Matthew Trueblood

Well, thanks! Any piece where I feel like I can synthesize my own thoughts on a subject is a win for me. If I get it right, they're also fun reads, because we're all learning together.

Not happening. In my opinion, also SHOULDN'T happen, but definitely ISN'T happening. Obviously your proposal is way more than he would cost, in one sense, though what it would really be (Rojas? Hartshorn?) would hurt. Skubal is an expensive and risky guy headed right to free agency. They're not going after him. And while I wish your last sentence were true, it isn't. They really don't have the farm depth or the recent player dev track record to be emptying the shelves for that kind of player.

Image courtesy of © Jamie Sabau-Imagn Images It wasn't enough to give the Cubs breathing room and win the game Thursday afternoon, but Pete Crow-Armstrong sparked a go-ahead rally in the top of the eighth inning. On a 1-0 pitch, he cracked a double to put himself instantly into scoring position—although in this particular case, "cracked" feels a bit cheeky. This was not, as the kids would say, an especially ethical double. It wasn't even a clean single, by a certain reckoning. When people talk about hitters getting lucky, this is often (rightly or wrongly) what they mean. Here's the thing, though: that wasn't luck. Firstly, give Crow-Armstrong credit. His speed made this a double; it's a single for most hitters. But secondly (and more importantly, for our purposes), this kind of hit is a new and durable part of the evolving offensive skill set Crow-Armstrong has showed off during his searing-hot stretch since May 22. When you start working to get your pitch, the balls you put in play start to cluster more in certain areas of the zone. We know how much better Crow-Armstrong has gotten at that lately, as he's drawn nearly as many walks (28) in the last 43 games as he drew in all of 2025 (29). Here's a heat map showing where the pitches on which he's put the ball in play have been this year, though, split into before and after the off day I've repeatedly cited as the starting point of his breakout. That's step one in making ferocious contact. Step two, of course, is swinging fast enough to deliver the barrel to the ball with massive force; Crow-Armstrong has also gotten much better at that. He made a big jump in bat speed from last season to this spring, but has also swung faster as this season has progressed. Step three in being a dangerous slugger is to find a swing path that allows one to consistently work uphill through the ball and pull it, rather than hitting too many grounders or using the big part of the park too much. Ironically, this is the thing Crow-Armstrong showed a knack for the soonest. All players develop uniquely, but one of the fascinating quirks about Crow-Armstrong is that he's gone through the three steps of blossoming into a great power hitter in the opposite of the most common and logically clear order. Now, though, let's talk about the bonus value a great power hitter can find, if and when they master the three steps above. You have your swing figured out; it's on plane and on time. It's also extremely violent, so even a mishit ball goes somewhere. You've tightened your zone, so that your mishits are just slight errors in the execution of a swing so fierce, rather than wild variants on an inconsistent stroke that sacrifice a lot of bat speed just to touch the ball. Your best moments are still when you click on the ball, the way Crow-Armstrong did for two home runs Wednesday night. But when you don't quite do so, you also get a residual benefit: a bunch of flared singles (and, if you're speedy, doubles). This season, Crow-Armstrong has 11 hits on batted balls with an exit velocity between 63 and 78 miles per hour and a launch angle between 25° and 40°. No other player in the league has more than eight such hits on the year. That's only part of the story, though. Of those 11 hits for Crow-Armstrong, 10 have come since the beginning of June. It's only once he started organizing his zone so well that he tapped this vein of balls that aren't well-hit, but are going to fall in just about every time. They look like this: WnhxQWxfWGw0TUFRPT1fVXdnREFWd0RWUVVBQ1ZCUVVBQUhVbFZTQUZoVEFRY0FWMTBIQ0FzTUExRURDQXRW.mp4 And like this: ek13eVpfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0FRUUFYVklNVkZZQVhGdFhVQUFIVUFRSEFGa0JWUUFBQkFZR0FWRlJBUW9HQ1FJRA==.mp4 And like this: UHY2eXhfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JsTUhCMUVNQXdVQVhnRlRBd0FIQ1FKVEFGa0VBbEVBQWxRSENRQlJCd1ZkVXdSVA==.mp4 His average swing speed on the 11 hits we're talking about (you can find more hits that fit this genre more loosely by changing the constraints, of course, but these 11 capture the skill he's found perfectly) is 75.8 MPH. That ensures that these balls get up in the air and over the infielders. They're also in hittable locations, because Crow-Armstrong has become so much more selective in his aggressiveness; that's why he's hitting lofted wedges instead of pure popups, lazy flies or impotent choppers. And because outfielders must both start in deep positioning to respect his near-elite power and initially read these swings as full and aggressive, they have almost no chance of reading the ball well enough to cover the ground required to make the catch in the time it actually spends in the air. He's htting them off the end of the bat, and off the label. He's getting slightly under them. But these are swings on which Crow-Armstrong is only missing by a little, and because his is such a dangerous swing and such a newly mature approach, the result is a series of balls finding parts of the field that the defense can't fill. Hitting for power is great. Crow-Armstrong brought that element last year, and turned into a star because of it. Now, however, he's much more than a power hitter. With an approach that puts him on base via the walk consistently and this ability to hit for average by finding singles even when he doesn't square the ball up, he's essentially unstoppable. Since May 22, he leads qualified batters in batting average, OBP and slugging—yes, in OPS, but also in each individual segment of the slash line. That's because he's become so complete that he now gets to profit from slugger's singles, as well as racking up extra-base hits and taking his base when pitchers show well-founded fear of him. When you bake in the fact that he's also a plus on the bases and in the field, it gets very, very easy to build an MVP case for him, even in a world he must share with Shohei Ohtani. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jim Cowsert-Imagn Images As so many Cubs seasons do, the 2026 campaign seems to have hit a nadir during a trip to Colorado. The road-tripping North Siders dropped the first two games of a three-game stay at Coors Field in early June, the second of which brought them down to .500, at 34-34. They'd been in a long downward spiral even before getting to Denver, and losing two of three to the worst team in the National League seemed to make things clear. This team was going nowhere. And then, as they'd already done once this year, they got blazing-hot. It hasn't quite matched the 20-3 stretch they enjoyed in April and early May, but since losing that second game to the Rockies, Chicago is 18-6. They've won or split seven of their last eight series, including their series win in Baltimore to start this week. They're back in the catbird seat in the NL Wild Card race, even if catching the Brewers in the NL Central remains a pipe dream. They're buyers. They were almost always going to be buyers, given what they have invested in this season, but this hot streak was enough to seal the deal. Plainly, though, they're not a juggarnaut. Even this run of three wins every four games has felt rough-edged and dangerous. They've gotten thinner in the pitching department even while racking up victories. They also don't have a great, deep farm system from which to make trades, the way (for instance) the Brewers and Dodgers do. The question of whether to improve is now settled, but a tougher one now rises: How should they improve? What are their options, and how can they best choose between them? There's a case to be made for bolstering the team's shaky bullpen, above all else. The relief corps has been decimated by injuries, and by the need to use several players whom they'd hoped to deploy mostly in relief (Colin Rea, Ben Brown, Javier Assad) as starters, instead. It helps that relievers are usually the cheapest thing to acquire each July. However, this team has issues too profound to permit them to focus solely on this year—and their pitching issues run much deeper than a thinness in the pen. For today, let's consider three options they could pursue instead, each of whom are controllable starting pitchers, rather than rentals or one-inning relievers. I'll introduce each using the capsule on our DiamondCentric Top Trade Candidates list, and then get into why each is an interesting fit for Chicago. Ok, the Edward Cabrera thing hasn't worked out as hoped. But the worst thing Jed Hoyer and company could do would be to learn the wrong lesson from that misstep. They haven't done a great job with Cabrera, and now, he's hurt, but it's not an arm injury that has him on the shelf, and there were glimpses of greatness early on from him. Rather than shy away from acquiring another guy with stuff ahead of command, they should try again. Soriano is a name they bandied about with the Angels last summer, and he'd be a perfect fit for the team's stellar infield defense. He's also a bat-missing flamethrower with two more years of team control beyond 2026. He would cost a pretty penny in prospect capital (think Jefferson Rojas), but he has a chance to start Game 1 in a playoff series for you this year, or next, or the one after. That upside is not to be dismissed lightly. Detmers ranks higher on our trade candidates list, because he's been pitching better than Soriano lately. As a lefty with more finesse and less power, he's also a bit more Cubs-y than Soriano is. If the price is the same, I would rather have Soriano, but in reality, the price on Soriano might be substantially higher. In that case, staying in their lane might make more sense for the Cubs, who would get a controllable starter with frontline upside, either way. The layers of complexity on this one might be too much to overcome, but again, here's a player with ample team control, upside and an obvious fit with the Cubs, in terms of pitching philosophy and the need for a plus defense. Intradivisional trades only get harder to make when the centerpiece will be in their new prospective home for multiple seasons, and harder still when one side is having a massively disappointing season that forces them to rethink what they hoped would be their emerging core. The Pirates might not make an amenable trade partner right now, but Mlodzinski could help the Cubs immediately in the bullpen or be stretched out gradually to start for them late in the season. This is the kind of target Hoyer should aim for over the balance of the month. The Cubs shouldn't be all-in on 2026; they're not good enough for that. They have clear and urgent needs, though, and they need to avoid the colossal failure that would be missing the playoffs. Adding a pitcher who can patch the holes that will be left by the departures of Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd (and more, perhaps) this winter while also boosting the team's chances down the stretch is the best possible course. It's just not going to be easy. View full article

I'm not currently of a mind or mood to defend the OP, but I don't think he even meant to cast that deal in a positive light. I don't think ANYONE believes that was a good deal in any regard. But thank you for linking to the correct lore; that moment in Chicago sports history really has faded a bit and I think it's worth remembering.

Good question! (And thanks!) Notable Cubs in Swing Disruption+: Boyd 123 Maton 117 Webb 116 Brown 104 (I'd have to check, but I suspect this is way up compared to last year) Cabrera 96 Rea 92 Assad 78 (yikes; I still haven't found any analytical support at all for how much I like and believe in him. He might really just be doing devil magic to avoid getting shelled every time)

I think you're three weeks late on that thinking, man. I agree that they're never going to catch the Brewers, but the combination of where they now stand in the Wild Card race and what they have invested in this season means there's just no chance they're trading away anyone they can't replace or improve upon on the fly. Selling is out the window for this team; they would only ever have considered it in an unmitigated crisis, of which they came to the brink but which they've now avoided.

