Transmogrified Tiger

HR for Preciado, the BB/K is still not where it needs to be, but he's legitimately raking this month.

Honestly I was expecting worse from the description. He should score and didn't even get it on target, but he still had to beat the keeper which makes the angle tighter than it appears.

Kilian has been on 4 days rest in his recent starts, that would have him in line to pitch in Iowa on Tuesday and have an extra day of rest to start the 30th. So basically no shuffling needed to line him up for those 2 starts.

Bote sighting at Iowa, he doubled in his first PA

Is his velo up? Fangraphs doesn't have the Pitch Info section for this year, but their other Pitch Type section has his fastball lower than both 2021 and 2020. My guess is that teams are probably going to see him more as a 5 unless there's a meaningful uptick. He's getting ripped by righties and he's not getting a lot of K's either. With the new playoff format maybe there's some inflation through having few true sellers though.

Do you mind translating what you wrote about Palencia? When a pitcher who isn't pitching very well in general has a really good but short start, the hype train around Cubs Twitter is a little disproportionate. If he had gone 7 IP or been more consistently doing that then that would be different, but for someone who profiles more as a reliever than rotation stalwart, it's a bit much

That is probably the rub. If you have a bottom 5 MLB team and a bottom 5 farm system, how good are your odds of swaying his opinion in 2 years? And the opportunity cost is pretty significant because we've seen even elite players don't command enormous packages as they get closer to FA.

I have to leave soon and just casted a browser tab with Youtube for a few minutes, it went from the dopey announcers to Pat and Ron for the last 2 hitters and then back to the other guys as they threw it to commercial. Real bang up production from Google

Just realized Frazier is rehabbing with Iowa, 0 for 4 yesterday and 1 for 3 with a single today.

everything dies, even robots

The Red Sox or the Saudi Yankees is a pretty easy call for me.

Alcantara in May: 61 PA, .302/.393/.623, 4 HR, 11.5% BB%, 24.6% K%, 175 wRC+

You just killed my buzz. But looking at his minor league numbers prior to this start that seems spot on. Maybe we can trade him for a new Aramis. And to be clear that's not a terrible outcome! For most of his Cubs tenure Hernandez was a league average player or slightly below, and having someone of that caliber able to eat up playing time at multiple positions helps raise a team's floor. Plus he could always figure something out and be more of a Contreras or a Chris Taylor in terms of value.

I almost feel like Willson plus positional flexibility and a bit more swing and miss is maybe a better comparison. Or maybe Jose Hernandez for those who remember him.

Villar looked obviously safe in real time, what are we doing here

not sure if I've ever seen a dust up as transparently petulant than what Vogelbach did there

if you misplay a ball so badly that Vogelbach gets a triple to LF, you should strongly consider retiring on the spot

Alcantara HR

What's the current status of the 40 man roster? I thought the team website was the gold standard, but they show 43 players on the list(not including 60 day DL guys), don't show Newcomb on the DL, etc. Hughes who isn't one of the 43 was apparently added without dropping someone, but I have no idea what that means for the rest.

It was clearly trending this way, but calling up Morel instead of playing Happ in CF even temporarily feels like a defining moment for Happ's future. Not a problem when he's 6th in MLB in OBP, but when the cooldown inevitably comes, the LF only profile is certainly dimmer long term.

With Steele showing some length recently and Stroman presumably not too far from returning to the rotation, you can add Thompson to this list soon too.

Is it me or is Simmons short-arming all his throws from short? They've all been routine plays so maybe that's his accuracy motion, but given his slow-healing injury was shoulder soreness, maybe not a great sign.

Given the GD should really only need a draw. That said, Arsenal please roast Everton so Leeds can have a better shot at safety and the dream of getting to see Pickford react to getting relegated stays alive.

I struggle with how to interpret a lot of the pitchers that are in a similar category, some of whom have been discussed in the last week. I'll roughly call them guys with big stuff but at least one big flaw, probably control and possibly also lack of performance/endurance as a starter. This is a broad brush, but guys like Espinoza, Kohl Franklin, Cam Sanders, Luke Little, DJ Herz, and Max Bain all qualify to a certain degree. On one hand, pitching development has been turned on its head so much that there isn't a golden path guys have to walk down, and with innings being managed it's very possible that the reps they need to take that last step may just come later than they did 10 years ago. Plus with multi-inning relievers and piggyback situations becoming more of a norm at the MLB level, they don't need to be a 200 IP workhorse to be valuable. On the other hand, prospects fail as a rule, so guys who can't throw enough strikes to not walk 4-5 guys per 9 in South Bend or Tennessee are really unlikely to be key MLB contributors without a big change(and one that modern pitch dev hasn't solved as well as stuff). And when you think about potential rule changes that disincentivize big stuff/no control profiles and/or encourage SP endurance, the window of opportunity for them to be very useful at the MLB level seems small. And ultimately if MIRP is the ceiling for a guy I find it hard to get overly jazzed, because that profile is increasingly fungible. I named 6 of them above and none were in the Cubs Fangraphs top 10, for example. I'm not really driving at a specific point here, just sharing that I struggle with being happy and excited that the system has a lot of big stuff guys filtering through that show signs and stretches of dominance, but when I look at their performance as a whole and I don't really see too many guys I'm particularly hopeful of becoming rotation regulars(Kilian and Wicks are probably the 2, and notably they are in the aforementioned Top 10).

Who could've predicted that besides literally anyone If it makes you feel better, that's mostly a product of him exclusively playing against LHP, and going 7 for 19 w/ a 2B and 2 HR in his first 5 games. Since those first 5 games his line is .143/.314/.179 for a 66 wRC+