Rockies (Lorenzen) vs Cubs (Imanaga): 6/15/26, 7:05pm

[UMFan83]

Just some comparisons between 2025 PCA and 2026 PCA

2025: 

 

2026:

 

All in all very promising especially considering this includes his pretty brutal start of the season.  He's hitting the ball harder and more consistently.  His chase rate and walk rate are low and will probably always be low but he's still seen improvements there this year.  With his other tools, he doesn't need to be an elite plate discipline guy (though the would be nice).

[Bertz]

There are yellow flags on both Swanson and Bregman's profiles, but Nico's a pure victim of BABIP.  Like I couldn't devil's advocate my way into being worried about Nico if I tried.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

10 minutes ago, Bertz said:

There are yellow flags on both Swanson and Bregman's profiles, but Nico's a pure victim of BABIP.  Like I couldn't devil's advocate my way into being worried about Nico if I tried.

Feels like Mo has been babip'd to death as well, maybe not as much as Nico though.

[mul21]

3 hours ago, Cubs420psd said:

What about Nico? Hes been damn near as bad.

 

I actually think Nico might be hurt, though. I don't think i've ever seen him look this bad. His last at bat last night was pathetic. He swung at a ball two feet out of the zone that's not Nico like.

 

I wish Shaw was a little more sound at SS. Because if he was, I would give him and Ramirez a lot of run over the next couple weeks.

Between the BABIP that's been mentioned and the brain damage that hopefully clears up soon, I don't think there's any real concern there.

[BigSlick]

Thank god the Cubs actually figured out a way to win that because if they lost the PCA-Cycle-Game I would have given up on the team the rest of the season. (Is that good? Should I do that anyway?)

[BKHoo]

4 hours ago, squally1313 said:

The one silver lining with Dansby, which somewhat goes against the grain of what you'd expect, is that his defense is seemingly back to being Elite. The under the hood offensive stuff looks terrible, which is where you have to separate him from Nico, but if this was just the Age Cliff you'd think it would also show itself in being a step slow in the field, and that doesn't seem to be the case. His arm strength is actually up this year.

Who knows, it could be sample size. Seeing a similar situation with Suzuki, though not as extreme, in that he's gone from being a near-elite hitter to just a pretty good one, but his defense has rebounded to keep his overall value up. 

Bregman's offensive struggles have been overblown due to his total incompetence in high leverage situations. You probably don't want to paying $35m for the profile, but league average hitter (99 wRC, league average at 3B is 94) with good defense at 3B isn't some black hole.

PCA is a superstar, Busch is a stud, Nico is Nico, Happ is Happ, (shrug) at the catching spot. 

But Nico is not Nico. He has been absolutely PUTRID for over a month. How do you go from an OPS at about 1.000 to getting closer to .650 in that short amount of time? The answer is you absolutely SUCK. 

[Jason Ross]

22 minutes ago, BKHoo said:

But Nico is not Nico. He has been absolutely PUTRID for over a month. How do you go from an OPS at about 1.000 to getting closer to .650 in that short amount of time? The answer is you absolutely SUCK. 

Nico Hoerner since May 6th:
BA: .171 xBA .283
SLG: .210 xSLG: .344
wOBA: .221 xwOBA: .314

None of his xData suggests he's "SUCKED". What it does suggest is some negative variance. Because that's another way you go from an OPS of 1.000 to getting closer to .650. 
 

[squally1313]

13 minutes ago, BKHoo said:

But Nico is not Nico. He has been absolutely PUTRID for over a month. How do you go from an OPS at about 1.000 to getting closer to .650 in that short amount of time? The answer is you absolutely SUCK. 

The results (using since May 1) have absolutely been terrible. If he continues to run a .201 batting average on balls in play, I would expect the results to remain terrible. But historically that number is a little over .300. Can he improve on some things to get better batted balls results? Sure, but in terms of fly balls, ground balls, hard hit percentage, it's all generally in line with what he's always done.

What's actually encouraging through all of this is in that same time frame, he's walking 10.2% of the time (career: 7.0%) while only striking out 5.1% (career: 10.6%). Players that walk 2x the amount of times they strike out are usually really successful, especially guys with sprint speeds in the 79th percentile. The results are absolutely the results, and the AB in particular last night with guys on reflected some combination of general frustration and/or trying too hard to sell out for contact. But everything else seems to say that he's fine.

