I was at work keeping an eye on my phone last night and saw Yu was through 7 with 92 pitches and thought he would almost certainly start the 8th. Maddon apparently never learns from pulling starters early. He’s Dusty Bakers alter ego I guess.
I just want to address a few points I’ve seen here. Machado and Harper were irrelevant to this team. If we were targeting those players we were making a mistake. They aren’t the kind of players we needed and didn’t fill holes. Harper in fact exacerbated our problem of poor contact in big spots (don’t try to use last night to argue this with me, one game doesn’t change a career). I don’t understand why people don’t think it was alright for the Ricketts to draw a line on spending. At some point you have to be smart with your money. Cubs have the second highest payroll in baseball I believe correct? Boston, Yankees, and Dodgers all limited their spending last offseason and the Dodgers have for a few years (I’ll never understand how the Dodgers have an unending supply of top prospects in baseball even after making big trades almost every trade deadline).
Second, Descalso is terrible, but him and Daniel Murphy had no connection whatsoever. And yeah we should have just kept Lastella.
I do think this team needs a serious overhaul in the offseason. The offense is broken. Bullpen is bad. Starting pitching seems to have a couple implosions a week. Defense has been bad. And the team seems to lack fundamentals. It’s hard to keep watching. They should be listening to offers on anyone.
The offense is clearly the hardest thing to fix. They’ve been trying for several years and can’t figure it out. Although the attempts don’t make a lot of sense. Hitting coach isn’t going to change who the players are we have and Descalso certainly wasn’t changing the construction of our lineup. We need a lead off man and a few quality contact hitters with a good approach. I can’t figure out what has happened with this teams approach, we use to consistently have pitchers around 100 pitches by 5 innings even when they were pitching well. Now every time I look the opposing starter has like 60 pitches through 5. Bryant use to work walks from 0-2 fairly frequently, I don’t remember the last time he did that. Have Báez and Almora lack of discipline affected everyone else?
Bullpen is actually a fairly easy fix even without spending a ton of money. Kimbrel is clearly our closer for a couple years. Wick is a keeper, Alzolay should be in the pen, Ryan has been solid, Hultzen is potentially a second lefty. Phelps has a team friendly option. That pen is cheap enough where you could grab a quality set up man if need be.
Starting pitching is basically locked in for next year other than Hamels spot. I’d love to see Gerit Cole, but odds are that’s not happening. It could be Chatwood building value in a transition year. And then we figure it out the following year.
Defense obviously depends on who they put out there. Happs defense as long as he’s been a major leaguer has never been outweighed by his offense. He shouldn’t be with the team next year. Bote isn’t really useful in anyway. Heyward really should be in right and not center. 2B should probably be a combination of Russell and Zobrist and maybe some Kemp for the remainder of the year as long as that’s what we have. Catching defense is bad and needs to be addressed at some point. Contreras should be moved to LF if we want to keep his bat in the lineup everyday.
Fundamentals is on the coaching staff, as well as the players. They should be ashamed to put such a poor product on the field when they’ve played this game their whole lives. Rizzo and Contreras in particular use to be aggressive, but not make a lot of dumb decisions on the basepaths, but that sure has changed. Russell acts like a kid that’s new to baseball with some of his fielding decisions.
Sorry for the novel I just figured I’d try to be thorough.
