Bertz

Preparing myself for the inevitable Colin Rea pixie dust tonight. Something like 7 innings and 1 run despite like 2 strikeouts and 8 balls hit over 100 MPH. All of us just watching like this

If Wiggins continues throwing strikes like this I assume he hits South Bend essentially as soon as he gets fully stretched out? As a well decorated SEC arm bullying kids in low A is probably not doing anything development-wise.

The RISP stuff is pretty overstated. Fangraphs has a stat called Baseruns, which basically strips out all sequencing and estimates how many runs you should score based on your hits, walks. etc. https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=BaseRuns The Cubs coming into today have scored 4.12 runs per game. Baseruns thinks they should have 4.19, that's 5-6 runs over the entire course of the season to this point. So like 3-4 extra hits with runners in scoring position? The issue is just the baseline level of offense, not any sort of issues with clutch.

Yeah I'm sure Bote was doing what he was supposed to and looking only at the ball but that sucks that Hodge didn't get get that opportunity. Catching the 3rd out on your first MLB save? Come on that would rock.

He's got his best velo of the year one start after having his worst. I think he needed the breather from getting knocked out early last time around.

If PCA's a +15 defender in center and steals 60-something bases at a 90+% clip the offensive bar is absolutely on the floor. Like to the point if he can get his OBP to start with a 3 he's an all star.

Dodgers leading the world in pitcher IL time and Glasnow not contributing at all is very funny. But then again as I said over and over again this winter his injury history was always wildly exaggerated.

Assad's velo has been down lately I kind of wondered if this was coming. Brown didn't sound too far out so hopefully he can get back before the next guy drops.

This is exactly the problem. Every GM in the league except Preller and Dipoto is too far up their own rear worried about min/maxing and not overpaying and just let moves pass them by. Then they do the Flanders "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" routine. It's not exclusive to Jed for sure, about 25 teams act like this, but that doesn't mean we can't criticize our guy for it. The Cubs have traded like a dozen walk year relievers over the last 5 years. The best return was probably Palencia for Chafin? There's just not a lot of ceiling for a reliever trade, just pay full freight and get it over with. There's always this "ohhhh we can't make a trade in May the prices are outrageous" and then whenever we do see trades made in May (Arraez, Willy Adames, etc.) the prices are fine. Like I'll buy the inflation argument for teams still vaguely in contention, but I don't buy that teams with 0% playoff odds on Memorial Day are spitting on offers 10-20% over market rate.

I mean we just saw the Marlins trade Luis Arraez for a deal that was not exactly earth shattering. Like yeah it might be a few weeks before the Blue Jays are willing to part with Vlad, but Jed could have absolutely grabbed a leverage reliever from the Marlins or the A's a month ago,

Pitching bot on Fangraphs LOOOOOVVVVVESSSSS him FWIW Also, weirdly, even though he's a RHH side armer he's been death on lefties

Soooooo....this topic is looking more and more relevant. I think my overall approach would be similar to my reply a few weeks ago, but getting more specific my goals for the TDL would be: - Clear relief innings for the kids. There are a couple of expiring contracts in Hendricks, Neris, and Smyly who I expect to return little to nothing but I'd look to trade anyway. If we're not worried about the standings then I want as many of the Iowa stuff monsters as we can muster in the MLB bullpen AND getting tested with leverage opportunities - Similar to the above, Tauchman’s got to go. I like Tauchman, quite a bit actually, but we need to open those PAs for PCA and/or Caissie. As a bonus I think he'll return something solid assuming he doesn't play terribly coming out his IL stint - Deal Taillon. He's got a limited NTC, but I would guess with the heater he's on and with how much of a seller's market it is we can get out of his deal right now. In order to add some star power to the team for next year you probably need to make a splash in the rotation, but at the same time the kids have proven enough that they should get two spots to fight for rather than just one - Buy something for next year. I mentioned a few weeks ago getting a young catcher and using the lost two months to get him acclimated to our pitching staff, coaches, etc. That'd still be my ideal route, but this could also easily be a move for an immediate contributor like Vladito I want to be in a situation where this winter is very straightforward. Something like "We need a catcher, a SP, and two relievers and we've got $70M to make it happen." I think part of the problem last winter is that there were too many permutations of what the FO could add, so they waited out the market looking for good deals and only made 4 moves when they should have made more like 6.

