Bertz

While they're certainly not our best prospects, Velazquez, Canario, and Nwogu are the guys I find myself most excited about recently. Velazquez especially, if the control of the strike zone he's showing at AA is real that's a first division starter.

Sahadev is awesome, but more from an analysis standpoint than a rumor-y standpoint. I wouldn't take anything from him as gospel. Hell I'm not sure I'd take anything from Jed as gospel this early. I do think it makes sense to do at least one mega move this winter. This FO was I believe one of the first to publicly say you can't wait and add everything all at once. It's just too hard to win all those auctions right at the moment you are "ready." I really look at the Blue Jays last year winter as a template. Springer got a mega deal, and then they did one year deals for Ray, Semien, Matz, Yates, and Chatwood. They hit huge on Ray and Semien, pretty well on Matz, and got nothing from Chatwood and Yates. I could see the Cubs trying similar with like Seager/Correa in place of Springer.

I don't really understand how all of this works, but is this a reason why depth in a system is less important than star power? A bit. The limits of roster size definitely make it so it's more difficult to sit on an entire horde of prospects. Generally though I think it's more that star prospects are higher probability and tend to be significantly more valuable. You need to hit on like 3-4 Ian Happs to equal one Kris Bryant. I think more specifically, it's why the Cubs did so well in the Rizzo and Marisnick deals. Vizcaino (the pitcher in the Rizzo deal) and Espinoza (the pitcher in the Marisnick deal) are both in A+ ball but already on the 40 man. I think they're much better talent than the Cubs should have gotten, but the reason they were able to net them is that the Padres and especially the Yankees were facing 40 man crunch issues.

I'm all about the tank but walkoffs are always fun. (Also Kyle and Happ having really big games is more important than a little draft position)

!!!!

This is going to be a large but underrated part of the decision making this winter. By my count, the Cubs have 46 guys currently on the 40 man roster or the 60 Day IL. 7 of those are FAs, so we're entering the offseason at 39. From Bryan's article, I see 5 "must save" guys: Roberts, Velazquez, Rivas, Sanders, Little. There's also probably another guy or three that Bryan highlights that the team likes more than I/we do and they're planning to protect (Manny Rodriguez was one of these two years ago). So the team likely needs to free up ~7 spots, PLUS however much they plan on adding via FA. Potentially as many as 10-12 guys need to be dealt with. With the team being this bad, there is obviously plenty of flotsam on the roster. I count 4 very easy cuts: Holder, Jewell, Meisinger, and Sampson. And there's 6 more still fairly easy cuts: Brothers, Maples, Nance, Stewart, Higgins, Alcantara. So that's potentially the 10 right there. But I do think we see some trade action in November that helps alleviate the issue.

Nelly Velazquez is 2/5 with a walk and a dong halfway through the second game of this double header. What he's doing at Tennessee is just extremely horsefeathering exciting.

I hope if this is finally what pushes Nwogu up to SB as well. And Christian Franklin's probably only a week or so behind? Feels like he's just in the ACL to get knock some rust off, right?

Hot damn, DJ Herz had 10 strikeouts in 4 innings tonight Made and Pinango each staying hot with two hits apiece so far

Also, I live in Wicker and the storm was super intense here for a good 20 minutes. So the storm didn't miss Wrigley by much. Glad to see Megill coming around. Hopefully he can keep stringing good outings together these last 6 weeks and we can feel good about him heading into next year.

Lol at dumping off the ball on 3rd and 17 backed up against your end zone in a game with no impact on the standings

Having a totally normal one and thinking about Kevin Made this morning. So I decided to do some research. Since 2010, 89 players have played in full season ball as a 17 or 18 year olds and racked up at least 150 PAs. Of those: - 5 are currently doing so, including Kevin Made - 30 never really became anything. They never really got all that high on top prospect lists, and if they made the majors it was a mediocre cup of coffee. About half of these guys are still active, so we'll likely get a success or two out of this pool still - 4 are still in the minors, and are good prospects who look like future MLB regulars - 9 are either on the current top 100 prospects list or were recently and now are very early in their MLB careers (e.g. Wander Franco) - 9 were very good prospects that busted hard (e.g. Jonathan Singleton) - 9 played in the majors, but topped out as 2nd division types or bench players (e.g. Ronald Torreyes) - 12 ended up as MLB regulars - 11 ended up as MLB stars That's a pretty great distribution there, and why even with Made's warts he's someone to be excited about. Now obviously, most of the stars on this list like Mike Trout were light-years ahead of what Made is doing. But even if you sort the players by offensive output, Made is currently right in between Carson Kelly and Adalberto Mondesi. So even in that lower quartile there's good company. Made has also been performing well for about 6 weeks now, so if by season's end he's moved his wRC+ up another 10 or 20 points the outlook gets that much rosier.

It's been a great year for relief prospects and that's with Carraway struggling, Luke Little not pitching and likely future relievers like Márquez and McAvene being hurt all year. I hope they can build up SP depth in a similar manner to withstand regression and injuries. Yeah, hopefully Jensen hits the ground running at Tenn. Kilian's definitely starting next year at Iowa and should be an option, at least for a turn or two in the rotation, the first half of next year. If Jensen's ETA looks like latter half of next year and Wicks early 2023, that's a solid pipeline. Though certainly thin enough that one snapped UCL would change the complexion significantly. Nelly Velazquez's K rate at Tenn is down to 21% through 3 PAs tonight. On top of that his GB rate is a smidge under 30%. With his power that's an extremely horsefeathering fun combination. Rhys Hoskins is the closest MLB comp I can find.

https://twitter.com/BtBScore/status/1428703722398527489?t=W94SnjTqEo1ShLUDKqtLyQ&s=19 Sheryl Ring and Jonathan Judge are the two actual lawyers on baseball twitter. So when Sheryl says she thinks Bauer's looking at a two year suspension, that's where you should set your expectations.

He's been on a tear lately. I love that we will have him, Leeper, and Roberts all ready to roll at Iowa next year. That's extremely high quality pen depth.

Lance Browzdowski I don't know about his prospect chops, but I like him. He's Marquee's dedicated BaseballSavant dork. Between him and Sharma one of them usually catches when a Cubs pitcher starts doing something interesting.

If this is for non scandalous reasons, which the "story to come" part does not have me confident in, he's got a good chance of ending back up here IMO.

Fun with arbitrary endpoints

A slightly below league average hitter without any defensive value who only excels at hitting 15% of the pitchers should never be more than organization depth, especially given that at his age you can't really project any kind of development. I really believe one of the biggest contributors to his success right now is that other teams just haven't bothered to figure out how to pitch to him. That goes away the second you give him any sort of prominent role and/or the Cubs actually start posing any kind of challenge. Our "1B/DH mix" next year should be an every day first baseman and a revolving cast of starters at other positions getting days off. There's plenty of opportunity for a lefty masher on the bench. Whatever 1B we end up with is probably going to be LH. We know the outfield right now is heavily left handed. And with Hoerner/Bote/Wisdom's versatility we don't need to burn a bench spot on a super utility type. We can focus on having guys with leveragable skills to deploy, and early on Schwindel is showing the underlying skills of a legit lefty masher.

The projections now see Schwindel as a smidge under league average as a hitter. Also as he's played more his platoon splits have been getting more and more pronounced. That's bad news for his prospects as an everyday guy, but it's looking like he might *really* mash lefties. We could use a guy like that in our 1B/DH mix next year.

In the early going Kevin Made is 3/3 with a double. His third straight game with a double, that batting average is getting a little less empty.

The pitching is really hard to evaluate. The problem isn't hard to identify, it's dongs. It's clearly dongs, it's obvious on paper, it's obvious in games, it's dongs. So many dongs. The question is, how much of the team's dong problem is bad luck and how much of it is real? I tend to think that dongs (at least as a share of fly balls) are more luck than not (from a pitcher's POV), but there are some reasons to think it might unfortunately be real for this team specifically. - Kyle has never had a dong problem before, so it's most likely that this was a fluke. Early in the season he was throwing a high (for him) proportion of his pitches middle-middle, and so there was a reason for it. In addition to him throwing a higher % of his pitches right down the pipe, hitters were swinging at them more. Now though, his proportion of mistake pitches (Meatball % in Baseball Savant) is back down to his career levels, and the dong issues have subsided. I would guess he was tipping his pitches early in the year, and has since resolved that? I think it was a (sizable) bump in the road that's behind him now, but with him being nearly the softest tosser in the league you can't say that definitively - Mills doesn't have a dong problem, but he did last year. That's another signal that these things can be flukey, even for soft tossers where you could argue conceptually why they might give up extra dongs - Arrieta and Williams while they were here, and Steele in the early going, are also giving up a ton of dongs. Maybe it's a Hottovy thing? - Alzolay has had one hell of a dong issue, basically all year. His HR/FB rate is worst in the league this year among guys with 50+ IP. Adbert to me is the biggest question going into the offseason (Happ is the only guy close). If Alzolay's dong problem is a mirage, he's a #2/#3 starter. If it's not he's a #4/#5. That's a huge swing for deciding where to allocate resources on the offseason shopping list. There's some evidence pointing each way: Why it might be Real: - Alzolay has a high Meatball % via Baseball Savant, (pitches that end up middle/middle) - He throws a ton of sliders and sinkers, two pitches especially prone to platoon issues (his dong issues have been with LHBs specifically) - He issued a lot of walks previously and has improved in that regard substantially this year. Maybe he's throwing more strikes than his command should actually call for (laying it in there essentially) - The Statcast numbers do not say it's been a bunch of wallscrapers, he has as many dongs as his batted ball data says he should expect to have Reasons it could be a fluke - Literally no one in the league gives up dongs at this rate, or even close. Since the start of 2016 (the Juiced Ball era), the highest HR/FB for anyone with 300+ innings is Yusei Kikuchi at 19.1%. Alzolay this year is at 23.5%, a couple standard deviations worse than the worst true-talent mark in the league - Other guys with a high Meatball % don't necessarily have a dong problem. Walker Buehler for instance - Plenty of guys have had a disaster dong season and bounced immediately back. Look no further than Yu Darvish for us in 2019 It's a big call for Jed & co. to make. Easy enough for me to say "xFIP uber alles" but the front office needs to obviously be far more thorough. Maybe the reason you can't find other guys who give up that many homers is because teams don't let those guys keep taking the bump. But if Kyle and Adbert (and Steele) don't really have a dong problem, and odds are that they don't, there's actually a pretty solid base for a rotation here. It needs a frontline guy regardless, but it's possible (likely?) that and a little bit of added depth is plenty.