Baseball

Series Preview – Padres vs. Cubs: Heat Death

By Sam Fels 1433 0

vs.

RECORDS: Padres 46-50   Cubs 52-44

GAMETIMES: Friday-Sunday 1:20

TV: NBCSN Friday, ABC 7 Saturday, WGN Sunday

FISH TACO ENTHUSIASTS: Gaslamp Ball

PITCHING MATCHUPS

Eric Lauer vs. Jon Lester

Joey Lucchesi vs. Jose Quintana

Cal Quantrill vs. Kyle Hendricks

PROBABLE PADRES LINEUP

Fernando Tatis Jr. – SS

Eric Hosmer – 1B

Manny Machado – 3B

Hunter Renfroe – LF

Franmil Reyes – RF

Franciso Meija – C

Ian Kinsler – 2B

Manuel Margot – CF

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Albert Almora Jr. – CF

Javier Baez – SS

Kris Bryant – LF

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Addison Russell – 2B

Jason Heyward – RF

David Bote – 3B

Martin Maldonado – C

 

The main story of this series probably won’t have to do much with either team, but the conditions they’ll spend the first two games in. Jon Lester might end up looking like the senator from the first X-Men movie by the 4th inning today. It is going to be hot, and gross, and sticky, and all other bad words to describe a 98-degree day with a fair amount of humidity. Basically, St. Louis.

But hey, that’s baseball, that’s summer in Chicago sometimes, and the Cubs have work to do. And while the Padres are poised to be the next big thing, next means it’s not here yet and they’ve only won four of their last 13 games. They’re coming off losing a series to the Marlins and got swept by the Braves out of the break before that, and the Cubs catch them at the end of a long road trip. So yeah, very few excuses here.

Overall, it’s not a very good offense, ranking bottom-five in runs, wOBA, and wRC+ as a team, But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some danger spots, mostly at the top. Fernando Tatis Jr., the player that makes all Sox fans hang their head in shame, missed a third of the season through injury but has been everything they could have hoped for when present. He strikes out a ton, but walks slightly more than average and hits for a ton of power for a shortstop. Considering he’s 20, getting upset about the Ks would be the height of pettiness. Manny Machado you know about, and Hunter Renfroe has hit some annoying homers against the Cubs already. Franmil Reyes is the rest of the pop with 20 homers. Manuel Margot has been hot of late, slugging over .800 the past two weeks.

The Cubs catch a break in missing Chris Paddack, probably the best rookie starter in the NL right now. Eric Lauer and Joey Lucchesi have been functional without being eye-popping, but Quantrill has had his struggles, though he did shut out the Braves last out over six innings. Lauer comes in on a roll as well, giving up three runs over his last three starts, though one was just four innings.

The Padres always seem to find a closer, and that’s true once again with Kirby Yates. He’s been about the only bright spot in the pen though, with a host of characters playing the role of gasoline this season. The Pads pen has the lowest walk-rate of any pen in the National League, though, so they don’t just give it to you. But other than Yates, only Craig Stammen has had sustained success and he’s had his problems lately.

For the Cubs, they’ll get Carl Edward Jr. back this weekend, at the expense of Randy Rosario so you know I’m delighted. Both the Brewers and Cardinals won last night, so the cushion is minuscule. It’s going to suck out there, but they won’t care about that when the final standings are tabulated in September. After this it’s now a pretty rough looking road trip with the Giants the hottest team in baseball at the moment before trips to both Hops-villes, USA. Everyone else, stay hydrated.

Baseball

Padres Spotlight: AJ Preller, The Hero Before His Time?

By Sam Fels 1173 0

Maybe if AJ Preller had just waited and not gone mad scientist in the ’14-’15 winter, he would have been thought of as something like a hero in the past winter or two. He would have been just about the only GM “going for it.” He would be the only GM who would have seemingly known what free agency and the winter months are for. Making people talk about your team. Getting them excited. Improving it.

Sadly, Preller’s Brewster’s Millions winter came in 2015, before that time in baseball’s offseason became nuclear and life was not allowed to grow in any way. Still, Preller’s pivot has been borderline-stunning, and one wonders how many other GMs would get the chance to reverse course as quickly and forcefully. Then again, when the pivot means saving and shedding money, owners tend to get a little patient.

