Question of the week: are you optimistic?

[Brock Beauchamp]

How you feelin' about this team right now?

[Bertz]

Yeah I feel pretty good about where the team is at right now.  White knuckling the bullpen a bit until Maton and Palencia are back, but that seems to hopefully be a short term problem.

With the *very* notable exception of Horton I generally feel as good or better about each guy on the pitching staff than I did coming into the season.  And at the plate I'm not feeling like any of the guys struggling are going through anything more than just a slump?  Mayyybe Busch?

Things are going well on the farm too, so that also gives me some confidence that reinforcements can be acquired if need be (though obviously temper expectations for what level of big game hunting Jed will have the appetite for).

[Rcal10]

5 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Yeah I feel pretty good about where the team is at right now.  White knuckling the bullpen a bit until Maton and Palencia are back, but that seems to hopefully be a short term problem.

With the *very* notable exception of Horton I generally feel as good or better about each guy on the pitching staff than I did coming into the season.  And at the plate I'm not feeling like any of the guys struggling are going through anything more than just a slump?  Mayyybe Busch?

Things are going well on the farm too, so that also gives me some confidence that reinforcements can be acquired if need be (though obviously temper expectations for what level of big game hunting Jed will have the appetite for).

I feel pretty good about the team as well. Obviously they have to stay away from any more pitching injuries and get Palencia and Maton back on the early side of their timeframe. Also, Steele coming back could be a huge addition. To me they look like a 90+ win team. Division does appear better, however. So this could be a race all season. Both the pirates and the reds have some solid staring pitching. Brewers can never be counted out. But in the end, IMO, the Cubs have the best 26 man roster and should prevail. 

[squally1313]

PCA needs to be parked in the 9 spot of the lineup for the foreseeable future but it's much less of a concern when the other two glove first guys up the middle are hitting the way that they are. Kelly and Hoerner aren't going to be able to keep this up but Bregman and Suzuki aren't going to continue to hit the way they have been. So the offense is fine.

Still skating on thin ice with the pitching, would really like to see a normal start from Boyd on Wednesday. But ultimately as much as I dislike this whole built in 'throwing pitchers at the wall to see what sticks' part of the cycle, we're 22 games into it and on a 96 win pace, so we're more than dealing with it. Keep it up. 

[Rcal10]

37 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

PCA needs to be parked in the 9 spot of the lineup for the foreseeable future but it's much less of a concern when the other two glove first guys up the middle are hitting the way that they are. Kelly and Hoerner aren't going to be able to keep this up but Bregman and Suzuki aren't going to continue to hit the way they have been. So the offense is fine.

Still skating on thin ice with the pitching, would really like to see a normal start from Boyd on Wednesday. But ultimately as much as I dislike this whole built in 'throwing pitchers at the wall to see what sticks' part of the cycle, we're 22 games into it and on a 96 win pace, so we're more than dealing with it. Keep it up. 

I’m not a huge fan of the “see what sticks” method of building a pen. But, if we are being honest, they aren’t bad at doing that. For all that wanted Williams as the closer, he just blew a game and has an era around 6. Diaz is going to be out for 3 months. The year before he was Scott, who sucks. Even Hader is on a long IL stint. Paying top dollar for a closer does appear to be fools money. While spreading the money around into several pen arms never gets you a top guy, it does give them options. And as I said, they do pretty well with how they spend it. 

[sneakypower]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

With the *very* notable exception of Horton I generally feel as good or better about each guy on the pitching staff than I did coming into the season. 

i feel quite a bit worse about Cabrera now, but conversely much better re Shota:

[mul21]

18 minutes ago, sneakypower said:

i feel quite a bit worse about Cabrera now, but conversely much better re Shota:

Doesn't Cabrera's FB grade out terribly in Stuff+ and the Cubs have him throwing it a lot more often?  Feels like that's a likely explanation is those things are true.

