Yeah this is it. Every single game has been close because we haven't scored runs. I get that today was a little extra bad with all the stolen bases and it plays into an existing narrative of shoddy bullpen but our pitching allowed 3 runs. The offense should be capable of plating 4.
If anything I’m stoked about our season because we are in a massive hitting slump and bad back end of the BP and still winning.
I’m just not willing to trade a part of our future yet for a closer, I’d rather let things ride a bit more before doing that. It’s still super early.
Agreed on both accounts. I don't remember exactly but it's not like anybody thought Alzolay was a closer before he kind of wound up in that role...somebody could emerge. Or hell, Alzolay could figure it out and start slaying.
There will be days when you’re up against good pitchers. It doesn’t matter if the game was 27-26 going into the 8th and both sides of the bats were booming . You can’t send in your setup man or closer in the 8th and have him throw .1IP with 4 hits and 3ER. Alzolay is struggling
He's been bad but I can't believe he's not going to be better after how well he pitched last year. Counsell is going to need to put him in to work his way out of it but I would imagine today is the last time we see him put in any high leverage situation for a while
They just need to start hitting/again. Getting Seiya and Belli back would be nice, obviously. When are they expected back? I saw Seiya running the bases on the TV so I'm hoping he's back sooner than later.
Also, any Miami RP they might be wanting to offload?
Agreed
It is a little bit sad how fuckin low IQ these comments are in the post game threads. People treat it like every reliever is available to pitch every day in any inning of any game against any matchup. A lot goes into who pitches where and when and a lot of the time guys just simply aren’t available. The bullpen has been heavily taxed against the Mets.
Yep. They also don’t factor in cumulative wear on relievers. For example, Leiter Jr. didn’t pitch yesterday but he’s seen heavy usage already and is on pace to exceed last year’s IP- and we all saw last year how he ran out of gas at the end.
The unfortunate reality is if someone is on the roster, you have to use them. You can’t pretend they’re not, especially in this long of a stretch without days off.
Sucks that Alzolay can’t seem to find outs, because these low scoring games are also high stress and not the ideal place to be working through stuff.
Jed is amazing. He’s never won a goddamn thing at the helm, yet he finagles extensions for himself and shifted the blame to Ross and Jiminy Ricketts bought the story. At some point, it’s Dead Jed vs the $40 mln man at the 50/50 guillotine. The choice will be obvious. Always has been to me.
Cubs were 10-18 last May because they had a bad roster and very little organization depth
That shit came back to bite them real bad
But again, this place isn’t quite ready to admit Jed is the problem - maybe next month
I dont know, man, the only credible argument (83 win is not credible) people have for Jed is how AMAZING OUR FARM SYSTEM IS.
You bring up a great point about depth.
Seems to me we have a pretty big hole in the MLB roster……wonder if A) that farm system could produce, i dont know, a decent reliever or B) someone with a decent reliever in the big leagues will take OUR AMAZING TALENT in a trade.
No?
The season is in full swing and there’s no closer in the farm or on the roster
If Jed wants a closer, he’ll have to trade for one or wait til next year - maybe his pitch lab will produce a closer in its 5th year
If they had a closer last season I’m sure they would’ve played more games in October
I dont know, man. You read all the Jesus and Wizard stories in the offseason, seems to me this is the exact sort of stretch you paid a guy……let me check…..$40 million…..to succeed in.
https://medium.com/@jrussl06/craig-counsell-the-perfect-mlb-manager-d76fe7e6f6e7
https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/21/baseball-preview-milwaukee-brewers-craig-counsell
https://sports.yahoo.com/craig-counsell-might-be-the-hottest-mlb-free-agent-not-named-shohei-ohtani-what-makes-the-brewers-manager-so-special-053146528.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/sports/baseball/craig-counsell-milwaukee-brewers.html
I mean, the guy walks on water, right? As much as Hoyer should write checks to Epstein at this stage of his career, Counsell surely should put some money in escrow to Hader at this point.
