Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Zack Collins

By Andy Jonathan 1418 0

2019 Stats

.186/.307/.349

3 HR 12 RBI

13.7 BB% 38.2 K%

.285 wOBA 77 wRC+ .656 OPS

-4 Defensive Runs Saved

 

Tell Me A Story: While not on the same level of anticipation for the likes of Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez, Zack Collins’ minor league career was watched very closely this season with the expectation he would be up and making a difference with the big club sooner rather than later. The waiting game ended on the 19th of June when Beef Welington went on the IL with some type of brain damage and Collins’ contract was purchased by the White Sox, officially putting him on the 40-man roster.

The expectation among sportswriters, bloggers, and fans alike was that Collins would be getting ample playing time at catcher, first base and designated hitter. What would the point of him being up at the major league level if not to see what he can do? In Collins’ first full game against the Rangers on the 21st of June, he showed just a taste of what he could do by smoking an Ariel Jurado fastball just right of dead center in Arlington (estimated at 445, no cheapie) for his first ever major league hit and home run.

Unfortunately that would be the only highlight of his first stint in the majors, as he played less than half the time before he was sent back down to Charlotte on July 14th. During that three-week span that he was up, Collins only started in seven of a possible 21 games, losing playing time and at-bats to White Sox legends like AJ Reed and Yonder Alonso. Why did the White Sox call up Collins and start his service time clock to park him on the bench 66% of the time? I honestly have no idea, and I have a sneaking suspicion neither does Rick Hahn or Renteria. Hahn would later claim that they saw something wrong with his approach at the plate and banished him back to AAA to work on it.

Credit where it’s due, after being sent down to Charlotte to work on that nebulous issue Collins began to absolutely rake at the plate. He slashed .281/.403(!)/.951 the rest of his time down there until he was inevitably called back up during roster expansion this past September. After being called back up, Collins got consistent playing time the rest of the month, both behind the plate and at 1B. He started out slowly after his return, but caught his stride the last 12 games of the season, hitting .293 with an .882 OPS and just under half of his hits being the extra base variety.

Behind the plate, Collins seemed to struggle to manage the game effectively. Runners stole bases on him at will, only being caught 11% of the time. He was at least able to keep the ball in front of him, however, only accounting for one passed ball which makes him look like a young Pudge Rodriguez compared to Welington Castillo. Granted he only started 6 games at catcher after being recalled, which again is kind of weird considering the Sox would certainly want to see what he has defensively if he’s going to be in the mix for catching in The Future™.

Contract: Team control next season, arbitration eligible 2023. Base salary is $550,000

Welcome Back or Boot In The Ass: Unless there’s a team out there who tosses an offer Rick Hahn’s way that he absolutely cannot ignore, Collins is coming back to the Sox in 2020 and will most likely be with the big club the entire season.

The main question concerning Collins’ playing time will be answered here shortly in December at the winter meetings. If Hahn is able to secure a player like Yasmani Grandal to play with the White Sox in 2020, Zack Collins’ positional future is gonna be in flux. In that scenario, Collins would most likely be splitting time between first base and designated hitter, with occasional starts behind the dish at catcher.

Even if the Sox don’t land Grandal, Hahn will most likely be shopping for a backup catcher as long term profile for Collins doesn’t show much more than occasionally spelling James McCann full time behind the plate. In a perfect world, the Sox sign Grandal and create a rotating conga line between 1B, DH and C for Grandal, Collins and Jose Abreu (who is almost certainly a lock to return.)

If Collins is able to progress at even half the rate Yoan Moncada or Eloy Jimenez has, the Sox will have themselves the kind of player who can get on base at an excellent clip (I don’t expect him to have a +.400 OPB again, but even .370 isn’t out of the question) and occasionally hit for power from the left side of the plate. Guys like that don’t grow on trees, and with some advancement in skill it will be worth the Sox time to try and find a spot in the lineup for him, wherever that may end up being.

Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Anthony Rizzo

By Sam Fels 1816 0

We move up the diamond a little to first base, where we find the Cubs captain. It should have been such an inspirational story, and yet the Cubs found a way to fuck up Anthony Rizzo hitting the shit out of the ball on one leg in a series they had to have. Instead they got swept. There’s your season right there. Let’s go through The Main Ingredient’s 2019…

2019 Stats

.293/.405/.520

27 HR  89 RBI

11.6 BB%  14.0 K%

.390 wOBA  141 wRC+  .925 OPS

-6.9 Defensive Runs Saved 

Tell Me A Story: If I told you in March that Rizz would set a career-high in batting average and on-base,  and have his best slugging in three years, you’d probably think the Cubs got a hell of a lot closer to 90 wins than they did. You’d probably think they’d have been over it. It wasn’t discussed much before the season, but Rizzo had something of a small slide in ’17 and ’18, especially 2018 where everything had dipped below the level he had set (such as .380+ OBP or .500+ slugging and such). As I will probably say with every review here, we don’t know how much to slide the bars for the baseball filled with gremlins, but we can safely assume this was a bounce-back year for Rizzo. Even if he didn’t need that much bouncing back.

Rizz was able to raise his line-drive rate, which is good. But his fly ball count went down and his ground-ball rate went up because of it, which is less than  good. According to Baseball Savant, there was a significant drop in his launch angle this year. Now that could be an intentional adjustment Rizzo made to hit more line drives, or it could be something else which would start to push you toward frowny-face. Also, even with the ball as it was, Rizzo’s exit-velocity didn’t really move from last year, which is curious. Which also plays into how the Cubs as a team just didn’t hit the ball very hard. If he were doing the same things, you’d think that would jump up even a little just given the nature of the thing. Still, it’s not like Rizzo heavily outperformed his expected batting average or weighted on-base, hitting those on the nose with his actual numbers this season.

If there was a big difference in Rizzo this year, it was his work on bendy stuff. Rizzo came into 2019 with a career average of .235 on sliders, .259 on curveballs, and .294 on cutters (which are really just baby sliders). Those numbers this year were .294, .305, and .429 with much higher slugging as well. And it doesn’t appear to be noise either as all three of those have much higher line-drive percentages than his career norms, so this was something Rizzo was focusing on.

Even more encouraging, considering Rizzo’s age, is that he was deadly on inside pitches this year. Here’s his career slugging by zone before the year and then this year:

You don’t think of Rizzo yanking outside pitches over the wall, because he stands so close to the plate it doesn’t look like they’re outside pitches. This year he turned on the pitches that jammed him even more. The worry with players crossing the age-30 threshold is that they can’t catch up to velocity and can get jammed inside. Neither of those things were a problem for Rizz this year.

If there are red flags with Rizzo, it’s health. 6-4 first-basemen who have had back issues for three straight years now should make anyone breathe a little deeper for a moment. This year was by far the most amount of games he’s missed. Some of that was due to a freak ankle injury, which isn’t anything chronic. The rest was the back issue in August and April, and now that he’s in his 30s that’s probably just going to be a thing that happens. When it starts to slow down his performance, that’s anyone’s guess.

Contract: Rizzo has two team-option years left at $16.5M each.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Face it, there would be a small to medium uprising if the Cubs ever thought of moving Rizzo. Given his production and salary, he would have huge value of course, but this is essentially the heart and soul of the team. The real debate will be in two years when he’s a free agent and also 32, but let’s table that as long as we can. Given his adjustments, it’s hard to see Rizzo falling off a table production-wise in 2020, unless that back causes him to miss more than just 10-15 games a year.

Perhaps the only thing new we’d want to see from Rizzo is something we can’t quantify and don’t actually see–which means we’re only guessing–is his leadership of the team. It’s not that he isn’t a leader, because he’s THE one. But this team played loose all year, in the bad way, and we know that Maddon’s style caused some of that. But players should hold their teammates accountable too, and Rizzo hasn’t really been that type of guy. He’s a loose, fun dude too. And while he might seem boisterous to us from the outside and leading things in the dugout, those in the know will tell you he’s not really a hard ass ever or trying to keep the team coloring within the lines. That’s mostly going to come from the new manager, but it wouldn’t hurt that if inside the clubhouse there’s a sword that needs swinging, it’s Rizzo who’s doing it. But this is nothing more than a minor complaint or tweak.

While we read too much about trades that didn’t work out for the Cubs, remember the Cashner-for-Rizzo one helped get Josh Byrnes fired. We’ve got at least two more years to not worry about first base. And probably a lot more than that, before Rizzo’s #44 is on the right field foul-pole.

Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Victor Caratini

By Sam Fels 1896 0

Quite the year for Victor, who started spring training as something of an afterthought and now could very well be in line for a starting job in 2020, be it here or elsewhere as trade bait. Has he earned that? Let’s find out…

2019 Stats

279 PA

.266/.348/.447

11 HR  31 RBI

10.4 BB%  21.1 K%

.338 wOBA  108 wRC+  .794 OPS

+4.3 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: When the Cubs were in Mesa, most every Cubs blogger and fan was losing their mud over the fact that the Cubs didn’t have a backup catcher. One of 2018’s major problems was Willson Contreras playing far too many games and tiring out, and Caratini’s brief cameo didn’t really convince anyone. It went from that in March to Caratini playing well enough in the season’s opening weeks that everyone found more mud to lose (it’s getting unhealthy now) when he broke his hand and had to miss a month (but hey, it gave us the Taylor Davis grand slam against the Cardinals. Boy it seemed so innocent then). And now it’s ended with some calling, or just thinking the Cubs think, that Caratini is absolutely a viable option to take over as starter if the Cubs move Contreras for pitching or centerfield help. As the one true Jokes would say, “Oh what a day what a day…”

So how was Caratini able to go from an offensively-absent seat-filler to a productive hitter? Becoming extremely patient certainly helped, as Caratini nearly doubled his walk-rate from ’18 to ’19 and was well above league average with that 10.4% mark. While Caratini still chased the same percentage of pitches out of the zone (though he did so at well below league average), he became far more aggressive on pitches in the zone. This saw him up his hard-contact rate to about a third of the time, which isn’t great but was definitely better than he’d been. And like with everyone else, we don’t really know how to adjust these numbers for the baseball.

Perhaps more encouragingly is that Victor was able to hit a range of pitches. He didn’t just hit mistake fastballs, though obviously one can make a career out of that. Victor did most of his work on fastballs but also mashed on changes and sliders, including a .622 slugging on the latter. Curveballs from right-handed pitchers were a bit of an issue, and one he might see more of with greater playing time.

Defensively, Victor improved massively as well, doubling up Willson’s framing numbers in about half of the time, which is where some people’s focus is centered. Victor doesn’t have nearly the arm that Willson does, but he bought his pitchers a lot more strikes, and was actually up among the best in the league in framing runs even though he hardly played full-time. So the question for the Cubs will be which is more important as we roll along here.

Contract: Team control for next season, arbitration eligible in 2021

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Most certainly welcome back unless some other team makes a generous offer for him. Considering he costs nothing at the moment, at worst he’s one of the better backup catchers in the league. The question will be whether the Cubs think he can be a starter, depending on if they have an inclination to see what’s out there for Contreras. Caratini is 26, so while his experience level suggests there could still be some growth, his aging curve suggests this is probably about what he’ll be. And that is a very good receiver with only a passable arm at best, and just about a league-average hitter. Over a full season he might be a 2-2.5 WAR player. But then that’s really only a tick or two below what Contreras was this season, though that’s partly due to injury and his framing problems earlier in the year.

The Cubs could carry Caratini as a starter with a few adjustments. One, a heavy return on Contreras. Two, they’d have to get more offense from second base and center field, or just a lot more offense from one of them. Third, they’d probably have to have a backup with a big arm for Lester starts, and whoever ends up being in the rotation aside from Darvish, Hendricks, and Q. Otherwise teams in big games will run all over Lester.

There isn’t a lot of air to Caratini’s stats, so a major regression doesn’t seem on the cards offensively. He doesn’t whiff a lot, which the Cubs will be curious about. He doesn’t have an alarmingly high BABIP or anything. But he also doesn’t hit the ball very hard. And remember, to give him the starting job you’d be giving one of the best offensive catchers in the game, which just don’t come around that often. It’s a big risk. Does Caratini’s framing and contact make it worthwhile? A lot of variables here, but it would not be a surprise if the Cubs bet that it does.

Previous Cubs Reviews

Willson Contreras

 

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Welington Castillo

By Andy Jonathan 1575 0

2019 Stats

.209/.267/.417

12 HR 41 RBI

6.4 BB% 29.5 K%

.287 wOBA 78 wRC+ .684 OPS

-10 Defensive Runs Saved (ouch)

 

Tell Me A Story: Ahhh Beef Welington. The latest in the long line of White Sox free agent signings that made me go “I like it!” and ended with “give this asshole to Elon Musk and let him fire him to the moon.” Almost immediately his two-year, $15 million dollar contract proved to be a ginormous mistake when he was busted for PEDs in May of 2018. This resulted in an 80-game suspension that lasted till the middle of September, after which he hit a very pedestrian .241/.293/.478.