Instead, in the offseason leading to 2015, Preller became something of a laughingstock. Let’s take you back. The Padres hired Preller at the end of the 2014 season, their fourth-straight losing one after nearly pipping the Giants for the NL West in 2010, ceding the lead in the last weekend of the season (and possibly saving us from the most mystifying dynasty of our time). Clearly, the Padres didn’t like the way things were going, as they licensed Preller to go all Jackson Pollock with their roster. (Maybe that Cashner-for-Rizzo deal played a part?)

So here’s what Preller did, and this list will seem completely alien after the past couple offseasons. He traded for Derek Norris, at the time one of the better hitting catchers around. He traded four players for Justin Upton, who was in the last year of his deal. He took Matt Kemp‘s salary off the Dodgers’ hands, though the whole Grandal-for-Norris swap behind the plate didn’t look good at the time and worse now. He swung a three-team trade to bring Wil Myers from Tampa, though it cost them Trea Turner and Myers didn’t especially have a position. He signed James Shields, who at the time was one of the biggest pitching free agents out there (which probably helped contribute to teams very calm trigger fingers when it comes to free agent pitching). And then right at the dawn of the season, perhaps the biggest move he made, was to bring in Craig Kimbrel from Atlanta.

The sheer volume of moves is startling through the lenses of what we’ve become accustomed to, and all of them were aimed at the top of the roster. It becomes even more stunning when you realize that almost none of them worked. Norris never hit, Kemp was in the middle of his decline everywhere outside LA, Kimbrel was a hood ornament on a car without a suspension, Shields gave up 33 homers before the ball became a Top Flite and with half his starts being protected by the marine layer. Myers and Upton hit for sure, though Myers was hurt for two-thirds of the season and a danger to himself in the outfield.

The Padres collected 74 wins, all the experts tut-tutted, and Preller had to reverse course in a hurry. Upton left via free agency. Kemp was traded the next season for nothing. Norris was traded after that season. But in the real coup, Shields was moved in the middle of 2016 to the White Sox, in midst of their own inexplicable and deluded drive for a playoff spot, and got Fernando Tatis Jr. out of it. Kimbrel was dealt for four prospects, one of which is Logan Allen who remains on the precipice.

At least it was quick work. While the Padres didn’t net much in all of their shedding of Preller’s ’15 madness other than Tatis, it only took Preller three seasons to build one of the more exciting, young teams around. Tatis is already wowing people, and Preller was able to convince Manny Machado that things will turn around soon. Franmil Reyes wasn’t his signing, but he developed in Preller’s system. He was able to steal Chris Paddack out of Miami, and he might be the best rookie pitcher around. And over the next two to three seasons, the Padres are poised to keep rolling out players from their system as they are considered one of the best pipelines in baseball right now. The Pads are considered to have 10 of the 100 top-rated prospects in baseball, though two of those are Tatis Jr. and Paddack.

Some were taken before Preller, of course, like Reyes. But he was allowed to admit a mistake, turn around, and now has the Padres poised for long-term success instead of the lightning in the bottle kind he chased four years ago. Quite the turn, no?

 

Baseball

Series Wrap – White Sox Swept By Royals: All Seven And We’ll Watch Them Fall

By Sam Fels 1273 0

Game 1 Box Score: Royals 5, White Sox 2

Game 2 Box Score: Royals 11, White Sox 0

Game 3 Box Score: Royals 7, White Sox 5

Game 4 Box Score: Royals 6, White Sox 5

It’s one thing to get swept by the Athletics in their usual, second half surge (they made a movie about that kind of thing, remember). It’s another to get pumped by the bottom-feeding Royals for four. And it appears the players in the clubhouse are getting a touch restless, though hardly anywhere near a mutiny. The Sox never had much depth, and being relieved of Tim Anderson and then Eloy Jimenez for all but one game this series didn’t help. The depths of the rebuild are apparent now, after some exciting moments in the first half.

Let’s get through it:

-It probably deserves its own post down the line, but some of Giolito’s stuff has lost just a touch of shine. He put up a quality start, one should against the Royals, but of late his change doesn’t have as much fade or sink away from lefties as it did earlier in the year. It’s only a fraction, but that can make the difference between a whiff and contact, and as we know anything can happen on contact. 14 strikeouts in three starts is not embarrassing, but it’s a noticeable drop from the eight per start he had been averaging through May and June.

-Who knows what’s going on with Eloy, as I can’t say I’ve heard of a bruised nerve before, especially from a position player. Hopefully it’s just a couple weeks, as the Sox can’t keep losing guys who need MLB ABs for development. One fears Eloy might be headed for the DH slot before he turns 25, though.

