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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    It is wild having both fun hitting AND fun pitching at Iowa. Seeing a Shaw homer and scrolling down to see Birdsell doing something more impressive is extremely fun.
  2. Bertz
    I think if we weren't getting the teeth of the Pirates rotation I'd be letting myself dream a little, but because of the way schedules fall the Pirates series are pretty tough. The Cubs have 11 series left - 4 look easy: @ Marlins, Home+Away vs. Nats, vs. Oakland - 3 look kind of tough: @ Rockies, @ Phillies (they will have their division locked up by then), vs. Reds - 2 look tough: Home+Away against the Pirates, but with their top 3 starters going both series - 2 look scary: vs. Yankees and @ Dodgers I'm feeling like they can end over .500 but 86-88 wins feels unreasonable.
  3. Bertz
    Javy's only hit of the series coming against slider specialist Ethan Roberts is kind of hilarious to me.
  4. Bertz
    Fly balls and Line Drives to the pull side this year have a .677 xwOBA and a .793 actual wOBA. Even if you exclude barrels, it's .481 and .547 Among qualified hitters this year, Isaac is 2nd in pull rate and 2nd lowest in groundball rate. I don't have pulled fly ball rate, that would require a little excel work, but he's probably #1 and certainly top 5. He was more or less designed in a lab to be an xwOBA outlier. Now there's some park specific benefits he enjoyed that will go out the window now in Wrigley, so his production will take a bit of a haircut, but we're still talking something in the 110-120 range as the expectation.
  5. Bertz
    So you think he was lucky for nearly 1600 plate appearances, and then suddenly the last 80 are the real him?
  6. Bertz
    Is his track record shorter than the 3 weeks he's been a Cub?
  7. Bertz
    Steele looks likely to get through 7. Wonder if 6 runs is enough for Roberts or Neely to get in the game, or if that would require additional tack on runs.
  8. Bertz
    My POV is that short of a prodigious end to the season you still probably can't walk into next season with Amaya starting. I think the longer this goes on the lower the bar for what you bring in ahead of him though. Specifically, the better Amaya hits to end the year, the less insistent I'd be on trading for a young catcher and the more comfortable I'd be with a veteran like Carson Kelly. I'd still prefer the former, there's only so many spots you can make a big upgrade on this roster, but it'd be a less black and white decision.
  9. Bertz
    Well that was fun
  10. Bertz
    I joke about how reactionary this fanbase is but I've still been blown away by the amount of handwringing over 3 weeks of play. Like is this the first year folks have followed a baseball season before?
  11. Bertz
    I can't imagine watching this year's team, seeing the dumpster fires at 3B and especially catcher, and being so flippant about having high quality depth behind a high variance young player.
  12. Bertz
    Really good rundown from the Athletic. Some other things that stood out: - On the position player side it feels like the choice for who to bring up is likely between Alcantara (already on the 40 man) and Caissie (probably the most ready, has to be added to the 40 this winter anyway) - The team will likely use a 6 man rotation for at least part of September. It won't necessarily be Wicks getting those starts, they're more worried about getting him innings than anything. I wonder if these means Wicks stays primarily at Iowa while Wesneski gets those starts?
  13. Bertz
    Fans are just comically impatient. And I don't know if Cubs fans are worse than most but they're certainly not better. For instance a bunch of dummies are already mad at Isaac Paredes after 3 weeks. The changing AAA environment doesn't help things. Michael Busch was about as polished and accomplished of a AAA hitter as you'll ever see, and even he had a rough cup of coffee with the Dodgers last year and a *deep* slump in late April to mid May of this season after his hot streak coming out of the gates. I follow the minors very closely and even I've had a tough time this year moving on from the idea that once you've mastered AA you just need like a month in AAA and then it's debut time. On PCA specifically, on top of the systemic difficulties he was more raw than most. I think too, part of why there's not a firm alignment on what he needs to succeed is because he is mutli-talented enough that he can reach star level production via a couple different paths. A significant level up in any of contact, power, or patience is probably enough to get him in the neighborhood of a league average hitter. What has made August so tantalizing is he's improved in all three phases, most significantly in contact.
  14. Bertz
    Yeah that was wild. I don't think I've seen that outside of the stupid juiced ball in 2019 or when the wind is howling out. Although he did hit it 102.
  15. Bertz
    How much trade value does a 4th outfielder, even a very good one, have? I don't think the opportunity cost here is super high. The timing sucked for trading Tauchman because we don't know what Bellinger's fate will be. Cody's option decision is pretty up in the air. He can easily clear the 2/$50M he has on his current deal, but he hasn't done enough for a megadeal. As encouraging as the last six weeks have been for PCA (though keep in mind half of that occurred after this decision had to be made), he's clearly risky enough that you need to head into next year with contingencies for. Imagine a world where you trade Tauchman for a 40 FV prospect or two, PCA faceplants in August and September, and Bellinger opts out. We'd all rightfully be on Jed's ass for being shortsighted about this totally foreseeable hole that now exists in CF. The cost to avoid that scenario is the difference between what Tauchman would have brought back in July vs. what he could still bring back in December. I don't see a lot of reason to think that difference is all that large.
