Padres (Buehler) vs Cubs (Rea): 7/1/26, 1:20pm

[Jason Ross]

4 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

So you agree with me but don’t like my tone. Okay. I was complimentary of the bats and gloves. It’s impressive to win at an 83% clip with mediocre traditional stats like a team 4.2 ERA through 12 games. Thats another way you can spin it. 

No. It has nothing to do with tone. It's purpose. Your purpose by posting "the Cubs have given up 4.3 per game over their 13-game span" was not to do anything other than point out doom-and-gloom. Contextually, it's league average! You didn't look to see what the rest of the league had done in that span, you hadn't looked up league average ERA. You found one piece of data that sounded bad and ran with it. When it turned out it wasn't doomy, you jumped to other things to doom-and-gloom about, things that weren't even connected to the original premise (Dansby Swanson, for example, or Cade Horton). 

No one disagrees that the pitching staff is not good. But we don't need to manipulate the data, or post contextless-data to find  new ways to doom-and-gloom over it. Especially after the Cubs have won 11-of-13 and beat the brakes off a Wild Card competitor 24-hours ago.

I'm just saying, we can be happy for a few minutes and we can enjoy the ride because when the first post that comes to mind is "The Cubs have given up 4.3 runs per game" without context as your only comment, it looks more like you're searching for something to wallow about instead.

[BigbadB]

7 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

So you agree with me but don’t like my tone. Okay. I was complimentary of the bats and gloves. It’s impressive to win at an 83% clip with mediocre traditional stats like a team 4.2 ERA through 12 games. Thats another way you can spin it. 

Cubs win 23-3 and have a stellar win/loss rate over the last 20 games and that's the moment you choose to eat Cheerios with pee in it? Given the amount of pitchers on the DL or IL or whatever you want to call it, I'd say they should be happy to be middle of the pack in ERA.

 

WEIRD!

[Geographyhater8888]

2 minutes ago, BigbadB said:

Cubs win 23-3 and have a stellar win/loss rate over the last 20 games and that's the moment you choose to eat Cheerios with pee in it? Given the amount of pitchers on the DL or IL or whatever you want to call it, I'd say they should be happy to be middle of the pack in ERA.

 

WEIRD!

Imagine if we had an ace pitcher and shutdown Bullpen arm to complement this elite core of position players. There’s a lot of potential here. How’s that?

[Rcal10]

7 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

So you agree with me but don’t like my tone. Okay. I was complimentary of the bats and gloves. It’s impressive to win at an 83% clip with mediocre traditional stats like a team 4.2 ERA through 12 games. Thats another way you can spin it. 

This discussion comes because of the way you seem to spin things in a doom boner fashion. You did the same thing after one of the Padre series, with the offense. I believe you said something like being concerned about the offense because if you took one 6 run inning away from the Cubs that they had against the Brewers, the offense wasn’t doing well.
No one is suggesting you aren’t right with your posts. Just saying you do have a way of spinning random stats or short periods of any kind where maybe you find a non flattering stat and dwell on it. Come on man! 15-4 the last 19. Take joy right now. I agree they need at least one starting pitcher who can be counted on as a playoff starter. And at least one back end of the pen guy. My hope is they get it soon. But I am not sure how likely that is. For now, be happy we got Peterson. He does help. 

[Geographyhater8888]

23 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

No. It has nothing to do with tone. It's purpose. Your purpose by posting "the Cubs have given up 4.3 per game over their 13-game span" was not to do anything other than point out doom-and-gloom. Contextually, it's league average! You didn't look to see what the rest of the league had done in that span, you hadn't looked up league average ERA. You found one piece of data that sounded bad and ran with it. When it turned out it wasn't doomy, you jumped to other things to doom-and-gloom about, things that weren't even connected to the original premise (Dansby Swanson, for example, or Cade Horton). 

No one disagrees that the pitching staff is not good. But we don't need to manipulate the data, or post contextless-data to find  new ways to doom-and-gloom over it. Especially after the Cubs have won 11-of-13 and beat the brakes off a Wild Card competitor 24-hours ago.

