Baseball

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

By Sam Fels 1105 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.

Baseball

Series Preview – Indians vs. White Sox: Swapsies?

By Sam Fels 1242 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 1244 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?

Baseball

Series Wrap – Sox Sweep Royals: KC Trash Edition

By Andy Jonathan 1318 0

 

Game 1 Box: Sox 2, Royals 1

Game 2 Box: Sox 4, Royals 3

Game 3 Box: Sox 8, Royals 7

 

 

The Sox managed to sweep a moribund KC team this week with some excellent Giolito pitching, solid offense in games 2 and 3, and a little help from Mother Nature in game one.  What does it all mean?  In the grand scheme of this season, not a whole hell of a lot.  The Royals are intentionally bad, with not much in their future that’s going to change the situation (unless watching Billy Hamilton bat .185 is your thing), and the Sox are 3 starters away from having an average MLB rotation.  That being said, the series was pretty fun, with some added spiciness tonight to add to an already simmering Hate Stew for these two teams.

 

TO THE BULLETS

 

-RIGHT TO THE SPICE!  With Tim Anderson missing the first two games because of a sore wrist, it looked like we might not get a continuation of the shenanigans that occurred the last time these two teams met.  That ended up not being the case, as Tim was in the lineup tonight and the first pitch from Glenn Sparkman sailed right over Timmy’s eyebrows and off the visor of his batting helmet.  Granted this was probably not an intentional pitch (it was a changeup that Sparkman lost the grip on and not a 4 seamer), but with the officiating crew well aware of the dumb shit that went down a few weeks ago, home plate ump Mark Carlson wasted no time sending the moon faced Sparkman to the showers.  This prompted Ned Yost to stop digging in the dugout trash long enough to come out and vomit some old timey coachins on home plate, but Carlson was not to be swayed.  Much to Anderson’s credit he kept his cool and walked down to first, later to get the last laugh in the bottom of the 8th, when he laced a double off a good Ian Kennedy slider to put the Sox ahead for good.

 

-Timmy shouldn’t have had to be so heroic however, but the continued mismanagement of the pitching staff by Renteria lead to the Sox blowing a 7-1 lead.  Going into the 6th, it was pretty clear that Rey Lopez was running out of gas.  That combined with the dreaded 3rd time through the order lead to him being charged with 4 runs in the inning.  Lopez ended up going 5.2 and throwing 118 pitches, 32 of which came in the 6th when it was clear he didn’t have it anymore.  Jace Fry and Marshall came in and performed admirably, but then it was KHT (Kelvin Herrera Time) and all of a sudden the game was tied.  It wouldn’t shock me to see Herrera on the IL here shortly, as he hasn’t been right since he tweaked his back awhile ago.

 

-Alex Colome had himself a heck of a series, getting the win in the continuation of game one yesterday, then getting the save later that night.  Tonight he was called on again to close out the win as well, pitching a solid 9th for his 11th save of the year.  With the emergence of James McCannonballs as a legit (at least for now) backstop, the trade that brought Colome here can be viewed as one of Hahn’s better moves in the past few offseasons.

 

-Lucas Giolito is now officially A THING.  It looked like his start against the Astros might have been a mirage if you watched the 1st inning in game two.  He started out pretty wild, walking one and plunking one, then giving up a bomb to Alex “Soul Stone” Gordon.  After that shot, Gio pulled his shit together and mowed the Royals down for the next 7 innings, never throwing more than 16 pitches in an inning.  His changeup is a thing of beauty, and his fastball has some pretty hilarious movement on it.  Top that off with 2 more offspeed pitches and he looks like a legitimate “top of the rotation” kinda guy.  To think this time last year I watched him give up 8 runs in 1.2 innings to a god awful Orioles team.  It’s a very welcome change.

 

-Jose Abreu and Yoan Moncada are hitting for power again!  They’re both still striking out too much, but I have a feeling once the weather settles into a warm pattern those folks sitting in the first 10 rows of the OF need to pay attention.  Moncada’s dinger tonight was also opposite field, which is awesome to see him taking what the pitcher is giving him.

 

-Eloy is still seeing nothing but a steady diet of sliders and curveballs.  When he gets his eyes timed with his wrists he’s gonna be right back to murdering the ball, mark my words.

 

-Leury Garcia started out the year with a brutal stretch, but over the past few weeks has turned things around completely.  He’s a Marwin Gonzalez-type player, with value all over the diamond and can also provide a little offense.  His robbery of Jorge Soler tonight was a well-timed thing of beauty, resulting in Soler tipping his cap to the diminutive center fielder.  I still don’t care for him leading off, but you can do a lot worse than him right now.

 

-Yonder Alonso is now batting .172, which is exactly what you want out of your fucking cleanup hitter.  /wanking motion.

