Author Topic: Cubs in '17 - 👑👑👑 Reigning Champions Edition 👑👑👑  (Read 75395 times)

Jes Beard

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http://www.dailyherald.com/sports/20171021/did-too-many-walks-prompt-cubs-to-fire-bosio

"Throw more strikes across the board in the bullpen," Epstein said during his season-ending news conference at Wrigley Field. "Partly a player-personnel thing but I think it goes beyond that a little bit because if you look at it -- and we have -- virtually every reliever that we have walked more guys this year on a rate basis, unintentional walk rate, than they did on average through their career. It was common. It could be a fluke, or it could be that there were certain situations where we tried to be too fine or certain situations where we didn't prioritize just getting a strike at the risk of some hard contact.

"We're openly looking at it, trying to figure a way to get better -- coaches, players. We're all trying to figure a way to get better because 30th in unintentional walk rate this year out of the pen, 26th the year before, come on, we have to be a lot better than that."

That should be encouraging to many of us here.  Teams fielding good defense in particular should be willing to let the other team make contact.