I'm just saying, we can be happy for a few minutes and we can enjoy the ride because when the first post that comes to mind is "The Cubs have given up 4.3 runs per game" without context as your only comment, it looks more like you're searching for something to wallow about instead.

What context do I need to add by stating that they’ve been red hot in-spite of mediocre pitching stats (and bad pitching)? I can phrase it in a nicer way if you want. Imagine if this team didn’t have an entire 5 man rotation full of guys on the IL, they could really use some arms at the deadline to not waste their talent. Better?

Edited 15 hours ago by Geographyhater8888

[Geographyhater8888]

23 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

This discussion comes because of the way you seem to spin things in a doom boner fashion. You did the same thing after one of the Padre series, with the offense. I believe you said something like being concerned about the offense because if you took one 6 run inning away from the Cubs that they had against the Brewers, the offense wasn’t doing well.
No one is suggesting you aren’t right with your posts. Just saying you do have a way of spinning random stats or short periods of any kind where maybe you find a non flattering stat and dwell on it. Come on man! 15-4 the last 19. Take joy right now. I agree they need at least one starting pitcher who can be counted on as a playoff starter. And at least one back end of the pen guy. My hope is they get it soon. But I am not sure how likely that is. For now, be happy we got Peterson. He does help. 

I’m not at all mad. Far from it. The bar is raised and my focus is on improving areas of need. They humiliated the Padres, took 2/3 versus a Milwaukee team on 1 day of rest with their top 3 pitchers lined up versus the cubs who played 4 games in 3 days with the Iowa Cubs bullpen. They also swept the Mets.  
 

I’m very happy. I want to keep being happy.

Edited 15 hours ago by Geographyhater8888

[Bertz]

I'm going to be curious how much pitching they add at the deadline.  Like literally from a number of bodies standpoint.

- There's some definite quibbling you can do but the bullpen is down at least 4, arguably 5 guys

- The rotation is down 2, and our depth has been slashed as well.  Worth noting if/when you bump Rea for the rotation he's gotta go to the pen as opposed to Iowa

- Some reinforcements are fairly close.  I don't think anyone is due back before the ASB but I think all of Taillon, Palencia, Milner, Maton, and Riley Martin are due back before the deadline?

- Presuming no setbacks, and we're on pretty high setback alert with two of these guys obviously, Brown/Cabrera/Steele all look like mid-late August returns

- Not a ton of prospect reinforcements left in the tank at Iowa, but Jaxon Wiggins would be a pretty ideal September callup and Will Sanders is probably not too far from being considered part of the big league team's depth

- It'll be late but sounds like Shelby Miller should be back before the end of the season.  We haven't heard a peep about Harvey but presumably since he didn't go under the knife (yet) he's not down for the full year

- We have the old dogs in Pomeranz, Bummer, and Hendriks at Iowa.  Pomeranz actually looks fairly promising

We have a number of guys who are optionable, and a handful of guys we might not want back at all.  But the flipside to the "we have a full pitching staff on our IL right now" not-so-fun fact is that, aside from Horton, they're all slated to return at some point.  At least as things stand currently.

[Bull]

16 hours ago, Outshined_One said:

I love how we've gone from "DFA Dansby!" to "MVP Dansby!" in the course of a week.

To be fair, that’s more on him than us.

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'm going to be curious how much pitching they add at the deadline.  Like literally from a number of bodies standpoint.

- There's some definite quibbling you can do but the bullpen is down at least 4, arguably 5 guys

- The rotation is down 2, and our depth has been slashed as well.  Worth noting if/when you bump Rea for the rotation he's gotta go to the pen as opposed to Iowa

- Some reinforcements are fairly close.  I don't think anyone is due back before the ASB but I think all of Taillon, Palencia, Milner, Maton, and Riley Martin are due back before the deadline?

