Jason Ross

He probably offers more off the bench, but I would expect to see him very little. Maybe one start a week if theyre against a lot of RHH. But he wont factor in any game with a LHP on the mound outside of a PH late and won't be valuable as a defensive asset or on the bases so even when he does start, he may only play through the 6th or 7th inning. This is probably as much about on-boarding him as a MLB player than it is anything else.

Really cool to see Caissie called up. I was expecting a roster space hold-type and am always happy to be wrong but Caissie gives the team some thump off the bench. Add in the Canada connection for his first MLB game? Has to be extra special. I wouldnt expect to see him often, and he wont supplant Ian Happ as much as a few people want him to. But hopefully he will have a few cool moments in the last few weeks of the season.

While we likely don't see much of Amaya the rest of 2025, I am so glad its a sprain. Sprains can be healed with time. A massive break and it could have altered his career. Sigh of relief. Even if they find a small fracture, this is truly a best case scenario.

Ian Happ has been one of the better hitting OFers in baseball since 2022 and all of his batted ball data is fine. I havent checked in for a few days, but he had a 134 wRC+ since the ASB just a few days ago. His slump is mostly perceived by fans and less so by data. I think the chances the Cubs would sit Happ, a consistent hitter with underlying data that is at his career norm or better since June 1st for an unproven rookie in a playoff chase is about slim to none. While "never say never" I feel pretty confident that it's very, very, very unlikely. Caissie is only starting in 2025 with an injury.

I think he will get votes. Drake Balwdin is probably running away with it. There will be no pick however. Horton would have had to have been on the active roster Opening Day (or within two weeks). It will just be for Horton's sake, the Cubs would gain nothing.

He won't get a chance to get hot. He won't play. That's the thing. Against a RHH is the only spot to start Caissie or Ballesteros. Castro will give any of the LHH a day off (PCA, Tucker, Happ). Turner will spell Busch. None will realistically sit against RHP unless they play a very long stretch of RHP. The Cubs will not sit anyone of those guys for a rookie. Rookies struggle league wide. All of those hitters are proven and more than capable. They are far better bets today than a rookie. If Caissie or Mo were more versatile, or RHH, or great base runners you probably would see them. Roster wise they don't fit. They are a round peg for a square hole. Even if they do call them up, I would expect to barely see them. They will probably be seen as much as Jon Berti has been for the last two months.

I think Caissie will be up in September, if it helps.

Both were off once last week for a Willi Castro start and had Monday off as a team. They're getting breaks. Neither Caissie nor Ballesteros could realistically give PCA a day off on their own, either.

Sure. But neither will play. They'd be fun for a moment, but I don't think either would be in line for even 10 PAs between today and Sept 1st. They have no true path. Castro is capable of playing everywhere and giving anyone a day off while also a RHH. It's fun, but only for the initial surprise. If it makes you feel better I don't think Nicky Lopez would play at all either. Why I expect it will be him. Less fun on the initial tweet, same general addition to the team in terms of playing time.

I think whomever they bring up will essentially sit their ass on the bench and be seen only in times of "10th inning pinch runner" or "emergency". Id love to see Caissie or Ballesteros, they have more fun outcomes, but just cannot see a scenario where you'd use them. Both make sense as Sept 1 adds, but Lopez fits the way Counsell has tended to use the 26th man. Theyre Milford Men. Neither to be seen nor heard.

Caissie is already on the 40.

Caissie and Ballesteros are the "fun" options but I dont know if the Cubs would bring them up just to plant them on the bench. They wont play over any of the PCA, Busch, Happ, Tucker or Suzuki group and that's the only place they could. Both are LHH and neither platoon with Busch. They're fun but are redundant in almost every scenario. The Cubs have no issue stashing a player in the 26th man spot. They do it constantly. I would expect it will be Nicky Lopez.

Brutal, man. I feel for that guy so much. He has had injury after injury and he keeps coming back. He looked devastated. I hope a combination of fhe replay making it look worse and some initial shock from Amaya has made what is a bad ankle sprain look worse in the moment. But that reminds me so much of Alexander Canario's injury and that threw a massive wrench in his development and career.

Ugh. My fault.

Hasnt given up a run since July 9th.

Great game from Cade Horton. He is a dude.

But...do they have to?

That is a special type of hell. In all honesty, love my students. I get middle schoolers. We're super cool with each other. I could not listen to them butcher songs all day.

Middle schoolers are the worst. Source; I start my 15th year teaching middle school history tomorrow at 9am est.

