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Join the BN Watch Party for the Wild Card Game and Other Bullets

Brett Taylor Brett Taylor
Oct 02, 2015
Chicago Cubs

2015 mlb postseasonIt’s happening: Wednesday, October 7, the Cubs will play the Pirates for the Wild Card Game. If you’re looking for a place to watch the game among friends and fellow hardcore Cubs fans, then come to Mullen’s on Clark in Wrigleyville. I reached out to Mullen’s and they’re going to reserve us an area, though I’d encourage you to get there well in advance of the game if you want a spot. They’ve got good food and good beer – no, this is not an advertisement, I just really like the atmosphere there.

The game starts at 7pm CT, but I’ll be there at Mullen’s in the early afternoon. Please come join me. It’ll be an incredible day, and tons of fun. I can’t promise that I won’t make you hold me in the later innings if the game is close.

  • Jason Hammel finished his regular season with a nice five-inning outing yesterday in Cincinnati, and he acknowledges that he struggled in the second half “post-injury” (CSN). That injury, a hamstring issue back in July, seemed to have knocked Hammel’s mechanics out of whack for a while, though – as far as I’d seen – he’d never quite acknowledged before that it was an issue for him. It’s not an excuse for poor performance, mind you, but it is an explanation for why the performance shifted so markedly. If you view the entirety of his season, though, wouldn’t you take this: 3.74 ERA/3.68 FIP/3.48 xFIP over 170.2 innings, with a 2.4 WAR for $10 million? Hopefully he comes out of the offseason 100%, is back to the guy he can be, and is a big part of the Cubs’ rotation again next year. It remains an open question just how he’ll be used in the postseason, should the Cubs go far enough to require his services.
  • Another public vote for Jake Arrieta as Cy Young, courtesy of Joe Posnanski. The edge for Arrieta comes from how well he’s pitched away from home, since the Dodgers’ starters have a more pitcher-friendly home park.
  • Sahadev Sharma writes a long, deeply interesting take on Arrieta and pitch counts and pitcher injury and all kinds of good stuff.
  • Another great read on Javier Baez. Such an impressive young man. So easy to root for.
  • If you missed it last evening, Brandon Phillips did something silly, and Michael looked at a deluge of Cubs content at FanGraphs this week.
  • Great context from Tom Tango on evaluating pitcher performance.
  • It’s silly, but it’s fun: a quiz on which Cubs player you are. I got Anthony Rizzo, presumably because I am so tall, strong, and handsome.
  • Boom, Yost’d. Er, um, actually, this article is effusive in its praise for a manager who leads a team that, apparently, could not possibly be winning in spite of his questionable in-game management because of its overwhelming talent.
  • Yup:

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    written by

    Brett Taylor

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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