Castillo said he was going to double down on his efforts over the winter to make sure the Sox got their money’s worth out of him. Undeterred, Rick Hahn came up with a Plan B in the form of James McCann, which turned out to be a very wise move indeed. Castillo came out of the gate in April sputtering, only managing to hit .204 while McCann blasted everything thrown at him. It wasn’t long after where Castillo began to lose more and more playing time to McCann, essentially relegated to being Reynaldo Lopez’ personal catcher before long.

Castillo was brought aboard the team strictly for his ability to hit for power, which while not ending up as Yonder Alonso-levels of shitty, was still not what the Sox thought they’d be getting when they signed him to the deal. In 2017 with the Orioles he hit .282 with 20 home runs with a 25% K-rate. With the Sox, his K-rate spiked to 29% and he only managed to hit 12 bombs. His career line drive rate of 21% was merely wishful thinking in 2019 as it fell to a career low 16.5%. His hard hit rate also dropped about 6% during his tenure with the Sox. I’m not going to say the lack of PEDs in his system resulted in this power dip, but I’m also not not saying it.

His defense became an issue as well. In the past, Castillo was a bat-first defender but had posted a few years with a positive DRS score, most recently in 2017 with the Diamondbacks when he was a +3. In the month of September in 2018 he managed a -6, and then in 2019 it all fell apart. Any ball in the dirt or above his shoulders was going to the backstop, and he made the entire thing look like he was being attacked by a swarm of bees.

The Sox were in the bottom 3rd of the league in allowing passed balls with 13. A whopping nine of them were attributed to Castillo. When you consider the fact that he was only the primary catcher in less than a quarter of the games the Sox played, that’s pretty fucking terrible.

Contract: Team option for 2020 at $8 million dollars with a $500,000 buyout, which the Sox will exercise.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Big ole boot in the ass for this one. The Sox will exercise the $500,000 buyout for Castillo’s last year and send him on down the road like sad Bruce Banner in the Hulk TV show. With Zack Collins and James McCann available for catching duties and the looming possibility of Yasmani Grandal being available it makes zero sense to keep Big Beef Welington around. I’d say it’s been fun, but that would only be true if I were comparing it to the time Yonder Alonso spent here. Hard pass on both.

Previous Sox Reviews

James McCann

 

 

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: James McCann

By Andy Jonathan 1909 0

2019 Stats

.273/.328/.461

18HR, 60 RBI

6.3 BB% 28.8 K%

.333 wOBA 109 wRC+ .789 OPS

5.0 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: Well lets kick this thing off with the best thing Rick Hahn did during the off-season, which was sign James McCann to a 1-year deal at a value of $2.5 million dollars (with an additional year of arbitration control for the White Sox). When this move was initially announced during the winter meetings back in December, I was supremely disappointed as Yasmani Grandal was still just sitting out there, like Fry’s dog in the Jurassic Bark episode of Futurama waiting for someone to sign him. Up to that point Grandal had better stats in pretty much every category available to us including the all-important framing ones. At the end of the season? Well Grandal still outperformed him in most categories except defensively where he was a -1.6 DRS, but the differences between the two were not the chasm I assumed they would be at the start of the season.

McCann started out the first half of the season pretty gangbusters, as he pelted opposing pitchers to the tune of .317/.374/.883 with 9 dingers through the end of June. This performance earned him his first ever All-Star nomination and the rave reviews of his teammates. You all know what happened next, however. After the All Star game McCann’s stats went plummeting off a cliff, resulting in a .224/.273/.667 line through the end of August. At this point folks began to question whether or not McCann was the real deal (and rightly so). He was able to lock things in again in September, however, and brought things back to a more respectable .242/.324/.763 to close out the campaign.

Whether or not McCann was pressing during July and August to justify his All Star selection we will never know, but one interesting thing popped up to me. McCann has been given a lot of credit to the turnaround of one Lucas Giolito this season. When I looked at their game logs for the first half of the season when McCann was raking at the plate, Giolito was doing the same on the mound. Then after the All Star break ended and McCann dove into his swoon at the plate, Giolito similarly fell off as well, though not to the extent that McCann did. It may be coincidence but it’s definitely worth noting.

Either way, Giolito credits James McCann for a good portion of his turnaround this season, and it’s certainly hard to deny the results. Giolito was an absolute mess by any measure last season, and turned into the Must See TV Ace Of The Future™ this season that we all know and love. Stuff like that can’t be discounted in the slightest. Defensively, McCann was above average this year in every category compared to most of his past seasons except for runners gunned down attempting to steal. He was 5th in the AL with 17 catches, which was a low for him. The Sox were 3rd best in the AL catching category with McCann behind the dish, which is a marked improvement from the previous half decade.

