OSS: Cubs win handily on Jake Arrieta day, but Heyward goes down early.
Three One down
- Jason Heyward left the game after making a spectacular catch near/into the wall in the first inning. He slid into the padded wall and came up holding his side. No word form the Cubs on how serious it is, and any tentative reports you see should be taken with large grains of salt. Remember when people were desperately grasping at straws thinking Schwarber just had an ankle injury when the Cubs released the initial injury report? Right now they’re saying it’s a right side injury (oblique?) but it could just as easily be the collarbone. I’m guessing Szczur gets called up quickly from his rehab and we see a lot of Kris Bryant in RF for the time being.
Three up
- The Giants did a good job of working Jake Arrieta’s pitch count, at least early in the game. But Jake Arrieta, Destroyer of Worlds laughs at puny mortals and still managed to go seven innings with eight strikeouts, one run, and six total baserunners. He also got the Cubs on the board with an RBI single in the second.
- Jorge Soler had a great game at the plate and on the field, making one great catch in particular up against the wall. He singled in the second and scored the first run, and later homered back to back with Zobrist. He recorded two outs, both of them line drives hit right to infielders just to remind him what kind of season it has been.
- Zobrist’s home run went into the cove, which is always fun to see. The only issue was that it reminded us of the Corey Patterson Era, as he was the last Cubs batter to do it. 2003 Patterson was fun until he blew out his knee. After that, not so much. He played twice as long in the majors than I would have guessed, last appearing in the bigs in 2011 (!). But I digress. Ben Zobrist. Good baseballing, sir.
Comments
I bet the good folks at Baseball Prospectus have a cool stat that shows that Arrieta’s start was actually not that good.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
The splash hit was awesome. I knew it would get out but wasn’t sure it would hit the cove on the fly.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
I’m going to San Fran for work on Sunday and will catch the Cubs game. It’ll be my first trip to PacBellAT&TLevi’s Stadium. If anybody’s been there before- any must see/eat/drink suggestions?
Wenningtons Gorilla CockQuote Reply
Eat all of the garlic fries. It will be much colder than you think at the stadium, especially after the sun goes down. Getting hot chocolate from some stand in LF was a game-saver for me (dying laughing).
berseliusQuote Reply
Wenningtons Gorilla Cock,
Unrelated to the stadium, if you like dim sum and you’re staying near Chinatown there’s a great hole in the wall place in called Hai Ah tea room. When I was there a friend and I rented bikes and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to Sausalito, which was fun, though make sure you take the ferry back.
berseliusQuote Reply
Thinking about Heyward: I think that was a freak thing. He has excellent spacial awareness, and he knew he had room to dive and brace himself for impact, but he went perpendicular to the wall. Shit happens.
However, remember Alex Gordon diving headlong into the stands at the Cell? Amazing catch. And dumb as a box of rocks. For a catch to count, a fielder should have to remain within the field of play. I would bet at least 1 in 5 attempts ends in an injury causing a DL stint. That it didn’t happen was part skill and a lot of luck. (Also, the Cell walls are stupidly non-existent. I remember being in the upper deck there way back when and feeling woozy—and I am not afraid of heights. Some Architect was proud of the fact that everyone of the now empty seats would be able to see the entire field and be close to the action.)
ceruleanQuote Reply
My understanding is that San Franciscans hate it when tourists call their city San Fran or Frisco. They probably don’t hate it when people call them Sanfranites, but that’s only because I made it up. Refrain from such nomenclature. It’s San Francisco, a gentrified mouthful.
Also, it might be 55°F in SF proper with a humid chill and 90° in San Jose. Check the weather, and don’t expect to be comfortable in a t-shirt and dad-shorts in the city itself all the time.
Disclaimer: All of my knowledge of the city comes from listening to a few hundred episodes of a podcast with someone who lives in a backwater neighborhood with many Mandarin speakers, so ymmv and all that.
ceruleanQuote Reply
TGI Friday’s
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89,
You have to hold out for the midtown Manhattan TGI Friday’s , all others are pale imitations.
berseliusQuote Reply
What about Rizzo jumping on the tarp and into the stands? It’s also a play that I’d say is really dumb, but I just don’t think these guys have control over that in the moment.
One thing to keep in mind is that we’re watching the action from an entirely different angle that the players are. Kyle Schwarber obviously didn’t know he was so close to dexter Fowler because Fowler didn’t even know it. But as viewers, we saw that play coming because we could see both players racing toward one another. Fowler and Schwarber were watching the ball. Heyward is playing that by feel and even said he knew he had room and was trying to protect the wrist. That’s about all you can ask. We can’t expect these guys to give it their all when we want them to and give it 80% when we decide it necessary.
