Baseball

It Seems Simple, But It’s Actually Not

By Sam Fels 1461 0

First off, let me say right at the top that I’m guilty of this as anyone, as baseball is perhaps the last outlet where I regularly leave any rationality behind and just want to stomp my feet, whether in anger or joy. So I know what I said yesterday, but after a night to think about it, I think I’m at least back in the neighborhood of lost rationality. It’s at least an area code away.

After a weekend sweep, watching every grounder the Nationals hit find a hole, them never striking out when the Cubs absolutely needed them to, it would be easy to point out that difference between the two teams and say this is why the Cubs are where they are and the Nats are where they are and why they seem pointed in such opposite directions. Except even after that sweep, they’re four games apart, which I could just as easily point to their top of the rotation being better than the Cubs top of the rotation, and the Nats getting far more dates with the Marlins than the Cubs do and moving along (they’re currently 10-3 against Miami).

Yes, the Nats do put the ball in play more than the Cubs do, and the Cubs whiff a lot more than the Nats do. And that’s certainly an issue. Is it THE issue? Not so convinced.

Sure, the more balls you put in play the more chance you’re going to find a hole. But there’s also a chance that you find someone’s glove for a double play, especially when it’s on the ground as often as the Nats were this weekend. Jose Quintana gave up five earned runs in just four innings, four earned, and he didn’t give up one hard-hit ball. Sorry, he gave up one, according to FanGraphs. 75% of the contact he gave up was on the ground. On another day, that’s probably seven innings of shutout ball, assuming Anthony Rizzo wasn’t having a backiotomy on the field.

Yes, I know, the more balls you put in the play the more will turn into hits even if you’re percentages are the same. I was good at math, can’t you tell? But is finding holes with your grounders really a skill? It’s not. The Nats as a team have a BABIP nine points higher than the Cubs, good for second in the NL, non-Rockies division. And yet if you go by contact, team-wide, the Cubs make the same exact kind of contact the Nats do. Since the Nats went nuclear from June 1st on, their BABIP is 15 points higher than the Cubs, and they’ve hit the ball slightly harder, but have also made more soft-contact than the Cubs.

Of course, with that added BABIP the Nats jus have more of a sample, as they strike out far less (about 6%). So yes, you are right to bemoan the Cubs lack of ability to not strike out when it matters, but it’s more complicated than just getting the ball in play. I don’t know that the Cubs would be all that much better off with grounders instead of strikeouts, given they really have little team speed. They’d have to get awfully lucky, let’s say.

Digging deeper, much like Kris Bryant, the Cubs just don’t hit the ball very hard. Since that June 1st date, they rank dead-ass last in hard-contact rate as a team, and are 12th overall in the NL. Strangely, right ahead of the Nationals. Only Castellanos since he came over has a hard-contact rate over 40%, And 40% is just about the median rate in MLB right now. How can a team with Baez, Contreras, Bryant, Rizzo, and Schwarber not hit the ball all that hard collectively? And this is where their whiff-rate doesn’t come into it, because it’s solely about when they do make contact.

Right now the teams that sit atop the hard-contact rate standings in MLB are the Dodgers, Twins, Brewers, Cardinals, Rangers, with the Braves and A’s right behind that. That’s four first-place teams out of eight, and another playoff team, with only the Rangers and Brewers being outliers. Your bottom five are the White Sox, Orioles, Mariners, Mets, and Pirates.

So yes, the Cubs do whiff and chase a lot, and that’s a problem. But they’re not doing enough when they do make contact either, which might be just as big of a problem. How can in our year of the lord JUICED BALL, only Schwarber be on a pace to blow by his career-high in homers? Or he and Contreras nearing career-highs in slugging? Again, the whiffs and lack of contact come into it, but that much?

The Cubs have hit a good amount of homers at 203, yet they’re 11th in doubles. And I would argue only ranking 5th for this team in homers and slugging…it’s not enough. And only some of that can be blamed on the wind mostly blowing in at Wrigley and the weather being barf until the middle of June.

It’s a dual-track problem, and they’re most likely not going to solve it in the next 32 games. Which means this is probably going to get bumpier.