Image courtesy of © Jamie Sabau-Imagn Images The Cubs hoped Matthew Boyd would be their third starter most of the time this year. They entered the campaign with Cade Horton penciled in as the ace, and hopes were high for the electric arm of Edward Cabrera. Ideally, Justin Steele would have returned around this time, slotting back into his old place near the front of the rotation. Ben Brown emerged as a top-tier starter this spring. As good as Boyd was in 2025, the plan was to have him surrounded by hurlers of similar or higher caliber. Plainly, that's not how things have turned out. Horton had Tommy John surgery. Steele had a setback (or two), and is unlikely to pitch in the majors this season. Cabrera sproinged two leg muscles on one stretch at the first-base bag and could be out until September. Brown suffered a recurrence of a previous neck issue, and he, too, might return only near the end of the season. At this point, Boyd is the unquestioned leader of this group, and barring a major acquisition before August 3, he'll be that guy for a while. That makes his outing Tuesday night in Baltimore especially important. Boyd fanned seven and allowed just five baserunners in six shutout innings, as the Cubs won 5-2 to keep pace in the NL playoff race. It was, by far, the best outing of Boyd's oft-interrupted, uneven season. It was also a reminder that he's capable of turning in starts like this on a regular basis. On Monday at Baseball Prospectus, I introduced a metric that uses Statcast's new swing timing and miss distance data to rate pitchers on their ability to disrupt swings. The stat is called Swing Disruption+ (I'm not good at branding), and it contains three components. Off Barrel+: How well a pitcher stays off the center of hitters' barrels, limiting damage on contact Upset Timing+: How well the hurler induces hitters to swing either too early or too late. Changed Eye Levels+: How well the pitcher uses vertical movement and deception to get above or below bats, maximizing swing-and-miss. These correlate, of course, to Statcast's data itself, which breaks down swings into being centered, off the end of the bat or up the handle; being on time, early or late; and being lined up, over or under the ball. By weighing each of the components appropriately and making a few adjustments that reflect the asymmetrical value of inducing errors in the two potential directions in each dimension, I turned them into Swing Disruption+, which correlates as well with overall performance as you could hope, given that it only measures the skill of manipulating swings and leaves out the question of the strike zone. Of the 368 pitchers who had 200 or more swings against them entering Sunday's games, Boyd ranked 10th in Swing DIsruption+, at 123, where 100 is average and higher is better. He's elite at upsetting timing (148), and above-average at both moving off the center of the barrel (116) and getting above or below bats (109). He doesn't do it in the most conventional way, but Boyd is elite at messing with swings. After multiple stints on the injured list, Boyd is finally finding a rhythm this year. If he can maintain it and stay healthy the rest of the way, yes, he can be a frontline starter for a playoff team. He showed how dominant he can be Tuesday night, and we have better insight than ever into what he does to flummox opposing batters. The Cubs need more help, but Boyd is good enough to be the ace of this team, under the circumstances. View full article

Image courtesy of © Robert Edwards-Imagn Images According to Statcast, there have been 212 ground balls hit either to third base or into left field with Alex Bregman on the field this season. On those grounders, on a rate basis, Bregman has been better at getting outs (and, in various ways, preventing extra bases) than all but five other third baseman who have had meaningful playing time. The only person who's been as busy at the hot corner and as efficient as Bregman, this year, is Matt Chapman. Bregman's 9 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) are already a career high. That's probably somewhat surprising, even if you've watched a lot of Cubs games this season. Bregman is suffering from a reverse-halo effect this year, because he's not hitting the way the team hoped he would when they made a major five-year investment in him over the winter. He also doesn't make many plays that catch your eye—just as the walks he draws and the singles he hits don't catch your eye, at bat. But in fact, Bregman has been a steady and positive player for the Cubs, thanks to his .340 on-base percentage and (especially) his elite partnership with Dansby Swanson on the left side of the infield. Let's take a look at a couple of plays that elucidate Bregman's brilliance with the glove. We can start with one that bends toward the obvious. TUFYcldfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdOV0JsTlZWd3NBQ1ZOVVVBQUhBZzRIQUFBTUJnY0FWMTFVQmdkVUIxVUdWQWRl.mp4 When you think of a good play by a third baseman, that's the kind of play that comes to mind. The ball was sharply hit and took Bregman toward the line, forcing him to slide to field it cleanly. It also required a long throw across the diamond. If there were 10 plays like this on his highlight reel, you wouldn't be taken aback to learn that he's been the third-best third baseman in the league this year. There aren't, though. Instead, most of the plays Bregman has made look a lot like this. d2V3cVFfWGw0TUFRPT1fVkFrRUJWSU1VZ0lBWGxRQlZRQUhVZ0VGQUFBQkFGWUFDd2RUQ0FVRFZWSUVBQXRl.mp4 That ball, too, was hit sharply, but the play was pretty routine, and it looked like it. In fact, Bregman even did something he's done a ton this year, which used to drive Cubs fans nuts when it was being done by both Nick Madrigal and Matt Shaw: take several steps after fielding the ball to gain ground toward his target before throwing. There are plenty of plays this year on which Bregman has fielded the ball, run five full (though short and quick) steps, then thrown across the diamond after a crow hop. Paradoxically, he's in the habit of giving ground on balls other third baseman would try to field on the charge (or at least with their left shoulder forward, getting their body moving toward the target), but he still finds time on those plays to use a few steps to build momentum before firing. MnI0R3hfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdkUUFGVUhCUVFBRFZjR0F3QUhDRlZXQUFOUlZsa0FBVklFQWdCV1VGSlhVZ1VI.mp4 I think, though, that a subtle genius underlies Bregman's unorthodox playmaking at third base. The more you watch him, the more he feels just like Swanson, if Swanson were a third baseman instead. For one thing, Bregman is very good at trusting his balance. He stays down on the ball extremely well, but not in a way that leaves him crouched too low to move fluidly out of his fielding position. As the ball gets near him, you'll often see him slightly straighten his legs, but his chest (and, therefore, his glove) stays down. He only has two fielding errors this year, and two throwing errors. Since April 23, he only has one error, period. He's sensationally sure-handed, at a position where bad hops are more common than for any other infielder. As is true of Swanson, Bregman has a below-average arm, in terms of raw throwing power. Like Swanson, though, Bregman has above-average arm utility, because he's accurate and always seems to know how much time he has to make a throw. His internal clock is excellent, and his confidence as a playmaker allows him to succeed on what we might call broken plays, in football parlance. TUFYQVFfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkZWU1VWY0ZBQU1BQUFRS0F3QUhBd0JVQUZrSFVBSUFDMU1IQVFNQlVndFhWZ29E.mp4 This play looks like a could-be routine