Jason Ross

I think Clay Holmes and the Cubs match up great here. There were rumors of a possible extension in New York, too. If you're the Cubs and you wanted to find a pitcher who will look like the best version of himself in front of this defense, you'd put Clay Holmes very high on that list. If you found a guy I think the Cubs like from a profile stand point, you'd put Clay Holmes pretty high on that list. And I think if you picked a guy who would probably talk extension in general, a 33-year old, recently converted reliver who's spent time on the 60-day IL headed into a possible lock out would be pretty high on the list of "guys you'd think would be okay cashing in now". Really, just connecting dots. Holmes could look at this as one-big-payday and it's all moot. But I think both sides would have motivation from a logic standpoint. Far more so than, say, Kevin Gausman.

Well, to be fair, the Cubs did get some shopping done. Right now, the Cubs have for the BP next year all of Maton, Palencia, Zeferjahn and Webb. So there's already a foundation for a strong back end of the BP. Braxton Garrett could be an option at the tail-end of a 2027 rotation. Now, that doesn't solve all of your shopping. You still need two or three SPs. But they did solve some shopping for the future. And I think a Clay Holmes extension could be a very real thing, but I'll keep that separate from anything deadline related as I always view extensions as a separate thing. I don't think it's unfair to have wanted more control on the SP's...me too. But all-in-all they got some work done for 2027. Just probably less than a fully ideal deadline, too.

Not necessarily. In fact, it might make Ian Happ more likely to extend, just on a one-year. His swing against LHP is bad right now which lowers his value. He's still hitting RHP and that's the strong side of a platoon, he's not nothing and you can point to him being physically fine (if he was bad against everyone you'd be far more worried). But if the Cubs think a winter's worth of time will work on the right-handed swing to get it back to where it was, and Ian Happ thinks that a one year deal will get his market back to a better place, I think a one-year deal makes sense for both sides.

He wanted us to to pay for a gofundme so he could fly a banner to get Hoyer fired. Even worse.

Bummer of a career. I think the 2020 draft year hurt him; he basically had no senior year. This probably overstated his draft profile (great glove, bat was getting better) and he lost significant developmental time. Cubs pushed him to Myrtle right away, he struggled. Comes back the next year, finally looks solid then has a devastating hip injury. He's never been the same. Even defensively he's fallen off because he just doesn't have the explosiveness any more.

If they're real, than Mason Miller as a comp is real, too. Like no joke. One of these is Mason Miller this year and the other is Zeferjahn since June 23rd. You tell me which is which: Player A: 49.2 K%, 8.9 BB%, 0.76 ERA, 1.35 xERA, 1.33 xFIP Player B: 46 K%, 6.3 BB%, 1.69 ERA, 1.66 xERA, 1.93 xFIP They're virtually identical. Obviously one of those is a full year and the other is 16 innings, so take it with a very large grain of salt...but yeah, that's nuts.

As someone who wrote about Ryan Zeferjahn last night I had to refrain from writing the names Mason Miller and Jacob Misiorowski myself. And it made me feel like I was being cheap for even mentioning Miller once. But if Mike Petriello is writing about him and using the same comps, then I don't feel so bad, because that guy is in another orbit when it comes to ball knowledge.

I think most of the "Skubal to the Dodgers long term" is people just connecting Skubal to the team who spends the most money. I could have missed it (I'm still catching up on a lot of the trades league wide because I was so in the weeds with the Cubs deadline - I've missed a lot the last three days from that standpoint), but I have yet to see anything from someone who I'd believe reporting Skubal has been eyeing the Dodgers or anything. I get it, the team with the most money feels like they'll be a player, but I'll wait to let the dust settle on the season before I even begin speculating.

His swing was always horribad at Michigan. The dream was "teach this linebacker a good swing and homeruns go brrrr" but he has remained just a massive mechanical mess.

It may, but I had a hard time believing in anyone striking out 32% of the time in Double-A. The power is real but we've seen the trials and tribulations our rookies have gone through with the Cubs and none of them were striking out this much in Double-A. Truly, though, I hope Rosario does well. My father is a Cleveland fan and I'd like them to do well, so if that's the guy we lose, I can at least find some solace.