Baseball

Series Recap – Nationals Sweep Cubs: Capital Punishment

By Forklift 1842 0

How the entire weekend looked, down to the white spy having a hole in his bat

Game 1 Box Score: Nationals 9 Cubs 3

Game 2 Box Score: Nationals 7 Cubs 2

Game 3 Box Score: Nationals 7 Cubs 5 (11 innings)

So a couple weeks ago I run into Fels at a Cub game where the As just completely steamrolled the Cubs. Me, kind of missing writing, and also being in possession of spectacularly bad judgement, decide to tell Sam, “Hey, lemme know if you ever need anybody to write about the Cubs.” So he reaches out after Friday’s shit fiesta and asks if I’d like to recap. I figure, sure, I’m going Saturday anyway so why not?

The Cubs have had this habit all year of turning Wrigley Field into their own ivy-covered death star, obliterating teams that have the audacity to come in with any idea of winning games or series, using homestands to lift them into first place, and making us all think they’ve finally turned the corner, and all the talent they have would finally start translating into wins, before shattering those illusion on the subsequent road trip. I guess winning the last two games away from the Friendly Confines threw the schedule off, because they spent this weekend being perfectly generous hosts to the Washington Nationals, up to and including letting them have the last beer and slice of pizza.

Let’s…

Baseball

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

By Sam Fels 1322 0

Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 5, Giants 3

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 12, Giants 11

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 1, Giants 0

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

Let’s…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onwards…

Baseball

Is Kris Bryant Still Hurt Or Just Weird?

By Sam Fels 2589 0

Well that’s easy. Bryant is weird, in that he might be the blandest person in baseball who really only just wants to play baseball. But I’m not here to discuss whether this guy is the human interpretation of beige or not.

And I’m certainly not here to claim that Bryan is bad, or disappointing, or anything remotely close. He’s been the Cubs best player in fWAR, and in wRC+. In the former, he’s the 7th-best player in the NL, and in the latter category 10th. So if I were to call these kinds of performance disappointing, I’d be perhaps the biggest asshole in the world (and I yet may be). Bryant has an outside shot at having his fourth 6.0+ WAR season, which would be every season he’s been healthy. He’ll have to hustle, but it’s possible. Also, since he came into the league, the only two players better than him are Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, in terms of WAR.

Clearly, Bryant is still very, very special.

Still, I have thought all season that with baseballs flying everywhere, former squeegee-holders now surpassing 30 homers, that it’s a touch weird that Kris Bryant isn’t anywhere near his career-high in homers or slugging. His career-high in homers was 39 in his MVP-year of 2016, and he’s at 25 now. It’s not that he couldn’t go nuclear in the season’s last six weeks here, and get up around that 39 number. It’s just unlikely, along with improving his slugging some 19 points to get to the .554 mark, also from 2016.

When digging into this a bit, it was a little startling to see that Bryant doesn’t really hit the ball all that hard.

Bryant’s hard-contact rate is 35%. That ranks 61st in the National League, which is only 16 spots ahead of last of all qualified players in the league, and really doesn’t compare to the likes of Yelich and Bellinger, who are over 50%. Bryant also only has a line-drive rate of just 19.5%. That’s not that far off his career-mark of 21%, and you’ve never really think of Bryant spraying line-drives everywhere. Actually, in his injury-ravaged season of ’18, he had a 25% line-drive rate, but that could be attributed to his shoulder problems and an inability to get the ball in the air as he had before.

Still, Bryant is hitting more grounders than he ever has, which can’t really be explained away as good in any fashion. If you go by exit velocity, his 87.6 MPH average is very pedestrian. It’s behind by two MPH what he did in 2016, but again, this is a season where the baseball is souped up with nitrous to be labeled all over the field.

In fact, if you go by StatCast, Bryant is lucky to have the numbers he does. His expected slugging and weighted on-base, based on the kind of contact he’s making, are both some 40 points below what his actual slugging and weighted on-base average are. Bryant’s 17.7% home run per fly ball rate is a little high, but not obscene to what he’s done before. But again, in this environment, it feels like it’s a touch low.

One angle could be is that Bryant, at least this season, has developed something of a hole in his swing up in the zone:

Bryant for his career was still pretty deadly high and high and inside in the zone, and that hasn’t been the case this year. I don’t think however, that if he were getting to those pitches as well it would do something about his contact numbers. It would affect his slugging and homers, at least you’d think so. He would be hitting more of those towering homers that just never seem to come down, that you’re picturing in your mind right now.

