Jason Ross

That's a great story. Appreciate that share.

I think that's a measured take, too. I sincerely hope Mo does well. And I hope he does catch; that would be a great outcome for him. I do think the Cubs don't feel they can get him there, and if there's one thing the Cubs have done well lately, it's identify and work with catchers defensively. They've done great work with Kelly and Amaya, as well as Ayers. And behind the scenes many rave about their catcher work. All of that has me fairly confident he'll be far more "DH" than "C" but it doesn't make the Cubs' infallible there either.

I don't think you can ever consider 9 of 12 as a minimum. That's an incredible winning percentage. I'd certainly love it, but even the best record against sub .500 teams in baseball is a .667 winning percentage. It's Milwaukee. Because of course it's Milwaukee.

An emergency catcher is there for an emergency. It's in the name. An emergency is not "pinch running with zero outs in the 11th inning of a regular season game in the beginning of August".

Can we please add Jose Escobar, Fernando Cruz and Dylan Blomker?

Yeah, I'm rooting for him. He seems like a perfectly good dude, and he's a fun player. And I know we love to win trades, but there's an aspect in which when Cubs' prospects perform well post-trade that continues to build your teams' reputation in development. You just want to ensure that the player you acquire also performs!

Arm wasn't really the big question with him. It was receiving and footwork.

I think the important thing to square away, especially the Moises Ballesteros trade, is that it highly depends on how you view him. If you still think he's going to catch 60 games a season at the MLB level and hit LHP decently, than I think you probably have a good reason to be miffed. But if you don't think he's going to be a 60-game player at catcher than it's really hard to compile value. If we look at the top-"primary DH" players, there isn't a lot of fWAR compilers. You've got your Ohtani/Alvarez tier, and I think we are going to be honest with ourselves, Ballesteros is no where near that level, sitting well above the 3-win mark. Ben Rice has 3 wins, but he's logged 54 games at 1b already. Then you're at Kyle Schwarber who has a 139 wRC+ at 2.3 wins, Hunter Goodman at 2.3 wins (74 starts at catcher), Chase DeLauter (52 in OF), Yandy Diaz (37 at 1b, 6 at 3b), Drake Baldwin (66 at C), Carter Jensen (69 at C), Liam Hicks (39 at C and 27 at 1b) and Rafael Devers (87 at 1b). Beyond these guys you're below 1.0 fWAR accrued and aren't going to sniff the 2 win marker. So for him to really get value, he's going to either have to find 50-70 games in the field, or be an elite bat like Ohtani, Alvarez or Schwarber. It's such a difficult line. I think we all like Baller, I think the bat can be fun, and I think he's a fun player. But when we take a step back and are objective...it's an incredibly narrow strip for his profile. I think when you look at how the Cubs handled him, they don't believe he's making 50-70 starts at a position.

He's my white whale and he's going to make an MLB roster one day and I refuse to believe otherwise.

The Cubs likely have an emergency catcher on the roster; someone who, in a "worst case scenario" would enter a game if Kelly and Amaya were both injured and unable to play. What you're asking for is the Cubs' to be carrying a third catcher - an extreme luxury. Let's keep in mind: teams are permitted to carry 13 pitchers and teams carry 13 pitchers, meaning they only have 13 positions players and nine of them start so you have four on the bench In yesterday's game, the Cubs had used: - Tyrone Taylor - Carson Kelly - Pedro Ramirez The only remaining player was James Triantos. That's the player who would have been the pinch runner. He's also the player you'd replace on the roster for a third catcher. So let's turn this around: what third catcher would you suggest the Cubs' carry that you want to actually see pinch run? Because, catchers generally suck at running. Also remember, this will be Matt Shaw's position when he returns, so which of Taylor, Shaw, Ramirez do you plan to send to Iowa or DFA so that the Cubs can carry this 3rd catcher?

You're stuck on what guys did in July. Do you think Javier Assad and Colin Rea will replicate what they did in July either? If they were they capable of that themselves, they probably would have done that before July. What it really is about is: which two pitches are likely to have the better two months in the future? That is a very clear cut answer.

