NL CENTRAL PREDICTATRON 2019

rip cubes

positives for the cubs 2019 season - javy maintaining his 2018 breakout, darvish's second half, heyward's best season as a cub, contreras rebounding from his bad offensive season last year, hoerner looks like a viable 2b and leadoff hitter option going forward

biggest problem i think was the feast-or-famine offense, so many 1-run losses and cold streaks

i like a lot of the players but cubs games moving from WGN to the ricketts-owned pay channel next season is going to make it hard for me to be an active fan. going to try and follow the white sox more closely instead.

free agents: hamels, zobrist, castellanos, strop, cishek, lucroy

dudes getting raises: kimbrel (+$6m), hendricks (+$4.5m), bryant/baez/schwarber/russell arb 2, contreras arb 1

i could see them non-tendering russell, although he shouldn't be that expensive

brew crew is on FIRE

it helps that they've been playing the padres, reds and pirates, of course. but still, they've been relentless. next up: the feared colorado rockies, playing for nothing

the cubs' attachment to russell is mystifying to me. a below-average hitter/decent fielder at a position where they already have an mvp candidate. and that's not even factoring in his domestic violence allegations.

and nico hoerner appears to be a viable younger/cheaper/less assholish option

it helps that they've been playing the padres, reds and pirates, of course. but still, they've been relentless. next up: the feared colorado rockies, playing for nothing

true but they had like 10 games vs. the Cardinals in April so that's kinda how it goes

we need a schedule overhaul w/ more intradivision games, and 32 teams to make Howie Rose's head explode

the double-a texas league covers a big geographical area and only has eight teams, so division rivals play each other 30 times a year. it's kinda crazy

Gotta say I enjoyed the division format for threads

same

only division where we have fans of each team?

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