We Got The Whole 9

That's not annoying

He was demoted 4 days ago. I can have a papasan chair delivered in 8 hours and this professional sports org couldnt get his equipment to him in 4 days?

Am I correct in assuming that even if he doesn't get hammered, you'd still look to trade him? Because it would be sort of bold to base what to do with Q at the deadline on one specific start. I think hes fading fast. It wouldnt be based on one start but the peripherals are ugly since April ended and his main value now is as an innings eater.

If Q gets hammered again (which looks likely with all those RH bats) then I hope they look into trading him at the deadline. Open up the few mil and go get Pence and Martin from the Rangers. Theres a few contenders with really bad rotations and he could be serviceable for them.

What's your suggestion? The entire bullpen isn't to be trusted. Using Cishek as first guy out was criminal. Cishek should’ve been completely down. Wick/Holland(for the lefty matchup)/Kimbrel (yeah he sucked but and blew it but was also up the prior 3 innings) should’ve been the guys from the 8th on. Also Chatwood probably needs a look as a RP candidate and should’ve been in over Cishek. Also if we got to the 9th with the lead he wouldn't have faced the heart of the order. But it feels gross saying Kimbrel cant get the best guys out anymore (or at least thus far this season)

This might not go over well. I may not have taken the most scientific approach to this or taken all painstaking efforts to back up my hypothesis. You're free to rip this apart. I'm sure Tiger will have a go at it and show me the error(s) in my ways. But anyway I have been feeling like we are largely a fastball or nothing hitting offense. I brought up yesterday how we are 15th against sliders and 22nd against curves, and Cubswin11 asked if this is unusual or something each teams fanbases believe is exclusive to them when it's really not. I looked at pitch values for the top offenses in the league, and I looked at the statcast data for our regular hitters. The only place I can find slash lines for specific pitch types is baseball savant. If anyone knows of another source, please let me know. Because this was kind of a pain in the ass as I had to go into each individual players page to find the info. So here goes. First the pitch values for the top offenses that we should aspire to be(at). Twins crush fastballs better than the entire league, are 7th against sliders, 3rd against cutters, 5th against curves, 6th against changes, and 8th against splitters. The only team in baseball that is top 10 against every pitch type. This is probably why they have 30 more HR than the field. Can we hire their hitting coach when Maddon gets canned? Dodgers are 2nd against fb, 3rd SL, 16th CT, 14th CB, 8th CH, 2nd SF Red Sox - 3rd FB, 1st SL, 9th CT, 6th CB, 14th CH, 7th SF Yankees - 4th, 6th, 4th, 15th, 4th, 4th Astros - 9th, 2nd, 6th, 2nd, 11th, 12th Cubs - 6th, 15th, 15th, 22nd, 12th, 19th So theres 5 offenses that pretty clearly handle most pitch types quite well. The Cubs non-pitchers entered today slotted in at 7th in MLB with a 109 wRC+. That is clearly great, but I feel like the talent is there to be even better. So I wanted to see just how good/bad our hitters are at hitting non-fastballs, by traditional slash lines, and expected stats. So this is what I have to go off of, from savant. Breaking (slider, curve, knuckle, other)/Offspeed (split, change, fork, screw) Willy: 318 BA/568 SLG/404 woba/363 xwoba. Says he has gotten incredibly lucky on breaking pitches according to his batted ball data; probably due to an average launch angle of 8 degrees and a whiff rate well over 30% On offspeed he is 270/568/386/282 (!). He has an XBA of 170 and XSLG of 321... 6 degree LA, but this is only on 30 batted balls as teams haven't thrown him too much offspeed for some reason. Still wow at that great fortune. KB: 216/392/307/315 on breaking. Maybe not too unusual. I dunno, I have been hard on KB in the past but I do recognize his greatness. Still he whiffs a lot on those pitches and doesnt do much damage on them. 306/417/363/269 on offspeed Launch angle reaches an insane 21 degrees with a paltry exit velo of 84.1. In the last 2 years he has 1 HR on offspeed, and 2017 is the only year he hit more than 2, when he hit 6 and carried an xwoba on them over 400. Curious. Rizzo: 283/557/389/345 on breaking. That's great. Launch angle goes to 9, down from 15 against fastballs. If we want to nitpick that is dragging him down but you will take those numbers all day. 284/373/325/322 on offspeed. LA again at 9 and EV at 87 pulls his xwoba way down and that's 30 points below his 2018 mark although the LA remained the same. EV down 2.5 mph from 2018. We all know Rizzo is a badass. Schwarber: look no further than breaking pitches for why hes not a 350 woba guy again. 191/383/273/298. Hes seen 500 breaking balls and put 50 into play with a PA ending on a K 42% of the time and an alarming 38% whiff rate. Ouch. 260/460/343/384 on offspeed which is totally acceptable. Both that and fastballs had similar results. Heyward: 195/356/255/262 on breaking. Man that is terrible. Hes seen 370 breaking pitches and put 54 into play. 35% whiff rate and 36% K. The ****ed up part is that he has a 88 EV and 12 LA which is pretty good for power when he actually makes contact. 200/420/259/234 (!) on offspeed. Again his contact results to 89 and 14 but a 28% whiff and 27% K rate. Good thing he has handled fastballs because his overall xwoba is 325, and 371 on fb. The gist is that he's largely the same guy hes been with us and has been incredibly fortunate. Those numbers are bad Bote: 217/315/252/241 on breaking. LA drops to 6 and he whiffs on them 36% of the time. Abysmal. 261/609/381/335. Hes only seen 81 offspeed pitches. That is just surprising. You'll take those results all day. The 50 point gap with his wOBA is likely due to an 85 EV. That's like Almora stuff. Speaking of Almora, I was almost just gonna skip him but **** it let's dig in: Overall he has a 27% hard hit rate lol 106/173/133/199 (yep). Hes seen breaking pitches 40% of the time. He has an EV of 82 and an LA of 7. 35% whiff rate. I mean JFC I still cant believe a Theo administration used a top 10 pick on this free swinging [expletive]. He has a 1.9 BB% against breaking, down from 2.0 in 2018 (LOL) His numbers are best against offspeed, 50 points higher than against fastballs even. 296/556/355/379. His LA even reaches double digits. Too bad he doesnt see more of them. Btw 321/503/364/327 against FB; more than adequate. And a stellar 14.5 whiff rate. I'm gonna stop at Javy. These are our regulars. 287/546/348/336 on breaking. Only thing to really complain about is the awful 40.9 whiff rate... but that should come as no surprise. 273/545/375/332... again a 42% whiff rate is bothersome but he has a 92 EV on offspeed. You gotta appreciate the hitter he is. He whiffs a lot but at least he can do damage against all pitch types when he makes contact. Something really bizarre about Javy though and if he can make an adjustment his numbers could really take off. Against breaking pitches he has an LA of 13 and against offspeed its 11 (14 and 8 in 2018), but against fastballs hes like Almora at just 5 (!) degrees. He blisters these pitches at 93.6 mph. You get that LA into the double digits and he will see a lot more balls leave the stadium IMO. So that concludes my research. I'm pretty sure the non regulars don't fare a while lot better. Despite the wRC+, theres still a decently wide gap between us and the elite offenses in the league. We really have to improve on those other pitch types. We also swing at the 4th lowest% of meatballs seen per statcast. I think that's bad also.

