Bertz

Yeah I guess using 5 probably isn’t a concern this late. Maybe too they have another reliever up (Palencia?) that they're ready to activate if things go south and the bullpen gets shredded in either game today. Roberts is a lot easier to option right back in that scenario than Assad.

Roberts not being the 27th man means he's staying up I believe. Otherwise this is just needlessly burning an option.

That'd be my best guess, and probably Palencia of those two.

I would say I feel pretty good about this game and tomorrow's game. Tonight's game less so, but it's far from out of hand.

Ton of off days coming up, I think there's more opportunity to pull something like this than there was in April and May. Shota could certainly use it as could the kids as they come off the IL.

The Giants and Cardinals are a hell of a lot better than the Angels. I think the glass half full on Kyle is that his time in the bullpen did actually fix him. The blowup against the Brewers was a run of the mill bad start and last Saturday shouldn't have been allowed to happen health-wise.

Smyly is not at all stretched out. His longest outing this year is 2.1 innings. Also I don't expect much out of Hendricks, but I do think I'd still prefer him to Smyly on a per inning basis even if Drew were stretched out. That's more being anti-Smyly than pro Kyle though.

They haven't been as good as the ERA implies, but they got a ton of bad bounces in May so they were due. Leiter's a legitimate dude, SSS but Little since the start of June and Hodge since his callup have been too. Miller's a fine matchup type. Neris has actually been pitching well for like 2 months, but those awful awful blowup against the Giants and Rays were sort of Karma for his terrible pitching/sparkling ERA in April. I think the unit is one arm short of having me feeling comfortable, two arms short of feeling good. Bigge looks like he might be one, and Merryweather was certainly one before his injury. Palencia is the other internal option I think has a chance. And of course if the team keeps piling up wins they can add someone externally.

I think the best analogue right now is Wesneski honestly.

Yeah Brecht would be pretty fun if he's willing to go underslot. If you gave him #20 money you'd pocket an extra million, which would be enough to bump our pick at #55 up to more like #35 money. If you add the team's 5% to that, you could offer up late first round money to someone willing to slide.

Yeah I think it's really hard to overstate how big of a deal it is for the farm to be where it is even after all of the graduations. I don't think it has an argument for #1 status anymore, but it's still likely a comfortable top 10. Being there after pumping out Busch. PCA, Brown, and Wicks is awesome. On the flip side. I do find it disappointing that we're not tracking towards any true stars. PCA's looking very Kiermaier-y, Caissie's power data at Iowa has been more good than great, and Horton's stuff has backed up a bit as he's gotten stretched out. Alcantara's running out of minor league runway, so even if he does make a star turn it looks like that'll be a few years from now in his next org. Shaw, Triantos, and Ballesteros look pretty tweener-y, not so much that they can't be quality starters but enough that I question the starpower. Brown was giving Spencer Strider, but how many innings can he give you a year? Odds say that we'll probably still get a monster from that above group, but I was hoping this year for that monsterization process to be a good deal further along for one or two of these guys.

Not as many as I'd like. I think my list is: Wrigley, Milwaukee, The Cell, Busch (current), Safeco, The King Dome (I think my only defunct one?), Fenway, Dodger Stadium, Oracle Park I think Oracle is my favorite non-Wrigley Park by a decent margin. Safeco is pretty great though. I didn't enjoy Fenway as much as I wanted, though there were some extenuating circumstances as it was one of those 4PM Saturday afternoon games FOX picks up and so I was essentially staring directly into the sun for about 6 innings. Work is supposed to start taking me to New York a few times a year, so I'm hoping to knock out both NYC parks next year.

This is about as lopsided of a matchup as we've seen this year. If the Cubs pick this one hard not to get overly excited. I think a split is fine this series given the pitching matchups. 3/4 would be huge though.

It probably doesnt mean much, I think he's DFA fodder when guys come back healthy, but Jorge Lopez had his best velo of the season tonight including his two fastest individual pitches.

Daniel Palencia with a bit of a clunker, though he did hit triple digits 7 times. I wonder if he gets 27th man duties on Saturday.

Christian Franklin on base 3 more times tonight Alcantara's pretty hot right now too. I don't think he's ready for Iowa but he might need to get the bump sometime before the end of the season out of pure necessity.