Still, Bryant only has one season of making hard-contact over 40% of the time, which again, was his MVP year. And for comparison, his 40.6% hard-contact rate that year ranked fifth in the NL. That mark would be 15th now (tied with Kyle Schwarber, strangely).

There is something about Bryant’s swing and style that just don’t make you think he should be hitting the ball viciously hard every time, while still being awfully productive. Again, the numbers are the numbers and no one should be upset with what Bryant has given.

There’s just this feeling that the atmosphere has changed, more and more hitters have caught up to what Bryant was doing, and he hasn’t geared up with them. Essentially putting up the same numbers and rates with this baseball suggests moving backwards a bit, or that he’s not completely healthy either. Being weak high in the zone, which he wasn’t before, could also suggest that shoulder isn’t quite 100%, but that’s just speculation. And last year, when he was definitely hurt, he was actually worse lower in the zone.

Look, this is Kris Bryant we’re talking about. GALACTUS. There might be only one player in the NL you’d even consider trading him for (Bellinger, and that’s mostly due to age). It just seems weird that Bryant isn’t putting up Belinger or Yelich numbers when everything is bent for him to do so.

Then again, this is probably complaining about the back of Penelope Cruz’s knee or something.

Baseball

Series Recap – Cubs Take Two Of Three From Pirates: At Least It’s Over

By Sam Fels 1201 0

Game 1 Box Score: Pirates 3, Cubs 2

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 2, Pirates 0

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 7, Pirates 1

It was inches away from being a sweep, and coming home with a 5-5 road trip, which would not have been acceptable given the circumstance but wouldn’t have felt like some punitive prison punishment that this has turned into. And yet, despite all their cock-ups and idiocy, the Cubs end this roadie in first place, though having to share it. And they’ll return home for six games, where they’re 12-3 since the break. And while they do that, the Brewers and Cardinals will be throwing their fake teeth and harvested manure at each other, so if the Cubs continue to play at home as they have they’ll be gaining games on someone. Thanks to the balloon-handedness of the division, and despite their own nincompoop ways, they still have it all in their own hands.

Right then, let’s…

-I guess we’ll start with Friday night’s what-have-ya. First off, you should never be muzzled by Joe Musgrove like that unless you’re intentionally trying to do so. The Cubs didn’t much look interested Friday night, which is a luxury they’ve lost with all the other games they’ve spent trying to light their own farts.

But hey, Maddon even got away with letting Tony Kemp bat, against a lefty no less, and you get the lead. There was sone consternation about bringing Brandon Kinztler straight from the DL into this bonfire, but what choice was there? Cishek and Kimbrel are hurt. Strop is broken, and along with Wick was part of the monk-immolation in Philly the night before. Really, the only mistake was Kintzler not throwing the ball down the middle to some rookie hitting .196 and seeing just exactly how far he could hit it.

-There was also daggers being tossed at David Bote, and the whole rigamarole about using Bryant as a defensive replacement is a touch weird. Bote is just unlucky to get another ball like that, and one if he even fields cleanly he might not have a play on. This is just sequencing again. Whatever the faults of Bote, defensively he’s been just fine, and more so at third. Proclaiming him a plague on society is overly strong.

-The Cubs didn’t look all that more interested against Steven Brault either yesterday afternoon, but  the Pirates can’t even take two games in a row that they’re being handed. Lester made some huge pitches and dodged and weaved out of trouble, and while he’s not what he was and probably won’t be again, he still can pull these efforts out when the Cubs need them most.

-Use Chatwood for multiple innings more often. Thank you for your time.

-Kris Bryant to the rescue again on Saturday, but it still feels like he’s having a weird season. Given the baseball and what others are doing, shouldn’t he be heading for a career-high in homers too? Or anywhere near it? Or are the 39 in his MVP year the aberration? His slugging is the second-highest of his career, so you can’t complain, it just seems like it would have been more.

-Since July 1, Jose Quintana has been the seventh best pitcher in the NL in terms of fWAR and FIP. But keep stabbing yourself in the heart about Eloy Jimenez and his .293 OBP.

