Bertz

Mekkes started for Iowa today, not sure what happened to force that. Caissie out of the lineup again. Hasn't played since Tuesday. Especially skipping both ends of a doubleheader, it's gotta be an injury.

Oof hopefully just dehydration or something minor. Forearms can run a pretty wide gamut of severity.

It’s been pretty fun this month. Obviously it sucks to miss out on a top pick but I don’t hate the potential outcome of the Cubs playing well to finish the season and getting a lot of positive momentum going into the offseason. 2 of the big SS FAs (Correa and Turner) have already come out and said they aren’t going to a rebuilding team. Hopefully a strong finish gives the appearance of a team that’s not too far off. I don't think winning meaningless games has ever had any impact on the next season. Especially when this team doesn't really have many future pieces. Like guys like Drew Smyly, Adrian Sampson, Patrick Wisdom, and even Willson Contreras (who might be gone next year) shouldn't be on any actual good Cubs teams yet they've been big contributors. And picking 13th in the Draft would be a huge failure in a year that they were done by May. Not saying they need to be #1 or even top 5 but there's a real chance they could be picking as low as 18th when it's all said and done with the lottery. May not seem bad now but we'll cringe at it when the draft comes around in July. Hoerner Happ Suzuki Morel Steele Thompson Velazquez Madrigal Wisdom About half the bullpen All are guys who will be on next year's team who do not have an established level of performance. I have no problem rooting for productive losses when the time is right. I was absolutely the guy rooting for Starlin to go 3/5 but the team to lose ten years ago, but there are far too many potential future contributors on the team at the moment to root for losses. And this isn't like last August where we were trying to talk ourselves into Frank Schwindel, they just mentioned on today's broadcast that the Cubs currently have the 6th youngest roster in baseball. Even guys like Smyly and Sampson are walking infomercials for the Cubs'pitching dev, which has non-zero value in this winter's FA. I forget which of Martin/Robertson it was but they said they chose Chicago over another comparable offer because reputation Hottovy and co. are starting to get around the league.

Yelich squaring to bunt here says volumes about where things stand with him right now

Apparently he's just gonna play. No extension or anything?

Williams is certainly burned for tomorrow now too. Very nice.

Has Dontrelle Willis been announcing long? I know he's done studio work for several years, but this is the first game I've watched that he's calling. He's pretty solid.

It would be really cool if Madrigal kept hitting. He's been the best version of himself since coming off the IL, hopefully his issues in April was just rust or lingering injury or whatever

Holy crap Kohl Franklin is really doing some things tonight. It would be pretty sweet of things have clicked for him. Ryan Jensen on the other hand...another clunker. Really wondering if it's time to pull the rip cord and shift towards short relief.

PCA did not take kindly to his slugging dropping below .500 Also for seemingly the first time in weeks neither of Perlaza or Canario did anything in the first inning

It's very funny to me that the team has started winning 1-run and extra-inning games AFTER the bullpen was eviscerated at the deadline. Just in case there was any doubt those are luck stats before.

Of the three, Kimbrel is really the dude I feel least strongly about. I left this out of the thread, but I really wonder if you could get Kimbrel cheaper than most other teams and so maybe it just makes sense to roll the dice. I’m leery of any pitcher the Dodgers can’t fix but maybe the Cubs really feel like they have the secret sauce. Britton and Estévez are really fun options and my personal favorites of the three. Kind of crazy that Kimbrel has been absolute garbage since the 2018 playoffs with the exception of 36 insanely good innings for the Cubs when we were looking to trade him. I know there's sample size stuff and ERA being a flawed stat but that 2021 Cubs ERA really jumps out 2019 CHC - 6.53 2020 CHC - 5.28 2021 CHC - 0.49 2021 CWS - 5.09 2022 LAD - 4.57 He was worth 2.5 wins during his 2021 stint with the Cubs and -1 win during the other 3.5 seasons. I don't know if it's the cause or a symptom, but Kimbrel's performance seems to move pretty much in lockstep with his velo. Given his age that would make me very uncomfortable, though the Cubs did just get 37 year old David Robertson to sport his highest velo mark in 11 years.