[Bertz]

30 minutes ago, mul21 said:

Doesn't Cabrera's FB grade out terribly in Stuff+ and the Cubs have him throwing it a lot more often?  Feels like that's a likely explanation is those things are true.

His velo is down too, though I'm wondering if that's at least partially weather.  He hasn't been pitching in tundra or anything but for a Dominican player who's career to this point has been in Miami weather in the 40's probably still has an impact.  His velo in the spring was fine and his velo that first start against the Angels (when it was weirdly warm) was also fine.

[squally1313]

53 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

I’m not a huge fan of the “see what sticks” method of building a pen. But, if we are being honest, they aren’t bad at doing that. For all that wanted Williams as the closer, he just blew a game and has an era around 6. Diaz is going to be out for 3 months. The year before he was Scott, who sucks. Even Hader is on a long IL stint. Paying top dollar for a closer does appear to be fools money. While spreading the money around into several pen arms never gets you a top guy, it does give them options. And as I said, they do pretty well with how they spend it. 

Those are some examples. The Braves signed Iglesias and Suarez and they've given up 1 run in just shy of 18 innings this year.

There's a counter argument of 'the resources can be better spent otherwise' that I can buy, but I think that lost a good amount of weight once we decided we were going to be a luxury tax team and we weren't as much pinching pennies to stay under the line. I don't think I'm going to buy a 'the relievers who got the most money are more likely to be bad or hurt'. We also didn't have to pick a lane. 

[NorthsideAvenger]

Cautiously optimistic. 

[Jason Ross]

Also that while I think Stuff+ is a good tool, it's only one part of the story. It's never a "good thing" to drop on the Stuff+ modeling, but Stuff+ is just measuring shape. With the rise of seam-shifted wake and teams doing tricky things with observed vs measured movement, this probably adds into it. The Cubs don't seem to super care about Stuff+ it would seem; they were not among the leaders in this last year (tied for 19th) and sit at the same 99 Stuff+ as a team this year. Internally, I would assume they think more of their internal modeling of shapes.

Cabrera's savant page is probably telling us a better story. The good news is that he's limited contact better this year. He's dropped his arm slot a little and he's gotten some more arm-side run. The bad news is that he's getting less chase and less whiff.

So if you want the rosy answer it's that "the Cubs are working through some arm slot stuff to better handle control and limit hard contact and the K's will follow" (similar to the two halves of Horton's 2025?) and the non-rosy side is "while he's limiting contact better it's not particularly great still and the whiff numbers going in reverse is never good". I'm a bit in the middle of those two things.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

I'm concerned about Michael Busch. bat speed is way down and he just looks completely lost.

[squally1313]

13 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

The Cubs don't seem to super care about Stuff+ it would seem; they were not among the leaders in this last year (tied for 19th) and sit at the same 99 Stuff+ as a team this year.

 I don't know if saying the pitching staff that was ranked 19th in fWAR last year 'don't seem to care' about a stat where they also ranked 19th makes a ton of sense. It's not a direct correlation or even really that strong of one (though the Phillies led the league in both), but ending up in the same ranking for that stat as your overall production isn't really an indictment of the stat or a sign that the Cubs don't think much of it. Because then you could essentially just say 'the Cubs don't seem to care about pitching fWAR' right?

[mul21]

4 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

 I don't know if saying the pitching staff that was ranked 19th in fWAR last year 'don't seem to care' about a stat where they also ranked 19th makes a ton of sense. It's not a direct correlation or even really that strong of one (though the Phillies led the league in both), but ending up in the same ranking for that stat as your overall production isn't really an indictment of the stat or a sign that the Cubs don't think much of it. Because then you could essentially just say 'the Cubs don't seem to care about pitching fWAR' right?

That feels like oversimplifying it.  Stuff+ is looking at a very specific aspect of what pitches do vs fWAR being an overall measure of how successful the pitching staff is.  Seems like an apples to oranges situation.  Like saying a team doesn't care about batting average vs WAR feels like a similar comparison to me.

