Transmogrified Tiger

I think the September window will be pretty telling. Sargent stands a better chance than the average pop up player given his position and past experience with the National Team, but at the same time he hasn't been called in since the first WCQ window, where he got 125 minutes with no production(the US had a 0-1 scoreline with him on the field, 5-1 in the 150 mins without). Pepi didn't light the world on fire with his WCQ time either so I wouldn't be at all surprised, but if there's been enough tactical evolution since Sargent was last with the team, I wouldn't be surprised if Pepi gets taken over him if there's even a shred of playing time/form on Pepi's end.

Madrigal up to .316/.400/.368 since coming off the DL (45 PA)

Reyes had 2 triples in 1820 MLB PA before joining the Cubs, and now he has 2 in 35 PA as a Cub. As we all suspected the coaching staff unlocked something, but it was speed

I think that's true, and I think the league-wide progress in player development plays a big part. In 2013 there was less prospect upward mobility, especially for guys who had gotten above Low-A. Now individual player improvement is so common place that even if it's not the most likely outcome, there's a real chance that hot streaks are representative of a skill change that could be at least partially sustainable.

that makes 4 relief outings for Newcomb since he came back from Iowa: 5 IP, 1 H, 9 K, and... 7 BB edit: as a silver lining, 4 of those walks(vs 2 of the Ks) came in his second inning of work or later

I feel like a cranky old person on this, but I see a lot of big leaguers making bad tags like Willson just did. He has to come to you to touch the base, you don't have to go searching for a body part that will not be the first thing there. Great glove flip from Sampson though, maybe the best/most impactful one of those I've ever seen.

You hate to see a player bring his struggles at the plate into the field with him

Yeah Reyes being reasonably certain as the DH is not only objectively good, but it clarifies some of the direction you might go with other positions. You're less incentivized to bring back Willson if you have another 120 wRC+ RHH that you want to play most days as a DH. You worry less about OF depth and maybe trading someone like Happ or Velazquez, because even if Seiya doesn't bounce back you aren't relying on the OF to soak up a bunch of DH playing time too. And it clarifies the need around 1B a bit more, in that you probably aren't doing a new platoon at 1B and are likely going to want to target some type of LHH there(could be Bell, Mervis, a reclamation, etc)

Yeah I've seen some understandable trepidation about that move but I'm more positive about it than an attacker. Dest should do well in a ball-dominant scheme and while he'd need to maintain health and a certain level to keep a spot, I think given his skill set, Man U being a team with a ton of possession, and the lack of strong existing options he could be set up well there. Plus Ten Hag would know what he's getting from past experience, though as we've seen with Pulisic that's far from the most important thing.

If there's a silver lining, half the hits were groundballs and two of those were infield hits, so at least he wasn't giving up a bunch of rockets. But still, not great.

This pretty accurately sums up my feelings on the Pulisic destinations Man U is not only toxic, but the positional congestion is worse than Chelsea unless Rashford or Sancho leave and/or Ronaldo exclusively plays the 9 or leaves.

Britton as next year's Robertson feels almost too obvious the fit is so good. I've also liked Estevez for a while, in general I'm really keen on pitchers who have only known Colorado(Marquez is the other I'm eyeing) this offseason, both for altitude and player development reasons. Kimbrel I can take or leave, there's plenty of reason to think he can be really good and might welcome the chance to work with the coaching staff again, but I can also see him getting more than I'd prefer to spend on a reliever, and his velocity is at an all time low at 34 so he's closer to being truly cooked than he ever has.

so, Reyes has resumed hitting the bejeezus out of everything right from the start of his Cubs tenure, that's a fun development