Pedro is 4-4 Nico homered

Its impressive how awful Joe is at managing his pitchers. Keep saving Kimbrel for the 9th, man. Keep on doing you.

In all seriousness, how many injuries do they need to see before the FO realizes that it's a very poor proposition to let these guys play through them? I wonder if some of it is Joe not wanting to dig into the milb depth.

Fantastic

Theo using a top 10 pick on a guy whose scouting report said he was a swing-happy no-discipline shmuck is honestly the most baffling move hes made as a Cub IMO.

Why does Joe have such an aversion to the IBB to the best batter with a base open?

Now that we DFAd Collins, probably

Does Javy know that he doesn't throw a slider?

Wtf kind of move is that Maddon

Thank you David. Need that more often from you.

Is this something unique to us or something that every fan thinks is a problem for their team but really every team mostly only has good numbers vs FB and average to bad numbers vs off speed? No. Not at all. Not hard to find the answer to that question. https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=7&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31

Looking at our offense and pitch values is sad. We can hit fastballs and somehow have a decent record against change ups and that is it. Most of that damage against changes was probably done against shitty pitchers as well because I feel like most of our guys are hopeless against them.

Ugly AB, Ian Then again the whole team chases the high heat

Brach should be DFA in favor of Wick. See if Wick can seize the spot. If he falters they can pull back the designation but I dont think my eyes can handle watching Brach's ugly ass delivery anymore and Wick offers more promise IMO.

Well, now Collins has been DFA'd because of the Derek Holland pickup. yeah but it sounds like Holland is only replacing him on the 40 man for now...though I guess they'd have to give him a 25 man spot pretty soon Descalso has to go. Really only him, Brach, or Maldonado make sense to me. Unless they option Garcia or something.

Would it physically hurt you to just brainlessly buy in?

We need to pry Conforto or Nimmo loose.I’m a huge Conforto guy and would love to get him between now and the offseason. I think Nimmo got Mets’d already, he has some weird neck thing going on. Yeah reports are that hes coming back sometime in the 2nd week of August. I think theres a possibility of one of them being moved in the offseason. They have McNeil, it looks like Rosario is gonna get moved to CF, so only 1 COF spot would remain. I think with Nimmo's neck causing such uncertainty they would probably like to move him first even though he has another year of control than Conforto does. Bulging disks are no joke but the upside is tantalizing enough that we should probably kick the tires at least.

We need to pry Conforto or Nimmo loose.

Totally agree. You can handle him with kid gloves all you want but you never know when the bomb is gonna go off. Dont waste too much time with him in Iowa. Especially since you might be able to avoid trading for some meh LHRP by just throwing him into the fire.