- Presuming no setbacks, and we're on pretty high setback alert with two of these guys obviously, Brown/Cabrera/Steele all look like mid-late August returns

- Not a ton of prospect reinforcements left in the tank at Iowa, but Jaxon Wiggins would be a pretty ideal September callup and Will Sanders is probably not too far from being considered part of the big league team's depth

- It'll be late but sounds like Shelby Miller should be back before the end of the season.  We haven't heard a peep about Harvey but presumably since he didn't go under the knife (yet) he's not down for the full year

- We have the old dogs in Pomeranz, Bummer, and Hendriks at Iowa.  Pomeranz actually looks fairly promising

We have a number of guys who are optionable, and a handful of guys we might not want back at all.  But the flipside to the "we have a full pitching staff on our IL right now" not-so-fun fact is that, aside from Horton, they're all slated to return at some point.  At least as things stand currently.

What you just said is why I said one back end relief pitcher, not 2. Of course 2 would be better, but unless they are getting an established pen arm having a good/great year the pen guy probably wouldn’t be any better than Webb anyway. Basically a roll of the dice on a team that has many dice to roll. 

[Soul]

6 minutes ago, Bull said:

To be fair, that’s more on him than us.

Dansby “rollercoaster” Swanson.  He’s two completely different hitters.  The bipolar player.

[Jason Ross]

25 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'm going to be curious how much pitching they add at the deadline.  Like literally from a number of bodies standpoint.

- There's some definite quibbling you can do but the bullpen is down at least 4, arguably 5 guys

- The rotation is down 2, and our depth has been slashed as well.  Worth noting if/when you bump Rea for the rotation he's gotta go to the pen as opposed to Iowa

- Some reinforcements are fairly close.  I don't think anyone is due back before the ASB but I think all of Taillon, Palencia, Milner, Maton, and Riley Martin are due back before the deadline?

- Presuming no setbacks, and we're on pretty high setback alert with two of these guys obviously, Brown/Cabrera/Steele all look like mid-late August returns

- Not a ton of prospect reinforcements left in the tank at Iowa, but Jaxon Wiggins would be a pretty ideal September callup and Will Sanders is probably not too far from being considered part of the big league team's depth

- It'll be late but sounds like Shelby Miller should be back before the end of the season.  We haven't heard a peep about Harvey but presumably since he didn't go under the knife (yet) he's not down for the full year

- We have the old dogs in Pomeranz, Bummer, and Hendriks at Iowa.  Pomeranz actually looks fairly promising

We have a number of guys who are optionable, and a handful of guys we might not want back at all.  But the flipside to the "we have a full pitching staff on our IL right now" not-so-fun fact is that, aside from Horton, they're all slated to return at some point.  At least as things stand currently.

I was just thinking about this today. Here's where I've settled:
1. I reasonably expect one of Cabrera, Brown or Taillon to establish themselves as a reliable rotation piece the rest of the year. Which one? Not sure, as I think there's arguments against any of the three getting back (injuries, talent, etc). I have different levels of excitement of all three.

2. I expect one of Steele, Palencia, or Wiggins will establish themselves by the end of the year as a strong BP guy you really trust with a good shot it's two and a realistic, though less chance, it's all three. For Palencia it's just that I'm always cautious on arm ouchies, but I think he's the most likely. Wiggins could possibly end up in the rotation discussion but I'm trying to be very cautious.

I'm left with a possible situation of this:

- Playoff wise, I'd trust Boyd and Shota to start, with outside chances of Peterson though preferably, not. Cabrera or Brown would add a third, but Taillon is a no go. I think the team certainly has to add a playoff starter, even if just to guard another injury. 

- Bullpen wise, Justin Webb, Ryan Rollison and Caleb Thielbar (I remain encouraged by the under the hood stuff, think he's stull a useful arm) remain in my my trust circle. Tyler Ferguson has given me some hope he could stick around, but it's still under 7 innings so I'll hold off putting his name in permanent marker. You expect one more of those guys to add to this list. If you get more? Great! But that leaves me four or five guys. You can slot your favorite non-playoff SP in here for length. But the team needs at least one back-end guy and probably one middle-relief guy. Maybe Maton comes back, too, and looks like last-year Maton, but it might not happen this year. Shelby Miller is a fun lottery ticket, too.

My hope is that the Cubs solve this with three arms. One Edwin Cabrera-type trade, one Andrew Kittredge-type trade and then pick up your favorite expiring middle reliever who does some damage. Obviously health is a big question mark, and more guys will possibly go down, But I think this is where I'm at.

