Bertz

Curious if anyone ends up taking a lesson from this Probably not

Angel Cepeda 4/5 with two doubles and a steal is fun

Yeah I think there's somewhere in the venn diagram of Chris Taylor and Adam Frazier where he likely ends up. Not a star but someone you're pretty damn happy to have on your bench.

Assad for Horton, freeing up Brown for relief work. Send Brown down after LA, and get Wicks a spot start against SF, who are *awful* against LHP.

James Triantos the last month: .296/.373/.429, 109 wRC+, 10.0% BB, 15.5% K, 110 PAs Also worth noting that even though he's been at Iowa for over a year, because of a few injuries this stretch started when he only had about ~300 AAA plate appearances under his belt He's never going to sniff a Top 100 again but don't write him totally off

Same. The next three opponents are the Angels (19th in wRC+), the Giants (22nd), and Rockies (30th), and then Horton could come right back at the start of September when rosters expand. This is probably the last best opportunity we're going to get to get him a breather without adversely impacting the big league team too much.

Assad can't come back up for Friday's game unless someone goes on the IL. So I suspect the team is hoping for Brown to take that start. I'd expect Wicks to hang out with the big league team the next few days. If Brown gets called on today or tomorrow he gets sent down after and Wicks takes the start Friday. That said I'd guess everyone but Rogers and Kittredge is available today if needed, though I'm sure Craig would like to stay away from Pomeranz too if he can.

The team has played 18 games since the ASB and literally half of those have been at Wrigley with the wind blowing in.

Looks like that's a 109 wRC+ due to the insane hitting conditions at Myrtle. The strikeouts are pretty scary like a lot of the guys at MV, but from a toolsy 19 year old shortstop still good stuff.

GameDay has Yahil Melendez pitching for MB, but apparently there's a new Melendez (Eduardo) with the team and the GameDay operator is just sort of phoning things in tonight.

Sure, but the flipside there is pushing Imanaga to the Angels series on Friday. And maybe with the gap in the division that's the play, a slow and steady wins the race approach. But I think with the two off days and Assad coming back it would have been relatively painless to get the top of the rotation lined up for this series with everyone on extra rest. I'm surprised they didn't prioritize that. They either did one or the other, not both. (unless you think Brown is one of our best pitchers, which I'm pretty sure I'm alone on that island)

Makes the rotation against the Brewers presumably Monday: Taillon/Horton Tuesday: Boyd Wednesday: Rea Thursday: Shota All of these guys would be on 4 days instead of 5, which feels like poor planning.

Case in point: Matt Shaw hit better than Owen Caissie at Iowa this year, and we saw how long it took him to be a significant contributor

Prior to last year Verlander seemed like he had a decent shot at hitting 300 Wins, probably the last guy with a shot. Wouldn't be surprised if that was a big part of the thinking. Scherzer's just a maniac

100% to all of this In the spring The Athletic mentioned that the team wanted to do this all year. Have each of Caissie/Alcantara/Mo just come up periodically and hang out for a few weeks. I suspect the non catcher parts of the bench being so useless in the 1st half is a big part of why that didn't happen. But now there's an opportunity with Castro on hand.

Scherzer is pretty dong prone at this point of his career, so it's basically a question of whether he gives up 1-2 solos or if you can time it with a couple guys on. He's also vulnerable to lefties. So probably a good day to get Castro and Caissie into the lineup.

I expect that Caissie won't take as long to get going as Shaw/Amaya/PCA thanks to his extended time at Iowa. That said, Busch also spent nearly two full years at AAA, and he had a terrible September callup in '23. And then in '24 he had a horrific slump in late April/early May before he finally got his feet under him for good. It's really really really hard for rookie hitters to break in these days.

It's for good reason, successfully graduating Shaw and Horton, but Cubs farm took a tumble from preseason.

Javy used to get a ton of HBP too. That's part of how he ran decent OBPs despite nonexistent plate discipline. It's...I don't know if skill is the right word but it's not random.

Caissie's being called up to take Amaya's spot. Looking forward to everyone being super normal about this

Jefferson Rojas and Cristian Hernandez each on base 3x, that's fun And yeah Erian Rodriguez feels like he should be at Tenn

Yency Almonte is back, and seems to be pitching well at SB. I'd love to know how close to pre-surgery the stuff is. I doubt he's got much of a path to the 2025 big league pen at this juncture, but if he looks good he might be worth a 40 man stash over the winter.

I think it's worth noting that this attitude towards '27/'28 would make just as much sense without the CBA expiring. You touch on why in your second to last paragraph. The team has practically no money tied up post 2026. Based on roster resource, it looks like this: - Swanson's $28M is rock solid guaranteed - Shota's $15M will probably get picked up - Steele in Arb 4, let's call it $10M - Assad at Arb 2, I'd be shocked if that's much north of $5M - Amaya, Busch, PCA, Hodge, and Palencia at arb 1. Barring some incredible developments none of those guys except PCA will top $5M. PCA might approach 8 figures So the team's got ~$100M in LT payroll committed in a year where the LT line is going to be at least $245M, and 1/3rd of that isn't even guaranteed. Even conservatively that's $100M available to sign players for the FO. Contrast that to this winter, where there's ~$50M available by the same assumptions, and a Tucker pursuit would take up most of the available cash on its own. An Edward Cabrera making ~$5M next year and projected for ~3 WAR is hugely valuable given the likely financial limitations. In 2027 though, there's not that same financial calculus because the marginal value of a dollar saved is pretty low. Ditto 2028. He's not worthless after next year, but if you did some $/WAR calculus I'd bet 80+% of the utility in a trade would have projected to come these first 15 months. Gore and Ryan, under control one fewer year, it'd have been more stark. I also kind of wonder if the prospect timelines influence this too. '27 is probably when you'd start to prefer having e.g. Wiggins and Caissie than Cabrera. So from the Cubs' POV I could see an argument that "you have to make things really worth it for us up front because we're going to lose the back half of the deal", almost like a FA contract.

I think keeping McGuire is about protecting somewhat against another catcher injury. Like he's not great but he's probably a little above replacement level, and maybe most importantly already knows the pitching staff and coaches. Add in that Castro took Berti from being mostly redundant to completely redundant and I'm not too surprised.

Surprised that they listed Brown as the probable for tonight initially if they were doing this, but overall still checks out