Bertz

Do we know anything about Nico Zeglin because he's putting up absurd numbers at MB, including 9 strikeouts in 3.2 IP last night. He's 24, so it's probably just him not being at an appropriate level for his age, but I'm hoping there's something there stuff wise worth paying attention to.

You're starting to see the contours of a really good 2025 bullpen, which is probably the #1 thing to nail down these next three months. Maybe 1A with "figure out if PCA can hit enough to be a starter". - Little and Hodge are starting to look like definite guys. They, Little especially, will always have control issues but that's kind of irrelevant if you can keep the walk rate in the low double digits that's fine with a K rate bumping 40% or a GB rate bumping 70% - Merryweather and Alzolay are due back later back later this month, hopefully you can get one of them back to '23 form over the last third of the season - Leiter's already a guy - There are additional youths ready or pretty close to ready for their tryouts specifically Roberts, Palencia, and Bigge. Can we get one more of them into the Little/Hodge zone? If heading into the offseason you can have five internal options you feel good about, plus with our SP depth you've got long reliever covered as well, that's a great place to be. I'd still place a premium on adding an external closer in the offseason, someone like Pressly or Jansen. But like I said you're seeing the makings of an outstanding bullpen.

Lot of good updates here. Surprising number of guys currently tracking for 2nd half of July, including some surprising ones like Alzolay. Definitely means the team needs to be judicious about 40 man spots

Minor Leaguers can't go on the 60 Day IL. They could call him up to MLB and immediately IL him, which would be a cool thing to do but not normal operating procedure. They could also cut him now instead of waiting for the offseason, which would be pretty heartless. I think you cut Lopez if you need a 40 man spot in the next few weeks, otherwise you try and hold off until trades naturally clear up spots to do anything. A few veterans will get sent out I'm sure plus Canario and Mervis feel pretty prime for minor trades in the Velazquez for Cuas neighborhood. There will be spots a month from now.

Yeah I think Palencia should and will be the next man up, and even he could probably use another tune up outing or two off the IL. Bigge's only had 10 outings at Iowa too so even though I've been posting about him breathlessly I think another month is fine. The other consideration is the 40 man. Kilian and Merryweather both seem relatively close, next 2-3 weeks. There's some dead weight on the 40 so making moves on top of that isn't insanely hard, but I'd guess non-essential stuff holds off for post-TDL.

Honestly you don't even really need to play arbitrary endpoints, he's up to a 120 wRC+ on the season. His awful April and the Southern League's deadball just made it the quietest 120 in the system.

Wheeler's got to be one of the best FA signings ever right? He wasn't injured, he wasn't tucked away overseas, he wasn't coming off a disaster season. He was really good, the Phillies "overpaid" for him and then he went from really good to incredible.

Timing wise it would be a little surprising to promote him right now. Feels like having him go to the futures game, and then doing the whole "here's your plane ticket to Iowa NOT Tennessee" thing is sort of the standard in a situation like this. But getting added to the official website two weeks early also doesn't feel like an accident. If anything the website is more likely to be out of date.

Yeah Herz was pretty bad at AAA this year so my guess is this is first time around the league success on the back of his funkiness. Also pretty funny thing to get mad about given literally every other conversation around this team.

I'm very interested in the plan with Kilian. It seemed in the spring they might just have him let it eat in relief where the pure velo on his fastball could potentially overcome its lack of life. I assume that's still the case? Or does he start knowing how thin the rotation is at the moment?

One thing Ive been thinking about is that because the Cubs have such a strong and deep farm I feel like it's prudent to draft for need after the first round. Not MLB team need, but organizational pipeline need. I think we want to keep that strong with a steady flow of guys heading towards MLB with relatively staggered ETAs So where are there weak spots? - Catcher is weak throughout. Ballesteros is probably a Mitch Garver type 3rd catcher/DH. Aliendo has a chance as a backup C that strikes out a ton but does hit some dongs. I liked Michael Carico on draft day last year but he's apparently dead? - Catcher aside, the upper levels of the farm are stacked position player wise. There's a a definite lull at South Bend, and then a solid wave of LatAm guys at Myrtle and below - Pitching is a bit similar to the bats. If you step back and consider some of the not totally established MLB arms like Brown and Wesneski as prospects, the upper levels of the farm are very strong, things get very thin at Tenn/SB, and then Myrtle's fun again. With Mule/Wiggins/Wheat up I don't think there's a ton of talent left down at the Complex levels? So all told I think you want college position players and then a bunch of pitching regardless of demo. I think I basically want a redo of the '22 draft but with a hitter in the 1st.

Awesome, very well deserved. This would also seem to indicate whatever has kept Shaw out of the lineup is just bumps and bruises? Also imagine this will be when Shaw joins Iowa.

