squally1313

Like, since May 1, he's had 156 ABs, along with 2 sacrifice flies. In those ABs he's had 9 strikeouts. That means he's had 149 (156+2-9) plate appearances not end in a walk or K (ie, a ball in play). Of those, he has 30 hits. If you give him his career average in batting average of balls in play, he would have 45 hits. That's a .288 batting average over that stretch, and that's a .357 OBP over that stretch. Even if you, conservatively, make them all singles, that's a .333 SLG, which would give you a .690 OPS for this stretch. I don't know how to do OPS to wRC, but there's a guy named Austin Martin for the Twins who has a .239/.347/.323 slash line, and that's good for a 94 wRC. Nico's hypothetical line is better than that. Geraldo Perdomo has a .246/.356/.364 line, which is slightly better than Nico's (conservative) hypothetical line, and that's a 105 wRC. So, split the difference, and hypothetical Nico is a roughly league average hitter, which is what he was in 2024 and 2025 when he put up 8.3 fWAR. He's fine.

The results (using since May 1) have absolutely been terrible. If he continues to run a .201 batting average on balls in play, I would expect the results to remain terrible. But historically that number is a little over .300. Can he improve on some things to get better batted balls results? Sure, but in terms of fly balls, ground balls, hard hit percentage, it's all generally in line with what he's always done. What's actually encouraging through all of this is in that same time frame, he's walking 10.2% of the time (career: 7.0%) while only striking out 5.1% (career: 10.6%). Players that walk 2x the amount of times they strike out are usually really successful, especially guys with sprint speeds in the 79th percentile. The results are absolutely the results, and the AB in particular last night with guys on reflected some combination of general frustration and/or trying too hard to sell out for contact. But everything else seems to say that he's fine. As an aside that's the main difference in concern between Nico and Dansby. They've both gone through a really rough stretch of BABIP. But Dansby pairing it with a 26% K rate makes it a lot harder to come out of.

It is Juneteenth, so maybe they were counting on most of the country being either officially or unofficially off.

Why are you taking away a 10 game winning streak though. What happens if you take away the 10 game losing streak?

While I appreciate the Wicks discussion I'd just like to request that they send Hartshorn and/or Rojas to Arizona on Mondays so I don't have to go a day without seeing what they're doing.

Since that offseason, here is a list of second basemen/shortstop who signed for more than $30m total. Willy Adames (who put up 4.0 fWAR last year and -0.3 fWAR YTD compared to Dansby's 3.3 fWAR last year and 1.1 fWAR YTD) Bo Bichette Jorge Polanco

Yeah his batted ball metrics have fallen off a cliff. Having said that, at some point, the Dansby discussion at least somewhat turns into a 'do we trust the value of defense' discussion. Like, should we bench the guy who is 10th in baseball in fWAR for shortstops? No, almost certainly not. But that requires a pretty firm belief in the importance of his glove at short vs Nico there/Pedro or Shaw at second.

Apologies for nitpicking here. I think your criticism is somewhat valid, but I think it's a little misguided, and also doesn't really fairly present the picture. Kris Bryant: Kilian and Canario. Both spent some time on top prospect lists, both found the major leagues, neither did anything of value for us or really anyone else. Bad trade. Rizzo: Alcantara has been on top 100 lists for years now. We haven't done anything with him, which I think is an indictment on roster building/prospect hoarding, but I think the trade was fine. Schwarber: Yeah, sure, the 243 HRs he's hit since we didn't tender him make this a mistake. But I also laugh at the thought of what the group generally on your side of the arguments would have thought about an overweight, fringe COF/likely DH hitting .188 with a 30%+ K rate. Contreras: Jaxon Wiggins in the comp pick. Pretty good, no? Basically, the trades have been fine for how the talent has been perceived. You're not going to hit all of them, and these were all expiring, non elite players. But we're also missing the Ben Brown trade. The Busch trade looks pretty good to me. Getting Paredes for Morel was a big part of getting an elite RF that got us to 92 wins. I know it's a whole exercise to evaluate the, what, 7 year run. But ignoring the Brown trade, specifically, kinda screams of unfair treatment.

