Need the Javy Oppo approach, Ross’s humility, bench energy and other Cubs balls

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The Cardinals finally returned to play yesterday after missing more than two weeks. They had to play a double title right out of the gate, and they were missing part of their roster. They of course won both matches. Thanks, White Sox.

• A few straight losses in a set usually don’t tell you much about a team, let alone when one involved bullpen. There are bats crumbling right now, and there were a few bad throws, and there were a few dirt balls with eyes. That’s roughly the magnitude of those losses. Baseball involves a whole lot of things in a season, even if only 60 games.

• So instead my only real thing to take away from yesterday’s loss, for example, is that I’m hoping the bullpen can rest a bit today before having to play two. doubles in three days. Yes, the fact that those four games are only seven innings will help. Yes, the 29th man each day will help you. But since you can only actually use a guy once a day, you need to have LOTS of well-rested guys for each of Monday and Wednesday. That will mean the Cubs need a great length from Jon Lester today and Yu Darvish on Wednesday. To say nothing of the entries in the double headers, themselves.

• To that end, however, good news: David Ross says Tyler Chatwood felt good enough yesterday that the Cubs could project him to start one of the two-title games on Monday (Bastian). So if he and Kyle Hendricks have normal outings that day, the Cubs may not need to cover many innings in the pens on Monday.

• Related / Unrelated: Just a taste of this double-counted stuff is a pretty quick sale for me that going seven innings, this year at least, was a really good idea.

• I agree with David Ross on Javy Báez at the moment:

• To me, it seems Baez’s game has evolved enough on the board in recent years that I think his approach is good (it’s his, but it’s good). He’s just not making his usual excellent contact right now – his bullet rate on the ground is through the roof – which suggests to me he’s just a little behind. This may be the short build-up for him. It was going to have a different impact on the guys. I would love to see Báez start letting the ball go a little deeper on him and go the other way – like we’ve seen in the past with him he’s one of those guys who can buy himself that fraction. an extra second and not lose. any power going the other way. Some guys have to cheat on the pull side to get power. He doesn’t. Javy has always presented huge numbers in opposition, and at the moment his attraction rate is the highest since 2016.

• Suspect that approaching the opposite field might also help Báez with his skyrocketing withdrawal rate, as that naturally buys him that extra fraction of a second to diagnose. I know: easier said than done. But he already has.

(Photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo / Getty Images)

• The three-person remote booth is not working for various reasons at the moment (it seems too often that Len and JD try to question a guess, over the phone, during a live baseball game – it’s usually more distracting as addendum), but yesterday’s “anecdote” of Mark Grace, speaking disrespectfully of his ex-wife, was particularly deaf:

• How about this comment from Ross on Ryan Tepera, who looked good in the spring and summer camp, but didn’t quite make the opening list (Cubs.com ): “Ryan Tepera [has] come back and prove me wrong. I was wrong about that. Went there with another guy and stuff and Ryan Tepera has done nothing but prove his worth and worth here. You might remember Ross’s final choice for the reliever pen was Dillon Maples, whose fights luckily didn’t cost the Cubs. But Tepera, yes, clearly belongs. And Ross’s frankness about it is appreciated. (And I can’t help myself: can you even understand Joe Maddon by saying something like that? Maddon was so awesome in so many ways, but living man you couldn’t pull enough teeth to make him admit he was never wrong.)

• A bunch of Amazon device deals today, worth checking out. #a d

• The Cubs lost yesterday, but was the living man bloated throughout the game:

• Speaking of energy, the ‘Get on the Bus’ shirt that the players and David Ross wore is now available to regulars:

• I’ll assume it was entirely intentional:

• Today, MLB is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues, and you can read more about the coverage here.



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