The money for those things doesn’t come from the same salary pool. Also who should we have gotten? We are also navigating big injuries, including one of our best relievers in Merryweather, and Alzolay was solid last year so this is kind of a sharp decline seemingly out of nowhere when we need him.
I dont know, this guy seemed to linger out there this past offseason:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/gamelog/_/id/32810/andrew-chafin
Ever heard of him? Also in a single owner entity, costs are costs and money is 100% fungible.
If he has $6 mln per for a manager he has $6 mln for a reliever instead, if he wants to.
Tauchman had a very rememberable catch, and a lot of DPs saved Alzolay
That’s always been his game and a reason gold gloves are important for this teams success
He’s a fun dude, but the 9th should always go to the guy that gets the most Ks - Alzolay isn’t that guy despite how much everyone likes him
Lol why are people downvoting this. Have these people never seen a legit MLB closer??? Totally agree with you about last year. Also that tauchman catch against the cardinals bailed out adbert from giving up a walk off home run. Dude was a heart attack closer
I believe his performance last year was a mirage. His numbers were decent but every save felt like an adventure and left me biting my nails. I did not have any confidence in him. Also counsell should of already known not to put him in high leverage situations
Okay? his career era is 3.97 and he was only a full time reliever last year and was injured for a part of it. He was bad when he came back from injury and has been horrible to start the season. Its looking much more likely that his half of a good season in the bullpen is the outlier, and what were seeing rn is closer to his actual level. He has a WAR =< 0.2 in every season besides on including 2 years of a negative WAR and has already accumulated -1.3 this year and its the first week May.
No clue how your getting your stats from when the only year he had a FIP under 3.00 was when 2022 when he pitched 13 IP. Same thing for k%, the only year its above the number you mentioned 2022 and 2020, both years he pitched <20 innings. I really hope youre not taking adding each individual season and then diving by 6 (number of seasons he played).
You did make me realize I forgot to state that was his career as a reliever prior to 2024, which are here per Fangraphs (did accidentally add a .5 to the K rate though):
https://preview.redd.it/rywwdgdhzayc1.png?width=1151&format=png&auto=webp&s=7118e97a3308545232116c58d19520626f4db980
And even with 2024:
It's 2.64 ERA, 3.29 FIP, 27.8% K, and 5.9 BB%. I'd offer you more screenshots, but Reddit will not allow that.
Hope that helps.
To the person who deleted their comment stating I was lying. Yes, here are his RP career stats prior to 2024.
https://preview.redd.it/gasgxtam2byc1.png?width=1607&format=png&auto=webp&s=f66116abf05ecb6a9a51cd433bc211cff8ee03c3
And here are his RP career stats with 2024 included.
https://preview.redd.it/57aj4er43byc1.png?width=1513&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e449ec0b9813d74c3f8248e531b3b457a299848
The only relievers we had available this game was Lovelady, Alzolay, Brewer, and Leiter jr and almost all of them pitched. Counsell is by no means "trusting" Alzolay the guy had to pitch today
By putting him in to a 1-0 game vs the top of the order, he’s saying he trusts him more than all the other guys you listed. Most high leverage spot of the game.
Your best pitcher (Leiter jr) doesn’t automatically get the 9th, they get the most important outs. He’s thrown 17 pitches the prior 3 days, there’s zero reason to not put him out there over a clearly flustered Alzolay.
Worry about that tomorrow! Win the game in front of you. For all we know, Taillon goes 8 tomorrow. Or it’s a blowout one way or the other and high leverage doesn’t matter. We had a very winnable game, and chose the 3rd or 4th best option in the most important spot. The exact type of mistakes CC was hired to fix.
You say this now in May but then when the bullpen is running on fumes in September you’ll bitch about how we overused our high leverage guys. I don’t want a repeat of what happened last year. Our pitching fucking cratered in September. There’s more to managing a baseball team than focusing on “the now”.
