Jump to content
North Side Baseball

Bertz

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    12,397

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    29

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    His .421 OPS thus far?
  2. Bertz
    That's such a crummy blown slave. None of those balls were hit that hard
  3. Bertz
    That felt like the first time this year I felt Keegan was fully back. Had the full velo and the breaking pitches working. He's had great results to this point but it felt a little smoke and mirrors-y when he was sitting 92-93.
  4. Bertz
    It seems like at this point JD never makes the west coast trips? Not sure if that's a JD preference or if they need give Sutcliffe X number of games and they decided might as well choose the West Coast trips?
  5. Bertz
    Wonder if Hughes is going to be allowed into a game this tight right away. This block of lefties is going to come back around at least one more time, and presumably it'll be really late.
  6. Bertz
  7. Bertz
    That Taillon sinker is nasty. Eno Sarris wrote about it a bit earlier this week
  8. Bertz
    Wowza that was a hell of a catch from Bellinger
  9. Bertz
    IIRC the sub scap was one of Prior's last injuries
  10. Bertz
    I'd be ecstatic to end up with Carter. I feel like so many "how the hell did he fall so far" situations are "Well, he was a top 5 pick on February 1st but then the league spent 2 months picking nits and overthinking it and he dropped." This does make me more mad we didn't address RT in FA. I feel like if we end up with Carter, the next move should be to use 53 and 61 to jump back up and grab a tackle. If Poles had addressed RT, he could have just let Day 2 come to him.
  11. Bertz
    Taillon actually pitched well last time out. Hopefully this is the start where balls start finding gloves.
  12. Bertz
    It definitely feels like Steel has leveled up this season. One thing I didn't like about Steele last year and really made me skeptical of him was his inability to hold his velo through starts. He'd regularly hit 95 in the first inning or two of games, but he'd be gassed and regularly be living in the 80's by like the 4th inning. Last night he didn't start regularly falling into the 80's until the 6th. And even then he was 89-92, not 87-90 like he got to at points last year. That more consistent velo along with some of the things you talked about in terms of understanding his arsenal and the plan of attack with it better appears to be allowing him to work deeper into games. I don't buy his sparkling ERA at all. But the peripherals are a little bit improved, and he's working WAY deeper into games. Last year he was a fringey #2 SP but for only 5 IP per start. Now he might just be a #2 SP, no qualifiers or caveats required?
  13. Bertz
    We used to say "good pitching day" when two or more of our half dozen legitimate pitching prospects were going on the same day. Now that we have closer to like 15 legitimate pitching prospects damn near every day is "good pitching day," so I don't really post that anymore. I like this way better
  14. Bertz
    It's still so wild how....mortal this Dodgers team is. Like it's good, don't get me wrong. But it's basically a .500 team plus the monster trio of Freeman/Betts/Smith. By their estremely lofty standards it's almost kind of embarrassing.
  15. Bertz
    Statcast says 109. Unless this was like pregame or something
  16. Bertz
    I'm also very much of the mind that the Braves will regret doing so many extensions. We've seen how quickly an all-world core of players can wilt, and the Braves basically don't have an off ramp until the end of the decade.
  17. Bertz
    It's been reported that Bellinger's GF is days away from giving birth, so Nelly is presumably staying up through at least Cody's paternity list stint Brandon Hughes pitched yesterday for Iowa, so while not far off he's likely not coming back tonight The Estrada news, if true, likely means either baby Bellinger's here or two position players are on the way out (Torrens and Rios?)
  18. Bertz
    Even though his season to this point has been one kind of bad start and one really bad start, both sets of pitch modeling data for Hayden are mostly unmoved from where they were last year. The cutter is getting better grades and the change up worse, but they see him as largely the same dude. And they LOVE him. I worry a bit about platoon issues, he didn't have them last year but with his repertoire you'd expect some. I also am currently worried that he might have gotten a little out in front of his skis in adding velo this offseason and there will be Kilian-esque impacts on his command. But honestly? The preponderance of evidence is that he's a number 2 starter right now. He's probably really good, no forecasting or wishing required.
  19. Bertz
    Me seeing 11 runs for Iowa through 4 innings and then checking the box score to see what actually happened was like the Anakin/Padme meme
  20. Bertz
    I'd love to steal this series. The Dodgers do not appear to have fixed Thor, and Michael Grove is their version of like Assad. Win these first two games and win that A's series you're supposed to and you can live with a little bit of ugliness during that block with the Dodgers/Padres back to back
  21. Bertz
    Wow, I didn't remember that being so brutal but you're totally right. He signed his extension in the offseason and then in that very same spring training got dealt. I remember people being mad about that one but thought there was at least a year in there between.
  22. Bertz
    I can't think of any examples of it happening within like a year. It occasionally happens a little further out, Nolan Arenado was a notable example when he got traded right around two years after signing his deal. There's definitely a honeymoon period of a few years before it starts shifting back to "what makes the most business sense"
  23. Bertz
  24. Bertz
    So thinking about what this does for the upcoming offseason. The Cubs have the following on the books: $91M in fully guaranteed contracts to Swanson, Taillon, Happ, Seiya, and Hoerner $40M in contracts where the player has an opt out with Stroman, Mancini, and Smyly $22M in Club Options for Hendricks and Gomes $3.25M Player Option for Barnhart $25M in random costs like player benefits, Bote's AAV, etc. 8 arb eligible guys, but none should make significant money. Mayyybe Wisdom cracks $5 because of the dongs or one of Adbert/Heuer rack up a bunch of saves? It's impossible to say which options/opt outs will get exercised at this point, but the over under on payroll heading into the offseason is probably about $150M?
  25. Bertz
    Davis actually has in the early going here his lowest swinging strike rate since he was 19 in low A. The elevated K rate is more of a deep counts thing IMO. The parallels at the moment with Cody Bellinger are actually really deep. Coming into the year I was primarily worried about contact. Both guys have improved their YoY contact numbers significantly while still walking and maintaining a flyball heavy batted ball profile. Therefore I *think* both guys are trending up right now. If each guy didn't have the injury history and questions, you'd absolutely focus on the K/BB improvements and chalk up the soft contact to SSS. But they DO have the injury questions. Maybe they can't physically make contact and hit the ball with authority anymore, and the physical issues have relegated it to an either/or.
×
×
  • Create New...