Working on the Lights at Wrigley Field, Suzuki’s Marlin-Aversion, Ridiculous Home Runs, META, and Other Cubs Bullets
This is your two-day warning: Mother’s Day is Sunday. Don’t forget, because if you do, the mothers in your life will DEFINITELY never forget that you forgot …
- For the most part, the bright new LED lights at Wrigley Field have been a welcomed addition to the old ballpark experience. There is one issue the club is trying to sort through, though, as explored by the Sun-Times:
- Because of where the lights are, there are some fly balls that get lost momentarily for corner outfielders. Read up in the Sun-Times for the particulars. The club has been tinkering and getting an MLB audit to try to figure out how to best address, but in the meantime, it could wind up a slight home-field advantage if, say, Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki were to get really used to it, and visit corner outfielders could not. (Who me, envisioning Christian Yelich losing a walk-off triple in the lights and SCREAMING about the irony? No. Couldn’t be.)
- Speaking of Suzuki, Brad noticed something pretty crazy in his stats so far this year (the second one):
- Suzuki has a 125 wRC+ this season against all non-Marlins teams. Now, to be clear, that’s PROBABLY just a small-sample fluke, combined with the Marlins having some tough match-ups for him. Or whatever. But wouldn’t it be funny if, in fact, the Marlins have some SUPER SECRET PROPRIETARY info on how to attack Suzuki, and no other team can figure it out? Thank goodness the Cubs are done facing that horseshoe-up-the-butt franchise this year.
- Don’t forget to REALLY look at how far this is the next time you’re at Wrigley Field. Like, you can tell from the video that it’s really far, but if you’re there, looking across Waveland to the rooftop, you see just how absurdly far it is:
- And since we’re looking at ridiculous home runs, how about this one that Reds prospect Elly De La Cruz hit on the anniversary of Hill’s blast. It’s not QUITE as ridiculous, but good lord did this look like just a nothingburger foul ball off the bat:
- That ball was hit opposite field AT A 41-DEGREE LAUNCH ANGLE and not only still somehow went out, it was DEEP out! You shouldn’t really be able to do that. Yes, De La Cruz is pretty wild. His story reminds me a whole lot of Oneil Cruz, another absolutely bonkers physical athlete with eye-popping exit velocities and a lot of swing-and-miss, all while playing shortstop at 6’5″ or taller. De La Cruz, 21, had a rough first week at Triple-A, but since then, his numbers are just stupid (.348/.434/.804/201 wRC+, only 22.6% K rate). I don’t think the Reds are competitive enough this year to feel like they HAVE to bring him up sooner rather than later, but it’s likely to be clear very soon that he needs to be challenged by big league pitches to continue his development.
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- A re-share for anyone who missed it, because I think Michael had some very thoughtful perspectives in here:
- META: We got a sudden wave of folks reaching out about being blocked/banned/spam-listed by Disqus this week, so I’m going to take a wild guess and say there was likely a bug. If that has happened to you and you’re thinking, “Why in the world would they banned me?!” – we almost never ban anyone, except for the worst of repeat offenders – we probably didn’t ban you. So, if you find yourself getting a notification about being banned recently out of nowhere, try logging out, clearing cache and cookies, restarting, and logging back in. In the past when things like this have happened, that usually clears it up for folks.
- It’s not baseball, but it’s just too good not to share:
