Jason Ross

Appreciate it! This was a fun PA to dive into this afternoon. I find more and more than my favorite plate appearances aren't *the* at-bat of the game, but the little ones that lead up to the moment. I can't tell if that's baseball-hipster of me, equivalent of being *that guy* who tells you he doesn't like a bands' best known work but likes their before-stuff when they hadn't "sold out" and were just some underground indie group, me being a bit of a discerning baseball nut, or some combination of the two, but I really like those small little building blocks and the stories that kind of go missed.

Appreciate it! I was actually surprised when I dove into the numbers. You are just so accustomed to thinking "why the hell would you bunt with two strikes?" that I never thought I'd come to the conclusion I did. It's not something that I think should happen often, but there's more than enough data here that suggests...maybe it should happen just a little more often for a few guys.

I like it better when the Cubs score the runs and the Braves don't score the runs.

Yeah he's a cool dude. Plays in our sister league (or at least did, it's been a hot minute) in Kentuckiana. Short jump from Lexington - there's a handful of guys who have moved between the two areas.

I've played adult league with Rusch.

Just my random former Cubs. No rhyme or reason.

Yeah, I thought so too. Age 22 season in Iowa, 25% K%, 128 wRC+, .230 ISO. No batted ball data, but those are some good numbers.

All Hail!

This is blatantly untrue. League SP: 21.6 K%, 7.8 BB%, 89. 6exit velocity, 41.5 hard hit%, 8.9 barrel%, 94.1 velocity, 12.3 HR/FB League RP: 22.6 K%, 9.3 BB%, 89mph exit velocity, 39,5 hardhit%, 8 barrelt%, 94.7 velocity, 11 HR/FB The *only* thing it is easier to do against relievers is take a walk. Hitters are doing everything else worse against relievers than starting pitching.

The Cubs have one of the best records in baseball, they are 20 games over .500. and FanGraphs projects them to finish at 92 wins, one win behind the Dodgers. They have a 99% chance to make the playoffs. I have plenty of issues with how the Cubs are run at times and how they spend. This is no where near ".500 baseball".

