Article: The Nightmare of the 90s is Alive in Wrigleyville

[Matthew Trueblood]

There was something gnawing at me. It was tough to put my finger on it, but just as Christopher Morel's eighth home run in his first 11 games of 2023 sailed over the fence, the penny dropped. This is what the 1990s were like.

Last Tuesday, Danny Rockett (on Twitter at @SonRanto, one of the deans of the metaphorical delegation from the real-life Wrigleyville to its digital counterpart) ran a Twitter poll asking fans of whom Christopher Morel most forcefully reminds them. He gave three options, and invited other suggestions. The responses were quite evenly mixed, including many people who took advantage of that offer to identify their own comps.

Who is Christopher Morel?

— Danny Rockett (@SonRanto) May 16, 2023

With all due respect to Danny, these weren't especially compelling comparators, in my opinion. Morel doesn't have anything approximating Aramis Ramirez's hit tool. He doesn't have the plate discipline or the defensive skills that allowed Ben Zobrist to first find a foothold, then blossom into a true superstar. Yet, his power is a louder tool than Zobrist ever had, and he's better able to make real use of his athleticism on the diamond than Junior Lake ever was.

Morel probably isn't a long-term, everyday infielder, but he's also unlikely to be a well-rounded utilityman with value in all facets and on both sides of the runs ledger. What Morel looks most like, as he comes up on 500 career plate appearances, is a rough-edged, toolsy outfielder with top-shelf power. What he looks like is Sammy Sosa, and while I'm not projecting that he'll hit 600 big-league home runs, that's an awfully exciting comparison.

Here's the cruel twist, though: For much of his career, Sosa was a dazzling, enlivening star on soporific Cubs teams. His flaws made him ill-equipped to be the best or second-best player on any serious contender for the first half of his Chicago tenure, and the obnoxious egalitarianism of baseball rendered him unable to singlehandedly lift them very far for much of the second half. Watching Sammy Sosa was always fun, but it was empty calories. That's not a commentary on the substance or the style of Sosa, but on the fact that too often, the Cubs were so relentlessly and (sometimes) inexplicably bad that one could have exactly as much fun by checking the highlights on SportsCenter to see Sosa homer as by watching the whole game.

That's the vibe of the 2023 Cubs right now. Morel is not a force on par with peak Sosa, of course, but he's been a burst of sizzle and spark in his first fortnight with the parent club. Alas, he's just the latest guy taking a turn. Nico Hoerner has had a similar stretch during which he put on a really fun show. Patrick Wisdom's power binge was every bit as thunderous as Morel's. Cody Bellinger showed us a glimpse of his considerable former glory, early on. Roughly twice every time through the rotation, a starter has a wonderful start that makes most of an entire game fun and watchable.

It's not adding up to anything. The maddening reality is that a lot of things have gone right for the Cubs this year, but they're 20-26, and they're watching a lot of the teams over whom they grabbed what felt like a potentially critical early edge get right and sail right past them--often at their direct expense. Somehow, for the fifth straight season, this team is less impressive and less consistent than it ought to be. The familiarity of the players, the makeup of the front office, the man on the top step of the dugout, and many things about how the organization tries to win have changed in that time frame, and they've had very different levels of expectation going into each of those seasons, but the results seem obdurate. 

That's why it feels like it did 20 or 30 years ago, right now. Even the team's successes feel a bit like hiccups. Just when they begin to feel almost trustworthy, the page turns, and Cinderella turns back into a franchise forever selling hope. The farm system is on the upswing, but fans old enough to remember $4 bleacher seats know that when the big-league product is on the downswing, the farm system is always on the upswing. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins are superficially smarter than Ed Lynch, and even than Andy MacPhail, but they seem no closer to resolving the perpetual extra gravity that drags the Cubs downward than those men got. Ownership was bad then, and ownership is bad now, but ownership changes far less quickly and easily than front-office or on-field personnel. If it's bad owners holding the Cubs back, there's no way to tell when a light might emerge at the end of the tunnel for the Cubs and their fans. If the Ricketts family is the kind of ownership group that can at least be overcome by better front-office work, Hoyer and Hawkins need to start doing it.

