Who to Root for in the LCS, Surprising Shildt, Batting Average Value, and Other Cubs Bullets

For the Bears fans among you who want to hang for Sunday’s Packers game, Luis is gonna be at Nisei in Wrigleyville to watch the game. Go, hang, have beers, keep him company, and watch Justin Fields TOTALLY TEAR THE PACKERS’ HEARTS OUT PROBABLY.

•   The game-ending “swing” gets the early attention, but if you missed any of the rest of the Dodgers’ NLDS-clinching win from last night, here are the highlights:

•   Whole lotta good pitching, and then a game-winning hit from Cody Bellinger, who was arguably the worst hitter in baseball this year. Good luck projecting what he’ll be next year at age 26. To go from producing like the best hitter in baseball in 2019 to the worst hitter in baseball in 2021 is just such a crazy change that you’ve gotta believe the multiple health-related issues just torpedoed his swing this year. Maybe he gets it back, but I will point out that part of what made Bellinger so successful was that he had this long, powerful swing, and yet he still managed to barrel the ball up consistently with tremendous hands and bat speed. What happens if the hands/wrists and/or bat speed dips just a little? Doesn’t that make it a little harder to expect that he’ll just “get it back” after an offseason? Or will he have to make more considerable adjustments to his approach and swing, which might get him back to being a productive hitter, but limit his ceiling?

•   The Dodgers move on to face the Braves in the NLCS, a match-up anyone could have predicted in March, but fewer would have predicted at various other times this year. Game One is 7pm CT on Saturday. Game One of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Astros is tonight 7pm CT. I can’t really choose any of these four teams to really pull for. I guess go … Red Sox and Schwarber?

•   It sure still feels like there is way more to the story on the surprising Mike Shildt firing, though I don’t necessarily mean that Shildt was on the Jon Gruden emails or anything. I just mean that, clearly, there was a history there of … something, and the front office just wasn’t gonna take it anymore. Keep in mind, this is a guy who was with the organization for 18 years, and had pretty much only seen success as the manager. But the Cardinals still gave him a very quick, very surprising, over-the-phone boot:

•   Here’s hoping – out of sheer, morbid, schadenfreude-y curiosity – we find out eventually what exactly the fracture was there with the Cardinals. They will now seek out a new manager, and although Mozeliak indicated they have some internal candidates (Yadi Molina, Player-Manager), I tentatively expect a search process.

•   I am not one to harp on batting average, though I will agree that the .299 with two strikes number here is pretty jaw-dropping:

https://twitter.com/WatchMarquee/status/1448328011757936642

•   As a stat, batting average is not particularly great, since it treats singles the same as homers, and treats walks as if they don’t exist. The trick with batting average, in my view, is not using it in isolation to evaluate a player. Instead, you have to consider it in concert with the rest of the production – hopefully everyone here by now already knows that, generally speaking, a .250/.400/.500 hitter is waaaaaay more productive and valuable than a .300/.310/.320 hitter. Still, there are some guys – Nick Madrigal being a prime example – where you have to pay more attention to the batting average because it serves as a disproportionate predicate for his success or failure. Since he isn’t going to walk a lot or hit for much power, that batting average HAS to be really high if he’s going to be productive.

•   But since we’re on the note, a general point that I think is correct: all else equal, you’d rather have the .300/.350/.350 guy than the .250/.350/.350 guy, right? A single is slightly more valuable than a walk, since it can advance baserunners an extra base (though a walk might have generated more pitches from the opposing pitcher, I think that’s less likely to matter than a possible extra base). So we’re not ever saying that batting average flat out doesn’t matter at all. It’s just that you need a much bigger picture to determine whether a guy who “hits .300” is actually a valuable hitter. In Madrigal’s case, if he can hit in that .300 to .320 range while almost never striking out, while keeping an ISO near .100, and while walking at least a little bit, then yeah, he’s going to be a very valuable hitter.

•   Today’s Epic Daily Deals at Amazon include tons of toys, Chromebooks, and much more. #ad

•   I guess just swing somewhere near that spot and hope you get the timing right:

•   The first base coach’s reaction:

https://twitter.com/YahooSports/status/1448874015968268292

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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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