NL CENTRAL PREDICTATRON 2019

i have no idea who's going to win the division. my instinctual guess is the cardinals.

i am predicting the cubs offense will rebound from last year but i do not trust any of their pitching beyond hendricks

expecting lester to really fall off a cliff this year, which is not something one often thinks of 18-game winners

i think there's a good chance the pirates finish last, and in a way, i hope they do

the cubs' pitching is potentially very good but also potentially a total disaster. Lester, Darvish, and Hamels all have the ability to strike out 200 and win 18 games, and also be sloppy, ineffective, and/or injured for the majority of the year.

Bote has been hitting the ball well this spring and taking a ton of walks. Same for Schwarber. I'm anticipating a major year from Bryant and a return to the slightly better stats from previous years for Rizzo. I think they'll be in it til the end, but a division title might be a stretch.

Lester has always felt like a guy who has been balancing on the edge of a knife; those worrying walk numbers and disastrous starts have always been there, but usually he's won despite the former and the latter have been infrequent. I agree he could fall off that cliff.

he's gotten worse every year since 2015 but it also seems like he figures out ways to get around getting worse

contreras' offense has looked better in spring training too, which is a good sign

if his offense is good that'll be a bonus, he's a very good defensive catcher as-is.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/03/brewers-rumors-craig-kimbrel-talks.html

if the brewers get him, they will have hader, knebel, jeffress, and kimbrel. wow.

also, not that anyone cares but i would have to switch my second favorite NL central team designation elsewhere because i can't stand kimbrel's dumbass hanging arm monster thing

i have no idea who is going to win the division. will probably wait until the deadline of the poll, just in case last minute additions (like kimbrel) swing the balance

Cardinals lineup adding Goldschmidt looks pretty impressive. I like picking up Wieters to be the backup catcher too as I think part time duty seems to bring back the bat for some veteran catchers. If Yady actually lets them take him out of the lineup, it could be good for both of them. Cardinals pitching isn't quite as impressive, but it does have room to improve in 2019 too.

Cubs won 95 last year and had kind of middling years out of quite a few players. Pitching staff is older and I would think could be worse, but they still have good depth and could deal for a couple guys too.

Brewers seemed to have everything go right last year. It will be interesting to see if they fall back or hold up to last year. I kinda feel like they will fall back a bit.

Pirates are better than they might seem on first glance. They should/could have the best rotation in the division, but then they held pat on improving the club in any means. Things go well with the young guys, they could be a .500 team I would figure. Kind of a push.

Reds with the trades have some interesting players playing for contracts including Puig. They should be like a bunch of Cincy teams in that they score runs like a beer league softball team and have pretty sxxt starting pitching. They have added some arms that should help the rotation, but I'm a Reds fan and a pessimist. Sonny Gray is already fighting a bad back. I do think the bullpen could be good and has some depth, so they could win some games with softball scores.

I'd bet my 2 bucks on the Cardinals to win the division, but the NLC should be very competitive as it often is.

Huh Ian Happ starting the season in AAA

I'm glad Jimenez is not on this Cubs roster.

I'd have to think it is just that Ian Happ has options and they are still ridiculously deep in some places. Seemed that Happ would eventually end up the replacement for Zobrist. Got to think Happ would be in the bigs on a bunch of other clubs and some clubs might inquire upon him.

i really hope this predictatron isn't right but i'm a little worried about the possibility that andrew miller is the greg holland of 2019

Scooter Gennette is out 8-12 weeks with a hammy. Looks like Reds are going to use Jose Iglesias at short and move Jose Peraza back to second at least to start the season.

Nick Senzel heading to AAA to keep playing CF as Scott Schebler has won the starting job there for now. Senzel was probably going to go down anyway so that the Reds could get the 'bonus year' and most likely bring him up in May. Got to wonder if Senzel might be playing some 2b, as he played that at times in college and minors.

didn't know senzel could play CF! (or can he?)

i have nothing to back this up with, but it seems like there are more players these days who can legitimately play a decent OF and IF. in early zobrist days it seemed more unusual?

Senzel did some winter ball work in CF and has prepped for it all spring.

Talk was that Puig might see some time in center too, it's not an ideal situation and probably will get defensively exploited in some of the bigger parks. You will get more offense instead of Billy Hamilton, but you will have a number of extra base hits drop in without him.

I think being able to play more positions at least to a certain level of competency is still a valid way to have an extended playing career.

