Jason Ross

Kyle Tucker is represented by Excel Sports. Not Scott Boras.

He had three balls in play with a .490 xBA or higher. Only one hit. There's improvement. Tonight's first PA wasn't great but yesterday was quite good regardless of result.

He's been less good than the numbers look. His wRC+ against RHP is under 100, and his LHP wRC+ is carrying him. He's hit four home runs against LHP in just 41 PA's where as he has one HR against RHP. He's hit just two home runs over his last two months; a two home run game in Sacramento against JP Sears; one of the worst LHP starts in baseball thus far. Two of his other home runs came in a game on the 18th of April. One of those two was a HR only because of the Crawford boxes (it was a home run in only 1/30 ballparks). They were both off of Kyle Hart, a replacement level pitcher who has since been sent to Triple-A (where h's been terrible at). That isn't to entirely diminish his season, those are real outcomes, you can't simply ignore them and good hitters beat up on bad pitching...but I think the wRC+ and the total line makes him seem like he's been really good, that he's been 15% better than league average. A dive into the numbers suggest that he's probably been less good then that most nights.

I will be very disappointed both in the Cubs and Hoyer if the "sweet spot" on Lugo was anywhere near Kevin Alcantara to begin with, regardless of other pieces. Alcantara is showing some red flags certainly, but is three months removed from being a pretty universal-top-75 type. I'm inclined to believe that there's some help and potential fixing that could happen as it pertains to his issues on non-fastballs. There's enough age there that I don't think we're at a nuclear option yet. Or at least, hope. On the flip side, Lugo's top-line looks good, but the processes and under-the-hood stuff are horrible. He's taken major steps back on chase, whiff, and contact quality against from where he was in 2024. Couple in the age and the potential to be stuck with Lugo next year if the processes eventually match the top-line (as in, he regresses to those processes) the Cubs should be able to find a far cheaper option who won't come with the potential for a 2026 grenade than to have to trade a down-year Alcantara. He did succeed in 2023 with similarly wonky Statcast data, but it's hard to think that it's very repeatable. Still the xData liked him more then, too. If he was coming from an organization who hasn't had success recently in pitching, I'd maybe buy that you could find some fix/help, but considering the progress of pitchers like Ragans and Bubic, it isn't like the Royals are currently an org who's incapable of squeezing some value out of starters like maybe we would have viewed them four years ago. Last year Martin Perez, at age 33 went for an 18 year old lottery ticket. Perez was not as good on the top-line, but his processes painted a similar picture. Lugo's got history to where you can argue his value is more because of it, but I cannot see the massive leap-and-bound that it would take to get to Alcantara.

Palencia vs Willson will be fun the rest of the year.

Good double play potential here with Saggese

I don't remember many pickoffs, but Lester picking that prick off of 1b was such a memorable moment.

Wow, great sequence to Nolan there by Daniel.

They did. But they also worked around some weird Jon Lester stuff there with David Ross. I think the Cubs would have preferred not to have 3 C's, one of whom was only there to play when one pitcher threw. But it's the price you pay for Jon Lester. Reese McGuire doesn't have the same caveat and would, probably, just sit there. He's had a cool little run, but it's probably in the best interest of the Cubs to let it be that; a cool little unexpected run.

Matt Shaw on the day: 83mph single xBA of .740 107mph lineout xBA of .490 28mph popout xBA of .070 101 lineout xBA of .490 That's about as good of a 1-4 as you'll see. He deserved a bit more.

Oh, fully agree on the McGuire thing. 49 PA's ago he was on an MiLB deal. If the Cubs rolled into the year with him and either Kelly or Amaya as the C duo, people would have thrown a fit. He's still Reese McGuire

Correct. I think we all have to accept that Turner probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I suspect, even if he can't really ever start hitting, he's going to be kept in the 26th-man-vibes role. The team seems to enjoy his contributions in the clubhouse. And my most meathead opinion (and understand I say this as a guy who's been heavy into analytics for two decades now) is that there are things like clubhouse stuff, that over the course of 162 games, can matter. We don't have a data point for it, but the year is a grind and having someone who can keep guys mentally there has value.