-I would like to think getting to do something as goofy as play in Williamsport for a night and hang out with the kids will remind this team what it’s like to have fun again, but I became way too cynical about these sorts of things way too long ago to truly mean it.

Onwards…

Baseball

This Team Doesn’t Have Moments, So This One Won’t Be Either

By Sam Fels 1139 0

The baseball season is so long, that we have a need to identify certain games or plays that signaled something, otherwise we’d have to admit we’ve just spent six months kind of watching the same thing over and over. Especially when it’s a team like this Cubs team that can never spend that much time being bad or good. It’s all dependent on location. Combine it all so far and you get a big bunch of mediocre, a colorless canvas, something that just kind of makes you make a sound like, “PHWA?”

You only can “identify” these moments in review, and that’s only when something much bigger happens at the end. Tell me, what was the defining moment of the 2017 season? I can’t really think of one, because that was a 92-win season that ended in the NLCS rather meekly. Wade Davis striking out Harper to end the series before (oh, the symbolism)? Max Scherzer’s inning? Certainly can’t think of much during the season.

I suppose last year has one, and it’s Carl Edwards Jr. throwing up all over what should have been the biggest home run of the season, Anthony Rizzo off Josh Hader to take the lead. Get that one win, and then you win the division and we see where it goes. Sometimes they’re easy to find, but then again it doesn’t really matter if the Cubs find one more win anywhere else along the six month season.

So yeah, there’s a huge urge to label last night’s dance quintet/cycle as the moment that will tear apart the season and send the Cubs spiraling to a .500 record or thereabouts, Maddon off into his RV, possibly Theo into the sunset to wait for his Hall of Fame berth, and whatever else. Certainly the symbols were all there–the player the Cubs refused to even try to sign (and rightly, honestly), the bullpen meltdown, the managerial what-ifs, the middle infield defense, I could keep going.

But you forget that the Cubs rolled into The Zit after what seemed like one of the biggest wins of the season, the comeback one over their bogey team Cincinnati. And they responded to that by three lifeless or dumbass games. So it honestly wouldn’t be a shock, and truly fitting, but following the worst loss of the season by three ho-hum, whatever wins over the already-quit Pirates. And then that will be a .500 road trip which won’t be great but isn’t disaster and we’ll be right back where we started. And the whole season has been just about ending up back where we started.

And they’ve done this before. I thought they were pretty much left in the shit after biffing a road trip to Milwaukee and St. Louis. They swept the Brewers and took two of three from the A’s, an AL playoff contender. I thought that might spur them. They then came up with these seven games of pure brilliance. They roared out of the All-Star break. That road trip they fucked up I just mentioned followed. That roaring out of the break followed a road trip they limped out of as well. They keep doing this.

“Momentum” in baseball is either non-existent or non-quantifiable. I can never decide. In the end, you win seven in a row because you’re playing well and you get a little luck. And you lose seven or eight in a row because of the opposite. The Cubs aren’t good enough to do the former and not bad enough to do the latter. If they were a winning team, their lack of spikes in the EKG would be cited as just staying on an even-keel, a quiet cool, a steady confidence. Because they’re a gray, shapeless life form at the moment, it’s easy to label them as lifeless, as bored, as unengaged. And they’ve looked all of that at times, as all disappointing teams do.

But I don’t know which one they are, I don’t think anyone else does, and more importantly I don’t think they do either. This Cubs team has just kind of existed through this season. It’s just there, standing in the corner, eating just the right amount of appetizers and drinking just the right amount of free booze without indulging and barely talking to anyone while also not appearing creepily aloof (can you tell who I am at parties?).

And that’s what I would guess would happen now. They’re not so stupid as to not take the two or three games this Pirates team will just hand you because that’s a thing they do now. And then they’ll return home and probably win more than they lose because that’s what they do. And then they’ll head on the road and lose more than they should. And they’ll just continue to Billy Pilgrim their way through this campaign until it ends, and still the most likely scenario is them standing on top as the Cardinals and Brewers more violently thrash about to go nowhere even harder than the Cubs.

It could be by next week you’ll barely remember last night. Or by the middle of September you won’t. There’s a small possibility it’ll become a comedic note, one we giggle about after the Cubs actually do turn it around and the Phillies continue to go straight to the middle. Most likely, it’ll just be something that happened. as pretty much all of this season has been.

Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Phillies: Blow Up The Chicken Man

By Sam Fels 1114 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 64-54   Phillies 60-58

GAMETIMES: Tuesday-Thursday 6:05

TV: NBCSN Tuesday and Wednesday, WGN Thursday

AND HIS HOUSE TOO: The Good Phight

PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Phillies Spotlight

After escaping Cincinnati with a split that you’re more glad to get against a sub-.500 team than would normally make sense, the Cubs will attempt to actually surge forward on the road in the Keystone State, including one game in the middle part of the state lovingly referred to as “Pennsyl-tucky.” It starts with a three-game set against the Phillies, who are doing a damn fine impression of the Mets these days.

It all started so well for the Phils, as they were 33-24 on June 1st and atop the East. They then watched the Braves go nuclear, the Nationals not far behind, and of late the Mets have become something of a farce, all the while piling up a 23-27 record in June and July. August hasn’t started much better at 4-7. losing series to the White Sox, Diamondbacks, and Giants. Yuck.

It’s not hard to figure out why. This team doesn’t really hit all that well, nor do they pitch all that well either out of the rotation or the pen. That’s a rough combination. The offense should be better, at least that’s what you’d think when you hear the names Bryce Harper, Rhys Hoskins, and J.T. Realmuto. The latter has been everything they wanted defensively, perhaps the best actual receiver in the league. But his offense has been exactly average, as additional Ks to what he did in Florida have kneecapped him. Harper has merely been ok-to-good, but not the star he has fooled a lot of people into thinking he is every year. He pops that for seasons here and there, but not every year. Hoskins has been everything they want.

But there were too many dead spots. Left field was one after Andrew McCutchen had knee-death, which they’re trying to fill with Corey Dickerson now after getting him from Pittsburgh. They still get nothing out of center. Second base is another black hole. Jean Segura has been ok at short but he’s never going to provide much more than average offense. You know you’re in trouble when you’re trying Jay Bruce at all.

We went over the rotation’s problems, and they’e throwing out Jason Vargas and Drew Smyly in this series, both midseason acquisitions. Arrieta is sounding like he’s not going to be able to put off the surgery on his elbow bone spurs until after the season as he’d hoped to do. So they’ll have to fill that spot, and internally now thanks to the passing of the one deadline to rule them all.

The pen has been extremely beat up, as all of Seranthony Dominguez, Adam Morgan, Victor Arano, Tommy Hunter, and supposed closer this year David Robertson are on the shelf. And all save Robertson were key contributors last year. That’s part of the reason Eflin and Pivetta are in the pen now, but when you’re closing games with Hector Neris, you’ve broken the glass.

For the Cubs, they’ll hope to get both Brandon Kinztler and Craig Kimbrel back from the DL this series, though likely the former much more than the latter. They somehow have survived their reliever-ocalypse this past week, at least so far. Kyle Ryan is coming off the Bereavement List today as well, so that will help.

Other than that, the Cubs merely have to keep the momentum of Sunday’s win, which did feel important, rolling. This Phillies team is looking for a reason to roll over, and the Pirates are a roll over right now. A first successful road trip since the beginning of time, or so it feels, is just beckoning. Yes, weird things can happen at Citizen’s Bank considering it’s a launchpad, but this is a team that just gave up 25 runs to the Giants over four games, and the Giants have a couple of sock puppets and broom handles in the lineup right now.

Feast.

 

Baseball

Series Recap – Cubs Split With Reds: Fine, Whatever, Good, Let’s Get Outta Here

By Sam Fels 1326 0

Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 12, Reds 5

Game 2 Box Score: Reds 5, Cubs 2

Game 3 Box Score: Reds 10, Cubs 1

Game 4 Boxscore: Cubs 6, Reds 3

Considering all that’s happened against the Reds this year, how annoying they’ve been, how every hitter turns into Barry McGwire Mays against the Cubs, I’m taking this split of four games and sprinting for the airport. Series wins against the Phillies and Pirates would mean a 6-4 roadtrip and yes I’ll have some of that. Sure, it’s still a below-.500 team and you’d like to think the Cubs will find the form to beat teams like that more routinely. But hey, when you get a boil off your ass you don’t really worry about how elegantly you did it.

