Successful Road Trip, Russell’s Deep Struggles, a Special Pitch Coming, and Other Bullets

April 26, 2018, by Brett Taylor Chicago Cubs

I’m chaperoning The Little Boy’s field trip to an ecological center this morning, which will be interesting and fun, especially because The Little Boy’s favorite thing to do is fall down on purpose. Gonna be a dirty kinda day.

Speaking of which, the Cubs haven’t found consistent footing yet this year, but the bright side isn’t hard to see. They’re still a game over .500, and took three of five on a road trip that sent them to Colorado and Cleveland, and where they played without Kris Bryant for three of those games. They also saw TWO starting pitchers reach the 7th inning for the first time this year, with Jon Lester last night actually recording outs in the 7th inning. It’s a minor miracle!
I feel pretty good, though I’ll feel a lot better when Bryant is back in there taking confident, comfortable, normal swings. The Cubs now get four at home against the first place Brewers, who are hot as all get-out, but who have primarily been beating lesser teams (not that there’s anything wrong with that – good teams are supposed to do that). Four-game series are tough to win, but if the Cubs can take three, I’m not sure there will be any looking back.
The Cubs come on home:

Wrigley Field: An oasis of green on the north side. pic.twitter.com/caXsDgcAf9

— Wrigley Aerials (@WrigleyAerials) April 25, 2018

Addison Russell’s results at the plate have been quite awful so far this year, but he’s putting on a positive face:

A. Russell, who went 0 for 4 with 2 K's, down to .205: "I have to keep working and just enjoy the process. I feel like I've been hitting the ball ok but I could do a better job with runners in scoring position."

— Jesse Rogers (@ESPNChiCubs) April 26, 2018

Russell is correct that he’s making a good amount of hard contact this year (he’s also not striking out a ton and is walking at a decent clip), but his soft contact is waaaaaay up, and I expect that is a lot of the reason for his depressed BABIP (.250) and microscopic ISO (.068). He’s also correct that his numbers are especially bad with runners in scoring position (.174/.296/.217), but they’re bad in all situations. It just looks like a case of not making enough quality contact so far. Why exactly is that happening? Well, that’s harder to say, since he looks fairly well-disciplined at the plate, and I’m not immediately seeing anything wrong with his swing. Instead, I can’t tell you how many times already this season I’ve been deceived by what I thought was a good barrel that actually proved to be nothing more than a routine, medium-depth fly ball.

Maybe it’s a thing, maybe it’s not a thing, but here are the numbers:

The Cubs have scored ten or more runs five times this year. If this score holds, they will be 0-5 and scored a total of seven runs in the games after.

— Desipio.com (@desipiodotcom) April 26, 2018

A great read from Patrick Mooney:

A behind-the-scenes look at Kyle Schwarber's World Series comeback: https://t.co/3mM9BAB32H

— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) April 25, 2018

Very special moment coming on Saturday:

This is for you @Cubs. See you on Saturday. So exciting! @MLB pic.twitter.com/QlZQJET9MV

— Haileys_hand (@haileys_hand) April 26, 2018

(If you’re unfamiliar with Hailey’s story.)
Oh, and about good teams beating bad teams:

The Dodgers lost, 8-6, to Miami. That game was wild. Clayton Kershaw was wilder. They’re 11-12. They lost a series to a team that was designed to lose. That’s not what you want.

— Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 26, 2018

This is truly incredible, and I hope he does very well:

This one is really fun.

We've selected LH Jonny Venters from Triple-A @DurhamBulls.

His last major league game was 2,028 days and 3.5 Tommy John surgeries ago. pic.twitter.com/IvgLMZMzJ4

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) April 25, 2018

That’s October of 2012 when he last pitched in the big leagues. Six years of having surgery, trying to come back, having surgery, trying again, having surgery, trying again, having surgery, and finally making it back. It just didn’t seem possible that this day would come.
It exists, and is a Deal of the Day: a universal remote that is a Harry Potter wand.
The NFL Draft begins today, which means Bears fans should be on The Ten-Yard Line, following on Twitter, and also give us a like on Facebook, please and thanks: