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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Yeah based on the forecast I'd guess this game starts closer to 8
  2. I believe 90-92, though with his arm angle I wouldn't be shocked if the models still really like it. Jose Cuas comes to mind for example.
  3. Jostin Florentino with 6 no hit innings, 9 K's and 1 BB I know the stuff isn't overwhelming... I wonder if the funky arm slot is just too much for the kids in Low A to deal with, even the lefties?
  4. Tyler Schlaffer is shoving again. I like the movement on the fastball and the slider, but I really don't see how he's doing *this*. I'd love for a pitch design guy to give us the dirt on him.
  5. There's also an insane Vlad Sr. one as well. This might complete the Mt. Rushmore
  6. Holy horsefeathers. Is this better than the Jose Guillen throw? I didn't think that was possible.
  7. Lumpuy with a double in the MB 1st inning. It's still SSS enough it could just be a hot streak but this feels like a breakout.
  8. Oh nice, that's very encouraging
  9. Alcantara is still out of the Iowa lineup....not great
  10. I'm wondering if we should read anything into Flexen getting warm in the 8th when it looked like the team was gonna play screw the closer. Even if Sunday's a bullpen game you'd expect 2-3 innings of Flexen, and thus wouldn't want to use him today. Is Brown coming back up or something?
  11. Man Hartshorn must be getting paaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiidddddddd
  12. I really liked Turnbull over the winter. He's a great guy to sign and stash at Iowa. I think you can hope that better health gets his fastball back to the 92-93 range and with it bring back some effectiveness. It's also good to make a signing like this now because they're likely going to lose Flexen entirely in a few weeks when he presumably gets bumped off the MLB roster for a trade acquisition.
  13. A Sunday starter hasn't been announced yet but I'd presume Flexen
  14. Wind blowing in today, though not heavily. Giolito's better than Rea (though at this point not by a ton) but this is still a game the Cubs should probably take.
  15. Something to keep in mind with the A's broadly is their new park this year has been the second most hitter friendly in the league after Coors. And park factors at places like Fangraphs aren't perfect at accounting for that (they use 3 or 5 year averages typically). Severino certainly hasn't been *good* by any stretch of the imagination, but I think in that ballpark average is probably an ERA north of 4.50. He's probably been roughly Colin Rea quality when you account for park and defense. That said, unlike someone like Gallen or Alcantara who I really liked coming into the year, I wasn't high on Severino to start with. So even if getting him out of Sacramende turns him back to normal, I don't love his normal. And what I wrote above about park factors needs to color how you look at Urias. Ultimately while I'd do this trade in a vacuum, I suspect there are other overlapping deals I'd rather pull the trigger on, like a Keller/Bednar deal.
  16. It's close but I'd probably take Alcantara too. You're starting with an advantage of something like 15-20 runs due to defense/baserunning, which is huge. And until about three weeks ago Caissie's never shown that elite offensive production which would make you think he's likely to overcome that gap. I think Alcantara has a much higher chance of busting than Caissie, but because he has more ways of impacting a game I think Alcantara's probably going to end up a better player.
  17. If you look at the last round of prospect voting, the most common #10 prospect was Cole Mathis. For those keeping score at home, that's last year's second round pick who has played less than 30 games since being drafted around injuries (and not been crazy impressive games on the field).
  18. You probably need glasses then
  19. For anyone who's not a Prospect Sicko, a less inscrutable way of thinking about those rankings is this 40 FV - A guy who would make a typical team's Top 30 list 45 FV - A guy who would make a typical team's Top 10 list 45+ FV - A guy who is a borderline league Top 100 type. These are usually guys with clear Top 100 talent but extra risk. So a lengthy injury history or a teenager in the Complex Leagues 50 FV - A guy who would make a league-wide Top 100 Prospects list in a typical year 55 FV - A guy who would be in the top 30-40 prospects league wide in a typical year 60 FV (or higher) - Elite prospects, usually Top 15 or so. If you see a 70 or higher they're usually generational talents So Lance's video is great, but where it falls apart a bit is that a lot of the prospect grades aren't realistic. Long's an easy 45 at this point. Pretty much everyone on Earth except Keith Law would have Caissie as a 50, etc. Rojas is especially egregious because Eric Longenhagen himself moved Rojas up this spring.
  20. Love Lance. It's extremely on brand for him though to juice every pitcher and fade every hitter
  21. Realistically there's not a rental around this year that would cost Caissie, and it's not even close. It would take a really extreme example for a hitter to cost that much, someone like Tucker coming available. SPs cost a premium at the deadline so it wouldn't take as extreme of an example, but I still don't see it among current options. Dylan Cease, Michael King, and Framber Valdez are the guys who might warrant it on talent, but their teams aren't selling. When we traded for Jeimer Candelario at the deadline two years ago he was the best rental bat moved, and he cost the Cubs' 14th and 16th best prospects. The equivalent today would probably be something like Will Sanders and Pedro Ramirez. Christian Franklin and Ryan Gallagher would be another comparable package. Caissie seems very likely to get moved, but it's almost surely going to be for someone under control through at least next year.
  22. If there's an opportunity to add one more year to Boyd's contract in exchange for an AAV bump I'd do it. Say replace his 1/$17M with a 2/$40M? I wouldn't want to go out any further though. The biggest storyline for the Cubs this winter is Tucker, obviously. The second biggest story IMO is whether the team can do anything to try and mitigate the post 2026 roster cliff. Extending Boyd would help with that, while obviously being player friendly to boot.
  23. The Dodgers won the World Series last year with Yoshi Yamamoto and a bunch of scraps. The Rangers won the year before with Nate Eovaldi as their best SP. The Braves in '21 had a formidable 1-2 of Fried/Morton, but neither guy was lights out in the playoffs (Ian Anderson was their best postseason pitcher lol). Having the best SP is good obviously, but doesn't necessarily get you the title, if it did the Phillies would be looking to threepeat right now. And then beyond that, if the Cubs add another good starter, their playoff rotation will match up with pretty much anyone except the Phillies and Tigers (or Dodgers if they get miraculously healthy).
  24. Looks like this year the 3 lowest whiff rates on fastballs in MLB are Luis Arraez (3.6%), Nico Hoerner (5%), and Steven Kwan (6.4%). So 4% does seem like a tough but not impossible bar to clear. Which is encouraging because if the best MLBer were at like 12% it would be so out of whack as to seem like a useless data point. I don't know what data looks like for amateurs, but looks like the MLB average is 19.5%, AAA average is 21.6%, and Florida State League (the only A ball league with public Statcast) is 23%. So a teenager being that locked in on fastballs seems especially encouraging.
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