I think Andrew Miller was a much better pitcher than Holland over all career, but it's hard to bet on any reliever at age 33 as it is such a boom/bust proposition. For every reliever that fails, you have another reliever seem to bounce back and be productive again after some time of either being injured and/or ineffective. And at 33, they could just be done at any time.

relievers are indeed a crapshoot. it'd be nice if andrew miller could manage to be at least league average, though, rather than single-handedly blowing a handful of games over the course of a month like holland did last year

Corey Knebel potentially needing Tommy John really sucks

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Hendricks extension with #Cubs is four years, $55.595M, according to a source. Includes club option for fifth season as well.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 26, 2019

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Brewers did better than i would have expected

they won the division last year and have only gotten better on paper

i picked Brew-haas

goldschmidt will have a chance at a 4th HR in the top of the next inning

Update:
Home run #3: 106.4 mph https://t.co/HJKbE4WAZ7

— Jenifer Langosch (@LangoschMLB) March 30, 2019

how many more years y'all got him for

for all the years

dan maclaughlin keeps saying "you are going to love him saint louis! you are gonna LOVE him!"

he did it after 2 home runs in Spring Training, and predictatronably he did it after his first regular season HR

i just saw someone say that Yelich has a 42% HR/FB rate in Miller Park. is that right?!

lol brewers just IBB'd goldschmidt

down 5-9 in the 9th. i get it, but

i thought the brewers were cool

Maclaughlin just said “folks you’re gonna love him” as it went to the post-game crew

christian yelich is on fire

*shakes fist*

YELIIIIIICH

This might have been the greatest trade in Milwaukee Brewers history

only other players to HR in first 4 games:

Willie Mays, Mark McGwire, Nelson Cruz, Chris Davis and Trevor Story.

he's been absolutely on fire since like...august 2018?

And a walk-off double...He's obviously already clinched another MVP.

On base all 5 times

lolcubs

I don't remember the STL announcers being as annoying/repetitive as they are on the call for the Goldschmidt homers.

i am going to LOVE him in st louis!

you guys are REALLY not gonna make team threads? so weird

in this age of robot umpires, all sense of boundary has been erased and we just mingle around to different food stands, watching baseball

cubs scored 28 runs in the rangers series and still went 1-2

Opposite: Jays held the Tigers to 6 runs in 4 games (only 3 runs in the regulation 36 innings) and went 2-2.

33 pitches in the first for waino; 14 of them strikes : /

yadi is playing 3B

Says something for the Reds to give up two weekend home games soon against the Cardinals to play in Mexico. I do hope they break out the 'Los Rojos' uniforms they used last year.

With the injury to Hunter Greene, it just ads to the bad luck and ineptitude the Reds have had developing pitching. Reds have pretty bad luck drafting and developing starting pitching for decades, even just average ones.

They had one short window when they had Cueto, Bailey and Mike Leake (who was drafted and went straight to the big leagues) and other than that Brett Tomko (who was traded for Griffey) and not all that hot going back to the late 90s. I think the next best self drafted and developed starter by the Reds you have to go back to Tom Browning in the 80s.

There cannot be that many clubs that have done worse and this is the primary reason the Reds have been mostly terrible for 25+ years.

I picked those four guys as they had at least had a couple seasons as a league average starter. Still that is only 4 starting pitchers in like 30 years developed out of the draft! Not good.

i will make individual threads for every team not in this division next year

I think Jays and Mets can have individual threads because they have an outsized # of fans on ilx.

cubs need a win this weekend to beat their notorious pecota projection

With Cubs out, Maddon isn't playing his "A" lineup in St. Louis, so @Brewers can start their bitching now: "Of course they're going to bitch, and I get it, but quite frankly, there are certain things I really don't give a shit about, and that would be one of them."

— Paul Sullivan (@PWSullivan) September 26, 2019

maddon otm

anyway his 'A' lineup last won a game 10 days ago, so

I can sense he's on his way to Queens

nah, mets are too cheap. i'm thinking san diego

wonderful catch by almora just now! that was the second time he robbed yadi tonight (first would have been a double, at the top of the wall).

oooooooof what a double finish
limping near the finish line

Happy retirement to Cincinnati Reds HOF announcer Marty Brennaman! I will long treasure his response to a fan's question about his greatest fear from a 2014 "Ask Marty!" segment! pic.twitter.com/2ccu8nvSXs

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) September 27, 2019

Hurdle out

idg why you’d fire someone hours before the final game

Cubs don't appear up to the task

Don’t get rid of Maddon imo

Great opportunity for Mets and Giants

https://i.imgur.com/iFV9qJF.jpg

i'm 98% sure i'd still say this if the cardinals hadn't ended up taking it, but this was a good season to follow the NL Central! no team ran away with it, with 3 teams with a good shot all the way to end. even the pirates were in first place as of late april, and the reds could be dangerous soon.

https://i.imgur.com/HqKF3O4.png

NL central titles since neal huntington took over as general manager of the pirates:

STL 5
CHC 3
CIN 2
MIL 2

Is Huntington the real problem? From a distance it looks like no matter what the FO does, the Pirates won’t achieve anything with Nutting

that is probably true, but his record of trading and player development is pretty piss poor as well

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Sawchik-NLCentralMLB-0924-1.png?w=575

Jesus the Mets being -4 despite deGrom

well, degrom was drafted before 2012. but still

Ha yes, okay.

