Jason Ross

Was it? What made it a head scratcher? The Cubs needed a BP arm. They signed Neris, who had been a positive reliever for years. The xFIP suggested some luck, but the FIP was still mid-3, the K% was 28% (which was down a smidge from his career 29.6% but not massively). The velocity was fine. He had no injury history. He was worth .8 fWAR which was the same as Julian Merryweather in 2023. It's not even like Neris was getting worse as the year went on; his best month was September. And sure, I think it was clear he wasn't going to keep a 1.71 ERA, but he signed a one year deal (with a vesting option we'll likely get out of) that doesn't suggest the Cubs thought he was going to post a >2.00 ERA again. Sometimes it's Hoyer's fault for missing things. I think it was Hoyer's fault for signing Eric Hosmer in 2023; it was clear after the calendar turned over in May of 2022, that Hosmer was toasted and he wasn't going to approach a 105 wRC+. I think it's Hoyer's fault for signing Trey Mancini to a 1+1 deal, who had a terrible second half of 2022 and suggested athleticism-wise he was toasted. I think it's Hoyer's fault for signing Tucker Barnhart to a 1+1 deal. All of that seemed bad at the time. In other situations I think we can take a step back and say "well, what was he supposed to have, a crystal ball?" and I think Neris is one. There's little to suggest Neris was going to implode this bad. Computer projections didn't hate Neris. There weren't glaring issues with velocity. There weren't super-scary underlying data. Look at his Savant Page. What issues do you see in the 2023 year that suggested this implosion was coming?

I've seen it intimated a few places he's 5"10 after some google searching, but they're all "according to some", like this article from Bleed Cubbie Blue or just listed like in this one from NSBB. There doesn't appear anything official, however and these articles come from 2022 and 2023.

You know me better to suggest I'm using horsefeathers statistics. And right now, PCA isn't helping offensively; you won't see me disagree there. But I think we need to take our frustrations and put them in a box if we're going to evaluate PCA, his future, and his current struggles. Prospects take immense patience (and probably more so now than ever - the best prospects in baseball are struggling in initial MLB callups), even more so when we're talking about non-elite offensive prospects (which PCA is), even more so when we're talking a prospect who's not played a ton of Triple-A baseball (which PCA hasn't). I am as frustrated at the 2024 Cubs as any one. But I don't believe at any point the Chicago Cubs expected Pete Crow-Armstrong to have been the defacto starting CF, having played 43 MLB games, on June 26th after only 26 games in Triple-A with a 98 wRC+ and a K% over 27%, either. I think we can all make a safe assumption that that was not in the pre-season plans. Multiple injuries in the OF early and players struggling to hit have created a perfect storm for this right now. So PCA was thrown into the deep end, probably too early, and has struggled. That's not a shocking outcome, don't you think? On his future...we'll have to remain patient. There's still a good player in there. But it's probably going to require more time.

Do we think that training, stretching and biometrics were going to make Adbert Alzolay (a history of injuries) not hurt his forearm? Or not break a bone in Merryweatehr's back? Or fix, whatever doctors can't really understand (and there seems to be medical confusion here - it's been reported they don't know what's really holding him back) on Almonte? Usually when a rash of injuries hit, it's less to do with the medical team and more along bad luck, bad timing, and events that were always going to happen. When teams miss injuries, it's usually because of positive luck. It's one thing if the Cubs were throwing their pitchers more than other teams, and the Cubs were seeing a rash of TJS. I think it's another when we look at how these guys got hurt. This is pretty assuredly bad luck.

