Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images The nominees for the 2025 Roberto Clemente Award were announced Monday, as each of the 30 MLB teams selected the player they believe best embodies the league's values of character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions on and off the field. The award is, in effect, the league's Man of the Year trophy, named after a player who had an enormous, transformative impact on the game—one very much akin to Robinson's. Though not the first Black player from Latin America to play in the majors, Clemente was very much the first star from that demographic, and like Robinson, he was unafraid to speak his mind or to back his thoughts and words with action. He endured slightly less focused racial animus than did Robinson, coming along more than half a decade into the integration of the National and American Leagues, but he had to deal with different prejudices, too—of culture and language, as well as skin color. Clemente was mercurial, but deeply dedicated to that which he believed in. He died in a plane crash, after he was so irrepressible in collecting and delivering relief supplies to an earthquake-stricken Nicaragua that he chartered a plane that wasn't airworthy and couldn't handle the load he'd amassed. That made Clemente baseball's closest facsimile of a saint, and has made it easy for the league to deify him as a symbol of charity and nobility ever since. That's not an inaccurate image of the man, but nor is it complete. The institution of baseball has always been comfortable with that. For that very reason, they're not sweating as much at the league's central office in New York today. Robinson, who died the same year as Clemente but had spent 15 years in post-playing career public life by then, left a legacy that could never be untangled from the racism and inequality that made up so much of the game's history. Clemente, however, had never been heralded as the same sort of trailblazer as Robinson; his story was mixed in with others somewhat like it. He was a phenomenal player with such a leonine off-field reputation that he could be upheld as the perfect confluence of baseball and personal virtue, in an uncomplicated narrative. Just as three rivers (not two) flow into one another in the city where Clemente became a baseball legend, though, there's a third element that needs to be part of a serious conversation about his impact. Clemente was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, a majority-Black city that lies cheek-by-jowl alongside the larger, better-resourced, majority-White capital of San Juan. From a young age, he was aware of the tension of his own existence, and when he journeyed to the States and became a professional ballplayer, he never ceased to be. Clemente was born into a Puerto Rico whose future was still very much undecided, as the post-Spanish Caribbean basin took shape under the heavy influence of the United States. Throughout his childhood, though, the U.S. firmed up its control of the archipelago. Clemente was 16 years old when the U.S. military violently quashed a revolution by Puerto Rican nationalists, including by bombing the town of Jayuya and killing civilians who were American citizens. Clemente himself never took up the cause of Puerto Rican independence, but nor did he denounce it. He signed up to serve as an American military reservist, but as he experienced more of the country and its contradictions, he would go on to consider himself a "double outsider," which itself seemed to be a double-entendre. Both his Blackness and his Latino heritage alienated him from neighbors and fans in the States, while his life as a rich and famous boricua made him occasionally feel less welcome on his own home soil—though, of course, he's now virtually venerated there, as some idealized (and partially silenced) version of him is here. Though they have always wanted to trade on his exemplary attitude of service and his extraordinary, stylish play, the league has never wanted much to do with the third current of Clemente's story. Even in times when the political and cultural climate invited more attention to the history and the modern reality of racism and xenophobia, the league never used Roberto Clemente Day to talk much about it. In this climate—one that actively discourages such conversation and whitewashes history to serve the maintenance of an inequitable social order—they've been especially quiet on that front. In fact, in each of the past three years, the league announced the Clemente Award nominees earlier in September, leaving at least a bit more space to (specifically) honor Clemente and (generally) celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. This year, they've held back those nominations until the day designated for Clemente, crowding the schedule. As for the nominees themselves, whereas 14 players of color were nominated in 2022 and 2023 and 12 in 2024, only seven of this year's 30 are people of color. It's a real shame that the league finds the waters of that third river too swift and too dangerous, because there's great power to be drawn from that current. At a moment when the world seems increasingly obsessed with mutual protection between self-selected tribes, it might be wonderful to make a bigger deal of the fact that Clemente wasn't rushing to his own home with the relief shipment that never made it. Nor was he seeking to serve his adopted hometown, or home nation. He'd only visited Nicaragua a few months earlier, while coaching Team Puerto Rico in the Amateur World Series, but that was enough to make him feel an obligation to his fellow humans. Clemente, who got used to being slapped with labels throughout his life and who came from a place that has lived in a colonialized limbo for over a century now, didn't pause a moment to consider whether the people affected by a disaster thousands of miles away were within his required circle of empathy or help. He took action, with conviction, because those people were worth as much to him as he himself was. We haven't resolved the colonial status of Puerto Rico in any satisfactory way, and life there gets more precarious by the year, as economic forces and climate change conspire against it. We also haven't resolved the sense of twice-baked alienation Clemente so often felt early in his baseball career. Preferring to read the direction of the wind and blow with it, the Commissioner's Office has abdicated any responsibility to address either issue. It can't be that way, for those of us who care a bit more about the game and the world it's played in than do Rob Manfred and his cohort. The history of American influence (sometimes imperialist, sometimes colonialist, sometimes covert, sometimes salutary, sometimes calamitous) in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela and other places is inextricably connected to the growth and development of baseball. In a sport awash in Spanish speakers and immigrants and supported by no small number of people who sound and look like those players, baseball has a huge, urgent duty to speak up each September—not just about the virtue of a great throwing arm and mission work, but about the relationship between the U.S. and many of its neighbors, and about how wide our circles of empathy ought to sweep. The league doesn't want that conversation right now, so please, start it yourselves. Otherwise, we'll be paying just two-thirds tribute to the legacy of Clemente—and letting too much water flow under the bridge. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images In another sporting culture, Nico Hoerner almost certainly would have become a soccer player. That would probably be his best sport. He's gifted with some speed, but by the standards of the major American sports (basketball, football, and yes, even baseball), he's on the small side. His body type is best-suited to baseball, of those options, but there's a problem: baseball is all about explosive rotation, and Hoerner is not an explosive rotational athlete. You can see this in all the major aspects of the game. It's the key to understanding why he looks different making so many kinds of plays than many of his peers do. It's why he'll never hit for much power, but it's also why he makes some plays that other second basemen can't—and it's starting to work in his favor when it comes to hitting for a consistent average and scattering just enough doubles and triples to be a major offensive contributor. Hoerner runs differently than most guys do, on the basepaths. It's why he's a fine basestealer, but better when going first-to-third or first-to-home. You've probably noticed it before; he seems to pump his arms and legs in a more powerful, compact way than many players do. Yet, he's not elite in terms of raw speed. Most ballplayers run a bit looser and a bit more languidly, even if they're faster, because most of them are exceptional athletes primarily in the way their hips and shoulders can rotate—their range of motion, in combination with strength and coordination. Hoerner is a straight-line mover. The problem with that, of course, is that most ballplayers excel in rotation for a reason. The most important actions on the diamond are the swing and the throwing motion, and both are (primarily) rotational movements. A player who lacks the ability to turn exceptionally fast (not just with their arms, but with those hips and shoulders) will always lack sheer swing speed and arm strength, relative to the rest of the league, and that's very limiting. To wit, Hoerner has a swing that most observers would call quick. His hands actually are much quicker than most players', which makes it look like he's swinging a quick stick. In reality, though, great bat speed comes from having lightning in your core, and Hoerner doesn't. Thus, his swing speed ranks in the bottom decile of the league. So does his arm strength. Some of that comes from his choice to play under control at all times, but only a small part. You've heard the old talk about Ichiro Suzuki having been capable of hitting for power if he so chose. That was true; the same is not true of Hoerner. Even if he cut it completely loose, he would be a below-average baseball athlete, in those key areas. That's why he doesn't hit the ball very hard or (especially) lift it with authority on any kind of regular basis. Because he's also a tenacious worker and a student of the game, though, Hoerner has found ways to turn the set of athletic gifts he does have to his advantage, and to mitigate some of the downsides. First, let's talk about how that shows up defensively. Hoerner knows he can't throw hard enough to make many plays ranging far to his right, which would force him to twist and throw back across his body. That informs the way he positions himself in the field. Hoerner plays as deep as the rules allow, almost no matter what. He trusts that he can gain ground with that straight-line speed, on slowly hit grounders. Playing deep gives him more time to read harder-hit balls and move to them in ways that suit his movement profile. He also plays closer to second base than the average second baseman. In other words, he's putting more batted balls on his left and giving himself more time to navigate ones hit to his right. You can see that in the images below on the left and the right, where he's highlighted as a big red circle amid the cluster of all second basemen's average positioning against lefty batters (on the left) and righties (on the right). The middle image, meanwhile, shows Hoerner's Statcast Outs Above Average based on his starting position, which reveals (unsurprisingly) that he's at his best when he starts closer to the bag. A few actual plays can illustrate this more concretely. First, here's Hoerner using the space he makes to his left, knowing that with it comes plenty of time to make the short throw if he can just get there. YVkyVmVfWGw0TUFRPT1fVXdrQVZGeFdCd1VBWFZKV1ZBQUhWd2RXQUZnQVV3SUFCRjFVQVFvRUF3UldCUUJm.mp4 A lot of second basemen—even or especially some who twist more explosively and flexibly than Hoerner—don't get to this ball, because they try to use that rapid rotation to race to their left on a flat route. Hoerner, however, has learned to make plays like this by giving ground. He turns and gets his shoulders square to his eventual destination, going away from the ball, making the play into a straight-line pursuit. Few infielders are comfortable doing this; it's more like an outfielder cutting off the ball in the gap or a safety taking an angle on a ball carrier. For Hoerner, though, it's the right way to make the play. Here's a play to his right. OHl3UGVfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFCVlVRWU5CMVlBQ0ZvR1V3QUhWRkFFQUFCUlZnUUFCRlFIQTFKWFVBRUVVMVJS.mp4 Two things work in Hoerner's favor, here. First, William Contreras is a slow runner. Second, the ball hits the mound and takes a high bounce, slowing it down somewhat. Still, it's a hard-hit ball he has to field on the third-base side of second, but he makes it a relatively easy play. What's interesting, though, is how. He started quite close to the bag, given that Contreras is more likely than most righty batters to hit a ball sharply the other way. If Contreras had done so, Hoerner would have trusted himself to try fielding it the same way he got T.J. Friedl in the previous clip. By playing where he did, though, he essentially eliminated the chance that he'd have to make a play moving any faster to his right than he did. Once he fields the ball, he also uses the time he has with Contreras going down the line to turn and (effectively) run toward his target. That backhand play where a fielder plants their foot and fires like a pitcher? It's only a last resort for Hoerner, and not an effective one. Here's the hardest throw he's managed on a non-relay this year, a mere 76 miles per hour. M3lxNHlfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFOUkFWRldCUVlBRDFJR0JRQUhCZ1ZYQUZnTUJRQUFWMVFCQmdCWENRWURCZ0lB.mp4 For context, here's Ketel Marte making a play similar to the one we just studied from Hoerner, in a very different way—punctuated by a throw at 81 mph. bmJNYmdfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFrRUIxMEdBd1VBQVZCUlh3QUhCMWRUQUZrTkFWSUFVMUZXQ0FRR0FRTlVVMU1I.mp4 Another way to make that play is the one seen here from Andrés Giménez: starting more toward first base, running faster to field the ball, choppy steps to get the feet set, and then a hard