Canario HR

Thinking through the way the front office's approach in their tenure so far, I wonder if they might not go for one of the SS if the right trade candidate becomes available. In particular I'm thinking about Rafael Devers. Why would Boston trade him? They're kind of a mess, they aren't good enough right now, six of their top 10 position players + SP are FA, and while they'll have money to spend they can't reasonably spend their way alone to competition in one offseason given how many holes there are to fill. That's a problem with Devers being one year from FA and early media reports are not very optimistic about an extension. Even though it's not popular, we've seen Bloom make this move before with the Mookie trade, and if they're bearish on Devers' future, whether it's his glove forcing to 1B/DH or his bat not persisting for some reason, the path is there for him to be available. Then the question might be, why trade for Devers when others are there for just money? The biggest one is age, Devers doesn't turn 26 til October, so if you're extending him prior to the season you're cutting off a significant amount of unproductive years compared to signing one of the SS, especially if it's not Correa you're signing. With Devers only a year from FA the cost would be noticeable but not obscene, and if you didn't keep Willson you'd have a head start on backfilling the cost, especially with many non-QO SP of interest. Additionally, Devers fits the team's need really well. He's an outstanding LHH power hitter that can stay at 3B at least for a few years, and the bat is well rounded enough that it may prove a better value than banking on the defense/positional value of some of the SS. What would that trade look like? The Betts deal again proves a useful blueprint. Mookie was a year older and a lot better, but also the Cubs wouldn't be taking back the equivalent of David Price's salary either. So if we roughly pattern match to that deal, it could maybe look something like Morel, Herz, and Triantos? That's not a small price, but if you consider the Contreras pick is roughly equivalent to Triantos and the ultimate limitations of those other 2, plus the benefit of not having to win a bidding war and getting a younger star, I can definitely see it being preferable for a FO that seems to fear too much age/contract downside.

That would be worrisome, but also he's 26 and has 40 IP above A ball with 25 BB, and might be out of options next year(I can never be certain). He's basically another Espinoza in my mind, which is to say I'm not putting much weight on his performance one way or the other.

Leigh isn't imminently Rule 5 eligible(though he turns 25 by opening day so the clock is ticking in that sense), so that says something about their view of him relative to options at Tennessee, though I guess most of those current options are guys nominally starting still(Jensen, Thompson). I wonder if there's a corresponding MLB promotion coming. Espinoza is the most obvious demotion candidate I can see, though you never know who might need an IL stint too.

the thing that gives me pause is that he lost out at dortmund too and under the other manager at Chelsea. For sure getting anywhere but Chelsea would be good. Did he lose out at Dortmund? I thought they did the thing they've done with other players before which was basically drop him once it became clear he wasn't staying at Dortmund beyond the year. Lampard is incompetent so I'm not particularly worried about that either. I do get the concern, though I think that's kinda part of the game now for attackers of a certain vintage. You get too good to go to anywhere but Champions League clubs, but most of them are trying to find playing time for 7 good attackers and you have to go supernova to be an every game player in a lot of cases.

Doesn't really seem to be looking at the whole picture to just mention rolling snake eyes on the injuries to our starters, a good portion of which are bad when healthy, and ignore Steele and Thompson exceeding all expectations and then Sampson giving us like 10 very above average starts. Yes, 10% of the games were started by bad pitchers. But, Alec Mills was regarded as our 5th starter to open the year. Yes, sometimes players exceed expectation(Steele and Thompson) and sometimes they disappoint(Hendricks and kinda Stroman), that's a pretty normal state of affairs. What isn't normal is your best expected starters missing 40% of those starts due to injury, and mostly simultaneously for further damage.

But our bullpen has generally outproduced the rest of the team, after being projected to come in as 23rd in baseball (not to over rely on the FG numbers, but seems like a solid resource for this discussion). 21st in ERA, 22nd in FIP, 6th in xFIP (we're also bad defensively!), 15th in fWAR with, to your point, a ton of innings pitched, so not the most efficient way to get to league average. Again, was supposed to be bad, is bad, just maybe for different reasons. Projections don't represent a ceiling though, especially for something like a bullpen which is made up of a zillion small sample performances. Given how well the top half of the pen pitched(the only miss is Norris I think), with the benefit of hindsight I don't think it's unfair to say that projection was underrating the group. In order to get there they still had to have Leiter Jr, Swarmer, Mills, and Newcomb start more than 10% of the team's games. And you had to give dozens of relief innings to those guys plus Rucker, Gsellman, Espinoza, etc because those rotation fill-ins weren't available in the pen. Bottom line, I still feel comfortable saying the team/pitching staff as constructed was a bit below .500(mid 70s wins) and they rolled snake eyes on some variance, that happens. If anything it's somewhat fortunate because they've been able to answer some rotation questions through it and 2023 has a higher floor for the trouble.