His overall numbers look good! But his underlying numbers paint an ugly picture of someone who's bound to fail. Only two hitters in the International League currently have worst contact rates than Canario's ~61%. This is almost 12% below league average. As well, his in-zone-whiff of 28% is bottom-5. It's not even like this is a skill he's improving on; it's 60% over his last few weeks (including his bonkers home run stretch) and it's down 7% from 2023. He's regressing. I've posted it other places, but the only MLB hitter with contact rates in this range (in-zone, o-zone, in-zone-whiff, contact%...) is Nolan Gorman, who owns a 95 wRC+ (.197/.271/.418), is striking out 35% of the time, and has been a 0 fWAR player this season. He was better last year, but his contact rates and swing choices were much better. So the best case scenario for Canario, right now, looks like Nolan Gorman's 2024. But even that is a best case...it's probable that Canario's contact rate against better pitching will not start at the 61% range, for example. The processes matter more than the lines when we're projecting what we expect Canario to do. That's not to say Canario is always going to suck, but that right now, he probably would. And sure, he might go on one of those nuclear weeks where he hits five bombs and has a .400 average - kind of like Patrick Wisdom. But between the two nuclear weeks he has all season, you're probably looking at 40% strike out rates, little offensive production, no real defensive ability....so you're just gambling that those nuclear weeks are coming soon and you can avoid the latter.

Was about to mention that. I think I've read he's closer to 5"10 or 5"11 now. But don't quote me on that. That's probably his height when he signed his IFA deal. I'd assume he's grown a few inches

If the Cubs win-now-mode hinged on a 22 year old prospect who has a little over 50 games in Triple-A (he's played almost the same amount of MLB games) being an instant 4 fWAR player, than the Cubs have bigger issues than we know about. Considering the Cubs resigned Bellinger, I'd assume the team was not suspecting to have needed 43 games out of PCA n the first half of the season.

Being fair to Ballesteros, I'd guess his defense is more on par with being in South Bend. So his bat is probably two levels above that of his defense. It's the good and the bad of being so advanced as a hitter; as a hitter he's going to force his way to Iowa well before he's ready defensively there. Hopefully the Cubs can crash course him. Realistically, he's probably going to hit well enough that his defensive ability may never catch up and he'll just go the DH route because of it.

The number 1 prospect on the Orioles couldn't hit MLB pitching either. PCA is 22. He's barely seen Triple-A. And the jump from Triple-A to the MLB is getting larger. He's not hitting yet. I think he may never be a great hitter. But he doesn't have to be a great hitter. Brenton Doyle is currently showing what kind of value you can bring at an 87 wRC+ this year as long as you play great defense and run the bases really well; he's up to 1.4 fWAR in 75 games. He does it a little differently than probably PCA will, but point remains. Hell, he was a positive fWAR guy last year with a 43 wRC+! PCA just needs more time.

Being a slightly better hitter won't change his value though. What PCA is giving away offensively will easily be offset in that he's still a plus fWAR player due to defense and speed. There's nothing to suggest to me in the data that Canario is anything but, at best, a replacement level player today. If you want to make an argument that the Cubs need to put PCA back in Iowa because you think that's where he needs to develop, we can discuss that - that argument has merit. Who they replace PCA with in the lineup, right now, is kind of hard to figure out because there isn't an obvious answer; all of the options suck in their own right,. But the argument that the Cubs just need to do something different, and that the difference is "play Canario" isn't going to result in a net positive for the Cubs right now and that should be noted. A lot of this seems to stem from "well we just don't know what Canario will do" but the underlying data on Canario right now paints an ugly picture of a guy who's going to just come up, and strike out 40% of the time. He may add 20 points of wRC+ over PCA currently, but that won't offset the defense. He won't make the Cubs better and I do believe it will make them actively worse. And maybe that's fine. If the balance between "winning MLB games" and "developing PCA" is shifting, then sending the more useful MLB player down for Canario might be a fine tradeoff. I just think we should understand going into it that Canario isn't really looking like much of a help and that any added offense people think is coming is probably going to be much less noticeable than they realize.

Eh. Not sure I agree with that. The baseballs are very different from double to triple-A. Look at how BJ Murray and Cade Horton have struggled in initial time. PCA as well. The jump from Triple-A to the MLB is larger, today, than Double-to-Triple-A. But there's still a real step up.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Cubs were okay with the idea of trading Moises Ballesteros. He is almost assuredly going to hit himself out of playing catcher; his bat is too advanced. While the bat is real, real good for many reasons, his overall long term value at DH is going to be limited in a sense. As a team the Cubs are obsessed with value and the concept that the Cubs would like to parlay a DH-only into something else is, at least, in line with their thinking, so it's not a crazy thing to think. With that said, I wouldn't say they're showcasing him, either. He was destroying Double-A, and without hyperbole, at historical levels for his age. He was ready for Iowa (offensively). He's hit his way to Iowa on merit.

I think people who are entirely convinced that Hoyer will be fired very well may be disappointed. While I still stand by my belief that there's a good chance that Ricketts will choose to drop the axe on someone, and the only someone he can realistically drop it on is Hoyer, the reality is that's far from a foregone. Hoyer's contract runs out at the end of 2025. He has one more year left. The original plan was five years and the Cubs as an organization giving him five years to complete his vision is realistic. Secondly, while this year is super frustrating, and plenty of things are Hoyer's doing, many things are not Hoyer's doing. Hoyer couldn't realistically see this offense taking the step back they did; the average age of the Cubs offensive players is 28 and almost every player has regressed so far. And while we can say that a Bellinger regression was likely, they should have more than made up for that deficient with the addition of Michael Busch's 128 wRC+ so far. This was a top-10 run scoring offense last year and now they're just horrible. As well, the foundations of a good bullpen were there; it's not really Hoyer's fault that Hector Neris has just absolutely been a dumpster fire, that Alzolay and Merryweather have essentially been hurt all year, that Almonte got hurt pretty early, that Leiter is also on the IL (plus injuries to Steele, Taillon, Wicks, Brown...). That's, again, not to say there aren't qualms, grips, legitimate issues we should have with Jed Hoyer's roster construction as well, but you also can't really blame him for anything I've listed here and those are real reasons we're where we are at right now. Lastly, I'm not sure there's a significant upgrade over Jed Hoyer out there. You could go to the Tampa Bay Rays as a first place to poach, but Neader just signed an extension this calendar year to stick around there. Kim Ng has had helium in the past with what the Marlins were able to accomplish while she was the GM, but is she really ready for a role running the Cubs? You can make an argument that the foundations of the Marlins success' were laid previous to her; players like Alcantara, Chisholm and many of the youth prospects were previous to Ng. She did a killer job on the margins, but is that going to fix the Hoyer issues? David Sterns has already taken a job with the Mets, so he's off the market. You could try to grab Chernoff, but then, you're basically re-hiring Jed Hoyer in terms of what Chernoff is seemingly good at. I don't think you'll be able to lure Elias out of Baltimore right now, Breslow, our best internal option (IMO) is where he wants to be in Boston...so then you're picking from VP's and hoping they're more capable than Hoyer, in the same way you hired Hoyer. That's not to say an option doesn't exist, but it isn't like I can find or point to someone who's real likely to be poached or is a sure thing, either. It may also mean you lose your scouting and player development group with a new President of Basseball Ops coming in, which, would be a shame. Kantrovitz just eschewed the Mets, and the Cubs have continued to develop and draft well. All of these things will be taken into account when the time comes to evaluate Hoyer. As stated, the Cubs may want someone to blame and if they do...well...Jed Hoyer likely stands alone as the best option right now. But they may look at the options, the ramifications and the like and decide keeping Hoyer for one more run makes the most sense, despite the outrage from those on twitter.

Yeah, it seems to have coincideded with Triantos playing CF more that Alcantara hit the IL. Reports from Mooney and Sharma on Shaw's defense like, two weeks ago was super positive and that the Cubs liked his progress. Feels more like Tennessee doing what it can with the players they have right now, and less to do with Shaw.

