Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images I'm a ruminator, and one of my unfortunate habits is the rewatch. When I find a great piece of media, I prefer to marinate in it—to revisit and reexamine it—than to venture forth and try to find the next thing with something to say. Eventually, I do find new things, but I spend a lot of time going back to things I've seen and read and heard before, whether it be by actually consuming them again or by considering them in the context of some other experience or product. In season 4 of The Wire, the show's most unabashed villain takes the stage. Marlo Stanfield isn't soulless; that's just a front he uses to project and accumulate power. But the process of proving himself hard, cold and ruthless has transformed him in ways he can't perceive. Marlo is a fool. He believes he's building a kingdom—making himself ruler of all he surveys. In reality, he's renting that world, the same way a drunk rents a bottle of whiskey. Just like the drunk is destroyed by that which he clamors to obtain and arrogantly believes he controls, Marlo is hollowed out by his consumption of power. But just like the drunk, he's dangerous and destructive to others, too, for every second he breathes and refuses to reform. One episode opens with Marlo at a convenience store, where he buys a bottle of water—and, at the same time, brazenly steals something from the counter while the cashier is distracted by the transaction, in full view of the security guard near the door. It's a cheap display of immaturity and greed—the kind of thing a fool mistakes for power. It's an assertion of power over the guard, which is made plain to us when the guard follows Marlo outside. He confronts Stanfield, telling him he understands the power imbalance at play but challenging the budding kingpin to show more respect for his community and for working people. "You want it to be one way," says the dead-eyed Marlo. He repeats it several times, flustering and (eventually) spooking the guard. Finally, he lets the other shoe drop, just before walking away. "But it's the other way." In the scene itself, that means what it appears to mean. The guard, by putting on that uniform each day and trying to enforce a bare-minimum kind of order and justice at the store, is offering a mission statement for life. He wants a world where the rules apply to everyone; he wants even the drug lords of the projects to see a few lines they won't cross unless it's absolutely necessary. Marlo's reply is, essentially: no. The scene is also a metamessage to the audience of the show, which sometimes lamented the extremes to which creator David Simon pushed the characters and the awful fates met by just about anyone who tried to make a positive difference. By that point in the show's life, Simon had heard those criticisms; they did not deter him. In fact, he himself characterized the show as "angry" more than once. His background was in journalism. He wanted to press reality (as he saw and understood it) up against the TV screen and make the world reckon with it. To the viewers, this scene said, "You want a world where morality matters. You want to believe that the powerful harbor a secret wish to consort with the powerless, and conform to their hopeful view of the world. You, who watch this from (in many cases, if not most) seats of privilege and comfort and whiteness, want to believe you've helped create and now occupy a governable, essentially fair world. You don't." All of this ran through my head in the top of the seventh inning Friday night. In a 1-1 game, Ian Happ swung at an 0-2 pitch diving toward his back foot, and he hit a nothing ball—a tapper toward first base. The Pirates' Ryan O'Hearn came to collect the ball and flipped casually to Wilber Dotel for the out—or was it one? Happ, to the surprise of the Pirates, had absolutely busted it out of the box and all the way up the first-base line. The play was shockingly close. In fact, the Cubs asked for a replay review. And in fact, Happ had been safe. He beat out an infield single, on a ball that had no business being one. It took the failures of two Pirates defenders to turn that sure out into a hit, but by hustling unreservedly at the end of what should have been a third straight empty, frustrating plate appearance, Happ created a chance for a game-winning rally. On a 2-2 count, Nico Hoerner then hit a flare to center field. Happ got a perfect read, knowing not only that the ball would fall in but that it would die (it was off the end of Hoerner's bat) and take time for center fielder Jake Mangum to field and fire in. He made it to third base on the play, putting him in position to score the go-ahead run. The combined exit velocities of Happ's and Hoerner's hits (121.8 MPH) was lower than those of two individual batted balls in the career of Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz, who has twice hit it harder than 122 MPH. But because of Happ's hustle and his smarts, he had a great chance to tick the telling tally in a crucial game. He didn't, though. Pedro Ramírez struck out looking, and Carson Kelly grounded into a fielder's choice. The rally died. You want it to be one way, in baseball and in life. You want effort and preparation and instinct and solemn, high purpose to be rewarded. But it's the other way. Baseball, like the world, is not a democracy or even a meritocracy but an oligarchy. Talent tells. Hustlers and scrappers can hustle for scraps once the big dogs eat. Of course, the Cubs were the big dogs in this fight, really. They pushed the game all the way to a 10th inning, and then they won it. Happ made a dazzling defensive play, because although he's not a superstar, he's immensely talented in his own right. In the bottom of that same seventh inning, the Pirates took their turn putting runners on the corners with one out, and they managed to hit the fly ball the Cubs needed from Ramírez. It was a medium-depth fly to left field, shallow enough to give Happ a chance to throw out the runner in terms of sheer distance, but it wasn't hit as lazily as one might have liked. Happ had less time to get behind it and start his movement toward home plate than he'd have liked; he had to generate all the power for a strong throw in a short span and (because a crow hop was a luxury he could ill afford) a small space. Doing that is difficult, and being accurate while doing it is almost impossible. Happ doesn't have an elite outfield arm in terms of sheer arm