There is too much talent and too much money on the field every day for the Cubs to be excused for their recent play. Fans can do little to improve the situation, but the standard the franchise is setting is too low. Coming into this season, the baseball world had relatively low, muted expectations for the team. To see them demonstrate that they have the talent to prove those people wrong, yet consistently fail to actually do so, makes it feel like the bad old days are here again. Given that the charm and the affordability of Wrigley Field have been irreparably damaged by the Ricketts's myopic cash grabs throughout the last decade, fans can't even fall back on something ineffable and separate from winning as solace during times like these. Just at this moment, it feels like the Cubs' owners successfully got rid of everything that made the Cubs unique, except for the mysterious, constant losing.  

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[CubinNY]

6 minutes ago, Matt Trueblood said:

There was something gnawing at me. It was tough to put my finger on it, but just as Christopher Morel's eighth home run in his first 11 games of 2023 sailed over the fence, the penny dropped. This is what the 1990s were like.

Last Tuesday, Danny Rockett (on Twitter at @SonRanto, one of the deans of the metaphorical delegation from the real-life Wrigleyville to its digital counterpart) ran a Twitter poll asking fans of whom Christopher Morel most forcefully reminds them. He gave three options, and invited other suggestions. The responses were quite evenly mixed, including many people who took advantage of that offer to identify their own comps.

With all due respect to Danny, these weren't especially compelling comparators, in my opinion. Morel doesn't have anything approximating Aramis Ramirez's hit tool. He doesn't have the plate discipline or the defensive skills that allowed Ben Zobrist to first find a foothold, then blossom into a true superstar. Yet, his power is a louder tool than Zobrist ever had, and he's better able to make real use of his athleticism on the diamond than Junior Lake ever was.

Morel probably isn't a long-term, everyday infielder, but he's also unlikely to be a well-rounded utilityman with value in all facets and on both sides of the runs ledger. What Morel looks most like, as he comes up on 500 career plate appearances, is a rough-edged, toolsy outfielder with top-shelf power. What he looks like is Sammy Sosa, and while I'm not projecting that he'll hit 600 big-league home runs, that's an awfully exciting comparison.

Here's the cruel twist, though: For much of his career, Sosa was a dazzling, enlivening star on soporific Cubs teams. His flaws made him ill-equipped to be the best or second-best player on any serious contender for the first half of his Chicago tenure, and the obnoxious egalitarianism of baseball rendered him unable to singlehandedly lift them very far for much of the second half. Watching Sammy Sosa was always fun, but it was empty calories. That's not a commentary on the substance or the style of Sosa, but on the fact that too often, the Cubs were so relentlessly and (sometimes) inexplicably bad that one could have exactly as much fun by checking the highlights on SportsCenter to see Sosa homer as by watching the whole game.

That's the vibe of the 2023 Cubs right now. Morel is not a force on par with peak Sosa, of course, but he's been a burst of sizzle and spark in his first fortnight with the parent club. Alas, he's just the latest guy taking a turn. Nico Hoerner has had a similar stretch during which he put on a really fun show. Patrick Wisdom's power binge was every bit as thunderous as Morel's. Cody Bellinger showed us a glimpse of his considerable former glory, early on. Roughly twice every time through the rotation, a starter has a wonderful start that makes most of an entire game fun and watchable.

It's not adding up to anything. The maddening reality is that a lot of things have gone right for the Cubs this year, but they're 20-26, and they're watching a lot of the teams over whom they grabbed what felt like a potentially critical early edge get right and sail right past them--often at their direct expense. Somehow, for the fifth straight season, this team is less impressive and less consistent than it ought to be. The familiarity of the players, the makeup of the front office, the man on the top step of the dugout, and many things about how the organization tries to win have changed in that time frame, and they've had very different levels of expectation going into each of those seasons, but the results seem obdurate. 

