NL Central

[Brian]

Cubs Collen Rea gets pulled in the 5th 

7-3 Giants. Keep up the good work SF. 

[adambr2]

The injuries are really piling up at a bad time.

Regardless, getting everyone healthy in the next month is more important than any one game outcome.

We don’t need to be the best team in baseball for the next month. We need to be no more than 6 games worse than the Cubs, Dodgers and Phillies for one month. That’s it. Anything better doesn’t even matter.

[Brian]

29 minutes ago, adambr2 said:

The injuries are really piling up at a bad time.

Regardless, getting everyone healthy in the next month is more important than any one game outcome.

We don’t need to be the best team in baseball for the next month. We need to be no more than 6 games worse than the Cubs, Dodgers and Phillies for one month. That’s it. Anything better doesn’t even matter.

Cubs getting shellacked 12-3 after the 8th, Justin Turner getting fat as hell also. His butt is as big as Aaron Civale's now.  Cubs just brought in there backup catcher to pitch.

[Baldkin]

15 hours ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Big brother. Willson is 33 ... and obviously should know better. He's always been kind of a dick though.

Older brothers are always trouble. I'm an older brother. 

[Team Canada]

1 hour ago, Brian said:

Justin Turner getting fat as hell also. His butt is as big as Aaron Civale's now

That's a bit unnecessary.

[LouisEly]

Rockies making the Cubs earn it..  11-7 in the bottom of the 9th, Rockies get two hits but then hit into a DP.

Just make the Cubs burn through their bullpen.

[ELCABALLO45]

Pete Crow-Armstrong in the month of August is currently slashing 

.165/.215/.237/.452

Good thing he plays defense in such a hard park to play defense like Wrigley field (this was a joke btw, anyone can play defense in CF in wrigley) because I’m pretty sure his bWAR and fWAR has gone up this month. 
 

His OPS since June 1st is .730.

His current OBP overall is .291.

Against LHP this year he is slashing 

189

.219

.390

.609

He currently leads the NL in WAR. 

As someone who uses WAR and enjoys WAR what a terrible look for this stat. 

 

 

[LouisEly]

Brewers play the Jays in Toronto for 3 games, Cubs play the Rockies in Denver.

Cubs gain exactly zero games in the standings.

[Brian]

Cubs message board sounds familiar to when he managed here:

I am sick of Craig Counsell and how he uses his pitching staff for the Cubs. They just commented that Hollowell who is getting whacked in the 8th and the announcers said they have a doubleheader and don't want to run out of pitchers so they will let him get beat up.

Excuse my French but then why the f would Counsell only let Pomeranz pitch 1.1 innings and gave up no hits or walks and pulled him. Then he puts in Rogers in who pitched one inning and yes gave up a run but only threw 16 pitches? You wonder why the idiot could run out of pitchers for the second game in a row.

Counsell has no clue for all of last year and this year on handling his starters at all.  He needs to go. I get that the team can't hit their way out of a paper bag, but the pitching is doing pretty good and Counsell doesn't have a clue when to leave them in.

Any comments and thanks for letting me vent. COUNSELL NEEDS TO GO.

[Underachiever]

5 minutes ago, Brian said:

Cubs message board sounds familiar to when he managed here:

I am sick of Craig Counsell and how he uses his pitching staff for the Cubs. They just commented that Hollowell who is getting whacked in the 8th and the announcers said they have a doubleheader and don't want to run out of pitchers so they will let him get beat up.

Excuse my French but then why the f would Counsell only let Pomeranz pitch 1.1 innings and gave up no hits or walks and pulled him. Then he puts in Rogers in who pitched one inning and yes gave up a run but only threw 16 pitches? You wonder why the idiot could run out of pitchers for the second game in a row.

Counsell has no clue for all of last year and this year on handling his starters at all.  He needs to go. I get that the team can't hit their way out of a paper bag, but the pitching is doing pretty good and Counsell doesn't have a clue when to leave them in.

Any comments and thanks for letting me vent. COUNSELL NEEDS TO GO.

Thank god we have Murphy, for whom this board has unconditional love for his bullpen management.

[Brian]

3 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

Thank god we have Murphy, for whom this board has unconditional love for his bullpen management.

LOL, no unconditional love anywhere on earth that I know of. 

[LouisEly]

19 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

Thank god we have Murphy, for whom this board has unconditional love for his bullpen management.

If people watched enough games of all of the other teams, they would likely come to the same conclusions.

They just don't watch other teams.

[sveumrules]

On 8/31/2025 at 4:43 AM, ELCABALLO45 said:

He currently leads the NL in WAR. 

As someone who uses WAR and enjoys WAR what a terrible look for this stat. 

