Lou's Lame Ducks
Twenty-Six Runs per Hour
Manager Ryne Sandberg's Iowa Cub lineup SCORED 4 runs in 9 minutes? I LOVE THIS STAT! That translates to 26.6 runs per hour. Thankfully, they suspend games in triple-A rather than just wash them out and make it a do-over. The RPH just might go up when the game resumes in a month.
Manager Lou Piniella's Chicago Cubs GAVE UP runs at a similar velocity. After last night's 17-2 debacle vs the Rockies in an 8th inning that saw 11 consecutive hits (13 total hits but 11 hits with 2 outs) and 12 runs score...that's what I'm talking about, RUNS PER MINUTE. The only problem is that the Chicago National League franchise's role model has been Captain Peter Wrongway Peachfuzz. It was too painful for me to use a stopwatch on that fiasco. The last time the Cubs gave up 12 in one inning was Sept. 24, 1985 vs the Expos. The Expos won that game 17-15 and Expo hat wearing Andre Dawson went 4-6 with 8 rbi and 3 homers. Oddly, a pitcher named Ray Fontenot took the loss for the Cubs. At least those Cubs scored 12 runs over the last 3 innings, which is more than this inept group could claim.
Why can't the I-Cubs just play out their schedule at Wrigley and hide the lame ducks in Des Moines?
As far as the trading deadline ending later this afternoon, the Saturday morning latest says Lilly is still on the block with the Dodgers, Twins, Tigers and Yankees for some reason showing interest. "Minor sniff's" on Xavier Nada and Little Babe Ruth are out there per Ken Rosenthal. Something about interest in DBack Kelly Johnson too. If they wanted him now, it seems they missed the boat since he would have come for less when he was a free agent nobody wanted last off-season. Did Jim Hendry misread the saying as buy-high and sell-low? I hate it when we get stuff bass-ackwards.
and a bit more detail on runs-per-minute after the break...
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videographer (view)
Here is an interesting thought: There seems to be an assumption that the Cubs had to trade 2 prospects to get Busch with Almonte thrown in to even out the trade. What if the initial trade was Ferris for Busch, but Hoyer wanted Almonte (a cheap RP) and Hope was the ask from the Dodgers. This scenario makes the trade more complicated to ponder the future ramifications.
Arizona Phil (view)
Zyhir Hope and Reggie Preciado were co-MVPs at Cubs AZ Instructs last fall, and every MLB organization had scouts at the AZ Instructs games so Hope was well-known to everybody (and was clearly a Cubs Top 30 prospect with a bullet).
https://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-2023-arizona-instructional-league-s…
azbobbop (view)
I can’t speak to how many organizations had newfound interest in Zyhir Hope but I did talk to a Dodger scout who told that the Ddodgers always had their on him.
I hardly think of my self as a “scout” but I saw a beautiful smooth left hand swing, easy power, an aggressive base runner as in very limited action, a good defensive player. He certainly caught my attention, moreso than anyone else on the ACL team last year.
George Altman (view)
Ditto. The can DFA him when they activate Taillon.
crunch (view)
cade horton with his 2024 AA debut of 4ip 4h 0bb 4k, 1r/0er is followed up even better...
4ip 1h 1bb 5K, 0r/er
he's still on a pitch count restriction, btw. he probably could have gone 6+ innings in both outings if he was off a leash.
crunch (view)
okay, officially done with hendricks as a starter.
dunno if counsell is there, but i'm there.
Bill (view)
That pretty well sums up the situation. Epstein, the media and the fans became obsessed with the concept of a "window of opportunity" that had to be taken advantage of before it closed. Thus the trade for Quintana, and the trade of Soler for crap.
The way to deal with a "window of opportunity" is not to sacrifice everything to win, but to extend that window. Epstein knew that he was having his best players, Rizzo, Baez and Bryant in the same year, with Contreras the following year, at the same time that the pitching staff was growing elderly and on the verge of declining. A responsible administration would have moved one of the ""core" two years earlier, and a second one the next year, in order to prevent the otherwise necessity of "tanking" when they left at the same time. they had to know that there was no way they could have all been extended, and still leave room for growth.
Other than the Dodgers and the Yankees, no team can maintain a consistent level of production without a consistent flow of high ceiling, low cost controlled young players coming up from the farm. We have lived through the errors of the past, and hopefully have learned enough from them to prevent a reoccurance of it in a few years.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
I think it was pretty clear that practically all of “the core” was going to be gone after the 2021 season and that utterly gutting the farm system to chase a championship with the same guys year after year until they all departed wasn’t going to end well. That was talked about as early as 2017.
I don’t think it’s hindsight to say they would have been better off from a sustainability standpoint trading some of those pieces for the best prospect packages available and introducing some of the kids. For example, I was hoping real time they would trade Schwarber during the 2016 offseason to an AL team as a DH when the DH was AL only. Fresh off being a WS hero he could have fetched quite a haul. But, alas, he was a member of the vaunted, untouchable “core”.
TarzanJoeWallis (view)
What would have surprised me is the Dodgers, who have traditionally been outstanding in evaluating and developing talent, giving away Busch for nothing. They obviously saw something in both of the guys. Perhaps one or both will be future superstars.
That said, the old cliche is that the level of competition increases ten fold for every level moved up. Ferris and Hope both have a long way to go. We’ll just have to wait and see.
For now, I’m watching Busch put the team on his shoulders while the presumed offensive star of the team flails and doesn’t seem to have a plan beyond “waiting for the numbers to even out”.
I thought it was a good and fair trade at the time - a talented but surplus guy for the Dodgers that filled an immediate need for the Cubs in exchange for potential pieces of the Dodgers future - and I’m awfully glad Busch is a Cub.
First.Pitch.120 (view)
Mostly agree, but I don’t think it was as much “unshakeable faith” as it was a series of unclear choices in the moment that have become obvious with hindsight.
The upside outcome for the coming year for any player was always much higher than the return on selling. It was like Texas Hold’em purgatory of having 4 to an A-K led flush… impossible to get away from.