Jason Ross

Between July 30th and September 19th Shota Imanaga had a 3.69 ERA and a 3.79 xFIP. Shota had one decisively bad start after getting beat up by the White Sox in mid-July...his last start of the year of the regular season on September 25th. So, neither had Shota Imanaga.

Do you think Michael King is going to sign a one year contract? Do you think Brad Keller is signing a one year deal? You have been very adamant that the Cubs won't sign a contract past 2026 and that the Cubs will go as cheap as possible. I've already got the Cubs near $215m and I'm not sure that's all they will add.

The Cubs will find a SP or two. And like a reliver. And probably will need to buy a bench player or two. It's not super hard. Michael King or Ranger Suarez ($20m or so), plus picking up Kittredge's option ($8m), plus another RP or resigning Keller ($8-10m), a better version of Turner ($5m) and a utility player ($3m) adds up quickly. I just found about $40m right there.

Baseball isn't my fulltime occupation either. I'm a middle school teacher who just has a second job where I co-host a podcast and write here. But you are making a lot of assertions here which are frankly, very easy to make. "Javier Assad would have done better than Matthew Boyd" is an easy thing to say where you're at - Mr. Assad wasn't even selected for the roster, it's something that has zero way of being disproven. What we know is that a lot of the underlying data on Assad is not good right now and the Cubs didn't consider him one of their 12 best healthy pitchers, and we can assume had Horton been healthy, he wouldn't have been in their top-13 either. Frankly, considering that the Cubs also selected Taylor Rogers in the Padres set, he might not be in their top-14 arms. You can sit here and think you know better than the Cubs, but the reality is that whatever small quibbles we can find, the Cubs have an analytical army behind them. I've explained this like six times across different threads, and to you, so I'm not diving back into that. But there are a few other things I'd like to point out that are just, entirely incorrect. For example "further he used up much of the bullpen". This is factually incorrect. After Boyd the Cubs went with Michael Soroka (who threw to two batters the previous series), Aaron Civale (who didn't pitch at all in the previous series) and Ben Brown (who wasn't even on the roster the previous series). That's it. Then they got another day off after! This is just nonsense, it doesn't help your cause to just make things up or invent things. The Cubs walked into Game-2 with only Civale (who was used in a blow out situation) and Ben Brown (only used in a blow out situation) down, and had another off-day scheduled today. The bullpen was operating at nearly full capacity and the only ones down were the ones who the guys who pitch in blowouts. They didn't waste Brad Keller. Secondly, I've explained multiple times across multiple areas, Shota Imanaga was not some failing SP. Leading up to his last start of the MLB regular season, Imanaga, dating back to July 30th (over 60 innings) Imanaga was running his best K%, his best walk%, an ERA of 3.69 ERA and a 3.79 xFIP. Yes, he got shelled his last start of the year, but event he best pitchers get knocked around. So no, again, not supported by data. We can't just make things up because it fits our narrative. What it feels like is you're doing this; you're letting your personal frustration allow you to be clouded, and to lash out emotionally. It's easy when we're emotional to create a narrative to fit our frustration (for example, the Cubs "wasted their bullpen in Game 1" to support our already-held-belief that Matthew Boyd shouldn't have started when a quick look at a box score tells us this just isn't true). I get it, I literally stayed up until 12:30 est running live reaction for NSBB after the Cubs sucked last night. I had students this morning. It was a long night - I've got my qualms, my dude. But it's important to move past our frustrations and double check if they're supported by reality or if they're just that - a frustration.

I actually think Hoerner is one of the most likely players to get extended. We have a profile of players the Cubs believe in: athletic, contact oriented, who are capable in multiple facets of the game. To look at it another way: what player has been signed to the longest (and most lucrative) contract under Hoyer? Dansby Swanson; a ~100 or so wRC+ middle infielder with a strong glove who adds base running value. Even consider the Tucker trade; he's more offensive than Swanson, but the Cubs targeted an OF'er who offers some defensive value (he's not a superstar defensive fielder but holds his own) and is someone who adds base running value. The Cubs have a profile. If there's an argument against Hoerner, it may deal with the eventuality that Swanson and Hoerner will eventually overlap in the same category; love Swanson and his glove but he will eventually move off of SS. That said, I think that's an issue you worry about in three years, not now. The Cubs are capable of eating some salary to make a trade if need be. Ultimately, I think Hoerner is the kind of player the Cubs like. He's the kind player I suspect the Cubs will attempt to sign longer term.