CONTRACT: One year of arbitration left, then unrestricted free agent in 2021. Would expect a raise of about 1.5 million this off season if the Sox tender him (They Will)

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Unless the Sox think that Zack Collins is the catcher of The Future™ and will be able to play 100+ games behind the dish (they don’t), then expect the Sox to tender him this off-season and then work out a long term deal with him shortly thereafter. Doing so would not hinder you from offering up a contract to Yasmani Grandal if you so desired.

Bringing in Grandal could create a rotating quadfecta at 1B and C, with Abreu, Collins, McCann and Grandal each taking time at C/1B/DH as the year goes along (Abreu won’t catch obviously). Even if they don’t get Grandal, McCann has proven enough this year to deserve another look behind the plate as the primary catcher. With Beef Wellington gone this winter the Sox will need a catcher to spell McCann if they don’t think Collins can play that many games back there.

I would think a 4 year deal at 4.5 million each would most likely be enough to buy McCann out of his last year of arbitration and keep him working with the young Sox pitching staff for seasons to come. With Michael Kopech returning from Tommy John surgery very soon and Carlos Rodon/Dane Dunning shortly thereafter, having a calming presence behind the plate goes a long way towards solidifying the rotation.

The other option would be to tender him, then flip him for whatever you could get at the winter meetings if you think you need to sell high on him or that this year was a fluke. With the progress Giolito made this year, I think this is very unlikely. The Sox got the most production out of the catcher position since Carlton Fisk hung up his cleats, and I don’t think they’re likely to give that away, which is totally fine with me. Besides, it would be really hard to replicate the FAR (Fashion Against Replacement) he brought to the clubhouse this year.

Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Willson Contreras

By Sam Fels 1782 0

Figured I’d start these off with the player I feel, and somewhat fear, is going to be the name you hear most in trade rumors. Seems like the Cubs, both fans and front office, have forgotten what a unique toy they have in #40. But he also might be the most expendable, even if he isn’t all that expendable.

2019 Stats

.272/.355/.533

24 HR  64 RBI 

9.3 BB%  24.9 K%

.368 wOBA  127 wRC+ .888 OPS

-0.3 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: Ok, so here’s the thing. How many catchers had a better wRC+ than Contreras this season? One, that was Mitch Garver (one of the 27 Twins to hit 30+ homers out of nowhere for no reason, in case you were wondering). How many catchers had a better OPS? Again, one. Again, Garver. Again, for no reason. So you’re dealing with basically a unicorn when it comes to offense from catchers in Willson. Since he became the full-time starter in 2017, the only catcher with a better wRC+ is Yasmani Grandal, and no one has a better wOBA. He’s a genuine treasure, with at least the bat. We’ll get to that in a second, though.

The problem for Contreras in the 2018 campaign is that his power went to the land of wind and ghosts. He only hit 10 homers, and slugged .390. We knew it was strange then, and probably something that wouldn’t continue. Willson’s hard-contact rate was below 30%. Maybe he made an adjustment, or maybe he was carrying an injury the whole time. Whatever it was, all of his numbers jumped this year back to what we know they should be, and in fact were career-highs. You have to normalize it with the golf ball being used every day, but still felt like he was returning to the norms of his first season and a half in the Majors.

There was a lot of discussion about Willson’s defense, specifically his framing, throughout the season. And a good portion of it is noise, but let’s work it through. It’s been two seasons since Willson posted a positive Defensive Runs Saved mark. One part of that is the league is now so aware of his arm, that he almost never gets to use it. When he does, he seems so excited by the opportunity he’s lasers it into the outfield more often. So he doesn’t get much of a chance to throw out runners to boost that metric.

The other part is obviously framing. But here’s the thing, midway through the season Contreras’s framing stats were all in the negative. He ended the season on the positive side of the ledger, though still some way behind Victor Caratini. Or at least close to it, depending on whose numbers you use. It’s something he was clearly working on, made an adjustment, and if the Cubs were to hire…oh I don’t know, David Ross as a manager, he would have someone with him every day to work on it with. He probably will never be Grandal back there, but he can be good as there’s still time for him to upswing.

The issue for Contreras is the contact. His contact in the zone and overall still lags behind league average, and this is something the Cubs are obviously going to try and improve somewhere next season. He’s always lagged behind, and in the season’s dying embers he seemed to be a poster-boy for poor approach with runners on, and one I was happy to echo. The Cubs have to improve their contact skills somewhere, after all.

