Cubs 8, Reds 2

In Postgame by berselius314 Comments

OSS: Cubs offense scores a disappointing eight runs, manage to win anyway.

Three up:

  1. Kyle Schwarber got things rolling with a three run homer in the first off of Kevin Gausman, who is actually not as terrible as I remembered after looking at his career stats. War Bear leads the team with 37 home runs, though sadly not 37 in a row.
  2. Jason Heyward continues to shake off the curse of the leadoff spot, homering and walking twice in this game.
  3. The bullpen was…solid….again (?) after another early exit by a Cubs starting pitcher. Cishek, Mills, Wick, Ryan, and Phelps combined for 5.2 innings of shutout ball, walking two and striking out five.

Three down:

  1. Cole Hamels had his third straight short outing, and on the heels of yet another short outing by Q. Thank goodness for the expanded rosters.
  2. Anthony Rizzo is in a walking boot for the next week, and I think he’s probably done for the year, no matter how far the Cubs could potentially get into the playoffs. This is probably just my annoying, months long, low grade ankle injury talking, but ankle injuries suck balls.
  3. The Cardinals and Brewers both won, so the Cubs tragic number drops and the WC magic number remains unchanged.

Next up: Sonny Gray takes on Yu Darvish at 7:05 PM CT.

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Comments

  1. cerulean

    They are now a half game behind the Nats, so there is that. Hopefully they win tomorrow and the ext day and stay a half game behind the Nats.

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  2. WaLi

    BVS,

    I took my kids (4, 5 and 5 at the time) to a Dead and Co. show. I brought their little chairs and a blanket and we sat in the very back of the lawn. They had a great time

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  3. andcounting

    Perkins:
    Surprised that Zobrist is still using one of his ex’s songs as his walk-up music. In his situation, I’d probably opt for Slayer or Lamb of God.

    I don’t believe his divorce is final. Apparently he’s trying to reconcile and said no legal action is underway or progressing.

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  4. Ryno

    I’m also going to an Iron Maiden concert this week, so I’ll let you know afterward. But I’m betting Maiden has one of the tamer crowds as far as “metal” bands go these days. Get the kids some ear plugs and they’ll be bored to death for a couple of hours.

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  5. Author
    berselius

    Thanks for the feedback, I guess the specific band crowd itself won’t be a big deal. Those kids are going to be fucking miserable though. This dumbass already lost track of the 6 year old at one public event earlier this year.

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  6. WaLi

    Fucking disgusting.

    FDLE’s investigation began in August of this year after agents obtained information that Vazquez [had] a reported sexual relationship with a 13-year old female victim who resides in Lee County. The victim, now 15 years of age, was continuing to have a relationship with Vazquez via text messaging and received a video on July from him in which he is shown performing a sex act. Additionally, Vazquez allegedly sent the victim text messages suggesting they would meet for sex after his baseball season was over.

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  7. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    2B Zobrist
    RF Castellanos
    3B Bryant
    LF War Bear
    1B Contreras
    C Caratini
    CF Heyward
    SS Hoerner
    P Darvish

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  8. Smokestack Lightning

    I remember when Sonny Gray was very beatable. I don’t like that the Reds, of all organizations, have fixed him.

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  9. Perkins

    In St. Louis for work and walked by Busch Stadium last night around the 7th inning – with the Cardinals trailing 3-2 in a critical September game against a good team, people were leaving and the stands looked about half full.

    One of the problems with trying to self-apply an epithet like best fans in baseball is that it’s super easy to find ways to disprove it.

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  10. andcounting

    Perkins,

    Unless “best” is short for “best at knowing when to leave a game some people still delude themselves into thinking could still turn around.” Because it seems like they’re good at that. I’ve never been good at giving up hope when it has clearly run out. I’m envious of those who know better.

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  11. WaLi

    andcounting: I’ve never been good at giving up hope when it has clearly run out.

    Yeah I tend to be an optimist when it comes to sports. It hurts at times. However since my post about the Cubs deciding to give a shit, they are 5-1. They still have 7 games against the Cardinals, though unfortunately what might now happen is the Cubs/Cardinals beat up each other and the Brewers pass them by for lead of the division.

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  12. Smokestack Lightning

    WaLi,

    The Brewers are garbage. I don’t know how they’re doing what they’re doing without Yelich, and it seems a reckoning should be in order soon. But then, baseball rarely cooperates with my superior sense of what should happen and what shouldn’t.

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  13. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    2B Zobrist
    RF Castellanos
    3B Bryant
    LF War Bear
    C Contreras
    1B Caratini
    CF Heyward
    SS Hoerner
    P Lester

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  14. Perkins

    So if the Cubs can win tonight, they’ll be two games out and half a game from the top WC ahead of the Cardinals series. That’s not ideal, but not horrible.

    “Not ideal, but not horrible” seems like a pretty apt mantra for this team.

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  15. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins:
    I predict that the Cubs win at least three this weekend, only to drop two to the Pirates next week.