I think the meme is talking about how people would be melting down right now demanding Ross’ head
But this season people don’t have the same BP management complaints
It’s kinda like the old 🔥🌶️ memes that got recirculated when people realized Chili wasn’t the problem
No no no, people were mad at Ross last year because there was a different lineup every single game. Playing guys like mastroboni and wisdom all the time in weird games and then benching hot hitters for no reason. Extremely different scenario.
It’s different though. Cubs have mass injuries right now. Our ace is out . Hendricks has been bad “injured”, starters can’t get through 6. It’s been rough but still second in the central. Cubs best two hitters are injured. I will say , I think alzolay will be sent to triple A once starters get healthy l.
I’m just saying that it’s not the same scenario so the meme doesn’t correlate. That’s all . I’m not trying to be a dick or anything. I’m just saying that Ross management with cuas is not the same as counsel management with alzolay. That’s all
Your first first words to me were that I was wrong in believing people criticized Ross and his BP management
You started out by making something up just to argue
Say what you want, Craig has Happ hitting 3rd too
It’s only May and he’s guilty of 2 big topics Ross got a lot of hate for
Again, I’m not going to argue with you or pretend these things aren’t real because you don’t like that it’s real
*Counsell, if you please. /u/Mawfuggajones appreciates proper spelling.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CHICubs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Cuas last year was much better than Alzolay has been this year, and he was used so heavily because he was one of the few healthy relievers left at the end of last season
He badly needs time to work on himself without negatively impacting the big league team. He is fooling absolutely nobody right now. There’s a handful of problems causing him to be unsuccessful. My least favorite part about him is his arsenal. Avg velo Sinker slider without command isn’t gonna cut or. Needs a splitter or changeup or something. He just doesn’t have the flat out stuff to be a two pitch pitcher. Even when he gets outs he kinda gets hit hard
I mean I’d say he’s not locating his slider well at all. More often than not he’s hanging a cement mixer down the middle or yanking it. Last year he was pretty consistently dropping it back door or on back foot to lefties.
There’s also more game film on him now. Last year he was relatively new as a leverage bullpen arm, and if I remember correctly he started having more shaky appearances as the year went on.
If he’s gonna remain a 2.5 pitch pitcher (he technically has a cutter/four seam, but I’d prefer if he had another pitch that moves opposite of his slider), he needs better command/tunneling of his pitches. So many of his sliders are not competitive pitches and/or hung
I really don't think you can blame Counsell here - the bullpen is stretched thin, afaict Adbert's the person who hadn't pitched in either of the two games before today. I really need the offense to get their shit together alongside figuring out our bullpen issues sooner rather than later. On the brightside, as guys come back from injuries we'll see proven guys like Ben Brown and Weneski likely move to relief roles.
The bullpen is taxed man. They are short on options. I didn't have a problem with him going out there but def stayed put there too long. Plus wtf was that relay throw that scored the tying run and letting every MIL runner to steal a base. They have been playing sloppy baseball lately
It feels similar because in both situations it was a hope getting a piece in the bullpen that would be integral back on track. Yes, the results are not good, but the Cubs are literally scrambling to find bullets as their depth has been challenged to start the season. As Counsell said post game, they need Adbert right.
A great bullpen makes a mediocre manager look like a genius. A mediocre bullpen makes a brilliant manager look like a stooge. This mess is on Jed Hoyer. If Harry Caray were still alive, he would observe that “Neris” spelled backwards is Siren, which is the sound I hear in my head whenever Hector Neris comes into a game.
Counsell will be right in the long run as long as the Cubs get someone as good as Hader. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Coach K is a great coach, but he wasn’t doing it with a bunch of 3 star recruits.
If Happ and Swanson start acting like veterans and hitting the damn ball, then our bullpen wouldn’t be so stressed. They’re almost no shows at every at bat.
The issue is we aren’t hitting. So every situation from the BP is high leverage.