How exactly do you think he will help? Again, he compares amazingly similar at Triple-A in terms of contact rates, swing decision and EV to what Nolan Gorman is doing at the MLB level in 2024 and Gorman has been bad offensively. With a jump in competition, it's likely that his data is worse than Gorman, and unable to even match that of Gorman currently. For Canario to have any positive impact offensively, he'd have to not only increase his contact rate by around 5-10% or so against much better pitching, he's going to have to lower his in-zone-whiff by 5 percent or so as well while maintaining the same launch, exit velocity and everything else. This is, highly unlikely considering his contact rates in 2024 are 7% worse than they were in 2023 at Triple-A; he's regressing in this category, not improving. It's made even more unlikely in his first extended run at the MLB level as he learns a new level of competition. While it's something that could improve in the future, there's nothing to suggest it would change for the better by promoting him currently. The result is likely going to be a hitter with a wRC+ in the 80's who provides neutral defense and base running. That will not help much. And the "change in dynamic" will result in re-organizing the deck chairs on the Titanic to fit a certain aesthetic as it sinks.

Forgive me for the clarification attempt, but it depends on what you're meaning by "that". If you're suggesting that "that's what you can do when you hit the piss out of the ball" is "run into a home run" or be Patrick Wisdom...you're correct, that is possible. If you are suggesting that as long as you hit the piss out of the ball, you can run 60% contact rates in Triple-A and expect MLB success? You cannot. Looking at the MLB, there is almost no one doing what Canario is doing, with one exception (and one big caveat). Nolan Gorman is probably the closest to what Canario is doing in Triple-A (with the caveat he's doing at a much higher level), as his contact rate is around 61.5%, with a 28% in-zone-whiff and near 50% swing rate. He's running a 95 wRC+, a .299 wOBA, with a .195/.271/.418 line while striking out more than one out of every three times. Gorman, has for all intents and purposes, been effectively a replacement level player this season. He was a 118 wRC+ hitter last year! He also made 5% more contact, made much better swing choices and these things are quite reflective and are above what Canario is capable of doing over large samples in a lower level against lower competition. Comparing to Canario, it's unlikely that Canario would be even capable of reaching those levels right now. Canario is putting up similar contact rates as Gorman is, but is doing so against much worse pitching. A reminder than Nick Madrigal and his sub 80 wRC+ was unable to barrel a single baseball at the Major League level this year and managed to barrel a ball in his third Iowa PA. Mastrobuoni, everyone's favorite Cub has a 107 wRC+ in Triple-A; he's got a 10 this season in the majors. Canario would be lucky to replicate that kind of contact data, meaning, the best case scenario, unless his contact rates change drastically, is that of a 5% below league average hitter, and but fare more likely well below that, in the 75-80 wRC+ range (or worse) as he'd be unlikely to maintain his contact rates against better pitching (which would make him about the worst contact% hitter in the MLB).

Wheat has apparently been lighting up guns on the backfields. MB is starting to get exciting.

