Transmogrified Tiger

"Friday Cubs! Friday Cubs! Friday Cubs!"

Tried to be clever and get a low % Yankee 40 HR and got burned(maxed at 38). Probably wouldn't have been able to remember a COL/DET either way though, so the 8/9 was deserved

Pretty encouraged by the landing spots of the USMNT guys on the move in Europe so far. Pepi to PSV, Aaronson to Union Berlin, Pulisic to Milan seems done, Musah either at Fulham or Milan. Just need to quiet that Balogun to Chelsea rumor and find a good home for Adams and Dest.

They needed a minimum of 2 more innings from the bullpen, had already used Palencia and Leiter Jr(who went 29 pitches so couldn't go a 2nd inning), Alzolay had pitched 2 straight days and 3 of 4, and Rucker went 35 pitches yesterday. So even if Fulmer(who had given up a run in 2 of his last 15 appearances) is apparently unusable, you have to use some combination of Merryweather, Assad, and Kay to get through those last 2 innings. Using Fulmer is fine in that situation, probably preferred given that 6-7-8 was due up.

Wow that is not the name I was expecting to read at #2

Taillon vs. Friday Cubs is a real test of opposing forces edit: Taillon's one Friday start was one of his best of the season in a 2-1 win @SD, Friday Cubs superiority confirmed

this is great

lol the moment Morel got jobbed I knew Bellinger was gonna do that and have the call potentially cost them the tie game

Right, Martinez is allowed to check a strange piece of equipment, and he's allowed to think EDLC is being immature for taking it personally in his celebration. He's not objecting to fun/celebrations, the situation is tantamount to a guy hitting a HR after a check swing appeal doing a fake point to 3rd base to celebrate.

boy we really got human elemented in this inning

bonk

I dunno I'm kinda with Martinez on this one. Guy had a weird thing on the end of his bat, he asked the umpires to check it/if it was legal, umpires said it was fine so he didn't make further fuss. EDLC hits a HR and points to his bat, as he should be allowed to, and Martinez thinks he's being a baby for taking it personally, as he should be allowed to.

I got curious so I checked on how Schanuel fared against power conference competition, and even though these are midweek games it did make me feel a little bit better. FAU had 6 games against Miami and Florida, Schanuel in those games: 29 PA, .545/.655/1.500, 7 HR, 7/4 BB/K

Especially since there's so many fewer divisional games, I think it's more useful to think in terms of what the likely win count of the division may be, then you can center the conversation around how likely it is the Cubs can pull that off. I'd expect some drop off from the Reds, but between them and the Brewers it seems like a safe bet that the division will require 86 wins. Hitting that mark requires the Cubs playing at a 96 win pace the rest of the year, which while not impossible is a gear they haven't shown in any real sense. As with Brock's thread the other day there's very little cost to simply waiting to see if things change(those 9 games between them could be opportune if they split and the Cubs get hot), but even if the Cubs start playing well it's not likely to change the calculus that it's an uphill battle.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2023-mock-draft-1-0/ All that matters is that they get it right in the very end, but boy does drafting a college 1B from a non-power conference make me antsy. Especially since he did not hit in the Cape last year.

Manny Rodriguez is in a pretty good run of form. After tonight his last month: 8 G, 9 IP, 8 H, 1 ER, 14/2 K/BB, 0 HR

Young was presumably the call up because it's intended to be short lived, with everyone healthy you've got to make a (potentially) more uncomfortable decision to get Mervis in there, so I take what I said back about Mervis being blocked. It's not so much 1B it's the roster spots where the bottom of the roster is performing 'okay' so there isn't an obvious choice unless you cut Mancini, which is a more substantial one-way door compared to the alternatives.

The Rizzo comparison is not that Mervis is destined for Anthony Rizzo's career in full, it's that Rizzo(like many others) faceplanted in his first attempt at MLB and the Cubs were the beneficiaries of not writing him off. More to this point, look no further than the offensive leaderboards for 1B this year and you'll see that putting things together in the mid-20s is not exactly unprecedented in the current era. Luke Raley, Ryan Noda, Lamonte Wade, Yandy Diaz, Christian Walker. Look back another year and you've got some of those names plus Ty France and Vinnie Pasquantino too. Teams hoard prospects now so the way to disproportionate impact is guessing/developing right on the ones that need that one tweak or opportunity they didn't get before. You extend that to your current roster by being careful not to write off players for having a poor initial impression.

"He's got the arm for it" Walker's body type really exaggerates the lack of instincts/footwork too, since he only played OF as a pro starting about a year ago. I assume they'll basically keep him at DH and maybe see if he can fake it in the OF in targeted cases until Goldschmidt is gone, at which point his real future home opens up. Of course, you can probably say that about Gorman too(and defense is a big reason the Cardinals are so bad this year), so they may have some decisions to make if both hit well enough.

Jared Young is currently playing 1B regularly, giving Mervis another shot doesn't require unblocking him on the roster. The only people that conceivably would be true for are Morel(defense only), Wesneski(injuries and 6 man rotation could do that too) and Amaya.

