Bertz

Probably bad? He's got a fun combination of good power with very little swing and miss within the zone. But the plate discipline is atrocious, and he offers no defensive value. Those I think more than outweigh what he does do well IMO. I find three hitters who don't suck where you can squint and see Schwindel: Eddie Rosario Anthony Santander Lourdes Gurriel So there is a path, but it's narrow. I'd feel a lot better if he had some sort of carrying skill, like a big time L/R split, but I just don't see it. That said there's not a lot of harm in running him out there to confirm. I'd rather have Rivas up but it's not a crime that he's not.

Wisdom's intitial surge ended with the west coast trip through San Fran and San Diego. Since June 11th when the Cubs got back home, he's hitting .239/.308/.465 with a 38% K rate. Combine that with defense that is liked by both the metrics and the eye test, and it really feels like we've found a legit starter here.

And there's a reason we're talking about the dominant LA and NY teams and Boston. They are big market clubs with every resource and advantage at their disposal that 85% of baseball does not have. The Cubs are the dominant big market team in Chicago and we've had to make player acquisition decisions based on things like how long Zobrist is going to be dealing with that thing with his wife? and when fans can attend games again? Does being a dominant big market team guarantee near consistent success? No. But it should be the aim of a team like the Cubs, and fans should have that expectation. Maybe it's a little unfair to put group Chicago in with New York whose metro population is more than double Chicago's or even LA who has about 50% more people. Chicago is much closer to Dallas/Houston than NY. But it is bigger and historically we have not used that to our advantage. As long as the luxury tax is a thing, I don't think comparing the Cubs to the Dodgers or Yankees is unreasonable. If all the teams were balling out payroll wise, we could complain about their extra revenue. Unfortunately we're not, and that's kind of my point. The Cubs are a well run team generally in that top tier of payroll. The Dodgers are what we want to be. They've gotten the waves and waves that we were promised, even while making a trade for a superstar every 12-18 months. They've shown that it is possible. Every single other team though? They've all had a dip. And except for the Yankees, it has been a pronounced one. Boston has had I believe 3 top ten picks the last decade and sold Mookie Betts. They bounced right back, and that's explicitly what Jed is trying to do. He has literally name checked them as the blueprint. But short of being as amazing as the Dodgers, your options are to be like Boston or the White Sox and sell guys before you fully bottom out, or to be like the Phillies or Giants and ride things to the very end and stare down the barrel of a 4-5 year rebuild. I look at the landscape, and I basically see the Dodgers as the team we should aspire to be, and then 29 teams that run on cycles. Like we don't have to pretend the Cubs are unique. They're not.

Yeah, the Dodgers are the platonic ideal, the Yankees dipped around 2015/2016 but not particularly hard, and then I'm not sure there's anyone else we should be looking at longingly in this regard.

Is this something that could really happen? I was hoping (more like wishing) they could move him at the deadline. Even if they had to eat 90% of the contract I would have been happy with it. I think this offseason we're finally at the point where it might happen (though it's unlikely). Right now, we have 5 (!!!) LH OFer/1B types between the MLB club and Iowa: Heyward Happ Ortega Deichman Rivas With the latter two having minor league options, and with the DH being an inevitability, it's not an untenable situation to keep all five. But there is some light 40 man crunch this winter IIRC. And having 5 of practically the same guy on your 40 is pretty dumb. So I think you should expect one of these guys to be shipped out. Happ's clearly the most likely impact guy, so he probably stays. Ortega's currently playing the best by far, so he stays too. The team JUST traded for Deichman, so they clearly like him. That leaves you Rivas and Heyward. They probably keep Heyward for veteran mentorship and such, but we've gotten through enough of his contract that it's no longer a slam dunk.

Really good. I'm curious if he's done. He only went 60 something pitches his first start off the development list. At the moment though, in his two starts off the DL he's at 9.1 IP, 11 Ks, 3 BBs, 0 R, and with a grounball rate a bit over 50%. That'll play.

I don't get why people say things like this. On paper this team is trash. They have no pitching. The strength of the staff was the bullpen that is all gone. The rotation has one guy and a bunch of garbage. They have one major league hitter, who is a catcher, and have been getting complete lightning in a bottle performances out of a collection of nobodies and it's still not enough to make up for the full roster. This is an incredibly bad baseball team that will need to add several very expensive players in the offseason to be competitive next year. If they went into the season with this current roster they'd lose 120, easily. You know there's pretty easy ways to verify how silly this is, right?

Feels like between Canario hitting the ground running at SB, Nelly Velazquez doing the same at Tenn, and what Nwogu has been doing at Myrtle Beach, we've got a good shot at netting a big time power bat. Really nice to see, as until recently I wasn't expecting much dong-wise in between Davis and all the ACL kids.

This is fun, especially since my understanding is that Brennen has been getting victimized by the high fastball

Yeah, I feel like from his relief work it wasn't too hard to imagine he could do the high K high BB low IP type of outing. Seeing him with an outing where he leaned hard on the sinker and did the pitch efficiency thing was really good to see. If he was stretched out more or it wasn't 1000 degrees outside he'd likely have gone 7 IP, that's awesome.

OK, my comment may have been a tad bit overzealous but it just doesn’t sound good over the radio. I think the Adames dong got him out of his groove and it took a few batters (and a visit from Hottovy) to get back into a good headspace. Fairly normal young pitcher stuff, just gotta see it get better with experience.

Adames' dong was a bit of a cheapy, but that Garcia one was not at all

7 for 7 now

4 Batters Faced, 4 Groundballs Justin, I think you and I are going to get along quite well

I kind of like the idea of Mancini if you trade for him and extend him at like 3/45. I don't think he'd take much to acquire and while he's bad in the outfield, he's ok defensively at 1B and you can expect him to give you a 115-120 wRC+. I totally agree about Mancini, but maybe a "bad contract" trade involving Heyward and Hosmer might work with the necessary tweaking (prospects/cash). Hosmer could give a few years of "adequate" production at 1B, while Heyward could replace Pham or be 4th OF/defensive replacement.

I'm generally of the mind that if you're a teenager in full season ball, you have to be REALLY bad for me to hold it against you. And like TT said when you add in the pandemic and the loss of short season ball, there's even more extenuating circumstances this year than normal. But Howard has been REALLY bad. And unlike say Hearn or Nwogu, his season doesn't look much better when you ignore May, which IMO would lend credence to either COVID rust or losing the NWL as an intermediate stop. I'm not writing Howard off for the reasons above, but we SHOULD be down on him from where we were a year ago. Especially since he's not the highest upside guy to begin with. I don't have a top prospects list written out, but if I did I imagine Howard would be closer to Strumpf than to Davis.

I feel like the Cubs were just extremely lucky last year that they didn't have an outbreak, and this year they've been mostly unscathed because they are one of the few teams that have to live with the under 85% protocols. For an organization that can hardly do anything right the last few years, I doubt they somehow devised the optimal strategy for preventing COVID outbreaks. There was some stuff last year (I think in the Athletic?) about how they actually were really great about things. Doing things like choosing hotels with outdoor areas they could take over, etc. Part of it was also that the team leaders like Rizzo, Heyward, etc. were part of enforcement in the early part of the year when less of the protocols we're mandatory. So while they have been doofuses a out the shot they were a big part of last year's efforts. And the team did have a small outbreak early this year. It's just that it nabbed guys in the bullpen we don't care about like Brandon Workman and Dan Winkler.

If Happ were on the open market, would you pay him $5M? If not, why even offer him arbitration? He has had plenty of time to figure things out, and he is terrible. Rafael Ortega is playing over his head for sure, but I would much rather let him fill the spot for the next year, whether that be as a 4th outfielder or as a placeholder starter. Sure I definitely would. Coming into this season he had a career .825 OPS in 1262 PA. Last year he had the 24th highest fWAR for a position player in baseball (yes SSS but still). $5m is worth trying to figure out what has gone wrong this season and whether he can go back to some semblance of the production he had in his previous 4 seasons. I'll trust the 1200 PA over the 300 PA this year, even if that 300 PA is the most recent data point. Yeah, if this were a KB or someone making $15M+ through arb you'd probably cut him, but Happ at $5M is nothing. Especially for a team that's going to be competing but also just trying to sort through guys, you absolutely should buy that $5M lottery ticket. Hell, at this time last year he was an MVP candidate (yes shortened season blah blah blah) so it's not like you have to turn the clock back that far.

Obviously needs to work on the contact, but he really had been hitting the horsefeathers out of the ball night in and night out

Yeah, I think no matter what we need two starters, including a legit #2/#3 guy. But if Steele or Thompson looks good here that second SP can be a backend type. If Steele AND Thompson look good it can be simply a guy we stash at Iowa. Like you said those latter scenarios make this winter a hell of a lot easier.

I'm generally patient with moving guys up, but Nwogu is a little old for his level and has been hot for nearly two months. Feels like he ought to spend the last month of the season in South Bend.