    I am prepared to go further. Cubs will take over first place early next week, only to lose the division and the wild card on the last day.

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  16. Smokestack Lightning

    andcounting:
    Daniel LaRusso——————> gonna fight!

    This seems… unwise.

    Maybe they’ll let him drive that scooter around the bases if he hits one out.

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  17. Author
    berselius

    I tuned in late and spent the entire first half of the inning wondering how the hell Pat and Len mistook Caratini for Rizzo (dying laughing)

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  18. Smokestack Lightning

    Rizzo the Rat:
    This is good but it also makes me more upset about Schwarber’s at-bat.

    Yeah, me too. Swung at ball four twice. Can’t do that kind of crap. Just because you have a green light doesn’t mean you have to swing.

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  19. Smokestack Lightning

    I suppose now is a good time to remember that regardless of whether or not the Cubs made a postseason appearance, it was likely to be brief and embarrassing.

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  20. EnricoPallazzo

    Smokestack Lightning,

    now is also a good time to remember that the cardinals fucking blow and this dumbass sam elliot impersonator sucks ass and also everyone is tupid and dumb and also you should never care about anything because it will just crumble to ashes right in front of you just when you think it might turn around

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  21. Perkins

    I kind of hope the Cubs just lose out at this point. And I kind of hope they ask why I’m not renewing my season tickets, because I have some opinions.

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  22. WaLi

    Four games back with six games left against Cardinals and three against the Pirates.

    How can the Cubs make this work? Let’s say they win out the rest of the series, Cubs would be one game back from Cardinals, right?

    Assume the Cardinals and Cubs both win two out of three vs the Diamondbacks/Pirates.

    If the Cubs then win two of three from the Cardinals in St. Louis would they have a tie record at 89-73.

    So for Cubs to just tie the Cardinals they have to win 5 of 6 and have the same record vs Pirates as they have vs Diamondbacks.

    The fucking Brewers with their -21 run differential will probably steal the division though.

    All hope is lost.

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  23. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89:
    Perkins,

    I’ve been that way for awhile now. This team isn’t any good and outside of a good 3/4 week early in the season, this team has been .500 or worse.

    They’ve essentially been what we saw the first four weeks of the season over and over: stupidly awful for a stretch followed by suddenly being really, really good. It’s like they’re half-Dodgers, half-Orioles. Neither has been sustained, which is why they’ll end up a slightly plus .500 club with one of the better run differentials in the league.

    Here’s hoping there’s a more ambitious plan, beyond not bringing back Joe, to excise the half-Orioles part of the club. But I fear they’ll just bring in a new manager, jettison a couple of the garbage players who don’t really matter anyway, declare the club talented enough (“Why, a healthy Craig Kimbrel is like adding an elite free agent right there!), and we’ll be in similar straits this time next year.

    I want bold moves. Doesn’t have to be selling off and being shitty for years again. I think there is a plausible path back to the top of the division if they really want to get there. But it will require a lot more commitment to being good than has been shown the past year or so.

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  24. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s offering to the gods of futility

    1B Rizzo
    RF Castellanos
    3B Bryant
    LF War Bear
    C Contreras
    2B Bote
    CF Heyward
    SS Hoerner
    P Mills

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  25. Perkins

    WaLi,

    I’d trade Contreras and have Caratini as the primary catcher until Amaya is ready. He’ll probably bring back a good prospect return, and it’s the position at which the Cubs can most easily tread water. I’d also trade Schwarber if the return is right and try to re-sign Castellanos.

    Then I’d sign Cole and 1-2 relievers. Not sure what to do about the bench, though.

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  26. WaLi

    Perkins,

    I’d have a hard time losing Contreras but that’s my heart speaking not my head. Him and Baez seem like someone that brings energy to the team which is something we need.

    Otherwise I agree with those moves.

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  27. Perkins

    WaLi,

    It’d be tough to lose Contreras, for sure. I think he probably brings the second best return after Bryant, but Bryant is harder to replace.

    The energy thing is part of why I’d like to see them retain Castellanos (well, that and he’s a pretty reliable and occasionally great hitter).

    I think that right now the Cubs can deal some players and reload while extending their competitive window, like the Yankees did in 2016. My fear is that they wait a few years and then face another massive rebuild.

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  28. WaLi

    Perkins,

    I think trading Bryant may not be a bad thing. I’d rather trade him away than Contreras (assuming returns were proportional). There is no way we are signing an extension with Bryant anyways. Trade him, sign Castellanos and have him play RF/3B (he plays horrible 3B, but he has played 4 seasons of 3B). Baez/Caratini can spell 3B as well if we keep Hoerner up for extended periods of time next year to play SS.

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  29. dmick89

    I think if you’re going to trade Contreras, you at least have to consider trading Bryant and seeing what you can get. Personally, I wouldn’t trade Contreras unless I was going to trade Bryant.

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  30. Author
    berselius

    WaLi,

    You’re forgetting that there are 29 other Tom Rickettses out there. They’ll cry poor at his big salary and won’t have any interest in extending him. Those poor baseball owners.