grounder made dangerous by Bregman himself, but in fact, it was one of those times when everything seems to work against you—but Bregman got an out anyway. With Willy Adames at bat, the Cubs infield was heavily shaded toward the left side. That made getting to the ball relatively easy for Bregman, but once he got there, he had a problem. Michael Busch had been pulled far off the line, and he wasn't getting to the base fast enough to set up in the usual way. Because the ball was hit slowly and on a lazy couple of bounces, Bregman didn't have much time to spare. If he had a stronger arm, he could have held it an extra half-beat, allowed Busch to get set in the standard way, and fired a seed across the diamond, but because he doesn't have that juice, he needed to throw on the run. Doing that while also trying to hit a target that's more air than flesh—throwing to a spot and trusting Busch to make the play, even though he wasn't yet awaiting the ball—is deceptively difficult. That's a play on which many players make an errant throw. Bregman, however, put it right on the bag. Busch, his feet not quite right and not touching the base, had to slap an emergency tag on Adames as the Giants shortstop went by, but he managed it. That's a disaster averted, but also a could-be hit nullified, thanks to Bregman's superb rhythm when he gets to the ball. Bregman has also been excellent at starting the double play; only Chapman has been involved in more from third base this year. Sometimes, that's accomplished simply by means of a quick glove-to-hand exchange and fast release on a throw, to spark the old-fashioned around-the-horn twin killing. But Bregman also does well (unsurprisngly) when running to touch his own base before making the long throw across to Busch—and not infrequently, he starts double plays like a shortstop, because that's where he's playing. ek13QTBfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUZWUkJsY0dBQWNBRFZFRkF3QUhBRlZSQUZsUlZWSUFVVllGQ1ZJTlZWQUFCd1VB.mp4 Swanson came to the Cubs the same year that the league outlawed the infield shift. In the years since, the team has mostly lagged the league in the frequency with which they deploy even the still-legal shading against left-handed batters, whereby the third baseman is pulled far off the line to play something more like shortstop, while the shortstop plays near the bag and the second baseman guards the hole between themselves and the first baseman. Here are the percentages of plate appearances by lefty batters on which they've shaded (and their rank in the league in that category) for each year of Swanson's tenure: 2023: 31.4 (25th) 2024: 37.8 (24th) 2025: 53.4 (14th) 2026: 66.9 (3rd) Whether to shade your infield against a lefty is as much a question of philosophy and personnel as of expected batted-ball location. It's a question of whom you trust most, and whom you trust more in specific circumstances. For the most part, since bringing in Swanson, the Cubs have trusted him with the ball more than the third baseman, even if there was a decent chance he would be making a given play going to his right. They've wanted him to cover as much space as possible even against lefty batters. No more. Bregman is getting a lot of time at a position that's closer to shortstop than to third base, when lefties are up against Cubs pitchers. He's always done this, but it wasn't a guarantee that he would continue to do so once he took up residence next to Swanson. He has. That's the other way in which he's been immensely valuable in the field. While the occasional slapped grounder might now get through an open left side of the infield, the Cubs are better for having Bregman and Swanson working in tandem. The lighter workload in the field should also help Swanson manage the grind of the season better. Cubs fans will feel frustrated unless and until Bregman clicks at the plate and rediscovers his power. His current slugging average (.345) more than .100 off even his recent averages, and he's a .471 career slugger. The team needs him to produce closer to that level, or their offense will continue to feel power-starved at times. Even in the meantime, though, Bregman has been an above-average player, thanks both to the way he keeps the line moving on offense and to the sneaky excellence of his work in the field. 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Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Sometime this week, Jake Woodford will toe the rubber and absorb some innings on behalf of the Cubs bullpen. When he does (barring something unforeseen happening first, like a trade for another form of reinforcement or an emergency call-up), Woodford will become the 33rd pitcher Chicago has used this season. That's the same number they used all year in 2019, the last time the ball flew like this. It's only two fewer than they used in all of 2018, a year marked by a draining fight for the NL Central crown and a litany of injuries. They'll push beyond the 35 pitchers the 2018 team used, too. They're likely to at least flirt with setting a new team record. They used 43 pitchers to get through 2022, after needing 40 to limp through 2021. Those seasons were the products of unusual circumstances, in that the team was trying to protect many pitchers' arms from overuse in the wake of the pandemic; had to navigate a shortened spring training after the lockout heading into 2022; and unloaded several pitchers in each summer to pace up their rebuilding project. None of that stuff is happening right now, though, and this flat-out was not supposed to happen. It's halfway normal, these days, to turn to a few dozen pitchers over the course of a season. That the Cubs are already running up on a bad year's worth of them, however, is a telling indictment of their preparation, scouting, risk assessment and development. This team will end up using several more pitchers over the balance of this season, be it because they trade for a bunch of help or because they're compelled to admit defeat and trade away some of their impending free agents. In effect, that's an announcement that they're no further along in the project of amassing enough pitching depth to field a sustainable winner than they were four or five years ago. It's hard to always have good answers for the difficult tests of depth that happen during a modern major-league season. As you can see, even a quarter-century ago, it was customary to use about half as many arms as the Cubs will use in 2026. Injuries and a rising baseline for offensive talent have rapidly increased the number of guys big-league teams need. Still, even with the Cubs at 50-40 entering Tuesday's games, it's fair to say that they've failed some critical tests that other teams have passed. With some of the formerly slumping hitters starting to recover, the quality of Chicago's everyday lineup has been on full display of late. That makes the juxtaposition of those players with this pitching staff even more jarring than it would be otherwise. Pete Crow-Armstrong is more than capable of being a one-man show at times, but he's not alone in delivering lately. Dansby Swanson, like Crow-Armstrong, is a two-way threat, contributing to both run production and run prevention. Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch are climbing out of the holes in which they stuck themselves at the plate, and each has made huge strides defensively. The lineup is deep and balanced, even if it's also been mystifyingly inconsistent this year. We've already talked a lot about how committed this team is to a core that will be around for quite a while. We should also take this moment to reflect on just how strangely that's shaped, though. Ideally, the team will get back the likes of Justin Steele, Cade Horton and Ben Brown at full strength next season. In reality, that's too optimistic. Besides, there's a whole second half to play, in which none of those three are likely to play a role at all. Beyond them, the pitching staff is as lacking for long-term commitments as the lineup behind the hurlers is awash in that same certitude. The Cubs lineup is what it will be for the next several years; the Cubs' pitching staff isn't even what it will be for the next fortnight. They've bumped along admirably over the last few weeks, but this is the pitching staff of a rebuilding team, not a serious contender. That's very weird, because the lineup is very much that of a serious contender, and these days, most teams have both or neither. The Cubs' deficiencies in depth and talent on the pitching side are so glaring that it's virtually impossible to imagine them overcoming them. On the other hand, if any team can survive what the 2018 team couldn't, it's probably this one—the best lineup the team has fielded since that fateful year. Somehow, Jed Hoyer needs to be extremely active over the next four weeks. He has limited ways to achieve that, but unless he threads the needle better than he ever has before, this Jekyll-and-Hyde team will live the ghastly end of that story: self-inflicted destruction, wasting the good because of an inability to fend off the bad. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images It's slightly inflated, this hot streak. It's easy to get a little carried away about it. Dansby Swanson is raking lately, to be sure, but the competition and the weather have conspired to make him look superhuman, instead of merely superb. He's hit five home runs in the last two games, taking ample advantage of the wind gusting out and the heat making everything carry at Wrigley Field. The ball is exceptionally lively lately. Walker Buehler came to town primed for some brutal regression. Last week in New York, the Mets inexplicably left their star rookie and ace on the mound to collapse, and Swanson hit a home run off Nolan McLean that was center-cut and missing about 3 MPH from McLeaan's usual fastball velocity. The last homer he hit Wednesday, which left his bat at 92.5 MPH and came against an eephus-lobbing backup catcher, was downright fraudulent. He's racked up an extraordinary number of RBIs, thanks mostly to coming up with runners on base constantly for the last fortnight. All of that, though, to say this: Swanson is also genuinely on fire. He's as hot as he's ever been, and that's saying something. Here's a graph tracking his rolling 50-plate appearance weighted on-base average (wOBA) throughout his career: Every hitter experiences fluctuations in production over the course of a season. Not every hitter experiences ones that look like this. Swanson has always been capably of running extremely hot and cold, for a player with such an average-looking overall stat line. When he first joined the Cubs in 2023, he brielfy reduced the magnitude of his ups and downs, but by early last season, he was back to being what he will probably always be, despite his best efforts: wildly inconsistent. Given how sharply and widely he's swung between delightful and disastrous for his whole career, it's jarring to say this, but it's irreefutable: Swanson is on an unbelievable hot streak right now, even for him. By contrast, just a few weeks ago, he was mired in a sustained funk as bad as anything he'd experienced since he still played his home games near Atlanta, Ga. What's changed? Well, there are a lot of ways to answer that question. We could start by saying that it's a good idea to adjust his raw numbers to account for the Rockies, Blue Jays, Mets and Padres throwing a lot of bad pitchers at the Cubs, on very hitter-friendly days. The fact that he's never been "better" over a span like this before partly reflects the fact that this particular heater has coincided with some very favorable circumstances that are beyond his control. Maybe, then, the better way to look at what's changed is to study process, rather than results. These days, though, 'process' is a term that catches several variables. Even 20 years ago, talking about process was simple: Instead of reading the baseball card, you checked a player's BABIP and their walk rate, or their out-of-zone swing rate. In fact, what the heck? Let's do that. This is a chart of Swanson's rolling 15-game averages for weighted on-base average (wOBA), which is the same stat being tracked above and just describes overall production; out-of-zone swing rate; and the percentage of pitches he saw that were four-seam fastballs. It won't shock you to see how the three things interact. Swanson started the season in an aggressive mode, but got hot when he started forcing pitchers into the smaller zone created by the implementation of the ABS system. Pitchers' answer to that development was to stop throwing him fastballs, and he reacted so badly to that that they kept reducing heater usage, dragging him to Hell for weeks with one breaking ball after another. Several weeks ago, though, Swanson started reducing that chase rate. Success didn't come right away, so we can say with some confidence that that's now why he's now hammering the ball without mercy. On we go, then, to a different tier of process-centered analysis. Let's talk about bat speed, and feel for the barrel, and timing. Firstly (and I'll spare you the graph, this time, but it's true), Swanson is swinging faster lately. His average bat speed is up a little over 1.0 MPH since he started to get hot; he rarely swings this fast over any prolonged period. One narrative we might construct, then, would have him going in the tank at the end of April when he developed some hip/glute soreness that took him off the field for two days, and getting hot again when he started to feel healthy in mid-June. The thing is, he didn't lose bat speed right away when his production disappeared at the beginning of May. In fact, that number rose a bit early in his rough spell, and dipped when he started stabilizing his approach—before exploding around the middle of last month. Bat speed matters, and the turbo boost in Swanson's is one component of his recent surge. Like his improving plate discipline, though, it's not enough to explain why he's suddenly searing. Let's forge on. It's time to get nitty-gritty. As you might guess, in addition to swinging harder, Swanson is making more solid contact lately. Since June 15, he's batting .333/.371/.895; you can't do that just by swinging for the fences and catching a few friendly zephyrs. Swanson's Squared Up Percent (the percentage of the maximum possible exit velocity on a given swing, based on the speed of the incoming pitch and of the swing itself that a batter produces) has risen sharply lately, returning to and then eclipsing the level he was at before things fell apart for him for six weeks. That's not an explanation, though. That's a dressed-up tautology. "Hey, you know the hot streak this guy is on? Guess what? Since it started, he's making more solid contact!" That's not insight. Let's seek some. Statcast's new swing timing metrics hold the key to really, deeply understanding what has changed for Swanson. First, keep in mind the chart (a couple charts back, now; sorry) in which we saw the rolling fastball rate against him; it's risen again recently. Essentially, Swanson was lost in the woods for so long that pitchers stopped feeding him as steady a diet of slop and decided they could probably beat him by throwing their four-seamer over his infamously steep swing, as he tried to sit on and attack the softer, spinnier stuff that had become his daily diet. Both when they're doing that and when they do go to the secondary offerings, though, Swanson is ready for them