Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images In a perfect world, you could fly to the ballpark every day to watch your favorite team fire a perfect game against their chief rival. Your favorite pitcher would never give up a hit or a run, and you'd win every game by 18 runs. But that would be dreadfully boring, after no more than a week. I even think you'd get sick of flying. Gravity defines us as a species. So does adversity. Without pressure and difficulty, there would be no gratification in the grace and victory that make sports fun. Shota Imanaga is perfect, for this blessedly imperfect world. He's a fierce, intelligent, crafty competitor on the mound, but he never invites you to forget that baseball is difficult. He doesn't throw that hard. He gives up home runs in bunches at times. Last season, he struggled mightily down the stretch and was virtually unpitchable in the Division Series against the Brewers. He's back for 2026, but the Cubs (wisely) ensured that he would be no more than their fourth starter heading into the year. The Cactus League season has been no kinder to Imanaga, results-wise, than was the end of 2025. He racked up eight strikeouts against the Angels on Tuesday, but even that was no spotless outing. For the spring, he has a 4.85 ERA. He's given up five home runs, and though he's only walked one batter, the biggest worry for most Cubs fans—that opponents will tee off on Imanaga in a way that constantly seems to confirm supporters' secret dread that he's been figured out—has not been assuaged at all. To those fans most in crisis, I offer this consolation: Imanaga has some tricks up his sleeve. As has already been thoroughly documented here (and elsewhere), Imanaga is throwing harder this spring. That matters. As much as velocity has become overrated in the modern game, it's inarguably important, and Imanaga's heater is humming in at 92.5 MPH this spring. That's up by almost 2 MPH from last year, when it was clear (especially after the All-Star break) that he never really got right in the wake of an early-May hamstring strain. He's retained the ride on his heater, too, which is as important to his overall effectiveness as the sheer speed. Imanaga has also made a small but significant change in his starting point on the mound this spring. Last year, he worked from the far first-base edge of the rubber. That was designed to maximize the deceptiveness of his funky delivery, especially by making his splitter as it first began to diverge from his four-seam heater. However, that didn't always work, and it came with some negative side effects, anyway. Imanaga has great command, but for any pitcher with natural arm-side run on the fastball, the danger of starting on the arm side of the rubber is that the ball will too often run off the plate. Uk9HUjNfWGw0TUFRPT1fQmdGUlV3Y0hCUW9BV1ZJSEFnQUhWUTVTQUZnRVVsVUFBQWRVQWdFRFVBQmRBUXNG.mp4 The solution to that issue is as simple as you'd guess it is. This spring, Imanaga has moved to the middle of the rubber, as you can see clearly in this (otherwise grainy) screenshot from Tuesday's appearance. A good pitcher like Imanaga can manipulate their arm to get the ball where it needs to go from almost anywhere on the rubber, but there's a limit on how much of that manipulation one generally wants to do. The more you alter your delivery or force the ball to a given spot, the less widely you can vary your shapes and locations without giving yourself away. Instead of trying to stay where he was and change how he pitches, therefore, Imanaga moved to the center of the mound, where his stuff can play more naturally to all the places where he needs it to go. This is also going to benefit him in generating deception against right-handed batters. Compare these two 3-D animations of the trajectories of Imanaga's pitches, from the approximate vantage point of identical right-handed batters. The top image is from his appearance against Milwaukee last October; the bottom one is from Tuesday. Moving over makes it look less like the fastball in is coming right at the righty batter, but that's not a pitch Imanaga leans on, anyway. For the heater away, up or down, being closer to the center line of the lane from the plate to the mound creates more deception. The splitter plays off his fastball better, and his curveball can play to righties a bit, which it has rarely done during his time in the States. Imanaga still might run into homer trouble once the regular season begins. This adjustment isn't guaranteed to fix that issue, and in fact, the increased velocity is more important to that project, in terms of pitch shape and forcing less aggressive swings. However, another important goal is to minimize walks and avoid getting into unduly hitter-friendly counts. This move on the mound should help with that, and with getting some of the chases that Imanaga struggled to induce late in 2025. View full article

Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Seiya Suzuki suffered a sprain of the posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, the Cubs announced this week. It's not great news, in that Suzuki has a tangible injury that will require recovery and a slight reset of his preparation for the regular season, but the diagnosis could be far worse. A sprained PCL is usually a fairly minor injury in a baseball player; the severe form of the injury usually involves a traumatic collision, like an awkward tackle on the football field. Kyle Schwarber tore both his ACL and his PCL in 2016, as fans might remember, but that was because he and Dexter Fowler collided so brutally in the outfield at Chase Field in Arizona. Suzuki suffered no such incident, and his sprain is considered mild. Before delving deeper into the prognosis for a player dealing with a PCL sprain, we should pause to make a clarification, because the Cubs ended up having to do the same on Tuesday. Initially, Suzuki's injury was reported as a strain of the PCL, which left anyone with substantial familiarity with sports medicine a bit confused. Sprains and strains are similar, but they're different. A strain is a stretching or tearing of either muscles or tendons—the latter being, as you might remember from high-school biology, the tissues that connect bones to muscles. Sprains, by contrast, are exclusive to ligaments, which connect bones to other bones and are the most important tissues in stabilizing joints. Because of their respective jobs, ligaments are a bit more likely to be stretched (and thus sprained) than tendons are to be strained. Any sudden roll or twist of your shoulder, ankle, elbow, wrist or knee is liable to produce a mild sprain of a ligament, and those can cause discomfort, lost range of motion, or weakness in the joint. Because they exist to absorb those stresses and keep joints functioning, though, ligaments handle mild sprains well, and recovery can be quick. By contrast, a strain of a tendon usually signifies a somewhat less natural or frequent movement. They're more likely to be overuse injuries. Muscle strains, of course, range from micro-tearing that merely allows our tissues to grow and strengthen to full ruptures, but they reflect the pushing of that muscle to a point of failure, whether through repetitive stress or an especially acute exertion of an unready tissue. No sports fans have been led into a deeper forest of confusion about these related injury types more than baseball lovers, because of the nature