2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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That video :pimp:. Damn prince used to be huge :wow: (at least more than he is now :lol:)

If a pitcher can scream and fist pump after a big strikeout, hitters should be able to pimp out big hrs. Also I feel like pitchers who throw at people should be allowed to get bats flung at them :lol:


not srs
 
Me the last 24 hours

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I knew he was gonna do an insane bat flip if he hit one :lol: I didn't care about that. Fans throwing **** on the field and at Texas' dugout though, you can't root for that kinda pansy behavior :lol:

I don't wanna see these Jays complain if someone from KC pimps one out :lol: they're so touchy and emotional.
 
On the Line Between Emotion and Sportsmanship.

You probably don’t need an introductory paragraph to this post. You read the title, so you already know what this one is about. Last night, with one swing, Jose Bautista untied the deciding game of the Blue Jays/Rangers series, and then Jose Bautista did this.



If you’re a Blue Jays fan, odds are you loved it.

The team hasn’t been to the postseason in 22 years, and have been lousy for most of that stretch. A few days ago, the team dropped the first two games of this series and looked like they were going to have a disappointing end to a promising season, only to go on the road and win a couple of games to force this decisive game five. Cole Hamels had mostly stifled the team’s offense, giving a crowd who came to be as loud as possible few reasons to make noise. And then, in the top half of the inning, the Rangers had taken the lead on a fluke play that hardly anyone even knew could happen. The crowd was tense and angry, and they were looking for a moment to release their frustration. And Joey Bats gave them exactly what they wanted.

Not everyone enjoyed the spectacle, however. Sam Dyson, the Rangers pitcher who gave up Bautista’s home run, said this when talking to the media after the game.

“I told him Jose needs to calm that down, just kind of respect the game a little more,” Dyson said. “He’s a huge role model for the younger generation that’s coming up playing this game, and I mean he’s doing stuff that kids do in Wiffle ball games and backyard baseball. It shouldn’t be done.”

Dyson certainly isn’t alone in feeling this way.

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For a significant portion of people watching, Bautista’s act violated the principles of sportsmanship that were instilled in us in Little League when we were kids. We all heard the same messages, and they’re important life lessons to teach kids, who aren’t born with the awareness of other people’s feelings. Sportsmanship, at its core, is acknowledging the validity of the opponents humanity, realizing that your exhilaration comes at the cost of someone else’s despair. Teaching people to respect the feelings of those around you, or even in competition against you, and to not make their suffering worse, is probably one of the most important qualities we can pass down.

So while I’m not always a fan of baseball’s unwritten rules, or the fact that so many confrontations end up involving a white player lecturing a minority who was raised in a different culture about how they should behave, I appreciate the origins of these ideas. Dyson, and those who think Bautista should have just put his head down and casually jogged around the bases, aren’t attempting to deprive individuals of joy; they’re trying to enforce a code that elevates someone else’s feelings above your own. There’s honor in that principle.

Sportsmanship has value, and I appreciate where these sentiments come from. But those values flow both directions, and respecting the game shouldn’t be a hammer that is used to pound emotion out of those competing at the highest level. “There’s a time and a place for celebration,” I was regularly told by coaches preaching the same virtues that Dyson grew up with. They were right. And last night, in Toronto, it was the time and place for one hell of a celebration.

One of the battlecries of the anti-bat-flip crowd is “act like you’ve been there before.” Which is perfectly reasonable, assuming you’ve actually been there before. This wasn’t a third inning home run in May; this was a series-winning home run to cap off an improbable comeback for a team whose closer wasn’t born the last time Blue Jays were in the playoffs. Jose Bautista had never been here before. This was the defining at-bat of his career, what he’d spent 30 years working towards, the biggest moment of his professional life.

This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill home run. This is one of the great moments in Toronto sports history, and will be etched into the collective memory of every Blue Jays fan fortunate enough to see Bautista take that swing. As soon as Bautista connected, everyone else in the Rogers Centre lost their minds.

This is everything. pic.twitter.com/rMd035OprQ

— Drew Silva (@drewsilv) October 15, 2015

That moment, when years of pent-up frustration was exorcised with a single swing, didn’t call for stoicism. Jose Bautista didn’t throw his bat like a javelin because he was attempting to bring attention to himself, or show up the Rangers; he was participating in a wide-scale celebration that his swing set off. Fans jumped and screamed and embraced and spilled their beers and cried; Bautista, alone at the plate, joined the bedlam in the most natural way possible.