-Much improvement from Dylan Cease, at least control-wise. He got eight ground-outs of the 18 outs he got, and seven more via strikeout. He wasn’t helped much by his defense clearly, and didn’t get any righteous BABIP Kung Fu Treachery. Only thre extra-base hits. His slider was the main whiff weapon opposed to his change in his debut. Baby steps to the elevator.

-Getting it upside the head from Glenn Sparkman, no matter who is in the lineup, isn’t really acceptable on any level.

-If you’ve had enough of Ivan Nova pitching against anyone but the Cubs, it would be very understandable. Also teams are slugging over .700 on Nova when they see him for a third time, so might be best to avoid that whenever possible, which is always.

-When you’re on your 10th starter of the season, your expectations can’t be all that high. Ross Detwiler probably met them. At some point you’re just too deep into the reserve.

–“We need them. We’re missing them. But we need to deal with what we have here. Until the organization gives us a chance to bring the people up that can help us here.”

I don’t know if Jose Abreu is calling for Luis Robert to be promoted, but I certainly don’t know that he’s not either. You sort of wonder how long current major leaguers were just going to play along with service time manipulation, and you could read this if you want as Abreu starting to warm up to the idea of not. These guys know what Robert is doing in the minors. They know they’ve been eating it in the majors. Abreu has never played a game that really matters with the White Sox. He would be forgiven if he’s just a touch tired of it. He’s also got some leverage with his upcoming free agency, though it’s impossible to imagine the Sox just letting him walk.

But Abreu won’t be the last and it won’t just be the White Sox that have players speaking out about the mechanizations of their front offices. Everyone knows the drill now, and the next time a team tries to keep the next Robert or Bryant or Jimenez down just to delay a clock, it will not be shocking when players in that clubhouse start calling bullshit in the press and putting more pressure on GMs. Here for all of it, really.

 

 

Baseball

Did Monday’s Trade Have Anything To Do With Anthony Rizzo?

By Sam Fels 5024 0

Cubs fans have a tendency to go a bit looney, as you well know. So Monday’s trade started a bunch of conspiracy theories about how Martin Maldonado would allow Victor Caratini to be used as part of a bigger deadline trade, or that Willson Contreras would find himself more in the outfield to boost the offense (and ruin the defense), or whatever else. So let’s stretch it out to ridiculous proportions, because I haven’t been able to shake the thought. Are the Cubs planning for a possible IL stay for Anthony Rizzo?

The reason I ask and think this is clearly Rizzo hasn’t been himself lately. He hasn’t homered since June 15th. He slugged .394 in June. So the worry was that something was wrong. When Rizzo’s power goes away that badly for that long, you almost have to assume it’s something physical.

This line of thought is rendered nonsense by Rizzo’s July, where he’s slugging .594 without homering somehow, his hard-contact is back over 40% and his line-drive rate is over 30% of the month of July. So in these past couple weeks, Rizzo’s lack of homers is something more of a quirk than a sign of concern.

Still, overall, Rizzo’s homer-production is down again for a second-consecutive year, and he’s going to have to hustle to get over 30 for the season that’s been the norm for him for his career. And while belting line-drives all over the field isn’t a bad thing by any means, it’s not really Rizzo’s game at all. He’s also carrying the lowest launch-angle of his career by some distance, so it still feels like something is up, at least a little.

So what went on in June, what’s going on now, and what does it all mean?

The first thing you notice about Rizzo’s June is that he was having real trouble with offspeed pitches. His whiff-percentage went from 8% in May on them to 20% in June, or 38% whiffs per swing. He wasn’t really seeing them more often, he just couldn’t do anything with them. Overall though, Rizzo wasn’t hitting anything well.

But now he is. And it appears that he’s rediscovered what to do with pitches on the outside part of the plate, even outside the zone. Here’s his slugging by zone before June 1st, in June, and in July:

Rizzo is definitely concentrating on left field again, as he’s upped that percentage to 34.3% this month, which is well above his career average of 22%. And considering how much trouble he was having with offspeed and breaking pitches in June, it makes sense that he’s waiting longer, happy to drive fastballs the other way to give himself just a hair more time to diagnose curves and sliders and changes and such. Which might be why in the month of July, his average exit-velocity on offspeed pitches is 94 MPH. And he’s slugging over .500 on all of curves, sliders, and changes.

Still, Rizzo is hitting more grounders than ever, and less fly balls than ever, which isn’t good. Some of that has been replaced of late by line-drives, which is good, but all of it means less homers. Why should that be?

