Named After Maddux

Believe the Cubs have been in on Dylan Carlson for a couple years now. He’s dealt with some injuries and there’s some talk that he might have turned a corner there. I’d be pretty skeptical there but sometimes you get a good season from someone if they have a lucky healthy season

The health risk is likely what shifted things so substantially. Caissie, Rojas, couple more guys in the mix in the top ten in the system. Big ask Cubs did extremely well on this deal but im going to be watching Cabrera’s health status because I think that’ll factor in heavily here.

I thought David Kelton was going to rake

Ian Happ has expressed a commitment to be in Chicago and while that doesn’t mean he would never waive his no trade clause, I think the power of that NTC would significantly hamper any possible return

Not necessarily what I’d do but I believe it’s going to be Shōta: decline Kittredge: decline Rea: accept

I meant getting one more inning out of Pomeranz this series and no I meant “certainly didn’t think he was outmanaged”. I’ll edit, but that’s what I meant. The Cubs played short-handed and Counsell managed things well to even get them to that point. I didn’t get this article seemingly acting like Murphy was just managing circles around Counsell. Didn’t feel that way at all.

Pomeranz has held righties to a .305 wOBA with a 15.4% K-BB%. since around the middle of September including the postseason coming into yesterday it was a .303 wOBA with a 42.5% K-rate. He’d been on a roll. Overexposed sure. The entire pen has been. I don’t think it was “outmanaged” to see if you could get one more inning out of Pomeranz while also changing the lineup of Milwaukee. The Brewers won. The Cubs ran out of steam. I think Counsell isn’t some savior but he’s helped the Cubs weather the storm this season and got them there. Lot of teams would have folded. The Cubs got back into it and forced that game. The only quibble I had was Rea facing Vaughn. The other moves made sense. Certainly (edit: missed a key word) didn’t* think he was outmanaged

Believe Soroka will be coming up. 2 inning role

15-14 or 16-13 feels like a tall order? Come on man, they’re 13-12 in August, 14-10 in July. Their worst full month of the season was June’s 13-13. Not going 15-14 the rest of the way would be a poor percentile outcome.

We bonded early because of the pharmacy school aspect and I've just rooted for him ever since so I'll acknowledge the bias there, but I would love to see him earn that 40-man slot this season

Sounds like Wiggins very unlikely to be a September option. Riley Martin though, he'd be a guy to watch there. You could mix him in there with some of the SP depth and then Soroka when healthy should be a shorter outing option.

Unfortunately I don’t believe so. Hartshorn and Wing are just going to be pricey. They’re valuing those guys very well

Big signing day today. Believe there will be 10 or so draftees in Mesa

Barnett is their insurance policy. I think mostly with Hartshorn. If something red flags with him, they can offer Barnett a bunch and have a good chance. Barnett was originally one of their 11th round overslot options when they had game planned to have extra money.

It’s still my understanding that Conrad is way under. At least that’s how I read the message. but I also have gotten the sense that these seniors were not all slot savings and for the life of me I can’t understand that methodology. I don’t think there will be a significant overslot. I’m confused by the strategy.

He and Appenzeller sounded like they had huge asks

My $750k slot savings appears to be low I think they have some significant cash to work with on Day 2. There’s a couple preps they have been lining up for round 11, but I don’t know who they’re going after in early day 2 because it should be interesting.

Very similar low-slot pronation. Heavy extension. Not a perfect profile and some player development folks wouldn’t like it, but also heard from non-Cubs folks that some of the big development orgs (Dodgers, Guardians) were in on Reid.

Sounds like I could have been low on that as well

I had an evaluator from another team around the Cubs range say they don't believe Bremner will make it down to them.

Kind of a quick and dirty explanation here. First, it’s an oversimplification and some in the biomechanics-focused pitching side would argue is poor to oversimplify it, but it’s still helpful to look at a lot of pitchers and put them into buckets. These terms refer to how a pitcher releases a baseball. Pronators tend to be behind the ball with a wrist that naturally stays more in line with rest of the forearm. Supination is a wrist more to the side. Think supination like “soup” where if you had a bowl of soup that you were trying to eat, your wrist would supinate with your spoon to hold the soup. If you were pronating with a spoon then the spoon would be held sideways and wouldn’t hold soup. What that means for pitching? Pronators tend to be able to generate a lot of backspin on a fastball. These fastballs have a high active spin%, meaning the majority of spin leads to movement (usually vertical break). Pronators tend to have high carry fastballs, changeups, and a cutter/slider/downward curve. Thats the pronator triangle. Think what the Astros and Dodgers prioritized in 2017-2022: high carry fastballs, hard curve. Supinators tend to get to the side of the baseball better and often (not always) have deeper arsenals. The fastballs tend to be less sexy on Stuff+ and are these cutty/cut-ride (if you’re able to get ride) four seams. They have historically struggled with changeups though the kick-change was developed to accommodate supinators. Supinators adopting sweepers was the big move a couple years ago. All of this is just a motor preference and I believe the most recent data suggests about 6-7% of pitchers can get both heavy carry on their four seam and heavy sweep on a sweeper. This is like Nick Pivetta. Also angle plays in really well so I’d highly recommend this pertinent video from Zombro. You can bucket pitchers by the active% percentage to at least get an idea of their preferences. <85% (supinators), >95% pronators, middle is a neutral bias. Most fall in one of the first or latter categories. Ok maybe that wasn’t quick and dirty, but just some thoughts I had! My personal feeling is that teams shouldn’t zero in on any one bias at the expense of the others. You’re liable to miss talent if you do. And so while I talk about how Zombro feels publicly about supinators, I don’t personally feel it should limit away from a guy like Gage Wood or Bremner or Witherspoon. All really good arms.

It’ll be interesting to see how much sway Zombro has in amateur scouting. I know he’s involved, but does he have veto power or is it more an opinion as one of the people in the room? Not sure. But Zombro is publicly a huge proponent of supination bias and a good number of recent signings and targets have shown that out.

The other factor to consider is what the pitching development team thinks of Gage Wood. He’s a heavy North-South pronator and the org has primarily targeted supinators. It wouldn’t surprise me to see quite the discussion where the scouting side (you got the area scout right) and PD have some hearty debates on Gage Wood.

I’m going to say pitching and exit velocity this year Likely more development arms and power

Yes indeed. Folks love Daniel Pierce internally from the gist I've gotten. If I had to guess on a HS hitter for the Cubs, Pierce would be my pick. Sounds like Steele Hall has fans too but there might be a disconnect between what the scouting team thinks (a bit wary) to the upper brass (he could be Trea Turner). When it comes down to it, I think there's a lot of healthy debate between college pitching and HS hitting unless someone magically falls to 17 and is a no-brainer.