Brett Jackson had another Brett Jackson kind of game going 1-4 with and walk, SB and strikeout. Vitters was 3-5 with his 5th SB of the year and got his BA back up to .300. No idea if these two are heading up for tonights game vs the Angels but Chris DeLuca was speculating that it might be the case.
Logan Watkins got two hits in 4 AB's last night including his 5th HR of the year. Watkins will probably be heading up to Iowa next season and still looks to be a decent prospect for a utility kind of role. Zach Rosscup threw 5 innings and allowed 1 ER while striking out 4 and walking 2. New Cub Jake Brigham had a rough outing giving up 2 ER in 3 IP. He walked 3 and struck out 2 batters.
Not a bad start for Christian Villanueva, in his first game as a Cub he hit two home runs and drew a a walk. Ronald Torreyes continues his revival going 2-3 with his 6th HR and drawing a walk of his own. He has a .900 OPS over the last two months. AJ Morris threw two shutout innings in relief.
Dustin Geiger is locked in at the plate. A day after hitting two HR's and driving in eight batters Geiger hit his 14th HR and collected two other hits for fun. 2012 pick Bijan Rademacher went 2-4 and is now hitting .277 since his arrival in Peoria.
Got the shit kicked out of them 15-1. They committed 6 errors. Vogelbach went 2-4 as the DH so he was the only one who showed up to play.
2012 pick Ryan McNeil struck out 2 in 2 IP to earn his first career win. Soler was 1-4 with a double and 4 of his first 11 hits have been XBH.
Angels?
(dying laughing)
fuck
I was confused so I had to look at the scoreboard. I thought you thought it was the Cubs who moved to the AL West. (dying laughing)
spiderman give little fucks is tied for the most common search phrase to get to this site so far today.
hey, Garrett Gould may not have made it to the Cubs but I did get a signed card thanks to my “source”
@ mb21:
Must be all those Spidey gifs MO likes to post (dying laughing)
Mish wrote:
The Baseball Think Factory was just quoting some other guy. When you click his name on his website, it’s a bunch of conspiracy theory crap, looks like to me. Baseball “Think” Factory. Shouldn’t they actually think?
Turpentine was better. RC’s sentiments were right.
@ SVB:
Are you not from Chicago? Chet Coppock has been a radio voice on the sports stations here for a long, long time.
Dolan has been having some fun with the whole Dempster fiasco:
http://www.desipio.com/?p=4128
http://www.desipio.com/?p=4140
Calcaterra got to play baseball at old Tiger Stadium:
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/08/03/a-visit-to-tiger-stadium/
Kind of cool. I hope one day when Wrigley is no longer functional they open it up for pickup games.
@ Mish:
Sidenote – I used to work with the guy that infamously punched Chet Coppock. Unfortunately, I don’t think he knew who he was punching at the time.
Of course he did, he was playing his natural position.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I think Mike Cameron might be Brett Jackson’s ceiling
@ Aisle424:
(dying laughing) (dying laughing) (dying laughing)
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
I think I would be okay with that. I didn’t expect Brett Jackson to be a superstar but if he can be useful for that long of a career, I’d call it a win.
@ Rice Cube:
Same here.
Mercurial Outfielder wrote:
Invalid comparison.
Racism wrote:
Tough shit.
@ Mish:
No shit? No, I’m not from Chicago. Closest I came was Kalamazoo. Maybe he’s like Frank Beckman, who thinks that being a Tigers radio announcer also makes him a very astute political commentator. Anyway, when I saw his website, I assumed you were doing some research for a case in the DA’s office. (dying laughing)
@ SVB:
(dying laughing) (dying laughing)
Nah nah, he’s not as popular any more, gets stuck with the Saturday/Sunday morning shifts and whatnot. I haven’t really listened to the radio in 4 years now so no idea if he actually really has a gig. I believe a few years ago I was “friends” with him on FB but had to immediately defriend due to inanity
@ WaLi:
That’s a classic from a few years ago at a Cubs game.
Brett Jackson is in LA.
@ Rice Cube:
False.
Silly Muskat.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Cameron was never the prospect Jackson was until Cameron was 24, but a ceiling of Mike Cameron is an awfully damn good player. If he managed to extend his peak a few years we’re talking about a borderline Hall of Fame candidate (43 rWAR). Fangraphs already has him as a borderline HOF candidate (53 fWAR). He won’t get in, but in terms of fWAR he’s pretty close to being worthy of getting in.
In the minors Jackson has been younger at each level and has performed better than Cameron. Cameron was almost certainly a far better defensive outfielder than Jackson will be, but I think Jackson could easily be the much better hitter. It’s not a bad comparison though, but I’d be thrilled if Jackson reached his ceiling and it was Mike Cameron.
The strikeouts are important of course, but I really think we’re focusing too much on it at this point (myself included). The guy hits, hits for power, takes his walks, plays average or better defense in CF, has a fantastic arm, runs the bases well and has plus speed. He’s one correction away from being a potential superstar.
@ Rice Cube:
He’s in two places at once.
@ Racism:
@ Injustice:
You have been banned.
I think Ryno is around.
@ SVB:
I live in Kalamazoo!