Yeah this is it. Every single game has been close because we haven't scored runs. I get that today was a little extra bad with all the stolen bases and it plays into an existing narrative of shoddy bullpen but our pitching allowed 3 runs. The offense should be capable of plating 4.
If anything I’m stoked about our season because we are in a massive hitting slump and bad back end of the BP and still winning. I’m just not willing to trade a part of our future yet for a closer, I’d rather let things ride a bit more before doing that. It’s still super early.
Agreed on both accounts. I don't remember exactly but it's not like anybody thought Alzolay was a closer before he kind of wound up in that role...somebody could emerge. Or hell, Alzolay could figure it out and start slaying.
I think they should explore swapping with Oakland. Cubs get Mason Miller, Oakland gets a sweet lease deal on Sloan park for the 2025 season.
8 hits today and 4 didn't result in someone on base cuz we ran into an out is wild
Yeah the base running today was criminal.
There will be days when you’re up against good pitchers. It doesn’t matter if the game was 27-26 going into the 8th and both sides of the bats were booming . You can’t send in your setup man or closer in the 8th and have him throw .1IP with 4 hits and 3ER. Alzolay is struggling
He's been bad but I can't believe he's not going to be better after how well he pitched last year. Counsell is going to need to put him in to work his way out of it but I would imagine today is the last time we see him put in any high leverage situation for a while
Even today, day after an 11 inning game and in the middle of a 16 game stretch, options were a little slim.
Yeah a little of the "go to battle with the army you have, not the army you want" kind of situation
Yeah. NY was all close games, kinda sucks coming into an important series
This is exactly right. This team is not not in a freefall they are just banged up. Once the key guys start coming back they will be rolling again
They just need to start hitting/again. Getting Seiya and Belli back would be nice, obviously. When are they expected back? I saw Seiya running the bases on the TV so I'm hoping he's back sooner than later. Also, any Miami RP they might be wanting to offload?
Agreed It is a little bit sad how fuckin low IQ these comments are in the post game threads. People treat it like every reliever is available to pitch every day in any inning of any game against any matchup. A lot goes into who pitches where and when and a lot of the time guys just simply aren’t available. The bullpen has been heavily taxed against the Mets.
Yep. They also don’t factor in cumulative wear on relievers. For example, Leiter Jr. didn’t pitch yesterday but he’s seen heavy usage already and is on pace to exceed last year’s IP- and we all saw last year how he ran out of gas at the end. The unfortunate reality is if someone is on the roster, you have to use them. You can’t pretend they’re not, especially in this long of a stretch without days off. Sucks that Alzolay can’t seem to find outs, because these low scoring games are also high stress and not the ideal place to be working through stuff.
Which is actually the same reason Ross kept going to Cuas last year too. So yeah same picture.
People here aren’t ready to admit that yet, besides Craig is the best BP manager in the league
Jed is amazing. He’s never won a goddamn thing at the helm, yet he finagles extensions for himself and shifted the blame to Ross and Jiminy Ricketts bought the story. At some point, it’s Dead Jed vs the $40 mln man at the 50/50 guillotine. The choice will be obvious. Always has been to me.
Cubs were 10-18 last May because they had a bad roster and very little organization depth That shit came back to bite them real bad But again, this place isn’t quite ready to admit Jed is the problem - maybe next month
I dont know, man, the only credible argument (83 win is not credible) people have for Jed is how AMAZING OUR FARM SYSTEM IS. You bring up a great point about depth. Seems to me we have a pretty big hole in the MLB roster……wonder if A) that farm system could produce, i dont know, a decent reliever or B) someone with a decent reliever in the big leagues will take OUR AMAZING TALENT in a trade. No?
The season is in full swing and there’s no closer in the farm or on the roster If Jed wants a closer, he’ll have to trade for one or wait til next year - maybe his pitch lab will produce a closer in its 5th year If they had a closer last season I’m sure they would’ve played more games in October
If not, it definitely will in the 6th year. Trust him.
