The 2016 Cubs: SPLOOGE SPLOOGE SPLOOGE

[Quality Start Machine]

This team has the largest lead in baseball, and every flaw has been perfectly revealed with plenty of time until the trade deadline. The pitching staff isn't the one Joe is taking into October.

Nothing is fucked here.

The problem there is that Arrieta, Lackey, and Lester are undoubtedly going to be in the playoff rotation barring a big trade and Lackey completely falling apart.

So the only thing in this entire slump that actually has me legit worried is Jake and Jon's struggles. Lester not so much because he was downright excellent for 3 months and has had two rough ones and he's done this before as a Cub and in his career and bounced back no problem. His struggles are probably only in my head because they came at the worst possible time for the team.

Jake scares the piss out of me because his career has been two acts: the guy that can't control his shit and gets hammered every start and the guy who can control his shit and is untouchable. This absolutely could be just a normal slump that he'll work through, we just haven't ever seen him have four-five bad starts in a row as a Cub and given his history I can't completely escape the fear that he's in his own head again and might be Baltimore Jake for awhile.

That little voice inside my head will go away the second he throws another quality 7 innings.

But yeah, the Cubs went into October last year with a bullpen counting heavily on Wood, Cahill, Rodney, and Richard and none of those guys were in the Cubs bullpen to start the year, two of them didn't even throw a pitch in a Cub uniform until September. Pens are fungible, and the offense has been solid and will only be better as they get healthy and play a ton of home games in the second half.

And, weather permitting, no more stretches of 24 games without a day off.

[Oleg]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

[SKO]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

[CBStew]

The 2016 Cubs *Santo Voice* THIS. IS. THE. YEAAAAAARRRR

The 2016 Cubs: The Year We've All Been Waiting For

The 2016 Cubs: We Think You Made It, Stew

The 2016 Cubs:  I'll believe it when I see it.

[R-V]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

[Quality Start Machine]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

[SKO]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

Yeah, I mean it's easy (and probably correct) to say "well they'll get better because they just aren't this bad, period." It's just easier to expect a turnaround when there's something attributable to bad luck or whatever that you can point to and say "oh, well, they've been running a .400 BABIP, that won't last." Saying "they've sucked, but they can't suck forever" is unscientific and just feels like wishful thinking even when it's actually the logical response.

Baseball is weird.

[SKO]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

[Quality Start Machine]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

And again, swee what the inevitable trades bring.

[SKO]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

And again, swee what the inevitable trades bring.

I mean you keep saying that but what the hell are trades going to do about Jon, Jake, and Lackey? I said I'm not worried about the pen, guys will get better (Grimm seems to have righted the ship, Edwards has looked solid) and they'll make trades, and I bet they'll shore up left field as well, but the biggest issue of the last two weeks has been a shit rotation and only one of those guys is likely to go anywhere and that's Hammel, and he'll probably be usurped by Warren if he's dropped at all.

If the top three in the rotation pitch like they can/should/were up until this month, great, all will be fine, and it probably will be. If they keep getting shelled inexplicably Theo's not going to replace three highly paid, top of the rotation starters.

[Quality Start Machine]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

And again, swee what the inevitable trades bring.

I mean you keep saying that but what the hell are trades going to do about Jon, Jake, and Lackey? I said I'm not worried about the pen, guys will get better (Grimm seems to have righted the ship, Edwards has looked solid) and they'll make trades, and I bet they'll shore up left field as well, but the biggest issue of the last two weeks has been a shit rotation and only one of those guys is likely to go anywhere and that's Hammel, and he'll probably be usurped by Warren if he's dropped at all.

If the top three in the rotation pitch like they can/should/were up until this month, great, all will be fine, and it probably will be. If they keep getting shelled inexplicably Theo's not going to replace three highly paid, top of the rotation starters.