strength. But in this way, he's elite. He got off the throw, and fast. It was strong, and it was true, and the play wasn't even terribly close. Happ was the Manfred Man in the top of the 10th inning, too. He came around to score the go-ahead run on a hard single to center by Dansby Swanson, and though his nimbly-adjusted slide to the inside of home plate first left him coming in too fast and his front foot bouncing over the plate, his tucked leg still reached its destination before the tag from an awkwardly lunging Henry Davis. It was another great bit of baseball from Happ, and although the play was breathtakingly close to heartbreaking, it turned out all right. That's not meant to imply that Happ's refusal to jog it out in the seventh or his perspicacity on the bases in that inning somehow earned him a smile from karma in the 10th. The Cubs won the game because of Happ's talent in left field, and because they've patched together an adequate string of pitching performances lately in front of an elite defense, and because Pete Crow-Armstrong is an incandescent superstar. Crow-Armstrong homered in the sixth to give the Cubs their only run in regulation, and when pitcher Yohan Ramírez fell behind 2-0 on him in the 10th, the Pirates intentionally walked Crow-Armstrong to load the bases with two outs. First base wasn't even open; they already trailed; and Ramírez has poor control. Seiya Suzuki exploited the moment by waiting out Ramírez and accepting an RBI walk, pushing across the insurance run that would prove to be the margin of victory. Crow-Armstrong's maturation into a patient hitter who won't get himself out earned him that free pass. In the past, the Pirates could and would have kept pitching to him in that spot, expecting him to expand his zone. He's a truly great player right now. Suzuki is a fearsome and disciplined hitter, too. There is another reading of Marlo's encounter with that security guard that's worth pondering, though. Maybe it's one only watching the series from a place of privilege and comfort would ever produce, but here goes: Marlo is, in a sense, wrong. The guard is, in a sense, right. Don't get me wrong: the world is as ruthless and as avaricious as Marlo Stanfield is. But real goodness is also unkillable. Marlo has that guard killed, and Simon would probably prefer that we take a sobering, dour lesson from that: the powerful will respond to your demands for dignity only by pulverizing you. Certainly, whether a person lives or dies is the ultimate equivalent to pointing toward the outfield and saying, "Scoreboard." What matters most, to most people, is who lives and who dies. What matters most, to most baseball fans, is which team wins each game. Why did Stanfield really have that guy killed, though? To make an example of him, sure, a little. To announce his dominance over everything and everyone. But deeper, down on a level Marlo couldn't even reach or understand, he did it because the guard had revealed the truth to him. Whether we try does matter, and so does whether we persist when our first attempts fail. Morality does matter. The world will not reward your good thoughts, words or deeds, in an extrinsic way; the world will come closer to punishing you for them. But it's your duty to think good thoughts, say good words, and do good deeds, anyway. Sometimes, you'll have enough power and enough opportunity and enough luck to be celebrated for that goodness. Sometimes, you won't. But life isn't counted out in dollars or in influence. Those are outputs. The real measure of our time is our inputs. Happ struck out both times he saw Jared Jones Friday night. In his third at-bat, against Dotel, he swung at a bad pitch, took a good pitch, then swung at another bad one. He happened to just touch that third offering, though, and when the least window opened for him to turn a bad day for the better, he seized on it like he understands the difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. He was fully present. To him, the right things mattered, and doing things right was his way of expressing what mattered. As most Cubs fans know, Happ is from Pittsburgh. Many forget (or never knew) that, 11 years ago, he lost his father to brain cancer, just a few months after he was drafted by the Cubs. The emotions tying him to Pittsburgh aren't simple; they must be equal parts joyous and painful. When he takes the field in his hometown, his surface-level stoicism burns off a bit, and you can see the same attention to detail and insistence on consistency that was handed down to him by Keith Happ, an agronomist for the United States Golf Association. He was a .306/.387/.528 career hitter at PNC Park before Friday. On a night when his bat wasn't doing the job, he found no fewer than three other ways to will the Cubs to a win. Not all of those efforts directly contributed to the win, in a tangible way, but that's not the same as saying they didn't all matter. They did. You can't win 'em all. Nor can you run 'em all out. Nobody is on their game and on fire with intelligent intensity all the time. Games played the way Happ played Friday night deserve special recognition, though. It's easy to give that recognition, because he ended up making a big and obvious contribution to an important victory. Even if the Cubs had lost, though, that seventh-inning sequence would have been valuable. Not all rewards are extrinsic. You can win every day, if not every game—one way, or the other. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins have reached out to front offices of several teams tipping toward selling in the days since the resumption of the season after the All-Star break, sources with knowledge of the talks indicated this week. They're looking for help in the bullpen, but the team's top priority is to shore up its starting rotation. More depth there would allow them to backfill the relief corps by demoting Colin Rea and cushion them against the risk of further injuries to the incumbent options. However, the team hasn't talked (yet, at least) about what it would cost to acquire Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers, said one league source. Instead, their preferred targets appear to be hurlers who offer either team control beyond this season or an opportunity to swing a deal without surrendering their top prospects. The Miami Marlins are on a nine-game losing streak, and their apparent status as buyers is now very much in jeopardy. The Cubs could feel a bit sour about the