[Jason Ross]

10 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

 I don't know if saying the pitching staff that was ranked 19th in fWAR last year 'don't seem to care' about a stat where they also ranked 19th makes a ton of sense. It's not a direct correlation or even really that strong of one (though the Phillies led the league in both), but ending up in the same ranking for that stat as your overall production isn't really an indictment of the stat or a sign that the Cubs don't think much of it. Because then you could essentially just say 'the Cubs don't seem to care about pitching fWAR' right?

I think if the Cubs cared a lot about Stuff+ modeling we'd see...probably some change in philosophy. They consistently let pitchers throw four-seams that grade out ****** in Stuff+. Colin Rea used a lot of 4-seam last year and had a Stuff+ of 89 on that pitch. They're doing a lot of the same thing on Cabrera. They didn't really add a ton of "Stuff+" monsters this year either. Cabrera was one and his Stuff+ has gone backwards, as well.

Mostly, I just don't think the team, for better or worse, is super worried about their Stuff+ rating. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in that they have their own models that they like better and score well in. If it's a bad thing because Stuff+ has correlated with K's and whiff. If it's a weird thing that observed movement and seam shifted wake just isn't being picked up on. 

This is an opinion. I have no proof of this. But circumstantially the team isn't acting like they're worried about that as a data point so while Cabrera's Stuff+ number is super down, I'm just not sure it's the number I'd hone in on. If I was worried, and to a little degree I am, it'd be the whiff and the chase numbers that are well down. I'd feel better if the contact numbers were better than they are, for example. 

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

hottovy mentioned in an interview yesterday they deliberately dropped Rea's arm angle because he was getting more velo that way, when he had previously been chasing vert.

 

[Bertz]

I think the Cubs don't care about Stuff+, but that's very much "our model and this model don't align" and not "we don't care about pitch models".  Painting with a broad brush but the Cubs tend to prioritize guys who work east/west (which pops off more in Pitching Bot) than north/south (which Stuff+ prefers).

If you see a guy go in opposite directions in different models I'd suspect an affirmative choice.  Cabrera's down in both so I don't think anything intentional is happening.  Maybe it's a SSS mechanical issue, hopefully it's weather, maybe sequencing/tunneling gains outweigh pitch model losses (Cabrera's fastball is finally in the black by pitch value), but Cabrera's stuff is definitely down.

[Jason Ross]

5 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I think the Cubs don't care about Stuff+, but that's very much "our model and this model don't align" and not "we don't care about pitch models".  Painting with a broad brush but the Cubs tend to prioritize guys who work east/west (which pops off more in Pitching Bot) than north/south (which Stuff+ prefers).

If you see a guy go in opposite directions in different models I'd suspect an affirmative choice.  Cabrera's down in both so I don't think anything intentional is happening.  Maybe it's a SSS mechanical issue, hopefully it's weather, maybe sequencing/tunneling gains outweigh pitch model losses (Cabrera's fastball is finally in the black by pitch value), but Cabrera's stuff is definitely down.

Yep. This is probably a better way of saying what I was saying. It isn't that the Cubs don't care about modeling, but that they don't seem to specifically align with what they care about and what Stuff+ care's about. 

[javy knows my name]

Generally? Not since I was a child

[JBears79]

Yeah, id say im pretty optimistic about this season. We need to shore up pitching depth at the deadline and I think we will have the pieces in the minors to do it. Hopefully PCA gets going here and Busch gets back to normal and we have a pretty great offense imo.

[squally1313]

All good points above, thanks. I think maybe my larger point isn't to ride for Stuff+, it's that I'm not really giving the Cubs pitching infrastructure the benefit of the doubt when a Cub/the Cubs in general show up as struggling in a certain metric. Cabrera has a 6.75 K/9 and a 4.37 BB/9. That's bad. Maybe his stuff and velocity will tick up as the weather warms up, but so will his HR/9, which is currently zero. 