of elbow injuries in pitchers. The most infamous elbow injury is the torn ulnar collateral ligament, which you might think would begin as a sprain. Sometimes, it does. However, diagnoses of elbow sprains are relatively rare, compared to diagnoses of strains of the flexor tendon in the forearm or the muscles of the forearm or the biceps. Often, before a pitcher's UCL gives way, they're diagnosed with a strain, so when the UCL then tears and they undergo Tommy John surgery, 'strain' is still in the air around them. Fans attach that term to the injury that sent them to the surgeon's slab. In reality, because the combined forces applied to the arm throughout the pitching motion are so violent, most pitchers pitch with a sprained (frayed or stretched) UCL much of the time. Sometimes, it's the point at which the muscles and tendons around the ligament can no longer absorb the excess force when the UCL finally tears. What does all of this mean for Suzuki? Well, partially, it's just a good opportunity to clarify the terminology of injuries, There's certainly a real set of implications, though. It's a good thing that Suzuki doesn't have a strained hamstring or quad, or even damage to a tendon or the meniscus in his knee. A PCL sprain, in particular, is relatively easy to recover from for a rotational athlete like Suzuki. You'd rather have him dealing with this than with a muscle strain, and you'd rather it be the PCL (in the back of the knee) than the MCL or ACL. I combed through Baseball Prospectus's Recovery Dashboard to create a useful guide by which we can estimate when Suzuki will return to play. The dashboard allows you to isolate injuries to the knee and to search the keyword "sprain", but that still leaves a bit of pruning to do. I cut out players who suffered their injuries in September, October, or over the offseason; those muddy any understanding of real recovery time. I went through and, where possible, removed players who turned out to have full tears of their ligaments after initially being diagnosed with a sprain. (That happened, for instance, with Dexter Fowler in 2021.) I also removed players I could verify were dealing with ACL or MCL injuries, leaving all cases of PCL trouble and the ones that were never publicly specified that well. Finally, I took catchers out of the sample. Any catcher dealing with a knee issue has a different checklist for returning to play than do other players, especially outfielder/designated hitter types like Suzuki. Here are the relevant comps I was left with, going back to the start of the 2021 season. Obviously, every injury is unique, just as every human body is. It would be foolish to overfit this data onto Suzuki's experience. (It also feels like something bigger was going on with Richie Palacios, doesn't it? If you strip out his tragic experience with this injury, the median and mean tighten even more, to 21 and 23 days, respectively.) However, these are fairly direct comps to Suzuki, and they tell a pretty clear story. Suzuki got hurt on March 14. We should expect him to miss anywhere from 3 weeks to a month of action, and since the team is pushing a fairly optimistic tone, we can aim for the early end of that window. Suzuki probably won't be ready for Opening Day, but he could be back in the lineup as soon as the second week of April, without having obviously rushed anything. It feels like a good bet that he'll be the DH for a bit as he returns, though. He'll be able to get back into the lineup faster if he doesn't push himself to be ready to play right field regularly before doing so. Besides, Michael Conforto looks likely to make the team, so he can play right field while Suzuki is unavailable. If Suzuki does come back primarily as a DH, it will cramp the Cubs' style a bit when it comes to Moisés Ballesteros. This injury might end up nudging Ballesteros to Triple-A Iowa to begin the season, where he can soak up reps as a catcher and prepare to play that role for the parent club either later in this season or in ones to come. In the meantime, the Opening Day roster could include Conforto, the winner of the Dylan Carlson-Chas McCormick battle, and even Kevin Alcántara. When Suzuki returns, Alcántara could go back to Iowa, and once Suzuki is ready to resume active duty in the outfield, the team could jettison either Conforto or the Carlson/McCormick victor, calling up Ballesteros. That arrangement would come with an ancillary benefit for the Cubs. If Ballesteros spends about 45 days in the minors this year, he'll come up short of a full year of service time by the end of the season, and the team will retain control of his services for 2033. It sounds like a small thing, but an extra year of team control is always a serious consideration for a team handling a top prospect. Suzuki won't be out an especially long time. It's just a sprain, and a mild one. His trajectory for the first six weeks of the season has been altered, though, and so might the Cubs' roster plans be. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images No pitcher in baseball last season produced as much horizontal separation between their four-seam fastball and their changeup as did Cubs righthander Cade Horton. What he calls a four-seamer (but which, in fairness, Pitch Info tags as a hard cutter) is a pitch with an extreme amount of relative cut for a fastball, which is part of the equation. Still, the 13.1 inches of difference between the lateral movement of his fastball and his offspeed pitch paced the league. In fact, only a handful of pitchers even come close. Freddy Peralta (then of the Brewers, now of the Mets) achieves a solid foot of separation, thanks to a much lower arm slot than Horton's and the ability to generate more sheer run on the changeup. That has led Peralta, who functionally lacked a changeup until 2021, to use the pitch more each season since, until it became his most reliable complement for the fastball last year. There's a simple reason for that: a changeup that can even vaguely mimic the fastball out of the hand but move that much is bound to end up generating lots of whiffs, and lots of weak contact even when the batter connects. That's why, as his rookie campaign unfolded, Horton, too, went to his change more and more often. By season's end, over 47% of swings against it had resulted in whiffs. Like Peralta, Horton was late in developing the changeup. When he entered pro ball, the headliners were his fastball and his slider, with a sharp curveball coming along for the ride. He's tightened his command and comprehension of each of those pitches, but it's the changeup that has transformed him. As he prepares for his first full season in the majors, he's a dark-horse candidate for the NL Cy Young Award, for the same reason why Paul Skenes exploded into that caliber of pitcher sooner and more completely than pundits predicted: because great players find unexpected ways to improve. Skenes added a splinker that changed his scouting report for the better, even after being the first overall pick in 2023. Because of injuries (and a bit less raw talent), it took longer for Horton to unlock his game-changing new weapon, but his changeup is just that. Yankees lefty Max Fried does technically have more separation between his changeup and his primary fastball (a cutter, and more of a true cutter than Horton's, with less ride on it) than does Horton. He has an even deeper arsenal than Horton's burgeoning five-pitch