I'm not going to turn my nose up at another David Peterson simply because we've seen depth issues all year, but I'm not very interested in another one of these. I think the Cubs with Rea, Assad, Peterson, and the possibilities of Taillon, Sanders and Wiggins have depth SP as of now. They need someone you write down with confidence in a playoff rotation.

[Hunter]

Wasn't it reported that Steele won't be pitching this year?

[sneakypower]

in a starter's capacity yes but he's still reportedly on track to be able to do some bullpen duty at some point

[Jason Ross]

9 minutes ago, Hunter said:

Wasn't it reported that Steele won't be pitching this year?

It was reported he will be unlikely to pitch as a starter. But he's still working his way back. Multi-inning leverage reliever feels possible. 

[squally1313]

The thing about all these injured pitchers maybe or maybe not coming back is that this pitching staff wasn't good to begin with. We were like 20th in the preseaon projections and about the only thing that has come out better than scheduled is Ben Brown, who almost certainly won't be stretched out until maybe October. This offense is far, far too good for me to have to watch Shota shrug and get a ball thrown from the umpire after giving up his third home run in the second inning of game 2 so that Jefferson Rojas, as cool as he is, can be Dansby/Nico injury insurance in Iowa for the next 2 years. 

[CubUgly]

2 hours ago, Bull said:

To be fair, that’s more on him than us.

Can anyone remember ever, not just a Cub but any player going from quite literally the worst hitter in baseball at the time to about 2 weeks later having an historic offensive stretch like this?

I mean the dude for Milwaukee who the Sox DFA'd last year had a pretty dramatic metamorphosis and improvement, but he didn't have 26 RBI in a week. 

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, Jason Ross said:

I was just thinking about this today. Here's where I've settled:
1. I reasonably expect one of Cabrera, Brown or Taillon to establish themselves as a reliable rotation piece the rest of the year. Which one? Not sure, as I think there's arguments against any of the three getting back (injuries, talent, etc). I have different levels of excitement of all three.

2. I expect one of Steele, Palencia, or Wiggins will establish themselves by the end of the year as a strong BP guy you really trust with a good shot it's two and a realistic, though less chance, it's all three. For Palencia it's just that I'm always cautious on arm ouchies, but I think he's the most likely. Wiggins could possibly end up in the rotation discussion but I'm trying to be very cautious.

I'm left with a possible situation of this:

- Playoff wise, I'd trust Boyd and Shota to start, with outside chances of Peterson though preferably, not. Cabrera or Brown would add a third, but Taillon is a no go. I think the team certainly has to add a playoff starter, even if just to guard another injury. 

- Bullpen wise, Justin Webb, Ryan Rollison and Caleb Thielbar (I remain encouraged by the under the hood stuff, think he's stull a useful arm) remain in my my trust circle. Tyler Ferguson has given me some hope he could stick around, but it's still under 7 innings so I'll hold off putting his name in permanent marker. You expect one more of those guys to add to this list. If you get more? Great! But that leaves me four or five guys. You can slot your favorite non-playoff SP in here for length. But the team needs at least one back-end guy and probably one middle-relief guy. Maybe Maton comes back, too, and looks like last-year Maton, but it might not happen this year. Shelby Miller is a fun lottery ticket, too.

My hope is that the Cubs solve this with three arms. One Edwin Cabrera-type trade, one Andrew Kittredge-type trade and then pick up your favorite expiring middle reliever who does some damage. Obviously health is a big question mark, and more guys will possibly go down, But I think this is where I'm at.

I'm not going to turn my nose up at another David Peterson simply because we've seen depth issues all year, but I'm not very interested in another one of these. I think the Cubs with Rea, Assad, Peterson, and the possibilities of Taillon, Sanders and Wiggins have depth SP as of now. They need someone you write down with confidence in a playoff rotation.

Yeah I think this is largely where I'm at.

