Iowa
No Game
Matt Szczur had a big game hitting 1-3 with a HR, BB and SB. Jae Hoon Ha is back from a scary head injury and walked 4 times which is nice to see. Nick Struck worked 7 innings and struck out 7 batters and Lendy Castillo worked 1 inning in his continuing recovery from a bullshit made up injury.
John Andreoli stole his 49th base of the year. Rob Whitenack continues to suck. That is all
Kyle Hendricks worked 3 innings and struck out 3 while allowing a solo HR. Javier Baez drew a walk.
Zeke DeVoss was 2-3 with a BB and his 5th HR of the year. Hopefully he can finish strong.
Dan Vogelbach. What more can be said? The guy has 5 HR's in 4 games. He's just a beast. He is just 2 HR's behind the Northwest League leader (a 22 yr old 1B) despite having about 150 less AB's. Top 100 prospect heading into next year or the system is broken. Tayler Scott continues to be the best pitcher in Boise as he struck out 6 in 5 IP while allowing a pair of runs.
AZL
No Game
DJ, have you asked anyone like KG what they thought about Vogelbach and being a top 100?
yep. no reply. Im not cool enough
@ dylanj:
You should send in a question to one of BA’s upcoming chats. They’re pretty good at answering most questions.
Well, HRs are nice and all, but we need to get to the stats that matter on this Vogelbach kid and see if he is a team player. What is his BA w/ RISP? You combine the obviously greatest stat for a batter, batting average, see it has batting right there in the name, and then select a smaller size of at bats in which the circumstances are completely out of the batter’s control, because handling situations out of his control = clutchiness and grititude and team leaderishness.
@ BubbaBiscuit:
I disagree. The only way to capture the total player is to add the number times he has crossed the plate with the number of men who scored when he was up to bat, in a stat I like to call R+RBI. It captures everything you need to know about a batter’s ability, both the runs AND the runs batted in.
@ josh:
You lost me at “add”.
Honey Badger=========> Should have cared
found this link on HJE today:
http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2011/1/12/1920357/the-top-100-cubs-of-all-time-90-ryan-dempster
actually surprised yellon didn’t rank him higher.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
He’s probably about 25th in rWAR among pitchers since 1900. Add in the batters and 90th is probably about right.
@ mb21:
not arguing the ranking – i wasn’t being sarcastic when i said i’m surprised that yellon didn’t rank him higher. the shit that i find ridiculous, though, is lines like this:
@ EnricoPallazzo:
Yeah, I figured that, but was actually somewhat impressed Alvin got the ranking about right. I don’t remember the rankings anymore, but I remember some of them were absurd. Where did he have Shawon Dunston? He was not very good at baseball.
@ mb21:
The fact that the Cubs were sporting Shawon Dunston at short while the Cardinals had Ozzie Smith rendered almost every “Cubs don’t suck” argument I made in my staunchly divided Cubs/Cards town of youth basically moot.
@ Edwin:
Embrace adding. What good are statistics if they can’t be meaninglessly lumped together to further conceal the vague information they already contain?
@ mb21:
http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2010/11/22/1758676/the-top-100-cubs-of-all-time-revisited
you have to scroll down to the comments to see the original rankings but he had dunston at #68. he re-did the list by WAR which is the reason he accurately ranked dempster. i’m also kind of surprised that sandberg has 2 more cubs career WAR than sosa.
also, this random comment really amuses me:
@ BubbaBiscuit:
leaderishness is a very under-rated tool that leads to one thing – world fucking series rings. nice to see that someone else on this site respects it.
That Alvin article makes me angry that he gets 10 times the traffic this one gets. I’m not even sure who I’m angry at. At Alvin for being a fuckwit who has stumbled into something lucrative on the internet without being any good at it, or at people for not knowing that Alvin is a fuckwit and continuing to go there to lap up his inane and poorly written drivel, or at myself for not doing more to knock that dipshit off his pedestal.
Lendy Castillo is around the team, should be cured of David Patton Disease this weekend
@ Aisle424:
funnel your rage into something productive, by which i mean you should wait til it’s dark, find his car, and slash his tires.
I see RC is enjoying the OV seats at Wrigley.
Alvin doesn’t appear to be in his seats yet though.
@ EnricoPallazzo:
Or spam him with entire acts from Shakespeare plays like GM did that one time. That was fucking awesome.
@ Berselius:
I thought there was no cure. Maybe it’s a variation.
So much for conditions being perfect for Germano (dying laughing)
fucking shit. I hate these games where they play like shit. I mean more than usual.
This is a year
I was voted most improved player on my softball team. I also was offensive MVP of the last game, which I think was just because people were surprised that I legged out a triple (without passing out).
I was also the only guy to take his skate off an try to stab someone with it. No one else had ever tried that before.
@ josh:
This was ice softball? That would sure be….interesting….with beer league rules.
@ Berselius:
I may have bled into Happy Gilmore there for a moment. Let me finish beating up Bob Barker and I’ll let you know.
Holy holy holy shit.
I thought BJax’s thing was defense?
I’m too tired for this shit.
@ Aisle424:
People are stupid and they relate to similar people. If this site got as much traffic as Alvin did, it would mean we’re all stupid.
@ Aisle424:
That’s from RC?
@ josh:
Did something happen? I haven’t been following the game.
@ Edwin:
Yes
(dying laughing), five errors for the Cubs today
TOOTBLAN
@ mb21:
I belive OV succeeds with Quality over Quantity.
At least RC got to see a typical Cubs game.