Yeah, I think I agree with all of this. The Cubs kept the prospects I most wanted to keep and they got significantly better. Their SP is very much improved from "bad-bad-bad" to "pretty good". And while there's a decent chance someone the Cubs gave up makes us regret it, that is the lottery you play. Someone will eventually bite them, but big markets replace.

They probably don't super need him. But I'd guess his versatility on the bench when Ramirez starts (especially at DH) is more useful than Alcantara now that Taylor is here. There's probably more overlap there from an options standpoint. Just a guess. But I'd be fine if it was James who went down. I prefer Kevin as a player. Probably need to amend my first post (forgive me, it's my first day back in a school for 2 months) from "need" to "I think they will".

I don't think they can keep Alcantara on the roster. Believe he has to be sent down to make room.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect The annual MLB Trade deadline is one of two sides. On one hand, it's exhilaration; it's adding new talent, new faces, and hope. It's about here, it's about now. For the Cubs, it's celebrating the arrival of veteran pitchers like Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes to bring stability to their rotation or for the excitement of a heavy Ryan Zeferjahn fastball striking out someone with the tying run on second late in a ball game. But these new additions didn't just appear out of thin air; they were paid for in prospect capital and the potential of the future; it's the other side of the coin. There's loss. You have to give to get. Everything has a cost, and nothing is free, especially in baseball. The goal is to buy more than you sell, to get more value than you give, and teams have to evaluate that in real time, and the Cubs had to give up a few names that are quite recognizable. Of the losses, the two names that will stick out the most are Moises Ballesteros and Jefferson Rojas. Both are names that have appeared on top-100 lists, regardless of the publication, and both were lights at the end of the tunnel when the Cubs weren't battling the Brewers for NL Central supremacy and were mired in mediocrity. If you're worried today that the Cubs just sold the future of the farm for today's crops I'm here to tell you to step a little off from the ledge a step or two. These are good prospects, yes, and they have real MLB futures, but to the Cubs, these were expendable pieces. Players the team saw as flawed enough to move and players the Cubs thought, ultimately, were better served being swapped for the here and the now. A few months ago, it would have been wild to think that the Cubs traded their Opening Day designated hitter, Moises Ballesteros. Big Mo got off to a really good start, hitting .387/.435/.481 through his first 69 plate appearances, which was good for a 210 wRC+. He even got a handful of starts behind the dish, making you believe there was a real future at the position. But things hit a snag, and not only did Ballesteros struggle to the tune of a 14 wRC+ over his next 106 PAs, but he was also sent back to Iowa to work on his swing and approach. Pitchers were getting him to flail at high heat, and he needed some added seasoning. Here's the harsh reality, however: the team told you today what they think of "Mo Baller"; he's a DH, and only a DH. Between their two catchers, Ballesteros and the up-and-coming Owen Ayers, it was the 19th-round pick Ayers who the team reportedly held firm on, not Mo. And as a DH, he's really just not that special. He's a high-contact, aggressive hitter who struggled against LHP both at the MLB level (76 wRC+) and at the Triple-A level (.260 wOBA last year). From this perspective, he becomes far less of a star and far more mundane. The barrier to entry at DH is just so high compared, and if he's not going to be a catcher, the value proposition is just different. vs LHP / RHP Overview Split PA AVG OBP SLG OPS wOBA xwOBA K% BB% Barrel% HardHit% Whiff% vs LHP 148 0.234 0.291 0.285 0.575 0.260 0.252 16.2% 4.7% 0.9% 31.3% 23.5% vs RHP 357 0.352 0.420 0.557 0.977 0.415 0.382 12.0% 11.2% 7.8% 47.8% 18.7% As surprising as it was to see Ballesteros moved, Jefferson Rojas may have been the most shocking to see dealt. Not because he was dealt (with how the Cubs' organization is set up, he felt expendable) but in how he was used: for rental starting pitcher Clay Holmes and rental outfield Tyrone Taylor of the Mets. Rojas has been a fixture on top-100 lists over the last few years, currently sitting 63rd on MLB.com Pipeline and #99 on Baseball America. As recently as our mid-year rankings, we had Rojas as our top prospect in the entire system. This makes the price seem steep, quite steep. Internally, however, the Cubs view their young shortstop quite differently. Defensively, Rojas has had questions about his ability to stick at shortstop across the board. Baseball America said about this part of his game that "his footwork and hands leave something to be desired and he’s prone to poorly timed dives on extra-effort plays". This would give you pause about