Welcome back to Cubs News & Notes – your daily Cubs round up blog of the most important things.
Today’s slate is lighter than your traditional fare and that’s because we’re in this weird dead zone between Tokyo and real opening day. In it, the Cubs have stopped broadcasting spring training games and released even less news. So we’ll do the best we can with what we got.
Right now that’s
- Opening Day Thursday
- TV Times blow
- Corbin Burnes not pitching against us
- Starting Pitching lined up
- Young Cubs are speaking English
Let’s get into it:
Opening Day is Thursday against the Diamondbacks and I think the roster’s okay all things considered. Most important though, it’s still a long way from where I want to be going into opening day. So much that it’s actually kinda sad that we’re this major market team with a billionaire owner and all this nationally acclaimed history. And then the season comes around and we look like complete slap-dick-schmucks that are lucky to play .500 ball.
Three full seasons of that later and maybe this is the year?
Nice thing is we have to play the games to find out for ourselves. But at the present moment I just don’t love the roster the way I’m supposed to when you have the resources we have.
That’s simple enough.
So is my hatred for our start times to open the season. And this marks the 5th time I’m complaining about it and certainly not the last.
Fuck Me
I’m gonna be so mad come Tuesday April 1st lineup preview time that I might spontaneously combust into a prime Kerry Wood fastball. It bothers me that much.
Specifically – I don’t want to be cranky to start the season. There’s enough blood in the water already. Watching losing baseball at midnight can only make it worse and that’s very much on the table to open the season.
Bright side is the 9pm west coast slate is inevitable throughout the course of 162. So get it out of the way as soon as possible vs. sandbagging me in August. That’s the only positive.
Another Positive: Corbin Burnes Is Not Pitching Against The Cubs
Maybe I’m overreacting but I’ll take any small win we can get right now after that 2-game series in Tokyo. The Dodgers looked like an All Decade team so excuse me for being a little gun shy around Corbin Burnes. In reality the win probability of a game started by someone other than Corbin Burnes is drastically lower for the Diamondbacks, which equals great news for the Cubs.
Even so – Zac Gallen is a Cy Young contender until he has major surgery and Merrill Kelly’s not too fucking shabby either. So these aren’t cupcakes by any means but it’s nice to know Corbin Burnes won’t be out there. Ipso facto you give the starting pitching edge to the Cubs here.
Let’s Be Specific About The Starting Pitching
I like the guys at On Tap Sports a lot and I think you should follow them. If you’re reading this then chances are you’d enjoy their fan perspective so check them out.
In the meantime, here’s the announced pitching matchups:
- Thursday: Justin Steele vs. Zac Gallen
- Friday: Jameson Taillon vs. Merrill Kelly
- Saturday: Shota Imanaga vs. Brandon Pfaadt
- Sunday: Matt Boyd or Ben Brown vs. Eduardo Rodriguez
And these are my observations:
- Justin Steele should be considered the Opening Day Starter for purposes of salary arbitration. Even if Shota pitched game 1 in Tokyo, that was an international gimmick. And if you think this is meaningless then I can assure you it’s not. All this matters when it comes time to ask for an extension or when you go to salary arbitration. Starting Opening Day is a formidable bargaining chip, especially when you start multiple in a row. Justin Steele was essentially robbed of that honor with the Tokyo series and I want to set it right.
- Cubs Opening Day Starters:
- Steele
- Stroman
- Hendricks 3x
- Lester 3x
- Arrieta
- Lester
- Samardzija 2x
- Dempster 2x
- Zambrano 6x
- Kerry Wood 2x
- Jon Lieber 3x
- After that it turns into a complete shit show.
- Jameson Taillon should be better and represents the exact kind of “pretty good” that embodies this Cubs roster to me. It’s all pretty good but not overly great on paper. Like your college sex life, there’s a lot of better options out there but it could also be much, much worse.
- I hate that we don’t really have a 4th starter going into opening day to the extent that we’re not sure who starts on Sunday yet. Why? It’s Monday afternoon and we’ve been at this for months now. There should be a explicitly named 4th starter that’s already preparing for his first game because this isn’t high school fuckin baseball. But Craig Counsell wants to treat it like such and that really bothers me.
- Are people going to be mad if I think Shota has some regression this year? I just don’t understand how he can repeat his success now that teams have had a chance to scout an entire year of pitch data. He doesn’t have overpowering stuff or that deep of a pitch arsenal. It comes down to fastball deception which I think opposing hitters can prepare themselves against in the long-run. Couple that with expectations and then the natural regression path for 2nd year international pitchers that have already been successful… mix that all together and I think there’s more than a coin flip chance Shota takes a full step back behind Justin Steele.
- Matt Boyd was the biggest name we signed this winter and that’s inexcusable.
- Matt Boyd needs material Cy Young consideration for me to reverse this position.
- I’m almost done being negative but I think we could and should have traded Ben Brown last year when his value was through the roof. His stuff is so good and he’ll be so dominant at times. But overall I think he’s a mental midge who doesn’t understand his super powers. The net result should be a bunch of 100 pitch starts that don’t get past the 5th inning.
- I told you guys I’m almost done being negative.
- All the bitching aside, I like the collective pitching staff much more than I like the individual parts. Like a group of chubby and fun bridesmaids in Nashville. Maybe not the sexiest group on paper but in the right scenario and enough booze, we’ll give anyone a run for our money.
- And yes I just assumed the role of a chubby bridesmaid. I feel fabulous.
Another Fabulous Feeling = Learning English
English is a lot harder to learn than a good 2-strike approach so I like this strategy a lot. Challenge them linguistically in the classroom like Michele Pfeiffer then come back and rework the fundamentals of pitching and hitting. If you can learn to conjugate English verbs then you’re much more prepared to hit a slider with authority to ride field.
Which reminds me.
I think a genius idea is to teach these guys the wrong english so that they hear trash talk from opposing fans as positivity.
For example.
You go to St. Louis and someone’s going
ALCANTARA YOU FUCKIN BUM
We tell him that means your mother loves you
Or
Ballesteros you fat piece of shit
We tell him they like the shape of his ass.
And then just go down the list of insults and use it to build confidence in our younger non-english speaking players so that when the time comes, we actually have an advantage in these moments because our players have been taught to interpret literal positivity in all scenarios.
Call me crazy but that’s actually not a shitty idea.
Opening Day in 76 hours and counting.