I'm sure the Cubs have their own metrics and analytics and prioritize things in a way that is different than the FG leaderboards. But the Cubs also haven't been top 10 in pitching (per fWAR) since 2020, so I don't take a lot of comfort in the response to 'here's a bad stat for a Cubs pitcher' being 'well the Cubs probably don't care about that stat'. 

[mul21]

16 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

All good points above, thanks. I think maybe my larger point isn't to ride for Stuff+, it's that I'm not really giving the Cubs pitching infrastructure the benefit of the doubt when a Cub/the Cubs in general show up as struggling in a certain metric. Cabrera has a 6.75 K/9 and a 4.37 BB/9. That's bad. Maybe his stuff and velocity will tick up as the weather warms up, but so will his HR/9, which is currently zero. 

I'm sure the Cubs have their own metrics and analytics and prioritize things in a way that is different than the FG leaderboards. But the Cubs also haven't been top 10 in pitching (per fWAR) since 2020, so I don't take a lot of comfort in the response to 'here's a bad stat for a Cubs pitcher' being 'well the Cubs probably don't care about that stat'. 

I think in the particular case of Cabrera, I'm willing to cut them a little more slack since he's only been in the organization for ~6 months and they may still be in the figuring out what works best for his stuff/arm slot/etc. phase.  Generally, I definitely agree with your point and it feels like they know their arms aren't great and that's probably a big part of why they've leaned into defense as much as they have.

[Jason Ross]

14 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

All good points above, thanks. I think maybe my larger point isn't to ride for Stuff+, it's that I'm not really giving the Cubs pitching infrastructure the benefit of the doubt when a Cub/the Cubs in general show up as struggling in a certain metric. Cabrera has a 6.75 K/9 and a 4.37 BB/9. That's bad. Maybe his stuff and velocity will tick up as the weather warms up, but so will his HR/9, which is currently zero. 

I'm sure the Cubs have their own metrics and analytics and prioritize things in a way that is different than the FG leaderboards. But the Cubs also haven't been top 10 in pitching (per fWAR) since 2020, so I don't take a lot of comfort in the response to 'here's a bad stat for a Cubs pitcher' being 'well the Cubs probably don't care about that stat'. 

That's fair. Nothing I posted was to suggest anything about him over performing numbers, only that the way the Cubs handle things, Stuff+ probably isn't where I'd go to point to an issue simply because, as Bertz explained, what the Cubs like and what Stuff+ likes are opposed. So I think even if things like his K% or whatever was good, we'd probably see that drop just because that's who the Cubs are. 

More concrete numbers like K% and the like, probably are where I'd go to point that out. I just think that the tweet of Stuff+ losers is probably a bit of a red herring distracting from that actual root issues.

[Bertz]

I know I'm getting too in the weeds but Cabrera's due positive regression on the K front.  His contact rate against is a hair under 74%.  Among SPs last year between 73 and 75, the average rate was closer to 25%.

He's been dong lucky but strikeout unlucky.  I'm still expecting the approximately 3.50 ERA guy we were sold.

[macarthur31]

Overall, I'm optimistic.  

During this winning stretch against NYM and PHI, what resonates is the "high floor" of the Cubs: we've got professional ABs from 1-9, a very solid pitching rotation, terrific defense and very good speed.  Counsell has shown he can cook a hobo stew out of the bullpen, as well as deftly weave in the bench to invite contributions from the whole roster.

And as stated in other threads, this has been achieved in spite biblical levels of pitching injury and with Busch, Suzuki and PCA yet to really hit to the "back of their baseball card."  

Finally, the corps of Swanson, Bregman, Hoerner just exude a steady, commit to the grind, type of leadership.   Perhaps some fans want more performative angst in down times (Cue short video of Justin Steele yelling into his mitt "WAKE THE F___ UP"), but over the course of 162+, those are the types I'd want to roll with.