@ Edwin:
Certainly compared to somewhere like BCB that is true. We do alright as far as traffic goes for what it’s worth. It’s no where near what Alvin gets, but we’d need a stupidification of this blog for that to happen. Brett is an example of someone who has created a rather large community without the need for being stupid like Alvin has mastered.
mb21 wrote:
RC, your kid is getting the True Wrigley Experience
@ mb21:
We need to ramp up the Pizza Hut MILF alien porn to bring in the readers
@ Berselius:
We could also post a series on the hottest chicks at Wrigley Field. (dying laughing)
I’m not one to overreact to small sample samples very often, but I think Brett Jackson has to go back to the minor leagues. He has a cool 57.9% strikeout rate. Obviously that will go down, but that’s really bad. The guy can’t hit baseballs.
@ mb21:
We just need to do a few hundred of those slideshows, and we’ll be worth $175m like Bleacher Report (dying laughing)
Berselius wrote:
Well at least the on field portion. RC, if he hasn’t gotten beer spilled on him or heard a new term for dark-skinned people, I’d be happy to provide that experience as well.
@ mb21:
He’s looked overmatched so far.
@ josh:
Overmatched it probably putting it nicely. He looks like he has no clue how to hit a baseball thrown by an MLB pitcher. He’s learning that hitting the baseball is kind of an important part of being an MLB hitter.
Watched the replay on Castillo’s double. The wind made Xavier Paul look like an idiot.
@ mb21:
I haven’t actually seen him, but it’s not good, going by the numbers. I’m surprised they called him up. Trial by fire maybe?
If Aaron Cook faced Brett Jackson he’d look like Roger Clemens.
Agreed on BJacks. He looks way out of his league.
@ josh:
I’ve seen about half of his ABs and it’s not pretty. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a prospect who has as little chance of doing anything at the MLB level as he does. At least right now anyway. The guy can’t make contact and is just horrible. If he ever manages to cut down the strikeouts he becomes quite interesting. It’s a shame because he has a lot of talent, but unfortunately the one necessary talent he completely lacks.
@ josh:
I think Theo was hoping to poach a Rizzo-type or two with Dempster and Garza. When that didn’t happen, I think plan B was to call up Vitters and BJacks
@ Aisle424:
This shot reminds me of why I like PNC Park better.
@ mb21:
He’s like the inverse of Ted Williams.
There are a lot of players who can’t hit, but Brett Jackson literally cannot hit the fucking baseball. The odds of the Cubs being any good over the next 4 years or so took a big hit this year with his decline. Castro, Rizzo and maybe Vitters is a decent core of talent, but it’s far from great.
@ Mercurial Outfielder:
I hadn’t thought about that, but I think you’re right. Garza’s injury really hurt the Cubs. He had the most value of anyone they’d have considered trading.
I tune back in because the Cubs pull it close, now Shawn Camp is going to hemorrhage out some runs again.
@ josh:
At least you don’t have to be at Wrigley Field. (dying laughing)
@ mb21:
Two words: Hamil. Ton.
Or I don’t know, anyone who can hit is fine really.
*sobs*
I’ve been too depressed to comic. I can’t make this shit funny.
Putting Barney in the 2-hole sure has sparked the Cubs’ offense.
Alberto Cabrera? Who’s that? And he’s been up for 10 days already? This new job is really cutting into my Cubs time.
@ SVB:
Lucky bastard.
Jackson just read this thread and decided to show us by taking a walk.
(dying laughing), sounds like it’s ludicrously windy today
Holy shit, Jackson is pretty fucking fast.
@ josh:
Except that the Cubs are my outlet for all things lousy. If I don’t have my Cubs time, then my level of disappointment/depression/irritation with other things will probably increase because all those feelings won’t be cleansed from my system by the Cubs.
@ SVB:
It’s sort of the opposite for me, but I see what you’re saying.
@ josh:
Cubs: my septic tank for negative emotions.
That wasn’t even fair.
You always have to wonder how Chapman would have done as a starter
SVB wrote:
You’re lucky.
@ SVB:
He’s a patient hitter who swings at a lot of shit outside the zone. It’s really weird. If there’s a hitting coach out there who can make sense out of that then he’s the best one. You normally don’t see people who can walk a lot who frequently swing at shit out of the zone. It’s just bizarre.
@ Berselius:
It’s never too late to convert back.
\Dempster’d
@ mb21:
That is odd. He must be trying too hard to guess with two strikes or something. The Cubs think it’s mental, which might be a good thing, in terms of ever seeing improvement. But who the shit really knows with that stuff?
@ josh:
Some of it may be mental. This is something he’s done at the minor leagues too so he needs to make some big changes. This is what the player development people get paid for. You’d hate to not be able to tap into that talent because he can run, hit for power (if he can make contact), and play defense.
@ Berselius:
nah, dude….
Pffft. Vitters can’t hit lefties either.
I know Sveum wouldn’t have allowed this to happen, but it would have been fun to see a Chapman/Jackson matchup.
Fun read: http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/8/10/3233654/albert-pujols-good-bryce-harper-bad
http://www.bleachernation.com/2012/08/10/the-cubs-are-getting-a-new-scouting-director-jaron-madison-from-the-padres/
superfriends: multiply.
Mather was on deck for BJax on the off chance that Vitters got on base. It was a plenty exciting game although annoying because the Cubs MIGHT HAVE won had they not been temporarily lobotomized. The ending was cool though and I think that would’ve been true either way. If the Cubs won they would have done so against the best closer-who-should-be-starter in the league. If they lost (yup) it was because Chapman threw some evil pitches (oh yeah). Going from 100 to a high-80s change is simply unfair.
two homers so far today for manny machado, in his second game since being called up.
@ Aisle424:
I actually thought that was him in the top bench of the LF bleachers. But my eyesight is pretty bad.
New comic… http://www.obstructedview.net/comics/heres-what-we-do.html