squally1313

PCA needs to be parked in the 9 spot of the lineup for the foreseeable future but it's much less of a concern when the other two glove first guys up the middle are hitting the way that they are. Kelly and Hoerner aren't going to be able to keep this up but Bregman and Suzuki aren't going to continue to hit the way they have been. So the offense is fine. Still skating on thin ice with the pitching, would really like to see a normal start from Boyd on Wednesday. But ultimately as much as I dislike this whole built in 'throwing pitchers at the wall to see what sticks' part of the cycle, we're 22 games into it and on a 96 win pace, so we're more than dealing with it. Keep it up.

This lineup is so, so deep. Dansby has been, xwOBA wise, essentially the same hitter since signing with the cubs and we’ve just (correctly) continually moved him down in the lineup as more and more talent arrived/developed.

Good call, had forgotten about that.

FG currently has no starter listed for Wednesday. Assume the plan from the current roster is to try and avoid Brown for the next two days and then let him rip, probably after some sort of lefty opener. Which probably means that Little or Rolison is going to have to throw BP if Rea or Shota go sideways today or tomorrow. In more positive news, if the Phillies are trying to avoid using relievers three out of four days, Kerkering, Mayza, Banks, and Shugart are all down today, and they're presumably not going to lean on Alvarado or Keller for multiple innings, which leaves some dudes named Kyle Backhus and Seth Johnson, both of which were in AAA last week, so if we can run up the pitch count we'll be in decent shape offensively.

That’s not quite what that statistic is saying right? I doubt it exists, but all you’re really looking for in this discussion is ‘how likely is it that a run scores’. It doesn’t matter how many. If the underlying data says (hypothetically), that the first situation scores 9 times out of ten and in the bases loaded situation, 50% of the time you score 3 runs and 50% you score none, you’re going to have a higher number in bases loaded but that’s not what you’re looking for here.

Candidly, I spent like two minutes trying to think through why the White Sox had a worse K rate, walk rate, ERA, xERA, FIP, and xFIP in four less innings but they were ahead of us in fWAR, but then I decided to give up because it fit my general narrative. 17th in K rate, 5th in BB rate backs up the xFIP. We need to find a couple guys in the pen, and there's going to be painful moments going through the roulette to find a (hopefully) Riley Martin. And then we need a starter, but we're probably not going to find one for a couple months. So....go offense.

Cubs now fourth in baseball in overall offensive fWAR production. 8th in wOBA, actually getting some luck there compared to xwOBA (8 points better), 9th in wRC, 6th in baserunning, 7th in defense. 21st in pitching.

If the cubs did a complete overhaul of their pitching development in the last year, then that’s a pretty damning indictment of Tommy hottovy, who has been with the organization since 2014 and been the pitching coach since 2018. Or, if we’re exempting him because he’s just the cubs major league guy (cubs are 12th in ERA, 21st in FIP, 25th in fWAR for relievers since 2019), then it falls on hoyer to have it apparently broken until last year. if the cubs secret sauce is that we can take a group of pitchers projected to be bad, and spend the first two months of the year watching them be bad just so they can be somewhat above average later on in the year and just be mediocre on the whole…that’s probably an argument against making the development guys start over every year, why can’t they do that with the $600k AAA guys, and it’s still, on the whole, a poorly run part of the organization that could not be more in ‘Win Now’ mode.

Sure. If we use your goalposts, that makes him the 57th best relief pitcher by ERA and 74th best pitcher by FIP (FG shows 3.55, whatever) out of 195 qualified relievers over that stretch. None of that is 'excellent' and nothing besides 2025 shows an 'excellent' single year performer. He's a fine reliever, he's absolutely nothing special. In reverse order 1. I never said anything about Drew Pomeranz 2. Is this true? We went into the season with Palencia, Brown, and 6 guys we signed in the offseason. The Brewers have Koenig, Megill, Uribe, Ashby, Anderson, and Hall that have been there since at least 2024. The Braves have had Iglesian since 2022 (you could it's the same situation as Thielbar, my counter would be that Iglesias is much, much better than Thielbar), Lee since 2021, Bummer since 2024, Payamps they picked up in September, Harris has been there since 2022. The Mets turned over most of their spots but also actually signed a good pitcher. The Phillies ponied up for Duran, Alvarado and Kerkering have been there forever. The Dodgers, similar situation with Diaz/Scott and then Vesia/Treinen. Not a single pitcher in the Padres bullpen was signed or traded for in this past offseason. We're an outlier in our inability to produce cost controlled innings or our willingness to sign top end talent. I get that you can throw a lot of bullpen results into the black box of 'bullpens are weird, small sample size'. I'm with you on that. But I don't think you can spin the approach is something worth being proud of.