It's so weird to see the Phillies come to town and be worried about their pitching and not their offense.

I think Ohtani is unique in that he'd have noticeably moved the needle on Marquee subscriptions sold, plus might be enough to get distribution of the network in Japan. Regular players yeah they don't impact revenue much because merch and a lot of that other stuff goes into a league pot.

Yeah Morel looks to be settling in as a -10 3B. That's a level where you shouldn't be afraid to let him play but below where you should be okay with him as an everyday option I think the plan moving forward should be that one of these guys owns 1B or DH, and the other gets traded. I don't think they're good enough to where we should consider both 1B and DH locked down, but they're also both too good to resign either to just taking Patrick Wisdom’s spot as the power bat off the bench. As for which to keep, I think it'd be Busch if you made the call today, but it's not a slam dunk. The results haven't been there for Morel this year but the arrows under the hood offensively are all pointing up. I think I'd trade Morel more because other teams may value him as a 2B or COF and less because I'm certain Busch will out OPS him.

I am VERY interested to see the Statcast data on him

We jinxed again lol

He went out for another inning! Gave up a solo dong, got another K, and passed the 100 pitch mark which the Cubs very rarely let prospects do

Brandon Birdsell with probably the best outing by a SP prospect all year? 6 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 1 HBP, 8 K Wonder how close he is to Iowa.

Part of the thing with the idea of selling is what are you getting back? Maybe there's a Harry Ford for Nico Hoerner deal to be had, but outside of potentially catcher how likely are you to be getting anyone that you'd slot ahead of the current crop of prospects in the upper minors. Maybe Steele could get you one of the Orioles' kids, but like TT mentioned thinking the team needs to tear things that far down to the studs is, to put it nicely, heavy on vibes and light on evidence. I am on team trade Taillon. I think he's a league average-ish starter getting heavy positive variance this year after getting heavy negative variance last year. I'd much rather have that $17M back even if it means you can be a little less aggressive in dealing from the stock of young pitching in your search for a bat. To further ape TT I think any other trades are about getting back to contention immediately in 2025. Some of that can be in the form of selling, e.g. dealing Neris so that his option isn't our problem and to open opportunity for someone like Hunter Bigge. Some of that may be more of a traditional buy trade, like Chris Morel for someone with much less team control but much better roster fit. But dealing guys like Happ or Hoerner or Steele feels like either a pretty fundamental misreading of the situation or excessive confidence in the viability of needle threading.

If only we had tools available that do the math for us on weighting these things properly AND taking age into account.

The Mariners are the most strikeout prone offense in baseball a year after being the #2, so in that sense them sniffing around Nico makes a lot of sense. That said I don't think this makes a lot of sense from the Cubs' side unless two of these three things are true: A) You're committed to Morel owning a starting IF spot going forward B) You're targeting a specific IF in FA this winter C) Your internal evals on both Triantos and Shaw are sky high For A, 3B seems unlikely at this point so I'd assume it'd be sliding Morel back to 2B? It is the one place he's shown some defensive chops in MLB. That would actually be a savvy way to inject some offense into this team. Though I'd be nervous about committing to Morel holding down a new defensive spot for a second year in a row. B's pretty straightforward. There's a pretty decent IF crop in FA this year with guys like Bregman, Kim, etc. Shaw and Triantos are both having killer seasons and look to have September-issues ETAs, but there's just no way you can count on both successfully holding down spots next year so like I said it'd have to be paired with one of the above. Overall I'm still fairly skeptical about this. It feels like IF is not yet deep enough organizationally, plus while Nico's not an offensive force he is a good compliment to the types of hitters we do already have in house.

If you remove guys who aren't really shortstops anymore, e.g. Fernando Tatis Jr., ZiPS has Dansby Swanson as 10th in the league amongst SS and worth 4.2 WAR/600. Our dumbass fanbase learned literally nothing from how nasty they were to Ian Happ and how dumb that looks a few weeks later. Now those same chuds have set their sights on Swanson as the new designated punching bag, but very little of this stuff really holds up to much scrutiny.

Assuming Soto's not an option at the ownership level, I wouldn't plan on doing heavy lifting on the lineup via FA personally. - Bregman's and Alonso's reputations far outstrip their current production at this point, both are Boras clients too so there are those associated headaches - Ha Seong Kim is awesome but not a great fit for a team with Swanson, Hoerner. and potentially PCA already in the lineup - None of the outfielders like Teoscar or O'Neill are appreciably better than what we have in house - Willy Adames would be fun if he was willing to shift off of SS to 3B, but as the top SS on the market I don't expect he'd want to do that I'd probably be into a d'Arnaud or Jansen at catcher, and certainly complimentary/bench options are fine, but otherwise I think you handle pitching in FA (Jack Flaherty?) and the lineup via trade.