Bertz

The Cubs were 6th in runs scored from August 29th to the end of the season, why not use that as your baseline for what the real offense is?

What possible reason could there be for only focusing on June 1st onward?

For starters there's no disconnect. The team was 5th in runs, 7th in wOBA, 4th in xwOBA. The difference between their actual runs scored and their Baseruns (which strips *all* context to estimate offense) is .05 runs per game, which is essentially a rounding error. None of these specific numbers are park adjusted so there's not any bias there either.

You speak very confidently for someone who does not understand how this stuff works

Wow! I knew he had gas but still wow. Curious what the plan with him will be next year. He's Rule 5 eligible, so there's a bit of a delicate balance between giving him SP opportunities to get reps and pushing him up the ladder as a reliever to see if he's worth protecting. Palencia and Little both performed as SPs in Low A (and Palencia in High A) so they're not great comps.

I'm as "focus big picture, avoid recency bias" as anyone but yeah I don't think you can let Shota see Chourio/Vaughn/Contreras. The way they were on him, whether it's sign stealing (not very likely), they see him really well (medium likely) or pitch tipping (very likely) I'm skeptical it was fixed in five days. There's a pocket of the lineup where Shota can slot in and get some reps, but he's just not the choice for getting even the plurality of the outs tomorrow IMO.

I'm still thinking it through, but I'm leaning towards being okay with that.

Yeah I expect the Tucker/Schwarber/Bellinger musical chairs to be one of the biggest stories this winter. I could see it going several different ways.

That ballpark was tailor made for him, sending him to New York for a potential contract year was definitely doing right by him

Philly is in an interesting spot, this was sort of supposed to be their year. As the proto Preller there's no way Dombrowski folds his hands for the second offseason in a row and coming off of *that* exit.

Craig did say he's probably not going to be able to provide "bulk" again this October. So I'd assume 2 inning stints max

(I almost always do this for big games)

Contreras was so obvious and over the top I kind of think it was just headgames. Unfortunately unlike the stupid "we had Priester warming up in the bullpen" gambit I think it worked.

About a third of Peralta's starts against us are clunkers, and his last two times have been strong. So we're clearly due.

Even as this board's resident Ben Brown fanboy slash xFIP truther, I think starting him over Boyd today would be crazy. Saturday (assuming we get there) as the tip of a bullpen game spear? Hell yeah let's ride. Not over Boyd though.

His career postseason ERA is now more than two runs higher than his regular season one. Not small sample either, nearly 200 innings. Crazy.

Awesome I think too if Mathis rakes that's a great sign. When the AA/AAA guys go and crush it that's largely just meeting expectations. Mathis is far enough down the ladder it'd feel like it means a bit more.

This is interesting! Though I'll say the fact that the Marlins are the best in the league makes me a bit dubious. But I think it's notable that even if you play around with GameDay zones it stays true. This isn't just a backdoor to showing that PCA and (to a lesser extent) Swanson's helplessness against the bellybutton high fastball is dragging the team down. It also made me curious about the Iowa bats, since that's a logical place to look to improving this for next year. It looks like this year at Iowa: - Jonny Long swung and missed a little more, put the ball on the ground a lot more, but still continued to hit the hell out of the ball. Thumbs up overall - Kevin Alcantara thrived. Again a higher GB rate but whiffs came way down and hard hit rate skyrocketed. This is probably instructive. Most likely the Cubs are one or two dead red fastball hitters short of ideal, but overcommitting to fixing this issue risks giving you a Miami Marlins' lineup - Mo is weird. His hard hit and barrel numbers jumped, while his whiff rate fell, yet his xwOBA was mostly flat. I assume he's popping up or barrelling with little in between? Overall positive though - Caissie got absolutely eaten alive by velocity. Looks like it happened last year too. That's...concerning So the internal reinforcements should help here, but definitely feels like something that needs to be kept in mind when assembling the bench.

The team is losing very little to free agency outside of Tucker, basically just all the veteran short relievers (and they hold an option on Kittredge, so maybe not even him). Beyond that the roster's fairly young, so in aggregate you wouldn't expect much decline from the holdovers. So i think it's fair to expect the team to be similar quality next year as it was this year. Tucker staying or going doesn't swing the bottom line a ton IMO, it just shifts how the roster is balanced. Are they an elite position player group (3rd in MLB) and an okay pitching staff (19th) like this year? Or do they maybe end up more balanced, around 10th on both sides?