The thing is it was so close to being better. There was a lot of people trying to remove their own tongues through their neck on Friday night, but if Javy Baez’s hard-hit grounder is two feet to either side of where it was it scores two and it’s 5-4 with no outs and two on. Shit happens sometimes. Sometimes Hendricks or any starter doesn’t have it on that day. You live with it, it’s just that there have been so many other boneheaded losses it gets harder to do.

Most of all, after I complained and moaned after St. Louis that the Cubs didn’t fight or scratch or claw their way back into ABs and games on the road, today they did. Hell, you could argue they did on Thursday too when Hamels gave up a big lead and they just poured it on some more. But today especially, against Luis Castillo-whom they weren’t really close to in the game’s first five innings–they took advantage of some lackadaisical location and selection and found a way back. Helps the Reds pen hasn’t been any good since the break, but you take it.

Oh, and they made Thom Brennaman cry. Good day all around.

Let’s…

-I thought Jon Lester had fucked it today, but that wasn’t totally fair. The 3-0 pitch to Eugenio Suarez wasn’t as bad as a I thought:

That’s more good hitting than bad pitching. He even tried to stay away from Apollo/Aries/Yahweh Aquino, and he still went outside the zone and got it. He kept it close enough, which after that outing on Tuesday is good enough for now.

The real upset was that the pen was flawless, with only one hit and one walk in four innings or work. They may have lucked into Rowan Wick, but he was the main star, going two innings and going through the meat of the Reds lineup to give Strop the easier part. He even figured out to give Aquino nothing below his nose or above his ankles.

-I kind of had it wrong all weekend on Aquino, too. He had a decent 7.9% BB-rate in the minors this year, so he’s not the hack-a-thon I thought/hoped he was. Still, when he’s raining fire down upon you, the Cubs could have figured out to not be over the plate as much if only to avoid damage. Then again, when you’re already down eight…

-Very weird start for Darvish, who gave up four runners all night and all of them scored. He didn’t get away with one mistake, which almost seems unfair. Have that start again and he might go eight shutout next time.

-I want to believe that this IL stint is the rest Cishek needs that Maddon would never give him, instead of the abusive use shredding the hip he’s already had surgery on before. That’s what I want to believe.

-I was just thinking to myself that with the ball being a Titleist, 22 homers for Bryant seemed a touch on the low-side. I’ll take the 23rd and shut up now. The Cubs are seriously just one Bryant binge away from hiding from the Brewers and Cardinals.

-And good on Joe for letting Mills take the last four innings in a blowout to not have to use anyone who will matter. That left Phelps, Wick, and Strop fresh for today. I still want to believe Maples will matter one day, but I’m probably the only one now.

-Y’know, if Ian Happ keeps hitting, it doesn’t really matter if Ben Zobrist makes it back or not.

-My one quarrel with Friday is that with two outs and Amir Garrett on the mound, one of the tougher lefties in the division, Schwarber shouldn’t be given that AB. I know that Bote or Almora is hardly a step up, but presumably Bote is still here because he might actually hit a lefty sometime. Fairly sure Schwarber won’t, especially in a clutch situation. Oh well.

Onwards…

Baseball

Series Recap – Cubs Lose Two Of Three To Cardinals: The Cows Could Produce A Run By Now

By Sam Fels 1459 0

Game 1 Box Score: Cardinals 2, Cubs 1

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 2, Cardinals 0

Game 3 Box Score: Cardinals 8, Cubs 0

Here’s what will definitely happen. Either in the postgame tonight or before the game tomorrow, Joe Maddon will tell the press that the Cubs have to get back to grinding out at-bats. They have to dig out some offense. They have to fight through this. And then they won’t, which either means Joe is telling them this along with whatever hitting coach they’ll fire this time around as a smokescreen, and they’re not listening. Or he’s not even bothering to tell them and is going straight to the press, because he knows and the players know he’s getting punted no more than five minutes after the final out of the season.

Here’s what very well might happen. The Cubs will peter out somewhere, either after Game 162 or in the Division Series or coinfli flip game after the balloon-handed nature of both the Brewers and Cardinals gifts them a spot somehow. And either Theo Epstein will find out the purse strings are still being yanked by the Ricketts and he’ll walk, or he’ll hope letting Maddon walk is enough of a cover again to mask that his system has produced exactly his dick in his hand since 2016 or so.