  16. Bertz
    Sucks for Neely last night, just could not get that slider into the zone and got beat for it. A lineup with like 7 lefties also wasn't the softest landing. Hopefully he can laugh it off and move on similar to Ben Brown. Loved what we saw from Pearson and Merryweather. If they keep pitching like that the situation heading into the winter looks a lot different.
  17. Bertz
    It requires keeping Suzuki in the field, but I've been looking A LOT at Shea Langeliers and Brent Rooker from Oakland. They're likely going to combine for 60+ dongs this year while playing half their games in cavernous Oakland, and they're both still cheap (Shea's pre arb while Rooker is entering Arb 1) so Jed would be able to throw most of his available cash at patching up the pitching staff sith FAs.
  18. Bertz
  19. Bertz
    This is a good winter to acquire a good closer without having to do anything silly like the Josh Hader contract. Kenley Jansen, Ryan Pressly, and David Robertson are all still very good but old enough to make 3+ year commitments unnecessary. Rumor in the Athletic last winter was Jed was willing to go outside of his comfort zone to get Counsell a closer he could lean on. I think something like 2/$36M to Kenley Jansen feels very realistic even knowing Jed's feelings on paying big money for relief help.
  20. Bertz
    I would definitely waive Smyly. I'm much closer to an xFIP absolutist than most, but we're 300 innings into Smyly's Cubs career and he's outperforming his FIP/xFIP by half a run. The margin for error isn't huge as we saw when he was getting hammered last summer, but I think there's some legitimate soft contact skills there, though his 2.88 ERA clearly has a healthy amount of luck baked in. That said I'm less interested in him and his merits and more interested in the roster spot. The need isn't as dire after Neris got cut, but I think what sets up the team best for 2025 is evaluating as many young pitchers as possible. Wicks, Kilian, Keegan Thompson, and Daniel Palencia are all guys who could really stand to get some MLB time pretty soon here (in that order IMO). Roster expansion will open up a spot, and Ethan Roberts can and likely will get sent down soon. So it's not a travesty if the team lets Smyly play out the string. But it feels like the full court press on getting interesting Iowa arms some MLB innings is the most appropriate play right now.
  21. Bertz
    I'm very curious about Herz slashing his walk rate so aggressively in MLB compared to what he did in the minors, including this year with the Nats AAA club. Feels like he either had a mechanical breakthrough with the Nats right before his callup, or it's some SSS weirdness. Given the amount of funk he has I'd assume the latter but hopefully for his sake it's the former. Greg Zumach and so seemed to indicate he's a cool dude.
  22. Bertz
    I was looking at upcoming pitching matchups on Roster Resource, it looks like things have lined up for us to get Jones/Skenes/Keller in both upcoming Pirates series. We're obviously missing Skubal here against Detroit and look poised to miss Gore against Wash but dear lord the Pirates we are getting are not the Pirates the rest of the league is getting.
  23. Bertz
    I'm really interested to see where opinions net out on Cristian Hernandez over the winter. Because of his amateur pedigree his first couple years in the org he got a lot of leash, too much if we're being honest, with little production to back it up. This year the production has shown up yet the vibes still seem on a downward trajectory. Is this a classic case of a guy who will get a bump once offseason reports come in? Are there red flags in his Statcast data we're not privvy too? Opinions souring on his defense? Because while his production this year is not entirely unimpeachable, nothing I can see would be considered more than a yellow flag.
  24. Bertz
    Dansby Swanson for his career has a .317 wOBA and a .326 xwOBA. So his true talent is to underperform his Stacast numbers by a modest amount. This year, Dansby Swanson has a .326 xwOBA exactly in line with his career numbers (despite a pretty crappy run environment) and yet us running a .289 actual. That is 4x the typical gap he runs. A .317 like his career suggests he should be around would coincidentally tie him with Mike Tauchman offensively (a 105 wRC+ for those like me who prefer that measure). Dansby's main problem is run of the mill bad luck. From a process standpoint though he has been hitting the ball on the ground too much. That's the difference between a luck neutral 105 wRC+ and something more like 115 or 120 like he's run when he's at his best. His contact, patience, and exit velo numbers are all totally fine.
  25. Bertz
    Kind of funny, Owen Caissie had an 111.5 MPH groundout that is, to this point, the hardest hit ball in AAA tonight. Much better from Wicks. Velo still down a bit, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do one more rehab outing, but still good stuff.
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