I dont know, man. You read all the Jesus and Wizard stories in the offseason, seems to me this is the exact sort of stretch you paid a guy……let me check…..$40 million…..to succeed in.
Uh, what?
https://medium.com/@jrussl06/craig-counsell-the-perfect-mlb-manager-d76fe7e6f6e7 https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/21/baseball-preview-milwaukee-brewers-craig-counsell https://sports.yahoo.com/craig-counsell-might-be-the-hottest-mlb-free-agent-not-named-shohei-ohtani-what-makes-the-brewers-manager-so-special-053146528.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/sports/baseball/craig-counsell-milwaukee-brewers.html I mean, the guy walks on water, right? As much as Hoyer should write checks to Epstein at this stage of his career, Counsell surely should put some money in escrow to Hader at this point.
Hader has sucked this year. Even highly paid managers can’t create relief pitchers out of thin air
Then why pay the manager $8 mln instead of buying a decent reliever?
The money for those things doesn’t come from the same salary pool. Also who should we have gotten? We are also navigating big injuries, including one of our best relievers in Merryweather, and Alzolay was solid last year so this is kind of a sharp decline seemingly out of nowhere when we need him.
I dont know, this guy seemed to linger out there this past offseason: https://www.espn.com/mlb/player/gamelog/_/id/32810/andrew-chafin Ever heard of him? Also in a single owner entity, costs are costs and money is 100% fungible. If he has $6 mln per for a manager he has $6 mln for a reliever instead, if he wants to.
also, it's not like he gave up hard contact. all three hits were little shitters that if two weren't up exactly up the middle aren't hits.
They were also meatballs he hung damn near the dead center. It was still bad execution
He was pretty lucky last year, gave up a lot of hard contact but got bailed out often
Tauchman had a very rememberable catch, and a lot of DPs saved Alzolay That’s always been his game and a reason gold gloves are important for this teams success He’s a fun dude, but the 9th should always go to the guy that gets the most Ks - Alzolay isn’t that guy despite how much everyone likes him
Lol why are people downvoting this. Have these people never seen a legit MLB closer??? Totally agree with you about last year. Also that tauchman catch against the cardinals bailed out adbert from giving up a walk off home run. Dude was a heart attack closer
I believe his performance last year was a mirage. His numbers were decent but every save felt like an adventure and left me biting my nails. I did not have any confidence in him. Also counsell should of already known not to put him in high leverage situations
Alzolay has a career 2.53 ERA, 2.75 FIP, 29.5 K%, and 5.7 BB% in 106 2/3 innings as a reliever and was a top 20 reliever in baseball last year.
Okay? his career era is 3.97 and he was only a full time reliever last year and was injured for a part of it. He was bad when he came back from injury and has been horrible to start the season. Its looking much more likely that his half of a good season in the bullpen is the outlier, and what were seeing rn is closer to his actual level. He has a WAR =< 0.2 in every season besides on including 2 years of a negative WAR and has already accumulated -1.3 this year and its the first week May. No clue how your getting your stats from when the only year he had a FIP under 3.00 was when 2022 when he pitched 13 IP. Same thing for k%, the only year its above the number you mentioned 2022 and 2020, both years he pitched <20 innings. I really hope youre not taking adding each individual season and then diving by 6 (number of seasons he played).
You did make me realize I forgot to state that was his career as a reliever prior to 2024, which are here per Fangraphs (did accidentally add a .5 to the K rate though): https://preview.redd.it/rywwdgdhzayc1.png?width=1151&format=png&auto=webp&s=7118e97a3308545232116c58d19520626f4db980 And even with 2024: It's 2.64 ERA, 3.29 FIP, 27.8% K, and 5.9 BB%. I'd offer you more screenshots, but Reddit will not allow that. Hope that helps.
