Transmogrified Tiger

Because (AFAIK) xBA is just a reflection of EV and launch angle, there are some edge cases in looking at it descriptively like this. Objectively all of those are not good contact and reflect that most of them were off balance and not barreled, but the fact that their placement and launch angle(which from the pitcher's perspective is basically random happenstance)are likely to be a single means the xBA is high. Process over result, essentially, even though it's an 'expected' stat.

that was such a lazy approach by McNeil I thought I was watching myself playing slow pitch for a second

Yeah you absolutely cannot pick up Hendricks' option, even if he's very good he's still dancing a razor's edge to be good. There's no stability or floor you're locking in, and it's the same AAV that guys like Eovaldi and Senga (and Taillon) got.

Stroman would be only opting out of 1 year though, he signed a 3 year deal with an opt out after 2. Which maybe was inevitable barring injury/collapse given the league wide spending last year, but a sub-3 ERA he's at now would almost certainly seal it.

When you said they got a D+ I knew I only needed to ctrl-f for "mooney" to find the Cubs blurb. C+/B-, the results aren't ideal but at Memorial Day it's a rounding error for where they should be expected to be. For the team's long term trajectory the individual results have been good(save for Taillon and I guess Mervis) and bordering on too good(increased likelihood of Stroman opt out). Their biggest areas for improvement save for just adding a stud hitter or SP are among the easier things to address both internally(bullpen shuffle) and externally(1B/DH are not expensive). If they can get Taillon out of that funk and back to at least being competitive I'll feel pretty good about them moving forward.

My glass half full take on Hendricks is that I think the rest from his injury and the focus on increasing his velocity combined with him looking sharp in AAA means he can be pretty good. I think he'll probably have a couple games where he gets burned by the long ball or imperfect command(so something a bit worse than his pre-pandemic levels in total), but the aforementioned rest and not pitching in games til May should help hedge against it. The glass half empty take is that even with some improved velocity, he's old enough that he's not going to have the elite sharpness of command he needs for every single hitter at the MLB level, and when he doesn't have that he's batting practice so he'll have a handful of blow up starts and a handful more that are really frustrating 5 IP, 3-4 R where one bad inning or a couple bad hitters kills him. That guy doesn't deserve the rotation spot over Wesneski(or Brown later in the year), but I'm not sure he'll be bad enough to give the org the conviction to cut him. If he doesn't have it, getting rocked repeatedly could be a small mercy in that regard.

Keegan got lit up in his first Iowa appearance: 0.2 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 0/3 K/BB, HR

I couldn't see exactly but I think Alonso might've bit hard on Hoerner's deke

the sanker is sankin

To this point, there haven't really been any meaningful plate discipline improvements thus far, at least when looking at his MLB time as a whole: The swing/mechanics changes are clearly allowing him to do more damage though, so that probably gives him more margin for error in that regard than he had last year. Also, 6/3 K/BB in his last 22 PA during the HR streak is at least the start of some good signs.

turns out that going on a hike in between fielding and throwing the ball is ill advised

I swear half of Morel's home runs look almost unintentional, like he hit that 108 off the bat and it didn't particularly look like he got his best swing on it

There's a week gap in there and he wasn't tearing the cover off the ball in that time, but PCA has 4 walks in his last 32 PA.

lol how does JD come up with these puns even when it's not sure if they're still on air

Nimmo runs well and it'd be an awkward throw so it's not an outright mistake, but a little surprised Wisdom didn't commit to what looked like his first reaction and go home

Seiya doing first pitch damage is an excellent sign

Am I missing something obvious, or why wouldn't it be Bam that is put on Jokic defensively?

Madrigal I think gets a little bit of a bum rap because of some folks' predisposition against guys with his profile(call it PTSDusty maybe), and I've been pleasantly surprised at how good he's been at 3B. Also, I do think his numbers have been depressed by being a bit of a sacrificial lamb and drawing a disproportionate number of PA against the best starters/those with elite stuff, which not only keeps his production a touch lower but shields the alternatives. That said, this is an argument that's much more valid if Madrigal is around an 80-85 wRC+, not 60. And I don't see a whole lot of reason to have Madrigal and Mastrobuoni to be half of your every day bench. I don't have super strong feelings on which one should go away(Mastrobuoni is LHH but hasn't shown anything with the bat, Madrigal has shown more defensively and historically with the bat), but one should be going to Iowa soon.

Cubs relievers are 9th in MLB in K%, Leiter Jr is top 10 of qualified individual RP, and all 4 of those guys you mentioned are striking out a quarter of the hitters they face. The pen has been far from infallible but the line of reasoning here isn't really coherent.

They are 9th in pitcher BB%, 19th in hitter K%(half a percent from being top half), and 12th in hitter IsoP, none of these are gaping flaws in the team right now. It seems pretty clear to me that the team is better than it's record, and while that's cold comfort since they probably aren't good & lucky enough to overcome that gap over the course of the season, it does mean we can be more clear eyed about what's going wrong and what the way forward should be. To me there's three main problems outside of things that boil down to luck/sequencing: The starting pitching hasn't been elite recently, so instead of potentially carrying the team it's shining a spotlight on other failures at the margins. In the first 23 games there were 4 starts with 4+ runs allowed and in the last 23 games there's been 7. This mostly boils down to the depth being tested and Taillon being horrific. If he can get sorted out(and there's no other path to try here given his contract) then this should be something that resolves itself. Hendricks avoiding disaster starts will be very important too, because I suspect he's going to get at least as long as Wesneski to prove his rotation worthiness. The position player depth has failed. Madrigal(though he deserves way less fanbase flak), Mastrobuoni, Hosmer, and now Mervis have not hit, and combined with the weird roster composition(I harped on needing LHH all winter for this reason) means that the offense is very good when it is whole but middling when inevitable trials are faced(Bellinger/Hoerner injuries, Suzuki/Wisdom slumps). Morel helps with this a bit but it's still a group with too much skill set overlap, particularly in its right handedness. First base and DH are black holes. This is related to the position player depth but I want to call it out specifically because these are positions that are supposed to help with consistency and stability in an offense, but they are bottom 5 at both spots offensively. Hosmer got a lot of ire for this but Mervis has been worse than even tempered expectations, particularly in pitch recognition. Mancini has floated under the radar but he's been bad too. Hopefully Morel keeps hitting and then once Bellinger is healthy you can start helping out more with Wisdom or even Velazquez if Mancini/Mervis can't get it going, but otherwise it's the singular spot on the team most ripe for external improvement. The pen might feel like a peculiar omission here, but I think it has the easiest way forward given the shuffling that's already taken place. It's also the spot that feels the most luck-driven(bullpen ERA is underperforming FIP and xFIP pretty dramatically) in its cause.

Castellanos forgot who he was for a minute

in my opinion, the Cubs should stop getting picked off at 1st base

This is a...confusing complaint. The Cubs current bullpen has 2 guys who average 97, 3 guys who average 95, and thus far on the season their relievers as a team are right in the middle of the pack in fastball velocity.

Triantos hitting XBH more than once a week would be a fun development

welcome back to the big leagues Mike, here's an infielder throwing an eephus with middle school velocity