OSS: Cubs sweep the Phillies, grind their bones to make their bread.
Three up
- Ben Zobrist's hot streak continues, this time thanks to a three run homer in the third inning. We're at the point where a one hit game seems disappointing from him. Do better smh.
- John Lackey was solid today striking out six batters in seven innings and allowing just one run, on a solo shot. Lackey walked four today and was visibily upset about some of them according to Pat, though I didn't get the sense if he was mad at himself or the ump.
- Miguel Montero also homered in this game, and later drove in one of the Cubs insurance runs. I hope that back stays feeling better.
Three down
- This sweep helps erase the sting of last year's sweep at the hands of the Phillies, the lowest point in what was an amazing season. It lingered, much like the stale fart of someone who has just left the room, but now the Cubs have put a match to it.
- I'm not sure what the point of bringing in Strop was to face Andres Blanco in the middle of the eighth with a six run lead. I guess he just needed some work.
- Speaking of Andres Blanco, he of a career .267/.320/.391 line and 1.6 WAR over eight seasons and change, it pretty much sums up the Phillies season that he was batting third today. I also completely forgot that he started 30 games for the 2009 Cubs, a good sign as that's a season I'd rather forget for many reasons.
Next up: The Cubs start a four game set against the Dodgers and somehow miss Kershaw. Alex Wood faces Jason Hammel at 4:05 PM CT. Hopefully the camo is kept to a minimum.
Comments
Blanco has had a really strange career
berseliusQuote Reply
Well, I was right. Four homeruns on the day—two even from the hapless Phillies.
The Cubs have broken that elusive 20-games-over mark and improved to +131. They are now over .500 since before that Padres double-header that started the slide.
The are on pace for nearly 115 wins and a +442 differential.
Are we starting to feel good about the Cubs again? (dying laughing)
ceruleanQuote Reply
I am a fan of this Cubs team.
/obviously
Rice in limboQuote Reply
It could go either way
berseliusQuote Reply
cerulean,
The Cubs were fortunate that the homers came with nobody on, especially with Lackey walking so many people.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Mike Trout was just intentionally walked. What is the world coming to when people are put on base in order to get to Albert Pujols?
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
I never would have guessed that, say, David Ortiz would age more gracefully than Albert, but there you go.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Rizzo the Rat,
Oh, I guess they walked Pujols, too. Whatever.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
41,575 at Wrigley today. If the Cubs average 40,000 at a ticket price of $44, That $142M in revenue. No concessions, no advertising, no TV deal. This team should do alright in revenue for the foreseeable future.
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
I’m a fan of the Cubs making money although I can’t afford to go as much as I’d like.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
The Giants are really buying in to that even year magic. They are second to the Cubs in the Majors at 12 over.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Rice Cube,
Yeah. It’s crazy how expensive they are. That’s why I find the “they don’t have money for that” to be a non-starter. Fucking sign Arrieta already.
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
I think that’s more a matter of “should we spend the money” but I do think they should obviously do their best to retain Arrieta. Paying him a Greinke contract seems dangerous though, but all contracts that big are dangerous.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Not gonna lie, I kinda wish they signed Shark in the offseason. $18M per year for five is looking like a steal. Seems like he’s one of the few pitchers that didn’t improve with Cooper’s adjustments. That and bad luck.
But then I look at Lackey’s numbers, and holy crap. This guy isn’t really this good, is he?
ceruleanQuote Reply
Rice Cube,
The prices for starting pitching are only going up.
I remember looking at Google’s and Apple’s stock prices in 2004 which had been on tear—I think GOOG doubled it’s IPO in short order while AAPL had been solving for that eighth wonder of the world since coming back from the brink and the NASDAQ bust—and I thought, “These guys can’t keep doing this.” Sure, trees don’t grow to the sky, but calling where the air ends and the sky begins can be dicey.
Maybe Arrieta is too old for such an investment. But $30M is not too much for an ace.
ceruleanQuote Reply
I’m so glad the Cubs are dodging Kershaw this week.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Rizzo the Rat,
Part of me is sad that this team won’t get the opportunity to add a run to his ERA and qualify him for the Cubs-adjusted stat.
The idiotic part, to be sure.
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
It’s the years that get to me. $30 million per year for 5 or even 6 years is fine, but I wouldn’t want the cubs to do more than that.
dmick89Quote Reply
cerulean,
It would be a lost of fun to watch them do to him what they did to Scherzer. But I’m mostly grateful that they won’t be facing the Dodgers at their best.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Also, the Cubs’ usual strategy of walking pitchers to death won’t work against Kershaw. He resolved to stop walking batters this year, and that’s that.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Kershaw has been worth 3.8 fWAR. Probably 4 after tonight. It’s not even June.
dmick89Quote Reply
He’s going to break Arrieta’s streak of consecutive Pitcher of the Month awards. Not that Jake had a chance of winning this month, anyway.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Of course Clayton comes back in the eighth despite having already passed the 100 pitch mark.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
I have no problem with the cubs overpaying for 2022-4 arrieta to get FMV 2017-2021 arrieta. BUT looking at this FO’s ability to get good/undervalued pitching on the cheap…I don’t know that I’ll get too worked up if they let arrieta walk.
EnricoPallazzoQuote Reply
Well, Kershaw isn’t going to get the win today.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
The Dodgers are wasting his talents.
