no because maybe he's not leaving chicago

Theo's own team player evaluation comes greatly in question. Jim Bowden on S & L the Cubs will get 20¢ on the $1 for Bryant is his last contract year. If Theo pulled the trigger trading Bryant & Schwarber 2 years early top value the Cubs would still be broken, but in much better position. Possible multiple top prospects in return back then.

While Schwarber never became what many Cubs fans hoped he would become, he was part of a lot of good teams and good memories.

Will be strange to see him in any uniform other than Cubs.

Darvish and Schwarber tried to drag the 2018 Cubs into the playoffs themselves in the second half of the season.

Not actually true but if it is what helps you sleep at night go with it.

2015

3 best regular season records in NL

2016

2 out of 5 over .500

2017

3 out of 5 over .500

2018

4 out of 5 over .500

2019
3 out of 5 over .500

2020
3 out of 5 over .500
4 out of 5 made playoffs


AL Central during same time

2015

3 out of 5

2016

2 out of 5 over .500

2017
2 out of 5

2018

1 out of 5

2019

2 out of 5

2020

3 out of 5

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The AL Central doesnt matter one iota there, conns35thSt

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2 more HRs tonight so far. It’s like he’s Baby Ruth.

Per plate appearance he homers only 1 appearance less than Ruth. It’s not a small sample size anymore.

He doesn’t do anything else but the guy can hit homers.

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You know me like that.

He has to have the highest percentage of solo home runs out of total home runs of anyone with over 100 total.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

All he does is hit HRs and they bat the guy lead off.

He’s got two solos tonight and they are down 1.

Stupid. 1 extra at bat isn’t worth putting him 3-5 and letting him drive in more runs with 0.65 fewer at-bats per game.

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You know me like that.

You sure about that?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

The kid on Pirates Slusisky (sp?) is just like that. Homer every 10 at bats. It’s among the immortals.

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Elections have consequences.

Damn right I'm sure about it. Put some goddamn fleas on the fucking bases. You get them big cock suckers that can hit the fucking ball out of the ball park, and you can't make any god damned mistakes. Did Jim Rice bat lead-off? Dave Kingman?

Those cheap bastards Billy Beane and Paul DiPodesta thought they were fucking geniuses because they didn't have any money and lucked into a respectable season and cocksucking Harvard graduates thought they had an arbitrage oppotunity in baseball. Here's your arbitrage opportunity! MONEY!

Stupid bastards ruining the game for everyone and those goddamn Theo Epstein's showing up in those suits thinking they reinvented the game. Fucking ridiculous. So if this cocksucker would mind his own business and let me manage the fucking team we'd be a lot better off.

Terry Crowley's lucky he was in fucking baseball and Alice Sweet ought to be worried about where the fuck her next lay is coming from, rather than where her next god dammed tomato plant's coming from. If she'd get her ass out of the fucking bars at night and go hustling around the goddamn streets she might get a prick stuck into her once in a while.

I don't understand where these questions are coming from. That's about it for Dr. Ken's Baseball Corner, go fuck yourself and to fuck with your show coming up next on the CFMB podcasting fucking network!

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You know me like that.

Pretty sure run producing is a real thing.

It's ridiculous that a guy with 27HRs only has 55RBIs. You have to be trying not to let him drive in runs. I'm going to guess he might set a record for fewest RBIs with 30+HRs this year.

It's not like he's getting on base and rocketing around the basepaths scoring runs.

He got caught stealing tonight. Stealing! The guy is an injury waiting to happen and you have him stealing bases and batting lead-off?

WTF are you doing?

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You know me like that.

He's guaranteed one AB every night with nobody on. That's one too many. And after that, he's following the teams worst hitters. This isn't a hard math problem.

Too bad the Phillies, back in the day, didn't have Ryan Howard bat leadoff to get an extra 35 PAs a year and a guaranteed 150 with nobody on.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Poor Alice.