Contract: Arbitration eligible for next three seasons. Likely to earn $5M or so.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass?: This is so hard. Again, you just don’t find catchers who can hit like Willson, and the defense can and probably will improve if he wants it to. Even as he heads into arbitration, he’ll make nothing compared to the production you get. If Grandal is basically the same guy, at least offensively, he makes at least three times more than what Willson will likely get in his first arbitration spin and even that was considered low-ball.

Except all of that is also why he probably carries the most trade value. And unlike Schwarber, you probably don’t have to pay through the nose to replace him, as you have an in-house candidate in Caratini. He’ll never hit for near the power of Contreras and runners might pass out from joy when he’s catching Lester next year, but he’s the better framer and makes more contact. You’d still be downgrading the position, even more so if robot umps are in our near future, but not so much you couldn’t justify it.

Justify it depending on the return, that is. Just like anything else, you can’t trade Contreras just for the sake of it. You won’t have another like him behind the plate for years, and we know this because the Cubs didn’t. But if you can get a starter that slots ahead of Quintana and Lester for him or more, you would have to think long and hard about it. Maybe even a long-term solution in center, though I have no idea who that would be. And when I say starter, I’m thinking like Thor. And don’t tell me you couldn’t get the Mets to bite on that one, because you can get the Mets to bite on anything.

Or the consolation is you bring the best or second-best hitting catcher in the game back, have him keep working on his defense and take your .900 OPS or thereabouts and get on with your life. Doesn’t seem so bad.

Baseball

It’s A Maddon World

By Sam Fels 2368 0

He’ll never say it, I’ll never prove it, but I can’t shake the feeling that Theo Epstein has been thinking about this day since somewhere around Game 6 against Cleveland. That was the night that Joe Maddon first panicked, up five runs with Jake Arrieta on the mound. That necessitated Aroldis Chapman coming in to get four outs, after he had throw 2.1 innings in Game 5, and of course left him scorched for Game 7. And then there was the pulling of Kyle Hendricks for little reason (not no reason, you could squint and see it) the next night. We don’t need to re-litigate this. You know the story.

But it felt like then Theo realized that Joe wasn’t going to manage the team as he saw the game. And it feels like that only got worse. Which maybe is why on the day after the most accomplished manager in Cubs history, and the most accomplished we might ever see, I don’t feel much of anything about his departure.

There’s two competing outlooks on the past couple seasons that probably have me stuck in the middle on the whole thing. The first is that I refuse to buy the argument that the ’18 team underachieved. 95 wins with half of a Kris Bryant, a hole in the rotation until Hamels showed up (and that’s with Chatwood in there) a bullpen disintegrating throughout the season, that played for 45 straight days. It’s being judged on two games at the end of the season, which seems wholly unfair based on the 162 before. We know the Cubs front office was upset about the handling of Brandon Morrow at the end of May. That has always screamed of ass-covering for a truly bad signing that had every chance of not working out, which it didn’t. That goes along with my feeling that the ’17 team didn’t underachieve either, given that Schwarber wasn’t quite ready for a starting role, Happ and Almora in center was iffy, Baez hadn’t achieved his higher plane yet, the entire pitching staff regressed, etc.

On the opposing side, whatever last year is categorized as, this was a season where the Cubs were supposed to play with urgency and have something to prove. Yeah, we can go back and forth on the offseason and the roster construction all day. That doesn’t change the fact that the players on the roster played looser, less focused, far more mistake-prone than they’d ever been under Maddon. The Cubs were simply not as locked in as they’d been, and it cost them games. In the field, on the basepaths, and on occasion with runners on base, the Cubs were simply not a tight enough unit. That’s on Maddon. This team did underachieve.

Did the Cubs set up Maddon to fail by not extending him, and essentially telegraphing their intentions before the season even started? Probably. But if Maddon truly had a hold on this team and everyone’s loyalty and attention, the constant looseness just would not have happened. That doesn’t mean the Cubs had totally tuned him out or were ignoring him, but they weren’t as attentive to his message. I get the impression they still liked him without totally buying in to whatever he was selling anymore. That generally only goes one way from there. So it feels necessary.

As with any manager or coach firing, Maddon isn’t wholly responsible for what went on here. We’ve spent all summer talking about the failures in ownership and the front office and what they provided. The bullpen at the start of the season was simply negligent. None of the younger players were ever ready to take on an everyday role. The hitters simply refused to change their approach ever.

