’t see it. I don’t know, and neither do you. But considering everything else, there can’t be a problem. There doesn’t have to be a reason in baseball. Things can just happen to happen. It’s what makes it so fascinating and frustrating, and leads to all those metaphors for life that probably drive you nuts as well.

So let’s get into it. So here’s the big number. Since July 1st, Yu Darvish has a 35.5-to-1 K/BB ratio. That’s 35.5. He’s struck out 71 hitters. He’s walked two. In August, he’s struck out 35 hitters and walked none. So in August, he has an infinity K/BB ratio, because he might not walk anyone ever again. For reference sake, since July 1, the second-best K/BB rate is Justin Verlander’s at 11.5. And 11.5 is amazingly good! Darvish is over three times that!

So when you’re striking out that many hitters, and walking literally no one, it’s really hard to argue you’re doing anything wrong. And yet there are the homers, and homers come off mistakes, so something must be wrong. But if you look at the whole picture, the homers have to be an anomaly. A ghost in the machine. Just some sort of spasm of weirdness. The ultimate punishment for being mere millimeters off where a pitch should be. It’s disproportionally punitive.

In this stretch, hitters are batting .211 against Darvish. That’s incredibly good. He’s not getting hit at all, except for last night where he was clearly off. In August, it’s .222, still really good. And yet they’re slugging .544, which isn’t. Which means every single hit he’s giving up, or close to it, is getting hit hard. So I guess you could argue his mistakes are bigger than others, because they’re just sitting there to get whacked. But if you’re striking out 35 hitters for every one you walk, you really can’t be making that many mistakes. You’re probably making barely any at all.

The number on the other side is a 24.6% HR/FB rate for the season, which is almost twice Yu’s career-average. In four August starts, it’s 44%. There’s no “method” to that, it’s just extremely bad luck. Yu would have needed simply four guys to foul a mistake straight back, a matter of an inch or two to cut that in half, and 22% would still be abnormally high for him.

So is something going on with fly balls? I mean, sort of? Yu is giving up 40% hard-contact on the fly-balls he gives up, which his high, but it’s hardly amongst the leaders. Just so you know, when giving up fly balls, Tyler Beede’s 56.2% hard-contact leads, and Yu ranks 52nd. And it’s less than two percent of an increase on his 2017 season, y’know the one that netted him this big contract. It’s not out of line from anything he’s done before, it’s just that everything keeps floating out of the park.

I suppose an argument you can make is that when you’re walking no one, hitters know you’re around the plate all the time so they’re a little more tuned in? Or maybe all of Yu’s mistakes are in the zone instead of outside? Doesn’t seem to bother Kershaw much, but Yu isn’t Kershaw. But are we really going to advocate Yu start walking more guys? How would that really help?

Maybe it’s a certain pitch or two that’s the problem. Except it isn’t. Every pitch is going for a higher slugging this season, due to that inflated HR/FB rate. But the thing is, a majority of his pitches are giving up less fly balls than his career norms–slider, curve, and cutter. The fastball and sinker are getting lifted in the air more often, but not exceedingly so. And only his cutter is getting hit for more line-drives by a significant margin. Yet they’re all going out of the park at a higher rate. The big one is that his splitter has a huge jump in home run/put-in-play rate, which I guess you could point to as the pitch he’s making more mistakes with than others. But it also has a 40% whiff rate, so would you really ask him to drop it?

Essentially, what I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Yu give up two homers the rest of the season without changing a thing simply because BASEBALL. You really can’t stress enough that when you’re striking out 35 hitters for every one you walk, there’s nothing to change, no matter what Kap’s galaxy dome has to say.

Baseball

Series Wrap – Sox Take Two of Three From Twins – The Neural Pathway to Victory

By Adam Hess 1108 0

BOX SCORES

Game 1: Sox 6, Twins 4

Game 2: Sox 4, Twins 14

Game 3: Sox 4, Twins 0

There are few things as frustrating as the White Sox getting their shit kicked in by the Minnesota Twins, but also few things more incredible than the White Sox kicking the Twins’ shit in. This week we got to witness both of these things happen, and it was a little strange but given that Lucas Gi0lito shoved in Wednesday’s game for the dominant win, it felt far more satisfying. Any time we can beat the shit out of those lousy idiots up north is a good time. Let’s do this:

– Ivan Nova has slowly grown on me this year, but I feel like it’s more like a disgusting zit and less like a nice beard. Not to say that Nova hasn’t been good, because he has been nothing short of solid in most of his starts for a while now (did I hedge this sentence enough?).  In reality, though, he was just so bad early in the season that he is now pitching less bad and this really is what the Sox were expecting and hoping for when they traded for him to be their innings eater rather than adding someone who could, you know, actually be a difference making starter.

