Jason Ross

I know you do. It's just the world of what ifs allow endless unknowable answers. All we can do is accept the universe we live in. Maybe parallel land Wood won 200 games and Ben Brown got a no hitter. They're probably having more fun than us.

I sincerely feel for Megill there. What horrible luck. But maybe the Cubs can use some good luck on their part to spring board and find themselves a bit.

I feel bad for McGull, but great play Luis!

And perhaps, if Riggleman and others had taken a little more precaution, we'd have gotten a full career out of Kerry Wood instead of the protracted one we got. There's what ifs everywhere. I'd rather the Cubs be safe than chase a no-hitter. No hitters are cool, but Brown's health is more cool. If the Cubs lose this, it's less to do with Brown being pulled (he was never getting the 9th) and more to do with rest of the team. A team who is clearly struggling to win and with confidence right now.

I'm not sure why the Cubs didn't come up with this "let's just not let the other team get hits" plan earlier. Frankly, it's quite the ingenious plan. I'd suggest implementing it more often.

I would push back on the idea that the Cubs font have any impact talent. We can agree or disagree on how likely they may be to hit their ceilings, but PCA, Caissie, Alcantara, Shaw, Rojas and Horton all have impact upside. They may not be clear to you, but there are signs to suggest all have that upside. Clarity is hard, but like, no one thought Jared Jones was a clear impact prospect, for example. And let's not forget, the Cubs have gotten significant contributions from Assad, Hoerner and Steele (all drafted/signed/developed) by the Cubs. Ben Brown is on a three win pace bouncing between rotation and bullpen, too. Jordan Wicks showed good improvements as well. I think it's fair to be a bit "whelmed" right now, but I think worrying about the Cubs development of young players is something that probably goes in the face of recent years. Maybe no one wins an MVP award, but the Cubs should have quality contributions from the farm in the next few seasons assuming they don't deal it all away. They have too many bullets to not find an all star or two in that group.

Hey friends! I'm almost though my busy time. So, so close to the light at the end of the tunnel. Good news: it's never as bad as it feels when you're in the thick of it. The Chicago Cubs will be alright in a few days or weeks. We have a long time to go.

There will be a time when Cubs baseball will be fun again. Maybe in a few days or a week or two, but right now it's rough.

I'll throw a bit of pushback here. My read on the Kilian situation is this: He was hitting as high as 97mph pre-trade with the Giants. They did look to get more velocity out of him with the Cubs, but I think the real death knell for him was the inability to create any sort of whiff. For all of the worries on Jordan Wicks' whiff rate last year, Killian's was under 12 at the MLB level and I remember watching his games with the Giants Double-A system and thinking "those pitches he's getting whiffs on aren't going to work at higher levels". It never got better. He lived in the zone a ton and couldn't get guys to miss his stuff. Where I think he truly died is forcing the spike curve to be a thing (which it never was) and lost mechanics. I'm not sure the velo spike helped or hurt, but I do think he was a troubled prospect regardless, so while I won't say it helped/hurt whatever...I will say in the end, I don't think it mattered much.

Well, I don't think that's true at all. OAA is using incredibly advanced cameras and algorithms. I've got no problem pointing out flaws; defensive metrics work best over multiple season sample sizes and while they're getting better and better and better, they're not as far along as offensive metrics. OAA is far better than their predecessors like UZR or things prior. OAA and DRS are rarely universes apart. and he's logged a -6 DRS. The total numbers are not good. Rarely do you look at the OAA or DRS for a fielder and it not make sense. I do think the -9 is probably a bit of a misleading number as much of his really bad play seemed to come at the start of the season. I wish we had a "game log" feature when it came to OAA where we could track it over sample sizes over time. Morel being worse at 3b the first week of April makes sense logically as he really gets comfortable at the position. So I'd say this instead: OAA and DRS are not horsefeathers stats. They're the best way we have to measure fielding today and are likely pretty darn close to the truth. With that said, Morel is a unique situation, as he's learning a "new" (and by new I should say maybe "relearning") position on the fly. We should expect the numbers to be rough but to smooth out as he gains comfort...so being forgiving of the defensive failures is probably fair and the right way to do things.