mix, too. Horton, however, uses his change much more than Fried does, akin to the amount that Peralta uses it. After he laid waste to the Guardians with the pitch in his penultimate spring tuneup Monday night, we might see his reliance on that offering rise even more this year. Note, too, that Horton's so-called four-seamer is two miles per hour harder than Fried's cutter, so hitters have less time to react to the gulf between his heater and his changeup than they do with Fried. More similar in their relative usages and plans are Horton and Twins righty David Festa, who operates with a higher-carry four-seamer but gets lots of depth on the change. Festa's ability to do that, though, reflects the motor preference of his arm, which generates so much arm-side movement and allows him to command a two-seamer but doesn't allow him to move the ball to the glove side very much. Horton, more like Fried and Peralta, can move the ball all the way from east to west. Unlike Peralta, though, he does it from a high arm slot where the horizontal movement on both his sweeper/slider and his changeup surprise the batter more, and unlike Fried, he has two-plane separation between his heater and his changeup, because he gets more carry on his fastball than Fried does on his cutter. In short, Horton's changeup has turned him into a unicorn. He won't strike out 10 batters very often, because his stuff is geared more toward outs than toward whiffs. He's still unlikely to win the Cy Young Award this year; Skenes and Logan Webb are early favorites. However, this development—this ability to make the last pitch he brought along (save his little-used sinker) his best one, even though it works opposite the movement pattern that comes most naturally to him—has unlocked the next level of success for him. Don't be surprised if Horton is the Cubs' ace this season, letting his former fourth pitch emerge as his signature weapon. View full article

Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Daniel Palencia has pitched seven scoreless innings this spring. The first three were virtually meaningless Cactus League warmups. The last four have been some of the biggest games of his life, serving as the closer for Team Venezuela in its first-ever run to the finals of the World Baseball Classic. He closed down wins for his country in both the quarterfinals against Japan on Saturday and the semifinals against Italy on Monday. Now, there's a tough question at hand. Relievers don't work three times in four days during March. That simply doesn't happen. It's not even something rubber-armed guys do to get ready for that pattern when it arises during the regular season; it's viewed as a greater risk than it's worth. However, Palencia has pitched twice in the last three days, including Monday night. If Venezuela has a late lead it needs to protect, will he be available to pitch? The answer isn't clear. Team USA closer Mason Miller is in a similar situation, having pitched both Thursday and Saturday, but he has an extra day of rest in his would-be three-appearance window—and still, neither he nor the team is yet committing to him being able to go. Miller did need a combined 40 pitches to get through his outings Thursday and Saturday, though. Palencia has yet to throw more than 17 pitches in a WBC game, and only needed 13 and 15 to mow down Japan and Italy, respectively. With hard throwers, in particular, a heavy early workload feels risky. There's no getting around the fact that Cubs fans have divided allegiances, because for many of them, the top priority is having Palencia healthy for the full regular season and (they hope) postseason ahead. Indeed, realistically, that's the nature of the relationship between MLB and international baseball right now: the latter is subservient to the former. Major League Baseball puts on the WBC; the event has little hope of real independence from the league. In my opinion, though, if the right moment comes, Palencia has to be on that mound. The Cubs should contact Venezuelan manager Omar López expressly to tell him that he has their blessing to go to his closer. This could easily be the biggest baseball moment of Palencia's life—even bigger than winning a World Series in the States. He deserves the opportunity, and international baseball needs that boost in legitimacy. Players take extended breaks from the top soccer clubs in the world several times each season to reunite with their national teams for various competitions and qualifiers. Sometimes, guys get hurt during international duty, as happened to Seiya Suzuki in the quarterfinals of the WBC. Other times, when a player needed a true break, playing for their country further wears them out instead, and they need to be lightly used for a period after returning from abroad. It's never fun when these things happen, but there's little expectation from fans that clubs will exercise power over the player or some national federation to prevent them from playing. That's the culture we need to pursue with baseball. If players want to play winter ball in Australia or in the Caribbean, they shouldn't need their MLB team's permission. When players join their national teams for the WBC or the Olympics, they shouldn't be constrained in usage by the dictates of their home club. We can move forward, toward a less MLB-centric baseball world. It can be a more vibrant world, and a more immersive one. Injury risk is a part of the game, but it should be a shared burden, and letting players and lesser leagues have more power to decide when and how players are used would do that—while also fostering the growth of shared benefits, like a game with greater global popularity and a more year-round calendar. It's clear that pitching for Venezuela is important to Palencia. He looks strong. He's been efficient. He has a chance to create the memory of a lifetime Tuesday night, if the right situation arises. If that happens, López should give him that chance, and the Cubs and their fans should be rooting unreservedly for a showdown between Palencia and Alex Bregman or Pete Crow-Armstrong with everything on the line. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images The numbers aren't pretty. Corbin Martin has allowed seven hits, four walks and six runs this spring, and he's only gotten 17 outs. He wasn't in pole position for a spot in the Opening Day bullpen, anyway, but it now seems nearly certain that he'll start the season at Triple-A Iowa. Some of those numbers are the results of a multi-layered effort to change his profile on the mound, though. When the time comes—as it always does, for the Cubs, usually by around Memorial Day—Martin could be the guy who's ready to step in and fill vital middle-relief innings for them. First of all, Martin has moved over on the mound this spring. His arm slot is little altered from last season with the Orioles, but whereas he started on the third-base side of the rubber in 2025, he's on the first-base side this spring: One reason for that change: Martin is also working to add a sinker to his pitch mix. His natural fastball is a hard cutter, with plenty of ride but considerable glove-side movement relative to most heaters. That shape is unchanged, but Martin is trying to complement it with a sinker that runs much more to his arm side. Moving to the first-base side makes room for that pitch to move across the plate and still be a strike. His changeup also moves a lot in that direction, so two pitches can benefit from the shift in mound position. When Martin signed, I noted that his best complements for the fastball were a cutter (a more breaking ball-flavored one, which Statcast tagged as a slider at around 91 MPH) and a 12-to-6 curveball to which he switched midseason last year. Interestingly, this spring, he's gone away from that cutter/slider, and back to a slower sweeper-like offering. The curveball is still there, but it's not as sharp as it was last summer. Keeping that sweeper on the plate from his new place on the mound will be tough. If he can locate the fastball well and tunnel the sweeper off it, he should get a good number of hopeless chases from right-handed batters, but looking at all this, it's not hard to see why Martin has struggled during Cactus League play. He's reinventing himself on the mound, in pursuit of a more complete arsenal that can generate sustainable success in the majors. All of it could be scrapped, if it doesn't work. Martin could move back to the other side of the slab and pare his mix back down, if erratic outings like Sunday's (0.2 IP, 3 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 2 SO) continue. However, if he and the team are seeing the progress they want from these changes, Martin might simply need more time to prepare himself for an important summertime contribution. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images Michael Busch has only challenged two calls this spring under the new ABS system, but he's won both times. Just as importantly, he's mounted them, even though (based on the array of pitches he's seen and taken) Statcast's model for predicting how many challenges each hitter would utilize only expects him to have challenged 0.8 pitches—and to have won 0.5 of those 0.8. Meanwhile, only one challenge has been issued against him, and it was lost. Obviously, the data set is far to small to say for certain that Busch has a skill when it comes to challenging. Besides, the magnitude of added value we're talking about here is quite small. Busch flipped called strikes on an 0-1 and a 1-1 pitch to balls, and saw one 2-1 pitch stay a ball despite a challenge. The total number of added calls in his favor, relative to the model's expectation, is 3.5, which isn't a big deal, unless the calls in question are hugely high-leverage. There's a bit of bonus value in taking away one of the other team's challenges by getting them to challenge in error, but that, too, is a small thing. So, why is this worth discussing? Firstly, it seems virtually certain that someone will benefit significantly from the ABS system this year, both at a team level and at an individual one. Last season, Triple-A players successfully overturned 4,628 calls, which is a lot of accumulated impact, even if it came in tiny increments. The value of those changes will accrue unevenly, based on good plate discipline for batters, good command by pitchers, and (yes, still) good framing by catchers, plus great gameplanning and strategic communication by teams and their coaches. Secondly, though, there's some reason to believe that Busch will be uniquely good at utilizing this system. First, he's 5-foot-11, which appears to be an advantage in a world with an ABS system. Pitchers will go through an adjustment period to recalibrate the top of the zone, but it's lower under ABS than it often was before that system went into effect, and for shorter hitters, that will include an especially apparent shift. Furthermore, though, Busch has a particular combination of stance and movement in the batter's box that could make the system very valuable to him. Though it's subtle, Busch hits from a moderate crouch. (See the first image above, on the left.) That won't determine where his strike zone stops and starts, as it would have in the past—ABS sets an identical zone based on height for each batter. It does, however, set the pitcher's sights a bit, and it's still likely to influence the umpire somewhat. Once Busch gets moving, an even more pronounced effect happens. Though he's not a huge leg-kick guy and starts with his feet only moderately far apart, he takes a longish stride. By his contact point (see the middle image), the center of his front foot is over 3 1/2 feet in front of the center of his back foot. Combine the crouch and the length of his stride, and Busch gets very deep into his legs. Again, refer to that center image, and note how low his left shin gets to the ground. That's part of his natural stroke, but it sets a low bottom rail for his zone, visually. Though his knees are bound to be lower than those of the towering Oneil Cruz, when you compare a composite animation of those two players' swings, you can immediately see that more than height separates them. The umpire isn't consciously looking at the way Busch's body moves into his hitting position when they decide whether the pitch is at the knees or below them, but there's a sense impression happening even in that instant of ball reaching mitt and a call needing to be made. This hasn't been a huge problem for Busch, but because he also dips that back leg and sinks into his hitting position even on takes (see the image on the right, above), he sometimes gets balls called strikes just below the zone. akQ5ZVpfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JWUlJYUUlNQlFzQUFGQUhYd0FIVkZJRUFBTURWRmtBQ3dCWFV3Y05Vd1pkVmxFSA==.mp4 This year, Busch will get a chance to challenge those. On the rare occasions when an umpire is fooled, the sharp-eyed Busch can rectify the problem, knowing his own zone and what distortion might have led to a bad call. On the other hand, the catcher is in position to get fooled more than the umpire—which could be great for the Cubs. It's not a natural thing to think of much in terms of the ramifications of implementing this system, but Busch took 109 pitches for balls along the bottom edges of the zone last year that were actually balls, but not by much. He has a patient approach and a good feel for that part of the zone. He could frustrate opposing pitchers and catchers, though, because they often thought they deserved a strike, even when they didn't. NHlNNU9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQndNQVhBQldYMWNBV1ZzSFZBQUhWQVJRQUZsWFZ3SUFWQUZVVkZVRlZGSlZVbE5m.mp4 Some of that is just Busch's great approach, but another piece is the way he stands in the box and moves toward the ball, even on non-swings. He's going to draw a higher-than-average number of mistaken challenges this year, and each lost challenge by an opponent has big value for the team. Even one such loss forces the other side to get more conservative in their challenges, and a second one robs them of the right to challenge at all the rest of the way. We've only really talked about the bottom of the zone, because the effects at the top of the zone seem fairly straightforward. There, too, though, Busch will get the benefit of some calls, because he strides so low that even more pitches look high than actually are. He might draw some bad challenges that way, too, since (again) the top of the ABS zone is a ball's width or so lower than most players are used to. The Cubs have to be good at the little things this year. Winning more challenges and/or inducing bad challenges by opponents will be one way to carve out the advantages they need. Busch looks like one of the players best positioned to do just that. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images When healthy, Hunter Harvey has consistently demonstrated the ability to dominate big-league batters. He has a 3.11 career ERA and has struck out 26.8% of the hitters he's faced. However, good health never seems to last long for him, which made him available relatively cheaply this winter. The Cubs pounced, signing him to a deal worth $6 million in guaranteed money and up to $1.375 million more in incentives. It wasn't a minor deal; that's a significant outlay for a team that rarely ponies up for relievers. Harvey didn't allow an earned run in any of his 12 appearances last year, but making only 12 appearances tells the story. Strains of his teres major (a back/shoulder muscle) and adductor (groin) cost him all but about a month in the middle of the season. They also cut into his raw stuff a bit. Harvey hit 98 miles per hour or higher on the radar gun 60 times in a much healthier 2024; he didn't get there at all in 2025. This spring, the fully healthy version of Harvey has reported for duty. On Wednesday, he averaged 98.1 miles per hour with his heater, and threw four of his six heaters at 98 or higher. That much velocity makes him a nightmare for opposing batters. To be fair, Wednesday's game was Harvey's first time on a Cactus League mound since Mar. 1. He'd been working in side sessions in between, but the long layoff probably helped him ramp up the velocity the way he did. Nor is his splitter showing the depth that makes it a bat-misser so far. His slider has been solid, but not spectacular. If he can sustain anything close to this kind of heat, though, he's going to be the dominant setup man to closer Daniel Palencia for as much of the season as he can hold up for. If Harvey can stay healthy and maintain this velocity over a substantial chunk of the season, he'll probably meet most of the incentive thresholds in his contract—because that version of Harvey would also get plenty of chances to close games as the season wears on. For now, it's only wise to modulate expectations. Harvey is healthy and firing on all cylinders right now, but that can change at a moment's notice. On balance, we should still expect Phil Maton to be the best setup man on the team, despite Harvey's demonstrated upside. However, spring is about optimistic stories like this. It's not just velocity. Harvey's fastball has impressive shape, too, with rising action and a bit less run than it showed last year. His secondaries still have to fall into line, and he has to pass the daily test of availability over a long season. If he were a good bet to do that, given the stuff he's flashing already in mid-March, he would not have been available at anywhere near as good a price as the Cubs got on him. Still, the proof of concept represented by an outing like Wednesday's is cause for celebration. The Cubs' bullpen will be a key to their efforts to topple the mighty Milwaukeeans in the NL Central; Harvey looks ready to lead the charge. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images This has been a very tricky spring for forecasting the Chicago Cubs' Opening Day roster—and even (since that exercise is a bit of rosterbation, really, and not an especially vital question) the broader utility plan for the team's positional corps. With two key players away from the team to participate in the World Baseball Classic and another having been severely delayed in reporting to camp, there have been variables for which Craig Counsell has had to account when filling out Cactus League lineup cards that wouldn't exist most springs, let alone during the regular season. There are also a greater-than-usual number of veterans vying for a roster spot, and often, the evaluation of such candidates goes far beyond what we can see on the field each day. Rather than make any overconfident predictions, then, let's pause today to ask some questions. Here are five things the Cubs need to know by the time they head north, but which (even if they have a strong inkling) fans don't yet have much clue about with two weeks to go. 1. Will Moisés Ballesteros Be on the Roster? This one is very important, because it has implications for other questions we'll consider, too. Ballesteros reported to camp late due to visa issues beyond his control, but has hit the ground running at the plate. In 65 pitches seen, he's been patient (44.6% swing rate), hit the ball hard (105.9 MPH 90th-percentile exit velocity) and made lots of contact (17.3% whiff rate). If he's destined to be the team's primary designated hitter, he'll have no trouble being ready for the season, despite the late start. However, of his six Cactus League games, he's been behind the plate for five of them. Surprisingly, it looks like Ballesteros might be a viable catcher after all, which changes a lot of things for the team. Firstly, they already have two veteran, roster-locked catchers. Secondly, if Ballesteros is showing them enough to be seriously considered as a backstop, he probably needs a bit more seasoning at the position at Triple-A Iowa, anyway. It's not terribly hard to imagine a scenario in which he's farmed out to begin the year, at this point. He could come up in the event of an injury to either another option at DH or one of the incumbent catchers, or (if everyone is healthy and Ballesteros forces the issue) in the wake of a trade of either Miguel Amaya or Carson Kelly fairly early in the season. That's pure speculation—but the chance of that trip to Des Moines for Ballesteros looks very real right now. 2. Is Michael Conforto Going to Make the Team? This could not be tied any more closely to the first question. Conforto signed a minor-league deal with the Cubs late last month, coming in as an additional option from the left side in the DH equation. He's also an outfielder, but a litany of injuries has turned him from a plus defender in the corners to a nearly untenable one. He can't, in other words, be the team's fourth outfielder, and given how much time Matt Shaw has spent in the outfield so far, he was never likely to be that guy for this team, anyway. However, if Ballesteros is out of the mix to begin the year, Conforto could fit nicely as a DH and occasional right fielder against right-handed pitchers. He's not having an especially encouraging spring in terms of performance. He's swung at 46.9% of the pitches he's seen, but whiffed on a hideous 36.9% of those swings. When he does connect, he's only generating a 90th-percentile exit velocity a bit north of 101 MPH—not what you want from a bat-first player whose profile leans on power. Again, though, he's the type of player the team might evaluate as much on work in the cage or on data not available to the public as on even pitch-by-pitch results in Cactus League action. If you need proof that he's using a different process than he would in the regular season, look no further than the fact that he's never swung at a 46.9% rate in a big-league season. 