Cubs (Rea) vs Twins (Paddack): 7/10/25, 12:10pm

[squally1313]

14 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

they did it with Happ in 2019

Ok what’d they do with their struggling rookie last year 

[JHBulls]

Colin Rea has been excellent today. Results go our way when pitchers pitch well and hitters hit well.

In other breaking news stuff: Winter is cold, summer is hot and the sky is blue. 

[mul21]

3 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Ok what’d they do with their struggling rookie last year 

And Happ going down was to work on the very specific issue of laying off the high fastball.

[Derwood]

RISP!!!

[Cubbies1996]

Dansby!

[UMFan83]

Ahh yes one of those series where were score almost all of our runs in one game.

[UMFan83]

Also it looks like the Twins are perfectly fine winning the first 2 games of the series with Paddack still in there.

[chibears55]

5 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

Matt Shaw xwOBA entering game: .307
League 3b wOBA: .306

zOPS: .723
OPS (as of 7/1): .617

Matt Shaw BABIP: .247
zBABIP (as of 7/1): .341

You know all of those conversations we just had about Ian Happ? Yeah, same here. Anything with a z in front is what ZiPS projects he should be at. So by almost every system we have, expected data, ZiPS data, a look at recent BABIP vs hard hit, it's pretty clear he's a recipient of massive bad luck. 

Sending him down isn't the answer. 

Again that all cool and all but results matter at some point, and this is a 23 yo rookie who is pressing and losing confidence by the day.

Someone mentioned about being glad im not management, can you imagine a roster some of you would have built with the all "bad luck" team ? You'd be down in the standings with the Rockies and Whitesox, but it ok cause it just bad luck 🤷‍♂️

 

I would love to see this kid succeed but to continue to run him out there everyday and drop 0fers, just isnt doing him and his confidence level any good, eventually a decision has to be made and I personally feel it would be best to give him a pause for now like they did with Happ in 2019.

I bet if Hoyer went and added a solid 3Bmen at the deadline nobody would be complaining on here.

[mul21]

Just now, chibears55 said:

Again that all cool and all but results matter at some point, and this is a 23 yo rookie who is pressing and losing confidence by the day.

Someone mentioned about being glad im not management, can you imagine a roster some of you would have built with the all "bad luck" team ? You'd be down in the standings with the Rockies and Whitesox, but it ok cause it just bad luck 🤷‍♂️

 

I would love to see this kid succeed but to continue to run him out there everyday and drop 0fers, just isnt doing him and his confidence level any good, eventually a decision has to be made and I personally feel it would be best to give him a pause for now like they did with Happ in 2019.

I bet if Hoyer went and added a solid 3Bmen at the deadline nobody would be complaining on here.

What evidence do you have that he's pressing and losing confidence by the day?  Jason has presented real, tangible data to back up what he's saying and you're just going off of vibes or something?  He smoked a line drive to win a game against Cleveland last week and just did the job again in an RBI situation.  You're grasping at straws because you can't let go of whatever thing it is you're clutching.  

[Geographyhater8888]

I agree with everyone. Keep Shaw in the lineup, at least until Jed trade ls for an above replacement level bat as an upgrade who’ll help you win in 2025.

Edited July 10, 2025 by Geographyhater8888

[CubinNY]

I'm going to have to turn this game off. As soon as I tune in a HR for the Twins by a part time player

[chibears55]

Lmao...

All of you that ok with sticking with Shaw and not sending him back down, then dont complain about him and his ABs and not getting a hit.  Don't be happy if Hoyer gets a solid 3Bmen to replace him if he does.

 

[UMFan83]

21 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

Matt Shaw xwOBA entering game: .307
League 3b wOBA: .306

zOPS: .723
OPS (as of 7/1): .617

Matt Shaw BABIP: .247
zBABIP (as of 7/1): .341

You know all of those conversations we just had about Ian Happ? Yeah, same here. Anything with a z in front is what ZiPS projects he should be at. So by almost every system we have, expected data, ZiPS data, a look at recent BABIP vs hard hit, it's pretty clear he's a recipient of massive bad luck. 

Sending him down isn't the answer. 

I don't claim to be an expert in these things but I have a hard time understanding how he could be unfortunate while being in the 1 percentile in exit velocity and 4 percentile in hard hit %

[Jason Ross]

1 minute ago, chibears55 said:

Again that all cool and all but results matter at some point, and this is a 23 yo rookie who is pressing and losing confidence by the day.

Someone mentioned about being glad im not management, can you imagine a roster some of you would have built with the all "bad luck" team ? You'd be down in the standings with the Rockies and Whitesox, but it ok cause it just bad luck 🤷‍♂️

 

I would love to see this kid succeed but to continue to run him out there everyday and drop 0fers, just isnt doing him and his confidence level any good, eventually a decision has to be made and I personally feel it would be best to give him a pause for now like they did with Happ in 2019.

I bet if Hoyer went and added a solid 3Bmen at the deadline nobody would be complaining on here.

So, you realize that Matt Shaw's data is significantly better than what Pete Crow-Armstrong's was at this same time last year, do you not? How'd that work out? 

Do you think sending Matt Shaw back to Iowa will "build his confidence?" A place he has been 40% better than league average? Will he just come back up to the Cubs and because he hits a home run off of the corpse of Matt Fulmer, he'll be ready to hit 98mph? The "confidence" argument always confuses me a bit. If I was struggling at work, and my boss took my responsibilities away and gave me obviously easier tasks that I had already shown mastery of, I wouldn't feel any better, and I wouldn't feel any more confident. Why we think baseball players are any different is beyond me. 