Bautista showed emotion in an emotional moment, because that’s what human beings do. We feel, and we react, and we have to be trained to contain those emotions, because it isn’t what comes naturally. We contain them because emotional outbursts are not always appropriate, and we don’t want to make others around us uncomfortable. But last night was an appropriate time to celebrate. It was a moment of release for a crowd ready to explode, the natural outflow of passion from a player who badly wants to win.

So often during the season, these very same players are criticized for making too much money, for turning a children’s game into big business. But then, when the games matter most and they remind us that they care deeply about the game itself and the competition it breeds, they get criticized for caring too much, and for not downplaying their greatest accomplishments.

I’m all for sportsmanship, for considering the feelings of others, and for not taunting your opponents after their best is not quite good enough. If Jose Bautista had this same reaction to hitting a third inning home run in May, when 25,000 people stood and gave smattered applause, then I’d have a different reaction. But the postseason is great in large part because the stakes are so high, because the tension is palpable, and because we live and die on the results of every swing. The players should have the right to feel the same way.

Jose Bautista wasn’t showboating last night; he was celebrating. It was a moment that will live on in baseball history, and the inappropriate response would have been to pretend that it didn’t matter. It did matter to everyone in attendance, to everyone in the organization, to his teammates, and to Bautista himself. And when he did something truly great, pushing his team to victory in the biggest game of his life, we’re all better off celebrating with him.

If you can’t celebrate in that moment, then none of this is worth anything.
 
Did you write that? Great article either way and I agree, there's a fine line between celebrating and straight showboating but last night was an act of pure jubilation in my eyes more than intended disrespect.
 
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Jake Arrieta: NL Contact Manager Of The Year.

It would be an understatement to say that these are pretty heady days to be a Cubs’ fan. In the last two games of the NLDS alone, an age-24-or-under phenom who will be under team control for the next five years or so seemingly drilled a ball into the stands or onto a scoreboard every five minutes or so. The present is extremely bright, and the near-term future potential seems nearly limitless. At this point, it might be prudent to take a step back and pay a little respect to the player who made it all possible, whose incredible second half cemented the Cubs’ wild card spot and then propelled them past the Pirates in the wild card game, ace starter Jake Arrieta.

These Cubs have been built quickly, and have excelled in many talent procurement areas. Hitting on high-end position player draft picks? Check, thanks to the likes of Javier Baez, Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber. Attacking the international market? Check, thanks to NLDS wunderkind Jorge Soler. Don’t forget the trade market, either. Anthony Rizzo was stolen from the Padres, but the biggest theft of all was the acquisition of Arrieta, along with key bullpen cog Pedro Strop, from the Orioles for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger.

Like our AL Contact Manager of the Year, Marco Estrada, who turned 32 in July, Arrieta wins NL honors in the very first season in which he qualified for an ERA title, at a fairly advanced age (29). Unlike the Blue Jay righty, Arrieta excelled in every way a pitcher can be measured, by missing bats, minimizing free passes — you name it — and is a leading contender for NL Cy Young Award honors.

Neither Estrada (originally a sixth-round draft pick) nor Arrieta (a fifth rounder in 2007 out of TCU), were sure thing, top of the draft guys. While Estrada was a college performer who was short on raw tools, Arrieta was a little different. He was highly regarded enough to be drafted out of high school and junior college prior to signing with the Orioles, and likely would have been drafted much higher than the fifth round had the event been held in the fall of 2006. Arrieta oozed tools, but at times struggled to put it all together.

This trend continued through his minor league career. He was good, but not great, at his various minor league stops, posting a 36-28 record and 3.18 ERA while recording a 481/206 strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB) in 492 innings, and generally wasn’t among the younger pitchers at each level. Each year, I compile my own ordered minor league lists of top full-season-league position player and starting pitcher prospects based on performance and age relative to league and level. These basically serve as follow lists, with the orders then tweaked based on traditional scouting methods. While Arrieta’s tools were such that he made Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospect list, encompassing position players and pitchers, on two occasions, peaking at #67 prior to the 2009 season, he didn’t fare as well on my starting pitcher-specific list, qualifying twice and peaking at #54 after the 2009 season.

