Cubs (Brown) vs Marlins (Cabrera): 5/19/25, 5:40pm

[UMFan83]

seems like the 9th inning double that Tucker couldn’t get to was around a 50% catch probability. Looked like he just took a bad initial route to the ball otherwise he catches it and the Cubs win. Baseball is a game of inches. 

[gflore34]

2 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

seems like the 9th inning double that Tucker couldn’t get to was around a 50% catch probability. Looked like he just took a bad initial route to the ball otherwise he catches it and the Cubs win. Baseball is a game of inches. 

The frustrating part is that's the best Hill could do with a hanging slider, there's no way in hell he would have done anything with a 96+ FB anywhere.  Just terrible, terrible pitch selection and not realizing the only thing the batter had any chance on was off speed stuff.

[UMFan83]

8 minutes ago, gflore34 said:

The frustrating part is that's the best Hill could do with a hanging slider, there's no way in hell he would have done anything with a 96+ FB anywhere.  Just terrible, terrible pitch selection and not realizing the only thing the batter had any chance on was off speed stuff.

Yep. And I saw Amaya set up outside and motion for Palencia to put the slider off the plate. I assumed it was either going to be ball 1 or he would chase and strike out. Instead it just hung there over the plate. Gah what a terrible loss. One that every team has every year but still doesn’t make it suck less 

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Back when I coached my son’s travel ball team, I got into a bit of an argument with a parent one day. We had a kid throwing straight gas one game. The other team had trouble making any contact with his fastball. This parent comes to the dugout and tells me we should call more off speed stuff to “fool them”. You know, the team that could not make contact. When I made the point that slowing down our pitches helped them, he said to trust him because his cousin was Darren Daulton so he knows a lot about baseball. We did not call anything but fastballs the rest of the game and won like 9-0.

[Hot Sauce]

Our old friend Aroldis Chapman is having a career resurgence. He notched his 7th save of the season tonight against the Mets and is a perfect 7 of 7 on the season.

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Tucker could have had that and palencia pitching 3rd time in 4 days and was warming up yesterday was bad. 

Tucker needed to catch that.

Hard to blame Palencia, he's been lights out and everyone is going to give up some runs once in a while.  The expectation can't be perfection.

Main thing is Brown can't give up 6 ER in less than 5 IP.  The pen gave up 2 ER in 4 IP, which is better than what Brown did.  With this mediocre pen Counsell probably has a slow hook trying to get some length out of his SP.  But maybe when Brown started getting knocked around late it's a spot where someone like Flexen needs to come in and throw a couple of innings.  But then again I have no idea who's available.

Edited May 20, 2025 by Stratos

[Stratos]

48 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

Our old friend Aroldis Chapman is having a career resurgence. He notched his 7th save of the season tonight against the Mets and is a perfect 7 of 7 on the season.

What's a "save"?  Who are these "closers" you speak of?

Looks like Chapman has gained a tick back on his velo too.

Edited May 20, 2025 by Stratos

[Geographyhater8888]

5 hours ago, Stratos said:

Tucker needed to catch that.

Hard to blame Palencia, he's been lights out and everyone is going to give up some runs once in a while.  The expectation can't be perfection.

Main thing is Brown can't give up 6 ER in less than 5 IP.  The pen gave up 2 ER in 4 IP, which is better than what Brown did.  With this mediocre pen Counsell probably has a slow hook trying to get some length out of his SP.  But maybe when Brown started getting knocked around late it's a spot where someone like Flexen needs to come in and throw a couple of innings.  But then again I have no idea who's available.

Until Brown develops a third pitch he’ll never be a quality starting pitcher. If you’re a hitter you either sit on a fastball or curve ad wait for him to throw you a hittable pitch. He throws nothing that moves horizontally off the plate so as a hitter it’s easy to lay off pitchers on the corners,

 

At 6’7, it’s a lot easier to pick up the spin on a breaking pitch too when it starts at eye level due to his height and over the top delivery. 

 

Siitter, cutter, anything. He’ll spend his career in the pen until he develops at least another pitch.

[squally1313]

Brown has 102 career innings and 2.1 fWAR, he has 85 innings as a starter giving up a .305 OBP and a .307 wOBA. His ERA as a starter is 4.35, and his FIP is 3.51. It’s easy to dream on what he could become given the flashes but he’s been fine and based on everything should continue to be more than fine as is. 

