The Fade, Wisdom’s Ankle, Not Foul, Mother’s Day, Gsellman, Thompson, Davis, and Other Cubs Bullets

To the mothers among you, to the sons and daughters of mothers, to the husbands and wives of mothers, and to the friends and well-wishers of mothers: make it a good one. Moms are great.

Moms are better than the Cubs at the moment, anyway …

•   The Cubs have now lost 13 of 16, and the briefly nice start to the season feels like something more than a distant memory – it feels like it may as well have been a different season – even though it was less than a month ago. We knew the Cubs had a tough stretch of games coming, but I don’t think that’s quite what this is. Instead, I think we’re seeing what it would (will?) look like if this team hits its bottom 20th percentile outcome. The roster was constructed in such a way as to give the team something like a 10 to 20% chance of hovering around contention into July if a whole lot broke right, but that means an 80 to 90% chance of not doing that. Of course, even in that 80 to 90% chunk, it isn’t all abysmal. But some portion of it is, and I fear that’s where this thing could be headed. It’s May 8. I don’t like thinking this way on May 8.

•   Patrick Wisdom, one of the few bright spots in the early going among the “maybe he’ll keep contributing” guys, fouled one hard off his ankle in game one yesterday, and you could tell he was feeling it. But the Cubs checked him out, and he must’ve felt he was good to go, so he played in game two – at least until this happened:

•   Wisdom did get X-rays and no damage was found, so I guess we’ll see what happens the next few days.

•   If you didn’t see it in the EBS last night, this was called foul on the field and then ALSO upheld as foul on replay, despite it being unbelievably clear to anyone with a video feed or eyes or knowledge of Wrigley Field that this ball hit the tape:

•   Keegan Thompson wasn’t able to clean up the inherited mess in the 2nd inning last night, but after that, he threw a couple more scoreless innings, as he does. On the season, Thompson is up to 23.0 innings, fourth most on the team despite being a “reliever.” He’s got a 1.17 ERA, and his groundball rate is a gorgeous 58.2%. The K (23.9%) and BB (9.1%) are likely going to boost that ERA a bit if they don’t improve, but they’re not bad. And again, it helps when you’re getting that many groundballs.

•   I know Robert Gsellman has had some success in the big leagues before (average-ish, which, hey, that’s not bad when you think about the bell curve!), and I know he was dominating at Iowa this year, but I didn’t see much in his outing yesterday that stood out. And the contact was very loud:

•   It’s just one appearance, but you have to keep in mind that Gsellman does not have any minor league options, the Cubs have to go down to 13 pitchers by the end of this month, and guys like Wade Miley and Alec Mills could be returning soon. There’s going to be a squeeze, and any appearance where a margin guy like Gsellman doesn’t look great is probably going to hurt.

•   If you’d been wondering why Brennen Davis hadn’t played the last four days at Iowa – I had been wondering – Tommy Birch reports that it is lower back tightness. That would explain why he hasn’t been put on the IL yet, since that’s one of those things that you can rest a few days and be better (and this also suggests it isn’t viewed as too serious). My hope is that the forced break will also serve as a little bit of a mental reset for a guy who had been off to a rough start at Triple-A, in a year where the weight of expectation had been put on him to be up in the big leagues by midseason. That was a lot to expect from a guy with so little pro experience (it’s just that he’s been fantastic every time he stepped on the field, and has been incredible at making adjustments). He still might make his way up to the big leagues at some point this year, but this start to the year has been a big reminder that development is a process, and you hope that the struggles now at Triple-A will pay long-term dividends in the big leagues years down the road.

•   Moms:

•   Now this is a rowdy slide:

•   I don’t get super into horse racing (although the Wright Thompson podcast ‘Bloodlines’ was EXCELLENT – highly recommend), but I will confess, it is stunning to me that this horse won this race from this position with this much time left:

https://twitter.com/NBCSports/status/1523104042427334660

•   It would be nice if some day in September we can overlay that video with “Cubs” on Rich Strike, and be like, lol, this is the Cubs coming back in the NL Central this year, amazing! … but that … well … that seems even more unlikely than what Rich Strike did, so …

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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