 

-Next up is a 4 game series with the Tribe, with 3 of those starts featuring some form of Banuelos, Covey or Nova.  I’m sure Jose Ramierez will be hitting .340 by Monday.

 

 

 

Baseball

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

By Sam Fels 1218 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 1216 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.

Baseball

Why Is Hole Camels Getting His Whole Ass Kicked?

By Sam Fels 1830 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.

 

Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Astros: Timing Is Everything

By Sam Fels 1142 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 30-21   Astros 35-19

GAMETIMES: 1:10 Monday, 7:10 Tuesday and Wednesday

TV: WGN Monday, ABC Tuesday, NBCSN Wednesday

HOT DOG DANCE: The Crawfish Boxes

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Cole Hamels vs. Gerrit Cole

Jon Lester vs. Corbin Martin

Kyle Hendricks vs. Wade Miley

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Javier Baez – DH

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Willson Contreras – C

Jim Adduci – RF

Albert Almora Jr. – CF

Daniel Descalso – 2B

Addison Russell – SS

David Bote – 3B

PROBABLE ASTROS LINEUP

Josh Reddick – DH

Alex Bregman – SS

Michael Brantley – LF

Yuli Gurriel – 3B

Robinson Chirinos – C

Jack Mayfield – 2B

Tyler White – 1B

Derek Fisher – RF

Jake Marisnick – CF

 

Yep, that’s Jim Adduci, called up today, batting fifth for the Cubs as they take on baseball’s best team. Jason Heyward is feeling his hip, Javy Baez is feeling his heel and is restricted to DH duty, and Kris Bryant is having a hard time feeling anything after running into Heyward yesterday. So yeah, it’s something of a skeleton staff. There’s only so much you can take as a team, no matter your depth. One wonders if Bryant or Heyward were going to be out longer if Happ wouldn’t have been the call, but here we are.

Lucky for the Cubs, they’ve caught the Astros at a sensitive point, or maybe have. George Springer is definitely out, and Jose Altuve might only return for the last game or two of the series. Collin McHugh is also down for the count.

Of course, there’s more than enough here to paddle the Cubs around, especially this bewildered sloth of a bullpen. Correa, Bregman, Brantley, Marisnick, Reddick, and Chirinos are all having well-above average years, and Bregman and Correa are at MVP-levels. Or they would be if Springer wasn’t dusting them when he’s healthy. So aren’t you excited to watch Cishek or Ryan or Maples or Edwards try and get big outs against these guys this series? Get the book on your head.

The Cubs will duck Verlander, but Cole is probably more torturous. The Cubs couldn’t do all that much with Wade Miley last year and that’s before he got the Astros pixie dust on him. Martin is one of their premier prospects, but he’s had control issues so far.

And with that depleted lineup the Cubs have, should they find themselves trailing late they’ll have to make it work against a legion of assholes breathing fire. Ryan Pressley gave up his first earned run in a year on Friday. Roberto Osuna, sadly not bathing in lava, has been a lights-out closer. Will Harris has an ERA barely over 1.00. Hector Rondon isn’t striking out nearly as many hitters as he did when he was a Cub, but he’s getting a multitude of grounders and has been very good as well. There’s no chink in the armor here.

Some would want to paint this as a possible World Series preview. We can only hope the Cubs look representative. It will be fascinating to see Kyle Hendricks try and negotiate what may be the best lineup he’s ever seen. There’s another Cole Derby today, with Hamels and Gerrit. For the Cubs to get by a team like this they need great starts. This is the hardest team to get great starts against. Let’s have some fun?

Baseball

Astros Spotlight: Gerrit Cole Doesn’t Need To Be Fancy

By Sam Fels 1127 0

You would think a lot of Pirates would benefit from escaping Pittsburgh. It’s only worked out so-so for Andrew McCutchen, the offensive centerpiece for those playoff Pirate teams. Gerrit Cole, on the other hand, has found salvation in Houston after being punted from The Confluence.

Upon arriving in Houston, Cole saw his strikeout jump up a third, to the point that he’s now striking out over 13 hitters per nine innings, after gather 12 per nine last year, or over a third the past two years. That leads the league both years and combined. Basically, nothing happens when Cole is on the mound, except the occasional home run when he finds someone’s bat. That’s been the only bugaboo this year so far.

So how was Cole able to boost his strikeouts so fantastically in Houston after flashing this stuff in Pittsburgh? Cole was the one pitcher who chafed under the Pirates cutter-heavy, and shift-heavy ways. He was pushed to give up grounders that their infield could gobble up instead of just sending hitters back to the dugout having never made contact in the first place. It wasn’t that Cole wasn’t effective in black and yellow, as his ERA was below 4.00 every year except his last.