PCA's 6.3 WAR at BRef tops the NL, but his 5.3 WAR at FanGraphs is only 5th in the Senior Circuit.

Typically when the two disagree to such an extent it's over defense, and there is definitely some of that at play here with +24 runs for fielding/position adjustment on BRef versus only +17.9 for the same on FanGraphs.

But PCA's slug heavy profile at the plate is also overrated at BRef with a 124 OPS+ shaking out to +15 batting runs. His 115 wRC+ over at FanGraphs does a better job accounting for his comically low OBP and has only netted him +9 batting runs so far.

I would guess his eventual MVP placement will end up closer to his fWAR ranking than his bWAR ranking.

[Frisbee Slider]

Seems like someone should have higher than .783 OPS (PCA) to win MVP? 🤷‍♂️

.624 OPS after the all star break (PCA)

[duewizard]

31 minutes ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Seems like someone should have higher than .783 OPS (PCA) to win MVP? 🤷‍♂️

.624 OPS after the all star break (PCA)

Someone like Brice Turang! 😉

[LouisEly]

So, the Brewers are now past the stretch with the Blue Jays and the Phillies and the Cubs gained...

... exactly one game in the standings.  And lost a half game over the last 10 games.  And lost a half game over the last 27 games.

[SeaBass]

Willson Contreras will begin serving his suspension today. There's a little uncertainty about the length but there are some reports that it has been reduced from 6 games to 4 games. Nothing official quite yet.

 

[Brian]

What do the Cub fans think of Apple TV? 

[RightFieldCoder]

I hope Cubs fans like Apple TV because I don't want to agree with them about anything.

[nate82]

I thought the Cubs were supposed to be in 1st place by now and the Brewers would be far in their rear view mirror?

Why are the Brewers still in 1st place?  Is this a conspiracy by MLB to keep the Cubs down and not allow them to be in 1st place?  What is going on?

[HarryDoyle]

4 minutes ago, nate82 said:

I thought the Cubs were supposed to be in 1st place by now and the Brewers would be far in their rear view mirror?

Why are the Brewers still in 1st place?  Is this a conspiracy by MLB to keep the Cubs down and not allow them to be in 1st place?  What is going on?

The Cubs have a .570 winning percentage. The Nats are at .404. The law of averages says Wahington should win at least one of the three this weekend, which they have.

[BrewerFan]

On 8/27/2025 at 10:22 PM, adambr2 said:

The injuries are really piling up at a bad time.

Regardless, getting everyone healthy in the next month is more important than any one game outcome.

We don’t need to be the best team in baseball for the next month. We need to be no more than 6 games worse than the Cubs, Dodgers and Phillies for one month. That’s it. Anything better doesn’t even matter.

+6 on the Cubs... though, they own the Tie-Breaker... BUT winning 1 of 2 from Philly was huge. We have the Tie-Breaker there and the Dodgers are 8.5 back. So more like 5.5 and 9.5 with the Tie-breaker. 

If we get everyone back from injury, we'll be good. If now, it's gonna be a rough road. 

Yelich and Megill are really the main 2, but Mears, Hall, they're huge. Henderson is pretty much shut down, right?
Biggest race is the healing properties of some of our pitchers. 

I think Koenig is also owed a bit of an apology... though perhaps not on here. He was getting trashed on other sites. 

[BrewerFan]

 

35 minutes ago, nate82 said:

I thought the Cubs were supposed to be in 1st place by now and the Brewers would be far in their rear view mirror?

Why are the Brewers still in 1st place?  Is this a conspiracy by MLB to keep the Cubs down and not allow them to be in 1st place?  What is going on?

That has been an ACTUAL argument. MLB wants the Brewers to win because it's better for them financially. This was during the meltdown by Cubs fans when the Cubs were playing... mostly decent, but we were on that insane run. 26 of 30. We had a 15 game swing on the Cubs and during that period, they were the 2nd best team in the NL. 

 

But yeah... it was obviously because MLB does BEST... not when it's the Cubs and say Red Sox or Yankees-Dodgers, but... the big market Brewers!

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

With yesterday's one-game swing, Fangraphs playoff odds now have the Brewers at over 98 percent to win the division. 

I'm not one to take those numbers as Gospel. We have no idea which simulation we're living in, and if you run 10,000, 200 are going to come up Cubs. Still, the math is quite hard for them. They're going to have to go like 16-4 and hope we play sub-.500 down the stretch.

That's not impossible. It's also going to take both a crazy hot run from them (on par with our post-ASB through mid-August run) and us playing well below our standard to this point.

 

[nate82]

When does the Cubs easy schedule start again?