throw. OTc5WnlfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFkWUJRZFZVUW9BWGxRTFV3QUhBUTRFQUZoV0FWZ0FCMTFUQkFJQ0FBY0FCZ1Zl.mp4 There's no question, really, that Giménez and Marte have better suites of baseball tools than Hoerner's. Yet, he's a better defender than either, at this stage of their respective careers. He's had to figure out different ways to make plays than they have, but he's done it so well that it looks more like they're the desperate problem-solvers and he's the natural. There's something similar happening with his offense. Entering Sunday, Hoerner was batting .307/.361/.423 since the middle of May. He's exceptional at making contact, of course, but that's not the primary driver of his offensive value. Rather, he's figured out how to consistently pull the ball effectively—and how to avoid the prolonged periods of weak contact and empty at-bats that cannibalized his production in each of his previous full (or near-full) seasons. Hoerner never will hit for power, because his hips and shoulders don't permit it. To understand that batter, let's compare his swing to those of some of his right-handed teammates. This is the moment at which each player's swing finishes working down into the back of the hitting zone and starts to work through it. Notice that Matt Shaw and Dansby Swanson are much more open, already, in terms of the orientation of their front shoulder. Seiya Suzuki is in a similar position to Hoerner, with the front shoulder, but notice that his hands are farther from his body; he's already extending his arms more. Finally, take note of the position of the back elbow of each hitter, relative to the back side of their torso—and of their respective attack directions (the angle of the barrel of their bat, relative to an imaginary line from the mound to the plate) at this instant. That Hoerner is closer to square to the incoming pitch than the others tells you this moment when he starts to work uphill comes later in his swing than it does for the others. Yet, as you can see, they're all farther along in the process of working under their front half (and thus, their top hands are all driving forward more) than Hoerner is. In short, because Hoerner has less rotation and less bend in his core, his hands do much more of the work of his swing. He's brought his bat around his body more than the others have, but isn't actually getting the bat out front to the same extent, because that front shoulder is staying home. Part of that is a choice Hoerner makes, to utilize the whole field and cover a wide variety of pitch types and locations. A much larger part, though, is simply what his body is (and isn't) good at. He could try to open up more, but it would only pull him off the ball and cause problems. He can't rotate various parts of his core as independently and create as much torque within his frame as other hitters can. The compensation for that dearth of power lies in the fact that his swing is all hands. That's why he's able to make contact so well. He's endlessly adaptable; there's just a low ceiling on the sheer force he can generate with his cut. From that full embrace of adaptability has come a forward leap in his contact skills this year. His in-zone contact rate is up to 94.5%; his strikeout rate is down to 7.2%. Rather than chase power that will remain beyond his reach, Hoerner has gotten comfortable this year simply pulling a clean and undefendable line drive to left field. That's been the genius of this season for him. Entering Sunday, he had 37 pulled batted balls at a launch angle between 5° and 12° this year, up from 17 in 2022, 23 in 203, and 21 in 2024. That's important, because he's hitting a cool .757 on those balls. Those are the singles (and sometimes doubles) that aren't BABIP luck; they're perfect process, resulting in a near-certain outcome. They often look like this: a0Q5TU1fWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdaVlVnSlhBd0lBV3dOUlZ3QUhVd2NGQUFBQVYxSUFVd0ZRQ1FvQkJGVlhCUW9B.mp4 But sometimes, of course, they also look like this. Hoerner's overall pull rate is up this year, but the way he's locked in his swing over the last few months has resulted in a particular spike in this kind of hit. No defensive alignment a team can reasonably play against you can stop that from being a hit, and no player in baseball has more hits of this kind this season; Hoerner is tied with José Ramírez for the league lead. It's become a relentless joy to watch Hoerner play, in all phases. He's never going to find 15 homers per year, let alone 20. In a game that runs on power and demands superb athleticism, he'll never be the best player in the league, and he might not age all that well. At this moment, though, he's at his peak, because he's blending good athleticism (albeit of an unorthodox kind, for a baseball player) with intelligence, skill, and endless adjustments to get the most out of his talent. The Cubs would be lost without him, but as it is, they're hitting their stride at just the right time. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-Imagn Images It would be ungenerous to suggest that Craig Counsell has a particular way he wins games. No successful big-league manager can win in just one way (sorry, Mike Matheny), and for a solid decade, Counsell has proved himself to be a very successful big-league manager. He tries hard to enter every game with multiple road maps to the 27th out and the singing of 'Go, Cubs, Go' in mind. The Cubs brought him in at the highest annual salary in managerial history because they believe his genius is flexible enough to take them to the end of the season and beyond. That said, even good, creative managers fall into patterns and have certain comfort zones. Some like a quick hook; some use a slower one. Some will take early risks to create a run or two, while others prefer to sit back and let their offense work. As important as fluidity is, you can't win 90 different ways in a 162-game grind. There has to be a Plan A, to which one is most eager to hew when circumstances allow. For Counsell, that plan is as follows: play great defense. Let it be a low-scoring game, but win not by playing small ball, but by creating more chances than the other team. That can mean having some power in the lineup and/or taking an exceptionally patient approach. It just has to mean keeping the pressure on the opponent. In the middle innings, take a lead (even if it be a narrow one). Then, just hold on, baby. Here are the records in one-run games for Counsell-managed teams, going back to 2016 (his first full season at the helm for Milwaukee). 2016: 23-28 2017: 25-22 2018: 33-19 2019: 27-18 2021: 21-15 2022: 28-23 2023: 29-18 2024: 23-28 2025: 24-16 Once he got his team together a bit, Counsell consistently won the close ones throughout his time with Milwaukee. He wasn't able to bring that skill to bear in his first year with the Cubs, but this season, he's back at it. Let's look at a different number, too, though. Here's the record of each year's Counsell-led team in games in which they led after six innings. (For ease of reference, I'm also adding the number of total games in which they had such a lead, in parentheses.) 