Greenleaf1

I was kinda wondering the same thing. Brauns out now so maybe his body did fall apart. Or cc was wondering the same thing and wanted an extended discussion with him? I'll third this, I thought for sure he'd cut it off but he didn't seem to be running very hard. Best guess is he was already feeling something at that point.

Was listening to a the MLB Statcast Podcast and they were talking Domingo Santana's defensive statistics look a lot better so far this year than last year. I'm not sure he's made any phenomenal plays or anything but that first out there was a nice grab and he does seem a little bit better so far this year, which admittedly might not be saying much.

Crap, Braun is injured now too.

Another oppo hard hit ball for Arcia. This one didn't fall but he's looking good tonight.

He may be fooling the reds into swinging at his junk but a better team might have a boatload of walks so far. On the other hand, he's really only missing the corners by inches, so on a good day I could see him getting ahead in counts and putting a lot of guys away with that junk and racking up the K's.

Miley looks like an ok option until something better is ready, but I could see him having tough games with a lot of walks if he pitches like today. Seems like very few of his pitches are inside the strike zone.

Pina would be a better backup than Maldonado. I think he should be able to be a league average hitter most of the time and is excellent defensively. But agreed that we could use a better starting catcher, maybe Nottingham eventually but in the meantime let's hope Vogt comes back and tears the cover off the ball at least.

Wow, Miley got down the line quickly! Also hoping Arcia can remember going forward how successful he is going to the opposite field.

I'm going to guess the next 3 moves will be: Logan up, Phillips option Vogt up, Bandy DFA Knebel up, Suter option I'd love if the Phillips option turned out to be Sogard DFA but I doubt that will happen yet. Sogard probably doesn't get DFA'd until they call up Dubon (who hasn't been walking but has a 20 game hit streak going!). Suter they can just say they're sending him down to stretch out, and I think they'd prefer to leave Williams in the pen, particularly when they already will have 3 lefties once Logan comes back (not that Suter would be used as a LOOGY).

I'll guess Santana gets in there today over Aguilar, but if Braun sits with the off day tomorrow maybe we'll see both, unless they want to give Phillips a start in right with the righty on the mound but I doubt that.

Since Chris Sale is probably the easiest comp to make to Hader, Sale spent a season and a half in the Sox bullpen, then they converted him at the beginning of his 3rd season to the rotation, where he obviously did quite well for himself. Hader's numbers in the pen thus far are even more dominant than Sale's, but Sale also had more pitch types than Hader, whose FanGraphs "changeup" is actually still just his slider according to Hader. I'd be concerned about that, but (small sample size alert) Hader's numbers against righties have been just as dominant as against lefties, so it seems like that slider is working well against righties too (and the fastball is best described as unhittable at this point if you look at those contact % stats). Hader has also shown dramatic improvement in other areas that might've worried me about his role in the rotation even last year (sorry for lack of formatting): 2018 2017 (Majors) 2017 (AAA) 2016 (AAA) 2016 (AA) Pitches Per Inning 15.94 16.34 17.83 18.06 16.96 BB/9 2.50 4.15 5.37 4.70 3.00 In addition to being better than ever this year, he's putting up his best numbers of his career in K/9 and BB/9 (except for 5 games in low-A with the Orioles in 2012), and is also getting more efficient as he goes. A lot of the things that might've worried people about his inability to go deep in games might not be as big of a deal anymore. I know there's been some concern that he can't hold his velocity late into games but I'm not sure where that originates from (probably in the minors a few years ago), and that's just something you're not going to know unless you give him a shot in the rotation I guess. The only other concern I have is that we have plenty of potentially good to great starters lined up who deserve shots in the rotation, but I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to leave Hader in the bullpen when he has shown that he can be as dominant as this. While Chacin is still in the rotation, I'm not going to be worried about us having too many good starters to not give Hader a chance.

The one silver lining about this series is that I seriously doubt that there won't be some sort of change made as a result of this series. They need to change SOMETHING.

Davies hit Rizzo because he walks out to Taylor Swift.

Counsell said something today along the lines of 100 PA is a large enough sample size to start making some changes. You have to think the writing is on the wall for guys like Sogard/Perez. Pina probably gets some more time, Bandy will go when Vogt is ready and we'll see how that pans out. Nottingham is hitting .400 at AAA so would imagine he'll be back up at some point but probably not until midseason barring injury. Nate Orf would be a good choice to take Perez's spot as he can play just about anywhere Perez can. I'd bring up Choi also for Sogard, at least until Vogt comes up and gives you a lefty option off the bench.

Nick Kingham just lost his perfect game bid against the Cardinals in his MLB debut. Kid went 6 2/3 perfect innings before giving up a ground ball single to Paul DeJong. Curious who has the longest perfect start to their first start. Maybe Kingham?

Arcia has serious swing problems that can't just be shrugged off by saying he's still young.

Lepay just compared the Cubs signing Chatwood to the Brewers signing Miley. I'm all for a little hometown bias on the broadcast but c'mon guys.

Young players don't magically get better just because they get older. Experience should matter as much as age and he more or less looks like the same player that came up a couple seasons ago.

I think if you go back and look at Arcia's hot run last year it was more or less driven by BABIP craziness. I know he had that great year at AA, but I'm not sure he was ever meant to be more than a #8 hitter with great defense, which is more or less what he is. He's definitely going to need to make some significant adjustments to get any better at the plate. We'll see if he's capable of doing that.

They'd almost certainly want Woodruff ready at AAA to take over should Miley be bad, so he'll likely be optioned. Drake might be DFA'd when Logan is ready next week. They might option Williams but I think at this point it makes sense that they'd just cut Drake.

Seemed like a lot of the Cubs pitchers had issues walking guys recently that they just didn't have this series against us. Now if Chatwood pitches all day like he just pitched to Cain...he's in trouble.

Seems pretty likely they option Woodruff to clear a spot on the 25-man. Can't imagine they go with a 9-man bullpen and makes sense to have Woodruff stretched out, as I imagine they'd likely want him to take the spot in the rotation if Miley isn't any good. I think Suter's days in the rotation are likely done. As for the 40-man, Saladino seems like the likeliest move. Wilkerson seems more likely to just get outrighted off the 40-man than placed on the 60-day DL. He's not currently on the Major League DL so I doubt they'd put him on the 60-day and have to pay him a Major League salary and have him accrue service time.

We need to get the hell out of Chicago and go beat up on the Reds some more.

Right on cue, Hernan.

Guerra's high fastball today has been incredibly effective. Sorry I need to talk about SOMETHING positive.