[DrCub]

11 hours ago, chibears55 said:

They just said deep into June..

Be nice if they can but gonna be tough to stay afloat with 2 very young Starters and no real top guy in rotation.

 

Agreed.  I only meant that was what I said about Shota the day he got injured.  I think they can stay afloat, I think what’s really going to matter is how Shota is when he gets back and can Hoyer actually acquire a frontline guy.  

[Hunter]

1 hour ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Until Brown develops a third pitch he’ll never be a quality starting pitcher. If you’re a hitter you either sit on a fastball or curve ad wait for him to throw you a hittable pitch. He throws nothing that moves horizontally off the plate so as a hitter it’s easy to lay off pitchers on the corners,

 

His curve was crushed when he left it in the zone. When it stayed out of the zone, he got a lot of swing and misses. Looks like a rotation vs velocity issue on the curve. When you can't consistently place a pitch where you want it, you definitely need more than 2 pitches.

[17 Seconds]

12 hours ago, chibears55 said:

They just said deep into June..

Be nice if they can but gonna be tough to stay afloat with 2 very young Starters and no real top guy in rotation.

 

it's not going to be tough to "stay afloat". they're a good team facing an easy part of the schedule. if they collapse, it's going to be about a lot more than a couple missing starters

[Outshined_One]

2 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Brown has 102 career innings and 2.1 fWAR, he has 85 innings as a starter giving up a .305 OBP and a .307 wOBA. His ERA as a starter is 4.35, and his FIP is 3.51. It’s easy to dream on what he could become given the flashes but he’s been fine and based on everything should continue to be more than fine as is. 

It's also worth remembering that he's a second year player who's only pitched a little over 100 innings in the majors.  Part of Brown's development will involve him making mistakes and having bad outings like yesterday.

It sucks because this team looks like it could be the class of the National League, and there isn't much room for mistakes and bad outings against bad teams, especially with a shaky bullpen.

[mul21]

3 hours ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Until Brown develops a third pitch he’ll never be a quality starting pitcher. If you’re a hitter you either sit on a fastball or curve ad wait for him to throw you a hittable pitch. He throws nothing that moves horizontally off the plate so as a hitter it’s easy to lay off pitchers on the corners,

 

At 6’7, it’s a lot easier to pick up the spin on a breaking pitch too when it starts at eye level due to his height and over the top delivery. 

 

Siitter, cutter, anything. He’ll spend his career in the pen until he develops at least another pitch.

He got a strikeout last night on a change up, so maybe have a little patience with the kid.

[squally1313]

Overall though, beyond Brown, I remain very worried about the pitching. It was basically projected as an average group going into the year and that was with Steele and Shota. Steele is gone for a while and Shota seems to already be having setbacks and also wasn't that good before he got hurt. Boyd has been solid but will eclipse his 2024 innings total in about a month at his current pace, and I'd throw Taillon/Horton/Brown all at about the same level of mid grade performance. Rea made a couple encouraging tweaks but the metrics still say he's bad. AAA is pretty barren, and even a fixed version of Wicks is more innings eater than elite performance.

This is all going to have a knock on impact to the bullpen, now minus Hodge. There's no real multi inning guy there (because ideally it should be Horton or Brown). There's still enough bodies floating around between Chicago and Iowa, but short of a Bautista type move, the best way to fix this is to get a couple starters and push Horton to the pen. 

[CubUgly]

11 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

seems like the 9th inning double that Tucker couldn’t get to was around a 50% catch probability. Looked like he just took a bad initial route to the ball otherwise he catches it and the Cubs win. Baseball is a game of inches. 

Yeah, it wasn't easy but I thought it not unreasonable that he could catch that.  The bigger issue for me was if Palencia throws a fastball to Hill 0-2 there the games over. 

[gflore34]

3 minutes ago, CubUgly said:

Yeah, it wasn't easy but I thought it not unreasonable that he could catch that.  The bigger issue for me was if Palencia throws a fastball to Hill 0-2 there the games over. 

Exactly, I'm convinced anything 96+ gets him, dude is terrible, he barely put a hanging slider in play.  How can't Amaya and Palencia not know this?