Forgot the Archer trade. I do think it’s a fireable offense.

The #Pirates have dismissed pitching coach Ray Searage and bench coach Tom Prince.

All the other coaches from manager Clint Hurdle's staff "are candidates to remain on the big league staff pending the conclusion of the
managerial and coaching staff hiring process," per the team

— Rob Biertempfel (@RobBiertempfel) October 3, 2019

i saw someone suggesting fabled gritty pittsburgh native DON KELLY -- currently the astros' 1B coach -- for manager

One neat factoid I came across in a career retrospective of Marty Brennamen's broadcast career was that he did the famous Christian Laettner shot for Duke against UK on the radio. I knew that Marty was a color announcer for UK basketball also for a few years in the 70s, but did not know or remember him doing college basketball tournament games on the radio that late.

david ross is the new cubs manager

pirates have fired team president frank coonelly

It sucks he won't be on ESPN anymore.

what do we think about Ross on the Cubs? felt a little out of left field to me, but i don't follow them too closely.

Apparently everyone in baseball loves Ross. Definitely a cubs legend due to 2016 WS heroics. He was ok as a broadcaster/analyst, I guess.

Honestly, feels like the manager’s main impact on games is to just avoid doing incredibly dumb and unnecessary stuff. The rest is just serving as a figurehead for people like me to yell at when they’re frustrated at the organization for not better decisions years ago

supposedly maddon was thought (by the cubs) to be too much of a players' coach? it kinda seems like ross would be as well, especially when dealing with so many former teammates, but maybe not. that's the only drawback i can think of

there had been talks of the cubs possibly trading bryant or baez or contreras (or...) and i wonder if this hiring makes shedding any of those core players from the 2016 world series team less likely

i'd be surprised if it made any difference -- theo et al reserve that power for themselves and seem sufficiently unsentimental.

apparently kris bryant's service-time grievance is finally to be ruled on this week; if bryant wins, he'll become a free agent after next season.

hard to imagine Ross being a better manager than Maddon but I agree with y'all, it's probably not gonna make much of a difference. I mean the Brewers hire of Counsell worked out pretty well and that was someone I could easily see being too much of an "old-school baseball" sort of guy

we joked about mathenaging -- and matheny did not, in fact, seem very good at managing his bullpen or making strategic decisions -- but for me the fact that he played favorites and let assholes like bud norris shit on rookies daily is much more damaging.

playing basically every day for six months while travelling all over the continent is pretty hard, and even more so when you hate your boss or don't get along with your co-workers. apart from building the strategy of using relievers based on leverage rather than inning, counsell had to sell the idea to players who'd been doing it differently their entire lives. he's able to do that because he's a good manager of people, and i imagine ross is as well.

(joe torre got a lot of shit for things like personally destroying scott proctor's right arm, but the fact that he was able to get his highly paid yankees teams to perform so consistently well is v. impressive to me. i mean, the a-rod/jeter thing, gary sheffield, clemens -- that's a lot of ego to massage.)

rumor has it that pirates gm neal huntington will also be canned, which is unusual because he has two years left on his contract and the team is so fucking cheap

attn karl

https://www.mlb.com/news/memories-of-david-freese-2011-world-series

thank you, i didn't see that! the will leitch story (about the story) is legendary

The Pirates spelled their interim GM’s name incorrectly in their press release. It is Kevan Graves.

— Stephen J. Nesbitt (@stephenjnesbitt) October 28, 2019

“It’s back to the future,” Mark Attanasio says. Here is the new primary Brewers logo. pic.twitter.com/Tw4pDAaWIx

— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) November 19, 2019

Awesome

All the gear I have has that logo anyway so no problem for me

Love the old logo - not a fan of the font.

same

Lots of people today are pointing out something I missed: The Brewers' new alternate road uni looks a lot like a Wolf Cub Scout uniform. pic.twitter.com/ZaHnOBXuvH

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) November 19, 2019

i quit on the same day i got my webelos badge

BIRDS OF A DIFFERENT GAME: THE '80S CARDINALS PREMIERES TUESDAY, JANUARY 28 AT 8:00 P.M. ET ON MLB NETWORK

MLB Network Presents Documentary Looks Back on How The 1980s St. Louis Cardinals Dominated the National League

i'm not a MLB network subscriber...are those documentaries usually pretty good? i will definitely try to track it down after it airs because :D