his long-term ability at the most premium of infield positions, and the Cubs share this fear. They don't think he's a shortstop at the next level at all. While the defense has always been a question, the hope is that the bat would play at lesser positions such as second, third, or left field. At the MLB level, the team has long-term solutions across the infield, meaning that Rojas would likely have to adapt to a corner OF spot. On the surface, a 21-year-old who's hit 15 home runs and has posted a 114 wRC+ in Double-A would seem to have the possibility to end up with a bat good enough, but this is once again where industry rankings and internal ones collide head-on as the Cubs are concerned with his ability to hit at positions that require a more demanding bat. Specifically, the fear revolves around his swing and whether or not it is adaptable enough to handle the high bar those positions require. When you look at both Ballesteros and Rojas in this light, the cost makes more sense. If you traded a 23-year-old, left-handed hitting catcher and a 21-year-old 20 home-run shortstop, today really hurts. If instead, you traded a platoon-DH and a tweener with the bat and the glove, it hurts way less. With how the Cubs priced them, it's easy to come to the conclusion that they feel they gave up the latter, and not the former. Beyond these two, most of the other names traded probably won't sway the system's overall ranking heavily. Mason McGwire, the nephew of Mark, whom the team also traded to the Angels in the Zeferjahn trade, is a strike-throwing pitcher who has mid-rotation upside and lots of injury risk. Jonathon Long is a fringe-MLB bat who's stuck at first base. Brett Bateman and Ty Southisene both receive 20-grades in the power department and profile as bench-hitters with a lot of contact and glove, but likely no ability to start. These aren't prospects who offer zero upside, but they also are much more "run of the mill" than Ballesteros and Rojas. All have interesting aspects, but none change the calculus of the team or the system. Ultimately, we cannot know today whether the Cubs gave up too much, and we probably won't know for years. But it's also probably important to look through the history of prospect-led trades made by Jed Hoyer to see what to expect, and when you do that, one thing becomes clear: Jed Hoyer hasn't been taken to the woodshed yet in any deal. While it's true the Cubs did give up Zyhir Hope (who headlined the Tarik Skubal deal), they also received Michael Busch in that deal, who has provided the Cubs 7.3 fWAR over 418 games. The Cubs traded first-round pick Cam Smith for Kyle Tucker: so far in 900 PAs, Smith has had an 87 wRC+. Christopher Morel, moved for Isaac Paredes, is currently in the Mets system, hitting for their Triple-A affiliate. Going further, it's hard to find many having success elsewhere, as former second-round pick Jackson Ferris (struggling in the Dodgers' system), Ryan Gallagher (struggling in the Twins' system), and Ronny Cruz (struggling in the Nationals' system) are having a hard time finding their footing in new organizations. We shouldn't expect the Cubs to bat 1.000 on prospects; when you trade enough of them, everyone gets burned, but to this point, they haven't had a notable "miss". A very easy thing to do on deadline day is to pull up your favorite publication and scour over their top-100 list and come to the conclusion that someone is an overpay or an underpay, but time and time again we are reminded that teams don't look at Baseball America or Pipeline when they make trades and have their own systems. Rojas may have been Jim Callis' 63rd-best prospect, but the Cubs didn't act like they thought he was the 63rd-best prospect. Time will tell if the Cubs were right on this front, but so far, Jed and the Cubs have been more right than the industry has been on their prospects. And with all of the doom-and-gloom of those leaving, it's probably important to remember who's left. The Cubs still have Josiah Hartshorn, Owen Ayers, Jaxon Wiggins, Cade Townshend, Kane Kepley, and Ethan Conrad. They have a brand new draft class about to start their own professional journey. And that doesn't count barely-graduated prospects like Pedro Ramirez, who have been making an impact with the Cubs already. They're not depleted. A good thing to remember is that prospects are assets to help the MLB side of things. You get a trophy for one thing in this sport, and it isn't having the most top-100 prospects on Pipeline. Prospects can affect your team by playing for it, or by being used as currency to buy known commodities. It's okay to be sad that they lost some of their perceived future, but also fair to believe in the team's internal ability to grade their own assets. View full article

The prospect the Cubs gave up has an 86 eRC+ through 900 PAs. I understand the fear they may have given up someone good, it's a realistic fear. But this is how big markets should act. Hoyer won't bat 1.000 on every trade but prospects also fail more than they succeed. The Cubs acted like a big market this year. It's commendable in that aspect.