lately. Here's our control group. These are the distributions in each of the key swing timing metrics Statcast tracks for Swanson's swings through the end of April. This data is still new to all of us, so let's walk through it a little. The lefthand image tells us how often Swanson centers the ball on the barrel, versus hitting it off the label (in on the hands) or out on the end of the bat. The center image tells us how often he was (more or less) on time, based on the angle of his bat relative to the path of the incoming pitch at the point of contact (or non-contact, as the case may be). The righthand image tells us how often Swanson lines up the ball on his barrel, vertically, versus swinging over or under the ball or hitting either the top or bottom third of it. As you can see, relative to an average right-handed batter, Swanson got the ball off the end of the bat considerably more often; was on time slightly more often; and missed both above and below the barrel slightly more often. That's consistent with the profile of Swanson you're familiar with. He has a swing that leaves him running out of bat for soft stuff fairly often and whiffing fairly often, but he's fairly good at getting through the hitting zone in rhythm, and the swing is geared to do damage when he does achieve accuracy with the barrel. All of that was working (for better and for worse) in March and April. From the beginning of May (just after that glute issue cropped up) to the middle of June, however, it worked only for worse. With all those extra breaking and offspeed pitches, hurlers got him out on (or beyond) the end of the bat even more. They had him early more often, taking away his ability to use the whole field. And notice the righthand image, here. That dip in the middle of the high range on the distribution is a sign that Swanson was always a little bit fooled, always a hair off in what he was trying to accomplish. He hit the outside and top half of the baseball a lot. He also hit the inside and bottom half of the ball a lot. Neither is the right way to produce solid contact, especially if you're catching it on the end of the bat. Now, here's what those distributions look like since June 15. He's early in a good way (a little early, that is; just enough to pull the ball instead of spraying it) more often lately. He's also back to lining it up well on the barrel. But the biggest difference lies in how often (and how well) he centers the ball on the barrel. Over the last two weeks and change, nearly 70% of Swanson's swings put the sweet spot of his bat on a path through the ball. He's not getting it off the end nearly as often. He was under 60% accurate that way during his megaslump. Getting more aggressive with his swing—a slightly longer stride and a slightly later but faster shift of his weight from the back left to the front—has gotten Swanson through the ball better. He's longer through the hitting zone, which is leaving more lumber on either side of the ball when he squares one up. That's why he's pulling it more and producing the long fly balls that can benefit so handsomely from the heat and the wind. Here's a middle-middle changeup on which Swanson just missed, from last month in St. Louis. OTdQOXdfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0FBTUNVQVlCQUZFQUFRZFRWZ0FIQkFSU0FGaFFCVklBQjF3QlVRUU5BRkFHQ1ZGWA==.mp4 Now, here's one on which he (emphatically) did not miss, from this week against the Padres. VndQeDZfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFWUkJ3QUdCd29BQVZBQlZ3QUhBUU5SQUFNRVZnY0FCbEFNVWdaWENBQmRCVllD.mp4 The extra length on the stride is important; it lets him sink into the swing more and not get stuck having to manipulate the barrel as much with his hands. The extra bat speed (which comes from the more energetic move in his lower half) is important; it lets him wait longer and get off a swing that can benefit from the subconscious but incredible hand-eye coordination that makes him a big-leaguer. He's on time, but more importantly, he's on time with a barrel he was able to load up and fire accurately. The difference between those two swings tells us much about why he's been red-hot lately. That doesn't mean he'll stay hot, though. Swanson is simply an inconsistent player, because the bad swing above just isn't that great a departure from the good one, and it never has been. Being a great hitter in the majors is extremely difficult, and never more so than now, with the high baseline of talent and development for pitching league-wide. Small defects that can creep into your approach or your swing—flaws in your physical and mental routine that are virtually inevitable—can have big effects, and those effects are bigger on Swanson than on most players. To answer the question of why Swanson has swung from as cold as he's been in years to as hot as he's been, ever, though, we can go a step further than simply acknowledging that he's inconsistent. He's done something material and impressive to get the sweet spot on the ball more often. That small tweak has played up in a big way for him, because he's already good at being on time. Though he's 32 (and players are always fighting off age-related decline at that point), he's showing signs of being smarter and organizing his physical and mental game better than ever, to make up for any creeping athletic shortcomings. For however long that lasts, it's sensationally valuable, especially from one of the game's best defenders at shortstop. View full article

Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-Imagn Images If you see Kevin Alcántara on the street today near Wrigley Field, be sure to congratulate him. Monday was his 50th day on an active big-league roster. After coming up at the tail end of 2024 and again for most of last September, Alcántara spent roughly a fortnight with the parent club in late May and early June. He was there to replace Matt Shaw, who had been placed on the injured list with a back strain. He was shuttled back to Triple-A Iowa, though, and it took another Shaw injury to get him back up for a fourth major-league stint. It's probably hard for Alcántara to tell he's a big-leaguer, though. He's gotten no real chance to show anything—either the magnitude of his talent nor the depth of his flaws—in his previous times as part of the team. He's stuck on 32 career plate appearances, which is about what Pete Crow-Armstrong collects each week. He's only played a complete game—neither coming on as some sort of sub nor being replaced mid-game—three times in the majors: September 25, 2024, in his MLB debut September 27, 2024 September 7, 2025 Neither the Cubs organization nor Craig Counsell has shown much faith in Alcántara. Yet, they do keep him around, and in a strange but real way, they need him. With Shaw shelved again and Michael Conforto circling the drain, they need a player who can play some corner outfield. With their offense running on Crow-Armstrong's increasingly well-rounded brilliance and a whole lot of luck and pluck around that, they need someone who can catch hold of a ball and hit it 425 feet now and then. Alcántara can be that guy. In the long run, I'm skeptical of Alcántara. In the short term, he needs to get a chance to help the team this time. After the Cubs put him in the cooler by calling him up for 16 days and 10 plate appearances starting May 23, it would have been understandable if he'd gone back to Iowa and struggled. Instead, he hit the ground running, with a 21-for-59 showing that included nine extra-base hits. He's up to 826 career plate appearances for the I-Cubs, with an OPS just under .860, all as a young and athletic player. His swing is long and whiff-prone; he needs to be shielded from bad matchups to have success in the big leagues right now. But