2018 Cubs

THERE’S NOTHIN’ LIKE WAKING UP IN LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY LAND TO REALLY PISS YOU OFF.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez · , , , , ,

Now that’s more like it, canon balls! Dunno what happened to the Cubs yesterday, but I figure it had something to do with wakin’ up in Milwaukee — somethin’ that coulda turned even Mother Theresa into a snarling rotweiller. Anyway, their pitching and hitting — not to mention their heads — each came poppin’ out to where the sun shines with a distinct THWIP! It’s about friggin’ time.

In the poetic words of Kid Rock…

Ooh, I’m back (back), the fog is lifted,
The earth has shifted, and raise the gifted.
You knew I’d be back, so pack your bone,
And hit the road Jack, cause daddy’s home.

Who’s your friggin’ daddy now, Ryan Braun?!

Yesterday, daddy made his presence known in the form of Jon Lester, who wasted no time showin’ Braun, Laverne, Shirley and the rest of the Brew Crew who the friggin’ boss is. When Braun got on in the first, you could see right away he was chattin’ up the demons between Lester’s ears. But when he started tap dancing around the bases like Gene Kelly, you could see the veins in Jon Boy’s neck pop out. They looked more like tree trunks. So when Braun took off for third, Lester gave him the Stormy Daniels treatment. No, not that treatment. The one where you get pants’d and then swatted with a magazine like Donald J. Trump. Admittedly, Lester’s throw was more of a bounce pass than a pick off, but in the wide, wide world of Jon Lester, it was a friggin’ Picasso, baby. Braun was left standing there with nothin’ but his toothpick in his hands. Loved it.

From that point on Lester was in steam roller mode. He surrendered just three measly hits and a walk though six, giving the Cubs an 8-nothin’ shutout over a team that the last few years has been givin’ me the same kinda rash as the Cards. And when that flares up, there’s nothing quite like the soothing relief one gets from the Cubs’ red hot bats. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know — puttin’ somethin’ hot on a rash — but it works every time, my friend. There are those times when — like the first five games of this year’s campaign — that the only red hot thing I can get my hands on is the missus. That works, too. Boy does that ever work. Kinda makes me wish for slump sometimes.

Then there’s Javi Baez.

Holy friggin’ craptiods! Unlike who’s-yer-daddy Braun, Javi doesn’t tap dance around the bases. He’s much more like the Tazmanian Devil. To score from first on a grounder to the pitcher — which Baez did in the second — requires a level 9 wizard’s license or somethin’. That and some really crappy fielding. Next to Lester nabbing Braun, it was the best play of the game. Number 3, I’d say was a tie between JaHey goin’ yard — somethin’ I think we’d all like to see a little more of — and Bryant slappin’ out his 500th hit.

In all, using the Brewers for toilet paper gives me a world of satisfaction. So would using them as a doormat, which I hope happens today.

I leave you with a little more Kid Rock.

The black cat is back, in original form.
The legible, credible, inevitable storm.
Way past the norm’, still misbehavin’.
Finger in the air and the flag still wavin’.

And that flag he’s referring to? In this case it’s the W, baby. Go Cubs.

Joe

PATTIN’ YOURSELF ON THE BACK FOR GETTIN’ OUTTA TRAFFIC IS LAME. THE IDEA IS TO AVOID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez · , ,

Hey there, rice cakes. Question: Does anyone ever — and I mean EVER — get home all happy-like after bein’ stuck in traffic for 2 hours? The correct answer is “No, they do not, Joe.”

Same goes for baseball, which is why I don’t wanna hear Tyler Chatwood singin’ in the shower after that outing the other day.

“I was good at getting out of traffic,” Chatwood said. “I created a lot of that. I thought my stuff was really good today. I just need to trust it and try not to be too fine too early. I can build off this for the next time.” NEXT time? What about THIS time?! If he keeps servin’ up “this times” like that there won’t be a friggin’ next time. For any of us. No worries about being “too fine too early”, either. He didn’t come within six lightyears of “fine.”