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  31. andcounting

    WaLi,

    You might be taking the metaphor a bit too seriously, but retreating to off-screen areas = returning to a previous base was the general idea I was going for. (dying laughing)

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  32. Perkins

    I legitimately hope the Cubs lose the remainder of their games. I don’t want ownership or the front office to have room to say the team doesn’t need changes.

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  33. andcounting

    It has basically looked like the Cubs are trying to win 7 games against the Cardinals every at bat. This isn’t a narrative so much as a black-and-white evaluation of Joe: he is expected (and expects) to keep the team focused on process over results, pleasure over pressure. No one can really argue that he’s done that successfully.

    Whether that’s the reason for anything not going right, I don’t know, but that is what his philosophy is and it hasn’t been carried out.

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  34. Smokestack Lightning

    andcounting,

    Yeah, hard to say whether or not it’s the players’ or Joe’s fault when it comes to the whole pleasure-pressure part of things. He can’t make them relax. He can’t make then listen to good advice.

    At the same time, if he’s not able to compel them in that direction, I’m not sure what he’s around for. He obviously can’t manage a game to save his life.

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  35. Smokestack Lightning

    I also think it’s nuts this team, mostly comprised of players that came back from down 3-1 in the toughest World Series in baseball history, can’t handle the pressure of a September playoff race.

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  36. dmick89

    I don’t know that it’s that they can’t handle the pressure, but I’ve never thought this team was all that good. I still think last year’s team was much closer to a .500 team than they were the 95 wins or so they ended up at. And I still think this team’s true talent is sub .500. They aren’t very good so it’s not surprising they aren’t playing good baseball down the stretch.

    I also think a whole lot of people deserve to be fired and I think a significant change is needed for the roster as well. Too bad we can’t fire the owners because they need to go too. If it was up to me, I’d get rid of anyone who had anything to do with building this roster. yeah, they won a World Series and that’s great, but they spent a shitload of money and here we are a few years later with the Cardinals winning the fucking division again. Not only are the Cardinals going to win the division, they are clearly the superior team.

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  37. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89: I don’t know that it’s that they can’t handle the pressure, but I’ve never thought this team was all that good. I still think last year’s team was much closer to a .500 team than they were the 95 wins or so they ended up at. And I still think this team’s true talent is sub .500. They aren’t very good so it’s not surprising they aren’t playing good baseball down the stretch.

    Yeah, in three short years they’ve gone from being the 1st or 2nd best and most talented team in baseball to the muddled middle. Some of that’s some really shitty luck, but more than enough of it isn’t. I still think there’s enough talent here that with the right moves this team can challenge for the division next year, but whether or not this FO is good enough anymore to pull these moves off (or whether ownership will even let them do all that might be necessary) is not something I feel particularly confident about right now.

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  38. BVS

    This season feels a little like 2014, where a lot of players got auditions. This year mostly in the pen, though Garcia and Hoerner count too. The difference is that the set positions are manned by players w more talent than Starlin Castro.

    I think if we’d had more luck with health, I think we’d still be in the WC. All of the core 4 and most of the rotation have been on the DL this year. Not sure if health would have made up the difference for the division lead. For that we’d have to be able to hit with 2 outs, have a higher contact rate, and not walk opposing batters 6 times a game.

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  39. EnricoPallazzo

    since the cubs season is over, we can turn to offseason topics. honest question for dmick (and anyone else that wants to weigh in) that I was pondering earlier today: do you have a favorite terrapin?

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  40. Perkins

    I’m just glad they’re in free fall. There should be no “well if X had just happened” among the people directing how this team is constructed.

    Winning 95 and still technically making the postseason last year probably allowed a level of self-deception about the improvements necessary.

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  41. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89:
    Kimbrel is the worst fucking signing ever.

    Ah, but he’ll be great next year, but a bunch of other shit won’t be addressed/will go wrong, and it won’t matter that he’s good again.

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  42. Smokestack Lightning

    berselius:
    A lot of rust in that swing

    Maybe not the sort of spot he should be getting that rust out, but somebody in that dugout apparently thinks they live in a movie.

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  43. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89,

    If it’s a retool and reload as opposed to a rebuild, then I think it’s his if he wants it.

    Edit: Watching this shit these last few days tho, I can’t see how he could possibly want it.

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  44. dmick89

    Smokestack Lightning,

    I’m pretty sure if the Cubs offer him the job, regardless of what they intend to do with the roster, he’s going to take it. I’m not really sure guys with no experience can afford to turn down one of the best managerial jobs in baseball. I think the question is whether the Cubs want someone with experience or not.

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  45. Perkins

    Ross probably has the advantage of having been to the top of the mountain with these guys – most other first year manager candidates can’t say that. He also seemed pretty universally respected by the other players, so that’s a plus.

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  46. Perkins

    In hindsight, maybe the most frustrating part of this team is that I wrote them off after about the first week and a half, only for them repeatedly to show flashes of playing at or above what I’d estimate as their true talent level and draw me back in.

