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Since the Boston series, we are 24th in run-scoring and 26th in OPS and wRC+. I was going to comment "shades of post-8/11", but that's not really true: after August 11th last year we were middle of the pack on offense. So what we're seeing now is very different from post-8/11. Probably a lot of it's timing: five of those games we won, we scored three or fewer runs, and when we lost, we were frequently blown out (11-4, 7-0, 8-1, 6-1). I wouldn't say pity the poor Rangers or anything like that, but they've been 28th in run-scoring during the same span (67 vs our 81), but second in run prevention (65 vs our 75), and yet they've gone 8-14 vs our 14-9.

I see what you're doing here. 😉 I'm going to go out on a limb and say 12-6. Who wants to come out here with me? We can talk baseball while everyone points and laughs at us ...

Agreed! I don’t know how capable the new guy was of doing that, but the good ones would know what to say. One other thing—a lot of fans think all the player has to do is say “the magic word” and he’s gone, the implication being that that word is “fūck”. That’s probably only partially true—it really depends on the context. Managers and players yell “that’s fūcking horseshīt, man” at umpires practically every game and get away with that. It’s when the manager or player directs it at the umpire, as in, “you’re a fūcking horseshīt umpire”, or even, “you suck at your job”, that he gets run out of the game.

The other thing about that is that Hoerner said, “You're having a really bad day.” Hoerner personalized the criticism. If he’d said, “You really missed that one bad”, he probably would have gotten away with that. But once an hitter goes after an umpire’s competence or, even worse, his integrity, he’s asking for the rest of the game off.

This is a complete 180 from where we were even five years ago!

I agree with Oblong in that as a fan, I don’t give a s***. I’m watching to watch the game. I also believe teams shoot themselves in the foot some when they parade empty seats in front of cameras for literally half the time a game is on. That’s a real problem for them, and I think it’s interesting to contemplate.

Those seats are overpriced everywhere. That main problem is the whole club aspect where people are incentivized to leave the seats and go someplace they can get swell food and drink as a lubricant to hobnobbing and networking. It’s not just that they have to walk clear across the ballpark to access club privileges—it’ll be the same thing when they finish the club underneath the seats.

I have tried in the past to create images of real people shown in various situations and the output has never been any good. Frequently they’ve rendered as cartoons. But that was probably a year or more ago and I was so disappointed by the results that I never tried it again. Obviously it has gotten better at it. This is a picture of Shirley Temple hitting a home run in a major league game. Meh.

I pay a dollar a month. That’s worth it to me.

I guess.

Media and social media keep saying that ICE and related agencies are arresting foreign nationals from certain countries “by mistake”. Make no mistake about it: this is not a mistake. This is purposeful. They know exactly what they’re doing.

I think Gleyber may have been exactly the right kind of veteran to add to a team like ours. He’s a very good hitter, a professional hitter, someone the other guys would look up to as a guy with experience, but he is also young and still hungry and only a little ahead of our guys. I think that last part especially might make him a better fit than Bregman or Alonso or, for Pete’s sakes, Soto, or, yikes, Santander—all of whom were regarded as being so far ahead of everyone else in both proficiency and salary that any one of them might have been on his own island here. Maybe Torres sets a better example, because where he’s at now is more attainable as the next level for our guys. This is simply a hypothesis, so I have no facts or quotes or links to back it up.

I like this, and I am not going to share this with some Cubs fans I know, because they would be legit offended. They take things more seriously than this meme would require.

Taking two of three from the team with the best record in the National League is awesome, but shutting them out in the finale is a huge feather in the cap, and yet another notice to the test of baseball and the nation: we’re for real.

Well, whaddya know, Hanifee comes out and gets three outs with yielding a run. Next thing you know, Bresike is gonna come out and get three outs without giving up a run.

Well, technically, yes.

How did you generate this on ChatGPT? I mean, what steps did you take?

Riley got called out in the first inning on a nearly-as-ridiculous miss for a third strike. Cubs announcers are borderline apoplectic about it. Their response to Riley’s called strike? A smirky “oh well”.

Welcome to the Alarmist Non-sense side.

This is what “thin” looks like, baby.

Who’s going to do what about this?

They’ll start following the Constitution at the same time they’ll start following the Bible.

Not anymore, he’s not.

Three walks and a single and no runs. Almost as though Jack was trying to give them some runs. But man, what a wild catch by Parker out in center.