- We NEED a playoff starter.  Ideally it's a multi-year guy, but a rental like Mize or Gray wouldn't be the worst thing in the world

- We NEED another closer caliber arm.  Love Palencia but that's now three arm injuries in the past calendar year.  Add in the velocity and we're on relatively high TJ watch with him.  The current bullpen, disaster against Toronto aside, has largely managed to avoid catastrophe.  IMO that's because we still have guys out there who are useful *in certain matchups.*  We need another matchup proof (ish) arm to join Palencia and Webb because to increase the odds that by the time October rolls around we've got a couple of them.  I'm trying not to get too attached to names but Luke Weaver feels pretty perfect here

- Speaking of bullpens and matchup guys, a generic high velo sinker/slider righty would really round out the group we have.  We are flush with guys who provide a quality matchup against lefties.  Thielbar/Milner/Webb are guys who are always nails againsy lefties and intermittently effective against righties.  There's also depth in Pomeranz/Bummer/Martin, and in the playoffs presumably Steele and Peterson will be in the bullpen.  Against righties though that's where the depth has been really cleaned out.  Tyler Ferguson is no joke probably our best right on right pitcher right now and even after some convalescence will still be way too high

Beyond that I feel pretty comfortable, at least until we get some more bad news.  Kind of like how you framed it there's a handful of roles where I don't know which specific name we'll be writing in by October but I feel confident that we'll have name(s) I want to write in.

[squally1313]

I'm very aware I'm bypassing nuance and maybe rationality here, but trading Kane Kepley for Casey Mize or whatever instead of just trading some combination of Matt Shaw/Moises Ballesteros for Tarik horsefeathers Skubal seems very dumb, or at least very not fun.

'Well yeah, the guy we got isn't elite, but have you thought about we might have a corner outfield vacancy next year and how we may need to put an infielder there'

[bukie]

While I appreciate all the pitching concerns, I feel like it's necessary to balance it out by glazing the offense (and defense) a bit...

- The Cubs offensive fWAR is 2nd in baseball behind the Dodgers, and significantly above the 3rd place Pirates.
- The offense leads the majors in walk rate and is 5th in ISO power (behind Yankees, Dodgers, Nats and White Sox)
- They're up to 7th in the majors in HR, because they have the most in the majors since June 15th 
- Their defense is so good they've lapped the field in Fangraphs' analysis, such that as a result only 6 teams count as above average defensively such that it adds value to their analysis.
- On an individual level, here are the season fWAR totals for each of the 6 finalists for NL OF All star voting:

• Andy Pages, LAD - 2.8
• Juan Soto, NYM - 2.6
• Michael Harris II, ATL - 2.1
• Brandon Marsh, PHI - 2.0
• Teoscar Hernandez, LAD - 1.0
• Ronald Acuna, ATL - 0.9

PCA has accumulated 3.3 fWAR since June 1.

[mul21]

19 minutes ago, bukie said:

- The Cubs offensive fWAR is 2nd in baseball behind the Dodgers, and significantly above the 3rd place Pirates.

Excuse me, what? 😂 That seems unpossible.

[KCCub]

8 minutes ago, mul21 said:

Excuse me, what? 😂 That seems unpossible.

Reynolds is having a big bounce back year, Cruz was having a bounce back year before he went down and Lowe/O'Hearn were solid off-season pickups who are having nice seasons. There's regression coming at some point for Endy Rodriguez and Valdez though as they've both had extremely hot starts since their call ups. 

[macarthur31]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

Yeah I think this is largely where I'm at.

- We NEED a playoff starter.  Ideally it's a multi-year guy, but a rental like Mize or Gray wouldn't be the worst thing in the world

- We NEED another closer caliber arm.  Love Palencia but that's now three arm injuries in the past calendar year.  Add in the velocity and we're on relatively high TJ watch with him.  The current bullpen, disaster against Toronto aside, has largely managed to avoid catastrophe.  IMO that's because we still have guys out there who are useful *in certain matchups.*  We need another matchup proof (ish) arm to join Palencia and Webb because to increase the odds that by the time October rolls around we've got a couple of them.  I'm trying not to get too attached to names but Luke Weaver feels pretty perfect here

