Bertz

This is great. You mentioned it here and I most wonder about the velocity. His 94.3 last year was, like you said, pretty much average for a reliever. I'd love to see him get back where he was in 2021 where he was just a smidge under 96. I'm also curious to see where his slider lives at velo wise. Now that he's adding some extra sweep will it trend down to more mid-80's, or does he keep it bumping 90.

A few that have been rattling around my brain - One of Luke Little or Daniel Palencia breaks free from the "probably a reliever" shackles and ends the season as our top pitching prospect - Reggie Preciado earns his way back into the org's top 10 - Kevin Made ends the year on multiple top 100's - Drew Gray doesn't throw a ton of innings, but he has absurd numbers when he finally debuts (think like DJ Herz's 40% K rate in 2021)

I wonder how likely it is Hosmer gets cut this week. His signing always felt like it came with an expiration date, and that he was going to get cut Memorial Day-ish and replaced with Mervis. But with what Edwin Rios is doing and the positive vibes around him in camp, feels like if you're going to give someone 6-8 weeks of runway at 1B to open the season Rios makes a lot more sense. Plus he's far more in the offensive mold Jed laid out at the end of '22 of more power and fewer groundballs. Cutting Hosmer would be one of the easiest ways to open up a needed 40 man spot. Somewhat relatedly, Morel and Mastro started in RF in both split squad games yesterday. With Suzuki looking more and more like he'll only be out a week or two, maybe the team is planning to forego the Tauchman addition and just make do with guys already on the 40.

I wonder if there's an opportunity to link up with the Phillies. Sending them some one of our many RHH 3B so that Bohm can slide across the field against LHP. Even something as small as getting out of Bote's contract.

What does it cost to get the seemingly disgruntled Ed Oliver out of Buffalo? One of our 4ths? He's making $10M+ so I don't think he'd cost one of those day 2 picks?

None of this is outright wrong. Though obviously not the most charitable of reads. On the player side, the pitching is where things are most interesting. Most indications, both from the teams words and actions, is that they believe they're now part of the inner circle of teams that has more or less figured out modern pitching. They think they're a year or two behind the Dodgers/Guardians/Rays, but still ahead of most of the rest of the league. There's some real indication this is true, but for the team to compete it damn sure better be because on the surface they project to have the 21st ranked pitching staff in baseball next year. The position player group is a little more straightforward. They're basically hanging on 3 "D's": Defense, Depth, and Dongs. Even the best iterations of this team are likely going to be middle of the pack in OBP. But aside from catcher they have strong depth everywhere, and so even the spots like 1B that don't look great at the moment should look better closer to Memorial Day after they've had a chance to cycle through some guys. If you want the model for what a successful version of this team looks like on the position player side, it's something like last year's Brewers. 3rd in dongs, 7th in defense, and 13th in OBP despite a clear lack of stars.

Quiroz got sold to the Phillies today. :):) My other read is that it could be in service of giving Morel everyday ABs and letting Mckinstry break with the MLB club

There's a non-negligible chance he's already our best starter.

What in the name of Joey Tribbiani was the reason for putting Pete Alonso's name in quotation marks?

We're probably a little over a week from getting official ones, but I think this is a great early projection from Bryan Smith There are some things I'd quibble with (e.g. Morel seems almost certain to go to Iowa) but I'd guess this is something like 90% right

The prospecting community basically does the opposite of the Tobias Funke "but it might work for us" meme when it comes to acknowledging young hitters with imperfect resumes but a strong does of age relative to league on their side. Because of that the prospect community (even the Cubs-specific corner of it )is way too low on Made, Ballesteros, and Caissie while also being embarrassingly high on Strumpf, Slaughter, etc.

Bellinger's dong today is getting all the press, but I'm noticing the 4 BBs and only 5 Ks in 37 spring PAs. There's some research from Dan Rosenheck that K's and BB's are the primary stats that matter in ST. Bellinger's not going to get back to the damn near even BB/K from his MVP season, but if he can be something like 11%/24% like he was in 2018, that's a huge improvement from where he was the last two years. That'd actually get him back to being an above average hitter even if his contact quality didn't rebound at all.

