Eloy Jimenez To The MOON For The Win!!!!!

WHAT. A. GAME.  And I’m not trolling – that was a great baseball game top to fucking bottom.  When I looked at the lineups today and saw lefty, lefty and more lefties in the Cubs lineup I thought FUCK.

Ivan Nova throws a really heavy sinker.  That’s a dying pitch in baseball, and I’ll explain why in a moment.  Low and behold, Schwarber goes yard on the first pitch the Cubs see:

Now the sinker is a dying pitch because launch angle is the new “in” thing in baseball.  Baseball sort of fails to evolve with the times to an extent.  For over 100 years, it was “hit the ball hard on the ground and make the defense make a play”.  Well now that’s evolved into “actually now that I think about it Big Leaguers don’t make errors like…. ever so let’s work on driving the ball out of the park”.

Sinkers ‘sink’ as you’d deduce by the name, and they sink right into the upper cut bat path that most new age hitters have adopted in the last few years.  So when I saw a sinker ball pitcher in Nova against a lefty ridden lineup against Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, Jason Heyward, and Victor Caratini I thought it was gonna be bombs away.  Well it wasn’t.  It was weak contact all night.  6+ IP and only 1 earned.  Good on ya, Nova.  Kept is in the ball game against a good team.

It was a really well played ball game.  Hamels was masterful after a shaky 1st inning, Bummer was FANTASTIC in relief, Sanchez played a great defensive 2B and then….. BOOM!!!!

Eloy Jimenez happened.  This ball went I don’t know… 415 feet or so?  And it went 415 feet on a BROKEN BAT.  That’s how massive Eloy Jimenez Raw power is.  I don’t even think it officially counted as a barrel on Statcast and that’s not a joke.  But doesn’t matter.  It was all the Sox needed to take game 1 of the two game set.

You KNEW something BIG was gonna happen off the bat of Eloy because he was laying off Hamels’ change up with EASE all night, which tells me he’s seeing the ball with extreme precision.  Unbelievable game.

What a fucking fun game that was.  There were a couple of stupid moves/plays (Yoan playing, Garcia fuckup in CF) but this was the start of what is going to be an awesome rivalry for the foreseeable future.  It’s about to be the best decade of baseball in Chicago history, as my good friend Hawk Harrelson says.

Let’s make it a sweep with Gio on the mound tomorrow.  Cannot fucking wait.  We’re doing it up at Country Club in Wrigleyville from 4-6, so bring your crew and we’ll throw back a few great tasting, less filling Miller Lites.

GO SOX!!!!