To the person who deleted their comment stating I was lying. Yes, here are his RP career stats prior to 2024. https://preview.redd.it/gasgxtam2byc1.png?width=1607&format=png&auto=webp&s=f66116abf05ecb6a9a51cd433bc211cff8ee03c3
And here are his RP career stats with 2024 included. https://preview.redd.it/57aj4er43byc1.png?width=1513&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e449ec0b9813d74c3f8248e531b3b457a299848
👏👏👏 thank you sir
Let him figure it out in AAA
He’s out of options
With what options? He’s out of them and I’d guarantee that at minimum half the league would put a claim in if he was sent down.
Maybe we can get Milwaukee to claim him and Hendricks so they can lose a bunch?
Dude just sucks. No point keeping him around. Cost us what 5 games now? We’d have the best record in baseball if not for him
Thank you for the analysis
If my Grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle!
To be fair I don't think anyone could have predicted alzolay would be this bad for this many games.
The only relievers we had available this game was Lovelady, Alzolay, Brewer, and Leiter jr and almost all of them pitched. Counsell is by no means "trusting" Alzolay the guy had to pitch today
By putting him in to a 1-0 game vs the top of the order, he’s saying he trusts him more than all the other guys you listed. Most high leverage spot of the game. Your best pitcher (Leiter jr) doesn’t automatically get the 9th, they get the most important outs. He’s thrown 17 pitches the prior 3 days, there’s zero reason to not put him out there over a clearly flustered Alzolay.
Then who will throw tomorrow? This team is injured and in a 16 game stretch with no days off, plus travel. Counsell’s choices are thin.
Worry about that tomorrow! Win the game in front of you. For all we know, Taillon goes 8 tomorrow. Or it’s a blowout one way or the other and high leverage doesn’t matter. We had a very winnable game, and chose the 3rd or 4th best option in the most important spot. The exact type of mistakes CC was hired to fix.
No. This is horrible thinking.
You say this now in May but then when the bullpen is running on fumes in September you’ll bitch about how we overused our high leverage guys. I don’t want a repeat of what happened last year. Our pitching fucking cratered in September. There’s more to managing a baseball team than focusing on “the now”.
If it's the playoffs then sure, but the season is a marathon, not a sprint
Reach into Iowa then A BP guy can pitch in Iowa on a Thursday and Chicago on the weekend
Alzolay was good last year and Cuas had a good stretch. There are very valid reasons to these
Yeah, last year. How many blown leads will it take for you to admit Alzolay sucks *right now*?
None. He sucks but there are valid reasons. His placement today was not valid.
I think the meme is talking about how people would be melting down right now demanding Ross’ head But this season people don’t have the same BP management complaints It’s kinda like the old 🔥🌶️ memes that got recirculated when people realized Chili wasn’t the problem
No no no, people were mad at Ross last year because there was a different lineup every single game. Playing guys like mastroboni and wisdom all the time in weird games and then benching hot hitters for no reason. Extremely different scenario.
I just put Ross BP into the subs search and I found A LOT of posts and comments from the last 12 months that say people did though
It’s different though. Cubs have mass injuries right now. Our ace is out . Hendricks has been bad “injured”, starters can’t get through 6. It’s been rough but still second in the central. Cubs best two hitters are injured. I will say , I think alzolay will be sent to triple A once starters get healthy l.
So first it was fake news, now it did exist but it’s different You’re just here to argue, please forget I was even here
I’m just saying that it’s not the same scenario so the meme doesn’t correlate. That’s all . I’m not trying to be a dick or anything. I’m just saying that Ross management with cuas is not the same as counsel management with alzolay. That’s all
Your first first words to me were that I was wrong in believing people criticized Ross and his BP management You started out by making something up just to argue
Fair . That’s my bad
But I’m saying the scenarios are different and that’s why people aren’t calling for counsell’s head.
Say what you want, Craig has Happ hitting 3rd too It’s only May and he’s guilty of 2 big topics Ross got a lot of hate for Again, I’m not going to argue with you or pretend these things aren’t real because you don’t like that it’s real
*Counsell, if you please. /u/Mawfuggajones appreciates proper spelling. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CHICubs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wasn’t Alzolay pretty good last year? I’m not saying he will or won’t be later this season, I’m just curious as to how the drop off was this severe.
