re: CHC 8/31: Cubs 6 Pirates 5 | Final | Cubs Sweep!!

no, there's certainly potential, and they're no reason to hit the panic button. more time for taillon and kuhl. more time for bell. cole gets reset. polanco is coming into his own as a rising star and clutch hitter. could shape up pretty well next year, but damn the central is just impossible. especially if they go cheap again in the offseason. that's probably what has the people here most angry, is they didn't address lingering problems in the offseason, and were cheap, and ended up the existing problems getting worse.

i'd like to see cutch swap w/ marte in CF, but lord knows what's wrong w/ him.

i don't know if it's clint hurtle or what, but how this team manages to have a whole month every season where they are just awful is perplexing -- especially when the organization knows they did it the previous season and it makes too big of a hole in the standings to emerge from.

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Anyone else's AtBat notifications been waayyyy behind tonight?

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Like 2 innings behind. I got the Bryant homer alert in the third inning

Way to go Pena. Very nice.

Looked bad turning his head on that hop there, though. He really needs to work on his defense

you know, people say "defense at first base? how hard could it be? it's first base."

i don't know that bell is bad in a pedro - "i don't understand how this can be happening at the big league level" - alvarez way, but he's just awkwardly learning out there. Polanco kinda looked that way in RF when he came up too. just not playing naturally and unsure.

but yeah, he's gotta improve.

Looks like my softball team

Pedro Alvarez at first base is the human embodiment of the Scott's Tots episode of The Office. It's just uncomfortable enough to make you squirm but horrible enough to still be funny.

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Pedro Alvarez

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what amazes me about the pedro experience is how he was historically bad at both 3b and 1b for totally different reasons. at 3b, he was pretty good w/ the glove and got to probably more balls than he should have, but when he threw to first it was anyone's guess. so everyone thinks -- gosh, just get him to 1b and this will be resolved. he gets to 1b and is even worse defensively due to his sudden inability to catch the ball.

we've been playing baseball and keeping stats for over 100 years and he managed to be historically bad twice at different positions? i guess it's a tribute to the pop in his bat and the desire of the organization to make it work that he was given the opportunity to continue to see the field. supposedly he worked hard at both issues, but just couldn't solve it.

Chapman is drunk

everyone must have seen the documentary fastball.....