I guess you could put some of the blame on the lack of development of some of the young players on Maddon. That’s a stretch though when he’s the manager for Rizzo, Byrant, Contreras, and Baez who have all flourished under him. Maybe they’re just such supreme talents it doesn’t manager what the manager is, but I have a hard time buying that and you’d have a hard time selling that.

Perhaps my general shoulder-shrug on this is I don’t think baseball is like hockey or football where there’s like five good coaches and you’re fucked if you don’t have one. You can find another manager. They’re out there, though I’m queasy about it being David Ross, which has a feel of placating the masses about it, whatever his managing acumen might be.

Some have speculated that Theo wants a hard-ass. Does that even exist anymore? Does that really work? I look around at the best teams and I don’t see any red and nude managers. Dave Roberts? A.J. Hinch? Aaron Boone? Alex Cora? Brian Snitker? I don’t think players respond to that anymore. I hope that’s just speculation. Sure, things seemed like they got too relaxed with Maddon, and you want a tone set for the whole season. That’s all the Cubs need, I think. They don’t need Sargent Hartman in blue pinstripes.

Perhaps that feeling of “it just had to be” comes from Maddon himself. He seemed to make it clear that he didn’t think he had much more to give to this team yesterday, though maybe that was just dealing with the situation. He certainly couldn’t ignore all the mistakes his team made throughout the season and how he couldn’t seem to stop it. It doesn’t feel like five years is a very long time for someone’s shelf life to run out, but things move quicker now.

Maybe that’s just the shelf life on Maddon, too. He only won 77 games in his last year in Tampa, though there are obviously other considerations there. Perhaps it’s something about his style.

Still, he’s the manager who ended our GREAT BURDEN. The Cubs don’t win it without him, even if you only want to credit him for creating an atmosphere that allowed the players to take all of that head on which had asphyxiated every other team before them. With something as huge as 108 years, just as it was with the 86 in Boston, you have to have a team that can smile and laugh at it all the way through while the rest of us are losing our minds and screaming about why they aren’t. You have to find a team to embrace the ridiculousness of it and not treat it like a plague. Maddon did that. His name will live forever here because of it. He as the perfect guy at the perfect time for Rizzo and Bryant and Baez and Contreras and Hendricks and everyone else.

And now he’s not. And that’s ok. I’d trust the front office to get this one right. It’s a job most everyone would want. There’s still a ton to work with here, especially if the that front office doesn’t get silly and do something just to do something this winter.

Thanks for everything, Joe. It was quicker than we thought, but it was everything it was supposed to be.

 

Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Cardinals: And Now, You Will Watch This

By Sam Fels 1298 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 82-77   Cardinals 90-69

GAMETIMES: Friday 7:15, Saturday 6:15, Sunday 2:15

TV: WGN Friday, Fox Saturday, ABC 7 Sunday

OUR EXECUTIONER: Viva El Birdos

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Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Cardinals Spotlight: The Next One

Two years ago, which seems like an eternity now, the Cubs came into St. Louis in the last week of the season. They put the NL Central to bed in front of their greatest enemy, and then the next night ended the Red Menace’s flickering wildcard hopes even though the game meant nothing to them. Fate can be cruel.

Having ended the Cubs playoff hopes, the Cardinals will likely celebrate taking the NL Central right in front of them and their fans deluded enough to enter the gates for this one. Perhaps an interested or even breathing Cubs team could knock the Cards down to a date with Max Scherzer on the road on Tuesday night, but that is not this Cubs team. It’s also incredibly beat up now, which won’t make for much of an excuse as they watch that celebration.

The Cubs will roll into this one with Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Hendricks, Yu Darvish shelved for the season to protect themselves from themselves. Cole Hamels is only getting a start to try and prove to prospective suitors in the winter he’s not in fact dead. The lineup is going to be utterly hilarious, and you can already hear the Brewers bitching about it from Denver. This is what the Cubs have become, and it does not feel good.

The Cards still have plenty at stake. They need to match whatever the Brewers do in Denver to avoid a 163 and/or wildcard, plain and simple. That’s motive enough you would think. So Dakota Hudson and Adam Wainwright are the first two out of the chute, with Jack Flaherty waiting for a 163, wildcard, or Game 1. It could be any of those. He could even go Sunday if the Cards need it. Considering the lineup the Cubs might put out that day, he could throw a perfect game in 80 pitches.