    The constant ups and downs and never putting it all together has been exhausting and not at all fun.

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  47. EnricoPallazzo

    Perkins:
    In hindsight, maybe the most frustrating part of this team is that I wrote them off after about the first week and a half, only for them repeatedly to show flashes of playing at or above what I’d estimate as their true talent level and draw me back in.

    The constant ups and downs and never putting it all together has been exhausting and not at all fun.

    Well stated. Very much how I feel, not just about this season but the last three years.

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  48. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins,

    It doesn’t matter. If he’d gotten the first two outs, he would have gotten struck by lightning, or the Cubs would have made six errors on a routine groundball, locusts, something would have happened.

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  49. Perkins

    I’m not saying the Cubs should spend all of next weekend’s series trying to injure everyone on the Cardinals for the hell of it, but I’m not not saying that.

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  50. andcounting

    Pretty funny how the Cubs managed to waste everything good Darvish has ever done while he’s been a Cub. It’s like he has battled ridiculously hard to show signing him wasn’t a mistake, but the team from top to bottom has refused to allow that point to be made.

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  51. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins,

    Can he do better than the 4/81 he has left on his contract? He’ll be 33 next year, and despite this second half, he’s far from a sure thing still.

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  52. andcounting

    Perkins,

    I doubt he’ll opt out, but it would free up a ton of money. Not that that means anything, but it would mean the Cubs would have different pitchers to waste money on.

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  53. Ryno

    Hello, 2004.

    I know this isn’t the popular sentiment around here, but this would be pretty fucking depressing if they hadn’t won the 2016 World Series. Not that it’s great fun because they won or anything, but this team feels like it’s so far from contending again.

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  54. Perkins

    Ryno,

    I’d also be a lot more torn up if they hadn’t won in 2016. If anything, this underscores how tough it is to build and maintain a consistent powerhouse franchise.

    In retrospect, I think the tipping point was the decision not to augment the rotation in any meaningful way going into 2017. That forced the Quintana trade, which gutted that pipeline of talent Theo had talked of so excitedly. At this point, it doesn’t look like reinforcements are coming.

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  55. Author
    berselius

    Perkins,

    I get what you’re saying in a very broad sense, but that Q trade is one you make 100 times out of 100. It just didn’t work out. The guy was a bona fide ace with the Sox and on a bargain of a deal.

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  56. Ryno

    Perkins,

    Yeah, the bandaids didn’t really work, did they? At least the org has started pumping more resources into pitching.

    It should be an interesting off-season. At least, I hope it is.

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  57. andcounting

    Perkins,

    But it didn’t force the Quintana trade, the fear that the window was closing forced the Q trade. And the Chapman trade.

    It’s difficult to argue they’re far from contending when they’re a handful of base hits or strikeouts from leading the division by a game. They’re far from dominating, but that’s a different story.

    I guess I’m feeling like the fire-sale tactic is too risky. When the Cubs were already looking like the best team in MLB, they traded their best prospect for a rental. Evaluating that trade is still the most difficult call to make about this franchise, for me. But I’d really like to just stick with certain guiding principles I feel like that trade and a fire sale would divert from: build the system, acquire talent at advantageous prices, always compete. That’s my holy trinity of Cubs baseball moves. (dying laughing)

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  58. Perkins

    berselius,

    I agree that the trade was the right decision with the information they had at the time. But I’m also saying that it’s one they may not have needed to make if they’d gotten a better SP than Brett Anderson in the 2016/17 offseason.

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  59. andcounting

    berselius:
    Perkins,

    I get what you’re saying in a very broad sense, but that Q trade is one you make 100 times out of 100. It just didn’t work out. The guy was a bona fide ace with the Sox and on a bargain of a deal.

    100 out of 100 is a little strong. I wasn’t disgusted with the trade and still don’t hate it, but I’ve always been ambivalent about it because of what they gave up.

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  60. andcounting

    Oh, and this is probably the worst time to deal Bryant. The question of his health is going to limit his value in a trade. Maybe you find someone willing to give up the farm for him and disregard what nagging ailments do to his performance (and oh good, an ankle injury, I’m sure that will have no lingering effects) but I don’t know who that would be.

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  61. dmick89

    andcounting,

    I don’t know if it’s the worst time. If he gets a good report back and has a good prognosis, I don’t think it will matter. Even if he was healthy, as you pointed out, he’s a season-long nagging injury waiting to happen anyway so every team is going to be aware of it.

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  62. Smokestack Lightning

    berselius: I get what you’re saying in a very broad sense, but that Q trade is one you make 100 times out of 100. It just didn’t work out. The guy was a bona fide ace with the Sox and on a bargain of a deal.

    I think the trade is defensible (although probably not 100-out-of-100-times defensible). But I never thought of Quintana as an ace. A good pitcher on a great contract, sure. The need was there, and the team was defending its title. My personal feeling is that you usually don’t want to trade high-ceiling potential for a cost-effective high-floor reality, as there’s so much more room for those sorts of deals to go bad, but I get it.

