Cubs in turmoil

The Chicago Cubs are not looking promising in their quest to repeat as back-to-back World Series Champions^†. The season started out...well, bad. Small sample size and all that, you can shrug things like that off. That was the story in May of this year:

Do the math -- please don't trust me to -- and it seems the Cubs are under .500 today at 18-19.

How embarrassing it must be to be at the same number in relation to par as the White Sox, who aren't even trying to win this year.

The Cubs haven't been under .500 this late since the middle of 2015. They were 27-10 after 37 games in 2016. They weren't out of first place after April 9 last year.

The early season struggles were already starting to look like a pattern. Flash forward about three weeks and the situation got worse. Way way worse.

Cubs slump reaches new low after being swept by the Padres in San Diego

How's this for unexpected statements: The Chicago Cubs were swept by the San Diego Padres.

It's true. The Cubs dropped Wednesday's game by a 2-1 score, giving them six consecutive losses -- their longest losing streak since they dropped seven in a row back in September 2014. The Cubs' recent slump puts them at 25-27, which prompts the question: what's going on?

When it comes to the Cubs' offense, the answer lately has been "not much." The Cubs have scored two runs or fewer in five of their losses, and were shut out in two of the three games they played against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, the Cubs have scored more than two runs in a game just once during their losing streak -- a four-run "outburst" that amusingly came against Clayton Kershaw.

That kind of underperformance has been a theme of Chicago's season. Consider, for instance, how Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber both have OPS+ figures in the 70s; or how John Lackey and Jake Arrieta both possess ERA+ figures in the 80s; or how even Anthony Rizzo and Jon Lester are playing below their norms. Whatever's to blame -- small-sample size, World Series hangover, or some combination thereof -- the Cubs have it bad.

As quite often happens when a team has trouble like this on the field, there is related trouble off the field.

It's hard to say exactly which spurs which, or if it's part of a cycle of regression. The first off-field issue was Addison Russell's wife accusing him of cheating on her, which as these things often do, turned into wild accusations of physical and mental abuse^‡ that don't appear to correlate with any police investigation.

Next came the Arrieta/Montero situation. Jake Arrieta has been definitely slumping this year: his opponents' hard contact rate went up 29% over last year and his fastball velocity is down 2% (which is actually a notable change when you remember that a changeup is only 10% slower than a fastball). A lot of people have noticed a deterioration in his game this year. One of those was backup catcher Miguel Montero, who accused Arrieta of "allowing stolen bases" and costing them a game against Washington. Montero was eventually designated for assignment and is probably going to wind up signing with another team for less money. Finally came the Cubs trip to the White House where Albert Almora, Jr. apparently was caught on camera giving PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP the finger. (It was about six seconds later derided as "Fake News" since when you look carefully at the picture you can see his other finger is right there, just partially hidden by his jeans.)

But the off-field distractions are nothing compared to the on-field issues. As previously mentioned, Arrieta hasn't been himself both with bases empty and runners in the corners (his response to the Montero situation, by the way, was to concede that Montero was right and he wasn't keeping players from stealing well enough). On June 8th the Cubs lost both Brett Anderson (meh) and Kyle Henricks (gah). Henricks isn't expected to return until the All-Star Break. Zobrist and Heyward are both on the 10-Day DL. Addison Russell apparently hit his wife a little too hard and threw out his shoulder. And worst of all, Kris Bryant last night rolled his ankle against the Nationals and he's probably out for 2-3 weeks at minimum. Add in Kyle Schwarber being demoted after spending all of last year on the DL, and it results in the bizarre situation where the Cubs only have one player looking to win the All-Star voting this year and he may not even be able to play...in 2016 the Cubs filled the entire NL infield.

It's not looking good. Presently the Cubs are .500 (39-39) and 1 game back of the Milwaukee Brewers, compared to this time last year when Cubs lost to the Mets to drop to 51-27 and a win percentage of 0.654. They were a whopping 10 games up on St. Louis and 16 games up on those same Brewers.

