Jason Ross

Fair. They're very good teams. But that's baseball. Every year a team who's very good has a clunker of a five game set. The Cubs offense getting hot for a few games, or more, wouldn't be a shocking outcome, though. So while I wouldn't bet my life savings on it, the Cubs are more than capable of finding three wins out of five against anyone.

Some people here need to realize it works both ways. Yes, the Cubs offense will face better pitching., but the other team will face better hitting than they face normally, too. The Cubs have been the best offense against some of the best pitching all year. Do you all not realize how bad Philadelphia's offense is? Dansby Swanson's 96 wRC+, the guy this forum has tried to DFA every summer has a higher wRC+ better than everyone in their opening day except for two hitters. Ian Happ, the guy this forum has tried to run out of the city for five months, groans every time he strikes out or hits a ground ball would be *comfortably* their third best hitter right now (as Arraez has not been good since the deadline). He'd almost assuredly be hitting cleanup or second for that team. Every night. You dislike him, but have you seen how terrible Trea Turner has been? He's essentially Ian Happ but everything is worse (except for Ks) now. I get it. The Cubs pitching sucks on ice (and we can play the game above but backwards, I know) but y'all, the Phillies have the third worst wRC+ in baseball on merit. Their hitting is our pitching. Stop doom bonering. Everything flows both ways. Teams are not used to facing the Cubs every night, either. We don't have to do this song and dance. The Cubs just took two of three against the NL East leading Braves. The Phillies aren't likely to catch them, the Cubs beat them a bunch this year already, and people here are *still* ready to waive the white flag.

40/40 is fun but 50/30 is also fun. Just saying.

Bregman's gonna finish as a top-10 fWAR player.

It's hard to go on the first or the second pitch of a game when you're on base, though. You want to get a feel for the movement and everything. I know we all want the steals, but there's a reason he didn't go. He's an excellent base runner and it isn't because he's lazy or not reading the game. Ritchie isn't throwing strikes and has only faced the Cubs one time over his young career, back in May. It's very likely he wasn't feeling comfortable and didn't want to run into an out when the kid had thrown 7 pitches only one of which was a strike so far.

Yeah, on second thought, I thought the same. This happened to me last Wednesday night. I was on first late in the game and the kid who hits behind me smashed what *should* have been a double to CF. Any normal speed human being scored from first, but my slow ass needed some help. So he stretched it to a triple, almost got hosed a third just so I could score. TLDR; being slow sucks and sometimes your friends have to help you out.

Mostly good job Bregman. I'd rather you not get thrown at second...but I like runs more.

To be fair, Ritchie hadn't thrown a strike yet and you don't want to take the bat out of the hand of Seiya early, either. He was looking like he might give you second for free. We all want 40/40 but I also understand not going there. Sadly we live in the future and know what happened.

Neither are joining the club. Hollowell is here to throw BP for Swanson and Martin is rehabbing. The weather in Omaha is straight rain for a week. The season ends the 18th, so it's not like they're needed for Iowa any more.

Ironic you brought that up. He struck out 12 in 7 today! He's been much better lately. But yeah, hasn't been great overall since the trade. But yeah, generally speaking the more human that moves, the harder it is to repeat said movement. As with anything, there's positives about being tall as a pitcher; extension, for one. But the drawbacks are there too. That said, the upside in that concept is also real, so while someone like Carson Jasa (6'7" listed) is a bit of a mess command wise, if you can get his command from "real bad" to "kinda bad" you can find something. And I'm here for that risk; you just have to realize it's a numbers' game. Like if you think Carson Jasa is going to be the guy to break out, it's a low chance. But if you have five Carson Jasa-types, you probably can find something. The 2026 draft is a lot more of the Jasa types finally, which was a decent departure from how the Cubs' were drafting prior.

I don't think that's unfair. Something does need to change. I do think the Cubs believe part of that change is in action with Zombro and the draft, but that is the long game. And to be fair to the organization, I think they tried to change some of that at the deadline trading for Gausman, Holmes and Zeferjahn. But the more immediate changes will need to happen again. It will probably require the team to lose someone like Suzuki this offseason to fix it; and that's going to suck, but it is what it is, as well. Unless Ricketts decided budgets are dumb and he no longer cares (if you believe this is the case, I have a bridge you may be interested in buying?) they'll probably have to rob Peter to pay Paul somewhere. And it will probably require new ideas being inserted in the organization, which may require something like Hottovy being relieved of duties even if it's not all his fault.

