Jason Ross

Ish. There are things he's doing better; for example, he's pulling the ball more and he's hitting the ball harder. He's chasing a bit less. He's also making less contact than he's ever made on the whole; down to about 68%. Mervis has clearly changed a bit and trying something new...which was likely a necessary thing. With that said, I'm not entirely certainly he's doing things better. They're different. I still remain pretty on the fence on if they're better, though. I'm not against him getting a fair shake now that he's on the MLB roster however. No reason to overly panic about the 7 PA's. He's here...so might as well let him cook.

Yep. Early season stuff is weird. Just really takes like a good week and things shift drastically in different directions. Great to see him figuring it out. Being on the 40-man, if he can make his way to Iowa this year...that'd really help; both in a trade or the Cubs propper.

My cold-streak tracker strikes again! Will Sanders had a good game after I added him. Paciolla and Alcantara got going after they found their way on the list. I'm taking full credit.

I did a lot of digging into PCA last night when discussing him with someone else off this board. I came to some weird conclusions at first, and then with more information, I've at least come to a thought process of what's happening. He's having a weird year offensively: 1. His in-zone whiff% is down 5% (good!) and his contact% is up 4% (good!) 2. His chase rate is comically bad: 45%+. It's over 53% (double last year) in hitters' counts. 3. Pitchers are using this to their advantage. He's seen an increase of 6% of non-competitive strikes. This doesn't seem like an accident. You've got a guy who will essentially offer at anything right now, especially when he's ahead. 4. His swing% in general is way up. 5. Pitchers are more consistently attacking up and out on him and he's not responding well to that pitch I'm hoping a little break from Triple-A and a few days as a defensive replacement will calm him down a bit. The numbers look like a hitter who's struggling mentally right now and is way deep inside of his head. I can't say I know PCA the person, but my educated guess on looking at the data and the way he plays is that he's an emotional kind of guy and perhaps he's let his emotions get the better of him. He appears to be pressing, especially when he gets ahead in the count...he's trying to do too much. Perhaps he's desperately trying to force his way to Chicago, or prove that he's ready. Maybe he's struggling and letting that compound. Either way, the data makes me think this is a mental thing for him.

I teach in an advanced program. There are days when I realize that of the 31 human beings in my room, I'm probably the dumbest one. I only beat these kids with experience.

You know, you'd think so...but kids these days are huge, man. I'm between 5"10 and 5"11 and there have to be 10-15 students who already are taller than me. I've got a student who's over 6"0 and 200lbs already!

If you told me the amount of injuries the Cubs had, and their schedule... I'd never have guessed they'd be 15-9.

Ah, you'll forgive me. My ability to handle emotion and tone are completely gone after an 8 hour day of middle school. If you're wondering "Hey, what's that like?" well, I had a boy at 3:30 ask me for a spoon (I don't have one). Five minutes later, I look over, and the kid has a pyrex of mashed potatoes (which had to have been in his backback...literally all day) hand-shoveling them into his mouth using fingers he almost assuredly hadn't washed once all day. Needless to say, I'm dead inside right now.

Does Savant not change the strike zone to account for the hitter? Seems like a weird oversight.

FWIW, Savant has it a strike.

Man...there was some iffy stuff in Neris' 2023 data. I'm not loving what I'm seeing because it's all that stuff amplified.

It's weird. But probably the right move until Morel makes you more comfortable. He's clearly capable of the spectacular, but he tends to lapse on the regular.

Yodan due up 3rd and then Tucker after him, so I'd guess Wes is a no-go. Those two lefties + Wesneski probably not the best bet. I'd guess Neris.

Not sure if anyone missed it, but Morel was up to a -1 OAA pre-game. Which isn't good, but the way he looked the first week...that's kind of a big jump.

Big K,

Strangely enough...also from Duke.

So, I really like going to Adbert here. It's not a closing situation but it feels like a big situation. You let him come in, with the tying run, in the 6th. You've got a guy on second. Hopefully he can rise to the moment and start to get back to the guy he was last year.

Yeah, feels like they're going to try to squeeze what they can out of guys right now.

Pfft. Only.

It's kind of Madrigal, but Nick Madrigal has found 3 wins of worth over <900 PA's in the MLB level. If Hernandez does that, based on how he looked the last two years...that's a win, so I'm fine with Madrigal...especially if it's Nick Madrigal the SS. I'm encouraged with the changes, though and the progress. Something had to change and we're seeing changes. How well they apply to higher levels...well...that's the rub haha

I like being wrong about a player when a player out performs what I think they'll do. Tauchmann has done a good job making me look bad. Credit to him, credit to the Cubs. He's a very useful 4th OF'er.

While I appreciate that sentiment, the reality is that you can strikeout a bunch of guys, the control was...horrendous. There's just no world in which I can agree that a walk rate of 13.6% in Double-A, where hitters are more prone to chase/expand the zone than at higher levels, constitutes anything but a rough season. Especially a season in which he was demoted from starter to reliever. But that's semantics and pedantics! We can have different barometers for what we think constitutes successful seasons. With that said, I've been in Hodge's corner for a while, so I think we agree on the upside here. Wrote about him in January, picked him as my breakout candidate in 2023...love the stuff here. If he can keep his strike% and competitive pitch% in an acceptable range, he should be a nightmare for RHH's. The stuff clearly misses bats and barrels when he's close enough to the zone. Wouldn't be surprised if he's a Cub in June or even a bit earlier (though that would probably mean more injuries, and I'd rather we not have more of those right now).

