Bertz

Superintendant Chalmers: Good Lord, what is happening in there? Scott Boras: Collusion? Superintendant Chalmers: Collusion? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your client list? Scott Boras: Yes. Superintendant Chalmers: May I see it? Scott Boras: No.

I'm not one of those crappy fans who popped up last year who hate Happ for some reason, but he's pretty objectively the most easily replaceable of our good players. Especially in April with the wind blowing in there's not a ton of daylight between Happ and Tauchman. Let him take his time and get healthy and if he has to miss the first series or three it'll be fine.

Chapman certainly got burned by waiting. There's real value in shaking off the qualifying offer and having your choice of the next three years to get back out there, but it's not double. This waiting game always seemed risky, with Chapman being limited to one position (limiting his options) it was clearly dumb.

And that was the second time it happened in like 3 batters.

I expect Cubs twitter to have a totally normal reaction to this half inning from PCA.

Nick Castellanos, Jake Burger. and Luis Robert all had chase and contact numbers in the same neighborhood as what PCA ran in AAA last year. Julio Rodriguez wasn't super far off. Like he's obviously got work to do but at 21 I'm not worried about it at anything beyond typical prospect attrition levels.

Nothing earth shattering, but interesting/good to see the people in the game with a consensus similar to the public of a 2nd or a 3rd.

Plenty of guys make a nose to toes approach work. Not just to the point of surviving but to the point of thriving. We don't need every hitter to attempt to be Juan Soto. Especially with Bellinger back obviously give Pete a little more time at Iowa to sand down some of the roughest edges, but overall just let him be him. Of the 20 most chase prone hitters in MLB last year, 9 had above average wRC+ marks and they were collectively at a 99. It's not a death sentence.

Morel is obviously the big question, and should be. I do think the fanbase generally has overstated how screwed we are if he can't make it work. I know the fans hate Madrigal, but ZiPS thinks he's a 3 WAR/600 PA player. Mastrobuoni is at 2 WAR/600 PA. Wisdom is 1.7. There are complimentary skillsets too, so there's opportunity for synergy and we just paid a manager huge money to try and wring that out. What's been interesting this spring is that the messaging on Busch and Morel feels like it's flipped. At the convention it sounded like Morel wasn't getting much run at 3B beyond utility work, while Busch sounded like a legitimate part time option. Here in the spring there's obviously been the news around Morel at 3rd, but also it increasingly sounds like Busch is going to get very little 3B time. I wonder if the about face is because Cody got locked in and a month ago they had to be open to Chapman?

Yeah he was REALLY good in relief. Unless he's injured or velo is way down or something there's no reason to not let him at least open the season in that role again.

I thought this was really fun. It also really speaks to the Cubs depth. They are among the teams least impacted by removing their top end talent. Now some of that is a lack of superstar talent, but also it's a testament to their depth. -As all teams are currently constructed, FG has the Cubs 15th in winning percentage - Remove every team's best player, Cubs are 13th - Top 3 players Cuba are 9th - Top 5 players Cubs are 6th - Top 8 players Cubs are 3rd It's a bit simplistic of an approach but once the season starts and things get real and injuries pile up the Cubs are going to be one of the last teams that has to dip into like waiver wire depth. What's also interesting is that the Rays appear to be kings of this exercise, though annoyingly the Cardinals do basically just as well as the Cubs. Though they're so old I there's a ton more underperformance risk beyond injury.

He got Judge and I believe the exact number as well. That said agreed he's a fraud and trying to parlay that into clout. I guess I'm a little curious if he happens to actually have one source in Aaron Judge's orbit or just had a fabulously lucky guess, but for our purposes it's pretty moot.

One thing that's interesting about Brennen from last year is that he was so clearly and unequivocally broken we will be able to clearly tell if/when he's fixed. Last year his AAA Statcast numbers would have ranked like this in MLB: 15th percentile average exit Velo 28th percentile max exit velo 23rd percentile hard hit rate 82nd percentile chase rate (in the bad direction) 17th percentile in-zone contact rate We unfortunately do not have public data from his 2021 stint at AAA, but you'd presume based on his production and prospect status he was substantially better than that across the board. And probably well above average everywhere but contact rate. If he's got like a .900 OPS on May 15th and we're wondering if he's back or if it's a fluke, we should be able to look under the hood now and have a very good idea.