- Speaking of bullpens and matchup guys, a generic high velo sinker/slider righty would really round out the group we have.  We are flush with guys who provide a quality matchup against lefties.  Thielbar/Milner/Webb are guys who are always nails againsy lefties and intermittently effective against righties.  There's also depth in Pomeranz/Bummer/Martin, and in the playoffs presumably Steele and Peterson will be in the bullpen.  Against righties though that's where the depth has been really cleaned out.  Tyler Ferguson is no joke probably our best right on right pitcher right now and even after some convalescence will still be way too high

Beyond that I feel pretty comfortable, at least until we get some more bad news.  Kind of like how you framed it there's a handful of roles where I don't know which specific name we'll be writing in by October but I feel confident that we'll have name(s) I want to write in.

I align with getting a playoff starter and high lev (closer 1B) relief arm as well.  It's too bad Michael Soroka didn't hang around longer, cause whatever Jed/Carter saw in him it's showing out this year:

15 GS

82.0 IP

3.07 ERA, 3.95 xERA

2.94 FIP, 3.60 xFIP

18.6 K-BB%

1.09 WHIP

With regards to performance, this would slot just behind Ben Brown, but well ahead of the rest on our rotation.  All this for $7.5M.

All this to say, if Jed/Carter sign someone and I'm like, "Huh?!" I'm gonna give 'em the benefit of the doubt.

Edited 10 hours ago by macarthur31

[bukie]

1 hour ago, bukie said:

While I appreciate all the pitching concerns, I feel like it's necessary to balance it out by glazing the offense (and defense) a bit...

- The Cubs offensive fWAR is 2nd in baseball behind the Dodgers, and significantly above the 3rd place Pirates.
- The offense leads the majors in walk rate and is 5th in ISO power (behind Yankees, Dodgers, Nats and White Sox)
- They're up to 7th in the majors in HR, because they have the most in the majors since June 15th 
- Their defense is so good they've lapped the field in Fangraphs' analysis, such that as a result only 6 teams count as above average defensively such that it adds value to their analysis.
- On an individual level, here are the season fWAR totals for each of the 6 finalists for NL OF All star voting:

• Andy Pages, LAD - 2.8
• Juan Soto, NYM - 2.6
• Michael Harris II, ATL - 2.1
• Brandon Marsh, PHI - 2.0
• Teoscar Hernandez, LAD - 1.0
• Ronald Acuna, ATL - 0.9

PCA has accumulated 3.3 fWAR since June 1.

I'm taking a short break from glazing the offense to complaining about the All-Star game voting in the NL OF, as none of the best 3 NL OF were among the top 6 vote getters, so the fans were way off this year. PCA, Corbin Carroll and James Wood should be the starting OF.

[PeanutPunch33]

The Cubs should empty their farm system to get a guy like Joe Ryan, and then dangle a guy like Shaw to get Sonny Gray.  Those are 2 guys I'd feel very comfortable starting a playoff game, and neither is a rental.  Time to go for it. 

[Rcal10]

4 minutes ago, PeanutPunch33 said:

The Cubs should empty their farm system to get a guy like Joe Ryan, and then dangle a guy like Shaw to get Sonny Gray.  Those are 2 guys I'd feel very comfortable starting a playoff game, and neither is a rental.  Time to go for it. 

I like both pitchers, but your give is excessive. Empty the farm system for 1/3 a season for Ryan and then maybe, if they play in ‘27, one more year? He will cost, but not emptying the farm. And no way do you give up Shaw for Gray. That is a crazy overpay. 
For a rental like Gray or even Mize, I would be ok with Kepley or someone around that level. Maybe, if you had too, add another lower level prospect. If Shaw is traded he has to bring back a guy with at least 2 years AFTER this one. Maybe Detmers. Even if you have to add to Shaw, that is fine. 
Other options are Wacha, who has a team option after this year, Soriano(who has 2 years after this year) a Peralta deal for a rental and maybe a low end trade for Lugo. Guys with multiple years left consist of guys like Cameron, Early and a few others. Those would start with Shaw and work from there. I like Ryan too, but not for Shaw.

Edited 10 hours ago by Rcal10