Bertz

Welp, we got an explanation

Really enjoying this Sosa/McGwire dynamic between Mervis and Canario

He hasn't hit for much power yet since he got back, but Brennen's been good since he got off the IL. I think his contact rates are way up too. FG doesn't show batted ball data for minor leaguers in their game logs, but his swinging strike rate at Iowa is now 14.9%. I believe before he went on the IL it was like 18-something percent, which would imply it's been 12ish since he got back. 11-12% is typically average, which for Brennen is about as good as we can expect for contact. Whether it's at Iowa or in the AFL I'd love to see him go on a dong binge soon to prove he's fully healthy, but I'm increasingly comfortable with him being in position to win the CF job out of ST. Don't plan around it happening, but I think they should let him take his shot.

Yeah he's not a guy you cut at this point. While his ERA is certainly flukey low, he's now at 124 innings of pitching with adequate peripherals going back to the start of last year. With minor league options like he has there's a little bit of value there. The Cubs are thankfully in a place where they can and should lean on the youths instead of holding onto Sampson, but not every team is. The Rangers seem like a great fit, Dbacks too maybe. Teams that need like 3-4 SPs this winter, Sampson could be the 3rd or the 4th.

The bread eating guy IIRC

Awesome drive. That flea flicker deal especially was real fun.

I'm sure it's just early season weirdness but it would be hilarious if the Bears end up with a better o-line than the Bengals

This fastball shape stuff ties into my Hodge comment in the last post. Separating those fastballs and breaking balls is a must! This point isn't universally agreed upon by teams. Right now there's a common sentiment that vertical movement is second only to velocity, but it's definitely more nuanced about it. The Cubs, in particular, are a team that believes in incorporating fastballs with relative (or actual) cut to them for certain pitchers. Part of that is that when used well in pitch design, these pitches produce softer contact on balls in play. The relative cut added to a four-seam tends to keep it out of the true dead zone, which is where fastballs have equal horizontal and vertical movement numbers (like if a pitch had 10 inches of horizontal and 10-12 inches of vertical movement). Also we need to consider that a lot of Stuff+ calculations tend to be based on whiff% (or heavily based on that). But there's some good research and commentary- that I personally agree on - that we should be looking at run value (RV/100) since what pitchers are ultimately trying to do is prevent runs, not only generate whiffs. It's why sinkers look terrible in most Stuff+ calculations, but they aren't all bad pitches. I haven't gotten an update on Hodge's data for a few weeks, but his horizontal movement cuts the ball in a similar way to Justin Steele's. If you compare his fastball to Driveline's "Blob", Hodge's fastball is outside the dead zone here due largely to the cutting action (approx -1 inch horizontal movement and an average of 92.5 mph which was from earlier this year). And he throws this fastball from a low release height. Obviously the velocity is different, but Hodge's release height is low like Edwin Díaz. If I had to guess, I'd say the Cubs try to still get Hodge's fastball to generate more ride so it's a cut-ride fastball similar to Leeper's. Additional ride on the ball along with his release height and a mph bump or two would be pretty deadly. This is great. The bold kind of fascinates me, because incorporating whiff rate into a stuff metric seems really dumb? It feels like "Stuff" should purely be about inputs. Velocity, spin, movement, approach angle, any sort of metric you can put around deception, etc. And then concurrently, we need to improve pitcher run values. Strike %, whiff rate, exit velocity and launch angle allowed, etc. Including whiff rate in stuff+ makes it a weird in-between for a process metric vs. a results metric. It'd be like including batting average in FIP. You learn more from FIP and ERA being separate than you do by trying to take the best parts of both.

Wild that a team with such a good supporting cast let their hopeful franchise QB take so many unnecessary hits

Preciado's season has been a mess, but as a 19 year old in full season ball (18 actually for most of his pre-injury play time) it's not a total write him off situation Yeison Santana progressed quite a bit this year. The ceiling is quite limited but I don't think an MLB bench bat is out of the question Ismael Mena is getting pretty safe to write off So Caissie's definitely the jewel of the deal. Whether he's the only relevant guy probably depends on your definition of relevant, but it's certainly not unfair to say. I think the deal was worth it, but at the moment it looks like Jed did fine rather than particularly good. There's probably some extenuating circumstances doing a deal that big at that time however.