That’s harder to pinpoint. Rizzo’s grounders are up across the board, or on every pitch. There’s isn’t anything zone-wise either. He’s just hitting the ball lower. Is that approach? Swing change? Something physical that’s not allowing him to get the lift he used to?

As we move forward, we’ll see if more of Rizzo’s fly balls have just become line drives now, if he’s more Freddie Freeman (or old Freddie Freeman than this version) than Old Rizzo. A 23% fly ball rate is awfully low, which it is in June, but hey, line drives are good. Still feels like something is up here.

Baseball

Series Wrap – Cubs Take Two Of Three From Reds: Like They Deserve

By Sam Fels 1334 0

Game 1 Box Score: Reds 6, Cubs 3

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 4, Reds 3 (1o)

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 5, Reds 2

Seems pretty simple, when you get quality starts you’ll get wins. The Cubs have gotten six of them in a row. They’ve won five. Arguably should have won all six, but it would be truly petty and desperate to complain too much about a 5-1 homestand so far. This isn’t rocket science. Throw in a Kris Bryant binge, and suddenly things are starting to look as they should. Though with a couple glitches, so it’s your parents’ perfect night out. The food is great, and the service just good enough to allow them to complain.

Let’s run it through.

The Two Obs

-Hard to decide on the headline, but let’s go with Yu Darvish, who has yet to give up a run in two post All-Star starts and has only walked one in 12 innings. Today, Darvish was fastball heavy. It says he only threw 30 four-seam and 16 two-seam, but considering the latter was averaging nearly 95 MPH, I think they’re all just four-seamers. He also piled in 26 cutters, so it was a power outing. His last pitch was 98, which on a hot day is something. Combine them all and he threw 61% of them for strikes today, which goes along with his quotes after his last start about finally feeling like he has command of his fastball and doesn’t just have to rely on his cutter to get strikes. You’re seeing a variance in Darvish’s approach now, as he was slider heavy against the Pirates. But when he has command of it all, he can do that in any way he wants. Hopefully this is the start of something big, and as his next start will come against the decidedly punchless Giants (though more so now)…well, let’s just hope.

-Cishek has a 2.83 ERA, and I’m convinced this is a government lie. Every time I look up it feels like he’s giving up a run, even if it isn’t always his. He’s giving up homers on fly balls 50% more than last year, though everyone seems to be doing that now. I still worry about the amount of appearances this year and last, and this pen never lets you rest, does it?

Of course, backing him up with Rosario and Brach was never going to work out, was it? I can’t believe I’m asking for Edwards to hurry.

-At this point, we have to guess there’s something physical with Rizzo. He hasn’t homered in over a month, and he has 10 doubles over the last six weeks or so. He just doesn’t seem to have the pop. To be fair to him, his hard contact and line drives are much higher in July than they were in June, so maybe whatever it was has passed and he’s just trying to find the swing again. The Cubs are a Rizzo binge alongside the Bryant binge from like a 12-game winning streak.

-I don’t need Albert Almora Jr. to hit. He’s good enough in the field and the Cubs should have enough other hitters to just take his defense and run. I do need him to keep his head in the game. It didn’t end up mattering last night, but once again him not running after a drop third is a sign of a player not locked in, and this is what the Cubs were trying to address in the offseason. It has to stop.

-Looks like I motherfucked Alec Mills into a quality start, which is probably my biggest accomplishment of the season.

-Heyward seems to have a new knack for big hits, huh?

Onwards…

Baseball

Why Doesn’t Eloy Hit The Ball Very Hard?

By Sam Fels 1588 0

I know where this will go. I’m just a bitter Cubs fan tying to rationalize to himself the trade of Eloy Jimenez. And I’ll cling to anything and everything like Linus’s blanket that will make it ok in my mind while Eloy spends the next decade raining projectiles onto the Dan Ryan. Feel free to think this.

It can be universally agreed, I think, that Eloy Jimenez has had something of a choppy rookie season so far. There have been flashes of brilliance, mutant power, and intelligent approach while at the same time a heavy slapdash of whiffs, curious decisions, and at times bad luck. All of it has led so far to a tick above average 107 wRC+, and a pretty on the nose of average .330 wOBA.

There’s little doubt that Eloy is going to be a very good player one day, perhaps even great. There’s probably a little more discipline at the plate to be harvested, which should lead to better pitches, which should lead to more balls landing the in the shrubbery. Another spin or two around the league couldn’t hurt either.