I think that is probably fair; but then I also think that's on people to understand the difference, which was the point of that. The lab is the vehicle, the organization is the driver. You put a teenager behind an F1 car, and if they crash, it's not the car's fault. I do think that the development thing gets a little hammered too hard. Like, the Cubs' squeezed an extra year out of Jameson Taillon last year largely because they taught him a kick change, as an example. The Cubs squeezed two quality years of Colin Rea because they tweaked his arm angle and pitch mix. And we can find faults in the plan (like maybe the Cubs can do that and still add good players) but these kinds of things generally go under valued, under the radar when people complain about "the lab" because they're not studs after that. Overall, I think every organization should be trying to find undervalued players, though. And especially in the bullpen. Like, look at last year's FA BP class. Sure, Phil Maton has been hurt and bad, but Edwin Diaz has been bad an hurt, Devin Williams has been bad, Rober Suarez has been hurt, Ryan Helsley has been hurt...and Mason Montgomery has been a top-13 reliever and he was a throw-in and was bad last year. The lesson here is that "if you're hoping for FA to save your pen, you're probably already in a bad place". You really need to develop "the guy" (or two/three) in your pen yourself but you can build a spine out of throw-aways. Like you should be able to find/develop a few Jacob Webb's every year - the Cubs' failure is that they haven't had young players stay healthy as the "guy" in the bullpen. Every time we think Porter Hodge or Daniel Palencia is ready they get hurt and fall away. Same with Alzolay. And this year there weren't many next-guys up. I do think that's a failure of the organization as much as it's a bit of bad luck (imagine if the Brewers saw Megill and Uribe do that? Would we think of them as the gold standard as much? Probably not). But this is really just a long winded post to say "I'm not mad people blame the lab, but I wanted to reframe the discussion". The tools aren't the issue, it's the carpenter more than anything.

The pitch lab thing is everyone's favorite scapegoat but it's not the issue. Pitch labs are good because they're really just data machines. Think of them like baseball savant on steroids. It's what teams do with the data that is always the questionable stuff. Some tinkers will work, others won't. This is why sometimes Pitcher X will be bad with one organization and pop with another; they're working from similar data sets but are reading and tweaking the guy differently. And like with anything, certain teams specialize in certain things. So don't blame the lab. It's just a vehicle.

Swanson is at Wrigley with this stuff. Good chance he's activated today and if not, by Friday and Murray heads back to Iowa.

To be fair, it's not entirely a scapegoat thing. And that's not an anti-Hottovy thing, but this year the Cubs haven't really had a lot of success tweaking guys like they have. They traded for Kittredge at the deadline last year, tweaked a few things and he went nuclear for the rest of the way. This year, they took Zeferjahn, continued to tweak and...results have varied. That's not saying it's all on him, but that's kind of the thing we're seeing not happening this year. That wasn't a cheap trade and the results haven't panned out. Nor do I blame that on scouting. And it isn't as if the scrap heap thing hasn't worked in years past. This year hasn't really been the case. Would I blame it all on Hottovy? Oh hell no. But when you have an all systems failure like we're seeing, it's usually an all systems failure and Hottovy is going to shoulder some of that. Pitching coaches are an easy change, easier than Baseball Ops, easier than full-staff turnover, and are such, the first to go. So it's probably going to be a bit of a "change is necessary" scapegoat thing, but it isn't like Hottovy isn't in some shape or form apart of this failure, too.

I think the issue with how they haven't had a pipeline of relievers is probably a bunch of different things all rearing their heads at once. First, the 2020 and 2021 drafts are really difficult years for teams to have nailed and the Cubs really haven't had a lot of luck from them. Certainly some teams found some guys, but with how scouting and development basically took a pause there, it's really hard to blame anyone. That's not a full on "pass" given, but I find it interesting these are basically the two drafts Kantrovitz whiffed on almost entirely and they're probably the two most difficult drafts we've had. Beyond that, the IFA guys just haven't popped. IFA arms, are also, largely lottery tickets. If prep arms in the draft at the hardest to predict, 16 year old kids from Latin America are even harder. Also, something I think is bad luck in some aspects. But also much deeper failures in development; these kids take forever to pop (if you sign at 16 and get to the bigs by 24, that's eight freakin' years!). That's a failure of development that goes back a while, and probably starts well before Hoyer took over. Sadly, it hasn't really changed much, though there's some signs of a few guys maybe bubbling up. It's not all bad luck though. The Cubs have lost guys via trade that were high picks (Jackson Ferris to name one, Ty Johnson being another). They probably gave up on someone like Jermiah Estrada too soon. And they were probably too far into drafting guys with secondaries that they could hopefully squeeze fastball juice out of, as opposed to guys with stuff that they could teach control. Too many Dom Reid's and not enough guys like they took this draft. Add it all up and there's just a dearth of interesting arms. Those reliever types are generally those "big stuff but oopsie, no control" types. The few the Cubs had flamed out (Luke Little) but it's a numbers game. You'll have five Littles to one decent pan out, but when you don't have many, you get very few. 2026 was a heavy arm-draft and while I think 2027 will need to be more bats than 2026 were, based on how they shifted their focus from Dom Reid types to like Carson Jasa types, they will hopefully get more of these random relief guys. But it's likely not going. to help for a few years, and that''s going to continue to suck.