Excellent? Years? Come on, man. We've got FIPs of 3.50, 4.33, 3.74, 4.26, 2.60, and corresponding fWARs of 0.6, -0.1, 0.6, 0.1, 1.5 from 2021 to 2025 (innings pitched between 61 and 67). He's fine. He was 19th in baseball last year, 73rd since 2021, 54th since 2023. We were banking on 2025, so far no such luck. Which he hasn't been since August 2024. This should not be a guy we're relying on as a key piece! Yes, and it was a bad bullpen for a team with playoff aspirations! 19th in fWAR, 16th in FIP. We point to Hottovy and Zombro all the time, how is it productive to make them start from scratch every year? Should we maybe not be clamoring for the Brad Kellers of the world? Sure. But it's an indictment of the organization that we're reduced to wishcasting for the few 36 year olds that actually worked out. Devin Williams, Raisel Iglesias, and Robert Suarez have a total of zero earned runs this year. They're all making $15m a year, give or take. We're paying Maton, Harvey, Thielbar, and Milner $21.5m, none of which are considered anywhere close to elite, because apparently the FO decided they haven't generated a single pitcher capable of pitching the 6th or 7th inning. Which is A. a failure of development, and B. about to be tested because multiple of the guys in the above group, all on the backside of their career, have either gotten hurt or lost their mechanics.

See I don't really care about this. If Matt Shaw gets you an ace with minimal control or a playoff starter with 1.5-2.5 years of control, you pull the trigger. We don't know what we're getting with Steele, we can't count on anything from Horton, and who knows what's going on with Wiggins. I think we all agreed that we pretty definitively needed to shift assets from offense to defense before the Cabrera trade, but now that Horton is broke you're basically back in the same spot you were 6 months ago pitching wise. Offensively you've both shored it up with Bregman and paid Nico to lessen the uncertainty going forward. Make another Caissie/Cabrera trade, but do it to maximize current production even more.

The issue I have with this utility role is that I don't foresee 'the game favoring him' at 2B or 3B very often at all. They're not going to alienate their flashy new signing by bumping him to DH 6 weeks into a 5 year deal. Dansby and Nico are better players in every facet of the game. We have an injury prone RF, and a first baseman, CF, and DH that struggle against LHP. Unless we want to trust him in CF (and set aside that Alcantara exists), those are super not ideal spots for what was previously a (career to date) glove first infielder. If we had some split heavy starting infielders, great, the mix looks way better. But his current role is basically backup COF/1B, and there's probably not a worse use of his skill set. Meanwhile, a prospect with hype but one who projects as having less value than Shaw, who profiles as a COF/1B just got traded for a 4ish FIP starter with 3 years of team control. Basically, if we don't think he's starter level at any position, we're doing no one favors by taking away his maximum defensive value and putting him at a spot that expects elite offense. If we think he's a starter level third baseman or second baseman, we should trade him, because we have one, and other teams would pay quite a lot for that.

Is this an opener situation? Just basically to avoid having Rea face Schwarber and Harper in the first?

If we can appeal to authority on defensive metrics, then we can also call Matt Shaw a career 91 wRC hitter, which maybe plays with good defense at 2B/3B, but almost certainly doesn't in the outfield and definitely doesn't at first base. We won't talk about his one start already at DH. In a world where we aren't pinching pennies to stay under the first luxury tax threshold (FG has us at $1.3m above, $19m to the next threshold), we could find/have found a slightly below league average hitter with positional flexibility to take the 10th man spot. I don't disagree that there's a job with 450 PAs for a tenth man. But your bat needs to be able to play at the positions where those PAs are coming from if you aren't going to provide defensive value above league average. It worked when you could bump Kris Bryant into the corner outfield or when Zobrist was putting up 120 wRCs. It doesn't work with a 91 wRC guy learning how to play outfield at a major league level.

The whole infield is locked up. Yes, I'm sure if we would have traded him that would have prompted a Dansby injury or something and then Dylan Moore or whatever would have set a record most consecutive outs recorded. But you came into the season with 5 major league ready infielders, all with team control through at least 2030, and then took the worst hitting one and decided to try and move him up the spectrum to spots where more offense is expected. And also on top of that, he's not good defensively anymore. Hindsight is 20/20, but watching Matt Shaw, who seemed like a very high floor third baseman at the end of last year, flail around a different position every night while Jameson Taillon and his 89 mph fastball and his 37.50 spring ERA is slotted as our third starter is maddening.