2016: 60-9 (69) 2017: 71-9 (80) 2018: 73-6 (79) 2019: 67-6 (73) 2021: 74-10 (84) 2022: 61-13 (74) 2023: 65-9 (74) 2024: 62-13 (75) 2025: 70-10 (80) The number in parentheses is almost more important than the record, of course, because teams who lead games after six innings go on to win them an overwhelming percentage of the time. However, Counsell-led teams have also been better than average even in that regard. The only year in which Counsell's Brewers were worse than the .870 average winning percentage for all teams over this span was 2022. When he came to the Cubs last year, though, they were very much like that frustrating 2022 club. This year, they're back on track, in both important respects. This team still doesn't convert leads into wins over the late innings as efficiently as the 2017-21 Brewers did (and the Brewers themselves are an extraordinary 75-5 when they lead after six this year), but they're much better than they were last season. They're also looking likely to have more leads after six than all but that 2021 Brewers team. Just as importantly, after a great start to the season during which the offense was humming so well that Counsell didn't have to do much to get them across the finish line, it feels like the team is now getting used to winning his way, even on tough days. They ground out a win Wednesday in the outskirts of Atlanta, to sew up a series victory. Jameson Taillon wasn't overpowering, but he pitched around an early threat. Trailing 1-0 entering the third inning, the Cubs got a home run from Carson Kelly, an RBI double from Justin Turner, and then a tack-on run on a Seiya Suzuki sacrifice fly. Then, a parade of relievers held the home side scoreless to lock down the win. Eight days earlier, they did the same thing to the same opponents at Wrigley Field, when a three-run Kyle Tucker home run in the third inning helped them run out to a 4-0 lead. They held on for a 4-3 victory that night. On August 30 in Colorado, it was much the same story. Ditto for August 24 in Anaheim, and for August 20, against the Brewers. He couldn't just cruise to those victories; they were close games. Those previous instances included six-inning starts and came when Counsell still had Daniel Palencia to turn to for three of the outs between those starters and the end of the game, but on Wednesday, he got to out No. 27 even though Taillon only took him halfway to that destination, and without Palencia. Of course, it hasn't always worked out, even recently. The Cubs led after six on September 3 and September 7, and lost each time. As the Cubs knuckle down for a fight to hold onto the top NL Wild Card spot the rest of the way, though, it's encouraging that they seem to have tapped fully into Counsell's favorite blueprint. This team isn't going to blow teams out as often as they did early in the season, especially when they get to the playoffs and have to face a higher level of competition. However, they have the right pieces to finagle lots of wins, by scratching their way to a lead and then clinging tightly to it. Counsell teams don't specialize in comebacks—not because he fails to instill resiliency in them, but because he doesn't chase wins. Desperate pinch-hitting or pinch-running moves aren't his style. Nor will he use his top relievers to keep a game within a run or two, unless they're in need of work, anyway. Although he's had a reputation for bullpenning, Counsell really doesn't lean in that direction, by modern standards. His best teams have had deep and capable starting rotations. He tries to spread his relievers' workload evenly, and if he can trust a starter, he will. Joe Maddon, the last Cubs manager with any reputation for genius, craved and cultivated that. He exalted in the extravagant strategy. He wanted to get weird. Counsell, by contrast, likes an early lead and a slow choke-out. He wins boringly, on purpose. The three-batter minimum and curtailed September roster expansion have made that plan a bit tougher to execute than it was when he first started, but he's shown the flexibility to work around the tighter constraints. Now, his charges are showing the balance of talent and execution to consistently win in his preferred way—just in time for their final test. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images The Cubs get Jameson Taillon back in their rotation Wednesday evening, as they wrap up a series in the wealthy White suburbs of Atlanta. Taillon will make his first start since August 24, and just his third for the big-league team since the end of June. Calf and groin injuries have sidelined him for much of the second half. Even when he's been available, Taillon has been underwhelming this year—not poor, but certainly not the stabilizing workhorse the rotation has craved. After a volatile first two seasons in Chicago, he's settled into the middle: he had a 4.84 ERA in 2023, then a 3.27 in 2024, and it's 4.15 in 2025. This summer's volatility has come in the form of those trips to the injured list. In the process, he's faded from (at times) second or third in the team's pecking order to a clear fourth. When the team uses the final week of the season to set their rotation for the Wild Card Series, it will be Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd and Cade Horton whom they position to start, as long as all three stay healthy between now and then. Taillon is still very much in the starting mix for Chicago, alongside Colin Rea, Javier Assad, Aaron Civale and Michael Soroka. He could end up starting Game 1 of the National League Division Series, should the Cubs advance that far but require all three games of the Wild Card Series to do so. However, there are a few things the team will try to suss out over the next few turns in the rotation, as they arrange their plans for that possible series and their roster for the Wild Card round. Firstly, let's take notice of the coincidence of Soroka's first rehab appearance with Triple-A Iowa and Taillon's return to the Cubs. Soroka will work multiple innings tonight for Iowa, putting him in the same spot in a hypothetical rotation as Taillon now occupies in the current one. That speaks to one possible way the team might handle games not started by Imanaga, Boyd or Horton, come the postseason (and even how they might navigate the middle of those games, depending on hwo they unfold): piggybacking and other multi-inning bridge appearances, making use of the fact that they have so many usable guys who are accustomed to working in bulk roles. Bullpen games in the playoffs are no scandalous notion anymore, and the Cubs would be especially well-positioned to run one, given their three left-handed relievers. If they want to, they can easily use Taylor Rogers and/or Drew Pomeranz to break up two bulk appearances by righties like Taillon, Soroka, Assad or Civale, slicing through a lefty-heavy pocket of the opposing order without stretching the staff too thin. They could also have one or more of those guys become a dedicated partner to Boyd or Imanaga down the stretch, soaking up innings while shortening the leash to keep those veteran lefties fresh for the playoffs—and flipping the platoon equation for the opposing lineup, along the way. This gallimaufry of swingmen has value over the final few weeks of the season, and that value will stretch into the postseason, for