FO projected the defense at #10, so while I don't want to be all "you hate my team!1!1" it seems pretty clickbait-y to rank them #32 while otherwise generally leaning on FO for your stats and research.

I have zero issue with Kilian's outing today. Missed bats, kept the ball on the ground, threw strikes. Unless someone is consistently this hittable, it's very much just a shrug your shoulders and say "horsefeathers happens" situation. The further we get out from his weird Steve Blass phase the more I want him to see MLB again for a run this year.

I mentioned up thread that I think it makes sense this winter to target a few $5-10M arms to round out the pen rather than the 4-5 $0-5M arms Jed has added the last few years. Even if you don't like these three guys in particular it shows there's some interesting options likely to reside in that price neighborhood

Yeah it's definitely a bit weird to have both Leiter and Espinoza in the pen right now. I imagine one gets demoted soon for a more standard one inning reliever. Relatedly, it looks like Manny Rodriguez is close too: Assuming tonight goes well, Miley up to backfill for a Thompson trip to the phantom IL? And then Espinoza demoted, backfilled by one of Sanders/Estrada? Kervin Castro probably gone in two weeks in favor of one of the convalescing Manny and Adbert?

The placement of off-days is really horsefeathering weird. I'm assuming that's still reverberations from the lockout? Seems to disproportionately hurt the Yankees and Astros though, so I won't complain.

I think this offseason would be a poor time to invest in a big ticket NPB player. There's so much uncertainty on the roster as is, I don't think you can responsibly use one of your big ticket offseason acquisitions on a guy you can't totally trust. Especially when it's fundamentally "is this guy an everyday player" trust as opposed to "is this guy a star or merely good" trust with like a Correa/Rodon/Swanson type of acquisition. There are times to embrace variance, last offseason was a great one, but this offseason is IMO an awful one.

It's probably more the former than the latter, but this has gone on long enough that I'm definitely a bit concerned. Nothing specifically has broken. As the season has gone on he's still chasing less than the MLB average, his exit velocity data looks solid, and he's not hitting a stupid number of groundballs (though more than he typically does). The strikeout and walk rates are bad since his hot start, but the components that feed into those are fine, so that may least is very unlikely to be permanent. What has fallen apart are his numbers against non 4 seam fastballs. Since Seiya got back from his IL trip he's been horrendous against cutters and splitters, and bad against sinkers. He's also been bad against curve balls lately after crushing them early in the year. Glass half empty is that the league has found an approach that works against him. Glass half full is that he's simply adjusting to the stuff in MLB still. Japan has lower velocity generally, and so the mid-high 90s sinkers and cutters that are uncommon over here are nearly non-existent over there, and he's seeing a lot of this wizardry for the first time. But the fact that he's still doing damage on 4 seamers would indicate that high velocity more broadly is not going to be a permanent barrier for him. I think he's at minimum a solid 2 win player. The peripheral offensive numbers even if we take out his hot start point to a league average-ish hitter. The defense is legit and has almost never been in question, his numbers are bad but that's mostly because he was total ass early in the year as he was learning new parks. I'm not worried about him going full Fukudome on us. That said I'm less confident he's a star than I have been at any point yet He kinda needs to come out of the gate blasting next season for me to hold onto that hope.

8/30 then suddenly looks like the return to Iowa? That'd give him nearly a full month at AAA plus presumably an AFL stint

Agreed on all of these. Also really enjoying how well Nelly is coming on. That he's not only survived but stepped up while getting exposed to more RHP is huge.

Matt Mervis has just...stopped striking out? No K's through 3 PAs today, only four strikeouts so far in August through 43 PAs. Canario and Perlaza each have dongs already for Tenn, because of course they do