But looking up Eloy’s numbers this year, I was struck by something weird for a player with such obvious power. Eloy doesn’t hit the ball very hard, at least not consistently. Yet ≥

Jimenez currently has a 35% hard-contact rate, which isn’t terrible but isn’t anywhere near what you would expect a genuine slugger to have. For reference’s sake, your leader in hard-contact rate is Christian Yelich at 54.6%, though no one would expect Eloy to already be performing at an MVP-level. Eloy’s 35.5% mark would rank 123rd in the Majors if he qualified, right in between Andrew Benintendi and Kevin Pillar. Fine players to be sure, but not exactly where you picture Eloy.

Eloy’s line-drive rate of 14.5% would also be borderline abysmal, though you wouldn’t fret much about it if he were hitting a lot of flies hard. Which he’s not.

Statcast-wise, it’s not a prettier picture. Eloy’s average exit-velocity of 90.3 MPH is good for 108th in the league. His barrel-percentage of 9.9% ranks 98th. Again, you wouldn’t expect Eloy to already be among the giants of the game, but given the power he has flashed at times you would think he would be making more loud noises more consistently, even if they didn’t always produce runs. Which leads one to believe his .271 BABIP isn’t really all that much bad luck

It’s a little tricky to see why this might be, but let’s try. For one, with over half of Jimenez’s contact on the ground, you might conclude that he’s had a roll-over problem (much like old Jeeps). And that seems to be the case. When Eloy puts it on the ground, 63% of the time he’s pulled it. Conversely, he gets the most amount of fly balls when going the other way, or just about half the time. It’s not that Eloy doesn’t have power the other way, he should just have more of it.

Right now, when going to right field, Eloy only has a 24.5% hard-contact rate, though a better than normal 19.5% line-drive rate. Strangely, the numbers are even worse when he pulls the ball. The hard contact is just about the same, but the line-drive rate is a measly 11.1%. How can a guy like this not be producing line-drives when pulling the ball?

If you’re about to suggest that Eloy should have a more Goldilocks approach, I’ll stop you and say you’re right. When he stays up the middle, his hard-contact rate is 54.2%. Now we’re talking.

Of course, it’s not that simple. You can’t just hit anything up the middle, it depends on how you’re being pitched. And based on where Eloy’s power has been, it’s a tougher riddle. Eloy is something of an iconoclast this year when it comes to hitting. Most hitters these days have found ways to lift low pitches for power and are vulnerable at the top of the zone. Not so much with Eloy:

But, MLB pitchers being what they are, Eloy doesn’t see a ton up there. This is where Eloy sees fastballs:

Mostly not up. And weirdly, he’s turning a ton of them into grounders:

As you might have already guessed, Eloy sees almost all of his breaking pitches low and away, and his only power off of them has been on mistakes that hang in the middle or high in the zone. That’s going to be true his whole career.

Eloy needs to stay up the middle for a while, and figure out how to lift low fastballs. Which I have no doubts he will one day. Because someone like this should have better contact numbers, even in this nascent stage of his career.

Baseball

Cubs Make Strange Yet Kind Of Nothing Trade

By Sam Fels 1766 0

I remember Joe Sheehan (who had an interesting and misguided angle on last night’s trade) writing about this the night after THE NIGHT in Cubs history. It was about how random it was for Mike Montgomery to be on the mound to get the last out. How he had been traded three times, never really flourished, seemed a surplus-acquisition at the time, ended up being pretty useful in a couple of roles, and here he was throwing the biggest pitch in Cubs history. Baseball can be strange that way.

And it can also be strange in that not even three years later, you’re now surplus to requirements and headed to the basement, standings-wise, in Kansas City. Baseball can be fickle, too.

So it proved with Montgomery, who kind of pitched himself out of a role this season. It’s rare that a pitcher can hang onto the “tweener” role for a lot of years. If you’re not good enough to start and pretty much not good enough to take a prominent relief role, eventually you’re just plain not going to be good enough. Something happened to Monty’s fastball/sinker this year and he’d been straight gasoline. The future wasn’t bright either, as if even two spots were to open in the rotation next year (one is more likely if any), then Adbert Alzolay is going to take it.

Montgomery made it clear he wanted to start, and that’s his prerogative. His stuff does lean toward starter, I just don’t think his stuff is good enough to negotiate a lineup two or three times. Not our problem now. He requested out, he got his request, and we thank him for his services. He wasn’t going to be the long man here with Chatwood around (though Joe Maddon doesn’t want to seem to use him in that role either), he’s never been a LOOGY and definitely should be aiming for higher than that, and doesn’t have the stuff to be a shutdown guy. No use trying to jam it into the puzzle here.