When the Cubs added righthander Porter Hodge to the 40-man roster this offseason, a few eyebrows were raised. The hard-throwing pitcher had really struggled in 2023. In 2024, Hodge has emerged as a potential power arm to join the MLB roster. With command issues remaining, does Hodge have what it takes to be effectively wild? Image courtesy of © Chloe Trofatter / USA TODAY NETWORK There's no beating around the bush: Porter Hodge had a kind of miserable, no-good 2023 season. On the heels of a breakout 2022, the then-22-year-old starting pitcher started the season on a rough 12-start stretch. Plagued by walks, he could never seem to string two good starts together, as he would routinely follow a walk-free outing with one in which four or five hitters got a free pass. After Jun. 14, the Cubs made the call: Hodge would go to the bullpen. Sadly for the righty, the demotion to the pen did not seem to fix his control issues, and the year ended shrouded in mystery about how the Cubs would handle the pitcher. I wrote about Hodge and the unique stuff he possesses back in December. For the uninitiated, Hodge throws an incredibly interesting cutter, punctuated with a 12:00 release point, which is incredibly rare. At 93 mph on average, the pitch plays well with his fastball/slider combination to create something of a stuff monster. Below, you'll see a visualization of his tilt chart. Pay attention to the number of cutters he manages to throw directly over the top. The question with the pitcher has always been: Can he throw enough strikes? The 2024 season has started off quite well for Hodge. By striking out a whopping eight hitters in just four innings, coupled with a single walk, he rapidly earned a promotion to Triple-A Iowa. He hasn't really slowed down there, either, surrendering just a single run in five innings (three appearances). He does have an inflated walk rate, but, we'll re-approach that in a minute. Coming back to the overall question on Hodge, we should probably also ask ourselves: How many strikes are enough? The MLB average for Strike% on the 2024 season sits at 63.5%. Despite the season being young, this is roughly in line with most seasons, as league-wide Strike% tends to hover around the 64% range (though it has been on the decline). Porter Hodge, so far, has sat at 60.5%. With that said, his first appearance in Triple-A is doing a lot of damage here. Hodge started that inning off with two ground outs, followed by three walks in a row. Having fun with arbitrary endpoints, Hodge has really settled in: he finished off that inning with a strikeout, and since then, he has fired in 62.5% of pitches for strikes to go along with a 7-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. The good news for Hodge is that 62.5% strikes is a pretty good number for someone like him. We shouldn't expect the control to be a strength for Hodge; his stuff is too funky and too movement-based, so a slightly below-average strike rate is going to be likely. We shouldn't expect him to become Devin Williams (62.1 Strike% in 2023), Jordan Hicks (61.4%), Aaron Bummer (62.3%), or others, but you can find a host of useful names who sit below the league average in terms of strike-throwing. So maybe we need to shift the question again, to something like: How many of his pitches are entirely noncompetitive? Looking at Hodge's pitch chart reveals what I think will be the next hurdle: cut down those pitches at which no one is going to offer. Below, you'll see two charts: on the left are the results of his pitches and the right are the specific pitches he throws. Note how many of these pitches are just entirely uncompetitive, and that it doesn't seem to be correlated to a specific pitch type; this is reflected in his 22.8% non-competitive pitch rate (pitches that are further than 18 inches away from the center of the zone). No one is really putting the ball in play when Hodge finds the zone: he has a 25% in-zone whiff%, compared to an MLB league average of around 19%. But he's only getting 16.7 chase%, which is below league average. Too many of those pitches just aren't going to get anyone to swing when they're that drastically uncompetitive. Here's the good news: a solid number of those uncompetitive pitches came in that one bad outing that started off his time in Iowa. His season rate is 22.8% of his pitches as "non-competitive," but his rate since that third walk has dropped by over 4%, to 18.1%. This still represents a worse-than-average rate (that sits at 16.4%), but it's movement in the correct direction. Quality MLB relievers such as Mark Leiter Jr. Jose Leclerc, Alex Lange and Matt Brash ran high non-competitive pitch rates last year. It's not advisable, but it's do-able. Regardless, I'd much rather see Hodge creep closer and closer to the league average. Despite the high number of non-competitive pitches, Hodge gets big chase numbers against righties, with his chase rate over the last run in Triple-A being over 31% for them. That is way up from his previous chase numbers, so being just "below-average" in terms of his non-competitive pitches seems to make a world of difference. This would make sense: sliders have a platoon split and right-handed hitters are more likely to chase sliders as they move away from them and the hitting zone. There's probably a real reason to get acquainted with Porter Hodge right now. The Chicago Cubs have had a pretty poor run of injury luck so far, as they've had the likes of Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, Julian Mertryweather, Kyle Hendricks, and Drew Smyly come down with knocks already. The team will have their bullpen depth tested plenty of times this season. Being that he's on the 40-man roster already and has incredible stuff, Hodge is likely to get a shot at the MLB roster sometime in 2024. I think he projects more in the José Cuas mold: he's going to excel in the right matchups, even if his command isn't great. Will he walk some hitters? Yes. And it seems as though hell be ineffective against at least some subsets of left-handed hitters. With that said, there's always a role for an arm who neutralizes same-handed batters, and Hodge has a lot of those skills. If he can just keep the non-competitive pitches to a minimum, Porter Hodge just might have enough to be the Cubs version of Ricky "Wild Thing" Vaughn. Let's hope he makes the strike zone sing. What do you think of Porter Hodge? Do you think he'll ever throw enough strikes to be effectively wild? Let me know in the comments below! View full article

Hernandez has worked really hard on his mechanics. He's making far more contact than he had in the past. What's great is to see the power come a bit; he had basically done nothing but get singles up until recently. I've still got hope he can get moving. Sadly, one prospect rebirth might be the deathknell for another, because I think Hernandez will get an early-promotion if he keeps hitting and I'm not sure Ed Howard will survive that promotion.