I feel very comfortable that the team is not going to have a debacle at 1B like they did last year. That said I think it is, by a pretty wide margin, the position the Cubs are least likely to get star caliber production out of. I'd expect a roughly 110 wRC+ out of each of Busch, Wisdom, Morel, and Bellinger if tasked with full time play. That is adequate production at 1B, and by playing matchups I think you can get the aggregate closer to 120. It feels very difficult to map out a path to 130+. Busch is a strong prospect, but that's built much more on floor than ceiling. Wisdom and Morel would need substantial cut downs in their swing and miss to get there. And I don't think Cody's going to tank at the plate but he's not going to do what he did last year again (and even if he does he probably spends 70+% of his time in the OF?). The wildcard to potentially make the above look foolish is Owen Caissie. Short of like a Kris Bryant/Vladito situation you should rarely expect star caliber offense from a prospect at the jump. But I do think Caissie coming up in June and hitting the horsefeathers put of the ball is more likely than Busch/Morel/etc. putting up All Star production.

Thought this was good. I thought we were going to lose these with Bryan Smith riding off into the sunset. Two things stood out to me: - If BJ Murray has to start back at Tenn to save room for Chase Horsefeathering Strumpf we riot - The position player group at SB and especially MB is not great. After two years going arm arm arm in the draft the position player side really needs some love this next draft. A couple of IFAs beyond Rojas popping would also do the trick

I imagine Kilian will continue starting, but given that Jed didn't trade any SP depth and knock on wood no one's arm is falling off I'd move him to short relief for good pretty much yesterday

I've mentioned this before, but I'm generally convinced by the idea that the soft factors in catcher defense add up. We've had several years of strong, competitive, and/or rich teams punting on measurable catcher production and instead installing a pitcher whisperer behind the plate. I don't love appeal to authority, but the Yankees, Rays, Astros, and Dodgers among others all doing something over that span feels pretty compelling. So this may be cheating but I view Gomes as a plus defensively. And while he's old and coupled with being a catcher his offense can fall off a cliff at a moment's notice, he's been and projects to continue to be roughly average offensively (by the lowly standards of the position). Then you have Amaya who on paper looks like an above average catcher on both sides of the ball, and also gets some buzz for being a budding pitcher whisperer. Like would I rather have Will Smith or Adley Rutchsman? Hell yeah. Am I worried about the position? Not a ton. There's actually a bit of a relief in not having too much of the team's projected production tied up into a position with such a brutal attrition rate.

The Cards are not winning the Central. Not saying the Cubs will, but the Cards definitely aren’t.

One of the few non-health things I would actually take away from this ST.

Thompson looks like a curveball goof who was at AA last year at age 22. Give him a little time in a better org's pitching dev and give him the velo boost that comes with shifting to the pen and maybe he's a fun reliever.

One of the things that becomes increasingly clear about Jed the longer we see him run the team is he's much more concerned about floor than ceiling. And Bellinger really raises the floor on this team. - If Morel is able to start at 3B, the team should get a wRC+ north of 100 from every spot except catcher, and even at catcher we should get above average offense by positional standards. Seiya is probably the only guy you can reasonably expect a wRC+ north of ~120 from, but it's a deep and varied lineup - Depending on how much value you attribute to the softer factors of catching, the Cubs look like they will run out plus defenders all the way up the middle, and average-ish defenders at every corner spot except for 3B (and even that becomes plus if Morel falters) - Because of the versatility of particularly Bellinger and Hoerner, the team is two or more deep with starting caliber players at every position, AND on top of that they have loaded Iowa and Tennessee rosters ready do push even more talent towards the bigs There will obviously be some guys who crater, but the team should be in position to minimize as much as possible wasted playing time. Contrast that with our main competition for the division, the Cardinals, and like their shortstop options are a 22 year old who OPS'd under .500 as a rookie and a 37 year old who OPS'd under .600 last year.

I don't put any stock into HotstoveCubbies, but yeah Sahadev confirmed its likely to be a pitcher getting the bump and Thompson makes the most sense. The Rays mention is interesting and I'd forgotten about. That came out from a Rays blogger during the Glasnow discussions, and was specific enough it perked my ears up. The Rays are obviously a very transaction-oriented organization, so they seem likely to play ball and marry up to convert someone like Thompson into equivalent value off of the 40 man.

Thank God Sahadev made it down to Arizona to give us a reprieve from Mooney