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Jason Ross

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Everything posted by Jason Ross

  1. Jason Ross
    I have seen it. Once. It was during an adult league game. Here's the thing: if you're doing the things I have seen in an adult league game, but you're an MLB player? That's...uh....that's not good.
  2. Jason Ross
    This is about where I am at. I'm not super enthralled by the super passivity; there's a middle ground between being hyper aggressive and uber passive. Swinging at pitcher's strikes isn't good just like watching good pitches in hopes of the perfect pitch is bad. We can see this just looking at the difference between count leverage at the MLB level. When hitters get behind, especially with two strike counts, bad things happen far more than good ones. It's something I think you can learn, but I'd like to see him be a little less passive in the same ways I had hoped for years Pete Crow-Armstrong would be a little less aggressive. When Pete lets the game come to him he's just a better hitter and I think if Cole can take the bull by the horns a bit more, we'll see the best version of himself.
  3. Jason Ross
    Hollowell.
  4. Jason Ross
    I wouldn't hate the idea of a bad pitcher. I think with Cabrera, Rea, Shota, Assad, Brown, Taillon that they probably are fine in the interim in terms of "guys who you could start" as long as you're confident Thielbar and Harvey are very close to returning to fill out the BP. But someone like the aforementioned Bailey Ober should be effectively free and if you wanted to add him, as another length option in the bullpen, I'm cool with that, too. With the way the rotation has gone, it's probably safe to assume one with catch ebola, another will be in a freak freight train accident and a third will vanish off the face of the Earth right now and having an extra human who you could coax through 4 innings wouldn't be the worst thing.
  5. Jason Ross
    No. With all Cubs MiLB injuries, expect the team to be less than forthcoming. As with Conrad, and others, expect them to just be randomly added to an ACL roster one day, or pop back up in pictures. Before then, the Cubs won't really be very open. From a fan perspective, it'd be cool to know more, but the Cubs don't really gain a lot by being super open with MiLB injury timelines.
  6. Jason Ross
    Wicks has been bad this year when he's been healthy. Wiggins hasn't pitched in a month in a game. Neither are options nor will be for a bit.
  7. Jason Ross
    Wild. Every pitcher keeps dying and the Cubs can't lose.
  8. Jason Ross
    I've seen enough. Martin goes before Thorton.
  9. Jason Ross
    I do not like Corban Martin
  10. Jason Ross
    The Mets aren't going to spend what they did and sell in May.
  11. Jason Ross
    Even if we want to choose his xERA, an xERA of 4.20 is better than league average for SPs. Your original quote was that we would have to "pray for offense" outside of Shota and yet even by that metric, Cabrera has been a tick above league average. He's above league average in FIP (4.02 compared to 4.18) and xFIP (3.85 compared to 4.12) as well. There's plenty of space between "slightly better than league average" in most spots and "pray for offense", no? He hasn't been a bang-on ace, but you're acting like the Cubs aren't getting production from him or that the only way they'll win with him is if you have to pray for runs. And there are some real signs of positivity there too. All of a sudden the ground ball rate is jumping up and the K's are too over his last 3 starts. He's done enough to be trusted. Just not enough to be trusted as like "bang on ace" status.
  12. Jason Ross
    Cabrera has a 3.27 ERA and a 3.85 xFIP. That's an xFIP around Joe Ryan, George Kirby and Freddy Peralta. He's been pretty good and the K% is trending in the right direction.
  13. Jason Ross
    I'd love the Cubs to get someone good, but the names the Cubs can probably get now are the names that Jon Morosi mentioned: Bailey Ober. And the best thing I can say about Bailey Ober and his 88mph fastball is that I guess he has no torn meniscuses right now. It's almost assuredly a "wait until teams actually want to sell" situation for a bit.
  14. Jason Ross
    He's one of the only SPs in Iowa. There was a time two weeks ago Connor Noland was the only traditional SP on the roster.
  15. Jason Ross
    I was just talking about Pedro as a possible LF option. Glad to see I wasn't entirely off base with the thought.
