OSS: The Rockies can’t figure out Mike Montgomery and Trevor Cahill is a sentence I expected to write
Three up:
- Mike Montgomery was great in his first start with the Cubs, and surprisingly efficient. I didn’t get into the game until the top of the third due to big lines (and spotting a ramen place as I was trying to get to the park early…) and was surprised to see that he was only at 20-some pitches. He was pulled after giving up a homer to Hundley in the fifth, and Cahill took the Cubs the rest of the way.
- Kris Bryant continued his torrid stretch of play, going 2-5 with 4 RBI and demolishing a season-best 471 foot homer to CF. He didn’t need the extra help from the altitude for that one.
- Miguel Montero is having a brutal year at the plate and the Cubs are lucky that Contreras came into his own right on time. Today, however, Montero went 3-5 and drove in three runs.
Three down
- I’m guessing we won’t see Jorge Soler tomorrow, as he looked in a lot of pain after fouling a ball off himself late in the game (we didn’t see a replay).
- Coors Field is mostly nice and actually has grilled hot dogs and decent beer selection, but that stupid hunger games shit for every strikeout got tiring in a hurry.
- Pitcher wins are dumb, and having that five inning rule is also dumb. I have no problem with not auto-assigning it to the starter if he doesn’t go five, but it sounds like said starter is completely excluded from the win and it has to go to the most effective reliever. Montgomery was the most effective of the two pitchers today. But I guess pitcher wins aren’t really worth getting mad online about (dying laughing).
Next up: Jason Hammel faces Jorge de la Rosa to try to grab the series win before the Cubs head down to San Diego.
Comments
Surprised berselius was able to post a recap lying on the couch at his airbnb drunk on Epic, baked on legal cannabis and traumatized by thousands of light-headed Cubs fans.
SKQuote Reply
I’m surprised he found a ramen place near Coors Field. I didn’t live in Denver long, but I don’t remember one near the ballpark.
dmick89Quote Reply
I was startled to find a Cubs blogger in 2016 ranking a rotation solely on winning percentage, ERA and WHIP. He also implied some preferences based on contract status, veteranocity and ace-iness. Plus home/road splits.
Thinking myself about the conundrum of having 5 good SPs for the playoffs, however, as I disagreed with some of his conclusions I realized I was using similar nonmetrics to come up with my own — such as ego, and what I assume about guys’ arms and heads that isn’t really measurable (nor, necessarily, accurate).
In the end I think I’d put extra weight on recent performances/tiredness/healthiness, and specific opponent/lineup. So my gut feeling about putting Lackey in the bullpen will have to wait.
http://cubbiescrib.com/2016/08/20/chicago-cubs-pitches-first-game-playoffs/
SKQuote Reply
SK,
I think I’ve been to that site before and was unimpressed, but that’s the case with most Cubs blogs. I was actually thinking about writing something today about the order of the rotation for the playoffs, but it took me about two minutes to come up with it: Arrieta, Lester, Hendricks and then you can take your pick from Lackey/Hammel however you want (hairstyle if it pleases you). I’d probably go with the one who has the best performance down the stretch. Lackey is probably better in terms of true talent, but his achy shoulder probably makes it more of a toss up.
dmick89Quote Reply
Arrieta/Lester could go in any order. Last year it was clear Arrieta was the better pitcher, but I’m less certain of that this year. Arrieta is probably still the better pitcher, but it’s fairly close.
dmick89Quote Reply
Pure, unadulterated Gordo today where he goes dumpster-diving for dirt on LaStella, anonymously-sourced gossip, bitching about current and past front offices, and ending up with the concluding subtext that Thoyer whiffed bad for trading away LeMahieu.
I won’t link because a) he might be right about LaStella, I’m not sure, and b) the Sun-Times site is like a click-baity site that gunks up your browser and stuff.
SKQuote Reply
dmick89,
rest assured this is the only Cubs blog I visit normally. I saw that post in my Google News headlines.
Mostly I was surprised that a blogger used such old timey metrics considering how far the MSM has come in the last couple years.
SKQuote Reply
SK,
I hadn’t been to the Sun Times forever, but I had to find that article. That place looks like Bleacher Report. I don’t care about the stuff about La Stella. Even if true, he’s a part time player and his absence isn’t all that big of a deal. It would be nice to have him, but it’s not like it’s a big thing.
