Bertz

I think it's pretty obvious that the issues with the Cubs offense right now are both bad performance and bad luck. I've been curious to see how much is attributable to each though. So I went to Fangraphs, and looked at each hitter's wOBA and their xwOBA. wOBA is a composite stat on the OBP scale, so average should be .320-.330. xwOBA is their expected line based on Statcast estimates from all their batted balls. Here's how the Cubs lineup and top bench guys measure by each (wOBA/xwOBA): Happ - .261/.337 Contreras - .365/.354 Rizzo - .257/.322 Bryant - .392/.353 Joc - .192/.217 Baez - .284/.242 Heyward - .249/.253 Bote - .202/.303 Sogard - .171/.229 Duffy - .218/.399 Marisnick - .290/.301 So on the one hand, the good news is that the team has been very unlucky. Bryant and Baez have been fairly fortunate, and Contreras has gotten a smidge of good luck, but everyone else has been BABIP'd, several of them quite hard. On the other hand, even if everyone hit based on their Statcast numbers, the offense would still be pretty bad. If you average the main 8's xwOBA's, you get .297, which still sucks. So like the team should be closer to the 20th ranked offense than the 30th, but being 20th is obviously still very much a problem.

He's so bad. He's probably the most connected of the beat guys except for Jesse Rogers, but he's a bad writer with a boring point of view.

Do we know if there's a Minor League Camp AAA roster, or if that's just the alternate site crew? Because that'd tell us a whole lot about how real Howard starting at High A would be.

Incentives. More and more guys have responded to the shift with trying to hit OVER the shift. That's more uppercut swings, with more Ks, BBs, and dongs. Raise the value of a single, and you see more changed approaches. But unlike hitting it the other way, this is a change that guys have shown more ability to actually implement. I mean, that makes sense, but I'm not convinced that the uppercut change versus opposite field change is based on an ABILITY to impliment as opposed to a WILLINGNESS to impliment. And what were you hinting at with the "raise the value of a single" comment. I wasn't sure what you were referring to. I would think you're right, but like CW11 said if it was doable we'd probably have seen some guys do it by now, right? We have seen lots of guys raise/lower their launch angle, but not many fix their susceptibility to the shift. Maybe that's because velocities are so damn high, and so moving the mound back solves this issue too? I missed a few words there, I meant raise the value of a "would-be single." So like if a 100 MPH ground ball to the right side becomes twice as likely to become a hit, that is likely enough incentive to change behavior.

Lol Miller was literally brought up just for innings and gave them none

It would lessen the 3 outcomes though. How many times have we seen Schwarbs and Rizzo hit in to some crazy shift on the right side? Certainly if teams weren’t allowed 3-4 infielders over there some of those ground balls and line drives go through for hits. That lessens the HR-BB-K outcomes. ...how? The alternative to a hit thought a normal shift is an out into a heavy shift. In both cases, the HR-BB-K totals remain the same. Incentives. More and more guys have responded to the shift with trying to hit OVER the shift. That's more uppercut swings, with more Ks, BBs, and dongs. Raise the value of a single, and you see more changed approaches. But unlike hitting it the other way, this is a change that guys have shown more ability to actually implement.

I hate not allowing shifts. Unrelated to the main reason that I hate banning the shift, heavy shifting should incentivize batters to just put the ball in play by altering their approach. That should also reduce true outcomes. If it was that easy “to just put the ball in play” I think we’d see it more. It’s just not that easy. Some guy would go hit .380 if it was that easy to flip the ball the other way when 3 guys or on the other side of the IF. And in my scenario you still could shift. It’s just with 2 infielders per side and not 3-4. Totally agree. My backing of banning the shift is VERY dependent on what it specifically looks like. Something subtle like 4 guys in the dirt or two guys on each side of the bag? Sounds good. Designated "zones" or something over-engineered like that? Horsfeathers off.

I think he's solid, but he's likely a high end bench bat that can thrive in the right situations rather than an everyday guy. And what sucks is the thing he has shown to be the most hapless against (high velocity high in the zone) is a very popular weakness on this roster.

I'm anti beanball, but if you're going to play then the opposing pitcher is the guy who *should* get hit, right? And then the catcher is the backup in case of DH or pinch hitter? Otherwise it really reeks of "well well well if it isn't the consequences of my actions." Like why pretend you don't have agency in this?

Ben Lindbergh has been pretty compelling in laying this out as the best way to fix the strikeout problem. So even if that's wrong, it's certainly worth the experiment.