I've seen two suggestions. The first is that the Cubs were hiding his approach and passivity against lower lever pitchers to pump up his value. The inverse is that the Cubs were trying to hide him in High-A so that he could have the end of the season to pump his value up for the winter after a Double-A bump. Which is it? No clue. I am not the biggest Kane Kepley guy myself, but I was a believer in Rojas three days ago and things Ive heard and what Law wrote...I definitely have come away feeling a little different. I do find how they have handled Kepley to be fascinating as he sticks out like a sore thumb in how he has been handled compared to the rest of the system.

Kepley has been seemingly promoted to Knoxville, though hasn't been made official-official. I do find the timing interesting.

The Cubs are not of the belief is a shortstop. I've heard this from two separate directions.

The deeper you go down the iceberg the more you come away feeling like you never knew anything, is what I have learned, too.

Kane Kepley was promoted.

Keith Law reported that the Cubs were very interested in him as the headliner and teams balked at it. Considering names I had heard tossed around with people who know...the name Rojas was never coming up. At the time, I thought it was because the Cubs weren't offering him. Squaring it all with everything we have seen since, I think it's because teams weren't asking for him in those trades.

I think we need two months for that to best shake out. So I think the answer is: You pick three of the guys you are the most comfortable with between Gausman, Holmes, Boyd, Shota, and potentially Cabrera or Peterson (though I think he's unlikely). The fourth on this list is the guy you line up for Game 1 of the NLDS. The fifth is in the BP the entirety of the playoffs and the sixth may very well not make a playoff roster at all. The handedness of the pitcher may inform you some too: you may go righty or lefty heavy depending on the opposition. Need to see how Cabrera comes back, how Holmes comes back and the general health of everyone first. But I'd suspect by mid September is becomes fairly obvious.

