10/2: NL Wildcard Game - Colorado Rockies @ Chicago Cubs 7:00PM CT ESPN

[anotheridiot]

Wow. Mully with a brain teaser this morning. After the loss on Saturday, do a sunday lineup on the last day of the season, concede the division to the brewers, get Monday off and accept yesterday as the wild card team and get rest.

Alot of the talk was the team talking themselves into being tired. It has been extended to like 42 games in 45 days with the pity party.

 

[CRM 114]

How do you gents think the Cubs would have faired against Colorado in a 5/7 game series?

 

[CRM 114]

You're a dumbass if you think Toews is good.

I agree. To think of Toews as anything other than a God like messiah is nothing but foolish and ignorant.

 

[TL1961]

That isn't really my take. Well I mean I'm not opposed to have a prototypical lead off hitter. But in my view the cubs need to go after guys with higher batting averages and worry less about obp. The thing that bothered me about the team when they couldn't score runs is similar to what happened tonight. You might get a single or someone walks. Then another guy walks. And then another guy walks. And then you get 2 strike outs or something like that. They don't really have many guys outside of the top of their line up who are high batting average guys. Almora can do it but he's only one guy and he's not always playing.

Statistically speaking I know a walk is never really bad from a probability outcome stand point. But I do often wonder when I see someone like Contreras take a walk with a guy on if that's truly the best play because you're usually talking about the guy behind him being a worse hitter just by nature of a line up. I think walks can lead to big innings and I'm not saying you entirely abandon them but i think you need balance between guys who get on base a bunch and guys who put the ball into play to get them home. Seems to me the cubs have too much of one and not enough of another.

Yeah.BP is important in the right situations. But if there are two outs, nobody on, and a HR hitter is up, I want him trying to hit the HR. Seems like so many times we got two on after two were out only to strand them. It may not have been more than other teams, but it seemed like it happened a lot.

We were the very best team in baseball going first to third and scoring from second through the first half of the season. But in the second half, everything seemed to grind to a halt. May be perception, but it did not seem like we strung together several good at bats very often.

As you pointed out the other day, the 2013 Cubs scored 0 or 1 31 times. This team did it 40!

 

[TL1961]

Wow. Mully with a brain teaser this morning. After the loss on Saturday, do a sunday lineup on the last day of the season, concede the division to the brewers, get Monday off and accept yesterday as the wild card team and get rest.

Alot of the talk was the team talking themselves into being tired. It has been extended to like 42 games in 45 days with the pity party.

You tripled the number of days off. It was ONE, not three.

 

[TL1961]

Anyone know what FanGraphs says about the Cubs chances to win the division?

My statistician told me if Iflipped a coin the chances of heads and tails were equal.

So I flipped it and it was heads, and then I bet $ 1,000 the next one would be tails, and it wasn't!!

That idiot.

Stats tell you probability not certainty. The posts here regarding fangraphs were stating that the Cubs were likely to win the division, to try and calm the nancies who cried the sky is falling when they lost two straight in August!

And before you mock anyone for stating the Cubs were likely to win the central, you damn well better believe it was you and several others who declared the Cards would win it.

Own that.

 

[zack54attack]

Wow. Mully with a brain teaser this morning. After the loss on Saturday, do a sunday lineup on the last day of the season, concede the division to the brewers, get Monday off and accept yesterday as the wild card team and get rest.

Alot of the talk was the team talking themselves into being tired. It has been extended to like 42 games in 45 days with the pity party.

The WC game is such a crapshoot. It's one game. You could lose to the White Sox or Orioles in one game. The Cubs simply couldn't hit over these past 2 days. No one ot blame but themselves.


Losing 2 to Pitt and 1 to STL late in the season doomed them.

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

My statistician told me if Iflipped a coin the chances of heads and tails were equal.

So I flipped it and it was heads, and then I bet $ 1,000 the next one would be tails, and it wasn't!!

That idiot.

Stats tell you probability not certainty. The posts here regarding fangraphs were stating that the Cubs were likely to win the division, to try and calm the nancies who cried the sky is falling when they lost two straight in August!

And before you mock anyone for stating the Cubs were likely to win the central, you damn well better believe it was you and several others who declared the Cards would win it.

Own that.

He's butthurt over the heart wrenching failure of the Cardinals.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

The WC game is such a crapshoot. It's one game. You could lose to the White Sox or Orioles in one game. The Cubs simply couldn't hit over these past 2 days. No one ot blame but themselves.


Losing 2 to Pitt and 1 to STL late in the season doomed them.

Also getting swept by the Reds.

 

[fatbeard]

Also getting swept by the Reds.

Also any single loss during any part of the season that would've avoided the tie with the Brewers.