Well, the Astros saw his 95-MPH fastball and figured he should just throw that as often as possible. They also got him to ditch his sinker/two-seamer, and haven’t worried about what ground balls he is or isn’t getting. Cole upped his fastball usage 10 percent as an Astro, and has completely cut his use of the sinker to nothing. He’s also bumped up his use of a curve and slider, which are just the same side of the coin depending on velocity, and dumped the change-up he was trying in 2017 that led to nowhere.

As you get with the Astros, there are always whispers about how exactly they improve the spin-rate of their pitchers. Cole has added a mile or two an hour to his fastball in Houston, and his curve has added three inches of drop each of the past two years. Which makes it quite the weapon, and also something you wouldn’t have seen coming. But with that smoke and then a curve that drops off the table, you can see why hitters are just waving at anything he’s serving up there.

All of it must have Cole looking at the upcoming winter and getting awfully big eyes, because it’ll be his first dip into free agency. Or he would have been if the free agent market hadn’t completely disappeared thanks to not collusion for sure. Still, top end starters have been able to get theirs. If Patrick Corbin was able to get six years at $140M, then Cole must be thinking about a $30M per year deal somewhere. deGrom just signed for a little south of that, that’s where teammate Verlander is, same for Scherzer, and those are the names Cole’s numbers have him hanging around with.

The Astros have some of the same concerns as the Cubs, locking in the players they’ve produced to make this unholy monster of a team. Jose Altuve’s salary jumps $20M next year. Bregman’s $13M. George Springer enters arbitration. So does Carlos Correa. Houston had $121M committed to next year before those two get what they have coming to them. They might have enough room for $27-30M for Cole, but it’ll be a squeeze.

Until then, they’ll just take the avalanche of strikeouts.

Baseball

Series Preview – Royals vs. White Sox: Back Down To The Floor

By Sam Fels 1073 0

vs.

RECORDS: Royals 18-34   Whites Sox 23-29

GAMETIMES: Monday 1:10, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:10

TV: NBCSN Monday and Tuesday, WGN Wednesday

ARGUING ABOUT BBQ: Royals Review

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Homer Bailey vs. Ivan Nova

Brad Keller vs. Lucas Giolito

TBD vs. Reynaldo Lopez

PROBABLE ROYALS LINEUP

Nicky Lopez – 2B

Whit Merrifield – RF

Adalberto Mondesi – SS

Alex Gordon – LF

Hunter Dozier – 3B

Jorge Soler – DH

Ryan O’Hearn – 1B

Martin Maldonado – C

Billy Hamilton – CF

PROBABLE WHITE SOX LINEUP

Yoan Moncada – 3B

Eloy Jimenez – LF

Jose Abreu – 1B

Yonder Alonson – DH

James McCann – C

Charlie Tilson – RF

Jose Rondon – SS

Yolmer Sanchez – 2B

Ryan Cordell – CF

 

After spending the week on the road playing the cream of the crop the AL has to offer, and having the Twins get in up to the elbow, the Sox return home to go to the other side of the spectrum with a three-gamer against the Kansas City Royals, who have as many losses as the Marlins. And when you have anything that’s the same number as the Marlins, that’s a place you don’t want to be. But hey, they’re not the Orioles.

How did the Royals get here? Well, it’s not an offense as bas as you’d think one for a wooden spooner would be. They rank 9th or 10th in most offensive categories as a team, and through Dozier, Gordon, Soler, Merrifield, and Mondesi they can put up some runs on the odd night here and there. Hamilton and Maldonado are automatic outs though, when any of the Sox pitchers need a break. Soler and Mondesi are strikeout-prone, but the other three in the five mentioned are very patient and can make for a headache.

Scouring further down, the Royals rotation has actually bee slightly better than the Sox’s, in terms of ERA and FIP. Their problem is they walk more hitters than anyone other than the Rangers. The only bright spot has been Danny Duffy, whom the Sox will miss this go-around. Homer Bailey can’t get it over the plate and when he does it’s had a nasty habit of getting sent to far away places. Keller has had even bigger walk-problems, so if the Sox can be patient there’s gold in them thar hills.

Late in games, you’d want to avoid the triumvirate of Jason Diekman, Ian Kennedy, and Scott Barlow, who have very high K numbers and have generally been a pain in the ass. Everyone else has been gasoline, and with the Royals have a shrug emoji listed for Wednesday, the Sox might get to that gasoline.

For the Sox, Moncada slots up to the leadoff spot and Eloy to the 2nd spot, where you’d hope he’ll make his home for the next decade. Garcia and Anderson are nursing minor knocks but could show up at some point in the series, though not this afternoon. Either way for the Sox, it’ll be something of a relief to just no have to deal with a hell’s gauntlet of a lineup anymore.