Being Angry, Without More, Doesn’t Make You Better at Baseball and Other Bullets

Jun 25, 2018

The Little Boy seems to be just fine after yesterday’s lost battle with a desk corner. He was a pro getting stitches, and I’m just relieved it wasn’t much worse. As a parent, you see all that blood – holy crap the head bleeds a lot – and it’s impossible for it not to stick with you. We handled it all right in the moment, but I’m still feeling that pit-of-the-stomach thing every time I picture him walking into my view with his injury. Hard to shake.

Wisdom from the players – Javy Baez put it best after the Cubs were swept by the Reds (ESPN): “It hurts. We do get mad, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t make you better. It gets everything out of you, but you still have to make adjustments.” Perfect. So the next time you see some joker upset that the Cubs are laughing and playing around an hour after a bad loss, tell them to not be an idiot. Of course the Cubs were mad to lose. But carry that anger forward doesn’t make them any better at baseball. So why ask them to do it?

(You can be plenty made enough for them.)

Fair or not, I’m long going to think about this missed strike in relation to how that horrifying 7th inning could have gone if called properly:

Gonna get this tattooed to my butt. pic.twitter.com/30Tc5qKldS

— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) June 24, 2018

Surely, Willson Contreras did not receive that pitch well, but when a pitch is that far from the edges, missing the call is on the ump. It’s their job not to miss obvious strikes like that. Called correctly, that’s the first out of the inning, and even if everything thereafter played out as horribly as it did, the Reds only tie the game, but don’t take the lead. More plausibly, Montgomery continues pitching, lefty Jesse Winker doesn’t pinch hit when he does, and that whole inning goes completely differently.

Let’s be quite clear, though: I’m not *blaming* a SEVEN-run inning on a single bad call one batter into the inning. I’m just pointing out how a game very well can turn on a call like that.

It’s still up to the players to play, of course, because there are potential game-changing calls like that in both directions constantly in a ballgame. In this instance, Pedro Strop simply had absolutely nothing, and chucked this game in the can. You won’t see me ripping on him, though, because he’s been fantastic this year, has been fantastic in his Cubs career, and you’re just gonna have outings like that sometimes.

I’m also not going to rip him, because the dude stood up after the game and answered all the questions, disappointed that it just wasn’t there for him this time.

Through that series sweep, the Cubs were very fortunate to fall only two games behind the Brewers. That said, obviously they have to start, you know, winning again for that slide to halt and ultimately turn around.

Moving on. Like I wrote this morning, I’m hopeful this was the low point, but we won’t really know for many months. Instead, we just have to watch the Cubs tonight against a very good and hot Dodgers team – one that just got back Clayton Kershaw – and see what happens.

I am excited to see how Duane Underwood looks and responds to tonight’s call-up – sometimes, you don’t get the best possible sense of how a guy will perform at the highest level until he gets that shot – but I remain floored at the combination of things that had to happen for the Cubs to go with TWO fill-in starters over a THREE-day stretch, despite having FIVE HEALTHY starting pitchers. A rainout. A doubleheader. A starting pitcher who threw 119 pitches and needed an extra day. A starting pitcher’s wife goes into labor the morning he was going to pitch.

Speaking of Cubs prospects, here’s Eloy Jimenez hitting his first AAA homer, a super easy swing to to straightaway center, oh my bad, he’s not a Cubs prospect anymore, sorry for the inconvenience:

Who wants to see Eloy Jimenez hit his first Triple-A home run? pic.twitter.com/XgF59X123a

— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) June 24, 2018

Yup, this will be worth watching:

Next Sunday on @E60 a special on former @Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa.

A must watch. pic.twitter.com/eaeHsKY1dj

— Juan Ceballos (@MrJuanCeballos) June 24, 2018

If you missed anything this weekend – there was a lot of news around the games – catch up on the headlines here.

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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