3. Who'll Win That Fourth Outfielder Job? The fight for the right to back up Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field and provide defensive support in the corners began as a four-man fracas. It's now down to three, with one of them being a new entrant and two of the original combatants having been eliminated. Justin Dean and Kevin Alcántara are both optionable, and will be sent down—assuming they aren't traded (a possibility for Alcántara) or designated for assignment when a roster spot is needed for a non-roster player. That leaves Chas McCormick and Dylan Carlson leading the roster battle, with Shaw having jumped into the fray, as well. Shaw was always likely to make the team, but what role he has within it will determine the makeup of the rest of the bench. If he's a solid center fielder, there's at least some chance that neither Carlson nor McCormick makes the team. So far, Carlson has been the best of the three on the field. He's swung at just 43.3% of the pitches he's seen and whiffed on just 17.2% of those swings. His 90th-percentile exit velocity is around 105 MPH. Counsell has spread the former top Cardinals prospect's work evenly around the outfield, and he's moving well. McCormick, meanwhile, has been much more anxious to make an impression, with mixed results. He's swinging freely (62.5% of pitches seen), and whiffing often (36.9% of swings). His 90th-percentile exit velocity is nearly identical to Carlson's, but given the other key indicators, it's less impressive. However, once more, the team might be judging these guys based more on defense, baserunning and factors that don't show up in Cactus League Statcast metrics than on those numbers, so it's too early to call the race. For what it's worth, McCormick has only gotten one start in center field, the most important position to cover for whoever wins the battle. 4. Where Will Nico Hoerner Hit This Season? Counsell has generally preferred to keep his star second baseman lower in the batting order than most fans would like. Hoerner batted leadoff 65 times in 2024, but that was largely because of a paucity of good options. He batted first or second just 28 times last year, while slotting in sixth 52 times; seventh 37 times; and eighth 26 times. This spring, all seven of Hoerner's starts have come in the first two spots in the batting order. The signal in that data is masked by the noise of other priorities during spring training, like veteran players wanting to get done for the day as soon as possible—and like the absence of Alex Bregman for the last two weeks. Still, it's an interesting development. It's easy to imagine Hoerner leading off against left-handed starters for this team. It would be much more surprising if he hit first (or, more likely, second) against righties, but you can certainly make the case for him, based on the way he finished 2025. That version of the lineup might go: Michael Busch - 1b Nico Hoerner - 2b Alex Bregman - 3b Pete Crow-Armstrong - cf Seiya Suzuki - rf Ian Happ - lf Miguel Amaya - c Michael Conforto - dh Dansby Swanson - ss It's a bit funky, pushing a guy who's in the lineup just to hit down to No. 8 and leaving Happ out of the top five from what is traditionally his stronger side. All seven times Happ has been in the lineup, he's batted third, so maybe a more realistic permutation would be: Busch Hoerner Happ Bregman Suzuki Crow-Armstrong Amaya Conforto Swanson Either way, moving Hoerner up would highlight how deep the addition of Bregman has made the Cubs lineup. It would also be a big bet on Hoerner's anachronistic skill set to keep playing near the top of its range of outcomes, though. Seeing him slide back down in the lineup against righties feels more likely. 5. Will Anyone Be Ready to Back Up Busch? When the Cubs signed Tyler Austin this winter, it appeared that they had a platoon partner in place again for their slugging left-handed first baseman—even as Counsell insisted that he intends to play Busch every day this season. Now, with Austin down, it looks like the sincerity of that pledge will be more sternly tested. Busch has started against three lefties already this spring, and seems likely to be the true everyday guy at the cold corner when the season begins. The question, really, is what the contingency plan will look like. The diminutive Shaw is the team's utility infielder, and makes a poor candidate to play first base. Neither Kelly nor Amaya has ever appeared in a big-league game at first. Nor has Conforto. If the season began today, the Cubs might be inclined to keep Ballesteros, after all—letting him be the backup first baseman, as well as the part-time DH and occasional catcher. That solution is far from optimal, too. Ballesteros is even shorter than Shaw, and not especially mobile. He bats left-handed, so he doesn't shield the team from platoon issues for Busch—only from an injury to him. Austin and Jonathon Long both getting hurt has left the team with an interesting hole in the corner areas of the bench. At this moment, if I had to bet, I would guess that Shaw, Conforto, Carlson and Ballesteros will all make the team when the Cubs break camp. It wouldn't be an exceptionally efficient roster. It's very hard to get Conforto and Ballesteros into any of the same lineups, and they don't complement each other especially well in terms of matchup play. However, all the questions above carry big ramifications, and none of them have clear answers right now. Much could change in the final two weeks of spring training. For a team with division title aspirations, the stakes of that potential change are very high. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images One surefire way to earn the scorn of a big-league player or manager is to take spring training results seriously. They don't matter, and although fans' instincts are often to hunt for the rare times and places when they do matter, players and teams roll their eyes at such efforts. Front offices, coaches and managers do have to evaluate players during Cactus and Grapefruit League games, and players do have to find ways to measure success and progress, but they're unanimous in their disinterest in doing so based on wins and losses, runs scored or allowed, or individual statistics. For those fans who do flinch when they see an ugly stat line even in March, though, it's been a rough couple of days around the Cubs. Shota Imanaga continues to get hit hard in Arizona. Matthew Boyd gave up three runs (and two homers) in Team USA's win over Novena México on Monday night. On Tuesday, should-be ace Cade Horton was the latest to run into some worrisome hard contact, giving up three homers and walking two over 3 2/3 innings against the Texas Rangers in a Cactus League game at Surprise Stadium. Horton's outing is the most important one to understand, and the surest way to distinguish signal from noise in spring training appearances. He gave up not only three homers, but eight balls hit at 100 miles per hour or harder, so the Rangers were locked in on his stuff. He did get seven whiffs on 29 swings, but when Texas batters connected, there was trouble. Because the one knock on Horton during his superb rookie season was a lack of high-end swing-and-miss skills, seeing batters do damage when they connect feels a bit ominous. Here's why it isn't. These are the pitch movement scatterplots for each of Horton's three spring outings to date: These tell a pretty clear story, if you know how to read them. First, look at the first appearance he made in the Cactus League, last month against the Rockies. That day, he only threw 26 pitches, and his emphasis was on commanding his hard, cut-ride fastball. He threw all five of his pitches, but not in their usual mixture; he just wanted to establish the heater and his slider. Last week against Team Italy, Horton's focus was on bringing out and gaining a feel for his changeup, the fourth pitch in his arsenal when he came up last year but a staple for him against left-handed batters by the end of