Bertz

3rd in xFIP too so not just dong luck

It was probably just him airing it out because the initial plan wasn't for him to stay in and finish the game, but Adrian Sampson's stuff was WAY up yesterday. Velo up more than a full MPH, and spin rates up about 100 rpm.

Made is up to .269/.374/.415. He's also about to hit 100 games at MB, which seems to be the number the FO tries to hit for younger guys before they get promoted. My guess is he's at SB in the next two weeks.

For anyone who's not familiar with this, Travis Sawchik has written about it a lot Cleveland and NYY have really driven the bus on this

Still not entirely sure how to interpret Roederer's quick bump to Tenn, but after getting on base 4x today his numbers are pretty solid

I made a post last week in the transactions forum, but yeah it looks like it's gonna be an issue: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4291&p=499439#p498977 The team has enough roster spots that we don't have to worry about protecting the most important guys, but they'll probably have to leave a few guys on the level of a Brendon Little unprotected, which is not ideal. I hope Jed takes some steps this deadline to get ahead of this, rather than being forced into trade(s) at the end of November just to clear up roster room.

As bad as he is, I'd much rather have him than KB or Javy right now. Broadly though this is exactly why I was okay letting everyone walk. The 2016 warm and fuzzies only last so long when guys aren't producing. The cardinal sin of the last five years wasn't not committing to the core enough, it wasn't not starting the process of breaking them up much sooner Or supplementing the core and preparing for potential departures. It’s both fair and unfair to use the example of the Dodgers because they spent way more money than everyone else but the Cubs could theoretically spend in their range but choose not to. But they lost Corey Seager in the offseason but had Trea Turner ready to slide over. Bellinger has been hot garbage the last couple years but they traded for Mookie. They were ok with Grandal leaving because they had Will Smith ready to break out. Hardly anyone noticed that key guys from the early part of their run like Seager, Grandal, Puig, Ethier, Gonzalez, Joc, etc are gone because they didn’t let the team atrophy around them and then trade them all right before they went to FA, they continued to build around them. Helps that their developing system is light years away from the Cubs too. What if it was the Cubs that traded for Machado and then resigned him? Or Harper? Or simply developed a few above average players. We’d be sad guys like KB were gone but there would not be the level of anger and now apathy that Cubs fans feel now. Oh for sure. I think a lot about the rumored KB to the Braves stuff in the '19-'20 offseason. I believe Kyle Wright and Austin Riley were suggested together, because Pache and Waters were too much (kind of hilarious in hindsight). But like even if not that specifically the team should have done something years earlier than they did. I get after '18 blaming it on the death march schedule, but after '19 it was clear as day change was needed and Theo chose to just run out the string.

At the game. It was a jam shot he dove and caught it. He wasn’t hurt. Pitcher was warming up long before it happened. Good to know!

As bad as he is, I'd much rather have him than KB or Javy right now. Broadly though this is exactly why I was okay letting everyone walk. The 2016 warm and fuzzies only last so long when guys aren't producing. The cardinal sin of the last five years wasn't not committing to the core enough, it wasn't not starting the process of breaking them up much sooner

Honestly it feels like he's been snakebit by the dong so much that he nibbles way more than he ever has in his career previously. I feel like I'd rather he just live with the dongs but keep them 1 or 2 run shots. Instead like today he pitched around Olson and the next guy hit a three run homer. The stuff is the same as ever, so it's wild to see the results so much worse.

Uh oh, GameDay had Herz's day ending after a lineout to the pitcher with 2 outs in the 3rd. Haven't seen anything on Twitter about what happened though

Even though I look at their catcher situation and don't see a ton of need, the Padres keep getting mentioned with Willson Contreras. If they are in on him, I'm curious how gettable Luis Campusano is. Any team but the Padres I would assume not very, but Preller's always willing to push his chips in. Willson probably doesn't bring him back on his own, but I would think additionally sending Robertson and/or taking back Myers' contract would be in the right neighborhood? Because of the positional versatility from Hoerner, Morel, and Wisdom, having catcher already settled going into the winter would make the offseason very straightforward. Just bring in players you like. One SP would still be an absolute necessity, but otherwise there'd not really any imperative for addressing any specific positions. That's usually a recipe for making the best decisions.

