Jason Ross

Oh man, former Cubs' farmhand Jared Young. Damn. Hope he's okay.

I think worrying about the ballpark the Cubs play in is losing the forest for the trees, here. Opposing players are much more impactful than park factors. Citizen Bank is 3rd for home runs and Petco is 11th for HR's over the last 3 years, To put this in another way of looking at it: Hitters hit the ball 2.9 feet further than average at Citizen's Bank (this year). At Petco it's 6.9 feet below average. I'm not going to really worry much about 10 feet. Last year? It was 1 foot above average at Citizen's Bank and under four feet less than average at Petco (most year's it's around these levels). So five feet last year. This isn't worth a bother.

"The Cubs have an above average offense" My guy, they've scored 30 runs more than any other team in baseball. You don't have to get carried away. They have the best offense in baseball. It's not particularly close.

I'm bummed that the games are this weekend and not next. I've got some stuff this weekend going on and don't think I'll be able to get up to one of the Cincy games. Next week I'm on fall break.

PCA is just one home run off the lead league. Who had "PCA HR Champion" on their bingo card?

Good news is that Zeferjahn seems like he's settling back in. Since his bad outing against Milwaukee, he's rocking a 1.69 ERA, a 3.10 xFIP, and 6 strikeouts to 3 walks. It's small sample size and it's not "mission accomplished" but he's been much better and we can accept that type of a reliever.

It should, yes. We've seen a trend where pitchers are more willing to go changeup to like-handed hitters in 2026, but historically this is an off-handed hitter pitch. Webb has always had more success against LHP. Erasing the slider basically means he has to resort to changeup/fastball right now. And his fastball location has gone to hell.

Webb's prior six appearances to his blowup streak saw him strike out eight hitters and had a zone-contact% below that of his season average and saw a swinging strike % much higher than his season average. So I think it's believing that was the case more than anything statistical. There was a run of four appearances between July 30th and August 5th where he only had one strikeout, but that was leading into that six game appearance streak where he struck out eight, so I don't believe it was some signal. More than likely what happened is that Webb is struggling with his slider, very specifically. My guess is he's tipping the pitch with his arm angle or that the arm angle is allowing this pitch to be far more hittable and sit in the zone: The slider is an important pitch for him to get RHH out. It also makes it so you can eliminate one pitch if he's coming in obviously differently on that pitch. He throws it 22% of the time to RHH. It then allows hitters, RHH as well, to sit on the changeup much more. And the changeup is his best offering. Notice that the xwOBA against his slider spiked first and then the others spiked after. The issue is specifically with his slider and now it's nuked the rest of his offerings. So something happened to that pitch first and it's caused everything else to go off the rails. He straight up stopped throwing it and now the rest of his game is horsefeathered.

Re: Palencia He had a forearm issue. That's where you're going to be placing a lot of stress on anything movement related. His fastball has ticked up as he's gotten back into it and now the movement/shape is the next thing to work on. Because it wasn't running so much it was catching far too much of the plate. We've seen the run (not the rise as much) begin to pop back. The next step will hopefully slider movement.

Since August 21st the Phillies and the Cubs both have 7 blown saves. Yes, the Cubs bullpen is untrustworthy right now, but see how we can play around with the data, too?

Does it? The Blue Jays (16th in xFIP in 2025) went to seven games against the Dodgers (5th in xFIP) last year. The Phillies (1st in xFIP) lost in four against the Dodgers. The Blue Jays beat the Mariners (3rd in xFIP) in the ALCS.

It isn't about digging deeper, but that certain teams just work with a specific type of pitcher better. Like, the Rays tend to specialize in teaching kids how to throw really, really hard. They're a pure velocity organization. They don't really "dig deeper" than others, they just specialize in that. But look at Taj Bradley; a high profile pitcher in the Rays' system who threw a 385 innings at the MLB level for them. His ERA was near 5.00 when they finally traded him to the Twins. It was the Twins who unlocked him this year. Montgomery, the reliever they shipped to Pittsburgh is another guy who was unlocked by another org. Sometimes you just aren't the team for specific guys. For the Cubs, they've done well with a few things more than most. They teach a cut-ride fastball better than most. They lower armslots and tend to do better with horizontal rather than vertical movement planes. It's a belief that guys can throw harder and safer this way (Kade Townshend is already reporting throwing 2mph harder in bullpens). Frankly, I think the Cubs were the perfect organization for Horton. They were able to utilize his insane cut-ride fastball, and on the fly, teach him a kick-change. Bummer he got hurt and we couldn't see the evolution and won't for a bit. It's why someone like Edward Cabrera looked like a good pick; he had lowered his armslot prior to coming here and the Cubs, I'm sure, thought "bingo, we can keep making this better". Sadly...hasn't taken. But yeah, some of the tweaks this year haven't been as successful (Cabrera is a great example of this). And the ones that have (Ben Brown, as an example) have gotten hurt, so we haven't seen them as often as you'd like.

Fair. They're very good teams. But that's baseball. Every year a team who's very good has a clunker of a five game set. The Cubs offense getting hot for a few games, or more, wouldn't be a shocking outcome, though. So while I wouldn't bet my life savings on it, the Cubs are more than capable of finding three wins out of five against anyone.

