When Thom Brennaman sat in the Reds broadcast booth in April and muttered “Enough already,” into the microphone, he had probably forgotten for a moment that he was on the air and his words would hang above the Cubs season for months to come. His private frustration was vocalized, and it’s captured the general sentiment […]
Tag: Kyle Hendricks
The 2016 Starting Rotation is Historically Good
When the Cubs picked up John Lackey during the offseason, the starting rotation finally felt like that of a team vying for a championship. The top two were never a question—Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester were always going to be the 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation. But following those two up with […]
Game 131 Recap: Cubs 3 Pirates 0
Feels good, huh? Extra-inning games—like the one the Cubs won last night—are fun to return to, in heady delight, the morning after, and certainly a thrill in the moment of their denouements, but they can be a bit of an emotional drain as they’re experienced. At a certain point, you just want to get to bed. Which […]
Cubs’ Unlikely Duo Dishing Up the Fun
“Don’t ever permit the pressure to exceed the pleasure.” It’s a famous Maddon-ism designed to keep players loose. With their 17-4 record this month and a cushy division lead, the boys in blue don’t seem to need the reminder. But some fans out there (you know who you are), definitely do. The dog days aren’t […]
Game 115 Recap: Cardinals 8 Cubs 4
Winning streaks are fun trivia, but not worth getting upset about when they come to an end. Had the Cubs pushed their streak to twelve games today, they would have been no more well positioned to win the division and succeed in the playoffs than they are right now after dropping this afternoon’s game to […]
Game 110 Recap: Cubs 3 Athletics 1
Like a wasted youth that is recaptured later in life and made up for, the Cubs let several chances go by them in the first half of today’s game, only to ultimately push across three runs and complete their tenth sweep of the season. They won almost with a yawn and a dismissive flip of […]
Game 105 Recap: Cubs 5 Marlins 0
Some days, baseball takes it easy. Yesterday was not one of those days—but if you read the recap we published here, or watched the game, you know that already. Tonight was, though. The Cubs charged out to an early lead, scoring two in the first off of Marlins sacrificial lamb starting pitcher Adam Conley, and never really […]
SKILL, NOT LUCK: KYLE HENDRICKS EDITION
When the idea was posed by the BP-Wrigleyville staff to break down the luck/skill quotient of each of the Cubs’ five members of the starting staff, I immediately volunteered for Kyle Hendricks. It seemed like a great idea at the time: after all, I’ve already written extensively about Hendricks this season, so it should have been a breeze… or so I […]
Thinking Probabilistically About Sonny Gray, Stephen Piscotty, Kris Bryant, and Kyle Hendricks
In the last 10 days, I’ve run a pair of Twitter polls. In the first, which I ran on May 22, I asked followers who they would rather have, Kris Bryant or Stephen Piscotty. My follower sample will totally skew the results, but: Who would you rather have? — Matthew Trueblood (@MATrueblood) May 22, 2016 […]
The Unheralded Professor Defies Perception Again and Again
Perception is a powerful thing. It’s a tool we all use every day, without really knowing it or understanding how it guides our path through life. It can help us—when it directs us to an answer we couldn’t quite consciously articulate without it—or it can harm us, when it forbids us from breaking free of our […]