That's why it feels like it did 20 or 30 years ago, right now. Even the team's successes feel a bit like hiccups. Just when they begin to feel almost trustworthy, the page turns, and Cinderella turns back into a franchise forever selling hope. The farm system is on the upswing, but fans old enough to remember $4 bleacher seats know that when the big-league product is on the downswing, the farm system is always on the upswing. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins are superficially smarter than Ed Lynch, and even than Andy MacPhail, but they seem no closer to resolving the perpetual extra gravity that drags the Cubs downward than those men got. Ownership was bad then, and ownership is bad now, but ownership changes far less quickly and easily than front-office or on-field personnel. If it's bad owners holding the Cubs back, there's no way to tell when a light might emerge at the end of the tunnel for the Cubs and their fans. If the Ricketts family is the kind of ownership group that can at least be overcome by better front-office work, Hoyer and Hawkins need to start doing it.

There is too much talent and too much money on the field every day for the Cubs to be excused for their recent play. Fans can do little to improve the situation, but the standard the franchise is setting is too low. Coming into this season, the baseball world had relatively low, muted expectations for the team. To see them demonstrate that they have the talent to prove those people wrong, yet consistently fail to actually do so, makes it feel like the bad old days are here again. Given that the charm and the affordability of Wrigley Field have been irreparably damaged by the Ricketts's myopic cash grabs throughout the last decade, fans can't even fall back on something ineffable and separate from winning as solace during times like these. Just at this moment, it feels like the Cubs' owners successfully got rid of everything that made the Cubs unique, except for the mysterious, constant losing.  

 

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First class write-up. They put a lot of resources into the pitch lab, but they haven't found a solution for throwing good pitches. They walk too many and throw bad strikes. The minor leagues have a lot of good players and no great players. And the Ricketts are content with buying one good player and paying him like a great player once every six years or so. 

There are bad owners all over baseball, but there are none who have the combination of abject awfulness of the Ricketts family. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

2 hours ago, CubinNY said:

The minor leagues have a lot of good players and no great players.

This is my biggest concern.  The Cubs are at the point where they are supposed to be turning the corner and entering their new competitive window with a fresh supply of minor leaguers to drive their success.  Their minor league situation has improved substantially, but they still lack any real difference makers and there is no clear path to obtaining any.  It would be great if they could make video game trades where multiple "pretty good" prospects can be exchanged for one really good prospect, but that just doesn't happen.  They will likely have plenty of minor leaguers who can fill roster spots, but they can't count on those guys to come up and create a new Rizzo/Bryant/Baez core.  So that basically leaves us back where they are going to need to spend themselves out of this hole if they are serious about competing, and are they really willing to do that?

[CubinNY]

6 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

This is my biggest concern.  The Cubs are at the point where they are supposed to be turning the corner and entering their new competitive window with a fresh supply of minor leaguers to drive their success.  Their minor league situation has improved substantially, but they still lack any real difference makers and there is no clear path to obtaining any.  It would be great if they could make video game trades where multiple "pretty good" prospects can be exchanged for one really good prospect, but that just doesn't happen.  They will likely have plenty of minor leaguers who can fill roster spots, but they can't count on those guys to come up and create a new Rizzo/Bryant/Baez core.  So that basically leaves us back where they are going to need to spend themselves out of this hole if they are serious about competing, and are they really willing to do that?

I'm not sure they can spend their way out it either. They need to be good at identifying a quality or qualities of players to augment what they have in others. They need strike throwers. They need to cut down on strike outs. And they specifically need slugging.

[CubinNY]

8 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I'm not sure they can spend their way out it either. They need to be good at identifying a quality or qualities of players to augment what they have in others. They need strike throwers. They need to cut down on strike outs. And they specifically need slugging.

If Mervis can have more competitive ABs more often he could be a key piece to moving the team forward. I'm hoping for progression for him and lots of playing time. Jed needs to tell Ross to let him play.

Edited May 22, 2023 by CubinNY

[Transmogrified Tiger]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

I'm not sure they can spend their way out it either. They need to be good at identifying a quality or qualities of players to augment what they have in others. They need strike throwers. They need to cut down on strike outs. And they specifically need slugging.