Also, (dying laughing):
http://i.imgur.com/nyone.jpg
That should say “Cubs fan too stupid to use hat”
Mish wrote:
@ mb21:
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
‘Merica wrote:
Awesome- can you get rid of poverty too? And then Hawk Harrelson?
Urk wrote:
What do you think this is? Sweden?
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=17893
Aaron Cook is awesome.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
That was one of the best articles about baseball I’ve read in awhile.
CB Bucknor is hot garbage.
@ mb21:
Yeah, great piece.
According to MLBTR the cubs are look into what it would take to acquire Lowe. WHY
So…Cubs lose.
@ mb21:
I guess he’s cheap enough after DFA and release that it isn’t that big of a deal…?
@ mb21:
Because he’s better than Casey Coleman?
He was just released so it seems they’d be trying to trade for him. Crazy.
@ mb21:
One of two reasons:
1. So we try to catch up with the Astros
2. Casey Coleman
@ mb21:
I thought he was on the street. If all he costs is money (and league min at that), I don’t see why not. Hell, even in trade, he costs a throwaway prospect. Still has a good GB rate.
It seems Soto will be getting the bulk of the action behind home. He’s played the entire game tonight too.
@ mb21:
It almost sounds like they were just talking to Boras to see if Lowe would consider signing the league minimum deal with the Cubs after he was released. I don’t know why they would trade for Lowe.
Woah. Bomb threat at US Cellular Field
I’d rather have Coleman than a 39 year old who was released. How many shitty starters do they need? They stocked up on them this past offseason. If this was Hendry people would be laughing at him for having a boner for an ancient shitty pitcher who was once good for them. If it is just money, no big deal I guess but can’t they find someone better?
@ Rice Cube:
I would hope they wouldn’t trade anyone for him.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
Really?
@ mb21:
Per Twitter
@ mb21:
Well it’s worth noting that pretty much everything about Lowe is exactly what you’d expect except the K’s and BB’s. If he comes to the NL Central he might be able to be a pretty OK pitcher again.
On another note, Buckner has, to this point in the night, been wrong on 10 pitches. He’s called 8 balls (obvious only) strikes and 2 strikes (again, only obvious ones) balls. That’s just absolutely awful. That’s probably close to 25% of pitches that weren’t swung at.
http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-bomb-threat-reported-at-us-cellular-field-20120803,0,5902837.story
11 now. The first pitch to Loney was a strike.
Oh man, 12 now. Third pitch to Cruz was a strike. This is just awful by Buckner. Incredibly so.
Bucknor’s Brooks card from tonight is going to be comical.
Alberto Cabrera has a crazy slider.
It’s actually rather impressive that the Cubs are 21 games back of first and yet the Astros are still 9.5 games back of Chicago.
@ Rice Cube:
Are you saying the Cubs are going to look like a playoff team when I go see them play the Stros?
@ Doogolas:
I only see one pitch inside the 2-foot strikezone (wider than the actual zone) that was called a ball during Samardzija’s outing: http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php?month=8&day=3&year=2012&game=gid_2012_08_03_chnmlb_lanmlb_1%2F&pitchSel=502188&prevGame=gid_2012_08_03_chnmlb_lanmlb_1%2F&prevDate=83
Looks like he had a wide zone last night, but during F7s start there was only 1 ball called that could arguably be called a strike.
Also one pitch in the 2-foot zone called a ball during Billingsley’s outing. He didn’t have as wide a zone for him as he did for F7 so that helped F7 out last night.
@ Suburban kid:
What a shitty game to go see. Hope you get to see Garza start. Otherwise it’s two minor league teams playing in a big league ballpark.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=23594467&c_id=mlb
Anyone know the official rule on this? Konerko is blatantly inside the base line.
Also, WTF is with the umpires when the Angels go to the Cell?
@ mb21:
One chance this year to see a game in a big league park, you take what you can get. I suppose I could go see the Sox but their stadium isn’t glorious.
Anyway, RC guaranteed that the Cubs would look like the 2004 Cardinals against the Astros.
@ Suburban kid:
Yeah, I know what you mean. I went to see a couple Royals games this year so it’s not like I was watching a great team.
Back in 2004 if you bought tickets prior to the season you figured you’d win no matter what. You’d get to see Wood, Prior, Zambrano, Maddux or Clement. By 2006 you’d get to see Zambrano, Sean Marshall, Carlos Marmol, other random shitty starter.
@ GBTS:
I don’t know the ruling, but what happens when a game is played under protest? Does Sciosca just get a tally under the “crybaby” column or can the league overturn the game?
@ WaLi22:
The league can overturn the game and force it to be replayed from a certain point (whenever he protested).
Baez ——-> Daytona
@ mb21:
I wasn’t talking about just Shark. I was talking about between both pitchers. So those are likely the exact two to which I was referring. If I was slightly off, it’s probably because I only had gameday, which isn’t as nice and clear, though I tried to only take the ones that looked obvious on Gameday. It was mostly that he had a very big zone, I only counted two or three total pitches that should have been strikes that were called balls.
@ Doogolas:
I’m not sure either of those were strikes either. They were inside the 2-foot wide zone, but the actual zone is only 17 inches (width of the plate). Bucknor did call several strikes outside the zone though. More for F7 than Billingsley from what I could tell.
new shit: http://www.obstructedview.net/commentary-and-analysis/lets-play-what-if.html