however long they play. A somewhat more intriguing alternative, though, could be to move Taillon himself into a short relief role, helping backfill for the loss of Daniel Palencia. In his start with Iowa last week, Taillon's stuff was a bit diminished. He was only sitting at 91 mph with his fastball, which is a tick off his usual register and two ticks down from where he sits when he's at his best. His pitch shapes were also a bit off. Here's the relationship between his horizontal and vertical movement by pitch type for that outing. (I've connected the dots representing each of his offerings in that contest, using the red lines you see.) He had good sweep on his slider, but his cutter didn't have the lift it sports when it's working. Nor did his sinker or changeup have the depth he tries to get from them (though, to be fair, he only threw one sinker in the game). Compare the above to the shapes Taillon had in his best game this year by Stuff+, against the Diamondbacks in April. Taillon's heater might warm back up with a bit of adrenaline once he toes big-league rubber in front of bigger crowds and with bigger stakes. The surest way to get him throwing 93 (or better) again, though, might be to invite him not to pace himself—but rather, to cut it loose in appearances of 10-20 pitches. With his feel for spin, when he's throwing in the mid-90s, he has the capacity to dominate. He could get back into that range by moving to short relief, and since the Cubs have an apparent need in the back end of their bullpen, that's not an outlandish notion. On balance, it's still less likely than leaving Taillon in the rotation and asking him to eat some innings. Soroka is a candidate to make the transition to the pen instead, and isn't as built up for starting as is Taillon. Other than (arguably) Assad, no one on the roster has as much upside as a fourth playoff starter as Taillon does. Either way, the Cubs need to see more sheer stuff from him than he's shown in his last few appearances (dating back, now, multiple months), but they've been cautious with him for exactly this reason. They need to play well to secure good position in the playoff bracket come the end of the regular season, and Taillon should contribute to that effort. After that, things could unfold in any number of ways. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images It hasn't even been a decade since Anthony Rizzo was the (admittedly, relatively veteran) heart and soul of an exceptionally young World Series championship team. It's not supposed to be time, yet, for him to come home solely for a sunshine sendoff. Rizzo, 36, was still supposed to be coming up with big hits right now, whether it be for the Cubs or for some other team. Injuries played a role in his early decline, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. Of the potential future Hall of Famers on that 2016 team, it felt like Rizzo had the easiest path. He'd already accomplished so much, so young. He could do so many things, and he brought such extraordinary charisma to the field and the clubhouse. He was a great player with a Tony Perez-like marathon career left before him. Obviously, it didn't pan out that way. Instead, the last anyone saw of Rizzo in competitive play was when he and Gerrit Cole were unable to convert a tricky ground ball by Mookie Betts into the final out of the fifth inning in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. Rizzo looked old and broken throughout New York's run to the pennant, and his lack of mobility was part of the reason why the Yankees lost the Fall Classic. His whole post-Cubs career has been a bitter disappointment, just as (for practically everyone involved) the very fact of his departure from the team was a major disappointment. Nothing has been quite right on the North Side since Rizzo left, but on the other hand, nothing was quite right there even for the last three years of his time with the team. And you know what? Come Saturday, all of that frustration and bitterness and tarnished memory gets wiped away. The happy beginning of Rizzo's career gave way to a stormier middle than anyone would have preferred, but now, he and the team get a happy ending. Rizzo batted .272/.372/.489 in 1,308 games in a Cubs uniform. He was the first major acquisition of the Theo Epstein/Jed Hoyer era, and the first pillar they put in place for what became the redemptive championship team. He turned out to be perfect for that uniquely challenging role, with the blend of sheer talent, dedication to craft, humor, grace, and fearless tenacity required to obliterate a century of futility. He was the leader of that team, in every sense, and while some of their later failures might rest partially at his feet, their early successes all have to be draped on his shoulders. It's been a season of mixed vibes at Wrigley Field. The Cubs are October-bound, but they've underachieved for much of the summer. An infusion of sheer joy (and, perhaps, a bit of magic) could be just what the doctor ordered. Rizzo and the team have already sketched out a long-term relationship that will bring a great community benefactor back into the picture. This is good news, and it should make for an unexpectedly festive atmosphere this weekend in Wrigleyville. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-Imagn Images After a week of "will they, won't they," the Cubs finally did: Kyle Tucker was placed on the injured list, retroactive to September 6, as he deals with a calf issue. It's the latest setback in a long saga of trouble for Tucker, who is beginning to give off Kris Bryant vibes: a phenomenal player with a studiously professional approach to the game, but one who struggles both to avoid getting hurt and to play well when dealing with even a nagging problem. He's still batted a solid .258/.371/.428 since the finger injury he suffered June 1, but that includes a seven-week stretch in which he had a .560 OPS. Perversely, he hasn't been quite good enough for this to feel like the crushing blow it would normally be. In Tucker's place, the team called up not Owen Caissie, but Moisés Ballesteros. Presumably, they intend to use Seiya Suzuki as the primary right fielder for as long as Tucker is out, and Ballesteros will fill in as a part-time designated hitter. He adds a good left-handed bat to their position-player mix, just as Caissie would, but the reality is that the Cubs are running out of hitters who are actually hitting. Suzuki is struggling to generate any power since the All-Star break. Pete Crow-Armstrong now has a knee contusion to deal with, a change unlikely to ameliorate what has been an awful second half in its own right. Lately, the engines of this offense are Dansby Swanson, Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner—fine players, all, but the guys the team counted on only to be secondary weapons at the plate. With Tucker out, the most important player on the team is Michael Busch. He's been their best overall hitter this season, despite ugly numbers in the second half. He needs to lock in and get hot to finish the season. The Cubs need someone to carry them to the Wild Card Series, where they can hope for recoveries and big adjustments to get Tucker, Crow-Armstrong or Suzuki going again. The only player who appears capable of that right now is Busch. For Ballesteros, the promotion is a welcome third chance to make some degree of an impression. He's been used only sparingly and during very short stints in the majors so far, but his bat shows every sign of being ready for the big leagues. It's not as high-ceiling a profile as the team might hope it will be in a few years, and if he can't catch, he might not be able to find enough playing time develop into the best offensive version of himself on this roster. For the balance of this campaign, though, Craig Counsell's challenge is to get him (and Kevin Alcántara) enough playing time both to get each of them into some kind of rhythm and to rest more senior players. Come October, the team might turn out to need both young hitters in bigger roles than they'd imagined. In the meantime, they need to at least give those struggling veterans a bit more of a chance to reset and unwind the grind of the long season. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images At the end of the day Friday, the Cubs had a magic number of 13 to reach the postseason. Any combination of their wins and Reds or Giants losses adding up to 13 would get them into October. Almost as important, though, they had a magic number of 17 to beat out the Padres, which would effectively ensure that they host the Wild Card Series starting September 30. With 21 games to play, that seemed very doable. Alas, since then, the Padres haven't lost; the Reds have only lost to the Padres; and the Giants are 1-2, while the Cubs are 0-3. Chicago's magic number is down to 11, but with only 18 games left on the schedule, they'd need to play .500 ball to completely indemnify themselves against a crazy hot streak by San Francisco or Cincinnati to close out the season. The Cubs and Reds still play four games in Cincinnati next week, which will be Chicago's chance to knock out that particular pursuer, but the Giants are beyond their control. San Francisco does play a Dodgers team that still needs to win to hold onto the NL West seven more times, so hopefully, the Cubs are safe in terms of simply making the playoffs. Holding onto the top Wild Card berth, however, is a very different story. The Padres are heating up, and have a much easier remaining schedule than the Giants do. It wouldn't be at all surprising if San Diego went 11-7 or 12-6 the rest of the way, which would force the Cubs to win 10 or 11 of their final 18 to edge them out. That, too, is doable, but the three days without progress are a real problem. Daniel Palencia is done for the regular season, at least. Pete Crow-Armstrong was only available as the designated hitter Monday night, and he's woefully underqualified for that role. Kyle Tucker is hurt, again, and has missed a week despite being on the active roster the whole time. Seiya Suzuki isn't hitting well since the All-Star break. This team is limping, just when others are surging toward the finish line. Making the playoffs is an important objective. The right goal coming into the season was to win the National League Central, and the Cubs have already failed in that endeavor. Part of the reason for that, though, is the dominance of the Brewers, so making the postseason and playing past the best-of-three Wild Card Series is a respectable way to salvage the season. At this moment, it doesn't feel automatic, but in a way, that's a good thing, too. It adds drama to the final few weeks of the season. Since the team is already playing for a consolation prize, it's nice that it will come with a fight down the stretch. Stumbling backward into October would be a deep disappointment; getting crucial wins just in time to make it would give at least the facade of a true pennant race. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images The 2023 Cubs fell apart when, down the stretch, they couldn't find a reliable set of relievers to keep them in games. Adbert Alzolay pitched much of the final two months with his arm hanging by a thread. Michael Fulmer tore his elbow. Mark Leiter Jr. stayed just healthy enough to keep pitching (although he pitched much less as September went along) and blew two games during the team's collapse over the final fortnight. The players on whom the team had relied throughout their late-summer surge couldn't keep things together in the fall. In 2024, the team largely fell out of contention early, but they did make a half-hearted surge in August and early September to get back onto the fringes of the playoff race. That hope fizzled, too, because pitchers couldn't hold up. They entered their Labor Day game against the Pirates just three games out of the final Wild Card spot, but Jorge López blew that game and then went on the injured list, missing most of the balance of the season. If they still held onto any gasp of hope, it flickered out in mid-September, when they made a brave mid-game comeback against the Dodgers but blew the game late, then went to Colorado and watched Drew Smyly (his career flaming out, at last) fail to hold leads on back-to-back nights as Craig Counsell tried to find anyone he could still trust. You could be forgiven, therefore, for getting a pit in your stomach when thinking about this Cubs bullpen. Constructed the same way as each of the last two seasons' pens were—with remarkable veteran reclamation projects as complements for one hard-throwing product of the farm system—this year's group has stumbled a bit in the second half. Daniel Palencia's August was rough; he had four truly poor outings and two more very shaky saves. He added injury to that injury on Sunday, when he left after having already blown the save against the Nationals with a "posterior shoulder area" problem, as Counsell termed it. That could be a lat issue, something in his teres major, or one of the major shoulder structures (labrum and rotator cuff) we think of more readily, but whatever the case, it'd be a minor miracle if he avoids the injured list. These do not tend to be false alarms, and even mild versions of such injuries tend to take weeks, rather than days, to heal. The Cubs should plan not to have Palencia available at least until the Wild Card Series, and even then, it's not a sure thing. Counsell will have to make a new plan for his pen, on the fly—and then, perhaps, he might get lucky and get Palencia back quite soon, after all. For the purposes of this exercise, though, let's assume that the Cubs (as usual) don't get that lucky. What would a viable postseason bullpen look like, if Palencia can't be a member thereof? The team will start Matthew Boyd, Shota Imanaga and Cade Horton in the three potential games of a Wild Card Series. They're likely to hold Jameson Taillon off the roster for that series so that he can start Game 1 if they get as far as the Division Series. With those four names off the board, then, who fits into the relief corps if the Cubs do start the playoffs without Palencia? The Locks Though Palencia had emerged as the unquestioned closer, he wasn't the only trusted arm in high-leverage spots. The Cubs will simply slot Brad Keller into the role Palencia looks likely to vacate. That would move Andrew Kittredge up from his secondary setup role to the primary one, from the