Bertz
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Everything posted by Bertz
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Game is not on Marquee but is on MLB.tv
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Add Ethan Roberts to the list of guys showing way more velo this spring I guess
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Your assumption should be that anyone where you're at all surprised they settled for a minor league deal instead of a major league one that they have an opt out before the start of the season. So Conforto and Carlson are probably keep them or lose them types. Chas is interesting because if they add him to the 40 man they can option him up and down this year. So much like Alcantara in the name of hoarding depth I expect Chas won't make it regardless of how he performs this spring.
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Steamer has him at 97/129 lefties/righties ZiPS likes Busch a lot more, but unfortunately I just see slash lines and not an indexed number. They have .247/.338/.438 vs. .261/.351/.507, which eyeballing it I'd say something like 115/145?
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Chas McCormick's double today was hit harder than any ball he's ever hit in a regular season MLB game. More than 4 full MPH than any ball last year. Feels notable for a guy with a lot of health issues the past few years.
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Last year in 132 innings Connor Noland threw seventeen pitches 92 MPH or harder, and one pitch north of 93. This spring in 15 batters faced Connor has thrown eleven pitches 92 MPH or harder, four above 93
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Chicago Cubs 2026 Top Prospect Rankings: #16-20
Bertz replied to Jason Ross's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Great stuff. This is definitely where you can feel that the system is a little soft. Ideally eachof these guys would be ~5 spots lower than they are.- 7 replies
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- erian rodriguez
- ty southisene
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Carson Kelly's underlying numbers at the full season level backed up what he did last year (again at the full season level). He's a 30+ year old catcher coming off a career year, so do definitely guard for disappointment. But as long as your expectations aren't the Aaron Judge impression he showed off last April I wouldn't worry too much about him.
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Makes sense. I think Mo was the natural assumption for giving short term 1B coverage but Amaya's also a guy we'd love to get in the lineup more. And unlike Mo you're not going to be as wistful about taking some of his defensive focus away from behind the plate. Barring a Busch injury you're probably talking about 2-3 games a month that need to be covered, we don't need to let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
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I think ultimately he's going to get something like the Turner role from last year. That said he doesn't have huge splits, in fact to this point he's got modest reverse splits, so it's not crazy to hope for an everyday player. I suspect despite being the most obvious 1 for 1 replacement he's not going to fill in for Austin coming out of camp though. It seems pretty clear the team is nervous about outfield depth, so I think they're going to take the opportunity to be able to hold onto both of Conforto/Carlson. And not really tied to Austin but on a similar note I'd be pretty shocked if they don't add McCormick to the 40 man roster and stash him at Iowa.
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I mean small sample he has a career ERA under 3, and while that's obviously got some good fortune behind it he's clearly doing some things right from a process standpoint since every projection system on Fangraphs expects him to have an ERA under 4.
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Taillon pitched poorly but his velo was back to normal, which I'll absolutely take over the vice-versa.
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Busch is being given the opportunity to play against LHP. So at least initially Austin was presumably going to mostly pair with Mo at DH.
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I suspect it's a simple matter of turning Conforto/Carlson into an "and" instead of an "or". Given the timing Conforto probably got signed when the team found out about this.
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Basically there are two area where there are a disproportionate number of should-be strikes called balls. The low outside corner is number 1, and then the entire top of the zone is number 2. Eno glazed over the low outside corner because everyone's always trying to hit that target, whereas top of the zone is a place where only some guys try to live.
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Interesting. Curious to see what they've got lined up for him besides the obvious focus on velo.
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Looks like he was 93.5 in the first inning and 92.2 in the second. That first inning is about as hard as we've ever seen him throw, the second was way better than his 2025 but right in line with his 2024 averages (maybe a smidge on the higher side). So good news overall, it's more of just a question of how good.
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👀 Shota's fastball was 93.5 during the first inning today. He threw four fastballs harder than any fastball he threw last year
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Holy hell this is the 3rd Braves pitcher to have their arm explode this spring and it's not even March
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Yeah I'd say so. I can't quite get to Eno's numbers but the Statcast searching I am doing says Steele's in between the two, and closer to Shota than Boyd. Steele throws fewer of his fastballs up than either guy, but it's balanced out by throwing more fastballs.
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https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7064417/2026/02/24/mlb-abs-system-challenges-pitcher-benefits/ Eno Sarris theorizes that pitchers who live on the top of the zone will get the most love from ABS. Cubs have two of the top guys in Shota and Boyd.
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Plopping this here since there was some discourse about it over the offseason. tl;dr is teams are paying about $10.5M per win, but there's a big split between role players ($6-7M) and good players ($12+)
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Helloooo, Ben Brown Sinker
Bertz replied to Matthew Trueblood's topic in North Side Baseball Front Page News
Sahadev Sharma let the cat out of the bag with this sinker a few days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7053313/2026/02/18/a-look-at-what-three-pitchers-are-working-on-as-the-cubs-build-rotation-depth/ One of the things that stuck out to me from that was this It's interesting to come back to this after seeing the details you pulled on the pitch. This is not what I was thinking when I initially read "sinker," but if the goal is to make life miserable against righties you see why this is what they settled on. Like you said it seems like it will make a damn good lane changer. I'll be curious to see what Brown does against a more balanced lineup. Does the sinker get play against lefties? Does the changeup usage get much higher than last year? The quote above makes it sound like the changes might be more incremental vs the other side of the plate. -
Fangraphs in their Top 100 prospects list writeup a few weeks ago noted that Rojas hadnt performed well against velocity. So I'm maybe more impressed that it came off a 96 MPH fastball than I am that he hit it 413 feet.