So to Martin Maldonado, who was available for just money in the winter. The Cubs demurred, preferring to let Victor Caratini assume the backup role, which he’s done with aplomb. It seems really odd that the Cubs would trade an actual something for a catcher merely to fill in one or two days while Willson Contreras is hurt. So what’s really going on here? And what changed between the winter and now?

The obvious answer, and one nearest the conspiracy theorist’s heart, is that Caratini is about to be part of a package to bring another reliever or bat to the Northside. You’d have to think there’s some market for a young, switch-hitting catcher who can hit and has decent enough framing numbers. He also walks. There is some puff to Caratini’s numbers, but his contact numbers suggest it isn’t much puff. Considering the rest he’s been able to provide Contreras over the past few weeks, you could see where the Cubs would be comfortable riding Willy hard (phrasing?) in the season’s last two months. That is if he were healthy, which he’s not, and while the Cubs are saying it won’t be more than the 10 days for his arch problem, the fact that it could have been made worse playing on it doesn’t exactly instill you with confidence about the rest of the season.

Maldonado definitely can’t hit, but he can catch and frame and all that, and is pretty much the definition of a backup catcher for hire these days. If he’s just third on the depth-chart, it would seem weird that the Cubs want to carry three catchers. Maddon hated doing it in the past when Contreras came up in 2016, but there was little choice given David Ross‘s and Miguel Montero‘s statuses.

If Caratini is traded, it would first obviously depend on the return, and second would put the Cubs in the exact same situation next winter that Caratini bailed them out of this time around. No backup for Contreras, signing some plug and perhaps overworking Willson. I guess that’s a minor problem in the grand scheme of things, though.

Some of the more mischievous around would opine that it actually means more of Contreras in right field, letting Caratini catch to boost the offense. Given how highly the Cubs rate defense (it’s why Russell and Almora still get starts, people), and that would give the Cubs possibly the worst defensive outfield in baseball (Heyward isn’t that good in center despite what you might think), I find that hard to believe. It would be creative, I’m just not sure if it wouldn’t be creatively destructive. Especially as so far this year, only Cole Hamels has kept things on the ground at more than an average or below-average rate.

For right now, the Cubs lost a nothing to gain really a nothing, and that’s all it may be if Maldonado is moved to Iowa when Contreras is healthy and is basically here to save us from the Taylor Davis Experience ever again. It’s what comes next that’s interesting.

Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox at Royals: Feel Good Hit Of The Summer

By Andy Jonathan 1357 0

VS 

RECORDS: White Sox 42-47   Royals 32-62

GAMETIMES: Mon/Tue/Wed 7:15, Thurs 12:15

TV: WGN Mon, Tue/Wed/Thurs NBCSN

ALL YOUR BBQ ARE BELONG TO US: Royals Review

PITCHING MATCHUPS

Game 1: Lucas Giolito vs Jake Junis

Game 2: Dylan Cease vs Glen Sparkman

Game 3: Chevy Nova vs Danny Duffy

Game 4: TBD vs TBD

 

 

PROBABLE WHITE SOX LINEUP

Leury Garcia – SS

Yoan Moncada – 3B

Jose Abreu – 1B

James McCann – C

Eloy Jimenez – LF

Jon Jay – RF

AJ Reed – DH

Yolmer Sanchez – 2B

Ryan Cordell – CF

 

PROBABLE ROYALS LINEUP

Whit Merrifield – RF

Alex Gordon – LF

Adalberto Mondesi – SS

Jorge Soler – DH

Chelsor Cuthbert– 1B

Hunter Dozier – 3B

Bubba Starling – CF

Nicky Lopez – 2B

Martin Maldonado – C

 

Another week, another series against the Royals for the Sox.  Yet these teams couldn’t have started their post All Star break more differently.  The Royals handily took their opening series against the moribund Detroit Tigers, while the Sox got their lunch fed to them by the A’s.  Apparently having 3 days off in a row turned the Sox into a bunch of slap hitting singles monsters, as in the first 2 games they managed a whopping ZERO extra base hits.  The Royals, meanwhile, banged out a boatload of them, and also ran wild on the basepaths.