That’s why I’d like to see them do an extension buying him out next year and going 5 to 6 beyond that. I think if nothing else, his work ethic is good for the club. Seems Hammel has taken to it.
ceruleanQuote Reply
(dying laughing): Liberatore comes in to relieve Kershaw with two outs in the eighth and allows the inherited runner to score from first. Kershaw is charged with the run and Liberatore gets the vulture win.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
What I’m saying is, Liberatore owes Kershaw a steak dinner. Or two.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
In other words, exactly like a self-described “liberator” might do. “I’ll finish this inning for you, but it’ll cost you a win.”
ceruleanQuote Reply
In addition to a difficulty scale assigned to errors, it would have been great runs were charged marginally: 50% for runners left on first, 75% on second (100% with nobody out), 90% on third (100% with one or none out). So a reliever coming in with two outs and the bases loaded gives up a three run double, only 2.15 runs would go to the pitcher who left and .85 runs would go the pitcher who gave up the double.
In this case, Kershaw and Liberatore should have shared that run equally—half a run a piece.
ceruleanQuote Reply
The same rubric would work for unearned runs as well. Basically, they would be just like runners on in relief. So if a botched play turned into the bases loaded and then a double that cleared the bases was given up, .85 runs is the pitcher’s. A grand slam? 1.6 runs to the pitcher. (A homer in this case being .75 runs.)
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
BP tried something like this years ago with Fair Run Average. I liked the stat quite a bit, but nobody used it. FIP came along and was easy to calculate and understand.
dmick89Quote Reply
If there would have been two outs, the runner from third would not count. If there would have been three outs, the runner from second also would not have counted.
ceruleanQuote Reply
dmick89,
This is one of those things that if done by the scorers would make it very easy. But since it isn’t, yeah, there’s FIP.
Yet how much better would it be if ERA were also a good measure of something like value?
ceruleanQuote Reply
One more Kershaw note: not only was today’s outing the first time this year he got removed in the middle of a half-inning, it’s the first time the manager visited the mound during a Kershaw start for any reason.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Time was, walks also counted as hits. I don’t believe any stat is beyond being tweaked, especially not ERA. The same kind of rule could apply to pitcher wins. Why the hell not? Stats are a big part of the history of the game. The worst thing for a stat is for it to be relatively meaningless, like AVG is becoming. I give it ten years until OPS replaces it in the triple crown.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Rizzo the Rat,
That’s only because the manager is scared of him. (dying laughing)
ceruleanQuote Reply
I’m not a fan of taking a concrete stat such as runs allowed and modifying it to be abstract (e.g., by using fractional runs). I think it’s absurd to say that a pitcher allowed 4.75 runs in a game. The way we deal with inherited runners isn’t ideal, but inventing meaningless partial runs.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Rizzo the Rat,
*last line should read “but it’s better than inventing meaningless partial runs.”
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
cerulean,
OPS is meaningless and convoluted, even if it does (accidentally) correlate with run production better than batting average. People prefer stats that are coherent and easy to understand.
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
Rizzo the Rat,
With that in mind, I would be fine with OBP replacing AVG in prominence (we’d still need to track players’ hit rates, of course).
Rizzo the RatQuote Reply
You’d be surprised to learn I disagree on many fronts:
First, fractions are not abstract. From splitting rent to cutting a cake, fractional amounts are often very concrete. Even very non-concrete things with fractional measures will be reified, rightly or wrongly—from all sorts of securities to gambling payoffs. Second, the fractional amounts are the runs that a pitcher is responsible for, and saying a pitcher was responsible for the guy who scored that he left on second doesn’t seem all that absurd. Not to mention that Earned Runs in most used form—the number of runs the pitcher gives up every nine innings—is already a fractional amount. Last, “meaningless”, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
ceruleanQuote Reply
The way I feel about stats are this: They help tell the story of baseball. The problem is, many of the widely available, “there’ve always been Starkadders as Cold Comfort Farm” kind of stats don’t tell the story well. I want a better ERA. I want a better GOB (Get On Base). Because they help tell the story. And because they help tell the story, they are the antithesis of meaningless.
Data is dead. Narratives can bring it to life. I want stats that are more narrative than just data. Sometimes, that requires more data, but usually it just requires better data.
ceruleanQuote Reply
Also, on the convoluted nature of some stats—that is, stats with many calculations that can be confusing—who cares.
Do you know how your computer works? Like, really works? Even if you wrote your own operating system, you still probably didn’t design the microchip that’s executing it. The point is, the brain works by chunking complicated things into a single thing if those things are linked together. I don’t address you as the trillion-odd cells you are, yet there you are, a trillion-odd cells, a veritable plurality rather dumb and rather mechanistic cells doing their duties, the result of enzymatic reactions that are executed simple because prior enzymatic reactions also successfully executed.
If you find yourself having trouble conveying the meaning of a particular stat, maybe it’s because you are trying to break it down into its constituent pieces. You don’t have to dissect a bunny to tell that it’s a fucking bunny. Don’t kill the bunny, dude. (dying laughing)
ceruleanQuote Reply
I give zero fucks about anything other than strawberry rhubarb pie which >>>>>> all
uncle daveQuote Reply
Also, it’s not even June and the Cards are 9.5 GB. Can you dig it?
uncle daveQuote Reply
I do remember when he was making daily web gems for the Cubs that one half-year.
SKQuote Reply
(dying laughing) worth reading through the rest of that shit
SKQuote Reply
I made it all the way to the year 2016 before having to have a fucking power button on my basic 2-slice toaster. Something tells me this one won’t last nearly as long as the last one.
SKQuote Reply
IIRC, needless toaster technology was what led to the fall of the Roman empire.
berseliusQuote Reply
Don’t tell me what not to do.
berseliusQuote Reply
Correct
dmick89Quote Reply
*kicks bunny corpse under couch. Smiles bloodily.* NOTHING
joshQuote Reply
new shit: http://obstructedview.net/cubs-minor-league-update-5-30-16/
dmick89Quote Reply