he does still have the upside of a big-league regular, and right now, the Cubs don't have a strong alternative to him, at least against lefty starters. They'll see one of those Tuesday night, as the Padres send southpaw JP Sears to the mound. Alcántara needs to be in the lineup. One of Cubs fans' legitimate laments about David Ross was that he mistrusted young players too much and stunted their development, especially by leaving them to rot on the bench amid call-ups. Miguel Amaya and Crow-Armstrong felt that very pain in 2023. The hope was that Counsell would be better at bringing along homegrown guys, but while his tenure has seen Michael Busch and Crow-Armstrong establish themselves successfully (and he's done everything right with regard to Shaw), Owen Caissie, Moisés Ballesteros and Alcántara are each marks against him as a player development guy so far. That has to change in the coming days. Alcántara could be a decent trade chip this summer. He could be retained with an eye toward replacing Ian Happ and/or Seiya Suzuki, who are each impending free agents. Either way, though, this is the last season in which he can be optioned to the minors, so the Cubs (and all other parties with interest in Alcántara) need some hard information about what he can do. This is the opportunity to obtain that information. The Cubs need another guy who can hit the ball hard enough to split a gap or clear a fence, anyway. They need to swing for the fences, metaphorically, to survive their slew of pitching injuries and catalyze a scrappy but aging lineup. They might as well go with a guy who can swing for the fences, literally, and see what doubling his career plate appearance figure in about 10 days tells them. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images Over halfway through the season, the regression monster hasn't yet caught up to Ryan Rolison. In fact, with Caleb Thielbar finally, sadly looking his age and Hoby Milner sidelined by an emergency appendectomy, there's not much doubt that Rolison is now the Cubs' top left-handed reliever. It's less fun to note this part, but with Daniel Palencia headlining tim times and a long list of injured righties, Rolison might even be their relief ace, without regard to handedness. The only other candidate is Jacob Webb, and if anything, Rolison has been more consistent. That's not to oversell him. Rolison's win probability added (WPA) over the 25 appearances since he came to the majors to stay in late April is -0.16. He hasn't been dominant, and he doesn't even have a save. His ERA is great, but his peripheral numbers are more like "good". He's allowed a pretty average 6 of 17 inherited runners to score. He's arguably the team's relief ace right now, not because he's great, but because the team is so far underwater in the bullpen. Still, this level of contribution is vital, especially for a team so awash in injuries and underperformance. Rolison started the season with Triple-A Iowa, even after a good spring. The Cubs picked him up over the winter, in no small part, because he's an optionable arm. He first came up on April 14, the first time the team was in scramble mode in the relief corps, but he stayed just that one day. He didn't come back until April 24. Since then, though, he's appeared 25 times and pitched 30 2/3 innings in the Cubs' 59 team games. Over a full season at this pace, he'd work 69 times and amass just under 85 innings. Craig Counsell has often been short on hurlers who are so much as available, let alone reliable; Rolison has been a rubber arm who doesn't give away games. He's markedly better than he was last season. Made to look much worse than he was by playing his home games in Colorado, Rolison had a 7.02 ERA in 2025, with little life on his fastball. He's up about 1.5 miles per hour on the four-seamer this year, with a more aggressive delivery in which he gets down the mound farther and draws more force from his landing leg. But more importantly, he's increased the induced vertical break on that heater by 3 inches, mostly because he's no longer pitching in the mountains. His curveball has more depth, too. To all of that, he's added a sweeper. The Cubs started talking to Rolison about incorporating that pitch back in the spring, but only stepwise as the season has progressed has he worked it into his attack within games. It's still his fourth-most used offering, but between that sweeper and the sinker that he's also mixed in more often of late, Rolison is moving east and west more than he has in the past. The variety of shapes he's now showing hitters is as wide as that of many starters, and because he's not seeing right-handed batters two or three times in a game, he can more than get by without a reliable changeup. It helps, of course, that it turns out that his new sweeper is the best swing-and-miss weapon in his arsenal. Tweak by tweak and sweeper by sweeper, Rolison has worked his way to striking out over a quarter of the batters he faces. He still walks too many opponents, but he can get off their barrels well with the two fastball looks, and his three breakers ensure that he gets the whiffs he needs. He's still not a playoff-caliber relief ace, but he's cemented himself as this year's Drew Pomeranz or Tyson Miller: a fine middle reliever who can be a bit more in a pinch, for a team very much in that kind of pinch. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images In a strange way, the most telling plate appearance in the five-plus weeks since Pete Crow-Armstrong got molten-lava hot might have come Sunday afternoon, after the flow had raced down the mountain and begun to cool a bit. Brandon Woodruff struck out Crow-Armstrong in the first inning, but the next two times up, he was even more careful, and Crow-Armstrong drew two walks. In the third inning, Crow-Armstrong's swing decisions were dead solid perfect. In a six-pitch at-bat, Woddruff only hit the zone twice. Crow-Armstrong swung at both (changeups, fouled off) and took the four bad ones, including two very tempting offerings. The sixth inning at-bat was even better. Woodruff went with the four-seamer that had worked to start the game, but couldn't hit the zone with it. He tried a changeup, but missed low. Crow-Armstrong got ahead 3-0, but with one out and nobody on base in a game the Brewers led 1-0, he stayed patient and took two strikes on the outer half. Then, Woodruff—never one to give up a free base without good cause—stayed in the zone three straight times, but only made one mistake, with the third 3-2 pitch. Hitting as defensively as one must in such a deep count, Crow-Armstrong fouled that off, too. When Woodruff missed away with the ninth pitch, though, he laid off and drew another walk. Those were the 34th and 35th walks of the season for Crow-Armstrong, who only walked 53 total times in his first two-plus years in the majors. It's not just the walks that mark him as a different hitter. though. When he came to bat in the top of the eighth, he showed as much maturity as in either of his previous two trips. Facing the viciously difficult Abner Uribe, Crow-Armstrong did well to lay off a first-pitch sinker above the zone. It was called a strike, and he probably should have challenged it, but the Cubs have been conservative by design when it comes to batters challenging this season. At any rate, he made the right swing decision. Uribe lured him out of the zone on the next pitch, with a sinker that ran off the plate away, and Crow-Armstrong was down 0-2 in the most frustrating fashion. For any hitter, that sequence—bad call strike, chase out of the zone—threatens to destabilize the mental approach. It's easy to get on tilt in such situations. For Crow-Armstrong, that sequence has nearly always led to an easy out for