Bertz

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.

I remember reading about Effross becoming a side armer last year, but I think this is my first time actually seeing it? Given how much leash Winkler got, you have to imagine another guy with such high levels of funk is destined to get some play in the big league pen. Also he's got 5x as many K's as walks and a groundball rate north of 60% at Iowa so it's not like he's without merit on paper.

Hermosillo was probably the funnest of the AAAA guys they got for Iowa last winter, and has been crushing it so far this year. The contact rate is certainly sub-optimal, but he's got power, speed, and patience. He's probably Jake Marisnick with roughly twice as many walks. That's not particularly exciting, but like a lot of these guys that's a high end bench player.

I wonder if the swing change is what got him promoted? He was in a slump, seemed to be just starting to come out of it, and then got the bump. Maybe the team saw the changes really stick and that was the last box he had to check to get moved up? Overall though I'm really happy with the power guys in the system. I'm pretty convinced that we'll net a GUY out of the Nelly/Canario/Nwogu trio, even if I'm not sure which one.

This is mostly bad. "Superstar" and "SS" are pretty obvious holes, right? How long do you want to wait to see if our prospect list turns out a superstar? Davis next year, and then....Ed Howard, all of 21 years old in 2023, currently getting owned in single A? The even younger Preciado/Hernandez/Caissie/Made group? And if those don't hit just press the reset button again? We have $38m in guaranteed salary next year, another $15m in arbitration for Willy, Ian, Ortega, Wieck, and then the league minimum for Mills, Wick, Heuer, Madrigal, Adbert, Hoerner, Steele, Wisdom, and whoever else. Call it, what, $60m? How does signing 34 year old Tommy Pham do anything in your plan as your top offensive move? Go get someone you know is good, gives you a shot of being good soon, and will still be good when those cheap prospects finally make it up. Then figure out how much money you have left and go from there. Or use the good prospect to get gooder Yeah, there's no reason to prospect hug this winter. Davis is off the table. He combines starpower with MLB proximity and does it at a position of need for the big league clubs. Literally anyone else? On the table. The Padres showed last winter how much shopping you can get done without using elite prospects. I would want to lean more on the checkbook than the farm system, but the Cubs should make at least one notable buy-side trade, probably two.

It’s good to remember the 3 best position players on the team are on the IL, so there’s a significant influx on the current roster relative to what we’re seeing right now, plus any optimism you want to have about others who could be productive role players(Happ, Bote, Deichmann) or better than their current role(most of the non-Hendricks SP). There is a lot of depth to add though. Plus there's Brennen Davis. Steamer thinks he's a league average hitter in the big leagues right now. So that's another ~2.5 WAR (obviously with wide error bars) for next year that's already in the org but not on the roster. I also think the cascading effects of depth are always understated until you actually see them in action. Frank Schwindel as the starting 1B would be a huge disappointment. Frank Schwindel as the top RH platoon bat off the bench might be a good thing. Steele as the #3 starter would be a huge yikes, but as fighting for the #5? Etc. Pushing the should be bench players that currently make up our starting lineup into the bench roles doesn't just reduce their playing time, it improves their performance when they do play because they're put in advantageous positions a higher proportion of the time.

I read this post at the EXACT same time Boog made the same comparison. Mind is blown I didn't notice it last time, but the way he walks around between pitches, and the way he does like this kind of shimmy thing to keep his shoulders loose. It's REALLY similar.

Steele has a lot of Rich Hill's body language and mannerisms

I've criticized BA a lot the last few years, as I think the quality has gone down substantially since Jim Callis left. That said, several of the individual writers (JJ Cooper, Ben Badler, Carlos Collazo, etc.) are still great. I think the drop in quality has been due to a move to more of a clickbaity content schedule. They're constantly refreshing rankings, even if there's no reason. Like I'm pretty sure they did one last June or July, which was asinine. It's not that the people have gotten that much worse, it's that the same number of people are doing 3x as many lists as they used to, and there's a noticeable corresponding drop in quality. I think JJ has some good points there about starpower vs. depth, and the (absolutely fair) drops from Marquez and Amaya, but ultimately I do expect that NAM is right that there's going to be significant movement in the offseason when the BA folks have more up to date Intel on guys who've improved since March (of 2020 for some). And if there is, it proves him right, because clearly the next five weeks shouldn't move things more than a smidge. There are logistics at play that make the inevitable offseason shakeup fair, but the right thing to do is just to not put out some half assed some new rankings right now. Wait until January when you can do it right. Measure twice and cut once as they say. Contrasting with Fangraphs is interesting. They're the high guys on the Cubs system. That said, Eric Longenhagen, purely through the happenstance of where he lives, is the only national voice who's seen most of the Cubs' complex league guys in person. So while EL is not typically my go to source for this stuff, right now he's CLEARLY the most well informed. Not to the point where we go "he's right they're wrong" but instead of simply splitting the difference, I'd put more weight behind 7 than I would 24.