disappointing early returns on the Edward Cabrera deal or the previous winter's scuppered Jesús Luzardo trade, but the team has sounded the Marlins out on their willingness to move Sandy Alcantara. Though no longer a Cy Young-caliber power arm, Alcantara is as reliable a workhorse as any starter in the league, and if Miami continues its spiral, they could be open to moving Alcantara to save the substantial money left on his contract. One reason for the Cubs' interest is that Alcantara's unimpressive numbers and high salary put a cap on what the Marlins can demand from him. The same goes, in one form or another, for Clay Holmes of the Mets, who made a rehab start Thursday with Triple-A Syracuse as he works his way back from a broken leg; Seth Lugo of the Royals, who's owed $21.5 million next season and has ceased to miss bats the way he needs to; and Michael King of the Padres, who (like Holmes) can become a free agent at the end of this year but (unlike Holmes) is still due over $8 million for the balance of the year. Alcantara, Holmes, Lugo and King are each high-volume starters who lack front-line upside. Each could end up being with the team beyond the end of this season, but none are guaranteed to be. They're the arms the Cubs might land on, but it feels like early contact with the teams in question is as much about establishing a good fallback plan as about prioritizing any of them. Not so for Joe Ryan, about whom the Cubs contacted the Twins recently, according to a source informed of the discussion. Right now, the Twins aren't selling, and they'd have to be blown away to move Ryan, who just went to his second All-Star Game and is under team control for 2027. Ryan is an obvious fit for the Cubs, though, in that he manipulates the ball masterfully; doesn't throw especially hard; and racks up strikeouts despite that dearth of raw power. Ryan would be a great pickup, but it's not clear how the Cubs would match up with Minnesota on a deal. Matt Shaw could be a fit for the Twins, for whom Shaw would instantly become the best defensive second baseman on the team and where he would have multiple paths to regular playing time. The Cubs' farm system is weak and top-heavy, though, so piecing together the right package around Shaw might be tough. To be sure, Minnesota is in a position where they'll balk at any move that doesn't make them better right away in 2027, so even if Chicago were willing to part with Jefferson Rojas or Josiah Hartshorn in a Ryan trade, it wouldn't get them over the hump. The Angels and Mets are more obvious sellers, and the Cubs have been in touch about multiple players on each club's pitching staff. As they did last summer, the team has checked in on Jose Soriano, but even under interim baseball operations head John Mozeliak, the Halos are setting a higher price on Soriano than on Reid Detmers, league sources say. That works out fine for the Cubs, who prefer Detmers to Soriano since the lefty's reemergence this spring. A report Thursday at The Athletic seemed to suggest that the Angels might accept catcher Owen Ayers as a centerpiece in a deal for either hurler. I asked around about that; it's a mischaracterization. Ayers is a prospect with rising stock, but not one with much ceiling, and the Angels' interest in him would be as a co-headliner, at most. If the Cubs deal for Soriano or Detmers, it's more likely to be the latter—and it's likely to hurt. Rojas is one player the Angels have liked when scouting the Cubs system in the recent past; the newly promoted James Triantos is another. However, it's not clear to anyone I talked to how much Mozeliak will try to put his own stamp on the team via the moves he makes at this deadline, as opposed to trusting the scouts and staffers who were there under previous GM Perry Minasian. The final starter I can confirm the Cubs have checked on is Freddy Peralta, a teammate of Holmes and (formerly) of David Peterson, whom the team already acquired from New York this summer. Peralta, of course, also has major familiarity with Craig Counsell. He's the most obvious happy medium among the choices the team has actively explored so far, with rough numbers that have forced Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns to lower his expectations in a deal; impending free agency, further curtailing his acquisition cost; and a low salary for this season, but also with major upside that shows up with even a glance at his Baseball Reference page. A rough order of the impact these eight hurlers would have, if the team landed them, might go: Ryan Soriano King Detmers Peralta Alcantara Holmes Lugo Ordering them from most to least costly to acquire probably looks like this: Ryan Soriano Detmers Alcantara King Peralta Holmes Lugo With a deadline coming, it's always a good idea to cross off the first couple of names on a list like this one. The team is doing due diligence, but it's extremely unlikely they get a deal done if a player is both obviously good and coveted by their current team. The bottom two names on the list, by contrast, are a little too available; you're settling. In between, here, the value plays would seem to be King and Peralta. Alcantara will cost more to pry loose than he's worth. Detmers is a fine little dream to dream, but it's important not to get carried away. Over the next week, the Cubs will talk seriously about another eight or nine starters, putting out feelers to rival clubs and trying to gain leverage or exhaust their options before making a move. They'll also work to reinforce the bullpen, and how high they end up aiming in that pursuit might determine which way they go when it comes to bolstering the rotation. It's possible that they even upgrade both parts of the pitching staff in a single, package-style deal, with multiple players going in each direction. For now, though, King and Peralta stand out as the fits who could survive the friction and frenzy of the deadline and end up with the Cubs most easily. View full article

I'll take you at your word. Make good on that word by not circling back to reignite an argument two weeks later (like on that Boyd piece), and by moderating this stance. They're in no position at all to tear it down again, they will not do so, and that's so unreasonable a position as to be unavoidably trollish, even if that's not your underlying intent. They're going to add at this deadline. Engage with that fact and make your case for protecting their long-term talent pipeline within that context.

[Re: Patrick88: Don't feed the trolls, everyone. They only get stronger that way.]

That's way too pessimistic. I don't like plunging resources into a team with no chance to win its division, but they're still leveraged toward the present, at the expense of the future. They still need to take advantage of a good chance to reach the postseason, both to build momentum for the future and to get decent odds on the dice roll that is a Wild Card playoff entry. Get in, and get in with a respectable chance. Just don't mortgage the future when the upside isn't there for the present. I totally get how that sounds like talking out both sides of my mouth, but hopefully it's clear what I mean. This team, unfortunately, demands a middle-road approach.

On the first score: You gotta remember the format now. The Cubs aren't catching the Brewers. They have to win a best-of-3 just to get to a best-of-5. Skubal can give you a leg up in that first series (though it's not, like, a guarantee; he started the game in which the Tigers were eliminated each of the last two Octobers), but then he can't start twice for you in the second one unless you get that series to a Game 5. I don't think their rotation or their bullpen is strong enough to beat the Dodgers or the Brewers in enough of the non-Skubal innings (including, of course, innings he doesn't pitch even in the games he starts) to get past them. On the second front: man, I just think that's telling yourself a story. It doesn't happen that way. Skubal will go where the money is biggest this winter and there's no way on Earth the Cubs will be the high bidders on a top-5 pitcher in the sport. It's not remotely how they operate. And finally, you have to think about opportunity cost. Rojas is unlikely to play a starring role for this team, but you can get Skubal for him, or you can get a guy like Detmers or Jose Soriano or Mason Miller for him—someone who still incrementally improves your chances for this year but also boosts you for the next two seasons or so. Given where this team is, I think you have to opt for the latter. They're not in a position to go all-in on this season, even though they absolutely have to invest more in this season. If they're going to give up one of the few impact players in their farm system, it has to be for more than a few months.

Image courtesy of © Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images The Cubs have started their second half 3-3, which is nowhere near good enough. That sounds cruel, but life in the NL Central these days is that unforgiving. The Brewers, who were already sailing toward their fifth division title in six years, have gone 5-1 over the same span, pushing Chicago back to 7 games behind in the standings. FanGraphs still gives the Cubs a handsome 80.7% chance to make the playoffs, and they still offer them fair odds to advance a bit in October. But the truth of the matter is that this isn't going to be The Year, or anything like it, for this team. They have too many flaws, and their competition is too strong. They won't win the division, and their chances for a deep run in October are slim. Fans and media personalities have tethered the team to Tarik Skubal in trade rumors throughout the early summer, after the Cubs lost Cade Horton, Edward Cabrera and Ben Brown to injuries. Without those three, the club desperately needs a frontline starter to brace the rotation, and with the Tigers falling out of contention, Skubal does appear to be available. Here's what I wrote about him for our DiamondCentric Top Trade Candidates list: However, here, I'll also add what I've heard from multiple sources in front offices around the league: the price tag on Skubal is high. You need to start with a top-100-caliber prospect or an equivalently gifted major leaguer under long-term team control, and then you need to throw in at least one meaningful secondary piece. For the Cubs, this would mean trading Jefferson Rojas or Josiah Hartshorn, plus a lottery-ticket arm like Kaleb Wing or Dominick Reid. The Tigers are not high on Moisés Ballesteros or Matt Shaw, according to sources familiar with the team's thinking, so making either of those players the headliner in a Skubal deal is a non-starter. In the Cubs' current position, with their current roster and given that Skubal will be a free agent at season's end, it doesn't make sense for the team to pay what it would cost to get him. They don't have enough depth in the farm system to make a trade with that much desperation in it. Instead, here are the names to watch most closely for the team over the next week and a half. Reid Detmers feels more like a Cub than does Skubal, anyway. He doesn't throw as hard, but he's still a lefty, and he comes with two years of team control Skubal doesn't have. That timeline means he could pitch alongside healthy versions of Horton, Cabrera, Brown, Justin Steele and more, if those pitchers ever are truly healthy again, and in the meantime, he would also bolster this team's chances to win a series or two in October. The cost would be as great as the cost of acquiring Skubal, but it would make more sense to pay that price for Detmers. If the team does end up defaulting to a rental starter, they could still get their shopping done in Detroit. They just need to do it on a budget. Casey Mize won't cost anywhere near what Skubal would. He could be had for a package headlined by Kevin Alcántara, whose stock is way down anyway, or by bundling a couple of half-promising lower-level pieces. He's a good mid-tier option to insure the team against outright collapse, which is still a very real threat right now. As well as they've played of late, they're still under .500 since the end of their 20-3 stretch in late April and early May, and the reasons why—some key hitters slumping, and the pitching staff ravaged by attrition—could easily rear up again on them in the final two months of the season. A starter in the Mize range is a need even to keep the team in good shape for a Wild Card berth. He'd be more about averting disaster than about chasing glory, but averting