Focusing on the last weeks of the season is just so meatball.

 

[Parade_Rain]

The WC game is such a crapshoot. It's one game. You could lose to the White Sox or Orioles in one game. The Cubs simply couldn't hit over these past 2 days. No one ot blame but themselves.


Losing 2 to Pitt and 1 to STL late in the season doomed them.

I don't know, Z. It's almost as if no one wants to give the Brewers credit for playing their butts off the entire month of September to out-perform their pythagorean by 4 games. I tend to believe the Brewers won the division more than the Cubs lost it.

 

[zack54attack]

Also getting swept by the Reds.

That too.

 

[zack54attack]

I don't know, Z. It's almost as if no one wants to give the Brewers credit for playing their butts off the entire month of September to out-perform their pythagorean by 4 games. I tend to believe the Brewers won the division more than the Cubs lost it.

The Brewers are red-hot and deserve the credit, no doubt. But the Cubs really shouldn't be in this position. They've had some very bad losses like previously mentioned and the 4-game sweep of the Reds.

Hats off to the Brewers but I think you can say the Cubs did blow it too.

 

[Parade_Rain]

The Brewers are red-hot and deserve the credit, no doubt. But the Cubs really shouldn't be in this position. They've had some very bad losses like previously mentioned and the 4-game sweep of the Reds.

Hats off to the Brewers but I think you can say the Cubs did blow it too.

Every team has bad series and bad losses and surprise wins over the course of 162 games. FI, the Brewers were .480 in June and .500 in August.

 

[beckdawg]

The Brewers are red-hot and deserve the credit, no doubt. But the Cubs really shouldn't be in this position. They've had some very bad losses like previously mentioned and the 4-game sweep of the Reds.

Hats off to the Brewers but I think you can say the Cubs did blow it too.

Does it matter though? I feel like we're missing the forrest for the trees here. If the cubs were hitting this poorly it doesn't really matter if they won the division. They aren't making a WS playing that way. People can call it excuse making but unless someone else has a better rationale for why they couldn't hit, seems to me they just got fucked hard by the schedule having to play I believe 42 games in 45 days. That's not ok and it appears they just ran out of gas.

We can second guess Maddon all we want. We can throw blame on this player or that player. But if that's what actually happened and it seems to me a reasonable conclusion for what happened, none of that really matters. I'd honestly rather they take the extra few weeks of rest if they weren't going to make the world series.

Plus had they limped to the NLCS again the front office may have decided they were fine and barely touched the roster/coaching. Falling out of the playoffs like this forces them to make some hard choices.

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

Also any single loss during any part of the season that would've avoided the tie with the Brewers.

Focusing on the last weeks of the season is just so meatball.

It also flies in the face of how the team is (supposedly) constructed.

 

[SilenceS]

I just want kB to rest and get that shoulder straight. They probably should have just sat him the rest of the year. He can’t catch up to a low 90s fastball right now. I want to see how he responds. This season was his first “bad” season for him since probably forever. He looked hurt and lost and made dumb decisions. That’s not him


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[beckdawg]

I just want kB to rest and get that shoulder straight. They probably should have just sat him the rest of the year. He can’t catch up to a low 90s fastball right now. I want to see how he responds. This season was his first “bad” season for him since probably forever. He looked hurt and lost and made dumb decisions. That’s not him


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What worries me more is this seems like a repetitive stress type injury. If that is indeed the case I'm not sure there is a "fix" without him going to this new swing which may or may not work for him.

 

[fatbeard]

What worries me more is this seems like a repetitive stress type injury. If that is indeed the case I'm not sure there is a "fix" without him going to this new swing which may or may not work for him.

It was an acute injury that he suffered sliding head-first into a base and then the swing kept aggravating it.

 

[zack54attack]

Does it matter though? I feel like we're missing the forrest for the trees here. If the cubs were hitting this poorly it doesn't really matter if they won the division. They aren't making a WS playing that way. People can call it excuse making but unless someone else has a better rationale for why they couldn't hit, seems to me they just got fucked hard by the schedule having to play I believe 42 games in 45 days. That's not ok and it appears they just ran out of gas.

We can second guess Maddon all we want. We can throw blame on this player or that player. But if that's what actually happened and it seems to me a reasonable conclusion for what happened, none of that really matters. I'd honestly rather they take the extra few weeks of rest if they weren't going to make the world series.

Plus had they limped to the NLCS again the front office may have decided they were fine and barely touched the roster/coaching. Falling out of the playoffs like this forces them to make some hard choices.

I don't disagree with the bold statement. But you'd obviously rather take your chance in a 5-game series and then a 7-game series hoping the bats get hot rather than a one-game for division and one-game for WC.