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  63. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins: I agree that the trade was the right decision with the information they had at the time. But I’m also saying that it’s one they may not have needed to make if they’d gotten a better SP than Brett Anderson in the 2016/17 offseason.

    From a free agency standpoint, there was nothing there. Jeremy Hellickson was ranked as the #7 best free agent that offseason on MLBTR.

    That was the offseason to pay Chapman or Jansen, which the Cubs declined to do because of some dumb rule about never paying for closers, and which has screwed them ever since.

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  64. Smokestack Lightning

    andcounting,

    Yeah, I also don’t think it’s a good idea to trade one of the few players on this team that doesn’t hit the ball on the ground at an above-average clip and has a track record of being mostly very good.

    We have very few of those players on offense. Unless the Cubs are going to burn it down—and I don’t think they’re going to—he needs to stay.

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  65. Perkins

    Smokestack Lightning,

    Fair enough. I suppose getting Chapman or Jansen would have stabilized the bullpen, though each of them has had struggles since then.

    The other thing in the back of my mind is that the Ricketts family invested a lot to get the Cubs there, but apparently had no appetite to sustain it. I guess all that support for white supremacists can’t come cheap.

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  66. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins: Fair enough. I suppose getting Chapman or Jansen would have stabilized the bullpen, though each of them has had struggles since then.

    This is true. Chapman is only good for 50-60 innings per year, and is an injury risk, but he’s been his usual self during those innings. And if the Cubs paid him it might have precluded them from trading Soler for Davis (although he was on the way out no matter what), or given the Cubs a Davis-Chapman late-inning combo in 2017, which would have been alright. It would have saved us the Brandon Morrow nonsense. And the Bad Kimbrel we got this year (although I hope he’s just struggling with the wonky course his season took and isn’t done-zo as a good player).

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  67. dmick89

    Smokestack Lightning: I hope he’s just struggling with the wonky course his season took and isn’t done-zo as a good player

    That’s the part we don’t know yet. Sometimes relievers are just done and I would not be surprised at all if that was the case. I’m not confident enough that he’s any good at this point that I’d trade him for anything I could get in return at this point. If he sucks next year, there’s nothing to get in return. I’ll take something over nothing.

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  68. Author
    berselius

    andcounting,

    I’d do it every time, but maybe I am secretly Dave Dombrowski. Q had just posted ~18 WAR over the previous four seasons, and the Cubs looked like they had a logjam of offensive players. Maybe they should have gotten more for Torres and Jiminez, but at the time it wasn’t even clear how much playing time they could even get.

    In my head every prospect is going to be a failure anyway, I’m the guy who attempted to defend the Garza trade from a tactical perspective (though clearly it was strategically dumb).

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  69. Ryno

    berselius:
    andcounting,

    In my head every prospect is going to be a failure anyway…

    That’s not even what bothers my. Even as an admitted prospect optimist, I knew Eloy’s value was higher as a trade piece. I just didn’t like the return. I guess I just didn’t like Quintana’s upside.

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  70. dmick89

    I was never as big a fan of Quintana as berselius (I think I’ve seen him pitch one good game as a Cub and probably about 15 shitty ones), but I’d still say it’s a trade you make. Looking back, I think I have a much bigger issue with the trade that brought us Chapman. I know people say the Cubs wouldn’t have won the WS without him, but really? That can’t possibly be true. I seem to think the 2016 Cubs were a wee bit better than one closer saving its ass the final 2-3 months.

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  71. andcounting

    dmick89,

    Agreed, though I think the damage of both trades together exceed the sum of their individual badness. It hurt losing two great prospects, especially given that both are contributing on the major league level already. It feels like they got rid of Jorge Soler three times within a year.

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  72. Author
    berselius

    andcounting,

    Soler had pretty much played his way out the door in 2016, and the Cubs decision to cut him loose certainly looked okay in the following two seasons. But this season though, holy shit. I don’t think the Cubs could have afforded to wait that long for him.

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  73. andcounting

    berselius,

    No, that’s true. They weren’t keeping Soler. Those three guys together aren’t an indictment of the front office and each trade can be defended easily, but damn it hurts to look at all their numbers at once.

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  74. dmick89

    andcounting: Those three guys together aren’t an indictment of the front office and each trade can be defended easily, but damn it hurts to look at all their numbers at once.

    Yeah, each trade can be defended and I have, but at what point do we look at the larger picture and say, “holy shit, the Cubs could be contending for several more years if they didn’t pull the trigger on some of their trades.”?

    I don’t know the answer and as I’ve said many times, I love what Thoyer did during the rebuild. I’m not sure it could have been handled better. Not so happy with how they’ve kept this team in contention for a whopping two to three years or the fact that the team already has to fucking rebuild its roster. Some of that is on ownership, but definitely not all of it.

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  75. BVS

    Remember that Gleyber Torres was still at Myrtle Beach when he was traded. Though the upside looked good, his stats in high A were so so. Plus lots of highly regarded prospects flame out between High A and the majors. Aramis Ademan seems on that path to me.