Yet nothing seems to be the cure for what ails the Sox like this KC Royals team, as so far they’re 7-3 against them with two of the losses coming in the opening series of the season.  This Royals lineup looks mostly the same since the last time these two teams faced off, with one exception.  KC called up their “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer Local Boy” in Bubba Starling right before the All Star break.  Starling, the Royals 1st round pick in the loaded 2011 draft (taken 5th over all), had the distinction of being one of three players taken in the top 30 of that draft who had yet to reach the majors.  Some of the notable names from that draft taken after Starling include Javy Baez, Anthony Rendon and Francisco Lindor, making Starling the 2011 MLB version of Sam Bowie.  He also hails from Gardner, Kansas which is about 60 miles SW of KC.  Starling seems to have pushed light hitting speedster Billy Hamilton out of the starting lineup, which will probably preclude his trade to a contender who has a need for speed in the postseason.

The Sox will toss out their best 3 starters to kick off the series with Giolito, Cease and (sigh) Nova to take the bump in that order.  Giolito will attempt to right the ship after taking losses in his last 3 starts.  He did manage a scoreless inning in his All Star game debut.  Dylan Cease will make his second career major league start on Tuesday against moon-faced yahoo Glenn Sparkman.  If Cease can command his fastball at the top of the zone, and dot the bottom with his breaking pitches the Royals shouldn’t have an answer for him.  Nova will look to continue his “streak” of giving up less than 5 runs, which I guess is considered progress for the Sox starting rotation these days.  Game 4 looks to be a bullpen one for both teams, as the Sox have no days off this week.  After his disastrous start against the A’s on Saturday, Dylan Covey might not be the guy to turn to, and instead we will see some more of Hoss Detwiler.

With no Tim Anderson to throw at this series, Ned Yost will have to find something else to get pissy about if he’s gonna show his young team HOW TO PLAY THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY.  The Sox get a chance to redeem themselves after the Oakland series, and Sox fans get this year’s version of “Free Eloy” as Luis Robert moves up to AAA and his first taste of the juiced balls at that level.  Judging by the 2 dingers and 7 RBIs he had in his first appearance, you’re gonna hear Rick Hahn talking a lot about the holes in his defensive game before too long.

Let’s Go Sox.

 

 

Baseball

Royals Spotlight: Everybody’s Selling?

By Andy Jonathan 1392 0

As we head into the 2nd half of the season, the league is increasingly divided into two sections: sellers and buyers.  As has been the case since their 2015 World Series victory, the Royals find themselves solidly in the former category.  This year, however, they don’t really have a whole lot to offer playoff contenders except for Whit Merrifield, who would probably bring quite the ransom back to a team that is desperate to bring some excitement back to BBQ City.  Merrifield is having another great year for the Royals, getting his first ever All Star team selection last week.  He’s currently slashing .309/.360/.497 with 11 HR and 44 RBI, and has added 14 stolen bases to his line.  He plays primarily at 2B, but can be slotted anywhere on the field with plus defense at the majority of positions.  Were he to continue on this pace, he’d be worth 5.4 WAR at the end of the season.  On top of that, he’s signed to a team friendly contract with 3 more years of control to any team that could acquire his talents.

Yet therein lies the rub for any team looking in on his availability, as Royals GM Dayton Moore has already come out and said that he’s not planning on moving Merrifield as he means too much to the team and no one could possibly entice them to move him.  While this might just be a GM attempting to set the market impossibly high to sell his player, it seems more likely that Moore plans on building around Merrifield and other younger players.  The Royals already have the uber-exciting Adalberto Mondesi and Hunter Dozier having success up at the major league level in addition to Merrifield.

If this is truly the case, Dayton Moore either thinks that his rebuild will be far enough along in the next three years for the team to compete, or that Merrifield puts enough butts in the seats that it’s better for the Royals to keep him around and potentially see him walk in 3 years as opposed to flipping him at the deadline for a king’s ransom of young talent that could supercharge his team’s rebuild.

So which is it?  Looking a little closer at the numbers, it seems it’s neither.  As it stands right now, the Royals farm system ranks somewhere around 19th in the league after this years entry draft last month.  They have 3 top-100 prospects in addition to the dearth of youth currently playing at the major league level.  Were the Royals to move Merrifield they’d easily jump into the top 10, much like the Sox did with the Sale/Quintana/Eaton trades.  As far as league attendance goes, the Royals pulled in about 1.7 million last season, about 400,000 below the AL average.  This is a precipitous drop from 2016 (Merrifield’s first season in the majors) where the Royals drew 2.6 million.  This season has them at 850,000 thus far, which puts them in line with last year’s numbers.  So the idea that Merrifield puts asses in seats doesn’t really pan out either.