He's hit well, but I'm not sure what purpose he serves. Amaya and Kelly have played more than well enough to be the 1a/1b situation, so they don't need a 3rd catcher. Next, none are capable of playing another position. Kelly is the only one of the three who's played any other defensive position, and it was 1 inning of 3b in 2019. It would be one thing if any of the three had extensive 1b history; but they don't. I know the Cubs barely use their 26th man right now, but at least Jon Berti offers utility if you need it. We'll see. I guess he could take the Berti-vibes role for a bit, but he'd basically never play. It'd be simply out of emergency if another C went down.

Matt Shaw, in around 240 PA's is rocking a wRC+ over 140 in Triple-A. I'm sorry, but this sentiment that he's going to work through these things in Iowa is pretty wrong. He's dominated the level. I cannot explain to people enough that the gap between Double-A and Triple-A has shrunk massively and the gap between Triple-A and MLB has grown greatly. For a really good example of this, look at how the Cubs have handled Cade Horton and how the Reds have handled Chase Burns. The best arms are essentially skipping the level after a few good starts. What this means is that going to Iowa to face the Kenta Maeda's of the world isn't going to help a rookie make the jump, especially when they've dominated the level. Rookies are not getting exposed to the high level arms in Triple-A they were a few years ago - MLB teams have brought those guys up to not waste bullets before the TJS they will (almost) inevitably have. I understand people would like a better option at 3b right now (Shaw's had a nice game offensively today, he's hit the 2nd hardest ball of the day, and has a single already) but this idea that sending him to Iowa is going to be the fix, isn't it. The approach needs to be challenged at the MLB level. This is what rookies do, I cannot stress this enough. 3-4 months of struggle is how rookies get through it right now. There might come a point where the Cubs will have to replace Shaw this year. But when he comes back up, expect more of this. More Iowa isn't the answer to fixing this. It's more MLB.

"Hey look what I found". Damnit.

I would guess there will be some limitations. He missed a handful of weeks and his longest outing during his rehab was 4 innings and 17 hitters faced. My expectation is that he's going to be taken out after 5 innings or so unless he's cruising.

There's little reason for the Pirates to realistically consider trading him. I don't think there is any chance he's moved.

The comparison is not of who he's replacing, but the level of value he's currently showing. I am not sure that the team needs another Jameson Taillon, but something better. The contract here becomes interesting. Does the control increase the price? Or does it decrease the price? If the Cubs can find something in the profile they like and can add chase, whiff and ultimately K%, then there is likely a reason to be a fan. I'm not 100% sure thats the case here, as on a quick profile glance, there isn't a very specific or obvious candidate for that. Not saying there isn't, either.

I'm fairly luke warm on Keller. He's done a few interesting things under the hood this year which has made his location better, but his K% has really dropped. Stuff+ isn't super-big on his pitch shapes, not is BP's models. It's cool he's controlled, but I'd guess his price becomes prohibitive based on his quality. Is Keller any better, than say, Jameson Taillon? Probably not significantly, as Keller's xFIP of 3.92 is in shouting distance of Taillon's 4.19. Is that worth the cost of admission?

48 hours ago the Cubs had the best record in the NL just a few games before the half way point. I get that the Cardinals are our biggest rival, but we don't need to go off the deep end because we lost two games. Reality is the pitching cannot give up this many home runs; it will even out. They still need help, but they arent going to serve up HR derby balls for much longer either. A good thing to remember is that when the Cubs are in a bad stretch, it's rarely as bad as it feels. They will come out of this.

I think Ben Brown hits an interesting blind spot on some advanced data; he gets good whiff, good chase, doesn't "walk" a ton but gives up a ton of hard contact that stays in the ballpark. He's rocking bottom barrel hard hit, exit velocity and barrel rates. He's also got a pretty high BABIP against, one I don't feel is particularly "luck" based. Ben Brown has a tendency to just throw fastballs when he's behind in the count. And he leaves them in good places. Compare how Brown throws the zone when behind versus, say, Cade Horton. Brown is on the left and Horton is on the right. Horton, when he's behind, goes away from the zone far more often. He throws his slider down and out, and he's just not afraid to give up a ball. Ben Brown throws in a hittable zone and once he's down, it's almost all fastballs. Cade uses his other offerings more in the count when he's behind. You can see the approach difference in both. The guy on the right feels confident that he can throw strikes later in the count. The guy on the left feels like needs to "steal a strike" to get back to the knuckle curve. And as he tries to steal a strike, opposing hitters can sit fastball, hit the ball hard. For Brown lots of this lands in play for hits. But since xFIP ignores hits in play, it doesn't calculate this.