This marked him as a pitcher with promise, but not a bankable future star. His early major league performance was uneven, to put it mildly. Now, ERA has been proven to be a statistic with limited value, but this series of numbers — 4.66, 5.05, 6.20 and 7.23 — in that column of his record in his four seasons as an Oriole didn’t exactly breed confidence, and the upward trend wasn’t so promising, either. Kudos to the Cubs for flicking the switch seemingly immediately after the July 2013 trade; he has a 37-13, 2.26 record as a Cub.

How did he get it done this year? Let’s take a detailed look at his 2015 performance by examining his plate appearance frequency and production by ball-in-play (BIP) type data. First, the frequency information:


Plate Appearance Outcome Frequencies
Metrics % REL PCT
K 27.1% 133 91
BB 5.5% 71 27
POP 2.1% 66 25
FLY 20.7% 68 6
LD 21.0% 100 49
GB 56.2% 124 94
Before you even get to the batted balls, Arrieta sets a strong foundation with his exceptional K and BB rates. His 91 K rate percentile rank obviously sits near the top of the NL, and isn’t exactly a new thing for him. In fact, over fewer innings in 2014, his K rate percentile rank was actually higher, at 96. Well above league average control is something new for Arrieta, however. Prior to posting a 27 BB rate percentile rank in 2015, he posted BB rate percentile ranks of 90 and 95 in 2010 and 2011 for the Orioles, before improving into the league average range at 49 and 44 in 2012 and 2014. Commanding the baseball was job #1 for Arrieta on his road toward becoming an ace.

The eye-catching item among his BIP frequencies is clearly his grounder percentile rank of 94. This too was a major 2015 breakthrough. Prior to this season, he had been about a league average grounder generator, with his grounder percentile rank peaking at 70 in 2011 and bottoming at 30 the following season. His near league average liner rate (49 percentile rank) actually was also a positive development for Arrieta; in three of his four previous MLB seasons, he had posted a liner rate percentile rank of 66 or higher, maxing out at 96 in 2012.

A very strong frequency profile; lots of Ks, relatively few BBs, and tons of grounders. That builds in plenty of margin for error on batted ball authority. Let’s check out Arrieta’s production allowed by BIP type to see how he fared in that area in 2015:


Production Allowed by BIP Type
Outcomes AVG OBP SLG REL PRD ADJ PRD ACT ERA CALC ERA FIP TRU ERA
FLY 0.216 0.541 112 67
LD 0.527 0.783 62 87
GB 0.188 0.216 56 77
ALL BIP 0.259 0.379 61 73
ALL PA 0.184 0.229 0.270 49 57 1.77 1.93 2.35 2.24
The actual production allowed on each BIP type is indicated in the batting average (AVG) and slugging (SLG) columns, and is converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD (or Unadjusted Contact Score) column. That figure is then adjusted for context, such as home park, team defense, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD (or Adjusted Contact Score) column. For the purposes of this exercise, sacrifice hits (SH) and flies (SF) are included as outs and hit by pitchers (HBP) are excluded from the on-base percentage (OBP) calculation.

As with Estrada, this is immediately identifiable as an elite profile by the near total absence of numbers over 100, which indicate harder than league average BIP authority. Arrieta did allow higher than MLB average production on fly balls (.216 AVG-.541 SLG), for a 112 unadjusted fly ball Contact Score. This was largely due to some vulnerability in Wrigley’s soft spot in left center field; adjusted for context, Arrieta’s fly ball Contact Score plummets to 67. He allowed well below average production on both liners (62 Unadjusted Contact Score) and grounders (56), and despite somewhat significant contextual adjustments toward league average, his Adjusted Contact Scores on both liners and grounders remain excellent at 87 and 77. Those figures ranks second and first in the NL, respectively.

On all BIP, Arrieta’s combination of strong frequency and authority measures give him a 73 Adjusted Contact Score, best among NL ERA qualifiers, beating out his closest competitors, Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller and Tyson Ross. Without the contextual adjustments, Arrieta’s Unadjusted Contact Score would rank second behind Greinke, who allowed markedly louder authority on liners and grounders. Add back the Ks and BBs, and his “tru” ERA of 2.24 is right there in the mix with his actual ERA (1.77) and FIP (2.35).