LeMahieu is as good as he is because of Coors, but I do think the front office missed on that trade. It’s fair to call them out on that in my opinion. LeMahieu’s comments were interesting because I remember the scouting reports at the time he was drafted and they tended to agree that he found ways to get the most out of his talents. Still, the guy is 28 and he’s putting together his first season with better than average offensive numbers. He’s a great fielder and that’s primarily why I think the team missed on him. That and the fact they didn’t get shit in return. It’s not the kind of trade that pisses anyone off other than Gordo, but it wasn’t a good trade by any means.
dmick89Quote Reply
The industrial area north of the ballpark has been invaded by hipsters. It’s changed a ton even from when I was here last year.
berseliusQuote Reply
dmick89,
LeMahieu’s no Casey McGehee, my frent.
berseliusQuote Reply
dmick89,
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hendricks pitch second, given how good he has been at Wrigley. Not sure how well Joe could make that case to Arrieta/Lester though.
berseliusQuote Reply
Yep. Total whiff there. However, it’s the type of trade I don’t mind making. An at-the-time glove-first middle-infielder for a potential power-hitting 3rd baseman is something I’d probably pull the trigger on just about every single time, particularly at the beginning of a scorched-earth rebuild.
Just wish it hadn’t been for Ian Stewart. (dying laughing)
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Smokestack Lightning,
In retrospect if Ian Stewart had been healthier and/or less of a douchebag maybe we wouldn’t have complained as much.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Jesse Rogers and BN’ers seem to think Cubs have unearthed their next awesome cost-controlled starter based on 4.1 decent innings at Coors on a cool night.
I am skeptical, but I will say I like the Vogelbach trade a helluva lot more if Montgomery ends up as a quality rotation piece.
Smokestack LightningQuote Reply
Rice Cube,
It’s telling that this is what Gordo has to write about (something from four years ago) in order to be pissy in print about the Cubs in August 2016. That and gossip from the utility player’s previous job.
Whatever happens in the post-season (or the next few years), I declare the Thoyer rebuild a success.
SKQuote Reply
Don’t be coy. We all know you mean a cannabis and ramen joint.
ceruleanQuote Reply
For what it’s worth, I’d bet his minor league numbers fared pretty well compared to Albert Almora who is essentially a no bat, all glove player. LeMahieu would have been a bit older since he was drafted out of college. I hadn’t actually thought about that comparison until now, but the two are somewhat similar. Neither strikes out and neither of them walk much. Neither has a lot of power. Both are gold glove caliber defenders who supposedly get the most of their talents. Neither is much of a base stealer.
dmick89Quote Reply
Knowing what we know now, it wasn’t a good trade. But knowing what we knew then, it was a shot I’d want the cubs to take every time (and they did, in many other instances).
They traded a defense first contact hitter that doesn’t walk for a former first round power hitting 3b who put up 1 WAR 2 of the last three seasons at the age of 24/25. If Stewart figured it out, he’d become a 2-3 win player with upside and skills that are easily tradable for impact MiLB guys. If LeMahieu figures it out, you have a contact first 2b who you’ll get a middling talent for.
In 2012, the cubs were 4 years away from Theo’s plan of competing and the strategy at the time was to trade for high risk / high reward players. Similar signings/trades (feldman, hammel, Turner) were all made with the same strategy; hope this guy figures it out and we’ll flip him to continue to build for 2016.
sharpchicityQuote Reply
To be sure, W–L% is far more meaningful than wins alone (for starters at least), and ERA usually tells a good enough tale after 100 innings or so. Those two alone tell the broad strokes of truth nearly every time—where they mislead is in the straight ranking of individuals within a pretty wide margin of error. WHIP, however, is the best stupid stat for pitchers. Anything below 1.00 is great. Anything above 1.50 is awful. 1.20 is ok. 0.90 is elite. WHIP I believe is better than OPS is for batters. Triangulating those three will get you more than close enough to the truth to make an arbitrary decision for the order of a single pitching staff or the comparative value of teams’ rotations.
It is easy to forget that the SABR fight for more meaningful stats was mostly about overvaluing of twenty-game winners and batting average leaders in Cy and MVP voting. Sure, they missed Ron Santo’s greatness and stuck some less-than-stellar players in the hall, but by every metric, Babe Ruth was the greatest.
Though I must caveat the above with this: I did not read the blogpost nor do I care, so don’t think this a tacit recommendation of anything with “crib” in the name.
ceruleanQuote Reply
cerulean,
Only if I wanted to lose my job (dying laughing)
berseliusQuote Reply
To-day’s base ball squadron
Fowler
Bryant (LF)
Rizzo
Zobrist
Russell
Soler
Contreras
Baez (3B)
Hammel
berseliusQuote Reply
berselius,
False
berseliusQuote Reply
berselius,
fowler
Bryant (3b)
Rizzo
Zobrist (RF)
Russell
Contreras
Baez (2b)
Szczur (LF)
Hammel
berseliusQuote Reply
berselius,
Was Soler scratched or were you just high?
SKQuote Reply
sharpchicity,
I’m not arguing otherwise, but it’s a bit misleading to talk up the first round draft pick stuff with Stewart. Yeah, 8 years earlier. Stewart had little chance of figuring things out. Still, I had no problem with the trade at the time and still don’t. It was a risk worth taking.
dmick89Quote Reply
new shit: http://obstructedview.net/cubs-rockies-game-thread-8-21-16/
dmick89Quote Reply