The team is starting to have locker room spats and unfortunate injuries. With the possible exception of Bryant (who might be playing good to back his case for a bigger contract as he's apparently still upset over his nonsense grievance situation) there isn't a single member of the Cubs roster who has improved his play from last season. None of the offseason moves could be charitably said to improve the Cubs strength at any position.

Cubs fans waited over a century to see a World Cup win in 2016. At least some of those fans hoped to see a second in their lifetime.


^† It's worth noting, of course, that the last time the Cubs won the World Series they were back-to-back champs in 1907 and 1908, and they lost to the White Sox in 1906. They then skipped a year and lost in 1910. If you were a Cubs fan around that time in history you must have thought you were the team of destiny: 4 appearances and 2 wins in 5 years. Little did you know that you'd only appear in three more Series over the next quarter century and your great-grandchildren would be dying of old age before the Cubs won again.

^‡ Obviously I have no inside information about this specific case, but I've seen it before. A woman leaves her man for some reason: sometimes something he did, sometimes she just met a new guy and made the switch. Pretty soon though she starts telling friends and acquaintences that he had bad behaviour to justify her decision. Often (but not always) the first bad behaviour is true. But pretty soon the sympathy boost she obtains from that accusation starts wearing off, so she ups the ante. He was verbally abusive, he hit her...I've even had two separate women claim that they caught their husbands involved in child porn and worked out a deal with him where he'd concede extra in the settlement and she wouldn't go to the police. The fact that each woman had a divorce lawyer on the payroll alone tells you that this is complete bullshit. So Russell may be guilty of something. But the newer the accusations, the less likely they are to be true.

Canada Day 2017 (weather)

If I can't get nice weather other for the long weekend, than NOBODY CAN!

An inconvenient truth

"Scandal" has rocked the tennis world this week when John McEnroe mentioned that shaved monkey Serena Williams would be ranked far down the rankings if the ATA and WTA were to merge rankings.

Serena, true to form, went primitive and illogical by demanding her "privacy" during pregnancy leave, because that's totally how major sporting etiquette works...you can make millions on endorsements and become world famous but cannot be "exposed" to criticism once you are taking a leave of absence. She demanded McEnroe "respect her and her privacy" as if he was standing in her front yard with a megaphone rather than simply talking about her in response to a question about her in an interview.

Others are upset with McEnroe for the politically incorrect thing that he said. But as Mark Steyn says...

Political correctness involves not being able to state the obvious, not being able to see the obvious, and sport is all about the obvious. Sport is all about someone who is objectively stronger, objectively faster than you. And that's why sport more than anything else has to be subordinated to these progressive pieties and made to deny the obvious.

And let's not kid ourselves: we can quibble about where in the men's rankings Serena would place, but it would almost certainly be somewhere in the hundreds. Because men are bigger and stronger than women. You can take a peek at the fastest tennis serves and notice that several players, most recently Dominic Thiem in the Gerry Weber Open, have hit serves of 144 miles per hour. The fastest women's serve is 131 miles per hour, while the fastest men's serve is 163 miles per hour. Serena's serve has never broke 129 miles per hour.

So in the one easily measurable quality, and one which flatters Serena Williams, she is clearly far down the list of combined-sex tennis players. So what would happen in a game? I can speak with a little bit of authority here: I've been playing a lot of tennis over the past couple of years and one of the regular players I play against is a woman. She has been involved in a few Edmonton tennis tournaments and finished top 5 in a couple of them. She is actually a ranked Canadian tennis player. Watching her games as a spectator against other women tennis players I have seen her win more than she loses and have often been impressed with her skill.

And I've never once lost to her.