– Fresh among a week in which Rick Renteria adopted the company line and told any fans who might criticize his lineup construction and in game decisions to kiss his ass, he made yet another extremely questionable and crticizable (?) decision by putting on a suicide squeeze with a two run lead and an 0-2 count in the seventh inning. Now to be fair, I also would probably rather not watch Yolmer Sanchez swing  a bat in an important situation, and it’s not like Ricky has a lot of options at his disposal (which I think was at the heart of his comments about critics), but I am just hoping that all of the bunting will go away next year when there is hopefully some real talent here.

– I do not want to talk much about Game 2, because it was very very bad. But Nelson Cruz is still fucking awesome and I am not looking forward to the Sox having to face him next year as well.

– Last comment about Game 2, but it’s tough to see Reynaldo Lopez get shelled after he had been having a strong second half of the season. Hopefully it was just one bad start and we move on.

– I am not sure what more I can say about Lucas Giolito at this point. The man is simply incredible, and it’s pretty cool to think that a huge part of his early struggles were mostly mental. It definitely seemed that way last year, and hearing about all of his neural pathway training (that inspired this recap title, thank you) was pretty fascinating. It was the kinda thing that makes you want to do the weird computer thing and figure out your own brain. But if you put me at full brain power I’d obviousbly be unstobbale and the whole world would be fucked.

– We should get Yoan Moncada back for this next series against the Rangers. So this team will become slightly more likeable and watchable. Thank you God.

Baseball

Ricky Adds To Sox Spiky

By Sam Fels 1322 0

Ok, sorry about that.

It’s been a cantankerous few days on the Southside. I suppose this is where a joke about it always being cantankerous around 35th and Shields would go, and that’s just the Sox Experience, but I’m trying to turn a new leaf here. So we’ll just leave it. A couple days ago you had Rick Hahn making the mistake of thinking Twitter represents all Sox fans and lashing out. And today in the Athletic, Rick Renteria has just about had it with people criticizing his lineup construction.

It’s not hard to see where Renteria’s anger, or insecurity, or frustration boils from. This is his second managerial job, and the first one lasted only one season before he was replaced by Joe Maddon and the Cubs went on to this era. His one season on the Northside was seen merely as a caretaker, someone to smile at Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro to aid their development after having their souls broken by Dale Sveum. And it was generally understood that Renteria would be moved along when things mattered again, which happened much faster than anyone anticipated. It felt like Renteria was never judged on what he could do as a manager, and though his one season didn’t mean much, we never got much of an answer.

The thing is though, both Rizzo and Castro had their best seasons in the majors in 2014, Rizzo’s by far. Now maybe you can chalk that up to just natural maturation and growth, but it would be a stretch to say Renteria didn’t have anything to do with it all. Moreover, Jake Arrieta became a star that campaign, Kyle Hendricks, Jorge Soler, and Javy Baez came up late in that season (though the latter certainly had some issues with the whole whiffing-at-the-world thing), and at least some seeds were planted. We can even throw in Hector Rondon having a great season as a Rule-5 pick, and he would be a valuable piece going forward. It feels like all of this couldn’t have happened in spite of or around the manager, smiling politely the whole way.

So to the Sox, and once again Renteria is being viewed as merely a placeholder or glorified mascot, even in his third year of managing. And for the most part, at least to start, he wasn’t given really anything to work with. You don’t want to look at that 2017 team if you’ve eaten in the last hour or are planning to in the next. Basically, it had one pitcher who was then flipped across town halfway through and not much else.

Still, this season, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, and Lucas Giolito have all taken major steps forward–along with at least half of a breakout campaign from James McCann–and it’s easy to pass that off as them just being naturally talented and gaining experience. But this seems to keep happening with Renteria around, so either he’s one of the luckiest guys in the world when it comes to young talent or he at least can provide an environment for it to progress and even flourish. There are more than a few managers who couldn’t even figure that one out.

As the article is based around. Renteria gets a lot of shit for his lineup choices, and as it also points out he’s behind a handful of eight-balls when it comes to it. Earlier in the year it was Anderson batting seventh, though now he’s batted second even more. Some would have liked to have seen Eloy moved up, but he hasn’t really done anything yet to merit that. Overall, I’m of the opinion batting order is a touch overblown, but it’s easy to see where hitting third or fourth would add extra pressure to a rookie still trying to navigate the heavy waters of The Show.

Renteria doesn’t have an OBP-heavy leadoff hitter anywhere, which isn’t his fault. It also would seem that Jose Abreu is entrenched in the third spot as organizational policy, so someone has to go cleanup which we’ve come to find out isn’t really where you want your best hitters. In an ideal world where everyone was healthy and producing, your top three would be some combo of Moncada, Jimenez, and Anderson, but it just hasn’t worked out like that for various reasons. Renteria has black holes essentially in center, right, DH, and second base. That’s a lot to navigate around.

