Jason Ross

You can add a third category of "entirely insufferable" for very specific players, but Koppech has none of that from what I can tell.

The same exact reasons when you asked the same question a week or so ago. Either: 1. His demands are far too high 2. He's hurt and still rehabbing Teams don't just ignore players whole sale for no reason. Especially with the injury epidemic in pitchers right now. Considering he's a RP and his demands aren't likely to be insane for that season, it's almost assuredly number 2.

Edwards and Chafin suck. That's the issue. Edwards fastball sits at 92.5mph. He isn't showing any wildly different offering, He hasn't pitched more than a few MLB innings each year since 2023. David Sterns is a smart mind. I know he had some whiffs in 6 IP this year, but he looks like he probably sucks over any extended time. He was also awful in Triple-A over 17 IP this year; a 5.29 ERA, an 18.1 K% and a 15.9 BB%. Andrew Chafin got released from the Reds who have the third worst fWAR of any bullpen and the worst xFIP. He had a 5.06 xFIP In Triple-A, had walked six in nine innings and only eight strikeouts. He was good in 33 IP last year but his average FB dipped below 90mph. I'm not sure that was sustainable. These two are toast. They're former Cubs who were good with the team a handful of years ago, but these guys are done. The team is likely more familiar with guys like Trent Thorton who came through Tread Athletics over the offseason than they are with Andrew Chafin who hasn't been with the organization for 3+ years. And Tyler Ferguson has been a Stuff+ guy in the past and throws 95mph. I doubt he's very good or anything, but he's got something at least. I just think the other two are nostalgia.

So, to be fair, I never said I was out on Mathis. What I said was "I'm not super enthralled by the super-passivity" and then explained why, then showed when asked where there was any reason to believe he was super passive. There's a lot of ground between "out" and "I think the best version of this player is elsewhere" and Mathis' data is probably hiding that issue to a decent degree. It's that I think as he graduates level over level that this passivity will be more easily exploited but at High-A I don't trust pitchers that much to really exploit these things consistently. For example, I'm going to go back to the hitter I also brought up, which is Pete Crow-Armstrong. At South Bend and Knoxville, Pete kept his K% under 25%: that's a good thing. By Double-A he kept the K% the same, doubled his walk rate, and kept an ISO of .238. But what was hiding under that the entire time was the hyper aggressivity. Even last year Pete kept an 82% zone-contact rate; But eventually, pitchers get better and take your hyper aggressive ability and help you get yourself out. Cole Mathis isn't hyper aggressive. And you're right, today, the K% seems to be the one thing suffering. But the passivity he shows is something I very much think will be something that better pitchers (and pitchers more capable than High-A arms) will use against him. And I think that's a point of polish for Cole Mathis, especially considering he isn't likely to make his mark on an MLB team in very many (if any) ways outside of the bat. And clearly I'm not the only who who thinks that, as Eric Logenhagen pointed out the same thing. While I won't put words in your mouth, you may be of the "well it's not a problem today so I'm not sure I'm going to worry about it" mantra, and that's fine, it may be a concern about nothing. But the counter to that is being pro-active and finding a polish and working on it before it becomes a problem, as well. And I'm going to fit into the latter ground myself. It's also fair to point out the argument against that to that is "maybe you fix what isn't broke" (my argument to that would be he's running elevated K% at both South Bend and Myrtle this year and while it's just May 8th, I do believe that's an early warning sign - but I'll refrain from having a fictional back and forth here). Honestly, I've been fairly high on Mathis dating back to the draft day. I like Mathis today. I think I can both like Mathis and point out a point of polish going forward for him. As we see today, when Pete Crow-Armstrong is the best version of himself at the plate, his hyper aggressive attitude seems to melt away for a bit and the guy we all wish he could be every day comes out. Much like that, I'd like to see Mathis trend a bit more in the other way; not because right now he's necessarily struggling at South Bend but as I feared with Pete in the same way; the concern is that better pitchers will be able to exploit this more often. And better pitchers did eventually exploit Pete Crow-Armstrong's hyper aggressivity and the solution has been "be more controlled". While different, I think Mathis probably needs to come back to the goldilocks zone to find the best version of himself at higher level, too. As it pertains to Kepley; I've mostly stayed out of Kepley Mania. I'd rank him higher than Cole simply because I think his path to MLB relevancy is easier with position. defense and speed in his favor, but I'm lower on him than many on the board. Not really all that important but did want to address that point that I think was more "to the world" and less "to me" but wanted to be as clear as possible, too.

From Fangraphs' Eric Logengagen's recent report on Mathis: Source

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.

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.

Hollowell.

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.

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.

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.

Wild. Every pitcher keeps dying and the Cubs can't lose.

I've seen enough. Martin goes before Thorton.

I do not like Corban Martin

The Mets aren't going to spend what they did and sell in May.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was just talking about Pedro as a possible LF option. Glad to see I wasn't entirely off base with the thought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.