I'm about as comfortable as anyone in turning the page from the 2016 guys, but this feels like a bridge too far. I'd expect Kyle to be much more useful next year. There were a number of outings this year, particularly May/June, where he was pushed farther than he should have been because the rest of the rotation wasn't giving any innings. I'd also anticipate the defense being significantly better next year. It's already been much better lately than it was early in the year, and adding one of the FA shortstops should only further help that effort. Prime Kyle's certainly not walking back through that door, but I think he'll still be useful as a 5 and dive guy with a viable MLB defense behind him. E.g. Drew Smyly. I do wonder about the plans for the rotation this winter. I look at things and see a clear need for a starter, but only one starter. Does the team see a need for a second? Jed and Theo have historically erred on the side of overloading the MLB rotation, but have also never had even close to the current crop of upper level SP prospects (at least with the Cubs). Maybe it depends how Assad and Wesneski do down the stretch here.

DJ Herz terrible again. If we weren't so close to the end of the season I'd say let's shift him to the bullpen and see if he can get AA batters out with a little extra juice, but as is the most important thing left this year is probably getting those last 10-15 innings

Still true through 5

Wesneski is absolutely shoving

The two way dream is still alive!

Really excited to see what he does next year. He's excelling as is in his initial foray into AA, but you know the org has some changes they want to make with him so what's he going to look like next April?

It's been quiet since it's largely been built on walks, but Brennen's been really good since he got back

This seems notable

Yeah, I'm pleased that he's been a bit above average offensively for going on 4 weeks now. I don't need him to be an expected above average hitter given his defense and the lack of alternatives, but the 35 wRC+ he was running to start his Cubs tenure wasn't gonna cut it. Yeah the aforementioned Joey Wendle, who has a pretty similar profile (trade a little power for contact), is playing at a about a 2 WAR per 600 PA pace despite an 87 wRC+. The offensive bar is quite low.

It would be REALLY nice if Mckinstry could stay hot the rest of the year. The team needs a LHH infielder for the bench something fierce, and and I don't see much on the market for this winter in that vein aside from Joey Wendle? Also Stro has sneakily gotten his numbers damn near where you would have expected coming into the year

Correa/Senga as the big FA splashes feels very Jed. Taking it back to the Passan article, grabbing two Tier 2 guys instead of one Tier 1 feels like a Jed move. Plus, neither guy has the qualifying offer attached, which we know is a biggy. Jed also explicitly name checked adding velo to the rotation (check) and power to the lineup (check).

McGeary, he was the D2 guy with video game numbers(1.640 OPS!) that also hit really well with wood in the Appalachian League. Probably not gonna add any defensive value so hopefully he keeps raking. Yeah, on the video I saw (I can’t find it on Twitter) the ball was demolished.

The particular details of this brutal takedown don't so much matter for us, but it does make me think about two more Cubs-centric questions. 1) Are there any impact pitchers available from teams further behind on the pitcher development learning curve? I hesitate to call any non-Rockies org dumb, but there are definitely those that get the modern approach to pitching and those that don't. The Cubs, while maybe not inner circle like the Rays/Guardians/Dodgers, are clearly in the cool kids pitching club. How can that be leveraged, especially if you're willing to expend some real resources rather than just making waiver claims and signing relievers to like 1/$3M? 2) Are there any young player swaps/challenge trades to be had? Again looking at the Royals, they have MJ Melendez behind Sal Perez, and they have Nick Pratto behind Vinnie Pasquantino. The A's have Shea Langeliers coming up behind Sean Murphy. The Rangers have a 3B prospect logjam, etc. What if Jed turned some of the Cubs' CF stockpile not into a veteran, but into a comparable youth at a position of greater need?