That Apple VR/AR launch announcement could not have been more disappointing to me. Maybe I’m wrong, but focusing almost exclusively on productivity/lifestyle use cases makes absolutely no sense. People are NOT going to strap this thing to their head and work all day, much less walk around with the thing on. Did we not learn our lesson from Google Glass? And that’s to say nothing of the obscene $3500 price tag, which means EVEN IF they’d focused on making it the kind of unbelievable entertainment product (which should have been what it’s about!), it’s just way too expensive for almost anyone to get. So disappointing. Maybe in a few years they’ll figure out that people want an entertainment device at an affordable price (because, as nerdy as it is, VR is actually fun as heck).
This may be unfair, but it’s just where the Cubs have put themselves: splitting that series in San Diego was a failure. Not an egregious failure, but a failure nonetheless. In a context-neutral environment, splitting a four-gamer on the west coast against a loaded Padres team would be just fine. The Cubs, however, are already in a deep hole of their own making, so splitting four-game sets is not going to help them. Moreover, that is a Padres team that is NOT playing well right now, and that was a series that the Cubs could have won. And if they want to make a big move before the season gets away from them, then they needed to make it there.
… but they can still make this west coast trip a success by taking four of the next six against the Angels and Giants. Once again, that’s a big ask. I get it. But it’s the current reality.
I think you have to take this with a grain of salt, because Rick Sutcliffe is not a newsbreaker and he may have misunderstood something or spoken too soon. But Sutcliffe suggested on the broadcast last night that Cody Bellinger will (soon?) head to Arizona to rehab, which would mean he could be playing in Arizona Complex League games as the start of a rehab assignment. As of yesterday, the timeline on Bellinger was unclear, other than the fact that he seemed pretty close to running full out, and was not likely to be activated on this west coast trip.
You already knew this about Seiya Suzuki just from watching his games, but it obviously REALLY stood out last night, and it’s just so maddening:
Now, if you are someone who is just never going to swing at pitches at the edges of he strike zone, then you are probably going to have a higher percentage of your total pitches faced be ones that happen to be edge calls outside the strike zone (other guys more frequently swing at those and turn them into swinging strikes or fouls or crappy contact). So this isn’t necessarily JUST about the league conspiring to treat Suzuki unfairly, or something about his stance or approach leading to missed calls. But it’s a reminder that, in a non-robo-ump world, a player like Suzuki is getting screwed a lot more than other players. He’s getting punished for really having a great sense of the strike zone.
Speaking of the horrific strike zone last night, which got David Ross booted and sank a bunch of Cubs hitters’ nights, I’m still waiting on the Ump Scorecard to come out. My guess is that it’s going to heavily favor the Padres, and there is clearly something about lefty pitches coming in against righties that Phil Cuzzi doesn’t see quite correctly. Because he called the edges of the zone perfectly well against Kyle Hendricks, but when lefty Blake Snell was working that outer edge against Cubs righty bats, he was getting 3 to 6 extra inches constantly.
Update: the scorecard is indeed quite skewed in one direction:
And speaking of that, here’s Ross on the boot (Sun-Times): “I just thought our guys were grinding some really good at bats early on, first two innings. That guy’s got a high walk rate to righties and there were just some balls that weren’t strikes called strikes on the on the outer edge. And just wanted to try to voice that a little bit and probably got a little too aggressive with it.”
Kyle Hendricks, whose outing was that same mix of encouraging-yet-not-quite-outstanding that we’ve seen from him this year, felt really good about his night. “I feel really good to be honest,” Hendricks said, per the Tribune. “Body physically feels great, shoulder feels great. And I feel like life’s on it. Everything’s coming out like I want. A lot of soft contact, just a couple of pitches over the middle there when I got out of the rhythm. But other than that, really executed everything from there on out. I can definitely roll with that and I feel like I’m in a great spot.” He did manage contact reasonably well last night, for what that’s worth. The two-run homer (on not even that bad of a pitch) did him in a bit, as we’ve seen before from him the last couple years.
Ah, rookie league:
Nevada’s regular legislative session ended last night without consideration of the A’s request for $380 million in public financing for their move to Las Vegas. A special session is still possible, but the situation now looks quite cloudy. It’s hard to see it completely falling through, given the weight MLB is throwing behind this move, but clearly the state is not eager to throw a ton of cash at the A’s to get them to Vegas.
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