I think he'd fit young, but he mentioned a "good, young veteran" and I just don't know if he's pitched enough to earn that moniker. Merrill Kelly would hit the good and the veteran, but not the young. It's hard to make what of what from that as we don't usually attribute "young" and "veteran" in the same player...usually one or the other. We'll see if anything happens or goes down. Wonder why it isn't going to happen. Is it because Shota is for sure a good to go? Did the team have a good last 10 games (Like, say, the Tampa Bay Rays and Drew Rassmussen?) and don't want to sell so much? Did the Cubs decide to aim higher? Do they like Cleveland or KC more? Interesting stuff.

I wouldn't advocate him starting with the Cubs. But as a reminder, the Cubs start Chase Strumpf at 3b in Iowa many days and routinely start Darius Hill or a similar ilk at DH. The Cubs could carve out a role for him in Iowa if they look at the tape/scouting and feel like they have a plan to rehab him. I'm not over the moon on the idea, but its a low risk move if they made it. And could give the team a switch hitting 1b/3b option if they get him back to something resembling to what he was. And if not, an easy release candidate!

Anecdotes. Neither OPS+ nor wRC+ deals in such a small sample size well. These are season-long statistics. Even at a game level, when we're boring down on what is a single game's worth of chances, you'll get funny things. Bad players have good games. Good players have bad games. wRC+ and OPS+ strive to peer through the anecdotal game-by-game outcomes and tell you what they're like on the overall. There is a concept in statistics in which is considered "stabilization". Essentially, "at what point is this data set beyond just pure, dumb, random luck?". Each statistic requires a different burden of proof, so there's no magic bullet, but every data point is well above the four-plate-appearance level. Most (beyond just wRC+ and OPS+, think like hard hit rate, barrel rate, pull rate, k-rate...) need at least 50 PA's of outcomes and there are some that require even more to really paint an accurate picture. Prior to that, they're anecdotal and not really important. It's cool to go 3-4, and have a double, but in a one-game sample size, even bad MLB players do that sometimes. So we need more data so that one good game from, like, Leodys Tavares isn't skewing the data. We have more than enough data to know he's a bad hitter, and that he's not magically a .750 guy now. Scoring runs, however, in general, is not something we want to attribute to a single player and all current analytics ignore this. I had mentioned "noise" before, and these are "noise" data, they create static because they add a second player into the mix. If I hit a ground ball to 2b and a runner scores from 3b, for example, all I did was hit a ground ball; that's bad. That there was someone on third base...I didn't do that, someone else did. A common counter argument to this is "situational hitting", and, yeah, I guess, but if we're being honest with ourselves, "situational hitting" still creates and out, limits more runs scoring later, and the batter is still trying not to make an out in almost all scenarios. It's also anecdotal and not a relevant sample size, so it's something we can usually ignore. The outcome of the PA by the batter (weak ground ball) is more predictive than "but yeah, he got the run home!" Similarly, if I score from 3b, cool, I should get credit for what I did to get to 3b (say, a double and stolen base) but scoring on that ground ball still required someone else. A different "someone else" in both situations and maybe a run doesn't score. We want to, as accurately as we can, determine only what one, singular player is capable of doing. So, we cut out the static, the noise, as much as possible. These are viewed as "team statistics" and not player specific ones. You can use these concepts to understand why things like ERA (which is affected greatly by team defense for example), RBI, runs scored, etc are largely considered obsolete. They had their moment but we're beyond them as meaningful data points in player evaluation. I think from a team perspective they may share some interest, but for individual players, they do not.

You're looking far too deeply into that analogy, my friend. That was to demonstrate on the very surface level how we simply can't weigh everything equally, not demonstrate every depth of how OBP and SLG are not to be weighed the same. It's not a full 1:1. I would caution to not throw the baby out with the bathwater here or make the analogy more than it needs to be. To be fair to myself and my post, that would be a fairly strong misrepresentation of the data I am trying to help people understand.