This is a Dodgers fan BTW. Mostly posting this because every fan seems to only think their team does this.

If Steele doesn't take this to the house please get Bigge in the game. I would like to give him the opportunity to pull a Hodge and become circle of trust worthy inside of a month.

I wonder if that means this draft looks like '21 where they basically immediately threw all their extra cash at Triantos and that was that. I think Gray was a bit overslot and then everyone else was at or under?

I wonder what Skenes' innings cap is this year. He's at 93 right now which isn't excessive, but it does mean he's looking at probably 160+ if they don't skip any starts. That's not an unreasonable number but would imagine they're thinking something closer to 140. What they ought to do is put him on the IL for a breather the weekend before Labor Day, give him two weeks to rest up and then legit rip down the stretch. Go ahead and rest Jared Jones at the same time.

Hopefully it's just a hairline deal like Hoerner's and he's back shortly after the ASB.

Why Danny Jansen? By an order of magnitude the catcher position has been the most problematic spot on the 2024 Cubs. The difference in catcher WAR between the 30th ranked Cubs and, for example, the 15th ranked Astros is 3.4 wins. Meaning if the Cubs had average production from the position they'd likely be over .500 right now. The offense in particular has been so bad that it has single-handedly cost the Cubs a quarter of a run per game at the plate. Danny Jansen is a name most are probably familiar with, as with the Jays' catching surplus he's been in a number of rumors over the last few years. He has *major* durability concerns, but on a rate basis he has been the 5th best catcher in baseball (4.5 WAR/600) since the start of 2021. Why Now? The Cubs as an organization place a premium on a catcher's soft skills. They want a field general and a pitcher whisperer behind the plate, and offense is a secondary concern. They're not alone in that regard. The Yankees, Rays, Astros, and Dodgers have all at different points over the last 5-10 years made a similar emphasis. But clearly there is a limit to what level of offensive ineptitude they can accept and what Yan Gomes and Miguel Amaya have done to this point in the year passed it. The best way to assess those soft skills is directly. You could chat with former teammates and coaches on background, but the best way to know if Jansen will mesh well with Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga is to have them work together. If you trade for Jansen prior to the deadline, you have two months to evaluate him specifically with this team, these coaches, this technology, etc. He also gets a chance to get acclimated and can ideally hit the ground running next April for what needs to be a much more competitive season. The Cost As Cubs fans we know that catchers do not fetch high returns at the trade deadline. The best Willson Contreras could net two years ago before Houston ownership stepped in was Jose Urquidy, an up and down SP with intriguing stuff. While Jansen is better than Contreras on a rate basis, his Mr. Glass level durability likely means the cost will be even lower. Two 40 FV level prospects akin to what the team gave up for Jeimer Candelario last summer feels like the upper limit of what Jansen might cost. Honestly it will probably be a good bit lower. Next Year Just as catcher has been the biggest hole on the roster in 2024, prior to any external additions it projects to again be so in 2025. I am not totally out on Miguel Amaya as a viable major leaguer, and Moises Ballesteros has potential to impact the position, but unlike the bullpen or third base there's zero argument that we can just roll into 2025 relying entirely on internal options at catcher. Jansen, along with Travis D'Arnaud, are the two starting caliber catchers set to hit the FA market. D'Arnaud seems likely to stick in Atlanta so the Cubs' options over the winter are probably Jansen or the trade market for that external support. There don't appear to be a ton of teams looking to add catching this winter, but getting Jansen in house and letting him fall in love with Wrigley does give you a chance to make sure you're not left holding the bag over the winter. This Year Let's also not forget this year. The team is probably a bit too far out to make a successful run at this point, but with playoff odds right around 10% they're squarely in the "it wouldn't be crazy" part of the win curve. This move would address the black hole at catcher, while knock on wood internal reinforcements appear to be turning around the bullpen. It's likely too little too late, but a Jansen trade would not be a complete waste of on-field value because we're not quite yet at the point where 2024 wins are meaningless. tl;dr The Cubs should trade for Danny Jansen this month as an audition of sorts to see if he's the guy next winter. The cost shouldn't be high and the position has been so poor the potential impacts are actually quite large.