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Watching the 3 HRs we hit yesterday...Nola made mistakes to Rizzo and Baez (his with 2 strikes), but it sure appeared he threw his 94 exactly where he wanted vs Murphy! 

I still can't believe Murphy was able to square up that eye-level (or higher) FB!  Man, what a hitter that guys is!!  Rizzo and Baez aren't bad either.   

And Murphy's HR was the key one: Nola was REALLY cruising at the top of his game before the Murphy bomb!

Shows how imperfect WAR is that Cain is the leader and Yelich is well below Cain in WAR.  That seems rather ridiculous to me!

Smyly is going to have to be added to the 40 over the winter anyway.  If he's pain-free, don't see a lot of downside in adding him now and seeing what he can give you.

Most of Morrow's seasons have been injury-plagued, so it's not really a surprise.

Strop has been really good as closer, Cishek and Wilson have experience doing it, and I have no doubt that the current version of Chavez would be fine in that role too. It's a blow, but the Cubs have depth.

I'm less worried about the closing than what this does to the 7th and 8th innings.  I mean,  I admit I don't really trust Strop but to give him his due, he's been great.  But with Morrow this could have been a real shutdown bullpen (which we need, given our un-dominant rotation).

https://www.mlb.com/news/chicago-cubs-are-a-dynasty/c-293649802

That's a really good article. Thanks for sharing.

It would be great if it works.  Happ certainly seems to have underperformed his talents for most of the season.  Danny Murphy showed in 2015 how much it can help a team when a player gets really hot in the playoffs.  Cespedes did the same thing for the Mets.