I also wouldn't mind a 3b, but not a starting type. The Cubs need a Castro, an Urias; padding. They have the 3rd best offense by almost any metric, they dont need a starting 3b

[mul21]

2 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Lmao...

All of you that ok with sticking with Shaw and not sending him back down, then dont complain about him and his ABs and not getting a hit.  Don't be happy if Hoyer gets a solid 3Bmen to replace him if he does.

 

Nobody is saying don't go get someone.  They're saying have some patience for another couple weeks and see if he turns a corner.  That's literally exactly what we saw with PCA last year.  If he's not showing something within 10 days or so after the break, then yeah, go get Suarez and keep Shaw on the bench as a late inning defensive replacement because the glove is fantastic and Suarez's, not so much.

[chibears55]

5 minutes ago, mul21 said:

What evidence do you have that he's pressing and losing confidence by the day?  Jason has presented real, tangible data to back up what he's saying and you're just going off of vibes or something?  He smoked a line drive to win a game against Cleveland last week and just did the job again in an RBI situation.  You're grasping at straws because you can't let go of whatever thing it is you're clutching.  

If you dont see a kid pressing when hes hitting, I dont know what to tell you.

That awesome he had 2 good AB in the last week but what about all the others, I forgot, bad luck.

[chibears55]

3 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I don't claim to be an expert in these things but I have a hard time understanding how he could be unfortunate while being in the 1 percentile in exit velocity and 4 percentile in hard hit %

It bad luck i guess 🤷‍♂️

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Lmao...

All of you that ok with sticking with Shaw and not sending him back down, then dont complain about him and his ABs and not getting a hit.  Don't be happy if Hoyer gets a solid 3Bmen to replace him if he does.

 

Your comment was send him down and bring someone else up from AAA. While I side with Jason and those who feel he needs time here, I do at least understand your frustration with him in the line up. But where you really lost me was suggesting sending someone else up, as if that someone would be any better in the line up. And he would undoubtedly be worse on the field. I assume that someone would be Long. Are his AAA numbers any better than what Shaw’s were? And he is clearly not as good a fielder. If/when Shaw gets replaced, this year, it needs to be by someone they traded for. And I am not sure they even have to do that. But I do understand why you do. 

[Cubbies1996]

Yeaahhh it’s time for Happ to move down in the lineup for a little bit 

[squally1313]

14 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Again that all cool and all but results matter at some point,

Genuine question because I think this might be the crux here. The games that have already been played are gone. All his struggles to date are in the past, his statistics are what they are, the teams record is what it is. Between his stats and his expected stats, what do you think is a better predictive indicator of his future performance?

[Geographyhater8888]

9 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I don't claim to be an expert in these things but I have a hard time understanding how he could be unfortunate while being in the 1 percentile in exit velocity and 4 percentile in hard hit %

1 percentile in exit velo?

[Jason Ross]

12 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I don't claim to be an expert in these things but I have a hard time understanding how he could be unfortunate while being in the 1 percentile in exit velocity and 4 percentile in hard hit %

I would like to introduce you to Luis Arreaz. Now, I want to be very clear here in that I am in no way comparing Matt Shaw to Luis Arraez in any way other than an anecdote, but he perpetually is among the 1% of EV and hard hit. Thing is this; many people misuse EV and hard hit% in that they use it like it was a silver bullet. 

Hitters like Matt Shaw (and Arraez) - high swing, high contact have lower EV's. When a hitter swings and misses, they don't create an EV, it's a miss. When a hitter strikes out, they don't make an EV. Hitters who make a lot of contact trade K's for weak-ass contact, thus, lowering EV. This also creates more opportunities. If I hit the ball in play, even weakly, I have many times  .120-.200 xBA or something. Yeah, most of the time I'm getting out, but a decent amount of the time? I'm getting on. K's are always outs so they don't factor into BABIP. K's, as well, have an xBA of .000. So lowering my EV to trade K's for contact can work. (Now, you can also trade K's for power, so let's be clear, this isn't always good!)

Beyond that, Shaw's sprint speed should add to his BABIP significantly. Shaw should run a pretty high BABIP regardless.

This isn't to say that EV can't improve! And Matt Shaw is. I've shown this chart a few times, but here it is again:

Don't you think it's weird that Shaw is making, consistently, better contact and yet his BABIP isn't following suit? Look at his first half...notice how they went together? 

So we have three things to understand:

1. Matt Shaw's EV's will likely remain lower due to his makeup.
2. Matt Shaw hits a lot of balls in play and thus his BABIP should help him more than others because he will generate more chances
3. Even despite this, we should be seeing significantly better BABIP based on the progress under the hood for Shaw

[Outshined_One]

Oh look, it's this argument again. And it's during a drubbing by the Cubs.

Cripes, I can't wait for this team to make a trade.

[Jason Ross]

1 minute ago, Outshined_One said:

Oh look, it's this argument again. And it's during a drubbing by the Cubs.

Cripes, I can't wait for this team to make a trade.

It's times like this when I miss having to work the other 10 months of the year I have too much time on my hands currently.

[squally1313]

Very good overall game from Swanson. He can certainly get a little streaky too, and that RBI base hit was a great approach, and the plays in the field, anecdotally, have given him a boost in the past.