Please god. Not again
KB with 3 strikeouts....Offense off to a great start again tonight. No-hit thru 5 innings.
I'm very much done with Joe Maddon:
Jordan Bastian
@MLBastian
Maddon said his reason for Holland vs. Wieters was that they wanted the Cardinals catcher to hit righty (86 wRC+ and .250 OBP). Also said Holland is working on some things for facing RHH and the Cubs need to get him out there on occasion in those situations.
10:04 PM · Aug 1, 2019·TweetDeck
This is on the heels of this quote:
Jesse Rogers
@ESPNChiCubs
Joe Maddon says the time has come and gone in the season to play guys for developmental purposes: “It’s big boy time.”
Wow... I'm sure Joe already has a realtor and movers lined up because as we've discussed here before even winning the whole f'ing thing this year may not be enough to keep him here one way or another. That's just a dumb thing for him to say though. Ryan only threw 5 pitches the night before and before that his last outing was on 7/28 so not like he couldn't have brought him in that situation instead. Righties are hitting .220 off Ryan but .291 against Holland so holy crap Joe why would you use that as your reasoning if you wanted to bring in a lefty to turn him around? He also had most of his best right handed relievers available.
Regardless the offense once again sucked last night so it really doesn't matter because they weren't going to win that game with 1 GD hit anyways. But the strategy is still frustrating to hear him say that.
I completely agree that the Wieters homerun is totally inconsequential to the result, but that quote just shows so much to me about why Maddon has to go. I'm just sick of his over-thought, existential bull**** and I'm ready to have someone who is capable of tapping into these guys potential.
Yeah, I will always like Joe because of 2016 because that was the most entertaining season of Cubs baseball I have ever watched. I probably watched more games that season than any I can recall. He's had a successful career managing but it is getting obvious that this team has stalled out from a development standpoint under him now and a new perspective and voice in the clubhouse may be needed. I am a little worried though about who the front office might be targeting as everyone seems to think its Girardi. I'm not completely sold on him as a manager, it's not too hard to win a World Series with the Yankees when you usually have the highest payroll in baseball. I don't know who would be a good fit with this group, I'd love to see David Ross manage some day but not sure if now is the right time but it does seem to be a trendy thing for clubs to hire former players with no prior manager experience lately too.
They won't hire Girardi, it will be somebody who will just run out the lineups the front offices gives them each day. I'm more concerned about the front office. Theo's stated goal of turning the Cubs into a player development machine has not come close to coming true, the minor league pipeline is extremely barren now. The pitching development in particular has been horrible. We just flipped a first and second round pick to get 2 months of a platoon OF, that's a problem either with scouting or player development or both. We're burning prospects for rentals year after year now because we don't have any MLB difference makers anywhere close to the majors. You also can look at the four high first rounders around Kris Bryant (Almora, Schwarber and Happ) and it's a startling lack of production from top ten picks.