[KCCub]

1 minute ago, squally1313 said:

Overall though, beyond Brown, I remain very worried about the pitching. It was basically projected as an average group going into the year and that was with Steele and Shota. Steele is gone for a while and Shota seems to already be having setbacks and also wasn't that good before he got hurt. Boyd has been solid but will eclipse his 2024 innings total in about a month at his current pace, and I'd throw Taillon/Horton/Brown all at about the same level of mid grade performance. Rea made a couple encouraging tweaks but the metrics still say he's bad. AAA is pretty barren, and even a fixed version of Wicks is more innings eater than elite performance.

This is all going to have a knock on impact to the bullpen, now minus Hodge. There's no real multi inning guy there (because ideally it should be Horton or Brown). There's still enough bodies floating around between Chicago and Iowa, but short of a Bautista type move, the best way to fix this is to get a couple starters and push Horton to the pen. 

Agreed. I think a couple starters around the deadline is absolutely going to be the move. One high end starter and one reliable starter. Allows the young guys to move to the pen to save innings + strengthens the pen. 

[sneakypower]

what's really wild to me is over the last month, Ben Brown is top-5 (!) in all MLB for K-BB%, xFIP & SIERA

so i do feel better seeing that despite a horrid 6.20 ERA caused by extreme LOB%, BABIP, the best available evidence suggests he's likely headed for much better days going forward if he continues the same processes he's doing; but i do accept the possibility that fielding-independent stats may struggle to gauge extreme 2-pitch starters

look at this elite company though, i'm still plenty content to play out the string for a while forcing him to tinker a lil bit in the background with a show-me change or whatever

[Rcal10]

2 hours ago, gflore34 said:

Exactly, I'm convinced anything 96+ gets him, dude is terrible, he barely put a hanging slider in play.  How can't Amaya and Palencia not know this?

I don’t think the slider was a bad choice. He also looked terrible swinging at one of them OUTSIDE the zone. The issue was not the pitch selection, it is where he threw the pitch. If he throws the slider 2 to 3 inches outside the zone he gets a swinging strike. He was not going to hit a good slider. 

[CubUgly]

2 hours ago, gflore34 said:

Exactly, I'm convinced anything 96+ gets him, dude is terrible, he barely put a hanging slider in play.  How can't Amaya and Palencia not know this?

Yeah, Hill was not gonna hit Palencia's fastball, so no reason to slow his bat down there.  One finger down would have gotten the W there.  No reason to overthink and get cute there. 

[Donzo]

 

Thank God this guy isn't a Cub

 

[UMFan83]

10 hours ago, sneakypower said:

what's really wild to me is over the last month, Ben Brown is top-5 (!) in all MLB for K-BB%, xFIP & SIERA

so i do feel better seeing that despite a horrid 6.20 ERA caused by extreme LOB%, BABIP, the best available evidence suggests he's likely headed for much better days going forward if he continues the same processes he's doing; but i do accept the possibility that fielding-independent stats may struggle to gauge extreme 2-pitch starters

look at this elite company though, i'm still plenty content to play out the string for a while forcing him to tinker a lil bit in the background with a show-me change or whatever

wait lol his xFIP over that stretch is 2.52?!?  that's kind of wild

[ryanrc]

Ben Brown is frustrating...

I have been in the chorus that says "find your third pitch, ASAP!"
He would have been sent down by now, if it weren't for Imanaga's injury. 

Some say Brown NEEDS a slider or sweeper, but I think a cut fastball variation would add JUST ENOUGH to make him stick as a starter. Every 3rd fast ball should break funny, and that would bail him out of jams, as hitter have to guess if it moves 3 inches the wrong way or not. It would lower his HR rate and raise his fly ball and foul rate.    

Let Chris Flexen take the next start, and Brown should move to the pen. I get it, Flexen throws a 90-91 fastball, and that's a bummer. But his junk is REALLY playing well. He's got 4 pitches in a unique combination of motion. If Flexen has a strong showing, let him stay as #5 until Imanaga returns... then keep Flexen around as long relief and send Brown to AAA to work on his third offering. 

Brown has the winning stuff if he could FOOL people. Split that fastball into two different pitches. And throw his below average changeup just a couple times a game for sheer surprise value to freeze people when ahead in the count.  
 

[Geographyhater8888]

On 5/20/2025 at 9:10 AM, mul21 said:

He got a strikeout last night on a change up, so maybe have a little patience with the kid.

You’re talking about his 94 mph fastball with a weird grip that he calls a changeup. If that counts as a third pitch, he needs a fourth one.

Edited May 22, 2025 by Geographyhater8888