Riley Thompson's return was inauspicious, but Clarke did really well in relief. He now has 4 walks and 33 strikeouts in 33.1 AA innings. Oh and a 55ish percent groundball rate. Kohl Franklin was okay, which by his standards is a huge win. Hopefully that can get him on a bit of a roll.

So as things look right now, going into the winter we'll have four consensus top 100 guys in Brennen, PCA, Alcantara, and whoever we end up with at 7 (assuming we don't do a signability play). And then another four guys will probably not be consensus but likely each end up on a list or two: Caissie, Triantos, Herz, and Hernandez. Add in whatever we end up with for Willson and Robertson, and that's a hell of a top end for a farm that was already really deep coming into the year.

Devers is getting really fun. A groundball rate north of 50% and nearly 5 Ks for every BB is hard to ignore

Don't pitchers occasionally get dead arms when they are moving around between being a SP and a reliever? Feels like he didn't have his usual command and stuff in those games. Yeah that's the hope. His velo was down a bit too those two starts and seemed back up today, so fingers crossed. I would definitely keep running Steele and Thompson out there as SPs for the foreseeable future. Feels like each of them is ~50/50 to be a legit SP, which isn't great but would mean ending up with one is pretty likely. If we can use these next few months to find out one of them is really worthwhile as a SP and also let Kilian work through his growing pains, it should pay dividends next year.

I'm hopeful that the disastrous outings in Baltimore and New York were just bad outings and not tied to the SP/RP thing. After all it was the first time through the order that things went to hell

Young or Maldonado IMO. Let's cycle through these guys so that we know if we've got anything.

I think looking at something like XBH rate can be a bit misleading. You can get an XBH from a 78 MPH bloop just as easily as a 114 MPH screamer can be an out. With the limitations we have on minor league data, I think the first place I look is HR/FB rate, and Made's has increased 4x from 2.6% to 11.1%. Now maybe it's less strength and more better decision making, but in the absence of Statcast data I think that's the most compelling data point we have.

Oof that doesn't look great. I do wonder if being able to spend the rest of the year on strength and conditioning isn't the worst thing in the world. You don't have to look any further than Kevin Made for a guy who shows the difference an offseason of physical maturation can make.

Would like to see Wicks throw up some zeroes tonight. The peripherals all day "ready for Tenn" but he's gotten BABIP'd quite hard and has a mediocre ERA to show for it. There's probably some luck in there but he's probably also not managing contact as well as he should.

when i'm in town, i usually park near belmont or montrose harbor and walk to wrigley. Yep, also anything west of Ashland is typically free. Last game I went to I found a free spot just south of Addison and Ashland and made the 10 minute or so walk. If you don't mind walking its not that difficult to find a free spot, especially because the Cubs blow and the park isn't full most nights. Yeah this is the play. I used to live right over there by the Whole Foods and it's basically the perfect distance to be close enough for the walk to be reasonable while far enough for parking and traffic to not be too bad yet.

Your periodic Owen Caissie update after getting on base 4x last night: .244/.319/.401, 104 wRC+, 8.9% BB, 29.3% K Since May 1st: .293/.374/.496, 144 wRC+, 10.1% BB, 25.2% K Still the 2nd youngest guy in the Midwest League (and the guy younger is hitting .077 through his first 7 games). He's not being quite as productive in June as he was in May, but the peripherals are all better so honestly I'd still chalk it as MoM improvement. Speaking of guys from the Darvish trade, Yeison Santana is super interesting. He's actually been kind of great at SB, but there's just absolutely zero power there: .323/421/.369, 11.5% BB, 14.1% K It is early and power is streaky, so it might come, but he didn't hit a single dong in his repeat of MB either. He's reportedly fairly fast and pretty good at shortstop, but I'm not sure how playable it is to have zero power without being elite at something else.

Agreed. Like I get the math of paying for an extra half-season costs resources you don't need to burn, but why aren't there more deals for guys with 2+ years of control where that half season isn't super meaningful. I'm kind of eying the Royals SPs. They as an org appear to not be one of the ones who "get" pitching in 2022. But they've got a bunch of guys who have pretty strong pedigrees and fairly mediocre to bad early results. Now their Statcast numbers aren't amazing either, so it's not as much of a slam dunk as like when the Kevin Gausman got traded, but feels like there's some low-hanging fruit for a Tommy Hottovy to work with. Get a guy in, spend a half season getting him acclimated, and hopefully he hits the ground running next April.