Yeah. Hitting a home run in your fifth at-bat that you wouldn't have gotten if you were batting fourth produces at least one run.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

Didn't say he had to bat 4th. I said leadoff is bad math for a run producer. And I'm pretty sure I'm right.

27 of his 67 hits this year are HRs.

They lost 3-2 today and he had 2 HRs and 2 RBIs.

JORR, I didn’t picture you as a new-age baseball math guy.

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You know me like that.

Bryant was similar...had a year with 29 HR and 73 RBI, and one with 31 HR and 77 RBI. And I don't think crazy Joe had him leading off.

Homers this year:
Schwarbs 27
Rizzo 23
Baez 7
Bryant 1

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Obviously it's theoretical because no one has actually done it, but I'm pretty sure any modeling suggests that you're going to score the most runs if your best hitters get the most at-bats.

I think it's pretty well proven that the importance of batting order construction is almost as overrated as managers, but the simplest and most effective lineup would seem to be one where the batters are ordered from best OPS to worst. Assuming who might be on base at any specific time is a fool's errand. If you think Tim Anderson should bat more than Jose Abreu because Abreu is a "run producer", I don't know what to tell you.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

I just want my best hitters to get the most at-bats. I can't guess when guys are going to be on base. I don't think even geniuses like Joe Maddon or Joe Girardi can do that. I just know that over the course of enough at-bats Abreu is going to be on more than Leury Garcia.

Now, I understand it's hard to get away from tradition. The model you and Nardi are married to assumes two little fast guys are gonna get on and Big Strong Schwarber will drive everyone in. It just really doesn't work that way. First, they're only certain to come up in that exact order once a game. So yeah, I'd rather have Schwarber get 40-50 extra at-bats per season than give them to Odubel Herrera.

All that said, I do understand that the object of the game is not to score the most runs in the season. It's to score at least one more run than the opposing team in each game. I just don't think you or me or Nardi or Joe Girardi is smart enough to control when those runs will be scored with a specific batting order.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

I think Schwarber is particular type of hitter. He hits a HR or he doesn't.

I'd rather have him have a few less opportunities over the course of the year but have those with potentially more runners in place, hitting after better OBP guys than are at the bottom of the order than to guarantee 1 AB every game with nobody on.

I also think there is a psychological advantage to get a 2-0 or 3-0 lead in the 1st inning rather than a 1-0.

But, again, I like those big cocksuckers that hit the fucking ball out of the ballpark.

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You know me like that.

One thing is for sure. The leadoff has no runners on base at least once a game. Guaranteed.

True. Another thing is for sure. The three or four hitter can't hit a solo walkoff in the ninth if the the lesser hitter batting in front of him makes the last out.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

He gets on base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlKDQqKh03Y

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

This analysis has surely been done, but I'd like to see the distribution of times leading off an inning based on position in the lineup. Clearly the #1 spot is assured of at least one, but I'm sure the #4 leads off more than the #2 since a 1-2-3 1st inning is common.

I did a quick google, and this is what came up...not surprising, a fascinating Bill James article:

https://www.billjamesonline.com/batting ... on_values/

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Which is why it makes sense to just get your best hitters the most at-bats.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Kash, and Don

Yeah, it's hard to imagine that a lineup ranked by descending OPS would score the same as one ordered by ascending OPS. But maybe it's one of those mathematical fallacies we just assume to be true. Or maybe it's true but statistically insignificant (let's say 2.70 runs a game vs 2.68 runs in that extreme example).

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Let's quit fucking around. How many more PAs does a lead off get than the #3? Then how many more men are on base for the #3 as opposed to the leadoff? How many times does the leadoff come up in the 9th and the #3 does not? I think on the last question you're talking about a handful of times vs a guaranteed 162 PAs throughout the year with no one on.

If you are going to convince the world that Babe Ruth should have lead off every game, you got to have the data to back it up. One of the reasons for the 1st inning 1,2,3 "construction" is they ALL get a 1st inning AB. It's also the reason TB had the idea of an "opener". Because of that construction.

5 PAs don't win games. 3 run homers win games.