2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (LOL NO)

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

Scorching-hot take, right there.

In other news, presenting the history of the Chicago Cubs summed up in one routine ground ball.

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

How do you score that? I get the two errors, but is there anything marked down for the runner running towards third?

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

Lind (who advanced to third) was intentionally walked, so if he had scored, it would have been an earned run. And Ramirez's hit was scored as a single. Or am I not understanding your question?

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

Well, base hit, advance to second on an error. Goes to third, advances to home on an error. I just wondered if Baseball has a way of marking that "goes to third" bit. Baseball's so oddly specific about everything, you figure they'd have a thing for it (if it were a double, advance to third on an error, it would be easy, but that's not what this is).

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

From the official PBP:

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

I hope he coaches every player to use his goofy helicopter batting stance.

In other news, Strasburg left last night's start with shoulder pain. Could be nothing, but when it's a guy with a history of shoulder and elbow issues...

Also, the Cubs' bullpen is terrible, sky blue, water wet.

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

I'm not a Castro fan and I think the Cubs should trade him at the soonest opportunity, but that was pretty funny.

Wouldn't have been so cute if Rizzo committed an error, though.

 

Re: 2015 MLB Season - Can the Cubs FINALLY win the World Series? (No.)

Mediocre at best defense (he's almost certainly going to shift over to 2B), he doesn't walk, has little power and his batting average is entirely dependent on BABIP. His offensive value wholly depends on tons of ground balls finding holes; one bad year of BABIP (like 2013) and he's back to being a black hole in the lineup. There's also the connections to shootings in the Dominican Republic last spring and multiple accusations of sexual assault, which are more than slightly troublesome.

He's two years removed from being one of the worst everyday players in the league. He does provide some value -- but that value is on a very, very slippery precipice. BJ Upton used to be a proven hitter, too, which is why the Braves signed him a few years ago, but no one bothered to look and see that his rate of swings on pitches outside the strike zone had been steadily climbing for like five years, and his walk and K rates were catching up to it. When looking at Castro, when your skill set is "BABIP-dependent singles hitter who runs really, really fast," your ceiling isn't terribly high. Given that the Cubs' problem is not scoring runs, but rather preventing them, Castro is probably the team's best asset for scoring pitching.

Again, he's not bad -- but he's not an Ubermensch, either. I don't think the team should be actively shopping him until they know what they have in Russell (and until they see if they can flip Baez now that he's been exposed), but if the right deal were to come along, absolutely, you flip him. Put another way, if a guy with a career 99 OPS+ is one of your team's "best players," then your team has issues.