Bertz

He's gotten much more aggressive. His P/PA has fallen from 4.07 with us last year to 3.74. His swinging strike rate is up from 9.3% to 10.8%. 10.8% is actually still good, MLB average is 11.2%. I think if we had MLB caliber data we'd be able to make a call on how real his improvement is. With the lack of transparency we have, the glass half empty argument is that his batted ball profile is largely the same, so while it's good that with his power he's putting the ball in play more, the vastly improved results are mainly due to the new shift restrictions at the AA level.

40 Man/Rule 5 implications are going to be a big deal over the next 7 months, and I'm very curious to see. - When counting 60 Day/COVID IL guys, the Cubs have 47 guys on the 40 man right now - 10 are in their walk years - 3 are chaff that are only up right now because of the crazy injury spree (Vargas, Leiter, Mendez) - Schwindel, Frazier, Ortega, Hermosillo, and Newcomb are all guys who either affirmatively prove they belong, or are easy cut candidates. Let's say two step up and we want to keep for next year - Heyward is probably finally a cut candidate when he's down to 1 year That means we'll have 10 spots for prospects and FAs. Plenty, right? Maybe not when you look at prospects who may need to be added to the 40 man because of the Rule 5 draft: - Brennen Davis and Caleb Kilian - Cam Sanders, Brendon Little, Riley Thompson, Eury Ramos, Bryan Hudson, and Brandon Hughes were all already available last year and might have been picked if the draft had actually happened, and look much more likely to be grabbed this year - Chris Clarke, Kohl Franklin, and Ryan Jensen will be newly eligible SPs - Upper minors live armed relievers Cayne Ueckert and Danis Correa - Kevin Alcantara, Yohendrick Pinango and Cole Roederer are far enough away to maybe be safe, but good enough prospects that you probably have to protect them That's 16 names who I think in a given year you would potentially see protected. There's a few more 40 man spots you can clean up (e.g. Mills, Rucker, Wieck), but you're still at best protecting half of these guys. I kind of wonder if we see a buy deal mixed in with all of the selling at the deadline, to consolidate resources and jump the offseason market. For instance to grab one of the SPs we need a little early and clear the decks a bit for what should be a busy winter. I think Jed should also look to do deals structured like the Javy deal last winter, where we threw in Trevor Williams to sweeten the return a bit and clear him off the 40.

If you're just looking for the right/left breakdown, he's currently 0-for-7 with 4 Ks against lefties this season, according to baseball-reference. That's awesome, I had no idea BR had minor league splits. I'll have to keep this in mind moving forward. Another guy I looked at is Pinango. He's been in a slump so I haven't been paying a ton of attention to him lately, but his groundball rate is starting to trend in the right direction. It's 48.6% right now, after being in the upper 50's a couple weeks ago. You generally want power guys in the low 40's or lower (FG doesn't have game-by-game batted ball data for minor leaguers, but he's probably been there during this recent stretch). He's swinging and missing a lot more than last year now though. I'm curious to see if that's a temporary bump while his swing gets reworked, or if it's a permanent tradeoff for the increased launch angle. I think either way it's an exchange worth making, but if he can keep this new launch angle with last year's contact rates he'll be kind of a unicorn.

Reggie Preciado is finally adjusting. In May: .296/.310/.444, 3.4% BB, 27.6% K, 107 wRC+ The walk and K numbers still need work obviously, but like the Caissie numbers I posted a few days ago finally holding his head above water. Still doesn't turn 19 for another few days, he's the baby of the MB crew. I also wish we had good split data (Minorleaguesplits is now defunct again) because with his switch hitting it's especially important context.

Bryce Ball is 3/6 with a dong so far midway through game 2 of Tenn's DH, which has pushed his OPS up over .900

https://twitter.com/JATayler/status/1524893061104410625?t=RyZS2zwoMMduTryi_7BPvA&s=19

I would have agreed with this last year, don't feel like this is at all the case this year. I kinda think JD's health issues last year were a lot worse than we knew, and that was the genesis of much of the weirdness.

Bryce Ball with a triple and a dong so far. Up to .299/.353/.523. He's slashed the K's a bunch this year, but it's come at the expense of his walks. I feel like he needs to either bring the walks back or drop the groundball rate more, but he's looking more and more viable.

Effross has been incredible since he came up. He's got great peripherals AND he's a bigtime soft contact guy. And I think the expectation was he might be a righty specialist but he's been great against lefties too. Given how predicated it is on pure funk you have to worry he'll get figured out after the league sees him more but there hasn't been a whiff of it yet. And the Giants have Tyler Rogers who has been doing a similar thing for a couple years with no issues.

Keegan was still 92-95 that last inning, including 94.5 on his last FB of the game. It was only 61 pitches but feels like he should just try a few turns as a standard SP. Last year he lost a lot of velo starting and the results showed, but if he's got more stamina this year let it rip.

He looks like he’s 15-20 pounds overweight. He was never a super in shape dude but he looks bigger than normal. Yeah Statcast says he went from 57th percentile in sprint speed last year to 39th this year. You generally expect some YoY dropoff but that's a lot

Feels like when people are healthy Villar probably shouldn't stay on the roster. He's turned into a liability defensively on the left side of the infield and even in his heyday was essentially a league average hitter who could play all over. Take away the "can play all over" and not much reason to hold out hope for the bat rebounding

I'm hopeful that Hoerner taking the AB after before coming out is a sign that this is a day to day deal and not an IL stint deal.

I think the big thing with Keegan to watch will be if he's still 93-95 in the 4th and 5th innings. If he is just leave him in the rotation IMO

*sigh* Davis still out of the lineup Hopefully he gets back on track after this lower-back induced breather

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.