Bertz

I would be very surprised if this happened and it was not step 1 of a full scale rebuild.

I had not gotten to that part of the news yet! That seems....very ill advised to put it lightly.

The Giants dumped Farhan Zaidi. SFG is going to be an interesting team to follow. Farhan and Jed are basically the same guy, both teams are pretty reticent to cross the LT to a meaningful degree, and both teams end the 2024 season within a few games of each other. The Cubs have more young talent on hand, while the Giants have more money on hand, but overall I'd put their respective org health in a similar place? SFG will presumably get the top GM on the market this winter, so if you want a glimpse at the alternate reality where PTR dumps Jed it's a pretty good analogue to track the next year or two.

I guess just to double up, Corbin Burnes gives me very strong 2016 Jake Arrieta vibes. The velo is still there, the ERA is still sparkling, and the uber-dominance isn't that far in the rear view mirror. But you pop the hood open and damn near everything else is going in the wrong direction. He's still good, after all even with the decline he's coming off an extremely high perch. But when you consider likely salary I don't want to touch him and even setting salary aside I don't think it takes crazy mental gymnastics to take some other guys ahead of him.

I would guess Burnes gets something approximating Strasburg money (7/$245M), Fried and Snell get something like Aaron Nola money (7/$172M), and Kikuchi/Flahery both get something like Kevin Gausman money (5/$110M). I don't know that I want to go there for any of these guys, but Fried's the one I would be most into, and Burnes the one I would be least into.

This is really interesting. I *think* this is just this year's weird anomaly, like not being able to win on Sundays or the comical number of first inning runs. If weather or wind was a more obvious culprit I'd be more convinced it's permanent given A) global warming and B) all the new developments around Wrigley, particularly the place across the street on Addison that's taller than the park itself. Reading this I got curious about prior years. So I pulled Flyballs + Line Drives by venue, and then what proportion of those were official Barrels. It's a bit different than what you did, but mainly because it's less work rather than because I would quibble with your process. But by this definition Wrigley ranks 19th, 16th, and 24th year by year from '22 to '24. I'll also note that some very good hitters parks tend to rank consistently towards the bottom here. GABP in Cincinnati, probably the #2 hitters park in the league, ranks 30th, 28th, and 25th the last three years. It might be a situation where hitters come out of their approach when the conditions are too favorable. We see this at Wrigley sometimes when the wind is howling out and we still get like a 2-1 game.

Good efficient game from Caleb. Even though he didn't get a lot of bulk yardage feels like he still got a good number of first downs and kept the chains moving and drives alive.

We're currently still in line for this, though the Braves game is only a 2 run game so not on lock yet

Caleb should go somewhere that can give him two months uninterrupted to see if he can get over the hump at the MLB level. He wouldn't be the worst guy to stash in long relief, but I'd MUCH rather pencil Wesneski in for that role. My guess is he's the 4th piece in a big trade or the 2nd piece in a small to medium trade.

Long is a year younger, has better contact numbers, and did most of his dominating at AA instead of A+. So I do think he's a better prospect. That said McGeary is definitely someone to keep in the back of our minds as to the perils of a popup guy who needs to be pretty much completely carried by his bat to succeed.

He's probably got a decent argument for the best Cubs pitcher since Maddux, right? Zambrano is ahead of him WAR-wise, but feels like not by enough to outweigh the postseason heroics? And honestly when you add in the playoff stuff Kyle's probably not *that* far behind Maddux (purely as a Cub obviously).

Some of it is a run of matchups that theoretically were in his favor. The other part though is likely getting some last looks to make sure they do in fact want to cut him this winter.

It's wild how this fanbase is so braindead saying you like the best player on your favorite team basically makes you this guy

Bullpen Day tomorrow in the finale

I know Alcantara's place on the roster was explicitly as a Suzuki injury backfill, but he's also faced Lowder 3 or 4 times this year at AA so it seems silly not to have him starting.

It would be really cool for Kyle to have a vintage Kyle outing today Also Lowder looks solid but there's nothing of substance backing up that 1.40 ERA. Dealing him a blowup start heading into his offseason would be cool, though weather looks like yesterday so not sure how reasonable that is.