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images I have a confession to make: I can be a fairly judgmental person at times. This shows itself in all of the things I dislike, and I have a tendency to dislike a lot of things. For starters, I think bananas, both texturally and flavor wise are fairly disgusting—I think we're better off without them in our world. My dislikes don't stop there; I think the word "moist" should be outlawed, I hate when things rub against my neck (such as a lanyard), and of all of the colors, I'm not a fan of purple. However, I merely dislike those things; they do not keep me up at night, and they have no power to ruin my day. One thing I truly loathe and despise, though, is bunting. There is something about the thought of giving up an out in a game in which you literally control the "game clock" so to speak (the 27 outs in baseball function much like a clock in other sports, as when your outs are up, the game ends) that drives me up a wall. There are some special use cases where I understand the logic, but outside of them, bunting brings me closer to a full body convulsion than anything on this planet. And yet I'm here to tell you what Pete Crow-Armstrong did with two strikes against the Braves was risky but artful. It was a good call and showed true wisdom by the Cubs' second-year star. Let's set the stage. It's Labor Day and the Cubs and the Braves are in the sixth inning. The Cubs offense is once again sputtering, down 6-2 as much-maligned Braves' starting pitcher Spencer Strider has managed to hold the Cubs mostly listless despite just a single strikeout on his day. Currently, another Braves' pitcher, 28-year-old Hunter Stratton is on the mound. Nico Hoerner, the Cubs' second baseman, stands at first after hitting into a fielders choice which erased Ian Happ, who led off the inning with a single. The Cubs have two outs now in the inning. This is a scene the Cubs have seen far too often recently: a leadoff runner wasted. Attempting to change this seemingly set-in-stone fate is the Cubs' center fielder, Pete Crow-Armstrong. Crow-Armstrong has been in serious rut to this point. With just one hit in his previous 20 plate appearances and a wRC+ of 47 since July 25, things have been a struggle for the Cubs' young star. Over this span, the center fielder has seen his barrel rate drop to 5.2% and his hard hit rate to 35.4%. He has been more discerning at the plate, with his chase rate dropping and his contact rate increasing, but things still haven't been easy, and he's still not a "patient" hitter by any means. Put another way: he's pressing and you can see it. The news of Crow-Armstrong's struggles are likely not lost on Hunter Stratton. The Cubs' hitter swings at 14% of first pitches and his chase rate remains high, even if it's better. Stratton also knows his best pitch is his slider, which has graded out exceptionally well based on FanGraphs Stuff+ model on the season. He also knows that his adversary is one to chase breaking balls down and off the plate, as highlighted in his swing decisions above. This decision is truly elementary, and the Braves' reliever understands the assignment perfectly as he throws a slider, his best pitch, below the zone. Naturally, Crow-Armstrong chases it for strike one. I also want to give credit to Stratton here as this wasn't as simple as just throw a slider—he throws a pretty excellent one in his own right. Now in the driver's seat, the right-handed pitcher has to make a decision. Does he try the slider again, or does he go to the fastball? The Cubs' hitter has already expanded the zone once on the breaking pitch, so the decision is pretty easy—go right back with it. Braves catcher Drake Baldwin sets up inside, looking for a slider that breaks down-and-in on the Cubs' lefty. Using the hex-code swing chart from above, this is a good place to go; Crow-Armstrong loves to swing and miss at pitches in this exact spot. Stratton misses his spot badly, but in a "it's so bad, it's good" kind of way, as he hangs the crap out of the pitch, but it's location and spot confuses the hitter enough that he can't even consider offering at it. Strike two. Pete Crow-Armstrong is now in a tough spot in this plate appearance, one largely of his own doing. Major league hitters, when faced with an 0-2 count, strike out nearly 50% of the time. They have a .167 batting average and a .173 wOBA. For his part, the Cubs' hitter has been slightly better than league average in these spots, striking out a little under 47% of the time and with a .239 wOBA, but this is not an advantageous situation. Stratton has a slick slide-piece, a pitch PCA is prone to whiffing on (with a 34.3% whiff rate, it is his highest against any specific pitch type). On top of that, he's just not hitting the ball well over his last few games or in the larger sample of his last month. This is set up for a textbook strikeout, which the Cubs can ill-afford as they attempt to get back into the game. Facing a situation in which striking out becomes highly possible, the struggling hitter goes into his bag of tricks to try to change his outcome. One of his best skills is his speed, possessing a sprint speed in the 97th percentile league-wide. Crow-Armstrong is aware that the Braves are utilizing a somewhat aggressive shift