12 up 12 down with 7 strikeouts now

Chase Strumpf in August (through 3 PAs today) is hitting .296/.380/.500. the K's are back up (30%), but he'd been controlling the strike zone for a while. It's good to see him actually hitting. Plenty of guys have a lot of swing and miss while they're hot and do more grinding when they're cold.

I'm so all in on him. He's really horsefeathering fun

Alec Mills career as a SP after the first 5 innings today: 29 starts, 150 IP, 3.78 ERA, 40 BB, 127 K, 20 dongs Short of a meltdown these last 6 weeks, feels like you can feel good about penciling him into a rotation spot heading into next season.

It's just three starts (2 from Bain and 1 from Jensen) but loving how much impact the Development List seems to be having for these guys.

I was wondering that too. I believe the plan going into 2020 before the pandemic was they'd expand to 28. I know we're now using a lot of the rules from the '19-'20 offseason, but havent seen any confirmation if that's one of them.

My thought was that teams that lose 100 games tend to be willing to let their pitching go rather than risk them going kaboom before they're good again. That had me eying Gallen as well as the Marlins' front three. That makes sense, I definitely have looked over that Marlins rotation a couple times since they have the pattern of selling off arb pitchers. I do think this type of thing generally happens more to pitchers who have hit arb given the expense and declining trade value as FA approaches, but especially given that Gallen isn't some DeGrom/Scherzer monster, I could see him going for the right combination of upside and quantity from your trade asset buckets. More broadly, I really struggle with the idea of trades for pitchers in general because of this. They avoid the expense and age of the FA market, but knowing who could realistically be dealt is a big challenge(hence my gravitation to habitual sellers like the Florida teams), and I'm hesitant to deploy a bunch of new found farm system depth for one right off the bat. Yeah, there's not a lot of obviously available guys, and the ones who are fairly obvious are mostly under control for just 2022. German Marquez, Sean Manaea, etc. So I'm assuming Gallen can be had, but if Sandy Alcantara feels more realistic that's fine too. Better insight into financials or the new CBA also makes a world of difference. If I knew what payroll projects out to the next few years, I might be more comfortable doing Seager/Stroman via FA and knocking out the lower list items via trade. Or maybe the qualifying offer gets killed, and Rodon or Ray become more attractive options. (Like you mentioned a week or so back teams don't love signing two QO guys in one offseason, and they're both getting one). I think the market is going to look a lot different December 1st than it does now.

My thought was that teams that lose 100 games tend to be willing to let their pitching go rather than risk them going kaboom before they're good again. That had me eying Gallen as well as the Marlins' front three.

For this offseason I see several roster specific goals, things I want to see them do to win games, and then a few longer term org goals nodding to the topic of sustained success Within each bucket, I've ordered them in how I view their inportance Roster Goals 1. Bring in a superstar. It makes most sense for this to be a shortstop, but doesn't have to be 2. Bring in a RHH outfielder to balance out all the lefties 3. Bring in a playoff caliber SP 4. Bring in a second SP, the quality of whom can depend on how much Steele/Thompson show from on 5. Bring in a LHH infielder 6. Bring in a LH setup man 7. Backup Catcher Org Goals 1. Keep the bulk of your powder dry for next year 2. Clean up the 40 man situation 3. Don't block this first wave of prospects Below is my current specific plan, but really as long as we check the above boxes I'm not married to names - Sign Corey Seager (~$30M per year) - Sign Tommy Pham (2/32ish akin to Michael Brantley) - Trade for Zac Gallen (league minimum in '22, under control through '25) - Sign Andrew Heaney (1/10) - Sign Andrew Chafin (2/14) - Trade for Dominic Smith (arb eligible, likely 5ish?) - Backup catcher (5ish) On $ Matters: On trades/prospects: Lineup: LF - Pham SS - Seager C - Willson 1B - Smith 3B - Wisdom 2B - Madrigal CF - Happ DH - Hoerner (like TT said, he doesn't actually DH but this is a nod to his everyday position fluid nature) RF - Deichman BN - Ortega, Bote, Heyward, Backup C Thoughts: SP - Gallen, Kyle, Heaney, Adbert, Mills/Steele/Thompson Thoughts: Overall, I think this is a playoff team, but in the Oakland A's mold where there's quality in spots 1-26 but only 2-3 impact guys. I expect though that this can be a good springboard to 2023. We should have a better idea of which non-Davis guys on the farm look like stars at that point. We should also be positioned financially to get another star in FA next offseason, and probably be positioned with the farm to make it two. The thought is very much for this to be 2007 or 2015, and then really bring the fireworks afterwards.

I hope we get some velo readings on Clarke today. There were some his first game back and they were bad, but it was his first game back so that's understandable. The results have been good so far but they're hard to buy into if he's throwing 91-92.