right side. Caleb Thielbar, Drew Pomeranz and Taylor Rogers will be the three lefties in middle relief. For the three-game Wild Card Series, the team will peobably carry 12 pitchers. Three will be the aforementioned starters, and in Keller, Kittredge, Thielbar, Pomeranz and Rogers, we've penciled in five relievers. That leaves us four more spots. The Bubble Guys Again, let's assume Taillon will be held back for use in the opening game of a Division Series. That would mean that, in addition to the starters already named, the team would have Javier Assad, Colin Rea and Aaron Civale as bulk innings/long relief options. That role isn't given much weight or consideration come October, most of the time, but in various ways, each of these three offers a more valuable twist on the traditional version of that job. All are kitchen-sink guys, but all also have a couple of pitches they can focus on in any given at-bat and the average caliber of stuff that can tick up importantly when switching from starting to relieving. In terms of more traditional playoff relievers, though, the cupboard is pretty bare. I'm sure Porter Hodge can do enough to convince some people to believe in him again even with a season on the line, but don't count me among that group. Ben Brown has big upside in short relief, but the team has been slow to move him into that mode. It's understandable, given his health history, but they should embrace the attendant risks down the stretch and make him a one-inning arm, to see what they have. Ryan Brasier is much less sexy a possibility, but he is one. The wild card is Michael Soroka, currently working his way back from the shoulder issue that sidelined him after just two innings of work for the Cubs in early August. His stuff could play up even more than Assad's, Rea's or Civale's in a bullpen role, as he showed late last season with the White Sox. He hasn't yet made an official rehab appearance, but is scheduled to do so Wednesday. If that goes well, it's not hard to imagine him stepping into a bullpen job for the final two weeks of the regular season. The Verdict Were I making out the roster, I would list the following pitching staff for the Cubs when they start the Wild Card Series on Sept. 30—assuming no more losses between now and then: Shota Imanaga Matthew Boyd Cade Horton Brad Keller Andrew Kittredge Caleb Thielbar Drew Pomeranz Taylor Rogers Colin Rea Javier Assad Ben Brown Michael Soroka That's far from a dominant pitching staff, but it's not an untenable one, either. With lefties likely to start the first (and perhaps only) two games of the series, it could pay off in a huge way for Counsell to have three righties (Rea, Assad and Soroka) who can be trusted with multiple innings even in the playoff pressure cooker, in case Boyd or Imanaga is knocked out of the box early or runs up a high pitch count and faces a fifth-inning jam. Ideally, of course, this will be rendered moot, because Palencia will turn out to be ok. At this moment, that feels unlikely. The Cubs have a much better record and are in much better position to weather this storm than they've been the last two Septembers. The storm is still here, though, and surviving it will require all of Counsell's considerable creative faculties in pitching staff management. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images I've fallen in love—what I now know to be love, and not some childish infatuation or passing crush—six times in my life: the first time I held each of my four children; some night in the spring of 2008, walking along the shore of Lake Michigan long after dark with the young woman who would eventually become my wife; and, first, in late August of 2007, when I first drank in Chicago. I arrived for college that month at Loyola University Chicago, and while I made friends fast enough, really, I spent most of the first six weeks I was there making the acquaintance of the city. I'd visited it some uncountable number of times, over the previous decade, but that was as a kid, and it was as an outsider. Now, the city was (in some tiny part) mine, and I wanted to fully feel it. That, of course, was the summer of Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett redecorating the clubhouse; Lou Piniella's reflection in Mark Wegner's sunglasses; Aramis Ramírez's walkoff homer to beat the Brewers; and Alfonso Soriano's scorching September, to secure the division title. Naturally, I spent a huge amount of time at Wrigley Field that summer and fall; I attended 12 of the last 15 Cubs home games. Because I was a frugal college student, though, I wasn't buying good tickets. Most days, I would either get out of the earliest class the Lake Shore campus offered and hop straight onto the Red Line, or get an early start toward my 10:15 class downtown so that I could hop off at Addison on the way. Those were the days when you could line up on game day to grab whatever few tickets remained available, or to purchase standing-room tickets, for anywhere from $8 to $12. That's how I became a connoisseur of the smell of Wrigleyville in the morning. Life is best savored via its bouquet. All our senses are important, but none is as vivid or visceral as smell. Immediately, I found the scent of the city more enthralling than anything else about it—the color, the heat, the volume of people, anything. Plenty of Chicagoans (and nearly all outsiders) lament the places where sour smells like liquor, trash or urine dominate, but those are relatively few, really. Anyone who's really spent a morning with the city—especially this time of year, the late summer or early fall—has to admit that it offers one of life's truly wonderful symphonies of aroma. The layers are simple, but together, they're magic. First, there's the smell of the greenery in glory. Even into September, clematis climbing many walls and fences throughout the city blooms and offers up a sweet hint of nectar. The trees aren't yet rounding the corner toward fall; that's a few more weeks away. Then, there's the lake. Wrigley's about as far off the lake as you can go while still getting a noseful of it, but it's there as a subtler note even farther west. There's a tactile element to this part, of course, because the air is pregnant with water and you can feel that in your nose, but it's also about the lively smell the lake takes on from spring to fall, when algae is in bloom and the activity in and on the water stirs up more organic material. The best time of day to experience that smell swings, from one end of the season to the other. You want to catch it at about 10 PM in the spring, but by early September, that layer of the city's smell is strongest and best in the morning. Finally, there are the people smells—especially food. It quickly got to be my habit, way back when I first hit the city, to walk the stretch of Clark St. from Addison down to Belmont each Saturday or Sunday morning, even if the Cubs were out of town. Wrigley didn't have to be occupied, on those days, for the smells of the strip of pubs and grills coming to life to be delightful. I've spent plenty of time in remote locales, marveling at nature. I've lived a long time in suburbs, which have their own charms and their own noses. But you'll never convince me that