against him; he pulls the ball 51.8% of the time, and the Braves' third baseman is well off the line, nearing where the shortstop normally plays. Crow-Armstrong has made up his mind: he's going to lay one down. We can see this with how early he squares up; this is clearly something he chose to do pre-pitch. Stratton has just thrown back-to-back sliders. He could go to the well once more, try the low-and-inside slider that he attempted the pitch before. In fact, this is exactly what I would have called for—if you get the pitch off the plate, the worst-case scenario is going to be a foul ball or a 1-2 count. Maybe you're a little worried that you spike one and it gets past Baldwin, which would allow the baserunner to get into scoring position. But even that is mitigated because Baldwin ranks 18th (of 68 qualified catchers) in the league in blocking prowess. Perhaps due to this fear, or a concern that Crow-Armstrong may be sitting on his slider, or the chance that he doesn't feel good about the pitch after missing badly on the one prior, Stratton decides to go with his fastball. This is a fateful choice, as a slider down and away is not a pitch you want to be offering a bunt on. It would be something entirely out of the question if it were any other hitter at the plate, but the Cubs don't have anyone else at the plate; they have a struggling Pete Crow-Armstrong. It's a textbook bunt. Crow-Armstrong offers a bit early to get himself in a good spot, ensuring that he gets the ball down on the ground. He correctly notices the defensive alignment, and audaciously drops down a bunt with two strikes, knowing darn well that a foul ball is an out. Most of the time, this would be a crazy thing to do, but after looking at the data, I think it was warranted and a pretty great idea considering the situation. First off, Crow-Armstrong is in a nearly no-win situation. He's likely to strike out if he swings away; as almost half of MLB hitters have done in this 0-2 situation, and that's without factoring in the context of this at bat. Stratton has a great slider, and Crow-Armstrong is prone to whiffing on that pitch more than any other; fouling out on a bunt is no different than swinging-and-missing in this instance. Beyond that, if he can just get it down, he's got a really good chance to get on. League-wide, on balls hit the opposite way to third base on similar exit velocities, hitters have a .587 batting average. Sure, he's fast, but with the third baseman being moved in what is considered to be a "strategic" shift, his speed isn't really needed here. He just has to get it down, and get it down he does. There is a ton of grass on that side of the field, so you don't need to be perfect. This helps to lessen the potential a ball rolls foul. Even if it's an imperfect bunt, it would force Braves third baseman Nacho Alvarez away from first base on the throw. Alvarez is already a below-average thrower, with an arm strength that ranks him in the 38th percentile league-wide. He would need a near herculean effort to move from his position to get there, and then would have to make a very difficult throw to catch the speedy runner. It's not shocking when we add everything up that Crow-Armstrong was able to get on first in this situation; it's literally a perfect storm of pitch, defensive alignment, and hitter to make this happen. Dansby Swanson, the Cubs' next hitter, would make sure that this decision by the Cubs' center fielder wasn't easily forgotten. Had Swanson struck out, this bunt single is one we probably forget about, grumbling about how the Cubs' offense struggles continued in the series opener against the Braves. We probably forget the heroics of new Cub, Aaron Civale and his three scoreless innings as well. Instead, the Cubs' shortstop laced a double into left field, scoring Nico Hoerner and Pete Crow-Armstrong, which loudly announced to everyone still watching that "the comeback is on" by making it a two-run game. Carson Kelly would later play hero, with the game-tying home run and the game-winning hit, but it was their center fielder's audacity that allowed the Cubs' catcher to even be in that situation. It was his audacity that allowed Swanson and Civale to play roles as well. Without this bunt, none of this happens. I say this as someone who said right up front that I hate bunting but... I love what PCA did here. After looking at the situation, I think what I truly hate is bunting when the purpose is to give yourself up as an out. Crow-Armstrong wasn't trying to do that; with two outs, his goal was always to extend the inning. He found himself in a bad place where he was a very likely strikeout victim given league data, his own weaknesses and the strengths of the opposing pitcher. To even the odds in his favor, he took a gamble, but it was one that I think was well thought out. The Cubs' youngster didn't play hero on Monday, as Carson Kelly managed to do that in the eighth and tenth innings on his own, but he used wisdom beyond his years and a dash of confidence to get himself out of a hole he dug himself into, which in turn allowed Kelly to put on his superman cape. So I ask you: how can you hate that? What did you think of Pete Crow-Armstrong's bunt on Monday? Do you like his decision? Let us know in the comments below! View full article