The benefit to having such a deep farm is that you should be able to throw $50M/year at an Ohtani and have no problem building out the rest of your roster. There's no excuse to not go full bore after him. That said, Jed's gonna do like Jung Hoo Lee and Lucas Giolito, which is nice but very much not the same.

https://theathletic.com/4334334/2023/03/22/cubs-keegan-thompson-velocity-struggles?source=user-shared-article Good article this AM from Sharma on Keegan Thompson. The tl;dr is that its mostly mechanical in his legs, and is actually something he's dealt with before. More and more looking like Iowa for him, with a callup pretty much immediately after he gets things sorted.

I wouldn't be opposed to each team getting a mulligan or three, just to minimize the chances of a key PA ending on an automatic call. The point about a guy being involved with the defensive play to end the inning and then leading off the next inning is totally reasonable as well. That's a slam dunk to incorporate.

Visually, not getting into like spin rates and stuff, he seems a smidge behind deGrom in terms of nastiness? But like they're clearly in their own class and no one else is close.

I think Tauchman's expiration date is actually Davis or Morel getting called up rather than Seiya's return. The roster needs someone who can play CF when Bellinger's got the day off. Ross was very reticent to throw Happ or Seiya out there last year, and I can't imagine that's going to be any different with each being a year older. But yeah Tauchman's clearly making the roster unless the org has changed its mind about Morel needing to open at Iowa or they make a trade. The list of in-house guys who can play a reasonable CF and step in immediately is just Tauchman and Deluzio, and the org is making it obvious that between those two Tauchman's the guy based on ST playing time.

Yeah, between the scouting reports and the SSS MLB data our assumption should be that Mckinstry is a very good 2B/3B and an adequate SS. Mastrobuoni or Madrigal are going to be a step down defensively at any of those spots. I see a lot of folks on Twitter being like "Mastrobuoni's a better hitter AND defender" and I don't think there's anything to back that up. Maybe it's true but I don't think there are any mainstream scouting reports or data that would agree. The offense is where you can pretty easily poke holes in Mckinstry's profile. He's not really hit at any point in MLB, and he's had this rough spring as well. There's some underlying stuff to like in the offensive profile, which is why he projects quite well, but sometimes dudes are just less than the sum of their parts. It's not super common but it happens. Though our assumption off of <400 PAs and a bad spring should still be that the projections are what is right.

I think the position player side is pretty clear at this point. The 11 guys you mentioned as locks, plus Madrigal and Tauchman. I do think, because of the 40 man situation, there's an outside shot at Hosmer or Mckinstry getting dumped. They both have ready made replacements on the roster and have been really bad this spring. I doubt the FO cares that much about their ST results, but if there's anything concerning in their underlying data and you're afraid you'll have to dump them in a month anyway, might as well do it now. The pitching is tougher. I think Assad swapping in for Thompson is going to happen, and because you don't trust Javier to close like you might trust Keegan, it removes the potential need for a more traditional garbage time longman. I don't think Assad's going to get banished to only situations outside of grand slam range, but he's not the trusted high leverage arm Thompson is. It feels like the concern around Wick is more from the fanbase than the team? So I assume with the roster crunch being what it is he'll still ultimately make the roster. The nice thing about him is that usually when he's got his good velo good results follow, and from what I've seen this spring he's been living at 95/96. The last spot probably goes to Leiter or Kay? Leiter's got that opt-out on opening day, so he's probably most likely. That said Kay has looked impressive this spring, including I believe a velo bump (I don't think he's pitched in front of Statcast this spring so it's based on stadium guns). As much as I like Leiter, if Kay's living at 96 from the left side he feels like the right choice? A trade would be ideal. Move an arm and/or a corner outfielder for a CFer instead of Tauchman. None of the guys we'd potentially cut have zero value except Hosmer, so it'd be nice (though not imperative) to not piss any away.

He's so freaking good. Fox needs to find their baseball version of Greg Olsen though so that they can lock Smoltz in an attic somewhere.