I just think the whole idea of Jason Heyward should have known better because he’s so important to the team is pretty dumb.
dmick89Quote Reply
Good point. My next recommendation would be Pizza Hut.
dmick89Quote Reply
—Heyward
Good news? (The MRI will say that he tore all the ligaments in both of his knees.)
ceruleanQuote Reply
dmick89,
San Fransico should be cosmopolitan enough to have a St Louis style pizza joint.
berseliusQuote Reply
dmick89,
I vehemently disagree with the notion that they don’t have an awareness of what they are doing. They absolutely are not thinking about injury. The Schwarber injury is predicated on that fact that two players in motion didn’t have an awareness of each in part because they didn’t hear each other. Rizzo on the tarp or Gordon in the stands were processing what they had to do to make the catch given the barriers. If there was a rule that said you had to remain in the field of play, it changes the feedback loop from a positive sportscenter webgem to “not an out” and not worth it. And these plays are almost never worth it.
ceruleanQuote Reply
EDIT.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Agreed.
Yeah, a rule change would stop those plays from happening. FWIW, I have on problem with those types of plays. If the player wants to take the risk, so be it. I’d rather focus on eliminating the riskier plays in which a player is putting someone else’s health at risk.
I think i misstated by opinion. The fielders are aware of their surroundings to a certain degree. They’re aware of the surroundings that are in the path of where they are trying to get to make the out.
dmick89Quote Reply
I stand by my opinion last night that if you try to take Heyward’s aggressiveness away from him, he’s probably no better than an average defender and if that is true, he’s not much better than an average ballplayer. He’s nowhere near the player the Cubs signed.
I trust that the player have a better idea of what they can and can’t do. I’ve never complained about the player jogging to 1st base on what is almost always an out and I can’t complain when a player makes what is a very dangerous play defensively.
dmick89Quote Reply
berselius,
They ought to try to be a little more hick like St. Louis. Every time I’ve been to SF, I ask myself, “where are all the hicks?”
dmick89Quote Reply
Can be slurred slightly to get it out quicker – just swallow the n.
SKQuote Reply
Thanks for the suggestions. I hear some place called Applebys is also a popular local joint (dying laughing)
Wenningtons Gorilla CockQuote Reply
Yeah, I agree/disagree, depending on the terms. Heyward is so good and fluid because he has great proprioception which has the added bonus (anecdotally) of knowing how not to get hurt, or knowing how to fall. If tamping down aggresiveness is simply doubting one’s abilities, then I agree.
But if it is better preparation on recognizing when to/when not to dive (not headlong into a wall, for instance) and positioning oneself a bit further back than normal with respect to the wall (421 feet is ridiculous) so that one never has to dive, that is the kind of thing that can be learned. This was one of those fuzzy marginal areas based on the field where usually you would slam into the wall instead of diving headlong. If he is not playing back, he should work through playing the carom because I think that he could have nailed him at second just about as often as catching it.
ceruleanQuote Reply
There’s pretty good Mexican in SF too. If you’re not some fancy guy, any of the local joints are good in my admittedly limited experience. (I went 2 for 2 )
SKQuote Reply
Pretty sure the plural of Appleby is Applesby.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Is it silly of me to expect the Cubs to go 4–1 in the next five against these Giants and the Cards, then lose 2 of 3 to the Phillies before sweeping the Dodgers? Because I feel like that is the most likely outcome. (dying laughing)
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
That’s kind of how they’ve been playing. Beat the good teams and play so-so against the bad ones. The exception being Cincy so who knows?
dmick89Quote Reply
And yeah, I think the Phillies are going to end up being a pretty bad team.
dmick89Quote Reply
Do you possibly mean “hang ah tea house”?
EnricoPallazzoQuote Reply
cerulean,
http://www.theonion.com/article/william-safire-orders-two-whoppers-junior-3351
EnricoPallazzoQuote Reply
EnricoPallazzo,
Yeah, that’s the one. It’s pretty hole in the wall but the food is fantastic and won’t break the bank either.
berseliusQuote Reply
EnricoPallazzo,
I have thought about the whole passersby and passerbys panty-twisting, and I have to say that passersby should never be allowed. We don’t use infixes in English. Concatenation should happen when the meaning of the whole is no longer the sum of its parts. Passers-by and hangers-on, fine. Passerbys and hangerons, right. For some reason, I think the pseudogrammarians line on the correctness of passersby is based on the same fallacious thinking that is against split infinitives and preposition-terminated sentences—that Latin is the standard.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Do these guys know how to party or what?
First time OV readerQuote Reply
Apparently Heyward looked pretty good walking into the clubhouse today. Jesse Rogers said on twitter you couldn’t even tell he’d been injured. That’s a good sign.
dmick89Quote Reply
First time OV reader,
Are we having fun yet?
berseliusQuote Reply
By “party”, do mean the temporary abandon of the realization that all flesh is like grass and life has only as much meaning as we put into it?
*downs another bottle*
No, I suppose we don’t. (dying laughing)
ceruleanQuote Reply
new shit: http://obstructedview.net/cubs-giants-game-thread-8-21-2016/
dmick89Quote Reply