Okay it's not like I win every bout between us 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. I've lost sets to her before, but never two in a row. I've lost sets to one of the other women I've played as well, but usually I lose a set 6-4, and I often win sets 6-4 or 6-2. In a heads up battle between a woman who is pretty good and me, I fare extremely well. If you watch me playing her on the courts sometimes you might think I'm really an impressive player. I'm always in position and my feet barely move while I make her cover all four corners of the court. My serves are often returned into the net, her volleys fly over my head and go long. My ground game in particular might blow you away.

And then you watch me play male players and you'll notice that I'm regularly the second best player on the court. Playing men is often my humbling experience: even matches that I win can make me look much more ordinary a player: he gets a good bounce and he wins, I get a good bounce and I win. My feet are definitely moving a lot more when I play men: suddenly even when I can make him run around covering all four corners he's usually doing something similar to me. I've almost never beaten a male player in straight sets (typically it's when he's new or hungover) and I've been beaten in straight sets (sometimes but not always hungover). Playing the women is good for the ego: playing the men is good for improving myself as a tennis player. I can play men two decades older than me and end the game drenched in sweat and often muttering "congratulations" as we shake hands at the end. Men are just better than women at tennis. We're bigger, stronger, and faster. Even a good female player is outclassed by some random blogger.

Can I beat Serena Williams? Of course not. The top ranked male tennis player in Edmonton probably can't beat her. But the top ranked male tennis player in Canada obviously can [though only if she's ranked 700th, apparently, since 698 gives him trouble... -ed]. The top ranked tennis player in larger cities like Vancouver or Houston or Madrid could certainly beat her. She's the winningest woman player in the world, but male tennis players that you and I have never heard of would defeat her.

So let's not pretend that John McEnroe has said some evil thing. He has said an absolutely true thing. That he is being vilified for it is just another example that the politically incorrect thing he said was, as it so often is, politically incorrect.

Connor McDavid, porn vendor

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Summer Solstice 2017

Welcome to summer everybody.

Today is the longest day of the year. It may just feel like the longest day of the year because Red Indians are trying to make it about them, but it legitimately is.

One hour from now, at 10:07pm, Edmonton will finally experience a sunset after over 17 hours of daylight. So for that, let's take a musical break courtesy of Mister Gordon Lightfoot....



Now because the solstice fell on a Wednesday you might be asking "so which is the longest weekend?" You might say "well it happened before noon on Wednesday so obviously last weekend was longer than this weekend.<sup>†

†</sup> Yes, yes, people say "longest weekend" when they mean "longest amount of sunlight in a 2-day weekend. Stop being so pedantic. Obviously all long weekends are tied for "longest weekend".

That's a good bit of reasoning but let's confirm it adds up. (All data comes from TimeAndDate.com)

Saturday June 17th Edmonton saw 17:02:02 hours:minutes:seconds of daylight. Sunday June 18th saw 17:02:22, for a combined "weekend daylight" of 2304 seconds.

Saturday June 24th Edmonton will see 17:01:56 hours:minutes:seconds of daylight. Sunday June 25th will see...well, less, and you can already see that since days will be getting shorter our supposition was correct: but still, 17:01:28. This means next weekend Edmonton will "only" get 2244 seconds of daylight: an entire minute less sunlight.

Winter is coming. Better soak up the rays while you can. Er, wait, nevermind...

Post #2700, Baby!

Well it's been a little while before we had one of these, didn't we? Well, we're back! Hopefully see you soon on Post #2800...

Your evil lifestyle is still illegitimate. Your suiciding adherents understand this better than you.

I thought the AIDS march was held in September?

And with the classic Third Edge of the Sword running gag unfortunately comes a sad truth: Edmonton's depraved faggot community and a bunch of their equally disgusting pro-poofter familiars will be on our streets today promoting their choice of an inferior lifestyle.

And as usual, the far left are responsible for the assault on truth and parental rights that comes along with it. They need to be stopped. If you see a faggot today, tell him off. If he touches you, hit him in the face with a pipe. If a leftist does either, do it to them twice.

And now, a little musical interlude on the topic...