Bertz

He doesn't have to be a star he just has to get lefties out. Seems reasonably likely to still be able to do that.

I'm really curious how/if the team is going to fold in Ballesteros this season beyond IL time. He can play C/1B/DH, and via moving Suzuki out from DH can help cover any OF spot. However, the Cubs are top 10 in the league at all of those spots except LF, where even with a slow start from Happ we rank 11th. Moises doesn't have major L/R splits, so maybe he steals some of Justin Turner's playing time? That said IMO it's quite rare for a lefty hitter to succeed against lefty pitching early in his MLB career. It would be ballsy to e.g. use a 21 year old to provide platoon support to guys like Happ or Busch. There will inevitably be an injury or three, and of course Moises has defensive work to do. But it's kind of crazy to have a guy this clearly ready and just nowhere to put him. First world problem to be sure.

Fun fact, aside from Nate Pearson and Eli Morgan, the Cubs bullpen has a 3.84 ERA and a positive WPA. Now that's not to say those two's performance doesn't count or anything like that, but I think the degree to which we should still be worried about the bullpen is overstated. - Pressly is clearly over his early season command issues. And to his credit even while he was fighting through those did a great job of bending but not breaking - Hodge, Friday's nightmare inning aside, is awesome - Merryweather looks most of the way back to 2023 form. Lost a little velo and in the process has traded some strikeouts for groundballs, but he looks very good again - Brad Keller looks awesome, full stop - Palencia and Roberts look like they are finally over the hump. Both are pitching well and most notably have not wilted in high leverage action like they did at various points in '23-'24 - Thielbar unfortunately I'm thinking might be cooked. He's gotten some sequencing luck, but under the hood things are very ugly. The only bright side is it is still just April Now obviously there's been some poor performance and that's already banked. But I don't see a lot of reason to still be worried about the group. Frankly with the way Keller and Merryweather have looked I feel better about the group now than I did in February.

Looks like it's supposed to end around 4. So they should be able to get this in just several hours late

I'm not especially convinced the Giants are anything more than a .500 team having a good month. The schedule certainly doesn't get easy until mid May, but I consider the Phillies series next weekend to close out the truly intimidating stretch.

Cubs are 2 games up and we're getting to the point where you can see light at the end of the tunnel with the schedule

Ben Brown's opponents and how they rank in runs/game this year 10th 12th 8th 10th 2nd Obviously want him to cut down on the walks but generally still pretty happy with him all things considered.

I didn't think Riley Martin had bad stuff but shocked to see him here

No 2nd Tommy John is fantastic news

The Dbacks reshuffle their bullpen, sending several of their lesser guys to AAA or the IL. AJ Puk also hit the IL though. Justin Martinez and Jalen Beeks aside their bullpen's now fairly rested, but it's also a lot more uncertain than the group they opened the season with.

The Cubs started *really* babying pitchers coming out of the COVID year and this feels like a needed correction. Like even Jordan Wicks, a healthy low velo starter, wouldn't see the 5th inning of games in April. Baseball the last decade has been pulling back on both how much a guy is allowed to pitch and how often. My guess is that the latter is far more consequential than the former. If you look at College and Japanese baseball starters pitch once a week and still run up low triple digital pitch counts routinely. Obviously neither is immune to injury problems but it's not exactly a bloodbath compared to MLB. Relatedly, Jed did hire that Japanese company to consult on pitcher health this winter. So this might be Zombro led but it might also be an infusion of some Japanese practices.

His swing looks like a carbon copy of someone else's and it's killing me that I can't place it.

Dbacks bullpen is pretty shredded heading into this weekend: - Aj Puk, Justin Martinez, and Jalen Beeks each threw the past two days. So they're likely down today, and probably can only go once this weekend - Shelby Miller threw both Tuesday and Wednesday, so if you're AZ he's available but you'd like to stay away from him today, and probably only use him once this weekend - Ryan Thompson threw 33 pitches yesterday, so his availability is similar to Miller where he's usable but you'd like to stay away from him. Ditto on ideally limiting him to once this weekend

I'll do a deeper dive tomorrow so I can include today's game but eyeballing his FG page he's currently above average in every peripheral you can think of except chase rate and pull rate, and both those are only slightly worse than average. And always worth remembering that if he was a college kid he'd be in this year's draft. So decent chance he gets a taste of MLB before his peers get a single pro at bat.

God I hate to even at a top line agree with Tom but except for the handful of clinker like the Rockies I do think the differences between FOs at this point are minimal. Like I'm not sure there are more than 2-3 teams where I'm jealous of their front office. That's not saying that the Cubs are 3rd or 4th, it's saying the difference between 3rd and like 11th is pretty small. There's a spectrum of conservative vs. aggressive, which is heavily influenced but not totally determined by resources (and expectations of future resources). There's also some actual daylight between teams in terms of scouting and player dev, which also has some I would say medium influence from resources. Hoyer is *clearly* one the most conservative team leads in the league, but also this team is IMO clearly in the top third of the league on a scouting/dev standpoint. So on the one hand this team is sitting pretty right now. The team is good, there's a bunch of young talent performing right now, and a bunch more close to being ready. If you were drafting teams based on how many wins you expect they'll pile up the next three years, I don't think you'd need two hands to count teams you would take ahead of the Cubs. All that sounds pretty great! On the flip side, each of the past few offseasons have felt one move short. In particular in '23 leaving those wins on the table clearly cost the team a playoff spot. Maybe it ends up being worth it, but there's currently a hole to dig out of.

100%

Yeah this version of Horton feels pretty close to major league ready. He's got to cut the walks, though like we talked about in the game thread yesterday he hasn't been nearly as wild as 10 walks in 12 innings would say to you. I think if we were the Marlins, I'd expect him up before May, and be shocked if he wasn't up before Memorial Day. But given the Cubs' competitive aspirations combined with his IP cap likely being something in the 100-120 range, it's harder to say what the plan here will be. I wouldn't be surprised by minimal MLB time in the first half, maybe a few spot starts, followed by a more permanent callup coinciding with a move to the bullpen around midseason. But regardless of the specifics I anticipate inning management, both Horton's and Brown's, to have a major impact on Cade's MLB time this year.

Looks like Cade threw 54% of his pitches in the zones, which is pretty good. He only got 5 whiffs though, which is kind of bad. So yeah 3 walks overstates the wildness but it sort of evens out because he probably shouldn't have had 6 Ks either.

Moises dong! OPS up to .934

Yeah no horsefeathers

It's pretty wild that they're still this bad. Like if Paul Skenes isn't pitching on a given day they're not any better than the White Sox/Rockies/Marlins. And their farm is good but not great.

Bullpen's gonna be dicey today. Everyone but Little and Palencia would be working their 3rd game in 4 days. Merryweather and Thielbar are likely fully down as it'd be 4 of 5.

What a phenomenal game from the bullpen. Merryweather's very much back in the circle of trust for me.