As an aside that's the main difference in concern between Nico and Dansby. They've both gone through a really rough stretch of BABIP. But Dansby pairing it with a 26% K rate makes it a lot harder to come out of. 

[squally1313]

Like, since May 1, he's had 156 ABs, along with 2 sacrifice flies. In those ABs he's had 9 strikeouts. That means he's had 149 (156+2-9) plate appearances not end in a walk or K (ie, a ball in play). Of those, he has 30 hits. If you give him his career average in batting average of balls in play, he would have 45 hits. That's a .288 batting average over that stretch, and that's a .357 OBP over that stretch. Even if you, conservatively, make them all singles, that's a .333 SLG, which would give you a .690 OPS for this stretch. 

I don't know how to do OPS to wRC, but there's a guy named Austin Martin for the Twins who has a .239/.347/.323 slash line, and that's good for a 94 wRC. Nico's hypothetical line is better than that. Geraldo Perdomo has a .246/.356/.364 line, which is slightly better than Nico's (conservative) hypothetical line, and that's a 105 wRC. So, split the difference, and hypothetical Nico is a roughly league average hitter, which is what he was in 2024 and 2025 when he put up 8.3 fWAR.

He's fine. 

[Jason Ross]

8 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Like, since May 1, he's had 156 ABs, along with 2 sacrifice flies. In those ABs he's had 9 strikeouts. That means he's had 149 (156+2-9) plate appearances not end in a walk or K (ie, a ball in play). Of those, he has 30 hits. If you give him his career average in batting average of balls in play, he would have 45 hits. That's a .288 batting average over that stretch, and that's a .357 OBP over that stretch. Even if you, conservatively, make them all singles, that's a .333 SLG, which would give you a .690 OPS for this stretch. 

I don't know how to do OPS to wRC, but there's a guy named Austin Martin for the Twins who has a .239/.347/.323 slash line, and that's good for a 94 wRC. Nico's hypothetical line is better than that. Geraldo Perdomo has a .246/.356/.364 line, which is slightly better than Nico's (conservative) hypothetical line, and that's a 105 wRC. So, split the difference, and hypothetical Nico is a roughly league average hitter, which is what he was in 2024 and 2025 when he put up 8.3 fWAR.

He's fine. 

There is no OPS to wRC+ conversation, sadly. Because it's rooted in neutralized statistics and field and league, etc, no easy 1:1. This is as good as you'll be able to do; find some quick comparisons! 

His xwOBA since May 6th is .314 and league average is .318 which also lines up with around that number. You can find anecdotal poor PA's (last night like you showed) and he's probably pressing a bit. But generally speaking? He's fine. He'll be fine.

[Bertz]

Just did a little math, pitchers in the 2010's had a .221 BABIP.  There's pretty much no argument that any position player can be expected to run lower than a .230ish over any meaningful time horizon.  And honestly anything under .250-.260 requires a leadfoot or someone who hits an insane number of fly balls.

Everyone always tries to tie themselves in knots over why this particular outlier BABIP, HR/FB rate, strand rate, etc. is totally going to maintain itself and every time they end with an "ah, well, nevertheless".

[Dfan25]

8 hours ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

So Shaw at short?

I am willing to sacrifice defense for offense at this point tbh .  Of course if they do it I bet Shaw will cost them a game 😂

[Stratos]

16 hours ago, cl smooth said:

PCA is 14th in all-star voting for outfielders?!

Dodgers fans hate him lol.  And White Sox fans, and probably others.   Meh whatever. He's a good guy just rambunctious.  He'll make the team, maybe not starter.

The All-star ballots also highlight everyone's hitting and no defense so that probably doesn't help PCA or Nico.

[Stratos]

14 hours ago, Cubs420psd said:

I wish Shaw was a little more sound at SS. Because if he was, I would give him and Ramirez a lot of run over the next couple weeks.

Shaw is a SS by trade so he'd probably be fine.

I wouldn't bench both Swanson and Nico at the same time though.  Maybe Nico needs a couple of days off.  Swanson needs a new hitting coach or something.