KeithStone53151

I was just coming to complain about urias ph. I'll enjoy my crow...

Perdomos stuff is good enough he can be good just being around the strike zone, not the same with yardley

You want Hiura to get a second consecutive day off after the only successful game he's had this season? I understand wanting to load up on lefties, but most people were frustrated that Hiura was off yesterday following a big game, let alone two days in a row. The Hiura off piece was admittedly an oversight. Didn't really think about that. I can live with him at 2b over Peterson and CC managed 5 lefties so that's good. Unfortunate that Yelich is off but if he needs the day it's what it is.

Agreed. Baez isn't my favorite player, but quite a few of this Cubs group seem like real good dudes and I would generally root for if they were on other teams. I'm looking forward to Bryant leaving especially so I don't have to hate him by default.

I hope we load up the lefties big time. This guy throws almost all fastball/slider, changeup is meh and he rarely throws it. The Cubs also have 2 LH relievers in their bullpen and one of them went 1.2 innings yesterday, so he might not be available. I'm hoping to see something like this... Cain Vogelbach Yelich Garcia Shaw Narvaez Urias Peterson P

https://thebaseballcodes.com/2021/04/07/willson-contreras-would-like-to-inform-you-good-sir-that-he-is-tired-of-being-hit-by-pitches/#:~:text=More%20specifically%2C%20however%2C%20is%20the,last%20season%2C%20for%20good%20reason. Let him cry, if he wants to lean in and try to get hit...and he gets hit...his problem

Alec bohm is not a burner by any stretch either. This isnt quite as embarrassing as the link above, but it's close. The braves should probably be counting on him for DH duty for the last 3 years of this horrendous deal...

The Cubs are currently 4-5 and they've already played 6 against the pirates. That's a massive yikes for them. Whoever replaced theo after he left that dumpster fire he created is probably already weighing trade offers for bryant...

Hey, tack on runs. I like it

Biggest problem is we needed to tack on a run or two here and there. Can't just get to 7 early and think we are done. Multiple times the cards have been one at bat away from making this a 1 run game.

We have Jace Peterson for the time being. If jace peterson is the biggest problem you have with the roster, that's a really really good thing...

It took some serious stones to leave lindblom in there to pitch to goldschmidt. Not sure it was smart but it worked out...

The biggest issue with Houser is his career .853 OPS against left handed hitters. He is well suited for a role where he can face predominantly RHHs, and you can control that better out of the bullpen especially coming into a game started by a LHP. Worth noting that st louis is heavily rh. Their clear best 2 hitters are rh and I think they only have 3 total lh

Arenado is so jacked right now. Off speed...

I really hope the pitch around arenado here. I wouldn't even mind international walk to face dejong

I always feel extremely comfortable with the throw as soon as shaw gets a glove on the ball. I feel like he almost never makes an errant throw.

Degrom with 8 innings of 1 run ball with 14 ks and about to get the loss. Kinda insane how often this happens to him.

We made defense a focus, glad it's paying off. Also hiura stung the ball both at bats today, good to see.

I'm real excited about the prospect of having Mitchell and Turang atop our lineup in the near future. Both guys have elite speed, get on base, play premium positions and hopefully will set the table for Yelich, Hiura. I think Turang's a future leadoff hitter and Mitchell sounds at the moment like an ideal #2. If he adds a bit more power, then perhaps he becomes more of a middle of the order bat. But with those two, and then some of the young arms and catchers we've got, I think this system is underrated. We may not have a lot of surplus talent that would allow us to make the types of trades the Pads or Astros were able to, but still...I think we look back on this group in 4-5 years and all agree it's an underrated group. A starting SS and CF'er who should hit, get on and steal bases while playing very good defense, a couple of lefty starters and a few good pen arms...and that's not counting on the development of guys like Perez who have huge upsides. Most of these prospect gurus have had minimal looks at players in the last year plus and are mostly looking at 2019 analysis for their information. These young players haven't been sitting on the couch because there was no minor league season last year, they were all advancing/improving at different rates. I'll go as far as it's likely to say the system/player rankings could be drastically different in July when the deadline comes up, assuming minor league games start in May sometime.

I was looking at statcast data for our offensive players, both Garcia and Cain have been extremely unlucky so far. Both guys have over 50% hard hit rate yet have averages of 182 and 188 respectively. Both have reasonable k rates as well. If they continue as they are going, I would expect both to be fine statistically by end of April. Hiura and Urias were both slightly unlucky as well, but statcast had very low XBA for both guys due to the high k rate. Obviously they both need to improve their contact. Yelich has actually been slightly lucky according to statcast, which is a bit scary considering his stat line is very mediocre for a $30m/y player. I think we'll be ok offensively if Garcia/Cain luck starts to average out and Yelich gets going(which I think is inevitable)...but here's hoping Hiura/Urias figure it out a bit. I'm sure Hiura has a few more weeks of rope left before Vogelbach starts getting majority starts. I think Hiura's issue is in the mechanics of his swing, seems like he's looping under everything. I wonder a bit if he became a bit obsessed with launch angle over the off season and it led to him missing under the ball way more.

Agreed, I'd be more than happy to let Brett Anderson throw 200 pitches if he's effective for all 200.

I'd agree with this, CC is solid but unspectacular. And he's not in a situation like Dave Roberts to look like a genius no matter who starts, as his 26th man probably starts on 2/3 of mlb rosters and his 3rd best reliever would close for 2/3 of teams. Just remember, before CC we had Yost, Macha, Runnin Ron, and Sveum. CC is head and shoulders better than any of them at his job in my opinion. And Yost went on to get carried to a WS title by probably one of the best bullpens of all time. A trash team can make a great manager look terrible, and a WS caliber team can make Yost look like a genius.

I've seen the in game threads, I think people are making way too big a thing out of pulling Woodruff and Burnes when he did. These are the first couple starts of the season, Burnes is relatively young still and Woodruff got a late start to spring training. Taking it easy and pulling these guys in the mid 80s pitch counts is not unreasonable, if you look around the league it's not all that uncommon. Blake Snell has a 1.86 ERA and has thrown 86 and 87 pitches in his starts. Degrom got pulled after 77 pitches his first start. Regarding Burnes/Woodruff, both guys labored a bit in their last inning of work and both had said they were pretty tired and agreed with the manager in pulling them. They might have said that anyways, but CC has far more information than us. I suspect the same people griping about not letting them pitch further into the game are the same people that would gripe if CC left them in and they gave up a couple runs in their next inning of work. It's really easy to second guess these decisions after the fact. I think CC has designated Hader as a more traditional closer this year, based on the make-up of the bullpen currently. They've sputtered a bit so far this season, but heading into the season Williams looked like a true lock-down reliever. And then CC has 3 or 4 guys ready to pitch 2-3 inning stretches if needed. Not sure how many managers came into the season with the strategy of having at least half their relievers prepared for multiple innings...such a strategy is far from traditional. Also let's remember we are a week into the season as far as hitting goes. It's fair for the manager to bear some of the criticism here, but it's not fair this early.

Wainwright has pretty low velocity, this isn't a bad opportunity for Hiura to right things. Wainwright relies pretty heavily on a pretty nasty(and slow) curve, which is something Hiura is good at hitting when he's right. Here's hoping...

We need to be really careful not to break any unwritten rules this series. Otherwise Molina might grab our player by the throat and our player will get ejected and suspended for 2 games.