That’s where it stands. the ultimate humiliation for the Cubs. Who knew it could fall so far in just two seasons? We thought a sea-change had been engineered, and yet here we are forced to watch yet another installment of St. Louis getting one over the Cubs. Perhaps it’s an image that will serve to light a fire under next year’s team, but they’ll need more than that. What is pretty clear is that this is Joe Maddon‘s last series as a Cub manager. Though every fan has been back and forth on what Maddon is and what maybe he should have been, what he definitely was is the most successful manager in the team’s history. It hardly seems like it was only five years ago that his hiring signaled something new about the Cubs, the combination of hope and expectation. If this is how it ends, no matter how you feel, you can’t deny it’s bene a ride.

That article can be written another time, though. And it will.

On a sentimental level, it’s perhaps the last time we’ll see Nicholas Castellanos in a Cubs uniform. There are others who could be doing so for the last time as well. That’s a worry for another time. This is just about getting through it, or pretending it isn’t happening as I’m sure a lot of you will understandably opt for. Some pains are too great to endure first hand. Just knowing it’s happening is enough.

 

Baseball

Cardinals Spotlight: The Next One

By Sam Fels 1518 0

Perhaps it all started with David Eckstein, who wasn’t even really the Cardinals go-hard that always seemed to play above his head but infatuated Cardinals Nation anyway (and they’re always white. So, so white). Eckstein came from somewhere else, of course. But there’s always one Cardinal who you just know is going to annoy the piss out of you for a decade because they’re just so…Cardinal.

Oh there have been failed attempts. Skip Schumaker. Brendan Ryan was actually cloned from Eckstein but never really worked out. Colby Rasmus was going to be the outfield version until he bitched his way out of town. They even imported Ryan Theriot to be that guy. There was a time when it was feared Daniel Descalso would be that (and he ended up annoying the piss out of us anyway). Randal Grichuk or Stephen Piscotty or Peter Bourjos definitely had chances which they never really took. So we guess it’s been a while since the Cards have had that squeaky clean, try-harder-than-you piss-ant that their fans hold up as all that’s good and right about baseball and why they’re just better than you because they recognize it and you don’t. Usually it’s right alongside a minority actually doing the work, but we’ll leave that this time. Sadly, this year it’s worked.

We give you Tommy Edman.

It’s always a bad sign when they have a y at the end of their name, just to more greatly portray their down-home-ness. Go by Tom, you’re a fucking adult, dude. Or supposed to be.

Anyway, Edman came up in July and all he’s done is hit, field, and run exceptionally. He’s been worth nearly three WAR in barely half of a season, and at 24 he’s going to be the rash in our ass for a long while it seems.

Is he a product of the Titleist baseballs? Yeah, a bit. Edman had never slugged much over .400 at any level in the minors until getting to AAA this year, where of course they’re setting all kinds of records for homers and power. Suddenly he was slugging .513 in Memphis when he’d never managed over .403 before. That’s continued in the Majors, where he’s got 11 homers in 89 games after hitting seven all of last year in AA and AAA.

Yeah, Edman hits the ball pretty hard, with a near 25% line-drive rate and a 40+% hard-contact rate. Whatever. This shouldn’t be happening and fuck him.

Still, the dude knocked Matt Carpenter out of the starting lineup, and Carpenter had been the Cardinals’ most consistent hitter for years, doing whatever they needed. That’s no small feat. And we can’t take Edman’s fielding and speed away from him, and they’re not going to go anywhere even if the baseball returns to the land of normal physics soon. Because of that speed, Edman is always going to run a high BABIP as he beats out infield singles more than most. Because of course this guy for the Cardinals has to beat out infield singles. It’s like a goddamn law.

If they aren’t already, the stands of Busch are going to be littered with Edman jerseys soon. There will be shots and shots of home-schooled children (if they even get that) in Edman shirseys while their parents tell them about how Edman plays the game the right way as they wait for his autograph. You can see it now in your head. You know it to be true. He’s going to get some sort of game-winning hit in the playoffs too, probably off his knuckles that has no business landing in the outfield unscathed as you go reach for your revolver. It’s going to happen, accept it now.

With Edman, DeJohn, Wong, and Goldschmidt, the Cards infield seems cemented for a long while now. You know the targets, you know the opposition, so you might as well plan for the “Edman-is-better-than-Baez” debates now. They’re coming, you can’t stop them. What it will mean is that Edman isn’t nearly as fun as Baez, and that’s why they’ll say he’s better. Better fundamentals. Respects the game more. Doesn’t need attention. Just wants to win. You know what they’ll really be saying.

You can script it out from here.