Bertz

Mostly noise? Most of the old guard underperformed, so I don't think it's a measurement thing. I'd guess it's like 90% SSS and 10% player type. On player type, there's two things Statcast's X stats don't handle (or at least well): horizontal direction and player speed. A slow guy who only pulls the ball like Schwarber will underperform his X stats while a fast guy who sprays the ball like Hoerner will over perform. So for Hoerner and Madrigal it might be real, but everyone else like Schwindel it's likely just a fluke.

There were some warning signs with Lahair even during that stretch that don't exist with Schwindel. - He was striking out a lot. His 28.1% rate isn't that notable these days, but back then would have been top 10 among qualified hitters - He had a .460 BABIP. Four. Six. Zero. Insane, I know we all knew he was lucky even at the time but hot damn I didn't realize how much he was until looking just now. Guys are always going to get good batted ball luck during hot streaks, but wowza - He had a 37% HR/FB rate. That's also stupid high. This was pre juiced ball so no one in MLB had a higher than 30% rate for the season back then. Even post juiced ball there's usually only 2-3 guys a year over 30% and usually no one over 35% The funny thing is that while he did crash afterwards, and crash hard, his underlying skills didn't change that much. His hard hit rate stayed steady, his GB/FB numbers stayed steady, his plate discipline stayed steady, etc. He just started running a normal BABIP and a slightly low HR/FB rate. Schwindel has certainly been lucky. Not as preposterously so like Lahair, but quite a bit. However, if you strip out luck and look at his Statcast xwOBA, he's been good at .344 (it's on the OBP scale so .320-.330 is average). Here's a list of guys within 5 points of his xwOBA: Bo Bichette Anthony Rizzo Kris Bryant Starling Marte Brandon Belt Jake Cronenworth So like I wrote a few days back, I think what he's currently doing is pretty sustainable. It probably should result in more of a 115 wRC+ than a 173, but there's legitimately good things happening under the hood. The question is whether he can sustain what he's currently doing. We've seen Patrick Wisdom go through two slumps and then adjust and come out the other end fine. Schwindel hasn't had his slump yet. And with where we are in the season, there's maybe enough runway for one slump and for him to start pulling out of it. But we're not going to *know* if he can do the adjust/re-adjust cycle necessary to be an MLB regular until next year. That sucks, because you can't trust him but at the same time 1B would be a crappy place to allocate resources to this offseason.

This seems to be the genesis, but again I haven't seen anything about them cutting those guys. I think one of the beat guys mentioned they were considering a Quinn restructure before they did Graham but that's all I've found. I believe that’s for next year. This is the Graham maneuver that sparked it all (the good years means there’s dead cap next season too but I’m no cap expert and I’m not learning the intricacies of the cap now): Oh that makes a lot more sense if it's a thing people are expecting this offseason rather than a thing people are expecting right now. Getting mad about it today is certainly weird and unproductive, but at least I understand the actual issue now.

Huh? Haven't seen that. They did some cap maneuvers with Jimmy Graham to extend most of his cap hit to 2022. That was needed just to get back under the cap apparently, as they didn't have enough "in season" buffer. But yea, to cut Foles AND Quinn, I don't think they actually could do it. But I've felt for a while they probably should cut Foles just for the roster spot, but they'd need to restructure someone (likely Quinn) to defer some cap to accommodate Foles dead cap acceleration. But maybe just hang on to him until the trade deadline... Never know. This seems to be the genesis, but again I haven't seen anything about them cutting those guys. I think one of the beat guys mentioned they were considering a Quinn restructure before they did Graham but that's all I've found.

There's a bunch of hand wringing on Twitter this morning about the negative cap impacts of cutting Robert Quinn and Nick Foles but I haven't seen anything to indicate the Bears are cutting Robert Quinn or Nick Foles?

This is really good data. A few of these, like Morel and Canario, I'd never have guessed were anywhere near this high.

I'm full aboard #TeamTank but I still think there's some nuance needed here and a day like today had a lot more good than bad. Someone like Davies doing well? Unequivocally bad. I actively root against him at this point. I literally LOL'd when he gave up the slam Guys like Duffy and Adam Morgan doing well? Probably bad? They're pending FAs, but going to be low enough that they're going to sign somewhere for soft factors like comfort, opportunity, etc. Them doing well, and the Cubs getting a front row seat, helps everyone make the best possible decision in January. I think I'd rather have the draft slot but there's an argument here Guys like Schwindel, Ortega, and Wisdom well? Probably good! Schwindel is not going to catch the last out of the Cubs' next World Series, but can he be a quality bench guy or second division starter for the next year or three? Absolutely! There's real value there, especially with how many question marks are going to be on next year's team Happ, Alzolay, and Wick doing well? Phenomenal, easily outweighs losing a game in the reverse standings.

I can't possibly imagine someone with the name of Shea Spitzbarth had an easy time growing up

It’s crazy that despite his unbelievably bad hitting he still has a positive fWAR this year, albeit just 0.1. He’s still a positive fielder and baserunner. I would consider keeping him if he accepted a very reduced role of 25th man, used only for late inning defense and pinch running. If we’re paying him either way why not use him in a way that gives us value? Also he’s a great clubhouse guy to have assuming he accepts the reduced role with professionalism. That said, I’m not sure Ross would use him in that way if he’s on the roster. I hate to infer this because his job should be to put his roster in the best position to win but I get the feeling he will do everything he can to make sure his buddy gets every opportunity in the world to play everyday. Maybe I’m wrong…he did eventually release Arrieta, though I think that release came several starts too late and Jake had to give us 3 IP, 6 ER games for a couple of months before the trigger was pulled. Also, I get that Ross doesn’t make roster decisions like that but I’m sure he had some influence, especially when the deadline happened and there was nothing to play for. Yeah, I think the Heyward decision is tough, so I'm not going to get too invested either way. He's likely not *this* bad of a hitter, and as long as he's not he's still probably in quality bench player range when you add his defense, baserunning, platoon splits, and soft factors like leadership. Like I don't think he's no longer worth being an MLBer, and we're paying him either way. That said I think I think Ortega and Deichman are better players. Probably modestly, but they're probably better. And unlike Heyward, if they're bad next year they are *very* easy to cut bait with. I don't think next year's going to be a total wash, but I do think there's going to be some roster churn, particularly in the first half, and having another roster spot where you can cycle guys through has real value.

GB rate has been up post DL too

Raised his OPS 50ish points tonight. He's been a bit of a disappointment since coming over but it goes to show how little time he's ultimately had over here

Yeah, early on he was pretty unlucky, but from May onwards there was no real excuse. He could have just packed it in but instead he's grinding and finally has his numbers back up to "merely kind of bad." Hopefully he can stay hot and the season at "decent.". Makes this offseason a lot easier if you feel like you can count on him. Love seeing the bullpen rounding into form. Megill's actually been pretty good the last few weeks. Would love for him to do enough that he can be near the top of the list among the guys fighting for a pen spot in Spring Training.

I don't subscribe to BP but I'm damn tempted just for this article

It's not. Him and Sullivan have been irrelevant as far as being sourced goes since the Hendry era ended. If Jesse Rogers or Patrick Mooney say something like that get a little nervous, none of the other beat writers are notably connected though.

I still think Schwindel is interesting. Not nearly ready to say he's good, but I've seen enough I do think he's a legitimate MLBer. He's chasing a lot, swinging at 34.9% of pitches out of the zone. That's a lot (~90th percentile), but a far cry from like Javy. It's more in line with Eloy Jimenez, Ozzie Albies, and Adolis Garcia His contact rate on pitches in the zone is pretty good. At 87.1% that's about 70th percentile, in line with guys like Starling Marte and Xander Bogaerts He also hits very few balls on the ground (33.3%, ~90th percentile), and he hits them hard (89.9 EV, ~75th percentile) These are all things that tend to become meaningful relatively quickly. That's not to say that after ~100 PAs we've found his true talent level, but it does likely mean that on broad terms the four statements above are all likely true. The problem is that with a meh defensive 1B, the bar is really high and so the degree to which each of those statements are true matters a great deal. I think his current peripherals are unique but ultimately able to sustain pretty good production, but if he starts hitting the ball less hard, on the ground more, swing and missing more, etc. things dry up pretty quickly.

I'm finding myself interested in the timing of promotions for some guys that have hit the ground running at their new level. Nelson Velazquez was promoted during a cold streak, he hit .148 and struck out 44% of the time the week leading up to his promotion, and absolutely exploded on getting to AA Yohendrick Pinango was ICE cold for over a month, got hot for a week and then got the bump to A+, and has been raking since Alexander Canario hit .227 and K'd 39% the week leading up to the trade. Again the Cubs promote him and he absolutely goes off I understand that there are non box score reasons for promotions, and that we publicly are using stat lines as proxies. There's all sorts of things like bat path and attack angle and such that we'll never know. But you'd think for a hitter that positive developments in "hidden" areas would manifest in positive developments in the box score. So like you'd expect good production with bad metrics to withhold a promotion, but it's interesting to see bad production with (presumably) good metrics lead to a promotion and IMMEDIATELY follow with good production at a harder level. Like it's unequivocally good. It really speaks to the thought that the Cubs do get player dev, but it's kind of wild to watch from the outside.

ZiPS currently projects wisdom for .234/.300/.465 line, which feels right for what he truly is. Combine that with the defense and I think we have a legit starter at 3B. I would love to add a LH complement if possible over the offseason, but it's not an absolute necessity.

This game was good affirmation that the bullpen will be good again sooner rather than later. Wick has clearly been knocking off rust, but there's a legitimate closer caliber arm there. Heuer was going through some mechanical issues with the Sox, and you can understand why they couldn't be patient but why Cody's still going to be a good reliever in short order. And then Manny Rodriguez just throws absolute fire and racks up ground balls. Hopefully next year you can add back in Brad Wieck. His heart stuff sounds messy and complicated, but he just had surgery and he hasn't shown many reasons *on the field* he can't be an impact reliever. There's also the three headed monster of Ben Leeper, Brendon Little, and Ethan Roberts down at Iowa. I imagine that's better AAA depth than 27 or 28 other teams will have available to them. It needs a setup caliber lefty, and ideally a grizzled veteran like Jeffress was for us last year, but it's a pretty set group going into next year that I'm already mostly happy with.

Kyle's definitely been worse this year, but the dongs are probably noise and overstate how much he's gotten worse by. Probably. That said you can't just assume his FIP beating powers will last forever. Matt Cain was also a guy who ran good peripherals and elite ERAs long enough that you could definitively say it was skill and not just luck. Then in 2013 his peripherals slipped a smidge and his ERA slipped a horsefeathers load, and it wasn't accompanied by a velocity dip or other factor that would easily explain what happened.

There are a lot of very reasonable explanations I would buy for sitting a rookie QB for part of their rookie year: - There's legitimate physical health/safety stuff from not knowing the playbook or NFL defenses yet. Like in the Bills game when Fields completely whiffed on the blitzer on his right and got decked - I could see, especially for a mobile QB like Fields, where if you put them out there too early they'll lean on their legs too much and develop bad habits in the name of short term success - The NFL season is LONG, and in fact just got longer. I'd buy that the ideal is for a guy to get 8-10 games out there, long enough to get into a groove and have both some ups and some downs, and then head into the offseason with some tape and some experience to learn off of - Players do appreciably learn and grow during trainings and practices, unlike something like baseball And I'm sure there's more. The problem is that NFL coaches are so far up their own asses that they think everything they do is a highly valuable trade secret. Combine that with how conservative they often are (even when it's fairly objective that they're wrong) and you have no way of knowing if the team's reasons for sitting a guy are sound or if it's the player development equivalent of punting on your opponent's 38 yard line.

Max Bain since coming off the DL: 24.1 IP, 2.96 ERA, 8 BB, 2 HBP, 2 HR, 27 K, 43% GB rate

So the Tennessee rotation to open next year is probably this, right? Marquez Jensen Espinoza Vizcaino Bain Obviously injuries will make their mark, but talent wise it feels like all five of those guys are major leaguers? And while each individual guy is more likely than not a reliever, odds are you probably net at least one pretty darn good starter out of that group?

Alec Mills career now has a 3.92 ERA over 31 starts for his career. It's very unlikely he'll ever be a guy you want starting a playoff game, but he clearly deserves to be handed a spot going into next year, pending a fairly disastrous September.