And unless you’re the kinda nimrod who stands in the middle of a sprawling Mumbai garbage dump and says, “Hey, I really like this fragrance. I wish I had aftershave that was half as sweet,” then no way you’d characterize Chatwood’s stuff as “really good.” He served up 43 balls along with his 49 strikes. A near 50/50 split. About what Stevie Wonder might do … with his eyes closed.

Yo, Tyler, when you give up 6 walks, that’s not the kinda stuff you “need to trust.” What you need to do is look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “Is that the sorta pitching that warrants a 3 year, $38,000,000 pay day?” Again, “no” is the answer, Chatstick. And while you’re in the bathroom for questioning, you also oughta ask that guy lookin’ back at you why he sucked so badly. And he’d better have an answer before your next start.

If I F’d up like that at my job and thought I should keep on doin’ the same thing — that I should “trust” it — my sorry ass would be out on the street in about 4-1/2 seconds. I wouldn’t get a chance to “build off” it for next time.

Now I’ll say this for Chatwood: In spite of the six walks, he was super stingy with the hits, giving up just a solitary run to the Reds. So we shoulda won. No question. With the lineup we got, we oughta be able to hand out 30 or 40 runs in every game and still win. So, to me, Chatwood doesn’t get saddled with that loss, the offense does. With 58 strikeouts in five games — a new league record, by the way — it’s the Cubs bats that can’t be trusted. They’re 7-for-51 with runners in scoring position, so far — a whopping .137 average. That’s not somethin’ you can build on, my friend. That’s somethin’ you oughta scrape off the friggin’ lot.

Until the bats wake up, though, we can’t be gettin’ into a lotta traffic jams. In my relatively non-humble opinion, it would be better to take an alternate route. And, as a pitcher, Chatstick oughta not be pattin’ himself on the back, no matter what. Twistin’ his arm up like that is a good way to end up on the disabled list.

Of course I could be wrong. But I’m not.

Joe

WHAT A THREE-TOED SLOTH, THE GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE AND THE 2018 CHICAGO CUBS HAVE IN COMMON.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez · , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey there, rubber bands. Ever heard of the geologic time scale (GTS)? Yeah, me neither. It’s a system used by rock hounds to describe the timing and relationships of stuff that’s occurred during Earth’s history, which happens so slowly it’s really the only way to do it. An eon, for example — the largest division of this time scale — spans hundreds to thousands of millions of years, which is one helluva long time, pallie. So until now, there have only been two major eons: the Precambrian and the Phanerozoic.

However, based on the Cubs immeasurably slow start this season, I’m guessin’ the National Academy of Science may have to introduce a third major division in the GTS — the Northsidian eon — as the only feasible way to track the April the Chicago Cubs are puttin’ together.

Have there been worse Aprils? Of course. In 1988, Baltimore went 0-21 before splitting their last four games to finish 2-23 in April. I remember that. They coulda easily just cleared out the clubhouse and started settin’ up tee times. I mean the season was done; burnt to a crisp before May Day, which I’m sure was a pretty common phrase in Baltimore that spring. And let’s not forget the Cubbies, who started seasons at 6-19 in 1962, 1966 and 1997. So, yeah, there have been some total crap Aprils since the beginning of baseball time, and five games in, no one should worry.

So why the need for a new eon now?

Cuz context matters, my friend. Leadin’ up to opening day, any conversation about the Cubs was peppered with assumptions of dominance. Sportswriters were practically wettin’ themselves over the strength of the revamped pitching staff and a line up so fearsome that some opponents might rather forfeit games instead of subjecting themselves to a lopsided Cubs beatdown.

Instead, we’ve come outta the gate like a three-toed sloth — an animal that tops out at 10 feet per minute. And we’ve done it against the Fish and the Reds, two teams that might have trouble qualifyin’ for this summer’s Northwest Little League Regional. It’s embarrassing, my friend. Our pitching has been about as hot as the last ice age, and our bats have demonstrated all the firepower of a fossilized salamander.