Really, what this road trip has shown is that there has been a systematic failure at pretty much every level of this organization. On the biggest swing of the year, the Cubs best players all went turtle. None of them have hit. And you’d be tempted to say that’s just the vagaries of baseball, except we’ve been talking about this in some fashion for two months. Baez was dominant in the season’s first two months by actually occasionally taking a walk and going the opposite way almost as much as he pulled the ball. So he’s going to spend six weeks swinging at everything and trying to pull everything. Contreras is going to swing at the first pitch he sees. Bryan is going to have to gut out an injury that clearly should have him on the IL because the bottom of the roster is non-existent. If Addison Russell didn’t suck out loud, they could go without Bryant for 10 days. If David Bote didn’t suck deep pond scum they could go without Bryant for 10 days. But they do, so he has to play and do a pretty mean David Bote impression for six games. Anthony Rizzo is nowhere. All when they have to be here.

This team doesn’t fight. They don’t dig deep in close games and find a way to get on base, to score, to win. They find ways to lose. And maybe that’s just what happens when a team thinks no matter what it does the bullpen is just going to blow it anyway. There’s no gumption about this squad.

But why should there be? They heard their GM say that there would be changes, that production would be all that mattered. And then nothing changed. No one’s on alert. Addison Russell got another chance. So did Bote. So did Almora. So did Schwarber. Who’s on edge?

But then why would this team feel their front office and ownership is fighting for them? They watched the same team basically come back, the one that wasn’t quite good enough last year. The Cardinals added Goldschmidt. The Brewers added Grandal. The Phillies added Harper. The Braves added Donaldson.

Here’s an exercise for you. Go and watch two interviews with the Astros right after they got the news their team had traded for Zack Greinke. See the bounce. Do you think any Cubs were doing that when finding out about Castellanos and Phelps? Castellanos is only here due the failure of multiple players, not to boost something that already is working.

This team plays entitled. Like nothing will happen. Because really, it won’t. This is all set up to burn down after 2021 anyway, and everyone in the organization looks like it’s just going to sit around waiting for that.

The urgency, the desperation, the fight, the want-to, whatever you call it, you find it on this team. I can’t. They accept what’s happening to them because that’s been the nature of the whole operation. Oh sure, they’ll get wins when Hendricks or someone else tosses a gem, or Kyle Davies places a “HIT ME” sticker on a barely-fastball. And this doesn’t mean the Cubs won’t win the division, based on the aforementioned nature of their competition.

Well, maybe not “win’ it, so much as just open the front door and see that it’s been left there so they might as well take it inside. That’s what the Ricketts Family, Epstoyer, Maddon, and everyone have created here. And there’s no reason to think it will change.

This team isn’t going anywhere. Someplace might land on them, but it will still be standing still when it does. And that you can believe.

Baseball

I’m Mad As Hell, And I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore…I Mean, I Think?

By Sam Fels 1503 0

A few caveats before you wade into the following muck. One, losses to the Cardinals make me irrationally angry. Losses to the corpse of Adam Wainwright make me more irrationally angry. This piece’s purpose is to show how two things can be true at once. It very well might not make any sense. It could also be completely wiped out contextually by the Cubs winning the next five games. Yeah, well, life is strange, said Slim.

Ok, to it.

I’ve been thinking about the ’85 Bears a lot lately, which you know if you follow me on Twitter. The parallels are getting too hard to miss with the Cubs. A life-defining, long-overdue championship. A manager/coach that is seemingly on every ad, and seemingly more interested in celebrating his style than actually managing the team. At odds with the front office. An ownership that seems content with the one. Follow-up seasons that are short of expectations. Competitors passing by and seemingly for good. Trying to balance the elation of that one night and how much it meant, that season meant, with the disappointment of what’s come after. Do I have a right to be disappointed? Am I disappointed enough? Am I erasing 2016? Did it mean too much?

It is hard to not be infuriated with this team right now. This was/is the biggest road trip of the season. They’ve fallen on their face so far, pretty much. They haven’t played like a team that even wants to win the division, much less can. The offense has simply gone away at the worst time, and there haven’t been any Scherzers or Strasburgs or deGroms doing the disappearing. It would be next to impossible to not be frustrated. How did this happen?