Busch has the 40th best (of 47) wRC+ of 1b against LHP PCA is 39th of 57 Both are at 63 wRC+ on the year against them. PCA at least offers some really elite defense in CF so you can live with it, but realistically, you're better off, purely offensively, if neither of them hit against LHP.

The issue you seem to have with this is at the end; mentally, you're struggling with how long poor (or good!) variance at the MLB level can happen. Bad batted ball data can last for hundreds of plate appearances; it seems impossible, but it happens every year. Players can have a few months of bad "luck" (or good luck!). Let's put it this way. There are 369 hitters who have 150 PA's (or more) on the season. That's a lot! It really isn't shocking that like, 20 of those guys are having some really bad luck for a vast majority of their PA's. 20/369 is 5%. If we had 369 guys flipping a quarter 100 times, don't you think like 10-15 of them would have some really weird data? So why not in baseball, too? To put it another way; have you ever seen a guy have a career year that stands out above all the rest of his career? When that happens, many times, it's just a player who put together enough good variance over 400 PA's that he looked really good. Same principle is at work here. Happ was doing what he should at the plate, and the baseball just wasn't finding space very often. Eventually things work out if you keep doing them enough.

If I flip a coin 10 times, and 8 times it comes up heads, does that mean I have an 80% chance of flipping heads again? What if I flip a coin 20 times and I get 16 heads? Both are certainly plausible outcomes, but neither reflects reality when it comes to coin flips. that the outcome should be very close to 50-50 (unless I am doing something untowards during the flip). It would be thus unlucky it didn't come up near 50-50 to heads and tails. Yes, the reality is in that small sample size, I flipped 80% (or whatever) one side. But we also know that this is not predictive and we also know that if I flip the coin 100 more times, the most likely out come is that over that 100 times, the amount of heads and tails I get will be close to 50-50. The same principals can be applied here. Ian Happ was doing things that should have resulted in one thing even though they weren't happening. All of our predictive data suggests that if Ian Happ kept doing what he was doing, it would eventually head in another direction; in fact, this is what is happening right now; Ian Happ is doing largely what he was doing at the plate and now what we expected would happen is happening.

Ian Happ was performing at or career levels of batted ball data for much of the season, his expected data all suggested his batted ball data should have resulted in one of his best seasons of his career. He was always posting career normal approach data. Despite all of this, his BABIP was incredibly low, From June 1st through the ASB, he had the fourth lowest BABIP in all of baseball. Had he been doing some odds things under the hood, such as not pulling the baseball (pulling the ball vs not pulling the ball can skew expected data) or hitting a lot of ground balls (more ground balls can inflate EV and hard hit but not be a good thing overall) than we could say that there was data in there that was creating a lot of bad data going into his expected data creating a situation where his bad variance wasn't necessarily bad variance. He did not have that. Because of all of that, the safest conclusion is that Ian Happ was experiencing bad variance for a large portion of the year. Not every single at bat was bad luck, no, but the general flow of his season was that the outcomes he was deserving were not occurring as often as they should be. That can be called "bad luck" in other words. He wouldn't be the first baseball player to have bad variance stretch multiple months, this happens to MLB literally every year.

Ian Happ season wOBA: 328 Ian Happ season xwOBA: .361 Ian Happ post ASB wOBA: .372 Ian Happ season BABIP: .278 Ian Happ post-ASB BABIP: .298 Ian Happ career BABIP: 307 Things have a tendency to be what they should given large enough samples. You are 100% correct, that his positive behavior at the plate is now being rewarded in a way that it was not for much of the year.

My theory on umpires costing a game will never change; if you leave the game up to the umpires, it's your fault. The Brewers gave up 10 runs. Maybe, give up less than 10 runs first, then start worrying about what a check swing is or isn't. I believe the same for the Cubs for what it's worth.

He's had a nice second half but as much as I advocated for him earlier, we can, probably, safely assume he's not the second best power hitter in baseball moving forward. Whether he's hitting 7th or 9th it's probably not anything that is truly affecting the Cubs ability to score runs right now, and I think it's probably safe to assume that anytime Busch, Tucker, Suzuki, Happ, Hoerner and PCA start that those six will hit above Matt Shaw.

With Santana here, it likely makes more sense for them to have the position variability that Alcantara possess over Caissie. Neither will play much.

It's just a photo. Baseball is an awkward sport, and sometimes guys get in unflattering positions. Moises Ballesteros isn't in any worse shape than he was at any time this season. This just is who he is. Defensively, it's fair to wonder, but I think we need to remember that the last time Moises Ballesteros was up, he was 21-years-old. That is the age of a draft-eligible junior. Even if the 1:1 pick was a college junior from the SEC, he wouldn't have been on an MLB roster this fall catching. Adley Rustchman has been, likely seen as the most recent example of a put-togther college catching prospect and he made his debut at age 24. He was drafted at age 21. It is weird we are holding him to near unseen standards. His bat has been so good that he has steamrolled the MiLB, but we can't blame him for it. Catchers take a lot of time. He could conceivably not be ready to catch MLB games until 23 and he would still be among the youngest at the position. There has been just a single 21 year old to catch an MLB inning this year; Samuel Basallo. There is only one 22-year-old to log in innings, Edgar Quero. I agree that his long term value is dependent on his ability to catch. But him not catching MLB games at age 21 or a funky picture aren't the legs that argument should be standing upon.