I think how the pitching does this year will tell us how long of a dip there needs to be. With reasonable estimates for Arb raises, the Cubs have an ~$85M payroll heading into next next year. That's less than half of even this season's depressed payroll. So even with the PTR factor, there's something like a hundred million available to Jed this offseason. That's not enough to build a playoff caliber team on its own, but if the pitching is in mostly good shape it IS enough to build a playoff caliber offense on its own. But are we going to rebuild an entire offense by throwing money at FA? Maybe taking on salary in a trade? I just feel like the situation is not the same but similar to where we were in 2012. There are no franchise cornerstones to build around once Rizzo, Bryant and Javy leave. Our biggest assets are guys like Contreras, Hendricks and Ian Happ and you'd think the latter 2 are the closest thing we can call to franchise cornerstones due to being youngish, not sucking, and under contract for multiple seasons after this year. We can use the pitching lab to cobble together decent staffs (taking your example as an assumption), but I can't see us building a championship caliber club with FA money and very little young cheap talent. I mean there is literally 1 position player in the Top 30 of the Cubs farm system that is currently above A ball. Doesn't seem like we should expect anything there for awhile. There's definitely a huge variance based on what happens the next six months. The pitching being good going into the winter is a gigantic if, though there's a critical mass of legitimately interesting guys already in the org, and with the team being bad they'll have 6 months of innings to evaluate off of. Every pitcher they hit on this season frees up resources to spend on the offense. And the offense needs significant resources. Though I will quibble with one thing you said. The position player group that's going to open at Tennessee is actually pretty strong, so I think near term help from the farm is more realistic than you think. Amaya, Davis, Strumpf, and Morel are all slated to open there. It's likely we see at least one bat out of that group in MLB as soon as this season. Add that and probably Hoerner to Willson and Happ, and you've gotta group that can be saved with 2-3 big bats. And there are a ton of good FA bats next winter. When you factor in all the "if this goes right" things that are needed together, it's likely we'll be down for a few years (though scorched earth again seems unlikely). But I think the volume of current pitching and volume of future cash means there is a chance to avoid that prolonged dip.

I think how the pitching does this year will tell us how long of a dip there needs to be. With reasonable estimates for Arb raises, the Cubs have an ~$85M payroll heading into next next year. That's less than half of even this season's depressed payroll. So even with the PTR factor, there's something like a hundred million available to Jed this offseason. That's not enough to build a playoff caliber team on its own, but if the pitching is in mostly good shape it IS enough to build a playoff caliber offense on its own.

Steele got some hype as possibly having become a spin rate monster during quarantine, and looks like the data from his debut is bearing that out

The fact that the brain geniuses down in Houston passed on him is further evidence that this stuff is hard, no? Or, again, that so much of it comes down to luck. And that's not inherently a bad thing in and of itself. But it makes the, "these guys are fuggin' baseball GENIUSES," hype all the more hollow and frustrating when things go downhill so fast after years of sucking. Personally, I think it's more accurate to say it was a smart enough FO who got really lucky. Sure, totally fair. But I think if you're taking that route you have to acknowledge how much of the quick decline has simply been bad luck. Saying the team made a bunch of 55/45 bets and got lucky on the front end and unlucky on the back is consistent. Attributing things like Bryant to luck and not acknowledging any bad luck with latter day stuff like Quintana is much less so.

What happens if the Astros draft Bryant instead of Appel. The fact that the brain geniuses down in Houston passed on him is further evidence that this stuff is hard, no?

My thing is this, almost any competent baseball person could have done what the Cubs did to get a championship. I use to think Theo and the guys around him were special, but it turns out they were not. Then ownership decided to use the Cubs as collateral for buying Chicago city blocks and donating millions of dollars to the worst of humanity, It makes it kind of hard. I love baseball and I love the Cubs, but man is it hard. That's nonsense. If it were that easy there'd be an example of a tanking success story post Cubs/Astros. The Phillies failed spectacularly at the task. The White Sox have failed modestly (they look like they're going to top out as like a 92 win team). None of the Tigers/Mariners/Giants look to be coming out of the other end of their tanks with super teams. The Dodgers being on another level doesn't make what Theo and Co. did not impressive.

How much of an off-field reprieve do we get? Because if we erase the Chapman/Russell sagas and turn the Ricketts into regular evil billionaires rather than cartoon evil, I probably take door #2.

Justin Steele debuting is fun

Good on Willson there to ensure he got the out and prevented the run. I feel like two years ago he would have spazzed out trying to turn and get the ball to first for the double play and it would have led to disaster.

This Brewers lineup without Yelich is really bad. Even still, what Alzolay is doing tonight is outrageous.

He might just really suck. He’s like a worse version of Javy at the plate with the Ks and contact issues, he walks a touch more but doesn’t have the raw power and obviously brings nothing on defense or base running. The little bit I've heard out of Milwaukee is that he fell in love with all the dongs he hit his rookie year and is now selling out for fly balls, but at like 5'10" he doesn't really have the power to do that without the rabbit ball. And he was never going to be a contributor on defense.

Keston Hiura is so bad in both sides of the ball right now

By Fangraphs' numbers, the Cubs have given up nearly half their playoff odds already. They were at just under 1/4 to open the season, now they're just over 1/8.