How does Arrieta’s raw velocity allowed on each BIP type measure up with his NL peers? His average fly ball velocity allowed was 86.8 mph, over two standard deviations below the NL average, and second lowest among ERA qualifiers to Clayton Kershaw. His average liner velocity allowed was 89.6 mph, over two standard deviations below the NL average, and second lowest among ERA qualifiers to Francisco Liriano. His average grounder velocity allowed was 82.4 mph, over two standard deviations below the NL average, and lowest among ERA qualifiers. His overall BIP velocity allowed was 84.9 mph, over two standard deviations below the NL average, and tied for lowest among ERA qualifiers with Kershaw. Arrieta was the only 2015 ERA qualifier in either league to allow average velocities over two standard deviations below average across the board, in all BIP categories.

Where does Arrieta go from here? First, obviously to the NLCS, and then possibly the World Series. After that, his newfound status as an ace seems fairly secure for at least the intermediate future, barring injury. His excellence in a multitude of areas — bat-missing, free pass-minimizing, plus elite frequency and BIP authority profiles — means that attrition in any one area doesn’t materially damage the overall package. For my money, Kershaw and his 2.17 “tru” ERA in a few more innings would still get my Cy Young first place vote, but Arrieta is a very close second, and an eminently worthy recipient should he win the award. Right now, Cubs fans should take heart in the fact that he is sitting at home and will be on full rest for the NLCS, while every other surviving club needed to weather a Game 5 showdown.

Johnny Cueto Flips the Switch.

For the first time in more than two months, the Royals again saw the capital-J Johnny Cueto for whom they traded at the deadline, the capital-A Ace they needed to front their rotation following the departure of James Shields on their journey towards a second consecutive World Series appearance – this time with the hopes of capturing that final, elusive victory.

Cueto, when healthy, has been among the most consistently effective pitchers in baseball for the past half-decade. Though you can’t count on what his delivery may look like on any given pitch, you could always count on an ERA that began with a 2, which is precisely what the Royals acquired when they shipped Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb and Cody Reed to Cincinnati for the 29-year-old Dominican hurler in late July.

The guy they wanted was exactly the guy they got, until he wasn’t. After three initial Cueto-like performances in Royal blue, he gave up six earned runs to Boston. Then six to Baltimore, and four to Detroit, and five to the White Sox, and seven more to Baltimore.

Thoughts were, maybe Cueto was hurt. Or he was tipping his pitches. Or his catcher wasn’t setting up low enough in the zone. Or he was just running into some bad luck.

Fact is, no one outside the organization knew quite what was happening to Cueto. But that all feels like a distant memory after he shoved against the Astros on Wednesday night, allowing just two baserunners and striking out eight in eight dominant innings to clinch an ALCS berth.

Cueto’s average fastball, typically, sits around 93 mph. During the height of his struggles in Kansas City, it had dipped to 92. There were others factors to Cueto’s slump, certainly, but there’s usually a correlation between a drop in velocity and a drop in performance, and Cueto suffered both. Three weeks ago, Cueto’s average fastball dropped to 91. Two weeks ago, just in time for the playoffs, it had fallen to 90.

During Wednesday’s start against Houston, facing elimination, Cueto’s fastball sat at 93, touching 96. He came out throwing hard, and held it throughout the game. There wasn’t an obvious move on the rubber. His release point doesn’t appear to have changed. Just like Cueto’s early Kansas City struggles, there didn’t appear to be a clear explanation. So I went back and watched some film from the Twins game, when Cueto sat 90, and I rewatched some film from last night. Before we get into things, I’d like to just show you some first-inning fastballs.

At 87, to the leadoff hitter, two weeks ago:

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A two-seamer, at 86, to the next batter:

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A four-seamer, at 89, to that same batter:

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That was Cueto a couple weeks ago, throwing fastballs during a first inning in which he never touched 90. Now, fast-forward to last night. Three more fastballs, all from the first inning, all to George Springer. Pay attention to Cueto’s body, moreso than the pitch.

A four-seamer, at 93:

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A two-seamer, at 94:

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A two-seamer, at 94:

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Maybe I’m just seeing things, but the difference, to me, about jumped out of the screen. I’d prefer not to use the word “effort,” so instead, we’ll go with “conviction.” That’s a word pitching coaches like to use, so let’s use that. Another way of looking at this could be still images of Cueto’s follow-through, 10 frames after his release point:

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Cueto, last night, came out of the gates pitching with conviction. Cueto, during his struggles near the end of the season, didn’t appear, at least to the naked eye, to be pitching with conviction. That was my gut feeling as I began this last night. Then this morning, I read Jeff Passan’s column at Yahoo! Sports, which contained this nugget:

“…Cueto vowed, he was going to throw as hard as he could from the first pitch. No more first-inning procrastination, starting with fastballs at 91 and 89 and 90 and 91 and 90 miles per hour, like he had his last five starts. The Astros were going to see why the Royals traded for him. The Royals were going to see why they traded for him.”