Of course, he can’t escape the criticisms of his in-game managing, and there’s way too much bunting and playing for one-run. And while James Fegan here leans to the “having no choice with the talent on hand” button, which is defensible, to me if the season isn’t really about wins and losses (and it isn’t) then you have to establish what you’re going to do going forward. How you’re going to play. Show the kids who will be here that no, we don’t bunt here or we don’t go for moving the runner over, just bash the shit out of the ball and let’s get two or three at once. But at the same time, does it really matter what he decides to do with Yolmer or Cordell at the plate? How much of a tone does that set going forward for Moncada or Jimenez? I’m guessing not much of one.

As for bullpen management, we know Renteria likes to go hard at times, and get the matchups he wants. There is something to be said of showing everyone that you want to get wins, that their hard work should be rewarded at times with the manager doing just as much to get those rewards. Though beyond Aaron Bummer and Jace Fry (maybe Jimmy Cordero), it’s hard to see out of the pen who is going to matter long term. But getting them in as many big spots as you can isn’t the worst idea in the world.

None of this means I or anyone else would expect Renteria to be around when the Sox are contending again, be that next year or probably more likely 2021. Which might be harsh on Rick for a second time, but that’s reality. But it would seem the main crux of his job–moving the players forward who are going to be the driving force for that contending team–he’s done. And he’s done it for a second time.

Baseball

Series Preview – Giants vs. Cubs: We Like To Be Here When We Can

By Sam Fels 1137 0

vs.

RECORDS: Giants 63-62   Cubs 66-58

GAMETIMES: Tuesday/Wednesday 7:05, Thursday 1:20

TV: NBCSN Tuesday/Wednesday, WGN Thursday

MISSION REFUGEES: McCovey Chronicles

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Giants Spotlight

Now that yet another nightmare road trip is over, the Cubs return to The Confines, where they’ll probably tease us by looking like an actual team worth giving a shit about fo six games. They’ll kick it off with three games against the walking anomaly that is the San Francisco Giants.

The Giants have convinced themselves, or maybe they have to convince themselves because there’s nothing else, that they’re still in this wildcard race. And technically they are, thanks to the grade-school basketball nature of the National League. They sit 3.5 games out of the second spot (the right to get domed by Strasburg or Scherzer on an October night), but have the Brewers, Mets, and Phillies to leap to get there.

And they’re there even though this team doesn’t do anything particularly well. The offense is second-worst in the NL, the rotation has to cling by its nails to maintain a middling status, and the bullpen has to save everything (which it can’t do as well at the moment after shedding some pieces at the deadline). They got here thanks to a ridiculous month of July where just about everything went right that could, except for that part where it carried delusion with it and may have stunted the whole thing for the next couple seasons.

The Giants are 8-9 in August, which is what they are. This is still the same team that stood 22-34 on June 1st, which is probably closer to the truth of what they are than a 19-6 July. It got a few spasms of usefulness out of some true nobodies like Yaz’s descendant, or Stephen Vogt, or now Alex Dickerson, Donovan Solano, or Austin Slater. None of these guys or the regulars are under 26 and none suggest this is something they can carry out for longer than a sneeze on the great timeline. But it was enough for Fairhad Zaidi to pass on the deadline for the most part, or fall asleep during it, or something.

Perhaps it being Bruce Bochy‘s last season Jewish mother-guilted Zaidi into at least making a half-ass attempt to get to a playoff spot, instead of Bochy having to serve out his last two months in the dugout watching an old, stripped, directionless club have its organs harvested. Or maybe that in combination with the weekend-detention nature of the National League led the Giants to believe something truly strange could really happen.

Either way, for this weekend, this is a lineup the Cubs staff should really buzz through, especially at home. There’s literally no pop here, as no one on the Giants have over 20 homers in a year where your neighbor who never wears sleeves and is always testing his boat engine has 25. And the Cubs will catch a break in that Madison Bumgarner will not pitch in the series, so the Cubs get looks at Tyler Beede and Dereck Rodriguez and his misspelled first name. Of course, they didn’t really do much with Beede back in San Francisco last month, though that was when the Giants swallowed a box of horseshoes and were still passing them. Shark will clean this up on Thursday afternoon, and generally the Cubs have had their way with him since he skipped town.

For the Cubs, it’s been something of a roster-palooza. The cadre of returning relievers from the IL has seen now both Albert Almora Jr. and David Bote punted back to Iowa to search for hard contact. It probably means more Tony Kemp than anyone should ever be comfortable with. Also Addison Russell to make everyone uneasy, but at least he can catch the ball on occasion. Cole Hamels will attempt to find the mechanics he left on the IL with his oblique, and there really aren’t too many lineups you’d choose over this Giants one to try and figure shit out against. Darvish and Hendricks just need to keep their recent form rolling.

Again, with the Cardinals and Brewers playing each other, the Cubs can make up ground on someone by treating this Giants team like the floating garbage ship that it really is. They’ll also, at least looking like, dodge Scherzer and Corbin on the weekend, so let’s do some things here.