NL Wild Card Thread - Rockies @ Cubs

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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How do you not give Gore the take sign on 3-2?
More importantly, how does any manager that uses him not tell him to keep his bat on his shoulder at any cost. Most AL pitchers are better hitters than him. Hell, most SoSHers are better hitters and I have seen some pictures from the old bash softball games.

Or what that announcer-hating, dickish E5 said...
 

SoxFanInCali

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California. Duh.
There used to be an expression that it would be like the manager cutting his ba!!s off.
Yeah, but he has 1 more hit than I do in his career.

The real story is that he should have realized himself that unless he got a fastball right down the middle he should take it. But I'm guessing pitch recognition is one of the many things he does poorly at the plate.
 

Al Zarilla

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Yeah, but he has 1 more hit than I do in his career.

The real story is that he should have realized himself that unless he got a fastball right down the middle he should take it. But I'm guessing pitch recognition is one of the many things he does poorly at the plate.
The pitch looked like a strike for a bit before it broke sharply down and out of the strike zone and you don’t have a lot of time to decide. Tough one.
Sure he should have taken the pitch, but he didn’t want to get called out on strikes either. When he started his swing, he thought it was a strike.
 

SoxFanInCali

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California. Duh.
The pitch looked like a strike for a bit before it broke sharply down and out of the strike zone and you don’t have a lot of time to decide. Tough one.
Sure he should have taken the pitch, but he didn’t want to get called out on strikes either. When he started his swing, he thought it was a strike.
Yeah, that's what I mean. Someone that can pick up the spin of a breaking ball immediately could take it, but given his lack of success at the plate I'm sure he hasn't developed that.

In reality the pitcher got pretty lucky, as there's no way he should have thrown a ball outside the strike zone in that spot.
 

Sox and Rocks

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Kyle Freeland's performance deserves more love. The numbers he put up this year pitching half his games at Coors are astounding.

Since Rockies hitters are often discounted because of Coors, shouldn't Freeland's stats receive a premium?
 

bosockboy

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They have to figure out what Addison Russell's future is. Or maybe they just cut him loose and replace him with Machado. They need offense.
I think Russell is gone. They also need to decide if Schwarber and Happ are part of their future. They don’t have any young pitching, Darvish may be more or less done.
I could see Rizzo moved for some younger players. They are a bit of a mess.
 

Bob Montgomerys Helmet Hat

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I think Russell is gone. They also need to decide if Schwarber and Happ are part of their future. They don’t have any young pitching, Darvish may be more or less done.
I could see Rizzo moved for some younger players. They are a bit of a mess.
I don't see Rizzo going anywhere. He's the face of this team and is absolutely beloved. If they add Machado and get a healthy year out of Bryant, Rizzo/Bryant/Machado/Baez is a very strong core.
 

uncannymanny

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Kyle Freeland's performance deserves more love. The numbers he put up this year pitching half his games at Coors are astounding.

Since Rockies hitters are often discounted because of Coors, shouldn't Freeland's stats receive a premium?
He was great and it was the first time I’d watched him. Feels like the pitch is coming out of his hand by the time you see the ball.

Lol at the BB celebrations, that was pretty lame. Hard to like a lot of players on the Cubs and dislike Joe Maddon so much. Can’t wait to see how they spin these last two games to maintain his “genius” status.

His Father was a mudder, his Mother was a mudder.
His mother was a mudder?!
 

InsideTheParker

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I've already heard calls to fire Chili Davis.

maybe the guy is a shit hitting coach, I dunno.
Wasn’t the new hitting coach hired precisely to teach and refine and demand more contact and smarter contact?

Wasn’t Joe Maddon’s choice to replace the hitting coach Maddon fired supposed to help this team move up runners and sacrifice power for being more dangerous to all parts of the field?

And wasn’t it stressed that Davis’ teachings were all about winning in the postseason after Cubs hitters were vaporized by the Dodgers in last year’s NLCS?

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I remember it, and the Cubs’ first chance to show how much more dangerous they had become in their preparations for playing perhaps into November lasted one playoff game into October.

Er, Choketober. And now it gets interesting. Does somebody pay for Choketober with his job? Might it be Davis?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-spt-cubs-lose-joe-maddon-choketober-rosenbloom-20181003-story.html
 

Van Everyman

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It's almost as if the Sox knew something by moving on from Chili Davis.

I mean, don't get me wrong: I actually thought Davis wasn't the problem last year. But it seems pretty clear that their current approach worked about 1000 times better than the last one. Were there other factors? Probably -- I suspect the combination of Farrell's old school style and running guys out there in 2017 no matter how dinged up they were didn't help. But it's hard to look at the last two seasons of data around hitting, the 2017 and 2018 Red Sox and Cubs and conclude that Chili Davis is the right guy to be teaching guys how to hit at this moment.
 

DeadlySplitter

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it's really hard to evaluate hitting / pitching coaches. but now two major data points of failure from Chili.
 

NJ_Sox_Fan

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Couldn't be happier to see Maddon lose. Stayed up late to watch this one, to kick off a couple of weeks worth of no sleep (hopefully).