Take a look at the numbers in the first 5 games:

We’re hittin’ .204 with 58 strikeouts. Un-friggin-believable.

44 of those Ks were brought to you, for the most part, by the high-butter fat cream of the lineup: Happ (10, and he’s supposed to be a leadoff hitter), Contreras (8, not a surprise given he swings at everything within 3 city blocks of the plate), Rizzo (6), and Bryant, Schwarber and Heyward (each with 5).

Although we’ve had 64 base runners, we’ve scored just 19 times and only managed to swipe a single base.

Did I mention Happ, our leadoff “hitter” has struck out 10 times? 10 FRIGGIN’ TIMES!

In game 2 against the Fish, we had a whole regulation 9 inning game, plus 8 extra ones, to get the slippery bastards in the boat. But did we? No! We let ’em off the hook, that’s what we did.

And we’ve been shut out twice already, including yesterday’s weak two-hit effort we put up … AGAINST THE FRIGGIN’ REDS!

What I’m hopin’ is that this pinched-loaf of a start is nothin’ more than the calm before the storm; the geological nap before baseball’s La Garita. And if it turns out that way, it would be nice if the 1,000 cubic miles of ash we leave in our wake includes a high concentration of St Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox, New York Mets and Clayton Kershaw.

Joe

STROP IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES: YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GONNA GET.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez · , , , , ,

Hey there, swizzle sticks. I hate to be judgmental with 159 games left to play, but if I wasn’t, you might not recognize me. Plus, after splittin’ with the Fish today instead of frying ’em up and feeding ’em to some feral cats, I’m not exactly feeling like the Easter Bunny. So, with the season’s umbilical cord still attached, I think it’s time somebody (me, for instance) asked a really obvious question: What the hell is Pedro Strop still doin’ on the Cubs?

To me, that’s like askin’ where astrophysical neutrinos come from, cuz the answer is the same: Nobody knows.

Bringin’ Strop into a game is a total crap shoot, and more often than not, without the “shoot” part. And yesterday was no exception, pallie. Yeah, the guy escapes with the win. Party on, Garth. But that was cuz of Bryant’s base-clearing double in extras, and the setting of the table before it, not cuz Strop came in and exerted his willful authority over the Fish. Hardly. We wouldn’t have even been in extras if Strop hadn’t given up a game-tying hit in the 8th.

Full disclosure: Darvish did his part, too, givin’ up all the hard work our bats did before he was yanked in the 4th (which was waaaaaaay too late, in my opinion. He wasn’t sharp, and anyone payin’ attention to his pitch location could see that he was havin’ a ton of trouble stayin’ in the Miami zip code. Maddon shoulda yanked him sooner.

But the jury is still out on Darvish. Strop, on the other hand, is in his 6th season with Chicago, and has pretty much painted a full color self portrait for us already. Has he had flashes of brilliance? Absolutely. Is he single-handedly responsible for narrowing the coronary arteries of every Cubs fan alive? Also absolutely. Strop is a high trans-fat diet in pin stripes. And that’s what drives me up the ivy covered wall, pal — the fact that he’s so friggin’ unpredictable.

I think his stuff can be pretty darn nasty at times. But he routinely has a serious problem findin’ the strike zone. And when he does, it’s often the part where the hitter happens to have put his bat.

Strop’s WHIP in 2017 was the worst he’s had since joining the Cubs in 2013. Not a good trend. Still, he’s thrown 272.2 innings over that period and racked up 320 strike outs. By itself that’s pretty awesome. But he’s also given up 173 hits, 107 walks, thrown 29 wild pitches and plunked 19 batters along the way. Not exactly Greg Maddux. What makes it worse is those things often seem to come at the most inopportune moments for the Cubs, which compounds their effect.