the season. Note, too, though, that his fastball shape was quite inconsistent that day. It's good to be able to manipulate the fastball, but Horton was really not commanding that pitch in the Cubs' exhibition contest with Italy ahead of the World Baseball Classic. That brings us to Tuesday's game, on the right in the graphic above. Horton threw 60 pitches, and showed more consistent feel for the shapes of both his fastball and his slider. The two pitches that should draw your attention most, though, are the sinker and the curveball. Horton threw each about twice as often as he normally would, at the expense of his changeup, fastball and slider. He leaned hard on that sinker to righties and on the curve to lefties. His velocities and shapes on all five offerings are similar to what they were last year; he just got funky with usage on Tuesday. When pitchers talk about "working on stuff" during spring games, this is what they mean. Horton did get hit hard, and most of the damage came on his cutter/four-seamer. However, much of that was because he spent the day focused on gaining a feel for his sinker and his curve, which require slightly different feel and which he consciously threw more than was competitively optimal, in order to better prepare himself for the season ahead. Horton might experience some regression this season, after that dazzling first ride of the senior circuit last summer. However, his spring numbers need not concern anyone, because getting outs isn't his top priority right now. Instead, piece by piece, he's assembling the version of himself that can be ready to throw 85-plus pitches during his first regular-season start, with feel for all five of his offerings and the best ways to use them. To do that, he has to do some things during preparatory games that aren't consistent with putting up great numbers. That's why spring training is valuable, but also why it can be misleading for fans reading too much into the results. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images Seiya Suzuki takes a lot of pitches. His swing rate hovers around 40% each year, which is markedly below the league average. That earns him a good number of walks, but it also means lots of called strikes. That's the price he pays for his selectivity. He gains more than he loses with his takes, but they're a source of much of the positive and negative offensive value he creates. In 2026, those takes will be affected by a new variable: the automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system. The less often a hitter swings, the more they'll interact with that system. Thus, Suzuki will be one of the Cubs most exposed to it, for better (he can challenge bad calls on pitches just outside the zone that are called strikes) and for worse (when he gets a bit lucky on a ball that should have been called a strike, the opposing catcher can appeal it). New teammate Alex Bregman is almost exactly as patient as Suzuki is, so he, too, will have to navigate the system well. Let's explore how these two will have to adjust to life under a partially computer-optimized zone, starting with Suzuki. Here's the bad news: Suzuki will have to adjust his sights and his swing a bit to adapt to the shifting zone in 2026. Last season, most of the balls called strikes just outside the edges of the zone to him were above the top of the strike zone. He can continue to let those go, and get aggressive with challenges there. However, at the bottom of the zone, he got away with some takes that were called balls, but which will be strikes this year, if umpires respond to the codified zones and/or if catchers are quick to challenge against him in those zones. This is bad news because Suzuki's swing and approach have always been geared toward owning the top of the zone. His patience on low pitches is part of a plan, and he's done best when he's dedicated himself to that. Because he has a slightly flatter-than-average swing, he naturally gets to the ball better when it's around or just above the belt. He has to be sitting on the low pitch to hit it solidly, and that makes him more vulnerable up at the top rail of the zone. He's also prone to rolling over on that low ball. Needing to swing more in that range is dangerous for him. The good news, though, is that he can afford to lock in more on the bottom third of the zone if he can be confident enough to challenge some calls along the top edge of the zone. Moving the measurement of pitch location back to the middle of the plate (rather than the front) will mean everything shows up as very slightly lower than it did last year, which evens out the above somewhat, but more importantly, the codified ABS zone simply stops lower on the typical player's body than has generally been called. The zone is shrinking, and it's shrinking more at the top of the one (especially for players under 6 feet tall) than anywhere else. Speaking of such players, let's turn our attention to Bregman, whose official listed height was 6 feet in 2024, 5-foot-11 in 2025 and now 5-foot-10 in 2026. With his even flatter swing, Bregman can handle the high pitch even better than Suzuki can, but unlike Suzuki, he doesn't particularly hunt in vertical layers of the zone. Instead, he assiduously avoids chasing off the edges of the plate. With anticipation and good hands, he can manipulate the contact point and tilt of his swing, but because it's so flat that he's prone to weak contact via balls on the handle or out at the end of the bat, he focuses his plate discipline on attacking the ball based on horizontal location. Since hardly anyone knows the zone as well as Bregman does (and because of that orientation of his approach), he's in position to get a more unmitigated benefit from the system and its changes. He can afford to keep being extremely selective at the top of the zone, and he's in position to harvest lots of extra balls off the plate away, where most of his erroneous called strikes were last season. Winning teams will find ways to gain value from this system; others will lose it. Suzuki is a good example of a hitter who has to make a substantial adjustment to thrive under the new framework, but Bregman is sitting pretty, even doing things the same way he's been doing them for a decade. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images In his two innings of work Wednesday against the Brewers in Maryvale, Jaxon Wiggins looked like a big-leaguer with front-of-the-rotation upside. He allowed just one baserunner (a walk) and struck out two. His fastball sat at 98 miles per hour and nearly touched 100. His hard slider (or cutter, depending on whom you ask) looked good, and his curveball continued to flash depth that makes it scary. Perhaps most importantly, Wiggins showed the ability to fill up the strike zone with that fastball, which has not just velocity but plenty of carry and life on it. He got just three whiffs from a contact-oriented Brewers lineup, but he also delivered seven called strikes, including six on the heater. If he can throw enough strikes to limit walks and put hitters into two-strike counts, he'll rack up plenty of strikeouts, even against teams who specialize in the avoidance of them. Wiggins's easiest comp might be Nick Pivetta, of the Padres. Like Pivetta, he throws hard, with a high-rise heater, and like Pivetta, he has huge break on his curveball. To get a sense of how extreme Pivetta is in terms of pitch movement, consider this plot of