the pitcher. He's struggled mightily with that mental battle throughout his career. But this time, he laid off a sinker up and away, and then watched a slider that plunged out of the bottom of the zone. On 2-2, Uribe sawed him off with a slider, catching Crow-Armstrong a hair early because he needed to stay ready for the sinker. It was a floater that bounced lazily out to the middle infield, and despite getting jammed, Crow-Armstrong got out of the box well. He almost beat it out for an infield hit. Yes, he was thrown out. No, he didn't play the hero, because the Brewers were careful not to let him do so. But that plate appearance was huge. It was tough, and professional, and it showed how Crow-Armstrong has improved both at staying in the fight and at covering multiple pitches within a pitcher's arsenal. From May 22 through June 25, Crow-Armstrong batted .376/.456/.760. In 147 trips to the plate, he had 22 extra-base hits, including 12 homers. It was a transcendent heater, the likes of which the Cubs haven't seen since Derrek Lee's near-MVP season of 2005. (Technically, Aramis Ramírez also had a hotter 31-game stretch in 2006, but like Lee, Moisés Alou and Sammy Sosa, all of whom have been similarly good over such stretches during this century, Ramírez played in a much more offense-friendly league than does Crow-Armstrong.) With any streak that incredible, though, you can feel the moment when it ends, and that happened over the weekend. Crow-Armstrong drew four walks (one intentional, in the 10th inning Sunday) but was hitless against the Brewers. He's not quite clicking on everything that comes within his happy zone, the way he was a week ago. What we saw Sunday, though, is that—not unlike that lava that hardens into rock after escaping the inferno—Crow-Armstrong has been reborn. He's not going to go back to the guy who batted .188/.237/.295 in August and September last year. His ceiling, as we now see, is as high as literally anyone in the sport; he is the only player in the last half-decade to demonstrate the ability to be as valuable as Shohei Ohtani. It's his floor that has really moved, though. He was, for a while there, capable of slumps as hideous as his streaks are thrilling. The new Crow-Armstrong simply can't be that bad. He's still going to have rough stretches, because he still borders on overly aggressive inside and outside the strike zone. He's morphed into a much more complete and dangerous hitter, though—even now that he's settling into a new normal, instead of doing backflips across a highwire, as he seemed to do for a month. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kyle Ross-Imagn Images You don't have to squint to see David Peterson's appeal for the Chicago Cubs. Firstly, look at that pulse! You won't find it on the Savant sliders panel, but being a living, breathing pitcher who isn't injured is a tough box to check these days, it seems, and the Cubs found a guy who checks it. More seriously, though, Peterson is a lefty who throws 92 MPH; succeeds by missing barrels, not missing bats; and was available in a buy-low deal, despite the calendar not yet having flipped to July and most could-be trade partners still being focused on preparations for the draft. When Ben Brown and Edward Cabrera landed on the injured list simultaneously (with no imminent return looking likely for either), Jed Hoyer did what he had to do. That doesn't mean that Peterson was selected solely because of his availability, though, or even because of the natural cut on his four-seam fastball. Rather, the Cubs locked in on him because there are real reasons to believe he's better than the ugly 6.09 ERA he's posted in 16 appearances (only half of them starts) this year. First, let's talk about what's gone wrong. To do so, we can look at Statcast's new swing timing metrics, to spot the ways in which hitters are reacting differently to his stuff this year than last. Peterson's best pitch is his sinker, but that offering (his ticket to last year's All-Star roster) is getting pummeled in 2026. Against lefties, the problem seems to be a failure to bust them inside and get them to hit the top half of the pitch, as you can see most clearly in the righthand image below: Against righties, the problem is that Peterson hasn't been able to get batters looking up or in, thereby incuding contact off the end of the bat when he goes to the sinker. Instead, righties are centering that pitch up relentlessly. Peterson actually throws his four-seamer more than the sinker to righties, a sensible practice for any non-fireballing southpaw. This year, though, righties aren't fooled by that, either. He's actually getting in on the label with that cutting four-seamer a bit better than in the past, which could be good news. Unfortunately, paired with the batter being on time more consistently, rather than late, it's yielding good results for the batter, not for Peterson. When he's right, Peterson's slider is also a solid pitch, working across the plate to lefties and dipping below what a righty batter thinks they have lined up. This year, none of that is happening. A good left-on-left slider should have an opposing batter reaching, flailing, way early and over the top of the pitch. Peterson just isn't producing those swings nearly as well this season as he did when he had a small star turn last year. At this moment, it's fair to say that hitters have him figured out a bit. The Cubs can help him, though. For one thing, Peterson's slider is very much a gyro-style tight spinner, but it's taken on an unwelcome cement-mixer quality this season. He's throwing the pitch harder, but partially because of that, it's moving less. It has some dart to it, but it's lost depth. Here's the spin profile of his pitches for 2025, with the initial spin direction on the left and the actual movement direction on the right. Here's the same image for 2026: Peterson's slider feels much more like a cutter this year, and the result is a pitch that doesn't dominate lefties as well. If it looked a lot like the sinker and/or the four-seamer out of the hand, it could at least fool batters that way, but it does that (if anything) less well than a year ago. That seems like something a new pitching coach can help a pitcher restore in short order. A small mechanical fix might go a long way for Peterson. Even better, though, the Cubs have one of the league's best defenses to offer Peterson. He's had a below-average strikeout rate in each of the last three years, but he keeps the ball on the ground often and in the park nearly always. The Cubs saw, up close, just how bad the Mets' defense has been all season. The jump from that to the Cubs' phalanx should be very good for Peterson—and what's good for him will be good for the team. The upside on this acquisition is extremely low. Peterson will be a free agent this fall. He doesn't pound the zone the way you'd like to see a pitcher who doesn't strike batters out do so; that's part of his strategy to limit the damage done against his highly hittable stuff. He can't save the Cubs' season. If it's to be saved, that will be done by the team's offense and its defense. Peterson is a couple small adjustments from regaining the much better results he enjoyed last season, though. A restored slider would give him an edge in the fight to get batters off the barrel on his sinker. A bit of counseling from Tommy Hottovy should help him see a better way to utilize that cutting four-seamer in on righties. Mostly, Peterson needs to soak up innings. But the Cubs didn't grab him just to get those innings out of the way. They believe, rightly, that they can get him back into the shape of a credible backend starter, and that would check several boxes at once on the North Side. View full article