disaster could be this team's slogan, anyway. Finally, let's consider what the bare minimum looks like. As of Thursday morning, I rank Skubal No. 2 on the aforelinked trade candidates list; Detmers No. 5; and Mize No. 15. Eduardo Rodríguez ranks 62nd. His raw stuff is fading; he's smoke and mirrors. He's also expensive this year, and owed a bunch of money next year. He would be a kind of second David Peterson, and Peterson might even have more upside. However, Rodríguez would also cost virtually nothing. That, plus the chance to pencil him in as a fifth or sixth starter on next year's team, makes him appealing in a way the other names discussed here aren't. The Diamondbacks are in no position to ask for a substantial prospect return, although they could get a little bit more by being willing to eat a chunk of the $6.5 million or so that will be left on his deal for 2026 by the deadline. He wouldn't be good enough to materially improve the Cubs' chances of doing anything in the playoffs, but he'd be almost as good a backstop for the rotation as Mize, and he'd come cheaper and with an extra year of control. A Skubal trade would be splashy and sexy. It would also be a mistake. It's fair to say that the Cubs are heavily invested in 2026, financially and in terms of the timelines on their key players. Unimposing though he's been at the plate, Alex Bregman is unlikely to be better in any future year than he is right now, at age 32. Ditto for Dansby Swanson. Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ will depart as free agents this winter, and the Cubs' farm system is thin. Those are reasons to wonder whether they'll be better in any of the next several years than they are right now. On the other hand, they're also reasons not to throw caution to the wind. There's still a chance that the team can be better than this, with sustained commitment to scouting and player development and with a bit better luck in the health department. They need to avoid annihilating that chance by swinging for the fences at this deadline; they're just not a good enough team to warrant taking that risk. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images When the Cubs traded for David Peterson late last month, it was as much out of desperation as out of proactivity. True though it was, Jed Hoyer's asseveration that the team had had interest in Peterson already didn't mean they actually would have pulled the trigger when they did, but for the massive injury trouble that struck their starting rotation just before the trade. With Ben Brown and Edward Cabrera landing on the injured list simultaneously, they needed a warm body and a working arm. They couldn't afford to be especially picky. Count them lucky, then, as well as good, because in Peterson, they found the right stopgap to fit their needs not only in the moment, but for the balance of the season. He's no more than a backend starter, but he's also no less than one, whatever his numbers in a brief and cursed start to the season with the star-laden and star-crossed Mets might have implied. Moreover, his stuff suits the Cubs' predilections gorgeously—and just before they acquired him, he made some changes that made him even more perfect as a prospective Tommy Hottovy pupil. Peterson's four-seam fastball has natural cut, which the Cubs have long loved. However, he also has a good sinker, and he tends to lean on that more heavily when he has a good feel for it. The two pitches work well as a tandem, not because of the way they play off each other, but because the four-seamer's unique shape sets up his fading changeup, while the sinker can prime hitters to misread and mishit his breaking stuff. However, he ran into major alignment problems early in the season with the Mets, which left him unable to locate either hitter well enough to set up much of anything. Since neither offering is thrown especially hard or has lively enough movement to make up for that, their newfound failure to help the other pieces of his repertoire play up became a huge problem. The fix, however, was simple—so much so that even the Mets figured it out. About a week before he was dealt to Chicago, Peterson moved from the center of the rubber to the third-base side. Here are side-by=side looks at him mid-delivery at Wrigley. One shot is from when the Mets visited the Cubs early in the season, and the southpaw was working on behalf of the visitors. The other is from his start against the Tigers Tuesday night, in which he pitched 6 2/3 impressive innings in a breezy Cubs win. Sliding over toward the side to which (relatively speaking, and to the eye of the hitter) the four-seamer already wants to move has made it much easier for Peterson to target the up-and-in quadrant against right-handed batters. That's extremely valuable; God hasn't yet created the hitter who feels comfortable when a pitcher can spot the ball there. Working along the entire top rail of the zone, as Peterson was doing before he came to Chicago, sounds good in theory. In practice, with a fastball that has neither good rising action nor average-or-better velocity, it left him running into barrels too often. Being able to force that pitch to the glove-side half without losing the height on it is a cure for that condition, and moving over on the rubber has been enough to accomplish it. Meanwhile, the sinker—in fact, let's call it a two-seamer; it's much more of a runner than a heavy, dropping pitch—can be thrown with more conviction and action now. Being closer to the glove-side edge of home gives Peterson more real estate with which to work. He can let the two-seamer run a bit more, which makes him harder to square up. That change in starting position happened before he joined the team, but Peterson has also tweaked his approach to suit the shift, and that adjustment has a more distinctly Cubs flavor. In his first several appearances for the team, Peterson threw more sinkers than he did in most of his appearances with the Mets this year. He leaned into the pitch he already had the best command of. However, Tuesday night against a heavily right-handed Tigers lineup, that changed. Peterson went to the four-seamer more, and found even more success. There's nothing more to unlock here. Peterson won't be an ace, no matter how he continues refining his approach under the Cubs' tutelage. He can be a very good mid-rotation arm with this team, but even if so, he'll owe much of the credit to the excellent Cubs defense. Still, what he can be is plenty for this team, which has gotten a bit healthier in the rotation since acquiring him and which figures to add another starter in the next 10 days. Peterson was already a Cubs-coded hurler and made the most important changes needed to get back to his best self before the club even dealt for him. Now, he just needs to execute each time he takes the mound, and keep trusting both his coaches and his on-field support staff, the defense. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images It was hot in Chicago on Sunday, It had been hotter on Saturday, and more oppressive on Friday, when the air was filled with down-drifting smoke, but Sunday was hot. Watch carefully on Sunday mornings at the ballpark, and you can see players allowing themselves tiny breaks. The season is grueling; surviving it means taking micro-vacations, like lingering over a breakfast plate in the team dining area an extra few minutes or attending some church gathering, be it one of the peer-led Bible studies or a miniature Catholic Mass. Two hours before first pitch, though, Justin Dean was already halfway through his demanding daily routine. "First thing, before I even get out here, I try to be one of the first guys through the cage, getting my flips in, my live pitching looks in," Dean said, standing and stretching on the steps leading down from the field toward the tunnel in the Cubs dugout. "That gives me time to do this, too." The "this" of which he speaks is a progression of defensive drills with third-base coach and outfield instructor Quintin Berry. Interestingly, their work together begins with Dean donning a mini-glove—a tool more often associated with infielders. Kneeling a few feet from Dean, Berry throws him a series of short hops, which Dean fields in several different positions. Unlike an infielder, he doesn't start down on his knees himself; this work is different. Instead, he goes through a series of arrangements of his feet, each one looking like he's reaching a ground-ball single at a different moment in his stride. The mini-glove forces him to get and stay even lower than he would in a game. "It’s so important. Getting to the ball quickly and getting rid of it, just stopping that guy from advancing, whatever I can do to be ready for that, I want to do it," he said. "So I try to do this every day. Make every kind of play that I might need to make out there. Be ready for anything." Dean has a preferred foot on which to plant as he swoops down to collect a ball, but he knows the game doesn't always operate on your rhythm, so he and Berry practice picking the ball up directly in front of him and to each side, with each foot forward. Relatively soon, the mini-glove is cast aside, and Dean switches to his custom-colored outfielder's mitt. Berry goes to work, then, with his fungo bat, and the drills are repeated, but with slightly greater distance between coach and pupil and slightly more pace on the balls being fielded. After going (again) through that exhaustive set of body positions and arrangements of Dean's feet, the two move farther and farther apart, until Berry is camped on the foul line about 40 feet beyond third base and Dean is out in shallow center. Now the balls are hit a greater distance from him, and the same ballet takes place with broader sweeps. Dean runs anywhere from three to 10 steps after each ball, fielding them exactly the way he did in the previous drills. He's locking in the same reliable set of movements, while making sure that the variety of those movements is great enough to prepare him for game action. "You want to be ready for anything. Not every ball you get out there is gonna be the same," Dean said of one move repeated at each level of the progression, wherein he backhands the ball like an infielder. (Nine times in 10, outfielders, will find a way to get around balls hit to their throwing-arm side and field it with their glove in a forehand position, surrounding the ball, but that's not always possible or preferable.) "I try to move some ways here that I might not do very often in a game, but then if I need to, I’m ready." That's Dean's credo, and the motto of any good fifth outfielder. "Be ready." It's much easier said than done, but that's why Dean works up a real sweat long before gametime—and does it every day. In all that time with Berry, he didn't make even one effortful throw; he returned the ball softly to his bare-handed coach on bounces or rolls. He'll play catch with a teammate closer to game time; this is just bonus work. "It can make a big difference; you never know what will," Dean said. "And so my main thing has been to have a routine. One, it wakes the body up, just get moving and get out there. Especially when you know that your playing time isn’t going to be that consistent, you want to be ready. You want to make that play when you’re called upon; it can be the difference." Dean said that, although he's always tried to get in extra work on occasion, he learned just how important a routine and a daily plan for improvement and preparedness were when he got a taste of life in the big leagues with the Dodgers last year. Then-teammate Mookie Betts talked him through it; Dean called Betts "my guy" and said the two still connect when needed. A 17th-round pick in 2018, Dean is a late bloomer. He's already, technically, a World Series champion, having been with the 2025 Dodgers, and he appeared in 13 games for Los Angeles in October last year. He didn't come to bat even once in those contests, though, and in what adds up to about four months of time on big-league rosters, he has only 42 games played and a hilariously low 10 career plate appearances. That's playing time