I gotta hope Theo sees somethin’ in Strop that us mortals can’t, and that he expects it to come out in its full glory this season. Of course, I also hope that Scarlett Johansson is hawkin’ sausages in my section in her full glory for the home opener. Maybe just some Jimmy Choo’s. I’m not sure hope will be enough in either instance.

Joe

PS. (Which in this case stands for Pedro Strop) put your friggin’ hat on straight.

JOSE ALTUVE, THE SMALLEST GUY IN BASEBALL, PUTS UP ANOTHER GARGANTUAN NUMBER.

· 2018 Cubs, Joe Sez, News · , ,

Hey there, piggy banks. It’s time for a little pre-season math lesson, brought to you by the twin gods of baseball negotiations; Insanity and Yurshittinme.

Baseball is a numbers game, right?

Baseball men count everything — at bats, hits, runs, steals, earned runs, wild pitches…probably even how many times a guy adjusts his junk in an inter-league game with less than two outs and a man on third. It friggin’ ridiculous. They even make up things to count, like Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). This make-me-laugh stat zeroes in on how much batters and pitchers contribute to their teams compared to a fake position player or pitcher of league-average talent. Now that’s GOTTA be somethin’ created by agents. Anyway, baseball is a game that lives and dies on numbers — national debt-size ones when it comes to contracts.

So here’s a number for ya: 151,000,000.

That’s what the Stros’ are shellin’ out for their sawed-off second baseman, José Altuve, for the next five years. Not $150 million (cuz that woulda been an insult). One hundred and fifty-ONE million. Not bad for a guy who still has to travel with his Graco Nautilus booster car seat. Did the Tuve have a stack of other big numbers last year…especially during the playoffs? Totally. But holy craptoids!

Baseball is also a game of inches.

That means at 5’6″ (66 inches) José Altuve is now the highest paid player in baseball, based on height, and will be rakin’ in $454,545.46 per inch, each of the next five seasons. That would be 2,945,436,200,000 bolivars in Venezuela — where Altuve is from — according to the unofficial but often used exchange rate of dolartoday.com. Surprise, surprise…official Venezuelan government exchange rates are considered overvalued. Of course I could say the same thing about pint-size second basemen gettin’ paid 3 trillion bolivars a year. Nobody is worth that. Not even Scarlett Johansson.

Is America great or what?!

No matter how Lester Holt tries to paint it, America just ain’t that bad. And Little Joe’s contract extension illustrates that in 4K living color, my friend. Take Venezuela, for instance, where the latest increase in minimum wage to 97,531 bolivars a month — an amount equal to $12.53 in Houston, Texas, America — means that Altuve, all by himself, makes as much money as 200,851 of his countrymen. Pretty friggin’ incredible.

America: Land of the free, home of the highly overpaid. Especially if you pretend (act) or play baseball for a living. But hey…I say more power to Altuve. Right up until they meet the Cubs in the Series this year. (Not that the little bat swingin’ munchkin needs anymore power, with his obscene slash line and all.) As far as his contract goes, though…if I were in his size 3-1/2 shoes, I’d take every penny they wanted to bury me in. Includin’ that extra million.

Are you still with me?

I know I lost White Sox fans, Cards fans and probably Major League umpires — who can only count to four and require one of those umpire counter things to do it — the moment I mentioned “math.” But for the astute Cubs fan (and is there any other kind?) what all this means is that Altuve is gonna be a Stroh for a while, the Stros are likely to be contenders for a while, and the people of Venezuela are worse than dirt poor. Whatever is worse than dirt — which I don’t know what it would be — that’s it.

Saving the best for last.

As long as we’re talkin’ about mucho bolivaro, here’s a piece of good news for the rest of us: After gettin’ boystowned by the Ricketts family the last two seasons, Cubs tickets are stayin’ relatively flat, with 2018 prices gettin’ goosed by less than one percent. This means the average ticket will set you back 518,946 bolivars, or $66.67. Consider yourself lucky, pallie. A minimum wage Venezuelan has to work through June 10th to make that much scratch.

Joe