Bertz

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

He's batting 1.000 in his last 1 at bats though so actually I'm pretty sure he's our best player.

Nico Hoerner's a decent weekend from ending the season over 4 WAR. I really cannot see a situation where he gets traded this winter.

Wow, I thought he was gonna be a defensive replacement and maybe start Sunday, this is fun

There were a few days of MiLB season left so these numbers have probably shifted a bit, but Alcantara's not as raw as you might think.

One of the things that's ironic about this winter is that, sans context, it's actually a good time for Jed to hang out and let the winter come to him. The team is going to end up at about 83 wins this season, and before we have projections in hand I'd guess looks at about that same level heading into the winter. With ~$50M to spend, or ~$75M without Bellinger, it's pretty straightforward to sign a couple short term contracts and buy your way to 88-90 wins. An 88 win caliber big league club, an absolutely loaded Iowa roster, and only one long term contract on the books is actually kind of a sweet spot for a value/process oriented GM like Jed. But there is that context. The last two winters Jed has stopped a move or two short of a slam dunk offseason because he spent all his cash and, Busch/Ferris swap aside, refused to meaningfully dip into the farm. That plus the unfortunate shape of the playoff odds graphs the last two years make just coasting into '25 feel like a non-starter. I don't think e.g. the moral victory of exciting Cade Horton and Kevin Alcantara rookie campaigns will keep Jed employed if the team misses the playoffs by a game again. I will say I don't think an AJ Preller type offseason is totally necessary. I think a typical Jed offseason with one somewhat painful prospect trade on to of it feels like enough.

I know teams don't generally send their best and brightest pitching-wise but unless these guys have popped under the radar this year this is a particularly sad crop.

Cubs (Mesa): Moises Ballesteros, C/1B (No. 4/MLB No. 41) Benjamin Cowles, INF (No. 30) Grant Kipp, RHP Jonathon Long, 1B Shane Marshall, RHP Aaron Perry, RHP Vince Reilly, RHP Luis Rujano, RHP

Also, by far most importantly

The Phillies clearly joined the ranks of the pitching development enlightenment sometime in the '22 to '23 neighborhood. But you look at Taijuan Walker and it's basically like this meme But with like 12 of the scary dragons and then Walker on the right just putzing away

Probably going to see an absurd amount of noodling with those last few spots in the bullpen the rest of the week.

This is exceedingly unscientific, but I increasingly use the "circle of trust" mental model and think about relievers in three tiers: - Guys I trust implicitly - Guys I trust in favorable situations (e.g Tyson Miller against righties) - Upside/Developmental Opportunities There are of course pitchers who are straight up bad, but if you avoid multi-year contracts you're very unlikely to have an on-paper one heading into the season. An elite bullpen is generally going to be something like 3-3-2. I'd say the Cubs are currently something like 1-3-4 heading into next year, though there's a small army of guys in that third bucket, so you do feel like the second half bullpen is likely to be better than the first half. Add a top tier guy this winter and I think you can feel solid about next year's bullpen. Add guys to both upler tiers (the latter ideally being tough on lefties) and you can feel good about it. Dare to dream add two top tier guys and we should feel great about the pen.

Right, they are results that in small samples often do not properly reflect performance.

Hector Neris has a 3.92 ERA this year. Josh Hader had a 3.67. Emmanuel Clase last year blew 12 (!!!) saves despite a 3.22 ERA. There's just not as much rhyme or reason to bullpen performance as there should be. It's not total anarchy, but generally the best approach is to build up as reliable a top 3 or 4 as you can manage and then flank them with as many live arms (ideally optional) as you can. And with that top group there's a delicate balancing act between buying track record without locking yourself into long term money.

From my POV, I don't LOVE any FA SPs this winter. Of the SPs this year north of 100 IP, only 6 are top 20 in xFIP: Jack Flaherty (#7) Blake Snell (#8) Yusei Kikuchi (#12) Max Fried (#16) Nate Eovaldi (#20) Flaherty and Kikuchi each only pitched at an elite level for half of this season, and didn't have the most ironclad resumes coming into the year. Max Fried is a command over stuff guy, Blake Snell has major consistency issues, and Nate Eovaldi has a pretty long track record of modestly underperforming his peripherals (as does Kikuchi). There are several guys in this market who I like at #3 starter salaries like Jameson Taillon. But 9 figure guys? I would groan for a while and then I guess take Max Fried. If SP is the biggest addition this winter I agree it's ideally via trade.

I think it's less the room they'll have in November and more the room they have right now. It's not immensely valuable to keep stashing reliever that hit waivers, but it's also not immensely valuable to get Caissie 20 at bats or whatever. There's also a lot of personnel stuff we don't think of. Like I saw on Twitter yesterday Happ is damn close to a couple career highs, including homeruns. So it's easy for us to say "just shut it down for the year dude" but for him he'd like to get those 20 ABs and try and run into that last dong he needs.