Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
Cubs are the third-worst team over the past two months only ahead of the A’s and White Sucks. 20-32.
Chicago Cubs 2024
Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
Woke up this morning to see the Cubs blew another one.
Tom and Jed, The worst thing that can happen to your team is not horrific hitting and bullpen pitching. It is fan apathy. Not that I watch any more, but I almost hope that Comcast and Marquee can't come to an agreement before September.
Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
It’s really a boring team to watch. Case in point the ninth inning Sunday night. Diaz thinks it’s a good idea to come in with an illegal substance on his hand and is immediately tossed. We all wait around forever for the next guy to get warm. Happ thinks it’s a good idea to swing at the first pitch down three and pops out. Morel takes a fastball down the pipe on 3-2. Swanson singles, new pitcher. Wisdom pinch hits and takes three strikes. Wtf. Great entertainment.
Chuck Nuggets
Dip your nuggets in my staff source sauce.
lol Cubs
Chuck Nuggets
Dip your nuggets in my staff source sauce.
Somehow the Cubs are not in the bottom 10 in runs scored, OBP or OPS. And somehow there are 7 teams with a worse slugging %.
To me that says MLB has an offense problem.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Somehow, some way, velocity has to be curtailed.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
they lowered the mound from 15” to 10” before the 1969 season , to help the offense , so there is precedence to make changes .
I don’t know if lowering it more is an answer , or moving the rubber back a foot or two helps or is even possible , but it’s clear pitching in general is dominating . some type of change might be in order
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Well and the thing is, both the weakness of production and unfavorability of style in hitting as well as the ever-increasing injury rate of pitching have the same cause. It's the velocity.
Dial back the velocity and everything about baseball gets better, aligned harmoniously with the rule changes they're already making.
The bad news is that dialing back velocity is a devilishly hard thing to work on. How do you do it? How do you enforce it?
A High Velocity Usage Tax: A Proposal To Protect Pitchers
To reduce UCL injuries, MLB needs to disincentivize throwing max effort on every pitch. This suggested rule change is a possible solution.
That's kind of a crazy half-baked idea, but half-baked is about the best I've seen.
bdutts
- Houston, Texas
Shouldn't that be incentive enough for the pitchers to stop throwing at max velocity?
Max career earnings of the high velocity guys wildly outstrip soft tossers. Even if its short term money, the money and chance to even the reach the bigs jump exponentially with high velocity.
Maybe lowering the strike zone would help, high velocity is much tougher to handle than down in the current zone. Who knows?
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
Pitchers are going to do whatever it takes to get outs, even if they know their elbows are a ticking time bomb. Interview after interview they all say the same thing.
If they don't, someone else will and collect the riches for doing so.
The checks still clear while you're rehabbing your Tommy John.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
its actually hard to legislate safety in sports in some areas
helmets were introduced in football first in leather and then in old school plastic and now high tech plastic. we still have injuries.
but eliminating helmets totally might very well lower the head and neck injuries . Unintended consequences can be hard to predict
While I would love to see a reduction in pitchers arm injuries, for other selfish reasons, I would love to see more offense.
Im not so much into seeing 3 homeruns every game , as I am seeing 10-12 singles/doubles and batting averages back up to .275-.295 for 5-6 guys in the lineup
but telling a guy in MLB that he needs to lower the velocity of the pitch , or reduce his allowable pitches/innings per week or per season, good luck with that
helmets were introduced in football first in leather and then in old school plastic and now high tech plastic. we still have injuries.
but eliminating helmets totally might very well lower the head and neck injuries . Unintended consequences can be hard to predict
While I would love to see a reduction in pitchers arm injuries, for other selfish reasons, I would love to see more offense.
Im not so much into seeing 3 homeruns every game , as I am seeing 10-12 singles/doubles and batting averages back up to .275-.295 for 5-6 guys in the lineup
but telling a guy in MLB that he needs to lower the velocity of the pitch , or reduce his allowable pitches/innings per week or per season, good luck with that
Exactly. A pitcher that can eat up innings and stay healthy is a valuable commodity. I don’t see inning or pitch limits as viable. You could reduce roster sizes so pitchers had to be available more often but good luck getting that through the union.
Moving the mound back a few feet seems reasonable. Also, taking a little “juice” out of the ball might encourage guys to shorten up and hit more line drives instead of the current K or HR approach of so many.
Chuck Nuggets
Dip your nuggets in my staff source sauce.
My assumption is about the only thing MLB can or will do is make another adjustment to the ball.
How about aluminum bats?
How about aluminum bats?
bdutts
- Houston, Texas
True...
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many blown leads not even halfway through the season. It feels like a running gag at this point.
Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
Another loss with one run, I think with only four hits. This is one dead-!!! team.
10 Quality Starts in their last 17 games. 6-11 in that span. That shouldn’t even be possible.
Jed needs to be fired. Outside of the starters, he has assembled a team full of replacement-level or worse players and a top 10 payroll
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I like Jed and would be reluctant to fire him.
That said, Theo Epstein made some enormous mistakes with the Cubs, but the huge successes he had taking those kinds of risks outweighed the mistakes in the end. Jed just seems to have very little tolerance for risk at all, and that's not a strategy with a lot of upside.
Chuck Nuggets
Dip your nuggets in my staff source sauce.
well , now we know it wasn’t Rossy’s fault last year
Jed has failed. By firing Ross he put the cart before the horse. You don't make that move unless you've constructed a roster you believe has a legit shot at winning a World Series. This isn't Counsell's fault, just like last year wasn't Ross's fault. This is a bad roster.
KBLEE
- Montgomery, IL