![]() WPA Play of the Game: With two outs and a runner on first in the sixth inning, the Cubs trailed 5-3 when Christopher Morel came to the plate. Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective. He picked up his 10th save with a perfect ninth.Īnd that brings us to the Heroes and Goats from Friday’s happy win. I have to admit to being a bit nervous about an aging closer on a less than spectacular team. David Robertson is doing his part to be a very tradeable commodity.Even without a bunch of homers, he’s got a very nice line of. He had three more hits including a pair of doubles yesterday. And his homers are off a bit, though he’s still got a fair shot at 20 with a projection squarely in the 15-20 range. The team isn’t very good, so he’s not putting up gaudy RBI or run totals. Ian Happ is quietly having a star season.He was a big part of the comeback yesterday with his two-run homer. Christopher has eight hits in his last 14 at bats and has homered in his last three games. What separates the average from the good from the great is how they bounce. Every hitter from Babe Ruth to Mike Trout goes through a rough patch. Right there in it, I said I hope you become one of those guys who blows away expectations. I meant no offense with my Flavor of the Day piece. There were definitely a handful to choose from. It won’t be easy for them to stretch this out to 20 games or more. After two more games against a tough Red Sox team, the Cubs go right into a brutal week of seven games against the Brewers and Dodgers. Of course, the schedule maker is trying to throw a cold bucket of water on this bounce. The Braves, Cardinals and Red Sox all believe they will be in the playoffs when they start. They are doing it with a good number of wins against playoff contenders. One might thoroughly expect the Red Sox to beat up on the Cubs the remainder of the weekend, but the Cubs have now won eight of 14 since that 10-game skid. But they took two out of three from those Cardinals, then came home and did it again against the Reds. They twice hit a new season low of 18 under and then against the Cardinals they hit it a third time. You might recall they lost three of four in that one, with more blowouts involved. They won two out of three against the Braves, and then the schedule did lighten up a bit for a series with the Pirates. There was no off day nor a letup in the schedule. At the time, that dropped the team to a season-low 17 games under. Just to review that putrid stretch of baseball, the Cubs weren’t just losing most of those games but getting crushed. Beginning with the second game of a doubleheader on June 4, the Cubs started a stretch of 10 straight losses. The funny thing is where this stretch started. And those stretches are what makes it so unusual for a team to lose 100+ games. That’s what eventually drags the winning percentage from bouncing around under. One of the things I said was that at some point this team was going to go through a stretch, maybe even 20 or 30 or even 40 games of playing at or above. But it’s good when the ones that are forward looking are right once in a while.Ī few weeks ago, while things were going bad, I talked about the natural ebb and flow of a baseball season, even for a bad team. Many of them aren’t really rocket science, just observations. Well, that was a fun one! A come from behind win against a playoff contender? That’s fun.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |