Bertz

On 4/24 Owen Caissie went 0/4 with 4 Ks. After that he sat for a few days presumably for a mental breather. Since 4/29 when he returned: .208/.269/.375 for an 83 wRC+. 7.7% BB, 23.1% K, .235 BABIP Obviously not time to order the mission accomplished banner, but good enough that you probably don't think about sending him down to Myrtle unless/until he backslides.

So we’ll need two more pitchers from SB to Tennessee. Clarke feels like the most obvious of the starters? Wicks would be doable but it's probably a month early.

Open the floodgates

Americaan wasn't playing every day but if you want your first tea leaf that it's both PCA and Roederer up to SB here you go

Roederer is definitely taking his spot right? Maybe it's PCA too, but Cole's essentially 100% likely to be in South Bend tomorrow I'd think?

https://twitter.com/billazbbphotog/status/1523743447504416769?t=JO9IRnqo3xxAjQTnVXCmMA&s=19

This isn't the most sophisticated analysis, though he does link to some that are more math-heavy, but a good high level overview of barrel rate (balls hit 95+ MPH on a trajectory conducive to dongs) and how it's actually a pretty meaningful and predictive statistic. Tl;Dr is that hitters mostly control their barrel rate, while pitchers mostly don't. From a Cubs perspective, it should make you feel good about Wisdom, Seiya, and Hoerner continuing what they've done so far, while conversely a pedestrian barrel rate is why (in addition to age) a lot of people never hopped on the Schwindel bandwagon. It's also another strike against Madrigal, as with a miniscule barrel rate his BABIP is going to ebb and flow more based on external factors. Barrel rates being pretty mercurial would be another reason to maybe leave one foot on the Kyle Hendricks bandwagon a little longer.

Nelly's got just such a fascinating profile. Fangraphs doesn't have his AFL numbers, but I think they're largely in line with his full season numbers, and collectively in AA/AAA he's got a: - 23.6% groundball rate. To put this in perspective, it would be the second lowest single season rate of the last ten years (2016 Ryan Schimpf). Since 2019, Mike Trout, Rhys Hoskins, Brandon Belt, and Adam Duvall are the only guys under 30% in aggregate with substantial playing time - He's walked 10.8% of the time, not a crazy amount but a good one - He's struck out 30.3% of the time, a lot but increasingly not a disqualifying amount. We're now in an age where 5-10 qualifying batters a year are north of 30% - A 25% HR/FB rate, a positively elite number particularly when you consider that the minors (I believe) never got the rabbit ball - He's reportedly a tweener defensively. That's usually an insult, but it's usually used to talk about guys with much more modest juice in their bats I think I've thrown out Hunter Renfroe as a comp, but you know who might be much closer is Adam Duvall. Duvall is a fantastic corner outfielder and a passable CFer. He hits the horsefeathers out of the ball, rarely on the ground. The big difference is that Duvall never walks. Add the extra 10-15 walks a year Nelly's likely to give you and that's the difference between a high end reserve like Duvall and a legit everyday starter.

Yeah pretty much has to be

Ended up at 77 pitches. Feels like getting him a few starts north of 100 without seeing any subsequent issues is really the only thing left that he needs. He's not running the crazy K/BB numbers he had with the Giants last year, but they're very good ones and he's running a groundball rate north of 60%. He's certainly one of our top 5 starters and is probably one of our top 2.

Opposing starters the last 8 games Kyle Wright - 1.74 ERA Adrian Houser - 3.42 ERA Eric Lauer - 1.82 ERA Corbin Burnes - 1.86 ERA Michael Kopech - 1.17 ERA Lucas Giolito - 3.20 ERA Clayton Kershaw - 1.80 ERA Tyler Anderson - 2.78 ERA Burnes, Giolito, and Kershaw are legit stars. Wright and Lauer are the breakouts of the year, and the other three are all solid while just kind of on a heater right now. The Braves, Brewers, Sox, and Dodgers also rank 3rd, 2nd, 6th, and 5th in bullpen WAR, so things didn't exactly get easier in the late innings. I’d buy that more if they didn’t get completely shut down by every pitcher they’ve faced in that stretch. They can’t be anything but a bad offense if they can only hit bad pitching. https://www.mlb.com/gameday/brewers-vs-cubs/2022/04/07/663178#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=box,game=663178 https://www.mlb.com/gameday/brewers-vs-cubs/2022/04/09/663205#game_state=final,game_tab=box,game=663205 https://www.mlb.com/gameday/brewers-vs-cubs/2022/04/10/663204#game_state=final,game_tab=box,game=663204 And YMMV given how tough of a start to the year he's had, but: https://www.mlb.com/gameday/cubs-vs-braves/2022/04/27/661552#game_state=final,game_tab=box,game=661552

Opposing starters the last 8 games Kyle Wright - 1.74 ERA Adrian Houser - 3.42 ERA Eric Lauer - 1.82 ERA Corbin Burnes - 1.86 ERA Michael Kopech - 1.17 ERA Lucas Giolito - 3.20 ERA Clayton Kershaw - 1.80 ERA Tyler Anderson - 2.78 ERA Burnes, Giolito, and Kershaw are legit stars. Wright and Lauer are the breakouts of the year, and the other three are all solid while just kind of on a heater right now. The Braves, Brewers, Sox, and Dodgers also rank 3rd, 2nd, 6th, and 5th in bullpen WAR, so things didn't exactly get easier in the late innings.