  16. Jason Ross
    He probably has some intrigue, but I don't think there is going to be much trade value. Murray is a 26-year old who has been basically, unimpressive since 2024. He failed wildly at Iowa as a 24 year old and then was good in Double-A as a 25 year old. We're one month into his age-26 season and while his overall numbers look good, he's got pretty middling batted ball data sitting between the 40-60th percentiles in things like EV, max EV, sweetspot and barrel%. This is a player that was essentially a non-consideration for a top-30 spot entering the year. If you're a bad team and you get your pick of "throw in" types, BJ Murray probably is an interesting dart throw. Beyond that, I doubt any MLB team is salivating at this moment at a 26-year old repeater with little draft pedigree who has had one promising month in the last two years. I don't want to write him off entirely; he's doing some good things right now. But he's old for Iowa, he's a repeater, and it's one month. Another team is going to be highly skeptical of him and his value via trade is probably extremely limited.
  17. Jason Ross
    Yeah, I'm kind of in a weird spot with Kevin. There are aspects of his game I really like. Right now the K% is a concern, and more than that, the bottom barrel in-zone contact. Sadly, his chase numbers seem to be just as bad, but he's tanked his in-zone. I'm not willing to trash him entirely for it; I suspect with his swing change he's going through an approach change and with that, in-zone contact feels logical to be thrown off as a hitter learns to do that. Part of me sees a lot of Alexander Canario and Nelson Velazquez in the bat; lots of power with concerning amounts of in-zone contact. It's not really my favorite profile as a hitter. Obviously defensively he's got a bit of a different story in that he should be plus in a corner spot where as those two were not particularly defensive plusses in any way. Part of me sees his swing changes, his injuries last year, and thinks he's got a chance to be like the RF-version of Jose Siri but with a longer career? Running K% around 30, adding plus defense and base running and smashing 30 home runs and that's probably a 2-4 win player many years. One thing I'll be keeping an eye on is the trend of in-zone swing. If he gets back to that 50% percentile he was last year I'll feel much better about the Jose Siri in RF thing.
  18. Jason Ross
    Alcantara also feels like he breaks the mold of what the FO prefers. Even more so this year. I love the power surge and the added LA but the team has tended to shy away from the idea of power-over-hit profiles. I won't say they're entirely immune to them, but they have held hard and fast to their hit-over-power profile prospects and have gone after Bregman and Tucker. How much of that is circumstance and how much is preference? Not entirely sure, but a trend seems to have emerged under Hoyer that I can't ignore. Bummer he doesn't get a lot of trade action from others because my hunch would be that the team would be cool with him being movable. Maybe moreso than others. Not sure I'm fully at a point where I've gone from wondering if Ramirez was an MLB starter at 2b to "I think his bat can play in LF" yet, but it's hard not to be intrigued with a switch hitting LF with his contact ability if the power is decent enough, too.
  19. Jason Ross
    One of the things that's been bouncing around in my head recently is "...could Pedro Ramirez be the solution in LF? Is he a Steven Kwan with less defense?" On one hand, he's not your traditional left fielder. Even with the power surge, I'm thinking he's a 15 HR guy if it sticks at the highest level. But he's probably athletic enough to handle the position, makes a ton of contact and he's a switch hitter. Frankly, he's very much what this team salivates over as a player. I know this is about Alcantara more than anything, but that idea kind of changes how I feel about Kevin, as well.
  20. Jason Ross
    I looked at some video from last year and this year. Came to a conclusion. Note his pre-swing set up now. From a PA last year. And this is last year. The bat is more upright and you can see a bit of his weight is different. And from the beginning of last year: He looks like he's just getting set faster. His swing at the point of contact is pretty similar. Actually it's pretty similar to his stance now: This is after the pitcher gets into his motion. Notice how similar it is to the top. He was late on this pitch. Probably because it took him too long to get into a proper spot. I think he's just quicker now that he's much closer to his swing before the pitcher even offers. He's got less motion and less to get into a good swing position now. The weight balance is a bit different too.
  21. Jason Ross
    I don't think they did a lot. I think he's healthy.
  22. Jason Ross
    Oh, fully agree! But we hadn't seen them be effective yet (I always expected them to be good). Nice to see what it should look like.
  23. Jason Ross
    Nice to see Maton and Webb lock this down. They've not been great so far, but you can see glimpses of what they can be for the pen.
  24. Jason Ross
    I mean...ugh. Yeah kind of. (I vote Pedro but Triantos is a fun addition to the bench and could steal some games)
  25. Jason Ross
    One of my favorite things is that my work filter blocks gifs from time to time (when our school filter is working an when it is not is a random number generator it seems), and when I look at these on my computer I just get the description and I get to wonder "Man, I wonder what Squally sent". Then I get to check my phone, which is on my network to see what it really is. "A Man in a Suit and tie is talking to another man in an office" is this one.
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