Game Time Change, Hendricks Working Up, Brach and the Mets, and Other Bullets

The Little Boy has a doctor’s appointment and then the big kids have their elementary school orientation, so I’ll be running around today. Ah, back to school …

  • In conjunction with the release of the schedule yesterday, the Cubs made a minor – but significant-ish! – tweak to the timing of games. Now, weeknight home games before Memorial Day and after Labor Day will start at 6:40 pm CT, instead of the typical 7:05 pm. (Those of us in the Eastern Time Zone who cover the games thank you for those bonus 25 minutes of sleep!)
  • Also on the schedule: the Cubs open in Milwaukee at Wrigley North, so … we’re all going, right?
  • This is just fascinating on the ongoing adjustments a guy like Kyle Hendricks has to make to succeed:
  • Interesting, and perfectly sensible: if you get good movement on your sinker/two-seamer, you can work it up – so that it moves in on the hands – to righties who have modified their swing path to try to elevate low sinkers. You miss the barrel more easily that way, and also disrupt the batter’s timing. Like Sahadev Sharma in the piece, I assumed there had to be some reason Hendricks was working up so much more this year, but thought it would have been mostly with the four-seamer.
  • You’d expect the groundball rate to be way down with this strategy, which it is, but you’d probably also want to see more infield pop ups (not happening), more soft contact (not happening), and less hard contact (not happening). Instead, he’s been succeeding with slightly more whiffs, and slightly fewer walks. Wonder if the contact metrics will shift as the year goes on?
  • The whole read with Hendricks is a great one.
  • The Mets think they discovered something:
  • It seems a little premature to make any declaration, but I suppose it’s possible, if Brach was tipping one of his pitches, batters would know when he wasn’t throwing the change, and could thus sit on the fastball (which had good movement and velocity, but still got hammered). Whatever. If Brach pitches well and gets a big league contract next year, it’ll save the Cubs between $600,000 and $1.35 million (depending on how much he gets), so go ahead and fix him and make him awesome, Mets.
  • Big sale today at the official Cubs shop if you want to peruse the deals.
  • I’m not saying it’s not a little odd, I’m just saying it’s clever and funny:
  • Gleyber Torres is doing absolutely ridiculous things against the Orioles this year (13 of his 26 homers!), and I have jokes/points:
  • Surprising roster move for the Bears:
  • The MLB schedule came out yesterday, as did the NBA schedule:
  • written by

    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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