Two things jump to mind for me. One is the clutchiness bit that you allude to, and the way I would think to incorporate that as a catch all would be WPA. However Hoerner isn't a standout in WPA, though he's about 60th percentile for qualified players which is better than his league average wRC+. The other thing is baserunning, that's not a part of wOBA(and by extension, wRC+) or OPS+, and he's 19 of 21 in SB and 7th among qualifiers in BsR.

Let's try to figure out why that happened then. Happ was DH'd that day, which I think we can safely assume was a nod to get him some rest. He had played 19 straight games in LF which also meant he had played in 19 of 20 days. Nico was on the IL so Madrigal was at 2B. Hosmer hadn't been DFA'd yet so he, Mancini, and Mervis were all on the roster. That means that holding other starters in place, you have this group for 1B, 3B, and LF: Barnhart, Mervis, Mancini, Hosmer, Wisdom, Morel, Mastrobuoni Other important context is that a very good LH SP(Framber Valdez) was on the mound for the Astros, which essentially makes the 3 choices choose themselves(Wisdom, Morel, Mancini). Valdez doesn't have extreme splits so could they have snuck another LH in there? Maybe, but imagine what fans would've said about the lineup that included Mastrobuoni against Valdez at the expense of Wisdom or Morel(who ended up combining to go 2/9 with a BB, 2B, and HR, for 3 RBI). Mancini isn't an option at 3B or LF, so then the realistic choice we're left with then is which one Morel and Wisdom goes to. At a baseline, you'd prefer Wisdom at 3B, it's the more important position and he's better at it. Plus Wisdom had been playing 3B essentially every day for weeks and is the incumbent, so shuttling him to LF for a single game is at best a little odd, at worst damaging to Wisdom's productivity if he prefers consistency in his role. Additionally, Morel hadn't played 3B since he was recalled and hadn't played 3B in over 3 weeks total, while playing OF most every day in Iowa. So yes, he doesn't have copious experience in LF and Houston is a tricky option. The alternative Ross had was 1) continuing to play Happ and risk wearing him down 2) punt on a lineup spot by playing Mastrobuoni over Wisdom or Morel or 3) weaken 3B defense to put Wisdom(who doesn't play much LF either) in that spot. Maybe the best call was choosing one of those! But the 'I can't believe he made this legit WTF decision' framing doesn't seem to hold up. I'm sure there's other choices that have less backing, and I have my complaints with Ross too. But this is what I mean when I say that people don't interrogate why a given choice *was* made. It's easy to say(doubly so with hindsight) that it was simple and an unforced error to do X, but to understand what the actual motivation was requires embracing that lots of these calls are very much shades of gray that don't have objective right and wrong answers.

They'll be operating as if the team intends to be good in 2024, so while expiring contracts may not be very useful to that end, there's also complicating factors for almost all of them. Also so few teams are likely to be sellers that I don't think you lose much by waiting a while, no one is doing anything of consequence for another couple weeks anyway with the draft and deadline prep. Fulmer: Gone, hopefully they can follow the pattern from trading Martin and get a 2024 contributor(and, you know, keep them until 2024) Stroman - Pick a lane, trading him makes the 2024 job harder but so does losing him for nothing. Really need the right team so a trade return could have immediate impact(Minnesota?) Bellinger: Keep, unless the market is much more tilted towards sellers it's better to keep the comp pick and the option open to extend him. Hendricks/Smyly: Pursue trading one of them if you can get a good deal, I'd probably settle for what I could get in the case of Hendricks but if his value doesn't get close to Smyly's then it's not a super consequential decision anyway. Those are the headlines, but they've been a bit creative at deadlines before and I wonder if depending on the deal if they might consider trading one of these guys: Alzolay: We've seen what a problem a bad pen can be, but at the same time last year's first half studs(Effross, Thompson) are now both basically dead so no reliever is forever. Alzolay is sneaky old(28) and sneakily arb eligible, so if a team buys him as a relief ace I wouldn't be stunned if they tried to arbitrage him. Morel: This basically boils down to the question of if Morel being a zero with everything besides the bat is something you expect to continue. If it isn't then start gritting through his defense while he works it out, otherwise he's attractive if they're making a big decisive move Madrigal: Speaking of sneaky, he's playing at a league average level and has shown he's fine defensively in multiple positions. He doesn't fit a roster that plays Hoerner everyday and needs power from 3B though, so if some team has a similar caliber player that's a better fit then let's do it Merryweather/Leiter: Leiter would basically be the Effross deal, betting against a lower stuff profile to get an immediate roster upgrade. Merryweather would be a bet that a guy who will be 32 next year and has no proven MLB consistency isn't going to be fireman caliber again.

Your baseline expectation appears to be 'a manager that never does anything I find inexplicably bad', which will be a standard that no manager ever meets unless they have a team that is historically talented and injury-free. Managers have more info than us and we often don't consider all the angles that they need to when scrutinizing their decisions, and managers are frequently(especially with flawed teams like the 2023 Cubs) put in position to make dozens of coin flip decisions regularly that some people interpret as obviously good v. inexcusably bad. This doesn't mean that managers are immune from criticism on appeals to authority grounds, but at the same time the overwhelming majority of manager criticism isn't nearly as curious as they ought to be about why decisions they disagree with are actually made. Show me a manager that you think is better than Ross and it's extremely likely it's a manager with a much better team and a manager that you are not watching make decisions day in and day out.