Jason Ross

Listen, if the Cubs are going to do something, I think Game 3 and Game 4 right now are the Brewers underbelly. They probably have to go with Priester and Quintana in these games. And for all of the flaws we can find with Boyd and Shota and the like, these two have flaws. Priester gets crunched by lefties and his cutter is atrocious right now. And Quintana is even worse against RHH. They're incredibly flawed and exploitable. But it's an uphill battle. And the thoughts of "this is cooked" have crept in. A win tomorrow night and you can start to see a narrow path forward.

We can be frustrated without being over reactionary. None of these are fireable offenses and you know that. Once again; Javier Assad is not a particularly good pitcher. His strikeout rate would have been the lowest of any qualified SP and his xFIP of 4.69 is bad. The Cubs didn't seem hom one of the 12 best Ps in the org and assuming they would have added Horton had he been healthy, is safe to rank him at least 14th. It's very easy to argue in favor of a pitcher who isn't even on the roster because we have no proof it would have gone bad. That said, he just isn't a good pitcher on paper. All you can do is use the information at your hand pre-start and the data on Assad is not pretty. On Imanaga; there also wasn't a clear better choice. Colin Rea just isn't a very good starter and that's about all of his choices. Imanaga had a really good run from July 30th through September 19th. Yes he had to non-great starts before tonight but bad starts happen. The HR bug is real, but he had mostly found ways to mitigate that (his ERA and xFIP were in line). He also pitched well on the year against Milwaukee. A perfectly defensible choice given his options. This is partially due to injuries. In a best laid world Justin Steele and Cade Horton would have also been healthy. While the Cubs had mid year time to fix the Steele thing, Horton cracked a rib the week before the playoffs. That is devastating. Frustrations are in order. It's very clear the Cubs left themselves and arm short; either a SP or a RP which would have more allowed the Cubs to do a bullpen game like the Brewers did. But Counsell's pitching choices have essentially ranged from "this bad choice or this other bad choice" and based on how we got to that point of the season, it's not really his fault his choices have been whittled down to that. Hoyer deserves blame for putting them in this spot. Bad luck on Horton left them in this bad spot. And the offense has struggled which has made the pitching issues the last two days worse. Counsell ain't perfect and while we can find fault in actions, nothing deserves "fire him immediately" posts. I'm just as frustrated as anyone. I stayed up past midnight to record our NSBB live reaction, a game that felt over by the 5th - I'm quite upset that the Cubs are pissing away my late nights with bad losses to the Brewers. But Counsell doesn't deserve to be canned because he picked one of the bad options in a pool of bad options.

We're live if you want to vent with us.

Now's the time for irrationality.

Yeah, sadly while I think the players will throw up a fight, that they're likely going to get smashed here. Fans tend to get to a "well they're just overpaid babies" place with these things. Or grasp on to the idea of a cap/floor creating parity (which it doesn't really do). Public opinion will generally swing to the owners, or swing to apathy and the owners will outlast. The players will also toss IFA and amateurs under the bus when they can, too.

I think Hoerner and Keller would be the two guys I think will most likely be extended. Maybe a PCA 7 year contract + 2 or so options.

Would agree. I expect the Cubs will pick up Kittredge's option for the bullpen, maybe resign Brad Keller (like a 3-4 year deal), and add another good BP arm (but shy of elite). Then sign Michael King. I also think the Cubs will look to trade one or two of the expiring 2026 contracts - Nico, Taillon, Happ or Suzuki. Not all of them, but one or two. And then look to make a trade to acquire a younger, controlled option as well. Just a spitball of what I think is likely

Yeah, I think Michael King is the guy I'd most bank on signing.

Only when down 4.

There will be next to no way they can accomplish that. They'll have to spend money this offseason if they don't extend Tucker. They can't go to the playoffs and lose to Milwaukee and optically spend less than they did (and they were well under the LT). There will be one, maybe two contracts signed that will extend past 2027. But they also lose most of their money after 2026. Tom Ricketts does care about his image. When he's about to be roasted he doesn't go to Cubs Con. He throws people under the bus. You can see how Hoyer speaks about how generous he is that reflected as well. Ricketts couldn't survive the media onslaught if they come in at a $180m payroll next year. I don't think they'll go on a spending spree. But they'll sign a decently sized contract or two.

I'm not sure we will either. It's going to be a tough battle. And really, a salary cap is going to hurt this game unless they do one like the NFL, but to do that, the MLB would have to lose their anti-trust exemption and that ain't happening.

Because owners want a cap hard. Players are not going to risk entering FA back in a landscape where a cap could limit their earning potential. I can't ensure they'll get one. What I can say though is that if I was the guy who was hands down the best FA on the market like Tucker will be, I wouldn't be testing that theory. Take the bag now.

No. His injury history so far is: Last year: fluke foul ball off the shin that was misdiagnosed by doctors This year: A finger issue and a calf issue Nothing is reoccurring. The closest thing to a red flag is a muscle injury to a calf, but like, who hasn't strained a calf before? No one is going to hide from that injury history. It isn't like he's been on the shelf for the same hammy 3 times since the Pandemic or something.