I'm not sure that's really true. They've drafted players like Luke Little, Jaxson Wiggins, Cade Horton and Jackson Ferris lately. They've developed guys like Porter Hodge and Michael Arias. They've traded for Daniel Palencia and Ben Brown... The Cubs MLB side doesn't have a ton of velo guys, but that's because they've added more velo through draft recently. They're also one of the orgs over the last few years who have developed velo; guys like Wicks and Assad have added velo under their tutelage. I do think the Cubs enjoy playing with shapes and movement but they're not anti-velo nor have they shied away from it. I think they're really interested in uniqueness as their driving factor. Ben Brown's curveball. Horton's slider. Hodge's cutter, Wick's changeup...

I actually think the last little bit is where I settle on the velo drop. There's some reason to believe that velocity (high and low) can increase or decrease movement. The Cubs love things like seam shifted wake and creating and tinkering with pitches in a way that creates movement or hides spin. My best guess is that they're making these changes now at Iowa as he gets used to the slightly different baseball to make his fastball go from "fine" to "really good" . A slight step back in velocity may add enough run to the fastball that actually makes it better.

Ive suggested something similar in the past. Keegan Thompson saw a velo spike when returned to Chicago this year, and Steele's velo was down a bit at Triple-A. I can't say for sure that they're having guys ease off, but there's a small pattern there. I'm also not entirely sure we're not seeing something where the Cubs are playing with the idea of movement on the fastball being created with a small tick off from the velo, too. His fastball movement in Double-A was considered to be "okay" at best, so I wonder how much of this is tinker-and-play time, as well. The Cubs have seemingly been big on the concept of seam shifted wake, and I wonder how much that's playing in here, too.

Awful luck for Happ there.

I like it when Mark strikes people out.

Glad to have you aboard!

Not trying to be the pedantic guy, but Slaughter was moved for Tyson Miller. Overall, I kind of agree. As of right now, it feels like the Cubs are in a weird spot. The Madrigal place on the team right now has been one that hasn't gotten much action over the course of the season when the Cubs have been healthy (which hasn't been a ton) as I think Madrigal is down to the old-Mastrobuni-spot from the start of the year. Caissie and Davis should be playing every day. PCA as a 3-start guy a week I'd be cool with, but I'm not sure that's possible with the 4 OF'er the Cubs have and like to play. Canario feels like a better fielding, more risky version of Wisdom, so I'm not sure he's a super fit...it feels like they're treading water here for a bit until they can either justify calling up a rookie to take the DH spot more easily, or, frankly, another injury.

Oh, fully. I didn't mean to seem like there were 20 guys where it was "horsefeathers it" territory. There are like 20 guys who have legitimate MLB upside in some fashion. I meant more in the terms of "right now, they're all so close in terms of warts, age, potential..." that this next group is homogenous enough that I could have a guy at 27, and you could have him at 12 and I think we'd both be justified in it. And regardless of him being 12th or 27th, I think we'd both agree that there was some level of MLB upside there.

Yeah the Cubs system is in a ton of flux right now. There's a clear...like 8 guys who are all really good and two or three of them are about to fall off due to graduation. The lower levels are pretty foggy right now, so there's probably like 20 guys you could list between 11-20 and all I could do is shrug and say "Might not be my 10, but it's defensible!"

Projection systems work based on input data. Right now, the only real input data we have on Shota Imanaga is the 52.3 IP he has in 2024. So it shouldn't be shocking that the projections are going to take the input and then output something very similar. Check out Yamamoto's projections and they're pretty similar, too. Same issue. I think logically, we know that Shota Imanaga is likely not going to limit HR's to a >5% rate. One pitcher in baseball kept his HR% near 5%, and that was Sonny Gray at 5.2%. Nine kept it under 10%. So we can probably expect some serious regression there. That's fine! He's a FB guy, it's going to happen. None of that is shitting on Shota. Listen, if you told me at the start of the season he was going to be a top-10 pitcher in the NL we'd have all been beside ourselves and that's where he's tracking, even with HR rates that are likely to climb as the weather gets warmer. He's had an A+ season, and so far, looks nothing short of an A+ signing. I just think he's probably going to have a hard time winning a Cy Young unless he keeps a stupid low ERA.

I don't live and die as much as you do on MiLB batted ball data such as GB/FB%. I would agree, he could use a bit of a LA adjustment, but it's not enough for me to just ignore the rest of the package, and probably not others, too. Yes, he's 1b/DH type, and that's going to limit the path to the Major Leagues (and where you'd list him on a top-20!). But he's also posted the right kind of BB:K you'd look for, and the ISO's have been in the ballpark of what you'd want (though I think .180 is right on the low end of that from Double-A standards). So I think there's a few sides to the dice. Like I said, 2024 has been a rough go for McGeary on the overall season line. When you couple that with the worsening batted ball data, there's something clearly wrong today (even with a recent go that seems better - more on that later). What that is...not super sure as I can't say I've spent what little time I've had the last month on a ton of McGeary PA's. And as stated, I'd probably have left him off a top-20, but I can see an argument for why you'd keep him in the top-20, as well. I'm pretty patient about moving guys up and down, and if you were someone who looked past the GB% as something of a polish, there was enough there that throwing him in the 17-20 range is defensible even with a tough start to 2024. If there's a positive, he's been better over his last month, posting a 126 wRC+ (though with much worse K numbers than the past and much worse HR numbers). McGeary's first 40 PA's where he had a -27 wRC+ are doing some heavy lifting right now still. It seems like the nosedive is past him, but now the real work comes in, so I think if you thought he was, say, the 18th best prospect in the system, holding serve is probably fine. Would I have him 18th or whatever? Probably not, so please, don't think I'm Captain McGeary over here. I'm just saying, I, personally, can buy that argument enough that it's something within reason. If you can't, that's why you have your own list. There's little to no consensus when it comes to such subjectivity.

McGeary is an interesting guy right now. I think you can make a case on him being in the bottom quarter of a top-20 based on his 2022-2023. He's had a pretty rough 2024. I guess it just depends on if you buy McGeary as broken right now or something under the hood is happening. His swing just feels messed up. I didn't have a chance to really think through a top-20 with how busy life has been, and I think he'd have been in the 18-25 range or so in my head. So I think maybe I'd have slipped him in, but probably more likely he wouldn't have made it.

As of today, I'd say he'd win it, maybe not going away, but by enough that it wasn't super in doubt. He's tied in fWAR with Sale, but has a clear advantage on ERA, and you know there's always going to be a population of voters who are going to default to the guy with the >1 ERA. In the end, I can't imagine he's going to keep that ERA up. His HR/FB% is immaculate right now and that's never going to keep that low considering his FB nature and the nature of Wrigley. I wouldn't handicap him as the favorite because I think guys like Sale and Wheeler have name recognition and are on pace to strike out more. Regardless, how cool is it that Shota is even in this stratosphere right now?

It's not a bad strategy. PCA is more valuable developing versus just sitting. This gives the Cubs another infielder they can choose to give a chance over Madrigal, and Madrigal can take up 26th man duties which Mastrobuni was taking care of earlier this year...when he got like 13 PA's in the first 3 weeks or so (before injury-Armageddon). Someone has to take that role...might as well be him.

I'll do a deep dive in a bit! Sorry I've been so absent. I've had state testing (no tech at work), end of the school year stuff and I also run the local adult baseball league in Lexington,KY so I've been handling the registration process (deadline is tonight) - and adults might be worse than middle schoolers. Give me...a day? I'll give some insight.