    Smokestack Lightning,

    Agree. We have so many high K high GB hitters. That’s why everyone was so excited about Zo coming back, even as a .240 hitter, he’d have a better approach. I think the frint line is pretty good, but all the depth could go (Happ, Schwarber, Almora, Bote, Russell). Of those, you might get something for Schwarber, especially because he hasn’t sucked lately. I assume Russell is a non-tender and so will everyone else.

    Maybe Hoerner can move to 2b and platoon with Zo if Zo comes back on a $4M one year contract. I don’t see enough arm for Nico to stick at SS.

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  76. dmick89

    I’m assuming Nico is going to move to 2nd when Baez returns next season, but more likely Nico will begin the year in AAA at SS. He’s definitely not going to move Baez to 2nd.

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  77. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89: That can’t possibly be true. I seem to think the 2016 Cubs were a wee bit better than one closer saving its ass the final 2-3 months.

    It wasn’t about needing Chapman to save the team’s ass during the regular season, but all about beating elite teams in one-run games in the postseason. That was what Chapman was for. Someone who could slam the door on the heart of the Dodgers’ order in the 9th with the team clinging to a one run lead. The FO rightly saw the 2016 team as its best chance to end 108 years (which used to be kind of a thing) and went for it.

    And they were right. Cubs could have gotten to the postseason without Chapman just fine. But winning the whole thing? I don’t see it. Not with Rondon. We’ll never know, because they won it with Chapman.

    Which is why of all the risky trades the Cubs made the last few years, the Chapman one is the one I feel no regrets about. That one World Series was worth it, that’s the only reason they made that trade, and I don’t believe they win it without him.

    Even with Maddon’s misuse and Rajai Fucking Davis.

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  78. andcounting

    dmick89,

    How frustrating is it that one of the most exciting developments of the season, Nico getting a chance to play in the majors and doing really well in a short, high-pressure stint, gets mostly lost in a dismal team collapse? I’m happy for him to have this shot, but it deserves a better ending than the team is giving it.

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  79. Smokestack Lightning

    BVS,

    At this point, I’m more inclined to keep Schwarber. His second half was pretty good, and he’s one of the few hitters we have around here who doesn’t hit the ball on the ground at an above-average rate and who hits the ball hard at an above-average rate.

    The rest of your list can gtfo, and I hope they do. I’m tempted to add Baez to that list, because he might be the worst offender we have in the high-K high-GB Club, but he’s sort of awesome at every other aspect of baseball, and impossible not to like. I’m also tempted to add Contreras to the list, but have similar misgivings.

    But this team has to clear out the groundballs and weak contact. I can deal with the strikeouts if the first two are gone.

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  80. dmick89

    Smokestack Lightning,

    I get the idea that you want to have an elite reliever going into the playoffs. I’m not questioning that. What I’m questioning is whether or not Chapman’s performance was really a difference maker. I don’t think it was. It certainly wasn’t the reason they got to the playoffs. It definitely wasn’t the reason they actually beat the Indians (he may have made it more difficult). I don’t think he helped much in beating the Dodgers either.

    I know we look back and say that one WS was worth it and I’m not going to complain about this trade. It’s probably one I’d made too, but it wasn’t a good one. It was a shitty trade that may or may not have helped the team win a World Series. It is definitely not a big reason why they won it all. It’s not even a large enough reason why to be mentioned at this point in my opinion. It’s a tiny, tiny reason why the Cubs won it all. That is, maybe it’s a tiny reason why.

    That shitty trade (one that I’d probably have made as I said), was made even shittier when the Cubs went out and traded for another reliever rather than signing a free agent.

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  81. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89: What I’m questioning is whether or not Chapman’s performance was really a difference maker.

    He wasn’t perfect, but I would argue he was definitely good to have around. And worth the trade.

    NLDS Game 1: Cubs win 1-0. Chapman with the save.
    NLDS Game 4: Cubs win 6-5 after that incredible comeback. Chapman strikes out the side.

    NLCS there wasn’t a whole lot for him to do. He came in game 1 with the bases loaded and no outs and damn near got out of it. He only gave up the one hit, and the Cubs still won that game. After that the Dodgers ran off with 2 wins before the Cubs more or less destroyed them the last three. He pitched, but it wasn’t all that important that he did. He was on the mount when they clinched the pennant.

    And up until game 7 of the World Series, he pitched very well. And I’d say game 5 was practically worth the trade all by itself. Cubs down 3-1 in the Series, hanging on for dear life to a one run lead after scoring all their runs in the 5th. Chapman pitched 2.2 scoreless innings with 4 Ks. Yeah, he fucked up in game 7 gassed from overuse by Maddon, but the Cubs probably don’t get there without him and what he did in game 5.

    Whether or not that still makes him a tiny, tiny reason the Cubs won it all, I don’t know. But it doesn’t seem like it to me, and I’m sure as shit glad he was there.