They are 9th in pitcher BB%, 19th in hitter K%(half a percent from being top half), and 12th in hitter IsoP, none of these are gaping flaws in the team right now.

It seems pretty clear to me that the team is better than it's record, and while that's cold comfort since they probably aren't good & lucky enough to overcome that gap over the course of the season, it does mean we can be more clear eyed about what's going wrong and what the way forward should be.  To me there's three main problems outside of things that boil down to luck/sequencing:

 

• The starting pitching hasn't been elite recently, so instead of potentially carrying the team it's shining a spotlight on other failures at the margins.  In the first 23 games there were 4 starts with 4+ runs allowed and in the last 23 games there's been 7.  This mostly boils down to the depth being tested and Taillon being horrific.  If he can get sorted out(and there's no other path to try here given his contract) then this should be something that resolves itself.  Hendricks avoiding disaster starts will be very important too, because I suspect he's going to get at least as long as Wesneski to prove his rotation worthiness.
• The position player depth has failed.  Madrigal(though he deserves way less fanbase flak), Mastrobuoni, Hosmer, and now Mervis have not hit, and combined with the weird roster composition(I harped on needing LHH all winter for this reason) means that the offense is very good when it is whole but middling when inevitable trials are faced(Bellinger/Hoerner injuries, Suzuki/Wisdom slumps).  Morel helps with this a bit but it's still a group with too much skill set overlap, particularly in its right handedness.
• First base and DH are black holes.  This is related to the position player depth but I want to call it out specifically because these are positions that are supposed to help with consistency and stability in an offense, but they are bottom 5 at both spots offensively.  Hosmer got a lot of ire for this but Mervis has been worse than even tempered expectations, particularly in pitch recognition.  Mancini has floated under the radar but he's been bad too.  Hopefully Morel keeps hitting and then once Bellinger is healthy you can start helping out more with Wisdom or even Velazquez if Mancini/Mervis can't get it going, but otherwise it's the singular spot on the team most ripe for external improvement.

 

The pen might feel like a peculiar omission here, but I think it has the easiest way forward given the shuffling that's already taken place.  It's also the spot that feels the most luck-driven(bullpen ERA is underperforming FIP and xFIP pretty dramatically) in its cause.

[I owned a Suzuki]

2 hours ago, CubinNY said:

If Mervis can have more competitive ABs more often he could be a key piece to moving the team forward. I'm hoping for progression for him and lots of playing time. Jed needs to tell Ross to let him play.

My bigger frustration is he should have been here since opening day already working past some of the issues he was going to eventually run into

[CubinNY]

55 minutes ago, I owned a Suzuki said:

My bigger frustration is he should have been here since opening day already working past some of the issues he was going to eventually run into

He had a pretty bad spring and a lot of helium last year, so I don't blame the Cubs for where he started. They have to give him a long leash to get himself comfortable. The way Ross sets playing time is not necessarily helpful for that. 

But it's on him to sink or swim if they give him enough time.

[gflore34]

I'm beginning to wonder if Mervis is nothing more than a AAAA player - may get sent down, will tear it up in Iowa, get called up and, again, look clueless and feeble, just never able to translate minor league success to the major league level.

[muntjack]

That may be the case,  but 50 PAs isn't going to tell us.   I won't list the first 50 PAs for the countless HOFers that performed similarly.  

[gflore34]

5 minutes ago, muntjack said:

That may be the case,  but 50 PAs isn't going to tell us.   I won't list the first 50 PAs for the countless HOFers that performed similarly.  

I agree but, he was terrible in spring training, he's thus far been terrible, at this point it doesn't look encouraging.

[CubinNY]

7 minutes ago, gflore34 said:

I agree but, he was terrible in spring training, he's thus far been terrible, at this point it doesn't look encouraging.

He's more than likely to not make it, but it's still too early to tell. He's shown an ability to adjust at each level so far. There is reason to believe he can adjust. In his first ABs he was doing pretty well at waiting. He may be pressing now.