being inconsistent, alright. It's a testament to Dean's dedication and his popularity in a clubhouse that both the Dodgers and the Cubs have been willing to carry him for so long while using him so little. He stays ready, even if it's only for a few innings' defensive work in blowouts. He knows that, one way or another, there's always a chance that he's called upon to play defense in a much higher-pressure, higher-leverage situation. He also keeps himself sharp as a hitter, leaning on the game's improved technological infrastructure. Dean said he got some reps in on the Trajekt machine while with the Dodgers last summer and fall, but has developed even more of a routine with it since coming to the Cubs. Unlike Los Angeles, Chicago has a machine at their Triple-A affiliate, as well as one at Wrigley Field; Dean built a pregame plan for utilizing that tool, too. "It can definitely help, just visually," Dean said of the machine, which uses video and data inputs to mimic the real experience of facing hurlers in a cage setting. "It doesn’t have to be about facing a specific pitcher or anything, but to feel like you’re getting more real reps that way." On the rare occasions when he's gotten to swing for the Cubs, that work, too, has paid off; he has his first two career hits this year. His role is a paltry thing, on a team loaded with outfield talent and three guys who (each for slightly different reasons) hate to come out of the lineup for any reason. Dean doesn't mind, and said that Craig Counsell doesn't need to coddle him by communicating constantly about what to expect. "I think it goes without saying, in a way," Dean said. "That’s what the job is. I can’t predict when the chance is going to come, but the work gets me ready to, when they need me, I want to make whatever play we need that day." Most days, the Cubs don't need any play from Dean. That hasn't diminished his passion for the preparation. Listening to and watching Betts, going along for the ride with that championship team as a 28-year-old rookie, and working under managers Dave Roberts and Counsell, Dean has soaked up a lot of experience in his short time in the majors, after spending the better part of a decade riding buses in the minors. He's making the most of his chance to stay in the bigs now, even if 'the most' of a role like this still isn't much. The metaphor of those reps where he's stationary and has to field the ball cleanly with each foot in each possible position is an apt one. The game can't wrong-foot you if you have no wrong foot. That's why Dean puts in the work, and the respect his teammates have for him is because he puts in the work. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images As far as hitting coach John Mallee's concerned, Nico Hoerner was never even slumping, really. He just got unlucky for a while. "Look, some years, you hit .300, and other years, you hit .250 or .260, just because of whether it’s finding gloves," Mallee said Sunday. He watched Hoerner square the ball up relentlessly from late April through the end of June but find lots and lots of gloves. From April 24 through July 1, in fact, Hoerner batted an anemic .213/.288/.272, with a .228 BABIP. In that time, he hit 14 doubles, but no home runs, and despite walking more times (24) than he's struck out (17) in 267 plate appearances, he was hurting the Cubs lineup, rather than fueling it. Yet, Mallee was unworried, and Hoerner never got the reset sitdown manager Craig Counsell gave to (in turns) Moisés Ballesteros, Ian Happ, Alex Bregman, Seiya Suzuki and Dansby Swanson. Why not? What prevented panic, about a player who had just signed a lucrative nine-figure deal and was so deeply mired in the muck for so long? "I’ve never been around a more winning player, more dedicated to the work and demanding of himself, other than maybe Mike Trout," Mallee said of Hoerner, unashamed to gush a bit about a favorite pupil. His faith in Hoerner never wavered, because he never saw a breakdown in Hoerner's trademark tenacity. Over the last three weeks, Hoerner has begun to reward the confidence of both his manager and the coaching staff—though only begun to do so. He had two hits Friday and four Saturday, but still entered Sunday's series finale against Minnesota hitting .268/.279/.317 in his last 11 contests. He's not red-hot again, or anything, but something has changed. "You can see him getting more aggressive," Mallee said. "You could see it, the frustration of it, it did affect him a little bit. Now, he’s relaxed, and when he’s getting that pitch, he’s on time, he’s on it." A more aggressive Hoerner will be more prone to strikeouts and less likely to get on via the walk, but swinging more is a sign that he's feeling better about his swing. There's some reason for that, too. Let's talk about the newest creation of the FanGraphs Lab: the squared-up explorer tool. These are the distributions of Hoerner's batted balls in each of the three segments into which we've broken down his season—the scalding start; the long downturn; and the recent rebound—based on launch angle and Squared Up percentage. Each batted ball is plotted based on the percentage of the theoretically possible exit velocity (given the speeds of both the swing and the incoming pitch) realized, and on its launch angle. Rather than show the chaos of each individual point, though, the frequency of batted balls falling into each relevant bucket are represented by those bubbles you see, and the relationship between the two variables being studied is expressed by smoothed curves. Early this season, when he was not only hitting for average at a superb clip but slugged a surprising four homers in the first four weeks, Hoerner hit a good number of balls in the 20-40° launch angle band, nearly all of which were squared up fairly well. That period is the set of bubbles and the curve in blue. Then came the slump, in yellow. Note how he not only lifted true fly balls less often, but met the ones he did hit much less cleanly. He was technically squaring the ball up more consistently, and the balls on which he was