Jason Ross

That sets up a weird situation. If we want to claim that it wasn't "ordinary effort" to make that play, all infielders should do is pretend they can't see it in the future and get a free double play.

William Contreras' single had an xBA of .000

It's an adjustment. However this isn't entirely true; he hit really well on the outer third over the last about 10 games in the regular season showing a really strong approach adjustment as pitchers had moved to the outer third in the plate over the month of September. It hasn't been a good playoffs for him in that regard, but I do think part of this is "young hitter + really good pitchers + very amped up"

Some of this would check out; the pitch Vaughn hit has terrible data over the last four years. It is not a pitch hitters do well on (location, pitch, handedness...). I found a single instance of a RHH hitting a HR on a LHH sweeper in that spot. I still don't think they're cheating illegally. Them gaining that advantage? Yeah I'd buy that.

This is a league spray chart on regular season games from 2021-2025 on sweepers (the pitch Imanaga gave up to Vaughn) and the location of the plate in which it was thrown, while also being only thrown from LHP to RHH. It's a pitch location that is rarely hit for home runs (just one instance) and is almost always an out. To clarify where the pitch was, it was #7 - well off the inside of the plate - it was not a strike: Your initial point might be to somehow blame Imanaga for that. That because he's so good at allowing home runs, his sweeper which has graded out better than league average in shape since coming into the league, was super easy to hit - but that's just not accurate. His pitch to Willson Contreras is much worse. I'm not going to defend him on that one. But three of the runs scored on that swing and it was pretty damn lucky. This idea, again, that this was some fireable offense is exactly what was said prior; it is hyperbole.

I'm hoping that a big moment early can help give the crowd some juice.

God I hope so. 9pm est starts for Cubs/Brewers are stupid as hell.

Ah, my bad. I was going to say - Brock is kind of the dude here haha. Probably wouldn't get much help. I'll admit, I don't think there's any cheating occurring. I think the Cubs are just not playing well. But hey, I'm here for the gumption.

One of those people is he who owns the site, so I'm not sure much help will be coming to you in this regards, my friend.

You're good! I want to defend Shota where and when I can. His pitch to Contreras was much worse.

I have issues with Hoyer, but one thing people will find a hard time really finding is money Hoyer spent poorly. The worst contracts he's handed out have been to like Trey Mancini and Tucker Barnhart. He's given out very little bad long term money and the Cubs have finished with 83 wins+ three years running. The issue in those years really isn't his inability to determine value, but what I would say is too strict of a value proposition. He tends to draw hard lines in the sand and it leaves the Cubs a player short.

I'm going to disagree a little here. Vaughn's home run was on a sweeper in and off the plate. It wasn't a strike. It was middle-middle, but sweepers off the plate there are not Here is a spray chart of sweepers, in the same hitting zone from LHP to RHH since 2021. It's not pretty. Credit to Vaughn.

Every MLB team is capable of spending more money than they do. As a fan of the Chicago Cubs, I first-and-foremost want the Chicago Cubs to act more in line with what they are capable of. Money spent doesn't guarantee outcomes, as you pointed out, anecdotal evidence of the Mets not making (and the Reds and Brewers making it) exist. But spending money generally gives you a far softer floor than not, and teams who don't spend money tend to yo-yo being horrible and good far more often.

The World Series was really cool! Wrigley Field looks nice! I think these are base expectations for an ownership; maintain a baseball field and put the Chicago Cubs in a position to win baseball games. The field update isn't one of simple generosity, as it's turned him into a real estate mogul and made him plenty. And the WS should be more attributed to the Cubs FO and players. I can't entirely take these things away from him. But I'm also not going to say I like him because of it. Was it better than previous owners? Sure. But I think two things can be true at once; I don't like Tom Ricketts and think he's not nearly as invested in making the Cubs a good baseball team as he should be. He has put forth more effort than some previous owners.

From reports, it wasn't that Tom vetoed Bregman. Reports are that the money was there to sign Bregman and the reason he went to Boston was the opt-out after year-1. The Cubs offered an opt out after year-2. This was the biggest reason why he isn't here.

I'm going to premise this with this: I hate Tom Ricketts and I think he sucks. But I don't actually blame the budget fully here. The reality is that while I blame PTR plenty (ex. post covid-sell off, the 2017 budget drop, the fact he refuses to blow through an LT line ever) I don't think that budget reasons are ally a cause for how much we're seeing Hoyer keep the prospects. Frankly, regardless of budget, you don't need as many DH, 1b, and OF'ers as the Cubs kind of have right now. For example, what is the pathway for Jonathon Long to play with the Cubs? He's a 1b, but the Cubs have Busch. He didn't hit LHP particularly well despite being a RHH, so platoon at 1b isn't really in the data. He can't play 3b, LF or RF with any real MLB ability. At DH he's going to compete with Caissie, Ballesteros, Suzuki in some capacity. Yet, here we are. You can play this game a bit for most of the prospects, particularly, the offensive ones. I think a lot of this reason is that Hoyer has placed X value on Long, similarly, with Caissie, Ballesteros, etc, etc. and the value prop for Hoyer is that he has to equal out that value prop in a deal. There seem to be a lack of ability to get a bit irrational, either with money or prospects to make the thing really happen. And in part, I commend him for it! It's why his worst deals are like, Tucker Barnhart and Trey Mancini. But also probably why the Cubs will lack the ability to win a massive FA or swing a massive trade because to make those happen it's usually a requirement than some irrationality comes in. He can grab pretty good trades; Parades two deadlines ago, Kittredge. Even Tucker kind of falls short of massive in that he was a one-year thing on paper.