This is entirely too kind. Thanks!

Exactly this. I mentioned it last night and I'll just add this on as an adendum to this post here; Ricketts cares a lot about his public perception. He skips Cubs Con when things are bad, he blames anything and everything for his spending, he made David Ross a scapegoat as quicky as he could, and you can see how Hoyer and the FO have to speak nice (even when it seems odd) about how generous he is. Tom cares about this stuff. He doesn't care enough to blow through to the top ends of the LT, but he does care enough that he wouldn't dare run a $175m payroll, down almost $50m after a 92 win playoff team. The budget will be enough that Tom isn't the clear, and only reason they didn't win and if they did that, it very much would be a Tom issue.

dRC+ is a statistic created by Baseball Prospectus designed to evaluated deserved runs created. One of the big factors dRC+ has that differentiates itself from wRC+ is that it factors in such things as competition faced. It also looks at expected outcomes versus simply recorded outcomes, but I think the focus on competition really is what is my favorite part. The belief that the Cubs offense was bad against good pitching doesn't really show itself in dRC+. In fact, quite the opposite, as the Cubs finished with a 110 dRC+, which was good for fourth in baseball. I think a lot of the feeling that the Cubs offense just fell off was due to a lot of factors. Kyle Tucker got hurt and he's a top-15 offensive contributor in baseball, that's a massive blow. Pete Crow-Armstrong had a worse second half than a first half. Seiya Suzuki had his worst month at the end of the year. But even in factoring in the second half of the season, the Cubs dRC+ then was a 104, which was ninth in baseball (tied with, Milwaukee). Most teams would struggle if their best hitter on paper struggled like Tucker did and yet the Cubs maintained a top-10 offense on this metric. Basically, I think what I'm trying to say is a lot of times the vibes don't match the output. We feel down so we think everything is worse than it is. last two games have certainly been a bummer. Milwaukee winning the division was a bummer. But it does feel like we've swung maybe a little too far into the doom and gloom territory overall which is natural when the season feels like it's coming imminently, but also probably isn't an accurate assessment on what happened either.

From July 30th through his second to last start of the season, Shota Imanaga, has around 60 IP andhad an ERA of 3.69 and an xFIP of 3.79, which suggests his ERA was about what it should have been over that span. His last start of the season was terrible, and yes, he had surrendered more than his fair share of HR's even over that 60 IP span, but the data also suggested a pitcher who was navigating those waters pretty fine. The idea that Shota was "failing on all levels" is revisionist history. He's one one disasterous start on September 25th, and two less-than-ideal starts in the playoffs. But you can't make it 60 IP with ERA/xFIP matching and it be a fluke, or, as you suggested "all systems failing".

Yeah it could. They need to get a lead and keep a lead. Right now it just feels inevitable that once they take a lead that they will immediately fall into a hole.

I think they only look that way because they're winning. The Cubs looked plenty loose on Thursday when they beat San Diego. And they looked plenty loose in the top of the first inning of both games. They celebrated home runs, and were fine. I wouldn't read much into how they interview though, that's a difference in personality - Murphy is just like that, as is Craig. But when you're down on the scoreboard, and you know your season is ending sooner than you'd like (unless something changes) than you get tight. Winning begets looseness and losing begets tightness.

Listen, if the Cubs are going to do something, I think Game 3 and Game 4 right now are the Brewers underbelly. They probably have to go with Priester and Quintana in these games. And for all of the flaws we can find with Boyd and Shota and the like, these two have flaws. Priester gets crunched by lefties and his cutter is atrocious right now. And Quintana is even worse against RHH. They're incredibly flawed and exploitable. But it's an uphill battle. And the thoughts of "this is cooked" have crept in. A win tomorrow night and you can start to see a narrow path forward.

