hrubes20 Posted April 3, 2018 Share Posted April 3, 2018 17 hours ago, Blazer026 said: 58 K's in 5 games. Yikes It was essentially 6 games, with all the extra innings considered. Still not great, though. 16 hours ago, Lions017 said: It's not good to start the year in a huge slump. What happened to everybody talking about how they were motivated and wouldn't repeat 2017? Half of the team looks lost out there. BN had some good stats this morning that backed up what I was seeing. Through their first 5 (essentially 6) games, the Cubs have one of the lowest team BABIPs in baseball, despite the 7th best hard hit rate and 11th best soft hit rate. There are in the bottom half of the league in K rate, but they have been pretty dang unlucky with the balls they are making contact with. That will start coming around, and hopefully the sooner the better. I'm just hoping the improvements that we've seen from Addy, Meatball, Zobrist, and Heyward are going to stick. I'm not worrying about Rizzo or Contreras. They will start hitting like they can in short order. 15 hours ago, Breesus mode said: god dammit Indeed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 3, 2018 Share Posted April 3, 2018 Minor league assignments are starting to trickle out, given that OD in the minors is on Thursday. The guys I would follow at each full season level are as follows: South Bend (A) - Jose Albertos, Brendon Little, Cory Abbott, Javier Assad, Jesus Carmago, Erich Uelman, Miguel Amaya, and Yeiler Peguero Myrtle Beach (High A) - Aramis Ademan, Alex Lange, D.J. Wilson, Keegan Thompson, Wladimir Galindo, and Bryan Hudson. Tennessee (AA) - Adbert Alzolay (will join team in 2 weeks or so), Oscar de la Cruz, Thomas Hatch, Michael Rucker, Duncan Robinson, Dakota Mekkes, Charcer Burks Iowa (AAA) - Not much. A bunch of relievers and Jen-Ho Tseng All the other interesting prospects to me will start out in EXST and go to Eugene to play short season ball. The offensive side of the farm looks rough right now. We need to draft at least 3 hitters with our first 5 picks in June, IMO. Especially since the early word is that we went after elite pitching talent this IFA period. With that said, I love the pitching depth the FO has acquired. There is going to be a legit pitching prospect going almost every night for South Bend and Tennessee (once Alzolay gets there) and Myrtle Beach will have at last 3 worth monitoring. This is quite the change from a few years ago. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 Well the bullpen certainly needed those off days. I, however, did not. It feels like a month since the Cubs last played. Should be a fun weekend series against the Brewers. Well, assuming that the rotation remembers how to not be insanely wild and that the BABIP gods stop smiting us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 6, 2018 Share Posted April 6, 2018 Well that game was fun as hell. More of that, please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lions017 Posted April 6, 2018 Share Posted April 6, 2018 12 hours ago, hrubes20 said: Well that game was fun as hell. More of that, please. I'm not sure if I was more surprised with Lester "picking off" Braun or Heyward hitting a homer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 6, 2018 Share Posted April 6, 2018 18 minutes ago, Lions017 said: I'm not sure if I was more surprised with Lester "picking off" Braun or Heyward hitting a homer. Don't doubt the bounce pass! Great to see Heyward finally get something to show for all the hard contact he's had early on. Tiny sample size, but Heyward has the same hard hit rate of Giancarlo Stanton and is right behind Mike Trout on the young season. He's really been squaring the ball up well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 Jeez. Wilson completely lost it that inning. He looked terrific until Aguilar coaxed that walk. There is no excuse for walking the impotent bats if Arcia and Sogard back to back. Ugly stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breesus mode Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 5 minutes ago, hrubes20 said: Jeez. Wilson completely lost it that inning. He looked terrific until Aguilar coaxed that walk. There is no excuse for walking the impotent bats if Arcia and Sogard back to back. Ugly stuff. Just not a good day for our pitching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 28 minutes ago, Breesus mode said: Just not a good day for our pitching. Hendricks imploded after being forced to throw it over the middle by the ump. It happens. Wilson was nails until he wasn’t (how did that guy have the mentality to be a closer?). The rest have been terrific so far. I’m not going to complain. Meatball has had an ugly night at the plate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 That end pisses me off. A walk to a crappy hitter (Pina). An error puts runners at the corners. And then another crappy hitter pokes one into shallow RF for a game winning hit. It’s early of course, but gotta tighten that up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flounch Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 Damn, i didn't expect a beginning of the season like this...pitcher aren't sharp, defense and batting very poor, it' s not an ideal start. And those extra inning with a loss at the end erghh it's not good for the team mood. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 2 hours ago, Flounch said: Damn, i didn't expect a beginning of the season like this...pitcher aren't sharp, defense and batting very poor, it' s not an ideal start. And those extra inning with a loss at the end erghh it's not good for the team mood. Team mood isn’t something we ever have to worry about. There’s no way to quantify it, but Joe is probably one of the best, if not THE best in the game at keeping the guys loose. The Marlins and Reds games were just as you said. They were terrible. But they dominated the Brewers in game 1, and were in game 2 until the very end. You aren’t going to win 162 games, especially road games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blazer026 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 I know it's early, but I don't like Happ hitting leadoff. Striking out a ton so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrubes20 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 19 minutes ago, Blazer026 said: I know it's early, but I don't like Happ hitting leadoff. Striking out a ton so far. I wanted him dealt this past offseason to try and maximize his value. The contact issues were always my biggest concern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blazer026 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 2 hours ago, hrubes20 said: I wanted him dealt this past offseason to try and maximize his value. The contact issues were always my biggest concern. Same, except I didn't think we were going to sign Darvish so I was fine with keeping him once we did that. I'd rather see Almora get the majority of the time in CF though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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