I outlined above his contract and what it takes to equal that value (you seem to have missed that). If it was 2000, yes a $118m contract for what Swanson provides would be an overpay. In 2022 and beyond, however it's perfectly acceptable. He's thus far out played what he's been paid.

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images Hitting a baseball is really hard. The amount of things that have to go correctly in the moment for you to not only make contact with a pitch, but make solid contact, is almost mind-boggling. You have just a split second to not only diagnose what pitch is being thrown (maybe you can read the seams of the ball, or you've got eagle-eyed vision like Tony Gwynn and can see the grip as the pitcher throws it), but also whether the pitch is going to be a strike or a ball. Even then, you need correct mechanics, swing, and timing, and then you have to hope that the Baseball Gods are smiling down on you and that the exact moment of contact results in a hit that lands where a fielder isn't (or that Pete Crow-Armstrong isn't in CF). Here's the thing; Hitting a baseball is really hard, but not impossible. There are little tricks that hitters can use to stack the deck in their favor. These tricks can be having great mechanics, pure luck, having a good read on a pitcher's scouting report; there are many ways hitters can find a way to get just the extra little leverage they need to turn an out into a hit. The Cubs have seen a few of their hitters this year look to increase their bat speed—Pete Crow-Armstrong has used this to increase his home run power. One of the best ways to tweak the odds in your favor is an old coach's adage: pull the ball more. By pulling the ball more (and meeting the ball out in front of the plate) good things happen. It's easier to hit the ball hard, and it shortens the distance between where you hit it and where the fence is. And pulling the ball is a great way to hide other things you may not possess, such as elite bat speed. Hitters like Isaac Parades, Cody Bellinger, and TJ Friedl use below-average bat speed and extreme pull tendencies to great effect, and Matt Shaw has changed himself to more closely resemble these hitters. To understand his progress, we first need to peer into the past. Shaw, prior to this year, was someone who wasn't very interested in pulling the ball. Part of this was due to his rather unique set-up—being closed and toe-in pre-swing made it hard for him to open up on pitches. This can be reflected both in his 14th-percentile pull-rate in Triple-A during his first look in Iowa, and as well in his early-season spray chart. Back then, Shaw was willing to go equally to all fields, with a 31.7% pull rate, a 37.2% center field rate, and a 31.1% opposite field rate. While many of us were taught to "go the other way" as a youngster, this is just a poor way to hit at the MLB level; opposite field hits are less effective at the highest levels. Let's watch Matt Shaw show a good example of this by peeking in a specific plate appearance of his on July 3 of this year. The game is currently tied, 0-0, in extra innings with the Cleveland Guardians. The struggling Cubs' rookie is at the plate facing fireballer Emanuel Clase with a runner on third base and less than two outs. The Guardians' closer hurls a 100mph heater on the inner-third of the plate. Shaw, to his credit, laces a barrel 377 feet to dead center 101.7mph off the bat. Shaw crushed this pitch for all it was worth and it ended up a fly-out. Using Statcast, we can see that this swing had an expected batting average of .540, but Statcast does not account for directional hitting on these pitches. What we can do is search for all swings to dead center, at 101mph (+/- 1 mph) off the bat, at 377 feet to compare what other hitters did on these swings and we can only find six instances of this ball landing for a single, double, or triple over the last three seasons, and no ballpark would have been small enough for that to have gotten out. Overall, hitters hit .098 on similar swings (48 in total) to center field. Now, due to the game circumstance, a sac-fly was enough to get the win, so he didn't need to pull it, but it's still not the ideal outcome on that pitch most of the time. We'll come back to examine this swing in a moment. One of the reasons that he wasn't able to pull the ball probably stems from his swing at the time. From March 18 (when the Cubs took the field against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Tokyo Dome) to the All-Star Break, Matt Shaw made initial contact with the baseball -2.8 inches in front of the plate. Yes, that means he was making his contact behind the front of the plate. This was 15th-deepest in baseball at the time. While other pull-heavy players make contact deeper than others (the aforementioned Cody Bellinger is one of them), one of the easiest ways to improve pull-rate is to move the initial point of contact. Since the All-Star