It's been a few years since I've had access to TruMedia, sadly, they priced us out here at NSBB. But it had a lot of the data on sends and what not and I looked into the success rate the Cubs had on there and it was way better than fans realized. I'm always pro-aggression on the bases (within reason, ya know?). Speed up the game. Either force a perfect really long throw or force a relay and multiple perfect throws. It also requires the catcher to apply the tag; something that isn't always a forgone conclusion. The more you can force the defense to make very specific, very intricate actions the more you allow a slight falter. And on that play all you needed was one slight falter to win. Myles Straw has a 24th percentile arm value, and a 52nd arm strength value. Yeah, Carson Kelly is a 14th percentile sprint speed, but it wasn't like they were running on prime-Ichiro. I think any way you look at it, it was basically a coin-flip. No one here wanted to watch the Cubs go back out for the 12th inning; it would have likely been a 2nd inning of Trent Thornton (who had already fulfulled his monthly K-quota with one the inning prior) or a Braxton Garrett Cub-debut with a runner on second. So make the best of the moment and force the action on your terms with zero outs.

Yep. It's easy to say "with Seiya, Busch and Bregman coming up you'll get more chances" but it doesn't always work out like that. Take the chance when you get it. It was probably a coin-flip. Heads you win, tails, nothing really lost considering Pete's on second, a hit still wins it.

I have no issue with the Berry send, FWIW. That was a crazy good throw to nail him. Force the action.

There aren't words for the year he's having.

Dansby missed that bad slider. But in their defense, that guy has been hell on right handed hitters in Triple-A this year.

No joke, it's probably Caleb, Thornton, or Garrett. At least Caleb strikes guys out and the wind will help keep the ball in.

Yeah, I mean, today just was Cease's day. Dude has been a machine.

Bingo. Lance had a great video breaking down the values of the trade and if you look at prospects in the way Eric did, it was a massive overpay. The simplest answer is most likely true: the Tigers just really like River Ryan and don't care he's 28.

I think the baseline was met the moment they addressed their need for a playoff starter. Getting a second playoff starter, a leverage reliever who has five years of control, and a hitter you can have hit lefties to boot pushes it from the baseline and well above. The only thing that they didn't get was a controlled starter. While I won't adjust my grade later regardless, Clay Holmes feels like he could remain with the organization beyond 2026 with an extension at some pointz so that may still be addressed. That would have gone to A territory for me. As for the cost, Rojas for Holmes/Taylor feels steep on paper, but I really think the value on Rojas both internally and around the league does not match what we thought it would have. I was shocked at first but today, I am far less surprised. The Cubs didn't hold as high of a view on him and I really am not sure the league did either. Moises Ballesteros was the oddman out and based on how the Cubs acted about the catching position, it feels like they had soured on his defensive future. Beyond that, I think the Cubs gave up spare parts. Every prospect that was traded at the deadline except one was 40-man-eligible next year and I am not sure most would have been added. I am sure it didn't hurt that it was the Dodgers of all teams who we played right after, but the vibes just felt different around the team. I won't pretend I know how much that changes anything, but I think it counts for something. It was not a perfect deadline but it was a very good deadline. There is a real chance someone like Jefferson Rojas bites the Cubs in the ass. But this is how big markets should act; you sometimes have to roll the dice a little to supplement the roster. Final Grade: B+

No dumb questions, Craig. Inquisitive minds are sharp minds. One or two things can get out of whack. But pitch velocity stabilizes in 10-15 pitches as it's one of the most stable things we have. When we last saw his slider, it was roughly, 88mph. The season before, it was roughly 88mph. Today the slowest slider he threw was 89.5mph, and averaged 90.8. He threw it 10 times. His previous outing he threw six slider and averaged 91.4. We are at a sample size with velocity where it's fair to say this isn't random any more. He's throwing it almost 2mph faster. That's a fairly sizeable jump. You can probably make a better argument for his arm side run being random, as there has been some times where he's gotten that. But velo jumps change movement so I'm inclined to think this isn't an accident and that the movement is caused by the velo.

As a Theilbar truther: it's probably time for him to go.

I'm saying that his slider now moves the other way more and is 2mph harder than it was before. His slowest slider today was still 1mph heavier than his season average. And it wasn't like he was any harder last year on the pitch, either. He's had some arm-side run sliders before, but it still, over the course of the year, was glove side. And it wasn't sitting over 90+ mph either. You can see three sliders in this same PA. Notice: 1. the velo 2. the direction horizontally It differentiates itself from the the slider because it's slower and has less break on the horizontal axis. So it's not mis-identified by Statcast. It also isn't a hot gun, his fastball was 97.4 and Hoby Milner say 85.9 (87mph at MLB this year). It isn't an oddity of today either, he did this last go in Iowa. Is it a new pitch? Is this just a weird two-start thing? Hard to say for sure. But that appears as it is new in some fashion. Something happened. I'm working on an article on the implications of it over the next day or so because I'm still trying to understand it.