Exactly. And even if we want to say "well the SP market was insane" (I tend to believe the price on Cabrera and Alcantara, from what Zumach has said, is within a price I would have paid, but let's for a moment assume that's not the case) then you pivot to RP. Let's say the Cubs had, Bednar instead of Taylor Rogers. Do you just BP game it on Game 1 instead? With the rest the Cubs BP had the day prior, and the next day, Bednar, Palencia, Thielbar, Keller, Pomeranz, Kittredge is likely enough to find 27 outs. But when you're missing Bednar and instead have four versions of "long relief in losing games" (Soroka, Rea, Civale, Brown) it begins to limit the BP-of-death ability. Honestly, I think Jed Hoyer is a pretty good guy to have run a team, but his biggest flaw IMO is that he tends to stick to strongly to his valuations.

Yeah, that feels likely. I don't think the Cubs ever had "no" intentions to resign Tucker - that seems like something that's incredibly farfetched. You can tell me they were never going to offer him, say, half a billion and I'd buy that every day and twice on Sunday, but the Cubs have artificially sniffed around into the deep waters on Shohei Ohtani and I don't think $375m over 10 years would be too far if they really like Tucker. That said, I don't think the Cubs will outbid anyone. Jed is a "line in the sand" kind of guy in that once you overstep the line of perceived value the Cubs kind of balk and Tucker will probably go to a team who is willing to get a little irrational. That said, I fully expect to hear the Cubs meet with Tucker's representatives throughout the early portion of the offseason and that will likely dispel any rumors they never had a single intention, either.

Martinez-Gomez was a name I had quickly started to pick up on come the end of the year. This is extremely exciting. It's very early, and it's a different version of a changeup, but that could put him in a Devin Williams type of a profile where fastball-changeup out of the bullpen could be devastating.

It does seem like Kaplan is reporting differently. It will be interesting to see which one has a better lede.

Not questioning you here, just curious where you saw that? Wanted to get the full context of it is all.

The Cubs as a team had a lot of pitchers have lowered arm slots this year, so I think it's a trend. It really helped many pitchers, lowering an arm slots gives added run to the glove side usually. It can create depth and shape on sliders sweepers and cutters. For Shota my guess is that the Cubs were looking to maximize his sweeper which he used much more this year. Sadly I don't think it helped him more than it hurt him. But it's also not just a lever you pull and go back. It is likely an off-season tweak rather than a mod season tweak.

You're the one who created the "last month" timeline, I didn't "cherry pick". Of course his "last month" looks terrible, one of his starts was an 8 run blow up. But prior to his worst start of the year, a start that was a week beyond the Cubs clinching the playoffs, he was just fine dating back his prior 60 innings. That *one* start skews that data set *you* created. So don't blame me for that. I responded to your criterion. I expanded that criterion out to show that one bad start made things look dire but it wasn't anywhere near that bad if we just zoom out a little. Prior to his last start of the regular year, he was on a 60 IP good stretch. It was 10 starts. One start does not erase the prior 10. I don't want to entirely ignore that the HRs were a bit of an issue. They were. But if we are erasing SPs based on their September ERA, the Mariners George Kirby (5.40 ERA) shouldn't have made a start, either. This is exactly why one month of data should be zoomed out, and zooming out gets us a better picture. You may point out his xFIP was under 3.00 during the month and while he is obviously a better pitcher than Shota, Imanaga had an xFIP of 4.04 in September prior to his bad game. Kirby, himself, had a 16.7% HR/FB%. Shota was again worse, but that would have been higher than any other month Shota had all season. Secondly I wasn't comparing him to Colin Rea, I was responding to a comparison of Boyd and Imanaga, so this is moving the goal posts, but if you want to do that all of a sudden we can. First, Rea was far more shielded than Shota. Go back and look at home may times Rea wasn't even allowed to go 5 innings. Over that same span (last 10 starts) Rea was pulled before he made the 15th out three times, a fourth he was pulled after the 15th. Shota went under 5 zero times, went over 6 times almost every single start. Rea went 6+ just twice. The Cubs protected Colin Rea much, much more and shielded him heavily from seeing a lineup a third time - a cliff we know SPs struggle with. That skews the data. Rea also allowed *one* home run over his last 57 IP. We know for a fact that's just entirely unsustainable for Colin Rea. His xFIP during the same run as Shota I used? A 3.80 xFIP. The difference between the two is a single, bad, Shota blowup on the 25th. And guess what? Both got Wrigley wind benefit. All of the Cubs starters did. If you want to go meta numbers, both starters faced Milwaukee twice in that sample size. Colin Rea surrendered 6 over 9, walked as many as he struck out. Shota surrendered five in 12, striking out 13 and walking two. Shota was clearly better against the Brewers over that span. Before we point out that July 30th was a start directly after Shota got bombed by the White Sox - July 29th is the start after Rea got rocked by the Royals for six runs. Both have the advantage of having a bad start being the end point. They got the same treatment. So on paper, they were basically as good as each other over the same span. Rea did so with unsustainable home run rates, the same Wrigley wind protection was worse against Milwaukee and the Cubs shielded him much more than Imanaga. The difference was truly one, very bad, no good start on September 25th. If you are going to let that start make you think Colin Rea is a better bet than Shota Imanaga, more power to you, but that's incredibly reactionary and by this same logic, you would have to at least *consider*, even momentarily, Colin Rea a better option than George Kirby. And I think we both know how silly that would be.

It's largely an arm slot issue. He's about 5-degrees lower (which sounds small, but in reality is a lot). It's created difficulty for him to elevate pitches like his fastball to the upper third and he leaves it middle. The shape of his fastball (high ride) means bottom or middle-third pitches ride into the bat path of launch angle guys (who are already trying to sky it). It results in home runs. When you get that pitch to the upper third it rides over the bat - weak flys.