Break, two things to note about Shaw and his approach is that he has greatly improved his pull%. He now pulls the ball 53.8% of the time, which ranks eighth in baseball. Previously, his pull rate would have ranked hm 141st (out of 155 qualified). This is a massive shift in approach. He is also making contact in front of the plate, ranking 71st of 237th in this metric, moving his point of contact from around two inches behind the front of the plate to over five inches in front of it. It's pretty obvious that to help create pull opportunities for their third baseman, the Cubs helped to create contact out in front of the plate (likely through the mechanical changes I have outlined in past articles). And it's paying off in a big way, as Shaw has posted the highest wRC+ of any third baseman since the mid-season pause. To highlight the importance of pulling the baseball, let's go back and look at the sac-fly Shaw had against Clase from above. However, this time, we'll be shifting from looking at similar batted balls to center field (remember, in three years, only six of those landed safely for a hit, and none were home runs) to looking at similarly hit baseballs to left field that were pulled (this excludes left-handed hitters who go the other way). If we look at swings that landed in the field of play on similarly struck balls, we find that only five balls hit at or around his exit velocity (give or take one mph) which also traveled 377 feet were hit for a single, double or a triple over the same span. Your first reaction may be to point out that this is less than those hit to center field over the same span. But, because the left field wall is so much shorter than its center field counterpart, we see that the number of home runs hit jumps from zero to 16, a massive increase. A home run in this situation may not have changed the outcome, but a home run in most others very well could. Simply hitting the ball to left field in a similar fashion increased league batting average from .098 to .808 alone. This is why you want to pull the baseball—good things tend to happen. Pulling the baseball can also help to hide other aspects of a hitter's game; the Cubs' third baseman does not show elite, or even above-average, swing speed. Swing speed usually goes hand in hand with power, and while he has begun hitting home runs in droves, his bat speed remains under 70mph even in August. TJ Friedl, Isaac Parades and Cody Bellinger all have bat speeds within one mph of what Shaw does, and all three have hit very well this year, due in large part to their significant pull%. Shaw is using the same concept to hide mediocre exit velocities and swing speeds. Finally, we can see this reflect in swing-decisions made by Shaw on a daily basis. While it's true that he has always been more willing to swing at inside pitches, where he is swinging has shifted, from up-and-in to more middle-middle. Swinging at pitches over the heart of the plate is just a good strategy for anyone, and when you add in pulling the baseball to it, it becomes a lethal combination. Hitters who swing at pitches identified as "over the heart" have a .436 wOBA on the year (on balls in play), and pulling those pitches increases their wOBA to .562. Conversely, hitting pitches even in the best zones to center or opposite field drops their wOBA to .357. In other words, it's the difference from being Riley Greene (who has a .357 wOBA on the year) to being almost .100 points better than Aaron Judge. Riley Greene is a good hitter, but Aaron Judge is the baddest man on the planet, and hitters who pull pitchers over the heart outpace him by a massive amount. It's not surprising that all of these good things have helped Shaw find success hitting against major league pitching. The Cubs deserve a mountain of credit for how they have handled their young hitter this season, and Matt Shaw deserves a mountain of credit for being open to change when he was in the midst of being humbled by the best pitching the planet has to offer. Both parties were able to identify issues and incrementally work through them. He's made strides defensively, mechanically, and approach-wise. How good can he be? It's hard not to start thinking about the ceiling. Could he be a Gold-Glove-caliber third baseman who hits 20% better than league average? Is he their own version of Alex Bregman? I'm not going to claim to know just how good it can get. But the one thing I am confident in saying is that the Cubs have a cornerstone type of a player for their team because players who are willing to listen and have the drive to get better are the ones who are always one step ahead of their competition. They continue to stack the deck in their favor, and the Cubs' youngster has all the hallmarks of the type of grinder who will not accept defeat. Have you noticed the changes in Matt Shaw's approach? What kind of a ceiling do you think he has moving forward? Let us know in the comments below! View full article