Image courtesy of Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images Ryan Zeferjahn, acquired by the Cubs during their mad dash before the 2026 MLB trade deadline, is a lot of things. He's a fireballer; he's a wild man; he's a freak; he's an alien. Whatever you want to call him, he's an outlier of a baseball player. The Cubs acquired some names who are more familiar than Zeferjahn. Kevin Gausman, for example, has been among the best starters in baseball for half a decade. But no player may have a bigger impact on a per-inning basis than their new weapon out of the bullpen—that is, if the Cubs (or any team) can learn how to tame the beast. Let's start with the elephant in the room: this dude walks people. He's walked people since he was back in college, so it's nothing new. Baseball America, in his 2019 draft profile, highlighted his propensity to vacillate between striking hitters out and walking them. "Two weeks before striking out 14 against the Longhorns, he walked seven hitters in six innings against Baylor," they noted. I'd love to tell you this has gotten better over the years, but since coming up in 2024 with the Los Angeles Angels, he's got the third highest walk rate in baseball among pitchers who have thrown at least 125 innings. This year, he's walked 14.3% of his opponents. Strangely enough, it just might not matter. What makes Zeferjahn an alien is his fastball. This is a special pitch. What makes it so special is how he spins it; it's incredibly inefficient. We're programed to have a negative connotation with things that are inefficient, but with pitches, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In layman's terms, low efficiency means more cut and less backspin. We live in a world in which velocity is king, but as everyone chases every last mile-per-hour, things become more normalized. Throwing 97 MPH today just isn't special. You have to stand out in some other way. I'll borrow a line from Kevin Goldstein to highlight this: "The further one can get from the norm, the more effective the pitch can be beyond just the pure speed. Hitters expect a fastball to behave a certain way out of the hand and when it doesn’t, regardless of the direction in which it deviates, it creates challenges in terms of making hard contact, or any contact at all." SzRCRFJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdVSFVsWURVMVlBWFZaVUF3QUhBZ0lDQUFOWFd3VUFVMU1DQ1FGVVVBTUdCd2NF.mp4 What Zeferjahn does with his fastball's shape makes it special. He throws a relatively low-slot fastball with inefficient spin. The result is that the shape of the pitch is elite: his Stuff+ on the pitch ranks top-10 in baseball (relievers only), ahead of Jeff Hoffman, Tanner Scott, and Louis Varland. To highlight how his slot and spin rate help create this, let's compare his fastball to another pitcher's which seems similar on the surface, that of Pirates righty Jared Jones. Jones and Zeferjahn have similar RPM on their fastballs and have similar velocities (though Jones does throw a little harder). In theory, you'd think they would have similar Stuff+, but they do not. Jones's fastball clocks in with FanGraphs's Stuff+ model as a 92, while Zeferjahn's is a 120. This is vastly different. Jones gets great results on the pitch, so this isn't a dig on Jones, but Zeferjahn is on another planet. He leads on Whiff% (41.1% versus 24.9%), and he's given up just four hits all season to the tune of an absurd .087 batting average. If you're worried he's getting good luck, don't fear. His xBA on the pitch is just .105. Like I said; he's a freak. The Cubs adore low-spin-efficiency fastballs. While he's not as inefficient as Cade Horton (who is under 80% in terms of active spin), he's definitely in the correct organization—one that really targets this pitch. We have seen firsthand what the Cubs could do on the fly with Horton, adding a sinker and using his cut-ride fastball to really attack hitters in interesting ways. It's not hard to think what the Cubs could do with their new toy, or that the Cubs may be in a better position than the Angels to get the most out of it. What's shocking is that his fastball might not even be his best pitch. You could make a compelling argument that his sweeper, which he throws roughly a third of the time, is just as good, or better. That pitch boasts an impressive 118 on FanGraphs's Stuff+ model, and also sees hitters whiff on it over 40% of the time. He has two plus-plus offerings in shape and production. Again: it's special stuff. Zeferjahn isn't just an alien on the mound with the stuff he's capable of throwing at a hitter, he's a statistical freak as well: he has a 96th-percentile whiff rate and just a 2nd-percentile chase rate. That's unfathomable. What it means is that if the guy can just throw enough strikes, no one is going to touch him. We can see that because, even when hitters do make contact, his batted-ball data against is pretty good, too. If you want to dream as to what could be, look no further than his last 16 innings, because there's a chance something has just clicked, and there's some data to support that it might not be smoke and mirrors. Over his last 16 innings, Zeferjahn has just four walks. Over his last 10 innings, he has walked just one hitter. Interestingly enough, the walk he had was called a strikeout on the field. The Giants' Grant McCoy had to use an ABS challenge to even get the walk. What's the change? His release point—which has moved because he's slid toward third base in his setup on the rubber, and is striding slightly more closed. On the left is Zeferjahn in April; on the right is him last month. This is a major departure in his motion and seems to correlate with his improved walk rate. It's too small of a sample to say "mission accomplished!" and that everything is fixed, but when we see outlier data coupled with a noticeable change, it makes you feel like there's a reason behind the improvement—and that it could therefore be sustainable. He's on a better line to tunnel his stuff and to keep it on the plate, and lo, everything has changed for the better. Over that span, it's not just the walks that are improved; he's absolutely dominating hitters. Since June 23, the righty has struck out almost half the hitters he's faced. This is Mason Miller levels of dominance. In his last outing as an Angel, he managed to strikeout four Brewers in a nearly perfect five-out performance. It's easy to imagine how much fun it could be seeing him do that to Milwaukee at Wrigley. All of this leads me back to my premise; this guy is an alien. He's unique. He has a great fastball that highlights its odd, inefficient spin and low arm slot. He's a whiff merchant, even while generating almost no chase. He used to walk everyone, but lately, he can't walk anyone. There just aren't many pitchers like this in baseball. The upside is massive; the risk is real. But he's a unique player, and one who could slot into a Cubs bullpen for years to come—because the best part about Zeferjahn is that despite being 28 years old, he's a late bloomer and won't hit free agency until November 2030. There's a good chance that one of the most unhittable pitchers in baseball will be shutting teams down for the Cubs for quite some time. View full article