I don't understand why Sunday wasn't his last game at Tenn

I would LOVE to play poker with you

I actually have a hot take I like 70% believe that now that pitch design has been more or less figured out there's not a ton of difference between what FO's know and what smarter fans know. FO's have tracking data available from a wider variety of levels and sources, and obviously have players' health records, but otherwise....

I think two things can be true with the bullpen: - The team has gotten absolutely boned in ways that aren't anyone's fault. They were projected to be the #13 bullpen coming into the year, and 3 of their top 7 projected relievers have been 60 day IL victims, with their #1 pitching poorly for a month prior. 3 more of those top 8 have had 15 day IL stints. Plus there's the ripple effects from the rotation injuries - The group was not exactly unimpeachable coming into the year (obvious from that #13 projection). Alzolay and Merryweather had late year injuries last year, so they certainly were at elevated risk. Neris shouldn't be nearly this bad but his velocity and peripherals declined last year and he's had A LOT of miles on his arm so again not insane for him to go all landmine. Everyone around here also talked about the pen being an arm short heading into ST and was pining for an 11th hour Tanner Scott trade

Do we think he's still 5'7"? I haven't seen a ton of pictures of him standing next to other guys (he's usually alone in the batters box), but he seems 5'7" in the same way Morel is 135 lbs.

Bellinger's sprint speed is flat YoY too. For a CF I'd be shocked if there was a real degradation of ability with speed held constant.

If AA and AAA are mostly interchangeable why would AAA be a showcase? Wouldn't you want him to stick at AA and destroy that league. As a catcher it doesn't look suspicious to slowplay his promotion schedule. For the public there's a meaningful difference because of the availability of Statcast data, but that's not a barrier within the league. I'd guess there's a real consideration of calling him up to MLB. Give him one pitcher to caddy, maybe start with Brown or Wicks during their rehab, and have him do the Mitch Garver catcher/DH thing.

Yeah I don't see any reason moving to LF would help Suzuki at all. Do they not have lights or walls or rain in left field? I agree I think the guy who goes is Morel, or possibly Busch. I think the plan moving forward should be to pick one of those two guys as the going forward 1B. and use the other one as capital on the market. Busch would clearly he the guy who stays if the decision was made today. That frees up DH for either an external bopper like Vladito or to shift Suzuki to primary DH work and open up outfield PAs for some of the kids Suzuki or Happ aren't bringing back anything of substance. They play above the level of their salary but not by a ton , couple that with the NTC and I'd be shocked if the juice was worth the squeeze on moving either. Not even getting into any outside the lines considerations.

If Jed's seat were at all hot he would have been more aggressive on the trade market last winter. "We project as a team fighting for the wildcard, I could spend a chunk of the farm to bump that projection up higher without needing a ton of additional payroll but obviously that has long term implications" is absolutely the type of conversation GMs and owners have. If someone like Stearns was out there I could see PTR going out and grabbing him in the same way Jed grabbed Counsell with Ross already on board. But as 1908 pointed out there's no one we know who's out there who'd be an obvious upgrade, and we're well past the era of "just go get the current #2 guy in Tampa" being a successful strategy. I'd guess the seat is getting warm and Jed will need to start pushing chips in. if the team does very little to nothing at the deadline my ears will perk up a bit. That'd possibly be an indication he's just playing out the string and Tom put the kibosh on making moves that would impact beyond this year.

Southern League deadball nonsense had me not realizing how not deep the hole Franklin dug was. Although that 61% groundball rate is horrifying.

Kevin Alcantara Status: Alive!

I don't think it's just that, they're also underperforming pretty severely on just pulled balls (.376 actual. 413 expected).

I'm not sure what to make of this, but the Cubs are 20th in wOBA against 95+, and yet 7th in xwOBA.