A .519 BABIP. Now, we have to remember this: BABIP at the MiLB level can and should be interpreted very differently than BABIP at the MLB level. High BABIP at the MLB level is almost always associated with luck; we know that speed influences BABIP greatly and that there's a limit to what BABIP we should expect moving forward. With MiLB data, high BABIP can be luck, but isn't always luck. Sometimes you're just figuring it out and are becoming that much better than MiLB pitching at your current level and it signals "I need a new challenge". With Howard, it's hard to say right now. Traditionally, if we saw a 22 year old with a full slate of MiLB PA's with a high BABIP, at high-A, we'd probably just say "ah, luck" or "he's too old" and move our ass on. But Ed Howard isn't a traditional 22-year old in High-A. He's had, around, 200 previous PA's at High-A, almost all of which were either "barely 20 year old in high-A" or "recently blew out his hip and is trying to come back from a devastating injury". So we have to look a bit deeper. First, we can see that the power is increasing; he's hit ten doubles on the season...six have been hit in his last 70 PA's. He's walked 14 times this year...seven have come in his last 70 PAs. His K% is at 23%, so he's not selling out for power hurting his contact rate. He's hit a ton of ground balls this year as well...this would improve BABIP, as well. It may also suggest his hip being healthy; speed = better BABIP. 70 PA's as well, is at a base line level where many things (contact rate, walk rate, strikeout rate) begin to stabilize and pass the "well it's just random luck" stage of statistics. That's not saying it's not a small sample, but that it hits a level of an "acceptable" level of small sample. His ISO, which isn't like, sparkly, is approaching .100, which would be a career high, as well. I can't dig much deeper; High-A savant data is not public information and as such, don't have access to it. It'd be interesting to see his contact rates and swing decisions. Barrels. That stuff. It'd help us understand even more. Thankfully, the Cubs have that data so they know more than we do. So what does it all mean? Frankly, I don't know. This could be a luck fueled BABIP by a 22 year old. It could be Howard is too old for South Bend now and is physically mature enough to just BABIP them to death. He could be over his hip injury, and doing something akin to Hernandez in Myrtle Beach; with mechanical improvements is slowly, but surely, conquering the level when people had begin to write him off. There's lots of outcomes here. The overall point I'm trying to make is just...Ed Howard is such an unknown. I think he got off to an unfair start to begin with in the 2020 draft (such an impossible draft to get right) and in Cub fan's minds to begin with. He's had injuries he can't control and the pandemic and a loss of a senior year he couldn't control. There's enough over his last 100 PA's that should suggest to us all to pause, take a second look and probably re-evaluate in...30 days. See where we're at. Is he still around a 110 wRC+ over another month? What's the BABIP like? Is it still .400? Well then it's likely not luck then. Maybe he' back at a 80 wRC+ over July and we can say "Ah, just a good month". Lots of things that can happen.

All of his main stats have come at times when he was either: 1. Super young for the league 2. Hurt 2024 is probably the first, real, honest, shot he's had a league where he's been healthy and at an age appropriate league. He's been a 103 wRC+ over his last 105 PA's and over his last 70 PA's has seen a 162 wRC+. What his upside is, as I said in the post above, is really unknown. Whether he as rusty earlier and is now at full health, is in an extended hot streak over the last 30 days, or plenty of things in between, it's impossible to say. He's had a very weird path to where he is today, enough to suggest we can't even trust defensive scouting on him from pre-hip injury. But that works in his favor with the bat as well. Let's just see where he goes before we worry about his upside right now. He's in an incredibly unique category of "it's impossible to tell" with all of the caveats (covid draft, missed development years, devastating injuries, aggressive promotions),

I think PCA needs more work. I also don't think Alexander Canario is still the answer. In fact, the mixup was because he's still hurt and the Cubs were checking him out. Regardless, however, his underlying numbers in Triple-A are ugly. I know he's been on a run up through the injury where it was home run, home run, home run, but overall his contact rate is...woof. He's making contact on 61% of his swings while in-zone-whiffing at 27%. To put that in perspective, he's making 10% less contact than International League average and swinging and missing in the zone almost 9% more. He's up to too many PA's at Triple-A for this to be nothing, as well, considering he's over 400 PA's at the level now. Even over his hot range, his contact% since the last week of May is 60% with a 28% in-zone whiff. If he had enough PA's to qualify, he'd have the third worst contact of anyone in Triple-A and bottom-5 in-zone whiff. Canario wll likely have a better wRC+ than PCA for a bit because I expect he can run into a home run more often. He's probably also capable of hitting four home runs in a week. But I expect he'd be Patrick Wisdom, mostly; someone who's capable of running into a home run or a super-mega-week but the in-between times are times of largely uncompetitive PA's and mediocre/poor defense. PCA is going to likely be a more useful player to the Cubs currently because in between the two who would be largely unhelpful offensively, one is providing elite defense at a premium position and other...well the other isn't in that ballpark. And I think while PCA has plenty to learn, learning at the MLB level probably isn't the worst thing right now, either. Take your lumps currently and if you can, get over them. It will take uber prospect Jackson Holliday a second chance to get it right and Jacksoun Chourio is only starting to look like he's turning a corner, 150 PA's into it.

