Cubs 2, Marlins 4 (6.23.16)

OSS: Injuries starting to take their toll

Three up:

David Ross continues to spit in the face of father time, tying the game with a solo homer in the eighth and drawing a walk to load the bases in the ninth in the Cubs failed rally. He also TOOTBLAN’d Christian Yelich in the fourth inning and probably would have another in the fifth if Contreras were left handed.
Jon Lester had a solid outing despite an erratic strike zone by the home plate umpire. He gave up two solo shots, one a bomb by Giancarlo Stanton (does he hit any other kind of HR?) and struck out seven in seven innings.
Javier Baez made one of the craziest defensive plays I have ever seen, unfortunately it was just too late to nail the runner.

Three down

The Cubs got the bases clogged in the bottom of the ninth with one out, but a Coghlan strikeout and a first-pitch flyout from Ben Zobrist ended the game. The Cubs also threatened in the eighth, but the Marlins pitched around Bryant to get to Contreras, who struck out with runners on first and second.
The Marlins rallied against Pedro Strop in the ninth, but for some reason I don’t remember him seeming as Bad Pedro Strop-like as usual. Though there was a wild pitch and a walk in the box score, so shrug. This felt just more like bad sequencing than anything else. I was a little surprised that Yelich wasn’t gunned down by Heyward on the Marlins go-ahead run, that play seemed much slower to develop than it should have.
That strike zone, ugh. I hate grumbling about strike zones, which is only a step above grumbling about uncalled holding penalties in the NFL, but it was salt in the wound after Lester gave up a homer in a PA where his first two pitches were well in the zone but called balls anyway.

Next up: Hendricks v Koehler, 6:10 PM CT

Comments

cerulean

June 23, 2016 at 11:32 pm

The third up summarizes three of the last four games. So. Damn. Close.

I still feel quite good about this team. But I would feel better if Vogelbach got a call. Theo, Jed, being the long time readers you are, make it happen.

Am I telling you what to do?

You’re goddamn right.

ceruleanQuote Reply

cerulean

June 23, 2016 at 11:45 pm

I was thinking about innings limits on young pitchers, and curiously I have never seen rookies tagteaming a game every fifth day by design—one starts, goes three to five innings, hands it to the other for the next three to five innings, switching up the starts so that each pitcher gets 96 to 160 innings with about 16 starts a piece. Obviously, injury and ineffectiveness elsewhere in the rotation will push teams to get the rookies more action if they are any good, though injury and ineffectiveness within the tandem is also pretty likely. But even if it’s just with a starter retread swingman, such a pairing would probably be advantageous, particularly for a team that looks to go deep into October.

ceruleanQuote Reply

dmick89

June 24, 2016 at 7:37 am

cerulean,

Tango and MGL suggested that a team’s 4th and 5th starters would be ideal for such situations. You could use young guys to fill out that rotation in that manner. It was the ideal rotation IIRC from The Book.

Why teams don’t do it? I’m guessing they value 5-6 innings at a time more than they do total innings pitched and there may be good reason for that. Pitchers who tend to average only 5 innings per start in the minors or less get moved to the bullpen as they move up the system.

dmick89Quote Reply

dmick89

June 24, 2016 at 7:39 am

OSS: Injuries starting to take their toll

Yep. It really kind of sucks that this team had to get hit with injuries. They could have been one of the best ever had they stayed healthy, but teams rarely do stay healthy so we knew it wouldn’t happen. Just kind of sucks that all these injuries have hit at once. The good news is that the timetable for return for several of the injured players is soon. Only Soler remains one we don’t know much about with regards to his injury status at this point.

dmick89Quote Reply