So looking at those numbers, the smart play for the Royals would be to move Merrifield to a team desperate for leadoff infield help.  Based on a quick glance at the contenders, he would be an instant upgrade for the Dodgers at second base solidifying an already terrifying lineup.  The Dodgers also have a top 10 farm system loaded with the kind of talent that could push the Royals rebuild up a few years.  The A’s farm system is also pretty well stocked, and could use an infield upgrade on the left side.  There should be no end of suitors for Merrifield’s services, but unless Dayton Moore has a huge change of heart (or some type of brain transplant) it looks as though he’s staying put in KC.  Which in the long run is best for the White Sox as a whole, since it pushes back their competitive window even further behind the one Rick Hahn is looking at.

Baseball

Series Preview – Reds vs. Cubs: Bogey Bogey Bogey, Can’t You See?

By Sam Fels 1271 0

vs.

RECORDS: Reds 42-48   Cubs 50-43

GAMETIMES: Monday and Tuesday 7:05, Wednesday 1:20

TV: NBCSN Monday and Wednesday, WGN Tuesday

CHRIS SABO APPRECIATION SOCIETY: Blog Red Machine

PITCHING MATCHUPS

Luis Castillo vs. Kyle Hendricks

Anthony DeSclafani vs. Alec Mills

Sonny Gray vs. Yu Darvish

PROBABLE REDS LINEUP

Nick Senzel – CF

Joey Votto – 1B

Eugenio Suarez – 3B

Yasiel Puig – RF

Jesse Winker – LF

Jose Iglesias – SS

Jose Peraza – 2B

Curt Casali – C

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Javier Baez – SS

Kris Bryant -3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Willson Contreras – C

Jason Heyward – RF

Robel Garcia – 2B

Albert Almora – CF

 

After taking care of one of the teams that made the last road trip hell with a three-game sweep of the Pirates, the Cubs will try and right previous wrongs against this year’s definite bogey team, the Reds. The Cubs have lost all three series to these assholes, who are something of an analytic darling with their subpar record but glittering run-differential. They seem intent on proving why that’s the case against the Cubs this year, which has been infuriating.

The Reds come in after getting knocked all around Coors Field for three days, giving up 19 runs in the last two games (though they won one of those as they scored 17 one night). That won’t help the Cubs much, as they’ll get the Reds three best starters in Gray, DeSclafani, and Castillo tonight. Gray and DeSclafani have been on particular rolls the past month, calming down the walks which had been a problem earlier. It’s been the reverse for Castillo, who has walked nearly six hitters per nine innings over the past 30 days. That said, his last two starts against the Cubs and Brewers have seen him throw 14.2 innings while giving up a run, so he’s probably found it again. Goodie. Just what we need.

The Cubs simply couldn’t get Joey Votto out last time, and then it was a rotating cast of miscreants that came up with big hits, notably Phillip Ervin. He went 5-for-10 with a homer in the last set, and seemingly all of them came at the biggest moments. It’s been that way in every game against the Reds this year seemingly, with the Cubs nominating a new doofus in red the hero of the day when they can least afford to.

The Cubs scored more than enough runs to sweep the Reds last time, but were unlucky to lose Cole Hamels before the second inning ever started, which forced whatever is parading around in Mike Montgomery‘s skin these days to come in and offer up sacrifices to the gods. Their bullpen weaved some magic in the finale of that one, and we can only hope that won’t happen this time around. Carl Edwards is likely to return at some point during the series, which would be a boost of some kind, assuming his head his screwed on tight.

If there’s been a soft spot on the Reds of late it’s in the pen, with only Michael Lorenzen and his Farnsworth-tight pants being consistent the past month. The Cubs got to Raisel Iglesias the last time they saw him, but he’s put up four scoreless outings since. David Hernandez and Amir Garrett have walked the park lately, so if the Cubs need to catch-up or add-on in the late innings for the next three days, they’ll have to display the same patience they discovered against the Pirates this weekend.

The Cubs have opened up just slightly with the sweep, having a 2.5-game lead now on Milwaukee and three on the Scum. With the Brewers having to deal with the Braves this week, this feels like an opportunity to open that up even more, especially as it’s the Pirates and Giants after this and neither are exactly inspiring (though the Giants have played better of late). We’ve been asking for months now but it’s time to turn it on, all the way up.