pitchers who threw a qualifying number of four-seamers last year. Now, contrast that with a plot of the movements of curveballs thrown by pitchers who fired enough of them to qualify. Stretching the vertical movement differential that way is good. It creates the chance to miss bats. However, Pivetta loses a little bit of the theoretical, in-a-vacuum value of his high-rise heat and big-breaking curve because he works from an extreme over-the-top angle. That makes his pitches' vertical movement less deceptive—less unexpected—than it would be from even a slightly lower slot. As it happens, Wiggins pitches from that slightly lower slot. With just a hair less spine tilt and a slightly less exaggerated overhand action, Wiggins makes the interaction between his curveball and his fastball more deceptive than Pivetta's. However, that's not the only effect of that change in slot. There's a cost to it, in that Wiggins's fastball runs quite a bit more to his arm side than does Pivetta's. The latter is a cut-ride shape, which allows Pivetta to keep it over the plate and to attack both sides of the zone with it when his command is good. Wiggins will always struggle to execute his four-seamer to the glove side, which introduces a limitation. However, there are also benefits of that lower slot that go beyond the ride on the fastball being more surprising to the hitter. Wiggins's second pitch isn't the curve; that's his third or fourth option. Rather, he leans hard on his hard slider or cutter, and that pitch works better because he doesn't come so completely over the top that he's locked into only vertical movement separation. That changeup is also unlocked by not having such a high arm angle. Wiggins is never going to have Pivetta-caliber cut on his heater, let alone anything like what teammate Cade Horton does with his power cutter/four-seamer. However, like Horton (and unlike Pivetta), Wiggins has the makings of four good pitches that each hit one cardinal direction on the movement compass. His arm slot permits that vicious four-seamer to set up both breaking balls and the changeup. That's not to suggest, however, that he's ready to show up in the majors and have Horton-like success. To his credit, he's taken the critical first step in controlling his arsenal, by learning to throw his fastball for strikes. He can locate the slider/cutter well enough to get outs, too. However, both his change and his curve are wildly inconsistent. He doesn't know how to change his targets on those offerings, or even to consistently attack any one quadrant with them. He's at least two big developmental mile markers from Horton Territory: Throwing those two pitches for strikes with life, forcing hitters to honor them; and Learning to consistently throw strike-to-ball versions of them that induce chases for weak contact and whiffs, as well as the versions that land in the zone and compel the hitter to prepare themselves to swing. On a remarkably talented pitcher's developmental checklist, these items can get checked off surprisingly quickly. Wiggins might be doing all of this well enough to come up and dominate within a few months. Right now, though, he's merely tantalizing. The chance to rapidly become an ace is there, but the current reality is a long way from that hoped-for eventuality. Wednesday was a lovely glimpse of what's to come, but also a reminder that it's not yet here. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images With both Tyler Austin and Jonathon Long dealing with injuries, non-roster invitee Chas McCormick has gained an inside track on an Opening Day role with the Cubs. McCormick, 30, is a seasoned veteran with ample experience in center field, and he bats right-handed, so he can (at least theoretically) swap in to shield starting center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong from tough matchups against left-handed pitchers. McCormick also hit a ball 110.8 miles per hour off Angels starter José Soriano in a game last week, harder than any he's hit in a big-league game in his career. However, he's also come into camp swinging rather desperately, trying to create flashes just like that double against the Angels but not demonstrating the improved approach he needs to succeed sustainably. He's swung at 43 of the 71 pitches he's seen this spring—almost 61% of them. A whopping 19 of those swings have been whiffs or foul tips. He might make the team purely because of his defensive utility, but he's not truly showing that he's ready to regain his footing at the plate, after batting .211/.273/.301 since the start of 2024. That makes the lineup Craig Counsell wrote Tuesday against Team Italy important. Matt Shaw, who had previously made three starts in right field and two each at second and third base, patrolled center field in the exhibition game leading into the World Baseball Classic. He was neither notably good nor a disaster there, and he also got two hits in the game—though he made a baserunning mistake (not his first of the spring, and an increasingly sore subject for Counsell). It's just one game, so it's far, far too early to make any kind of assessment. The simple fact of his standing out there, however, carries some heavy implications. If the Cubs can get Shaw more reps in center over the fortnight for which Pete Crow-Armstrong will be absent from camp, and if he shows himself to be capable there, the roster math changes. The team claimed infielder Ben Cowles from the Blue Jays on Sunday, the third time they've acquired him. They first dealt for Cowles at the 2024 trade deadline, when they shipped Mark Leiter Jr. to the Yankees, and after losing him on waivers to the White Sox last September, they reclaimed him in January—only to waive and lose him again in February, then scoop him up once more to open March. Cowles, 26, can be optioned to the minors, but as the four times he's been waived in the last six months attest, he's a fringe guy. If McCormick does assert himself as a solid candidate for the roster, he'll need a spot on the 40-man reserve list, and Cowles could easily be the casualty. However, the Cubs wouldn't keep bringing him in if they didn't like some of the things Cowles does. He's a solid defender at shortstop, second base and third base. He's not a good hitter, but he has a modicum of both speed and pop—though the latter would be muted at the big-league level. If Shaw keeps playing center field and looks good there, the chances of the team making him the backup center fielder and letting Cowles (rather than McCormick) take up the final spot on the roster. Even better, perhaps, would be the scenario in which Pedro Ramirez—unlike Cowles, a good contact-oriented hitter who also hits from both sides of the plate—claims that utility infield role. Unless Shaw can handle center, the team needs a righty-batting guy who will do so, not only to insure them against an injury to Crow-Armstrong but to give them someone who can hit lefties at that position. McCormick, Dylan Carlson, Justin Dean and Kevin Alcántara are all auditioning for that job, but none has come into camp looking so good as to make the decision clear. If they have to give one of their bench spots to one of those guys, Shaw will be the utility infielder, with occasional time in right field mixed in. The results of the converted third baseman's trial in center, then, will determine from which pool the team selects the last member of their bench cohort. View full article