The Cubs swing at 32.8% of first pitches, while the Brewers swing at 29.5%. The Cubs aren't leading the league in first pitch swinging, in fact, they're 11th. Also important to note, they have the fifth most first-pitch strikes thrown to them - it makes sense that teams who get first pitch strikes swing at them. There is no direct correlation between scoring runs and swinging at the first pitch. The Cubs lead the lead in runs per game and are 11th in first pitch swinging. The Brewers are second in runs scored and are 26th in first pitch swings. Arizona is 6th in runs scored and 27th in first pitch swings, the Phillies are 6th in runs scored and 2nd in first pitch swings, and the Tigers are 8th in runs scored and 10th in first pitch runs scored. They're pockmarked around. You're creating a narrative that the Cubs are somehow an egregious first-pitch swinging team when they are not, nor is there any evidence to suggest that first pitch swing% and runs scored are connected. Beyond that, guess what team watches the most strikes in the league? Milwaukee. Both teams get virtually the same amount of strikes and makes virtually the same amount of contact. And a good reminder, The Brewers aren't some magical, super consistent offense either. They had the 20th best wRC+ through May 31st, which means they were straight up bad offensively through the first 1/3rd of the season. They're hot right now, absolutely! But you're creating stories to explain events that don't check out. The Brewers have been no more consistent than the Cubs, swinging at first pitch strikes does not correlate with runs scored, and the Brewers stand and watch way more strikes than the Cubs do which balance everything out anyways. What is happening right now is far more to do with the Brewers having just a really awesome run of results. They've gotten some positive variance, they're getting some good results and it happens. The Cubs at the same time have had the opposite. But the theory you propose here has no underlying data to support it.

No worries! I was just trying to figure out the connection. I think we're all frustrated right now. I try to remain positive, but the amount of times I've said "horsefeathers this, enough baseball for me" as I turn the thing off in the sixth, is at a season-high currently.

They're pitching him slightly more off the center of the plate. But they did that in March through April too (more in and over the plate May-July) and he crushed then, so there is nothing in the heat map to suggest pitchers have just thrown their hands up in the air and said "pitch him like he's Nick Madrigal!" or that he should particularly struggle with this zone-attack. He's getting a pretty normal distribution of strikes, both in the zone and based on his heat map. It leads me to, once again conclude, this isn't something pitchers are really doing to Kyle to cause this. It could be finger-related, but it could also be typical slump that even elite players are prone to (and slumps can be mechanical, mental, etc, as well). Full year: March - April: May - June July - Now

wRC+ > OPS for this very reason - OPS does not properly weight his OBP and he was getting on base. He was 7% better than league average using the superior metric, so while the slugging has been down, he was a decent offensive performer in July. I'd obviously like that number much higher, but Freeman, Alonso and a lot of other really good hitters have months that sat below 60 wRC+. These things happen. On the respect aspect, I'm not sure that's true. He's seeing a little more than his average in the zone, up around 4% in August. But because we're at such a small sample size, if you just cut August 1st from the sample, it drops 2% and you're well within standard deviation, so I'm not sure that pitchers are really doing that. His two highest zone% were two of the first three games of the month. At this point we're just micro-slicing data into unusable sample sizes. The biggest issue I've seen is that his timing has just been a bit off. He's hitting a lot of things to CF instead of RF right now. Whether that's due to his finger (though he hurt the finger a month before the backslide, so I am unwilling to fully jump on the correlation bandwagon there), a bad month that just happens, a bit of mental frustration himself...I am unsure. Beyond that, most of his other stuff is pretty normal. The bat velo is down a bit too, but that's mostly over August and not really something we see happen with the finger injury in June, either.

To be fair to Tucker, most of the "awful" has been from August 1st - August 10th. His July wRC+ was a 107.

MLB organizations are literally in the business of winning baseball games. The people they chose to either helm their VP of Baseball Ops or their General Manager (each organization has a different name for these) has one job; win baseball games. If they don't win baseball games, these people are fired. The people MLB organizations pick to win baseball games are almost exclusively data-dorks. Andrew Friedman was an analysist for a financial firm. AJ Preller went to Cornell and graduated Summa Cum Laude. Craig Breslow with the Red Sox did pitch in the MLB, but he has a degree from an Ivy League school in molecular biophysics. You can do this for almost every person helming a successful MLB organization. If teams thought the "eye test" mattered, MLB organizations would be run by former MLB players exclusively not data-dorks from Ivy League schools or financial analysts. If MLB teams feel as though the best way forward in terms of determining wins and losses are through data and not the eye test, then maybe regular people like you and I, who's entire business is not winning and losing baseball games should have some hubris and recognize that our personal eye test is not applicable. And to clarify just a bit more, my post was not some eyetest vs data argument, you've created that stawman yourself. You're right, his timing is a little off. But Kyle Tucker, even with those struggles has been one of the best hitters in all of baseball. Yes, even the very best hitters in baseball have rough months. Jose Ramirez has been awful so far in August (78 wRC+), Pete Alonso was terrible in July (51 wRC+). Freddie Freeman was terrible in June (54 wRC+). Kyle Tucker's worst full month on the season is a 106 wRC+ in July. His August is trending towards being much worse than that, but he's got two-thirds of it to go and all he needs is like one big week. My post was about being positive about how good Kyle Tucker is, and that there is even some bad luck baked in. Instead, you wanted to make it about the eye test instead of the context.