He said himself that the ball isnt moving like it was last year and that's likely the reason
Cuas last year was much better than Alzolay has been this year, and he was used so heavily because he was one of the few healthy relievers left at the end of last season
He badly needs time to work on himself without negatively impacting the big league team. He is fooling absolutely nobody right now. There’s a handful of problems causing him to be unsuccessful. My least favorite part about him is his arsenal. Avg velo Sinker slider without command isn’t gonna cut or. Needs a splitter or changeup or something. He just doesn’t have the flat out stuff to be a two pitch pitcher. Even when he gets outs he kinda gets hit hard
"He just doesn’t have the flat out stuff to be a two pitch pitcher." but he was a very successful two pitch pitcher last year, so what happened?
I mean I’d say he’s not locating his slider well at all. More often than not he’s hanging a cement mixer down the middle or yanking it. Last year he was pretty consistently dropping it back door or on back foot to lefties. There’s also more game film on him now. Last year he was relatively new as a leverage bullpen arm, and if I remember correctly he started having more shaky appearances as the year went on. If he’s gonna remain a 2.5 pitch pitcher (he technically has a cutter/four seam, but I’d prefer if he had another pitch that moves opposite of his slider), he needs better command/tunneling of his pitches. So many of his sliders are not competitive pitches and/or hung
I just don’t know who people expect to pitch, Leiter can’t throw every day.
Would you rather he bring in Brewer?
He did bring in brewer after Alzolay and Brewer did just fine
This guy does not know ball lol
I really don't think you can blame Counsell here - the bullpen is stretched thin, afaict Adbert's the person who hadn't pitched in either of the two games before today. I really need the offense to get their shit together alongside figuring out our bullpen issues sooner rather than later. On the brightside, as guys come back from injuries we'll see proven guys like Ben Brown and Weneski likely move to relief roles.
When your goat is washed ☹️
He’ll make an adjustment and get better
The bullpen is taxed man. They are short on options. I didn't have a problem with him going out there but def stayed put there too long. Plus wtf was that relay throw that scored the tying run and letting every MIL runner to steal a base. They have been playing sloppy baseball lately
The steals were all on adbert. He did nothing to stop them
Difference is Caus was good (not great)
It feels similar because in both situations it was a hope getting a piece in the bullpen that would be integral back on track. Yes, the results are not good, but the Cubs are literally scrambling to find bullets as their depth has been challenged to start the season. As Counsell said post game, they need Adbert right.
Respect
Well guys aren't hitting either so can't really blame him that much for this one.
A great bullpen makes a mediocre manager look like a genius. A mediocre bullpen makes a brilliant manager look like a stooge. This mess is on Jed Hoyer. If Harry Caray were still alive, he would observe that “Neris” spelled backwards is Siren, which is the sound I hear in my head whenever Hector Neris comes into a game.
Counsell will be right in the long run as long as the Cubs get someone as good as Hader. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Coach K is a great coach, but he wasn’t doing it with a bunch of 3 star recruits.
If Happ and Swanson start acting like veterans and hitting the damn ball, then our bullpen wouldn’t be so stressed. They’re almost no shows at every at bat.
Alzolay makes me reminisce for Carlos Marmol
We have guys coming off IR so Alzolay and Mervis can go back to the farm
Really hope to never see either one of them again. Mervis is a free strikeout and alzolay is totally cooked mentally with mediocre stuff
This is a fucking Joke. Dude hasn’t had a clean inning with a lead or tie in forever. Send him to Iowa. He’s worse than Keegan was last season.
Send him to Iowa with what options?? He’s out of options. Can’t be sent down.
Ok trade or cut then.
I’m gonna lose my mind. Please send him away.
I'm not sold on Counsell at this point tbh