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  82. Perkins

    I don’t think the Cubs win the World Series without Chapman’s performance in game 5. I think the trade for him was worth it just for that.

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  83. BVS

    Smokestack Lightning,

    I’d see if the Tigers would take Schwarber for Boyd. Generally though, I think he’s about the only one on my list with any trade value.

    I’d rather have grounders than Ks. Balls in play can advance runners and create errors. Ks do nothing. Iirc, St L has the highest ball-in-play rate in the NL. Followed by LA. Look where they’ll be in Oct.

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  84. Smokestack Lightning

    BVS: I’d rather have grounders than Ks. Balls in play can advance runners and create errors. Ks do nothing. Iirc, St L has the highest ball-in-play rate in the NL. Followed by LA. Look where they’ll be in Oct.

    They are also among the lowest in GB% and highest in hard hit%. The Pirates have a high contact rate, but didn’t score very many runs this year, largely, imo, because they didn’t hit the ball hard, and they hit it on the ground. Groundballs don’t produce high slugging percentages or high batting averages. It’s why virtually every pitcher that struggles to get strikeouts tries to get groundballs (the ones that don’t get Ks or GBs tend not to be in major league baseball very long). Outside of IFFBs, they’re the most likely batted-ball outcome to produce outs or hits that do the least amount of damage.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’ll happily take an Astros/Dodgers type offense that makes a lot of contact, draws a lot of walks, limits groundballs, and hits the ball hard. Obviously too many Ks and batted ball profile starts to matter not at all, and a lowest-in-baseball contact rate is never acceptable. But if I had to choose a weakness for an offense to have, I’ll take an above-average K rate (not highest in baseball, but above average) over a low hard-hit percentage and a high groundball rate.

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  85. WaLi

    WaLi,

    Additionally the Cubs were way too inconsistent. They scored 789 runs over 156 games. 5 runs a game sounds pretty good to me. Well they scored 2 or less in 45 of those games (28%). In only 21 games (13% of total), they scored 247 runs (31% of their total).

    Not sure how this can be fixed. Could this have been helped with a “looser” clubhouse or lineup management, or maybe this happens because of the errors on the basepaths? Or because of the team construction as discussed above by BVS/Smokestatck?

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  86. andcounting

    WaLi,

    People make bad choices if they’re mad or scared or stressed. Throw a little love their way and you’ll bring out their best.

    It’s not that difficult. It’s from Frozen. Everyone saw that movie. How did Joe forget about it?

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  87. BVS

    Smokestack Lightning,

    Ah, but you are trading one weakness for two. 🙂 I’ll take groundballs with hard hit rate over high K and hard hit.

    Regardless, there are many fundamental flaws on this team, as Wali also points out above.

    Let me propose another: the medical staff.

    I railed on them last year with the Morrow and Darvish situations. Apparently this year they also missed Javy’s broken thumb for a week. Plus the many Morrow false starts. Not sure that Strop, Kimbrel and Hamels weren’t misses either.

    Last year dmick countered that diagnosing physical issues is hard. I get that, and it’s a good point. But this year we have another set of circumstances that seem to show that the medical staff isn’t doing its job on the front end. Getting Willson and Rizzo back on the field has been good, but that’s after they knew what was wrong to start–a correct diagnosis.

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  88. Ryno

    My problem hasn’t been the players CHC traded away. It’s the return.

    CHC overpaid for Chapman, but the end justified the means.
    Soler for Davis was fair at the time.
    Eloy didn’t have a spot and I’m not sure Cease did either, so their value was higher to the org as trade bait. I just think they could’ve gotten something better than Quintana.

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  89. BVS

    Assuming Joe is gone, there seems to be four profiles of manager hires that are possible.

    1. Hotshot HOF manager who is looking. Maddon and Pinella fit that profile. Bruce Bochy and maybe Girardi fit that category.

    2. Recent respected player thrown into the hot seat ala Aaron Boone, Matt Metheny, etc. That’s David Ross.

    3. Longtime minor league manager who has earned his stripes in the org. Shildt, Shnitker. That would be Marty Pevey.

    4. Former manager with moderate to questionable success or existing major league coach. The former often found as the latter. There are tons of these. Dale Sveum or Brad Ausmus for example. I don’t really have anyone in mind with this profile for the Cubs.

    What/Who is your pick?

    I’m killing time at lunch, can you tell?

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  90. EnricoPallazzo

    WaLi: Additionally the Cubs were way too inconsistent. They scored 789 runs over 156 games. 5 runs a game sounds pretty good to me. Well they scored 2 or less in 45 of those games (28%). In only 21 games (13% of total), they scored 247 runs (31% of their total).

    pretty sure someone made almost this exact same comment verbatim last year. here’s hoping we don’t go for a three-peat.

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  91. andcounting

    I’m back to “bad baseball is better than no baseball” mode. As painful as this season has been to follow, the next six months will probably suck even worse.

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  92. WaLi

    andcounting:
    I’m back to “bad baseball is better than no baseball” mode. As painful as this season has been to follow, the next six months will probably suck even worse.

