Transmogrified Tiger

His K% is now 46.8%. That is also his K%-BB%.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that Hatch was only the first Cubs pick in the draft, and not a 1st round pick. He's a mess right now.

Agreed. The percentage of hits on early round pitchers the last couple years(thus far, at least) combined with dropping some picks for FAs has put them behind the curve a bit. There's still a handful of guys who can be solid MLB starters and a couple of them with a shot at being impact players, but the proportion of future MLB starters to guys with role player ceilings isn't where you'd like it to be.

In that timeframe he has a 3.59 FIP and 4.07 xFIP, which is explained by a .219 (!) BABIP against. Santana is fine as a guy to give you innings and I always like AL to NL transitions, but I don't think there's another gear there. He's not someone you want starting a playoff game any more than the Lackeys and Hammels of the world. He's decent at everything but not excellent at anything. Look at the quality of contact. His SOFT% is way up and his HARD and MED% are both down. His LD% is down from 21.7% to 13.6% so it's no wonder his babip is so low when people aren't making good contact against him. What has led to the drastic increase in poor contact? I have no idea, but based on the huge increase in Pull% there has to be something. I'm not saying he's not someone who can't beat his fielding independent peripherals, but Arrieta at his peak was still running a .240 BABIP. I'm pretty skeptical that Santana figured something out in his mid-30s that makes him a consistent low 3's ERA due mostly to soft contact.

Fine, drop Ely to #4 overall then.

This is fun: Player A: .273/.388/.382/.770 in AA, 10/7 BB/K 13 games at SS, 3 at 2B, 4 at 3B Player B: .279/.361/.395/.756 in AA, 10/15 BB/K 14 games at SS, 3 at 2B, 3 at 3B One of them is superprospect Gleyber Torres, the other is Cubs farmhand Andrew Ely, who needs to be looked up to double check that he's a real player and not made up.

In that timeframe he has a 3.59 FIP and 4.07 xFIP, which is explained by a .219 (!) BABIP against. Santana is fine as a guy to give you innings and I always like AL to NL transitions, but I don't think there's another gear there. He's not someone you want starting a playoff game any more than the Lackeys and Hammels of the world. He's decent at everything but not excellent at anything.

Good stuff. I'm not even so sure that the defense is completely to blame. I think they are to blame some, for sure. They just haven't been as sharp defensively. And that's not something I expect to continue. There are a lot of really good defenders on this team. And I suspect they'll get their horsefeathers together. But, if you look at the expected stats at https://www.xstats.org/ that Andrew Perpetua keeps, his expected stats are also based off of batted ball direction, which Baseball Savant's aren't. Savant's method only looks at launch angle and exit velocity. Pepetua's calculations have Lester's and Arrieta's xBA and xwOBA higher than Savant's, though not as high as their actual numbers. So I think another problem is that balls are just finding holes -- or finding where there usually are holes. Add them both together, porous defense and finding holes, and then realize it's a small sample size and weird stuff can happen. Yeah, I almost mentioned something to that effect. Sawed off bloop singles are going to hurt that xwOBA/wOBA disparity even if the defense wasn't to blame. Whatever the proportion is though, the good news is both seem likely to progress to the mean.

This is a pretty good read: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-is-up-with-the-cubs-rotation/ Especially worthwhile are the charts comparing 2016 xwOBA and xBA(calculated w/ Statcast data) with the actuals and how that compares with 2017. Hendricks and Lester have been getting similarly strong defense as last year, while Lackey has seen a decent dip and Arrieta has seen the defense behind him crater. Small samples, but it gives some hope that Arrieta and Lackey have better days in front of them.