Hendricks is the Cubs' three, whether anybody wants to believe it or not - hell, if you go by WAR, he's actually the Cubs' two. But there's nothing we've seen from Jake or Lester over the past 2-3 years that indicates they won't get back on track. In fact, the past two seasons, Jake has been a soul wrecker in the second half.

[CT III]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

And again, swee what the inevitable trades bring.

I mean you keep saying that but what the hell are trades going to do about Jon, Jake, and Lackey? I said I'm not worried about the pen, guys will get better (Grimm seems to have righted the ship, Edwards has looked solid) and they'll make trades, and I bet they'll shore up left field as well, but the biggest issue of the last two weeks has been a shit rotation and only one of those guys is likely to go anywhere and that's Hammel, and he'll probably be usurped by Warren if he's dropped at all.

If the top three in the rotation pitch like they can/should/were up until this month, great, all will be fine, and it probably will be. If they keep getting shelled inexplicably Theo's not going to replace three highly paid, top of the rotation starters.

Nothing.  They will either pitch well or they won't and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

[flannj]

Feel free to panic, SKO.  I won't be but I won't tell you how to live your life.

Didn't really say anything we don't already know: nothing has changed other than that the starting pitching all went to shit at exactly the same time. What caused it? Who the fuck knows. Will it be fixed? Probably, but maybe not.

I mean logic dictates that guys who were great and then unbelievably terrible will probably go back to being pretty good, at least, and that this is just a blip, but that's logic and it's hard to listen to it until they go out there and actually pitch better. I wish there was some bad BABIP luck or abnormal strand rate noise to tell me it was a fluke.

For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to chalk it up to the fact that the starters were pitching at a historically ridiculous (i.e. unsustainable) level, and instead of their performance normalizing to "really good" instead of "complete insanity" slowly over the remainder of the season, the baseball gods decided to carry out said normalization over the course of a few weeks. So they'll be good the rest of the year! Or something.

What's really weird is that Montero is having a really good year from a framing perspective. And sure, having an inexperienced catcher like Contreras might factor in too.

But (for what it's worth) I think it's mainly due to the fact that the Cubs just finished a hellish stretch of damn near a month without a day off. And they came out the other side with a 7 game lead.

Hell, didn't the Royals have a fucking brutal stretch like this last year? I seem to recall they came out of it OK.

Let's swee how the next 3 weeks plays out. I can't imagine Jepstink not going balls-to-the-wall in the trade market, knowing that this is the best chance they'll have, with Fowler walking after the season, and Lester not getting any younger.

DPD but yeah, basically every world series champion had a 25 game stretch of pure garbage, as the Athletic pointed out yesterday. Joe Sheehan pointed out that the 35-5 1984 Tigers followed that up with a 22-23 stretch. But so have a lot of teams that were not world series champions. Obviously nothing matters at this point but winning the division and they should still do that, I just suspect I'm not alone in feeling ill at ease until we get some quality starts from Arrieta, Lester, and Lackey to prove the worst is behind them.

And again, swee what the inevitable trades bring.

I mean you keep saying that but what the hell are trades going to do about Jon, Jake, and Lackey? I said I'm not worried about the pen, guys will get better (Grimm seems to have righted the ship, Edwards has looked solid) and they'll make trades, and I bet they'll shore up left field as well, but the biggest issue of the last two weeks has been a shit rotation and only one of those guys is likely to go anywhere and that's Hammel, and he'll probably be usurped by Warren if he's dropped at all.

If the top three in the rotation pitch like they can/should/were up until this month, great, all will be fine, and it probably will be. If they keep getting shelled inexplicably Theo's not going to replace three highly paid, top of the rotation starters.

What's done is done.
I love your passion but sometimes you need to take a fucking pill.

[Eli]

But there's nothing we've seen from Jake or Lester over the past 2-3 years that indicates they won't get back on track. In fact, the past two seasons, Jake has been a soul wrecker in the second half.

Lester, sure. But there's plenty in Arrieta's history that could be a reasonable cause for concern.

[flannj]

I hate Bud Selig.