DJ Herz was good, but only went 2.1 on 50 pitches. I hope that was planned, as he left mid inning

Dodgers started two lefties yesterday. Rivas has generally taken Ortega's PA's since he came back up.

Ed Howard has gotten his numbers up to respectability after another good day yesterday. If he plateaus at respectable it isn't really enough after last year. But it's only early May, so hopefully he's putting up straight up good production a month from now. He'll be an interesting promotion decision this summer if he keeps improving. I think given how tough last year was and how much time he lost with the pandemic, I'd probably let him just kick some ass at SB for a few months short of him going all PCA on the league.

I'm annoyed that he's been just completely useless. Last year his numbers had their fair share of good fortune behind them, but he legitimately smoked lefties and fastball heavy righties. The offensive bar at 1B is high enough that I wasn't confident he in him being a first division starter, but I thought he'd say least be (and he projected as) a guy worth having in your lineup situationally.

PCA is 3/5, now hitting .410 through 98 PAs

Okay outing for Wicks in game 1, followed by a really good outing from Clarke, his fourth really good one in a row. Bain started game 2 with four good innings, his second good start in a row after a fairly horsefeathers April. Feels like Clarke might be the first one to get promoted, which would have been a mild surprise coming into the year. Especially I think he's the only one who's completed 5 in an outing thus far. I am curious when guys will start being asked to do 5-6-7 on a regular basis. Until they do, there's a bit of a "yeah but" to the great outings being piled up in SB.

Nelly with another double He's just on some kind of tear right now

I get wanting to increase his versatility, but with very little else in the upper parts of the org at 3B I'm not sure why Wisdom is playing LF rather than Villar?

Yeah I'd like to see the walk rate rebound more and the groundball rate continue dropping, but very encouraging stuff so far. Do we know if the Southern League is one of the leagues with the shift ban? Because his BABIP is WAY up and I'm curious how much we should think that's him vs. whether that might be a league change. Though maybe the latter wouldn't matter since it's coming to MLB too.

I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how what has transpired so far impacts the ability to compete in 2023. I have actually been thinking about this a lot this week. My initial thought was that things haven't yet gone well toward that end, but I think on the position player side at least it has. The hit rate on the fungible guys hasn't helped. Of Schwindel, Ortega, Wisdom, Hermosillo, and Frazier, only Wisdom is showing that he's legit (Frazier needs more playing time though). You also have the disastrous month Madrigal has had, though he certainly gets much more runway (I'm also intrigued by the added exit velo). On the other hand, while it's early each of Happ, Hoerner, and Suzuki have played like stars. And none of it seems especially flukey. Happ decided to trade some dongs for contact, Hoerner appears to have learned when to turn on a pitch, and Suzuki is holistically playing how we expected except for the large number of called strikes 3's (which is probably a temporary adjustment thing). In terms of how it sets us up for next year, I'd rather have the Hoerner and Happ level-ups we've gotten than e.g. Schwindel and Ortega looking solid. It's MUCH easier to fill a hole than it is to upgrade from average to good. The pitching is doing the opposite though. The walk year guys are almost all crushing it, but while that's great for the deadline it doesn't help 2023 (pending returns). The prospects with a 2023 ETA like Wicks and Herz are crushing it. But Steele and Alzolay are clearly not starters now (in Adbert's case I will vehemently argue that's purely for durability), and Hendricks hasn't bounced back. With the key exception of Kilian, the SP prospects we could reasonably see this year like Jensen and Espinoza are struggling. We might realistically go into the winter with 8-10 pitchers already on the MLB roster you feel good about, but only two of them being surefire starters (Stro and Kilian). Add it all up and I think we're on a trajectory to be a big winter away from a good team next year. Maybe more goes wrong than goes right over the remaining five months. Maybe the mid market payrolls from the past two years are the new norm and not a temporary issue due to COVID and the changing of the guard. But I think the best set of assumptions are that the team next year will be of the quality that they're competing for a 3 or 4 seed.

Morel with two dongs tonight, doesn't want to be too far behind Nelly

No surprises in SB, which means either Nelly is a one-off or it was reported early and the movement is all going to happen on the Monday off-day. I wouldn't be surprised by the latter, I think we got word of Caissie's promotion 4-5 days early last year.