doing so tended to be in the 0-20° launch angle band where a lot of hits should be. They weren't showing up, though. "There are two ways to be unlucky, too," Mallee theorizes. "One is, you’re squaring up balls, but they’re just not going where you expect or you want them to. And the other way, sometimes, you hit it and there’s a guy standing there, waiting. And Nico had a little bit of both." In other words, by his coach's reckoning, Hoerner was getting profoundly unlucky, because none of his schtoinkers were landing—the kind of good luck to which a great contact hitter should occasionally be entitles—and all of his line drives were dying a hair short or not quite splitting the gap. We can visualize that, too, in a slightly different way. Here's the heat map showing where Hoerner hit the ball most often during his great start to the season. This looks relatively unimpressive, compared to a similar chart for a star slugger like Pete Crow-Armstrong, but this is what it looks like when Hoerner is going well. He hits a lot of hard ground balls and low line drives to left field; he hits a good number of line drives to right field. He doesn't hit the ball to center field very much. Here's the slumping Hoerner's spray heat map. People talk about hitting the ball "to the big part of the field," like the sheer vastness of center field is a guarantor of hits falling in. Not so, as Hoerner learned the hard way. He tried not to change anything, but acknowledged that it was hard—and that he needed to remain open tto change, lest he "get stubborn" and miss his chances to escape the slump. "I think the challenge is, no matter what the results, I want to help the team, and so sticking to my routine was important," Hoerner said Sunday morning, before collecting two more hits as the Cubs routed the Twins. "Trusting the coaches and trusting myself. It can be frustrating, but that’s our game; there’s a lot of randomness in this game. My approach stayed pretty similar. You want to make enough changes to get out of it, but you don’t want to change too much and lose what makes you good." Finally, recently, that diligent work and that intensity have paid off. Here's Hoerner's heat map for the last three weeks, showing that even if his process stayed mostly the same, he began to find ways to direct the ball that eluded him for a long, long time. Ironically, one of his hits Sunday—initially ruled a bases-clearing triple, though it should and could be changed to a single and a two-base error by Twins center fielder Luke Keaschall, who was playing too deep and then got handcuffed by the ball as he tried to play it on the bounce—came on a line drive to dead center. Call it corroboration of Mallee's theory that Hoerner was getting unlucky and was due for a bout of better fortune, even if there was also some deeper level of analysis to be done and some minute adjustment that needed to be made. Broadly, at least, the manager agrees with both coach and player. "Nico is one of those hitters where sometimes it’s really hard to evaluate, because the ball is just always in play," Counsell said. "You can say Nico’s struggling, but like, in Cincinnati, Nico swung the bat good, just like he did [Saturday], but no results. The ball doesn’t go over the fence that much, and he doesn’t strike out. So the fielder has an opportunity on every play to catch his ball. [Saturday] they didn’t; in Cincinnati, they did. But it’s kind of the same him. "That’s baseball. That’s part of it. But I think what happened [Saturday] was, line drives to the opposite field. That’s always a sign for everybody that he’s [right]." Counsell is right about that, though it's only half the story. Hoerner also needs the line drive to the pull field to be his best self, and he did have one of those Saturday, too. He chalked up another in the fourth inning Sunday, lacing a ball to left field for a clean single. Over the two-plus months in which he was hitting .213, it must have seemed like fielders had opportunities to make a play on everything, but when Hoerner gets going, he hits balls that are as undefendable as if they'd landed five rows deep in the bleachers—just for singles and doubles, rather than homers. Going back to the first visual in which we saw Hoerner's squared-up profile evolve throughout the season, yoyu can see that he's doing that more often right now. He's hitting a lot of balls extremely squarely, and nearly all of them are in the launch-angle range where they have a good chance to be a single and at least some chance to for extra bases. As any good hitter or hitting coach will tell you, the key to producing those perfectly struck balls lies in getting the right pitch. Doing that means not expanding one's zone overmuch, though it also means covering the zone thoroughly—and closing holes in your swing. Hoerner had two hits on high, upper-90s fastballs on Saturday, much to Mallee's delight. "Yeah, got to 98! It was great," Mallee enthused. "Any time you can take something off the scouting report, force them to change that, it always helps. And then when they have to throw that low ball, he can crush those." Hoerner doesn't like to spend much time studying what opposing pitchers are throwing him, but if he can force them to change tack while staying locked in on what he wants to do, that's a win. "It absolutely helps. I haven’t been in the game that long, but it’s always evolving, they’re always trying to find new ways to get you out," Hoerner said. "So anything you can do to disrupt that is great, but I don’t want to go up there overthinking what a given pitcher is trying to do against me. It’s more staying in my strengths and focusing on what I’m looking for." For a long time, that's not how his at-bats were actually unfolding. Now, though, Hoerner seems to be back in his groove. The hitting coach, the manager and the player all downplayed the extent to which his lackluster production was ever a source of concern. It should have been one, at least—but it probably needn't be now. The slump is over, and a new streak is very much underway. View full article