I keep looking at this lineup. Is this really the best we can do not even three seasons after having the best offense in baseball? Should it fall this far this fast? You’re pinning your hopes on Robel Garcia, a tinder-swipe of a hope if there ever was one? Ian Happ?

It’s much more fun and much easier to yell at the Ricketts, and they would deserve it. But let’s cut through to the heart of it. The cash the Ricketts aren’t opening up for Theo and Jed is for them to buy their way out of the holes in the team the system they made hasn’t filled. Since 2015 and basically Javier Baez’s recall (who wasn’t their draft pick, remember, though that doesn’t mean they didn’t develop him), who has come up through the Cubs system and proven a piece? You can search all you like, you won’t find one.

But is that fair? Because after a stretch of developing or acquiring Rizzo, Arrieta, Bryant, Baez, Contreras, Hendricks, Rondon–all at least unproven before arrival–is it really the expectation you can keep at that pace? Well, yeah, because others are doing it, but that is two Cy Young finalists/winners and two MVP finalists/winners.

Still, it feels like from standing on top of the baseball world not yet three seasons ago, the Cubs have been passed by the Dodgers, Astros, possibly Braves now, Yankees, Red Sox, and you might even convince yourself or me to throw one or two other teams on there. They deservedly beat the Dodgers in six games but from that October night, the Dodgers have added Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy, Walker Buehler, Alex Verdugo, rehabilitated Joc Pederson, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and still were able to trade for Yu Darvish and Manny Machado in that time, and still have one of the best systems in baseball, with Gavin Lux just twiddling this thumbs waiting for a spot.

It feels like the Dodgers have sprinted miles ahead, with their better records in ’17 and this year…except the Cubs won more games last year in a tougher division. But they didn’t beat the Rockies at home, the Dodgers did. Am I really going to hang that conclusion on a coin-flip and the small sample size of the playoffs?

This team won 95 games last year with half a Bryant, basically no Darvish, and bullpen crumbling as the season went along like it was sent from the Acme Co. We bitch and moan about Maddon now, but sure that was actually excellent managing, no?

The Astros created their super team, swung trades for Verlander and Cole, and still have Yordan Alvarez punching holes in the sky, and Kyle Tucker and Forrest Whitley waiting. Now maybe the latter two will turn out to be nothing…but with their track record, is that what you’re betting on?

Meanwhile, back here at the ranch, it’s Ian Happ being rightly demoted. It’s the stock in Kyle Schwarber they kept telling us they had to buy that has yet to produce 1 WAR this year in his nearly fourth full campaign. It’s whatever iteration of sadness Albert Almora is today. It’s Carl Edwards being wheelbarrowed to the zoo. It’s Addison Russell hopefully being locked in a dungeon to never see the light of day. It’s ANY pitcher that doesn’t actually exist.

And what’s on the way? Nico Hoerner? The 12 minutes Alzolay will be healthy? Miguel Amaya three years down the line when everyone may have left by free agency already?

Am I going to be that guy in 25 years (no, I’ll be long dead but go with this) barking at some poor kid about how he missed out on 2016, just like I’ve heard about 1985 a zillion and a half times? Yes, I absolutely will be, because 2016 was that worth it and also very well might be all we have. And that kid will long for the season he remembers just as fondly, only so he or she can stop hearing about 2016 again. And if that season also should end for them with Rex Grossman fumbling away the World Series, boy wouldn’t the symmetry be complete?

Should there be more money? Of course there should be. They’re worth $2 billion, after all. But that doesn’t absolve the front office either. The trade for Aroldis Chapman was “necessary,” (only convinced of this after Strop and Rondon both got hurt that year, but had they stayed healthy also think they would have been enough). The Quintana trade was worth it. But as stated above, your rivals were trading for All-Stars and top of the rotation pieces. And their systems survived those culls. Yours hasn’t. Why?

And yet…we’re talking about two seasons? 2017 and 2019? Because 2018 saw them win the most games in the NL. Can we really be that upset about that? And 2017, it was kind of understood it was going to be a slog from the get-go. Then again, that’s when they told us their “second wave” would start. Well, I’m still sitting on my board in the sun, and it’s getting hot and I’m getting burned.

It’s not good enough. It was more than good enough. And here we are, stuck in the middle with this.