Szczur + plate discipline - ability to play CF

Wow, they chose Pena over Grimm

Hitters had an .890 OPS against Butler the *first* time through the order last year, he walked a couple fewer guys but it's also harder to walk guys when all hitters are hitting .328 (!) against you. The point here is not that Butler is terrible, I think he's potentially a very nice find. The point is that in all of these cases you're looking for improvement beyond what they've done thus far. Butler has gotten shelled in MLB and been effective with weak peripherals in AAA. Montgomery has been effective with weak peripherals in MLB. If you start Montgomery you can keep Butler in AAA and have both being treated as SP for potential future seasons. If Montgomery struggles you can always turn to Butler too. But by starting Butler you're continuing to inch the door shut on Montgomery starting, because in the next few weeks he's not going to be capable of throwing enough IP to be considered for the 2018 rotation. It continues to mystify me that the front office talked up Montgomery as a future starter for the entire 2nd half of the season, Maddon trusted him in the playoffs more than Rondon and Strop, and now they won't let him have a role beyond next-gen Travis Wood even though there is ample opportunity. I have extremely high regard for their evaluations of pitchers, but in this case I have a hard time understanding why they aren't giving Montgomery at least the briefest of opportunities to fail out of that role. Butler just got off the DL for an ankle injury too and hasn't been lighting AAA on fire, so it'd be trivially easy to justify.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Donaldson will be 33 when his FA deal starts, and Pillar is the only offensive player they have who 1) actually can be expected to play well and 2) is not post-prime and going to continue to get worse. On the pitching side they have Stroman, Sanchez, and little else, Osuna is a good end of pen guy and that's about it. They play in the AL East too, and they have a lot of money in guys who are uncertain to even be average going forward(Martin, Tulo, Happ, Morales). They may logically decide Stroman is part of the next good Jays team, but they're real close to the 'blow it up' point too, and cashing in pitching assets sure isn't a bad decision if they do.

I think it's important to take stock of the current rotation to help inform who they might try and acquire. - Lester - A pair of bad April starts notwithstanding, he's been fine and his overall numbers are as expected - Hendricks - got bombed his first 3 starts but has righted the ship and looks to be following a similar path as last year, no reason to expect he won't continue to be good going forward - Lackey - yesterday was his second truly good start in 7 tries, but he's also averaging 6 IP/start. It's on the lower end of expectations, but he's not pitching poorly for the back end starter he is. - Anderson - on the DL and hopefully sent to Belize when he's ready to return - Montgomery/Butler - They're going to be given a chance to take Anderson's spot, personally I'd expect Lackeyish production there, maybe with better run prevention over shorter outings. You know, like we expected from Anderson. - Arrieta - hasn't given up less than 3 runs since his first start, he's been quite bad. His track record gives him leash to work things out since the stuff doesn't appear to be diminished. With that out of the way, I think you can focus on two potential outcomes: 1) Cubs target middle of the road starter - This happens if Montgomery/Butler don't live up to the Lackey standard, or Lackey starts getting truly torched 2) Cubs target top 3 starter - This happens if Arrieta continues to pitch poorly, with a possibility of it happening in the above two situations as well The tricky thing for me is I expect Arrieta to bounce back but not pitch exceptionally, and I also don't expect Montgomery and Lackey to pitch poorly enough to lose a rotation spot, leaving them without a gaping hole to patch. You can always send Montgomery to the pen or Butler to AAA if you find a real good deal, but I'm also skeptical of the front office paying midseason prices for a Stroman/Archer type that would necessitate such a move either. Among the actual targets, I'd love to see if Stroman was actually available, and if they could take on some contract(s) that would help with his asking price. I also wouldn't turn down Teheran or Odorizzi, although for the latter I'm not sure he's such an upgrade that I'd want to displace Montgomery/Butler if they were doing fine.

UPDATE 2015 ERA thru 3 starts: 5.74 ERA after: 3.78 2016 ERA thru 3 starts: 4.50 ERA after: 1.88 2017 ERA thru 3 starts: 6.19 ERA after(including starts against NYY, BOS, and in Coors): 1.52

5 errors in 240 innings is not okay, Javy (I am not watching so apologies if it was a harsh scoring decision)

tbh I'm gonna throw a tantrum if he doesn't start Friday or Saturday Eddie Butler? I'd like to see what he's got. Can't Lester start Friday, he pitched on Sunday. Friday would be normal 4 days rest for Lester. Butler is fine and all and I'm optimistic he can be a part of a future rotation, but he needs to string together more starts where he strikes out AAA hitters for me to consider him a preferable option to Montgomery, who has already turned in a promising month+ as a SP as a Cub.

tbh I'm gonna throw a tantrum if he doesn't start Friday or Saturday

Mekkes finally gave up an extra base hit, a HR to a C/1B with a .421 OPS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 1.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2/0 K/BB, HR #Mekkeswatch

Game will start in a rain delay, per Rockies twitter

Russell out w/ shoulder soreness, Almora in [tweet] [/tweet]

Also, Schwarber/Jay/Bryant is a fair bit better than Schwarber/Jay/Zobrist, which I'm pretty sure we've used at least a time or two.

#illuminati

[tweet] [/tweet]