Now, I’m not at all comfortable venturing a guess as to why Cueto may not have been pitching with conviction out of the gates in the regular season. I’m barely comfortable writing this post as it is. But the numbers back it up, the visuals back it up, and Passan’s column backs it up, so it’s there.

From August 21 to October 4, a nine-start stretch in which Cueto posted a 6.49 ERA for the Royals, his average fastball velocity, the first time through the order, was 91. The second time through the order, it was 92. By his third time through, he’d ramped it up to his normal speed of 93, so it’s not like Cueto had lost the ability to throw 93, he just hadn’t shown the ability to do so in the early innings. By the time he’d gotten to 93, he was often already trailing, or he’d been removed from the game before he’d allowed himself the opportunity to get there.

Last night, Cueto’s average first-inning fastball was 93. His second-inning fastball was 93. In the third, 94. In the fourth, 94. Cueto ensured that the Astros weren’t able to jump on him early, and held his dominance over the course of eight innings.

Beyond the fact that throwing harder is better, and pitching with conviction is better, there’s a potential residual effect that stuck out to me in this, as well. Yesterday, I wrote about how Clayton Kershaw dramatically changed his approach in his second start against the Mets, throwing a career-high number of sliders in Game 1 before ditching that strategy in Game 4. My idea, there, was that Kershaw could prevent the Mets from timing him up in his second start by giving them a wildly different look in the first.

This is the part where I point out that Cueto threw the Astros a season-low number of changeups in Game 1. Last night, he threw a similarly-low rate his first time through the order, while he hammered away with his revitalized fastball. Once he’d gotten the Astros geared up for 94 early, he returned to vintage-Cueto, throwing his lethal changeup late in counts with success. Three of Cueto’s eight strikeouts came on the changeup, and he used it to get four of his final six outs.

It got Springer for a swinging strikeout to end the third:

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It got Chris Carter swinging to end the fifth, the 10th consecutive batter he’d sat down:

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Colby Rasmus, swinging, in the seventh, for 15 in a row:

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Cueto established his fastball in the early, something he’d lately been unable to do, and it set up his changeup for the later innings. Of course, there was more to Cueto’s success last night than just throwing his fastball harder. There’s more pitching than just “conviction.” But, in the big picture, it kind of seems like Cueto decided to just come out and be better, as ridiculous as that sounds. Like he just flipped the proverbial switch.

It’s never that easy — if a guy could flip a switch and throw eight dominant innings every time, baseball wouldn’t be any fun. But Johnny Cueto looked like he flipped a switch last night, and turned back into the guy the Royals traded for. And if all it takes for Cueto to be that guy is to flip a switch, his regular-season struggles will quickly become a thing of the past.
 
Reminds me of this...which wasn't as bad as a bat flip...has this happened in an MLB game before? lol

Being up 6 and hitting a hit by a bunt...doesnt seem bush league to me imo
 
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I try and forget these "fights" but the closest I can remember is Coco charging Shields and them both throwing haymakers :lol:
 
Osh Kosh Bosh said:
Luckily for the rest of us Jose Bautista isnt interested in protecting you or Sam Dysons feelings.

You baseball people are unbelivbly soft. :lol:
Click to expand...

I'm not a baseball person. It's my least favorite sport. Out here puffing your chest because your country is relevant for the first time since the Expos left. **** outta here.
 
Man there's no such thing as showbowing in a game 7 (or 5 in a LDS). You make a great play you better celebrate. I was salty when Manny hit that walkoff against us and just stood there with his hands up but I was only mad because it happened to us.


On a related note, I recently watched game 7 of the 2002 world series. This dude Garret Anderson hit a bases-clearing double to take the lead and didn't even crack smile :lol:
 
Lmao Mexico got mad at Canada for bunting while up 6? Hahahaha what a joke. If I'm up 20, I'm still trying to add more runs... You know why? Because it's competition. Baseball is soo soft. Look at Sergio romo like he had a big part in that game. Foh
 
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