Bertz

What a play by Steele. I would have only expected Stro to pull that off among our guys

Whatever issues Steele had in the first were clearly temporary

Post WBC velo bump Assad gets slapped with a 45 FV

What a night for Nelly. All 5 batted balls north of 90 MPH, 3 of them north of 105 (!!) and maybe most notable for him zero swings and misses

This Iowa team is very good and prospecty. And Iowa hasn't even been kind of good at any point since approximately Schwarber's first call up. It's so refreshing and I hope the quality young depth provides a good number of MLB wins this year.

Curious if the weather influences tomorrow's lineup. I could see an argument that nothing is getting out so you want Madrigal, Hosmer, and Mastro in for contact. I could also see the opposite and wanting Rios and Wisdom both in because they might be the two guys on the roster who could actually get it out tomorrow, and it's inevitably going to be a tight game.

I probably elicit eye rolls with my constant praise of Hottovy, but this was really impressive. Not only how fast they fixed Keegan, but the fact that they had the confidence to bring him up north even though he hadn't shown it in a game yet.

Weird thing that probably means nothing but made me raise an eyebrow: Gomes' GIDP today at 109.6 MPH was the second hardest hit ball he's had in the Statcast era. And not by a smidge, he's only had 4 batted balls at 108 or harder. And all of those were 4-5 years ago. I know some of the Dodgers guys did weighted bat training this winter to try and juice their exit velos...wonder if Yan did something similar.

I don't think we got any meaningful data on Taillon’s sweeper, right? I believe he only pitched one game in front of Statcast and it was in an early game where he only threw it a few times. If that pitch shows out on Sunday I will be very quick to jump on board with #4 My one I feel most emphatically about is that we're fixing to have a bullpen of death like the Rays. The Cubs have in the upper levels of the org four guys with pretty monstrous stuff in Julian Merryweather, Jeremiah Estrada, Ryan Jensen, and Daniel Palencia. They have two other triple digit arms in Sanders and Correa. There's a small army of guys who sit mid 90's with a nasty breaking ball. Assuming Thompson's velo issues are temporary, they have three guys on the OD roster who can serve as high leverage long relievers. Fulmer and Boxberger aren't especially exciting but create a solid floor in the near term here. There's no closer-caliber lefty on the way (Luke Little is the closest to MLB and he's not close), but that's really the closest thing there is to a blemish.

For as great as Burnes is and as bad as the Cubs were, they beat him 3x last year. Here's to #4

My guess is that it's more about the roster spot than Torrens himself. I think with how light hitting Gomes and Barnhart are, combined with the general position versatility on the roster, Ross likes having a 3rd catcher where he's pretty free to pinch hit. I think this is also a signal that Amaya could not be pressed into duty even in case of an injury right now. For Torrens specifically, he projects surprisingly well given his career to date. He also has more oomph than a generic backup catcher. Good exit velos and much more speed. Between his age (27 isn't that old for a catcher to break out) and athletic ability it's not that hard to imagine another gear in there, even if I wouldn't count on it.

This is great. What's funny to me though is that while in the micro you're 1000% right, on a more macro level he's essentially the complete opposite of the rest of the roster. In terms of end of the day production, he's both very good and also quite safe and boring. He's going to put up a low 3's ERA and be worth between 3 and 4 WAR. There's not much (seeming) additional upside there, but at the same time the only real downside is the inescapable risks inherent to any pitcher. Everyone else on the roster is either A) not talented enough to be an impact guy or B) the error bars on them are enormous. I wouldn't want a roster full of Stromans, but 2-3 more would be pretty nice right now.

81 - 85. I think it's very easy to take the over on the projected production from the pitching staff. The pitch modeling section at Pitchingbot/Fangraphs for instance thinks all five of our starters legit earned sub-4 ERAs last year. And the team's earned a legit benefit of the doubt on the reliever front. That said they project to be the #21 pitching staff, so you can comfortably hit the over and still not be especially good. I also think the depth on the position player side is not given enough value by the projection systems. It doesnt just raise the floor but the ceiling. Take 1B for instance. One of Hosmer/Smyly/Mervis/Rios is likely to hit their 70th+ percentile projections and be a legit starting caliber 1B. It takes some time to evaluate which of those guys that's happening to, but even still it does ultimately lead to additional wins IMO. The problem is that the positives above are worth, what, maybe 5 wins tops? If the projections are saying something like 78-80, it's really hard to argue north of 83ish without getting real homer-y. Jed really needed to make a big trade this winter. If we had e.g. Trevor Rogers instead of Drew Smyly, we'd also have been able to afford upgrading Barnhart or Hosmer to Christian Vazquez or a Brandon Belt. That sort of twofer upgrade would have more affirmatively gotten us into being favorites for one of the WC spots IMO.

I'm in

Ah, good call!

The Cubs are mostly tapped out for this year, and considering we're getting the #1 guy in the class we should presume next year's funds are completely spoken for as well. So do we think there's any opportunity to get Rodriguez? Presumably some team has some leftover funds and will swoop in and grab him?

Strumpf going to Tenn for the 3rd year in a row tells you exactly what the org thinks of him, and personally I'm very much in agreement.

Looking at a few recent comps Adam Frazier went 2.8 -> 4.3 -> 8 Amed Rosario went 2.4 -> 4.9 -> 7.8 So a little higher but not a ton. Hoerner's skillset is not one that racks up a lot of dollars in arb unless it's paired with some hardware.

Rule of thumb is guys get a 50% increase each year in arb. So Nico would likely go 4 and 6 his last two arb years. That said if he won the gold glove or started stealing a ton of bases with the new rules he'd probably juice those numbers quite a bit.