It's very dumb. On top of it you're probably not even improving the offense that much if you trade him. Of guys with at least 400 at bats this year listed as being primary 2B, Hoerner is 10th on offense. BUT, five of the guys ahead of him are only ahead by a little bit (six points of wRC+ separate Nico at #10 and Brendan Donavan at #5). The top 4 are Ketel Marte, Jordan Westburg, Jose Altuve and Brandon Lowe. Lowe, is probably pretty available but he's A) made of glass and B) a worse player than Hoerner on the whole even when he's on the field.

I wonder how much money Nick Martinez made himself this year. His numbers are all sparkling, but without gaudy GB or K numbers I assume it's still 2-3 years at $15Mish per?

Yeah I think this is the biggy. Another thing I'd point to as well is guys like Michael Lorenzen and Seth Lugo taking LONG breaks from being a SP and then coming back and fairly quickly becoming boring innings eating SPs. It feels like teams are pretty comfortable with more or less any grown adult targeting ~120 innings. So if Horton is reasonably healthy from here he can do 120 next year, 150-160 in '26, and be reigns off from there. And while he hasn't thrown a ton of innings to this point, it's not a litany of injuries. It's a pretty standard TJ and then this recent lat. There's nothing to prove he's not snakebitten like a Dustin May, but we're not nearly there yet. Especially with his raw velo being more good than great.

I think the rotation helps the pen too if you get the right guy. This year Kyle averaged 4.7 innings per start, Wicks 4.2. and Wesneski 5.1. Replace 30 of those starts with someone who goes closer to 6 on average and it makes a difference, particularly during the sprints where the team has like 20 games in 21 days.

There's an argument going in another thread about the workloads Alzolay and Merryweather had late last year and how that torpedoed this year's bullpen. Regardless of where you fall on blame, in hindsight I do think we probably should have been a lot more worried about carry-over from their late season '23 maladies. So with that in mind, what are some things we should worry about heading into next year that might not be considering three months from now when we're deep into Max Fried watch? I've got three: 1. We should be prepared for Amaya and PCA to be crappy hitters. Their progression has been THE story of the second half of the year. However, according to Dan Szymborski (the ZiPS guy) 1st half/2nd half splits do not have predictive value on future projections, it's the full year data that matters. On top of that, neither guy has even had 600 MLB plate appearances yet so there's still some risk of them full on washing out like you often see with second year players 2. The rotation is riddled with injury risk. Every SP in the org who likely figures into next year's plans except for Shota and Brandon Birdsell has spent time on the IL this year. All of those except for Jameson Taillon and Ben Brown have been IL'd for an arm injury. The Cubs have great rotation depth, nine guys I'd personally feel comfortable starting a game, but attrition really needs to be top of mind 3. Every bench guy on the team is either outright bad or at least a bad roster fit. Mike Tauchman should stick around if Bellinger leaves, but otherwise this group needs to be completely renovated. The starting lineup is very good. There's also a great crop of hitters at Iowa. But the lack of anything in between leaves the team really exposed to injury, particularly in the first half when you likely can't count on the kids yet. This ties back to point #1 too, we *need* strong backups/low end starters at CF and C especially What else should we worry about?

I actually think Alcantara's contact and discipline numbers are pretty reassuring. I was expecting cataclysmic, early Morel level contact especially and it's just sort of regularly below average. Like if we take his contact, zone contact, and chase rates and put them on an MLB percentile scale, they come out at Overall Contact - 16th percentile; close comps include Nick Castellanos and Cal Raleigh Zone Contact - 33rd percentile; close comps include Willy Adames and Austin Riley Chase Rate (higher = better) - 46th percentile; close comps include Matt Olson, Jazz Chisholm, and Anthony Volpe Now obviously it's at AAA and not MLB, but those numbers tend to not move *that* much between levels. A percentage point or two typically, which will correspond to 5-10 spots in percentile rankings. And all three marks are below average, but from a plus CF with power that's probably playable right this second, and at his age could graduate to exciting really quickly like PCA did.

Fiddling around on Fangraphs this morning. Isaac Paredes career as a Ray: 129 wRC+ in 1381 plate appearances Isaac Paredes first 4 weeks as a Cub (7/30 - 8/25): 43 wRC+ in 92 plate appearances Isaac Paredes starting 8/26: 126 wRC+ in 112 plate appearances

What a weirdly aggressive response