Teams don't make drastic decisions based on one start. Remember, until his last start of the year, he had posted a 60 IP (10 start) sample in which his ERA and his xFIP matched. His K% was up, and his walk rate was down. The one flag was an inflated HR rate, but xFIP factors this in. Pitchers have bad starts. Even really good pitchers have bad starts. Teams don't change arm slots by 5-degrees because of them. That's an offseason type of a change. So yeah, it hasn't gone well over his last three starts. But being realistic with ourselves, a mechanical change like this isn't something any team is going to try to implement on the fly.

With the potential of a lockout looming, I think there is a zero chance he's taking the short term, high AAV deal.

No doubt those starts were bad. But he had 60 IP after a terrible start against the White Sox. Do you think after you post a 3.69 ERA and a 3.79 xFIP over 60 innings someone should have said "I know what we should do: tear it all down!" You and I both know that would be stupid. It's pretty obvious something got much worse with Shota starting that last start and has carried through to now over his last three. But there really wasn't much concern in his profile prior to that last start of the season that suggested an implosion was about to hit right then, either.

I'd prefer if you didn't put words in my mouth. I'm happy to have a conversation, but if we're not going to have one in good faith, I'll bow out. No, what I said is that I think the issue with Shota is that his arm angle is too shallow. I also trust that guys like Tyler Zombro and Tommy Hottovoy are really smart guys (Zombro runs Tread Athletics, one of the best pitching developmental groups on the planet). Shota, leading up to his last start of the season, was pitching well enough that even though he was giving up added home runs, it wasn't really hurting him overall - when ERA and xFIP are essentially in line, you are getting results you likely should expect - there is no use in going nuclear and stripping a guy to the core mechanically when that's happening. Between his last start of the regular season, the playoff start against San Diego and his one tonight, the needle is shifting to where that change is more and more likely to need to be made. But it cannot be made at this juncture of the season.

Between July 30th and September 19th he had a 3.69 ERA, and a 3.79 xFIP. He faced the Brewers twice in that span, to be clear and was just fine. Yes, there were home runs surrendered in there, but Shota is always going to be a bit of a HR merchant; his fastball will do that. But it wasn't really an issue. He was doing everything else pretty well. There is nothing there outside of a bit of a too high HR/FB% rate in there (and to be clear, his HR/FB% of 17.2% is high, but it's not like, impossibly high either. It's about 5% higher than league average). But no where near enough to say "strip it down and completely change this dude's mechanics".

I try to be pretty optimistic and find the good when everything feels dark... But that feels like it's curtains.

Not how it works. It's confusing. At the end of this year multiple things happen. First: the Cubs will chose whether to accept or decline the option. If they accept it, his contract will slide to 5 years. Secondly, if they decline it, Shota has an option. He can either accept the original 4 year contract or immediately opt out and become a FA.

Well, for a lot of reasons. First, you can't just "fix" an arm-slot immediately. Arm slots aren't like levers where you just pull it and poof. Biomechanics are deep and to change an arm slot you're tinkering with a lot of things. It's a near impossible change to make at the end of the season - by tweaking on thing, you can create new issues. And the last thing the Cubs wanted is that. And frankly, he wasn't terrible for much of the run - up until his last start of the season he was pitching really well. But that's not kept. Secondly, Craig Counsell is the manager, he isn't the pitching guy. Tommy Hottavoy and Tyler Zombro are two of the big pitching gurus in the Cubs system. They'd make the changes. I do think they did change this into the season, though. The Cubs in general have lowered a lot of arm slots - to the benefit of the pitcher. It creates extra run to the arm side and actually is a less violent arm action to aspects of the arm. For Shota, my guess is that they hoped it helped create extra arm side movement on his splitter or to create extra sweep on the sweeper. Sadly, it's also created an issue where the fastball cannot sit as high as you'd want it and he's struggled because of it.

They have to make the decision this offseason.

Not optimistic, but the pathway forward becomes clear when you data dive. There are obvious things that work well and things that don't. And we can usually diagnose issues. With Shota, the fastball shape is worse and we can see it's running more on the arm side. We can also see the drop in the arm slot. We also have enough data on what pitches with that much IVB do; they're horsefeathers nasty if you throw them on the upper third - they directly attack launch angle and essentially eliminate the hit box for a hitter trying to elevate the pitch (thus, weak flys). He doesn't have any obvious signs of injury so the issue becomes mechanical. I don't think Shota is like, the ERA monster he was through June last year. I do think that the best version of Shota Imanaga, at around a 40-degree arm slot and throwing his fastball up and in on the hands is pitcher who belongs in the middle of a rotation of a playoff team. I also think the Cubs do a good job with working with pitchers. When you add it together, I think Shota should be fine.

My assumption is that he's dropped the arm slot to give his sweeper better run. But it's resulted in a worse Shota.

Correct. Zero chance. He's still a good pitcher, even at $16m AAV. And I think the issues are quite fixable. His arm slot is about 4-5 degrees lower. It's creates more arm side ride (for Shota against a RHH, pitches that tail bail into the zone) and has lowered it's elevation. The outcome is that his fastball is tailing both into the zone more and not getting the elevation. High ride fastballs are killer in the top-third but horrible in the bottom two-thirds. It's a narrow path to live, but high ride fastballs kill the launch angle of hitters. But only if you elevate. A flatter arm path has killed his fastball a bit.