Extra innings madness, drop in attendance, wisdom and Sano, sticky loss, Cubs balls

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I will be playing in a fantasy football league for the first time in a decade. I’m so lacking in practice that I can’t even remember the best way to prepare the draft, especially when you walk into the thing without a knowledge base (which is good and valuable “for fancy purposes” can trip you up. very quickly if you are used to watching and following sport for who is Actually Well). I have a week to prepare …

• The Cubs have taken two of the Rockies’ three wins at Wrigley Field, which is mathematically the most likely outcome for those two teams right now. The Rockies entered the worst baseball team on the road (in history?) Series, and the Cubs entered the series after losing 13 straight home games. It was the baby’s gentle force meeting the perfectly pasty object. At least there was some entertainment value …

• Last night’s double clip was the kind of silly, silly kind of game that’s only fun when the outcome doesn’t really matter. If the Cubs were in desperate need of winning this one, oh man, I would have been furious if they lost a big lead, then got a three-run tying homer in the last set, then got a GIFT of a mistake to throw to tie the game again in the next inning, then still couldn’t pull it out. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter in the leaderboard, so we can marvel at the madness of a seven-round game that has turned into a 10-round game:

• The Cubs’ participation in this series in the Rockies, as you would expect, has been extremely low. The Monday opening had an announced crowd of just 25,577, the lowest home crowd since April 2014 (Greenberg). And yesterday’s double schedule, which naturally comes with a bit of quirk, was about a thousand fewer. I guess there is some symbolism there with April 2014 representing the start of the COOKIES era, and now representing the end of this competitive era. Most of the time, it’s just a reflection of reality: yes, Cubs attendance will always have a pretty high floor compared to other clubs, but this idea that attendance (and TV ratings!) Are completely inelastic and insensitive to the quality of the team is wrong. It’s by far a better financial situation when the Cubs are good. The owners know it. The front office knows it. Even if you think their only motivation is money, of course they care about winning in 2022. It’s good for business!

• Patrick Wisdom was the only starter in Game 2 without a hit, but played the hero in Game 1 with a monster explosion. I recorded a draft for a while on a comp that I wanted to discuss, but since it did on the same day that Miguel Sano did, I’m just going to chat now:

• To be clear from the start, I am not saying that Miguel Sano is a model of what Wisdom can be. One broke into the big leagues as a high-profile prospect at 22, and the other is still trying to establish himself as a regular at 29. Instead, what I find interesting is that Sano has shown what you need to do to be a productive hitter with wise-level batting rates. I discovered this by trying to find players who have been successful, over the long term, despite regularly having strikeout rates above 35%, as Wisdom has had all year. It won’t shock you to learn that there aren’t many! Sano is probably the only good example (36.5% for his career), and provides the lesson: the only way the bat can deliver value to the pull rates up there is if (1) you always walk over 10% of the time, and (2) you hit absolute crap off the ball almost every time you make contact.

• Sano (11.7% rate of operation, 45.1% rate of hard contact, 13.1% rate of soft contact) was able to post a 117 wRC + thanks to the steps and the enormous BABIP / ISO comes from its quality of contact. Still not a * great * hitter overall, but certainly productive, and for Wisdom that would be especially true as he can play a quality defensive third base, unlike Sano.

• Wisdom, for its part, has a strikeout rate of 39.1%, a walk rate of 7.9%, a hard contact rate of 46.0% and a soft contact rate of 13.7. %. Extremely similar numbers to Sano’s, and he should continue to do so to be a solid above-average hitter. It’s doable, but it’s really, really rare.

• Mark your calendars! What? The Cubs are not yet mathematically eliminated:

• The Dodgers and Padres played 16 ROUNDS last night, which is absolutely nuts when it comes to a game where the free runner starts at second base in 10th. No match has lasted more than 13 (!) Innings in today’s age of rules, so playing 16 is crazy. Just when the Padres thought they’d won it with a Fernando Tatis Jr. home run in the 15th, the Dodgers tied it and won it the next set. Crazy game:

• In those 16 innings, the Padres have had just four hits. Oh, and a ridiculous little random bonus:

• Go ahead and fish it out now:

• I always find it endearing when the road crew sends a group out for coffee at Wrigley Field, because there is a group of uniformed baseball players walking through a neighborhood. The Rockies, by the way, did it right yesterday – Do-Rite are the best donuts in the world:

• Dog stuff, coffee stuff, clothes and more are your daily deals on Amazon. #a d

• Interesting read on the struggles of recent MVPs Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger. Injuries have been a factor for both, especially for Bellinger, with the combination of shoulder, leg and hamstring issues all undermining his ability to have good hard contact (or at least him and the Dodgers must hope it does, and be better next year). Bellinger was the 6th worst hitter in all of baseball by wRC +, tied with, among others, Jason Heyward (62). We have already spoken of Yelich’s apparent decline.

• I mean, the guy was one of the more egregious sticky stuff users in the game, so… yeah:

• When it comes to applying the sticky stuff, Karinchak’s spin rates dropped by over 300 RPM, and overnight he went from being one of the best relievers in baseball (2 , 37 ERA, 45.0% K rate (!), 11.7% BB rate) to a guy who may not have a job in the Guardians pen next year (5.25 ERA, 21, 1% K rate, 15.6% BB rate). Again, he was not really subtle in his use, and it looks like that’s the kind of performance the league (and the hitters) wanted outside of the game.

• META: To all the blueberries in the comments, you make me crack. I love you for that.



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