It's been an interesting way to build a staff, and the hope is that learning has happened, but who knows? We'll have to take a "wait and see" approach with the young pitching; but internally I know the team thinks they're solving the pitching issues with Zombro. He's got influence across the board, but I think his influence will be felt more through the draft and development than in terms of the MLB side of things more than anything (I do think he's apart of the discussion there, but I think he's probably more helping the team find Trent Thorntons than overall grand roster construction). Also important to pay attention to Dan Kantrovitz this offseason, his name has popped up for bigger openings and he might be out. Have to see how that plays out in that aspect. On the MLB side, I expect Hottovy will be gone by the end of the playoffs, fair or not (and I think it's a bit of column A and B to be frank). This offseason will be a telling one as once again the team will have the opportunity to spend on pitching (Skubal, King, Taira as examples) and will also need to do some offensive work (LF/RF namely). And with the upcoming CBA shrinking the offseason timeline, they won't be on "Jed-time" this year where he can let the market play out and whittle people down. We're at a point of (likely) back-to-back playoff appearances and a recent extension that Hoyer is certainly safe this offseason (barring absolute collapse), but I also think 2027 is kind of a "make or break" it year for him. Which really makes this an offseason to watch on that front. Does he come out guns blazing to fix the pitching? Is it an over correction? Is this the "mega contract" offseason for him?

I want to be fair to Hottovy: there's a reason why the bullpen got bad all of a sudden and it isn't really on him, there. The Cubs are kind of patchwork because of a lot of injuries. Palencia has lost run or ride (depending on the night) on the fastball post injury. Cabrera has been missing in action for months; not shocking he's rusty. Caleb Theilbar is as old as I am; not shocking he's rough. Jacob Webb is absolutely struggling right now, but good reminder, he was also the best pen arm we had 85% of the year. Things I do think we can trace back to Hottovy have been the tweaks made on players. We haven't seen Zeferjahn take steps forward. Cabrera's tweaks weren't taking. They haven't found some of the magic they had. And I think it's on those margins where a new, fresh take is probably in order. This isn't Hottovy's problem nor his making, but I also think there's likely some aspect in which fresh, new ideas are welcome.

I'm rarely the "fire the coach" guy, but I do think we're at a point where Hottovy's time has likely run a course. Not as a scapegoat, but as a "something has to change" thing. Sometimes simply having the same exact voice in the room for a long time runs its' course. Fresh eyes. Look at the problem from a new angle and offer a different potential solution. They can't do it today, and I won't lay this entirely on his feet (at some point it's the pitcher's fault for being bad) however the Cubs can't just replace the entire pitching staff as easily as they can switch up the pitching coach. This isn't really his fault across the board. Injuries have hurt. Player's haven't produced. But I do think the Cubs' can find a benefit from hearing a new, fresh perspective on these things in 2027.

Palencia hasn't been captain reliable either. And it's hard for BP guys to sit and then come back. Sadly, there aren't options right now that make sense. Everyone has a glaring red flag. Hard to blame Counsell on these things.

Solid outing for Guasman. Good offense, went 5.2 IP, 15 whiffs, 2 runs.

Martin won't be back. There isn't enough time. That one ain't happening. I also wonder about Steele, though.

Up until last season, many were convinced the Cubs wouldn't sign any more long term contracts, wouldn't use deferred money, etc... A good reminder, Jed was around when the Cubs signed John Lester. It was as the #2, but he learned a lesson that those contracts can work out well. I don't think it's that far out of his wheelhouse for him to sign a major SP. Also good thing to note; despite the immediacy of injuries to pitchers, they are aging better than hitters overall. Pitchers like Zach Wheeler and Chris Sale have both had awesome comebacks from injuries into their mid 30s and have no signs of slowing down. Scherzer and Verlander were useful until they were nearly 40. We don't see hitters do that right now. They generally fall off a very sharp cliff at 36. I would not worry about the injuries. It seems counter intuitive with how TJS takes a year or more from most, but SPs are just showing they can be counted on longer. You just have to accept any specific season could disappear.

Plus; you know what's the best way to score the slowest runner from 1b? Hitting the ball so far everyone gets to jog home together.