A couple weeks ago David Laurila's notes column asked a former NPB pitcher now in MLB about the top pitchers: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-torontos-hunter-mense-played-pro-ball-with-a-teenage-giancarlo-stanton/

Seems like it might be an unpopular opinion, but I would not bother with calling up Hill, or even rostering him at the end of the year in all likelihood. He's not an upgrade in defense, power, or patience over Ortega, so the hope is that his hit tool sustains in MLB despite never doing anything like it at previous levels. Plus it seems fairly clear that his AAA line is driven by those first couple weeks at AAA which aren't proving sustainable: 5/31-7/3: 111 PA, .382/.432/.520 7/4-8/14: 113 PA, .299/.310/.420 I get the appeal of having someone with options, especially given the lack of LHH OF on the 40 man, but that type of player is available for basically free most years(like Ortega!) so I don't think there's a big opportunity cost. Plus I really don't think Hill is in much danger of not being around if left unrostered.

What counts as a major signing for you? They added a 5/100 and 3/71 contract last offseason, and not too many had longer than 5 years or higher than 24 AAV(and even fewer had both).

That’s all well and good but why should the assumption be that a former top ranked amateur who just lopped 11% off his K rate and added 40 to his wRC+ (a 21 YO Contreras posted a 109 wRC+ at the level, Hearn’s at 102) just be done making gains? Because Ks and batting average? He was showing the same flyball hitting, high Iso game even before this breakout, so why should the assumption be that they’ll go away? They might but what might happen seems less important than what is happening Consensus top 10 prospects in the low minors for Cubs with above league average K rates: Alcantara (27% Ks, above the league), Crow-Armstrong (28% at SB with a 7/50 BB:K), Hernandez (29%)….It seems very arbitrary to see all the upside there and not get why it’s probably going to be OK to look beyond K rate on a catcher (a LHH catcher at that) delivering an all around season with meaty gains (including, coincidentally, K rate and BA) Hitting is a weak-link skill, yours gets exploited until you fix it or fail out. Lopsided profiles exist, but they still require a minimum threshold of competence for the profile to not collapse, and lopsided profiles generally have higher highs than Hearn's. But don't take my word for it, I didn't check every name but I don't see a single big leaguer of substance with that combination of K and AVG in Low-A going back 15 years: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board-scouting-and-stats?pos=all&level=4&lg=2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,14,12,13,15,16,17,18,30,32,33&stats=bat&qual=0&type=1&team=&season=2006&seasonEnd=2021&org=&ind=0&splitTeam=true&players=&sort=20,1&pageitems=10000000000000&pg=0 The only ones I can see that even got a cup of coffee(e.g. Will Benson) got a mulligan on A ball and showed much much better hitting ability in that 2nd chance.

One of the things I'm finding tricky with plotting out the offseason is just how much flexibility is taken away when you sign one of the SS. Assuming a 35M AAV, you'd spend as much on a Correa and a Smyly as you did on Seiya + Stroman. I'm not saying you shouldn't sign one of them, but it does mean you have to make some tough choices with the rest of the holes they might try to fill, even if you assume they'll jump payroll all the way to the luxury tax line(which I think is too optimistic for 2023). On that note, the two uncertain decisions that seem to be the biggest factor in those tradeoffs are at catcher and in the rotation. There's literally no outcome for the catcher position that would completely surprise me, but the range of expenditures is significant. And given Hendricks' setback, Jed's comments about pitching depth and liking to integrate prospects via the bullpen, I'm wondering if they're going to try to add 2 SP this year, which could be done in any number of different ways.