We can be frustrated without being over reactionary. None of these are fireable offenses and you know that. Once again; Javier Assad is not a particularly good pitcher. His strikeout rate would have been the lowest of any qualified SP and his xFIP of 4.69 is bad. The Cubs didn't seem hom one of the 12 best Ps in the org and assuming they would have added Horton had he been healthy, is safe to rank him at least 14th. It's very easy to argue in favor of a pitcher who isn't even on the roster because we have no proof it would have gone bad. That said, he just isn't a good pitcher on paper. All you can do is use the information at your hand pre-start and the data on Assad is not pretty. On Imanaga; there also wasn't a clear better choice. Colin Rea just isn't a very good starter and that's about all of his choices. Imanaga had a really good run from July 30th through September 19th. Yes he had to non-great starts before tonight but bad starts happen. The HR bug is real, but he had mostly found ways to mitigate that (his ERA and xFIP were in line). He also pitched well on the year against Milwaukee. A perfectly defensible choice given his options. This is partially due to injuries. In a best laid world Justin Steele and Cade Horton would have also been healthy. While the Cubs had mid year time to fix the Steele thing, Horton cracked a rib the week before the playoffs. That is devastating. Frustrations are in order. It's very clear the Cubs left themselves and arm short; either a SP or a RP which would have more allowed the Cubs to do a bullpen game like the Brewers did. But Counsell's pitching choices have essentially ranged from "this bad choice or this other bad choice" and based on how we got to that point of the season, it's not really his fault his choices have been whittled down to that. Hoyer deserves blame for putting them in this spot. Bad luck on Horton left them in this bad spot. And the offense has struggled which has made the pitching issues the last two days worse. Counsell ain't perfect and while we can find fault in actions, nothing deserves "fire him immediately" posts. I'm just as frustrated as anyone. I stayed up past midnight to record our NSBB live reaction, a game that felt over by the 5th - I'm quite upset that the Cubs are pissing away my late nights with bad losses to the Brewers. But Counsell doesn't deserve to be canned because he picked one of the bad options in a pool of bad options.

We're live if you want to vent with us.

Now's the time for irrationality.

Yeah, sadly while I think the players will throw up a fight, that they're likely going to get smashed here. Fans tend to get to a "well they're just overpaid babies" place with these things. Or grasp on to the idea of a cap/floor creating parity (which it doesn't really do). Public opinion will generally swing to the owners, or swing to apathy and the owners will outlast. The players will also toss IFA and amateurs under the bus when they can, too.

I think Hoerner and Keller would be the two guys I think will most likely be extended. Maybe a PCA 7 year contract + 2 or so options.

Would agree. I expect the Cubs will pick up Kittredge's option for the bullpen, maybe resign Brad Keller (like a 3-4 year deal), and add another good BP arm (but shy of elite). Then sign Michael King. I also think the Cubs will look to trade one or two of the expiring 2026 contracts - Nico, Taillon, Happ or Suzuki. Not all of them, but one or two. And then look to make a trade to acquire a younger, controlled option as well. Just a spitball of what I think is likely

Yeah, I think Michael King is the guy I'd most bank on signing.

Only when down 4.

There will be next to no way they can accomplish that. They'll have to spend money this offseason if they don't extend Tucker. They can't go to the playoffs and lose to Milwaukee and optically spend less than they did (and they were well under the LT). There will be one, maybe two contracts signed that will extend past 2027. But they also lose most of their money after 2026. Tom Ricketts does care about his image. When he's about to be roasted he doesn't go to Cubs Con. He throws people under the bus. You can see how Hoyer speaks about how generous he is that reflected as well. Ricketts couldn't survive the media onslaught if they come in at a $180m payroll next year. I don't think they'll go on a spending spree. But they'll sign a decently sized contract or two.

I'm not sure we will either. It's going to be a tough battle. And really, a salary cap is going to hurt this game unless they do one like the NFL, but to do that, the MLB would have to lose their anti-trust exemption and that ain't happening.

Because owners want a cap hard. Players are not going to risk entering FA back in a landscape where a cap could limit their earning potential. I can't ensure they'll get one. What I can say though is that if I was the guy who was hands down the best FA on the market like Tucker will be, I wouldn't be testing that theory. Take the bag now.

No. His injury history so far is: Last year: fluke foul ball off the shin that was misdiagnosed by doctors This year: A finger issue and a calf issue Nothing is reoccurring. The closest thing to a red flag is a muscle injury to a calf, but like, who hasn't strained a calf before? No one is going to hide from that injury history. It isn't like he's been on the shelf for the same hammy 3 times since the Pandemic or something.

Teams don't make drastic decisions based on one start. Remember, until his last start of the year, he had posted a 60 IP (10 start) sample in which his ERA and his xFIP matched. His K% was up, and his walk rate was down. The one flag was an inflated HR rate, but xFIP factors this in. Pitchers have bad starts. Even really good pitchers have bad starts. Teams don't change arm slots by 5-degrees because of them. That's an offseason type of a change. So yeah, it hasn't gone well over his last three starts. But being realistic with ourselves, a mechanical change like this isn't something any team is going to try to implement on the fly.