As I said previously, Howard's been a popular punching bag for Cub fans, but I think we have to take a step back and say that, today, we have a hard time pin pointing what his upside is. I've compared Howard to Vazquez before and I'd like to continue to hammer that home; at this stage in his South Bend trip, Luis Vazquez probably had similar upside to Howard. That's not to say Howard is going to even hit Vazquez upside, but I think today we can say that Vazquez's upside has changed significantly over the course of the last two years, from someone who you'd have said "that guy will never play an inning in the majors" to "looks like a decent backup option and could be a second division starter". What Ed Howard's upside is today, isn't very clear. What I can say is that he had another good week with the bat and he's been an above league average hitter with South Bend long enough that it's very possible we're past "Well, he's just having a hot streak". With uncertainty with the glove (is it still plus?) and real uncertainty with the bat (and that's a good thing, there was a time it looked like there was no bat there at all), I'd implore everyone to kind of...suspend whatever you think, or you've thought, his upside is. To compare Howard to another Cub prospect, I'd point to Cristian Hernandez. Hernandez, a quite-hyped prospect, struggled mightily in Myrtle Beach for 1.5 years. This season, he entered with new mechanics and begin to really hit the ball...a lot...but with little power. The approach was much better but questions remained about would the power come. Then it started with doubles, and has now transitioned to home runs. He hit one home run in his first 140 PAs. Since May 28th, Hernandez has three home runs, six doubles and two triples. He's been one of the best hitters in Myrtle Beach, and while I'm not comping him as baby A-Rod, Cristian Hernandez is once again an easy-top-20 in the system and likely going to be worth a top-15 or better mid-season rank, Howard's had about 100 PA's where he's been over 100 wRC+. Let's see if the doubles turn into home runs. That doesn't mean Howard's going to make a top-15, he's a bit older (though does get the caveat of "horrible injury" as well), but that we've seen multiple times where prospects at his very position, that we have in our system today, have drastically changed where people saw them in the last two years. I don't know what his upside is. He's probably going to fail, but most prospects do! But his upside could be a lot of things right now, and we're experiencing the first time in his career where he's had extended health, and extended success. Let's see where that leads him. I was close to writing him off myself 100 PA's ago, but I was probably wrong to do so.

Update: False alarm. He's not in SF. Per Tommy Birch.

Either PCA to Iowa or (another) injury.

Edit: I made a mistake in my data set, so let me change my post. When setting up my table of .500 teams, I did not include the Cubs, who, were a .500+ better team and changed the data. The Cubs scored the 13th most runs against .500 teams but the 10th best Runs/G (they played less games against winning teams than others). The Cubs W-L against .500 teams was not great, but it wasn't their offenses' issue generally speaking. They played 89 games against winning teams and still were a top-third-run-scoring-offense. The idea that the Cubs offense beat up on bad teams is the hollow argument,.

Eh...I think they need to hit on one of them at least. That'd help a lot! But they still have tons of talent internally. If one or two of those don't work out, there's still Alcantara (who, despite it all, still has real upside), Triantos, Rojas, Davis, Canario, Hernandez...these are upside guys who can all be starting players if they hit their 95% (some more likely than others). Maybe none hit star level, okay, but the Cubs can figure out a way to acquire stars too (through aggression and the like - we can debate if they'd be willing or not). I don't think anything is so black and white, overall. There's plenty of way to skin a cat. Though the easiest is the Cubs top end prospects just turning out to be really good.