    I tuned in for a few innings. Saw Hoerner get the go ahead run which was nice, but had to turn it off when they blew the lead yet again

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  93. BVS

    Today in pyrrhic victories :

    John Lester, assuming his season is over, will have his highest batting average, OBP, and slugging of his career. BA of .188 is 40 points above last best, 2 years ago.

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  94. Author
    berselius

    berselius:
    Perkins,

    It would be nice if the Cubs sweep the Cardinals back to the wild card this weekend.

    Actually, win enough to make it a divisional tie so they and the Brewers both have to play a game 163 that hopefully goes 22 innings.

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  95. andcounting

    This season has been like watching a movie without knowing if it was directed by Michael Bay or Martin Scorsese. You know it’s miserable, and you know the people you’re watching probably deserve to go down in disaster, but it still seems like it would be nice if everything worked out in the…oh god, never mind. It’s a Scorsese movie. Holy shit. Oh fuck, I guess I should have seen this coming. Damn. Ok. Shit, turn it off.

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  96. BVS

    andcounting,

    (dying laughing). I’d been thinking it was an Oliver Stone movie. Shot with an obvious point of view that you are hit over the head with repeatedly. A brief sequence of cinematic entertainment embedded in a general waste of good actor’s talents within a poorly scripted and directed effort.

    In contrast to Scorsese films, which generally are well-done treatments of tragedy and disaster.

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  97. andcounting

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  98. andcounting

    It’s been two hours and this rant, by the president of a real country, in which he misspells at least two words, misidentifies a punctuation mark my seven year old can correctly identify, and argues that a news network maliciously tried to make it seem like he can’t spell, is still up on the internet for anyone to see.

    How bad does something have to be for him to try to cover it up?

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  99. BVS

    I’m beginning to wonder if the Republicans, led by Romney and Richard Burr and a few others not running for re-election, are just so sick of this game that they’ll help push him out.

    Maybe Mike Pence is the whistleblower. Apparently he was on all the calls. Et tu, Mike?

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  100. Author
    berselius

    BVS,

    They still need to move from ‘very concerned’ to ‘extremely concerned’. Those brows aren’t going to furrow themselves.

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  101. Smokestack Lightning

    BVS:
    I’m beginning to wonder if the Republicans, led by Romney and Richard Burr and a few others not running for re-election, are just so sick of this game that they’ll help push him out.

    Maybe Mike Pence is the whistleblower. Apparently he was on all the calls. Et tu, Mike?

    I wouldn’t get too far down the road on this wondering if I were you.

    And I hope everyone’s girding their loins for another four years of this garbage. I am about as bullish on impeachment/2020 Trump defeat as dmick was about the 2019 Cubs.

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  102. Perkins

    Smokestack Lightning,

    I think it’s possible, even likely that Trump gets impeached. Though I don’t expect him to get convicted in the Senate unless the details of his interactions with Ukraine are even worse than what’s laid out in the complaint.

    I do think it’s likely he loses the 2020 election if he makes it that far, simply because his approval rating has been well underwater for his entire administration and he trails in polling by double digits in all of the swing states he barely won in 2016 against another extremely unpopular nominee.

    I wish everyone would stop treating that asshole like he’s so goddamn inevitable. During the primaries, he kept getting coverage and all the news outlets kept saying “what if” and dignifying his lies and dumb shit because they don’t know how to deal with someone in that position who straight up lies about everything and has no shame. Until recently, Democrats refused to do anything substantial about his many impeachable offenses because of course the Republicans will never vote to convict in the Senate, so why bother? The guy’s a fucking moron and a piece of shit. Treating him like some force of nature just absolves people of the hard work of mitigating the damage he’s causing and getting him the fuck away from the wheel.

    I’m sure Ryno will have a field day with the ellipses in that last paragraph. (dying laughing)

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  103. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins,

    I don’t think he’s inevitable, just far more probable than he should be. Like it or not, unless we catch a break, this going to be an uphill battle. There’s a profound lack of political talent/acumen/whatever-you-want-to-call-it on the Dem side. And at this point, I have very little confidence in their ability to pull off two things that should be gimmes: impeachment (in terms of seeing it through without looking like morons themselves—as bad as this latest episode is, unless something more comes out, it’s not bad enough, and it will die in the Senate, and not enough swing voters will give a shit for it to move the needle) and 2020. Maybe that will change, and I could very well be wrong, but I’m mentally preparing for otherwise.

    Besides, I’d like be wildly, happily surprised to be wrong for a change. Usually I’m just wrong and sad. (dying laughing)

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  104. Perkins

    BVS:
    Perkins,

    How stressful can it be when your biggest worry is how to spell and punctuate “Liddle’”?

    Given that he’s a narcissist and an authoritarian, it would be stressful to have so many people hate and mock him, and to learn that “laws” prevent him from just doing whatever he wants.

    He’s not smart enough to be worn down by the actually stressful parts of the job.

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