The one silver lining with Dansby, which somewhat goes against the grain of what you'd expect, is that his defense is seemingly back to being Elite. The under the hood offensive stuff looks terrible, which is where you have to separate him from Nico, but if this was just the Age Cliff you'd think it would also show itself in being a step slow in the field, and that doesn't seem to be the case. His arm strength is actually up this year. Who knows, it could be sample size. Seeing a similar situation with Suzuki, though not as extreme, in that he's gone from being a near-elite hitter to just a pretty good one, but his defense has rebounded to keep his overall value up. Bregman's offensive struggles have been overblown due to his total incompetence in high leverage situations. You probably don't want to paying $35m for the profile, but league average hitter (99 wRC, league average at 3B is 94) with good defense at 3B isn't some black hole. PCA is a superstar, Busch is a stud, Nico is Nico, Happ is Happ, (shrug) at the catching spot.

Is this true when you look at whiff rate or whatever? Genuinely asking. Here was his K/9 rate by month last year: May: 7.08 K/9 June: 6.20 K/9 July: 6.46 K/9 August: 9.30 K/9 September: 7.45 K/9 Average K/9 rate this year is 8.46. Don't get me wrong, he pounded the zone and got ground balls (which are the two main things in front of Dansby and Nico) and, to get a little meatball-y, he seemed to have a little bit of an extra gear when he needed it. And maybe he still had/has an extra level where he'd start piling up Ks. But I think he was largely the same pitcher from debut through injury.

I generally agree here but I think there's a fair amount of criticism that should be directed at the pitching infrastructure. Cade Horton was the 7th overall pick, so I'm not sure how much developmental credit you can hand out, and while he's shown flashes of brilliance, he also likely won't take the mound until he turns 26 and up until that point he'll have given us 125 major league innings. I'm not smart enough to comprehend how much, if any, the organization's pitching approach/philosophy/training regimen impacts pitcher health, but it feels like we went from mediocre and healthy to bad and horribly injured pretty quickly. Who knows, maybe in August and September when the division is out of reach (again), we can hand out points for the shape the staff finally rounded into, but this whole annual event of scrambling around for 3 months trying to find the right guys off the scrap heap in games that still count is very tiring, and the Cubs being 27th in pitching fWAR this year (and 24th since the beginning of last year) is pretty unacceptable. Add to that that there's not a single pitcher in the system with anything resembling AAA success in a win now window, either due to injuries (again) (Wiggins) or ineffectiveness (waves at everyone else). I'm consistently confused as to why the offense (3rd in fWAR YTD and since the beginning of last year) gets the lion's share of the criticism around here. It's not flashy, outside of our (Hoyer acquired/developed) stud centerfielder., but it's more than good I'm on record as having preferred Schwarber over Bregman last year, but I acknowledged that was a little irrational and also considering Schwarber resigned in Philly who knows if that was even realistic. But that's a marginal difference in overall production (Schwarber 2.0 fWAR, Bregman 1.3), the biggest value for me would have been maybe quieting some of the RISP complaining. Overall, he's been fine, I just think he kinda considers the bullpen/pitching in general a bit of a black box and has decided to throw elite defense at the problem. Which is fine, if you buy into the metrics it's probably an undervalued skill set, but there's only so far that can take you if you don't develop or bring in guys who can run elite strike out rates and/or keep the ball in the park. I don't really know how to solve that problem either, building an offense seems like a much more approachable concept, but also I'm just an idiot who thinks about this to avoid accounting work, but the guy getting paid to do this full time at an elite level.

Since 5/1 Nico has a 9,9% BB rate and a 4.1% K rate, and a wOBA 80 points below his xwOBA. He's running a .204 BABIP during that stretch, 5th worst in the majors and 97 points below his career average. April was probably more of a hot streak than a levelling up, but he's been fine underneath the hood.

line out to first behind happ?

beggars, choosers, etc

lol

Man, on the one hand it seems like whenever PCA does something boneheaded or faces some adversity he somehow levels up. On the other hand, I'd like him to enjoy how awesome this was and not have to talk about the pickoff that would have been the tying run in a 3-2 loss.

It’s absolutely insane that we traded javy, of all players, for this guy.

It was probably that AAA demotion people were calling for

I assume we’re all fine with seiya getting hurt because he’s an affront to humanity hitting breaking balls or something?

Wrigley is 27th in park factor over the last 3 years https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors

Went to go sprinkle some money on the Spurs to win the series and realized they're 'only' +380. Think there's a good chance this isn't over yet.

Wait rizzo and Ross brought Addison Russell on their dumb podcast??? Jesus man.

Nico has one more hit this year than Bregman. This is an indictment of Nico, who I love unconditionally like a son. They both need to get going.

124 wRC from the best defensive player in baseball