Some people here need to realize it works both ways. Yes, the Cubs offense will face better pitching., but the other team will face better hitting than they face normally, too. The Cubs have been the best offense against some of the best pitching all year. Do you all not realize how bad Philadelphia's offense is? Dansby Swanson's 96 wRC+, the guy this forum has tried to DFA every summer has a higher wRC+ better than everyone in their opening day except for two hitters. Ian Happ, the guy this forum has tried to run out of the city for five months, groans every time he strikes out or hits a ground ball would be *comfortably* their third best hitter right now (as Arraez has not been good since the deadline). He'd almost assuredly be hitting cleanup or second for that team. Every night. You dislike him, but have you seen how terrible Trea Turner has been? He's essentially Ian Happ but everything is worse (except for Ks) now. I get it. The Cubs pitching sucks on ice (and we can play the game above but backwards, I know) but y'all, the Phillies have the third worst wRC+ in baseball on merit. Their hitting is our pitching. Stop doom bonering. Everything flows both ways. Teams are not used to facing the Cubs every night, either. We don't have to do this song and dance. The Cubs just took two of three against the NL East leading Braves. The Phillies aren't likely to catch them, the Cubs beat them a bunch this year already, and people here are *still* ready to waive the white flag.

40/40 is fun but 50/30 is also fun. Just saying.

Bregman's gonna finish as a top-10 fWAR player.

It's hard to go on the first or the second pitch of a game when you're on base, though. You want to get a feel for the movement and everything. I know we all want the steals, but there's a reason he didn't go. He's an excellent base runner and it isn't because he's lazy or not reading the game. Ritchie isn't throwing strikes and has only faced the Cubs one time over his young career, back in May. It's very likely he wasn't feeling comfortable and didn't want to run into an out when the kid had thrown 7 pitches only one of which was a strike so far.

Yeah, on second thought, I thought the same. This happened to me last Wednesday night. I was on first late in the game and the kid who hits behind me smashed what *should* have been a double to CF. Any normal speed human being scored from first, but my slow ass needed some help. So he stretched it to a triple, almost got hosed a third just so I could score. TLDR; being slow sucks and sometimes your friends have to help you out.

Mostly good job Bregman. I'd rather you not get thrown at second...but I like runs more.

To be fair, Ritchie hadn't thrown a strike yet and you don't want to take the bat out of the hand of Seiya early, either. He was looking like he might give you second for free. We all want 40/40 but I also understand not going there. Sadly we live in the future and know what happened.

Neither are joining the club. Hollowell is here to throw BP for Swanson and Martin is rehabbing. The weather in Omaha is straight rain for a week. The season ends the 18th, so it's not like they're needed for Iowa any more.

Ironic you brought that up. He struck out 12 in 7 today! He's been much better lately. But yeah, hasn't been great overall since the trade. But yeah, generally speaking the more human that moves, the harder it is to repeat said movement. As with anything, there's positives about being tall as a pitcher; extension, for one. But the drawbacks are there too. That said, the upside in that concept is also real, so while someone like Carson Jasa (6'7" listed) is a bit of a mess command wise, if you can get his command from "real bad" to "kinda bad" you can find something. And I'm here for that risk; you just have to realize it's a numbers' game. Like if you think Carson Jasa is going to be the guy to break out, it's a low chance. But if you have five Carson Jasa-types, you probably can find something. The 2026 draft is a lot more of the Jasa types finally, which was a decent departure from how the Cubs' were drafting prior.

I don't think that's unfair. Something does need to change. I do think the Cubs believe part of that change is in action with Zombro and the draft, but that is the long game. And to be fair to the organization, I think they tried to change some of that at the deadline trading for Gausman, Holmes and Zeferjahn. But the more immediate changes will need to happen again. It will probably require the team to lose someone like Suzuki this offseason to fix it; and that's going to suck, but it is what it is, as well. Unless Ricketts decided budgets are dumb and he no longer cares (if you believe this is the case, I have a bridge you may be interested in buying?) they'll probably have to rob Peter to pay Paul somewhere. And it will probably require new ideas being inserted in the organization, which may require something like Hottovy being relieved of duties even if it's not all his fault.

I think that is probably fair; but then I also think that's on people to understand the difference, which was the point of that. The lab is the vehicle, the organization is the driver. You put a teenager behind an F1 car, and if they crash, it's not the car's fault. I do think that the development thing gets a little hammered too hard. Like, the Cubs' squeezed an extra year out of Jameson Taillon last year largely because they taught him a kick change, as an example. The Cubs squeezed two quality years of Colin Rea because they tweaked his arm angle and pitch mix. And we can find faults in the plan (like maybe the Cubs can do that and still add good players) but these kinds of things generally go under valued, under the radar when people complain about "the lab" because they're not studs after that. Overall, I think every organization should be trying to find undervalued players, though. And especially in the bullpen. Like, look at last year's FA BP class. Sure, Phil Maton has been hurt and bad, but Edwin Diaz has been bad an hurt, Devin Williams has been bad, Rober Suarez has been hurt, Ryan Helsley has been hurt...and Mason Montgomery has been a top-13 reliever and he was a throw-in and was bad last year. The lesson here is that "if you're hoping for FA to save your pen, you're probably already in a bad place". You really need to develop "the guy" (or two/three) in your pen yourself but you can build a spine out of throw-aways. Like you should be able to find/develop a few Jacob Webb's every year - the Cubs' failure is that they haven't had young players stay healthy as the "guy" in the bullpen. Every time we think Porter Hodge or Daniel Palencia is ready they get hurt and fall away. Same with Alzolay. And this year there weren't many next-guys up. I do think that's a failure of the organization as much as it's a bit of bad luck (imagine if the Brewers saw Megill and Uribe do that? Would we think of them as the gold standard as much? Probably not). But this is really just a long winded post to say "I'm not mad people blame the lab, but I wanted to reframe the discussion". The tools aren't the issue, it's the carpenter more than anything.