the smells of a Midwest city revving up for a festival day in September can be beaten—especially Chicago. As you've surely heard, President Donald Trump posted a message of war and malice on social media Saturday, aimed directly at Chicago. He chose (or, clearly but unimportantly, an underling like Stephen Miller or Pete Hegseth chose) to invoke both the language and the imagery of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now to get that message across. This was posted at 10:38 AM Central. The Cubs began a game against the Washington Nationals at 1:20 PM. It's extraordinary, when framed that way, isn't it? The president declared war on a city, and the baseball game scheduled for less than four hours later took place as though nothing had happened. It's a juxtaposition as poignant as another that had to do with the same movie. In 1981, when martial law was enacted in Poland so that the Soviet-supported puppet government could viciously put down a worker-led resistance, tanks rolled into Warsaw. An astute photographer named Christopher Niedenthal snapped a photo of one in front of a theater in which a Polish dub of Apocalypse Now was the headline attraction. Soon, in the wake of Trump's self-styled poster, there might be a similar photo of an unwelcome military vehicle in Chicago, which has famously called itself the second-most Polish city in the world. (That's never quite been true, but nor has it been baseless. My wife and I got a dog, between getting married and beginning to have our kids, from a shelter in West Rogers Park. His name was Dyzio, and he only understood Polish.) Trump's post specifically paraphrased the most famous line from the film, wherein Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) says, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." That line is meant as a warning, fairly early in the movie, about just how deep the protagonists are about to plumb the depths of human nature through their mission into a war zone. It's the clearest distillation of the insanity at the heart of war (and, perhaps, the human condition), and it's certainly not meant as a sentiment to celebrate. Too often, though, it's also condensed. To the quote itself is appended the sentence that bookends the monologue: "Smells like... victory." But the full quotation is: Although Apocalypse Now is a somewhat problematic war epic—so dedicated to its propounding of the complicated, ugly dual truths at the core of its source material (1899 novella Heart of Darkness) that it sometimes seems to glorify war, and certainly leaves much unsaid about the specifics of the Vietnam War, in which it's set—the scene in which Kilgore brutally conquers a beach (partially) for the pleasure of surfing the waves next to it is as unvarnished an excoriation of war's absurdity and evil as any image Trump and his team might have picked. In the AI image appended to the post, Trump is dressed as Duvall's insane character. Being an utter fool is not a sufficient explanation for that; it's an intentional repudiation of the scene's initial message. It's an argument that wanton violence and destruction is a good idea, after all, as long as you're the victor, extravagantly stripping to a bare chest and casting about for a surf board amid the mortars and the smell of burning flesh. It takes a knowing, bad-faith malefactor to post that image. What has any of this to do with baseball? Not as much as I wish it did, to be honest. We leave the firewalls nice and high, between here and there. We are all, in a sense, surfing just off the beach as the yellow-orange smoke curls outward. We're still paying attention to the Cubs, and to the Bears (whose season begins Monday night). We refuse to be denied our small and selfish entertainment, just as Kilgore did. If we're willing to drop those blinders and see the big picture, though, these things could not be more intertwined. Sports, if they are mere entertainment, are unjustifiable. I prefer to think they're more than that—that they are, like rock music or movies, light art. Maybe we spend 90% of our time watching them simply enjoying (or decrying) what's going on, within the specific context of the game or the song or the story, but if any of these media deserve to exist at all, then they come back to us in other moments. When we lay down to sleep at night, or when we walk the street and breathe deeply to smell the wondrous morning, or months later when we long for summer, or years later when we need some inspiration or some bracing memory of grace under pressure, we return to those experiences and see something in them that didn't feel as important when they were happening. If that's true, then sports are as vital to a community as great theater or a vibrant music scene—and, because all art is in conversation with its audience, the community is vital to sports. Teams are sources of civic pride and unity, but civics are also the sources of the teams. The Cubs don't matter, except insofar as there is a community of people who care about them. What Trump is threatening is a deep and ghoulish fracture of that community, and of the community of White Sox fans. "Deportations" might sound less ghastly than "napalm" when substituted into that original quote, but what Trump is threatening is a nightmarish burning-down of communities, all right. Chicago without immigrants is not Chicago, just as America without immigrants is not America. Alas, that is what this administration wants: a Kilgore-like sense of victory, made up of eerie silence and the utter absence of the victims they view as enemies. It's an unfortunately widespread fiction that Wrigleyville and downtown Chicago are wealthy bastions within an otherwise unclean, dying or lethal city. Like all big cities (and all small towns, and all farm communities, and all coral reefs), Chicago has real problems, but they are outweighed by its potential and its beauty. Those things—the "lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning," as Carl Sandburg called it, responding to the very same generalized accusations still being lobbed at the city 111 years later—are what the Trump administration can't seem to appreciate, and that makes it doubly important that we do. "Deportations" coming to Chicago via militarized sweeps and enforcement is likely to mean many, many people who have lived here all their lives being unjustly arrested and separated from their families. My now-wife and I volunteered many sweet-smelling Sunday mornings at Su Casa Catholic Worker, on the South Side. It's a wonderful community resource—an intentional community where families (many of them sheltering from homelessness or domestic violence, but in a much safer and more stable way than other places can offer) live and work together, serving the neighborhood as well as themselves. It was founded, initially, to serve refugees of war in Central America; that's the kind of family that could easily be targeted by incautious military invaders. Those refugees and their descendants look a lot like many of the players who will continue, for now, to suit up and play at Wrigley Field (and Sox Park) in the coming weeks. Those conflicts have burned out, but ones not unlike them have flared up, too. Just as the administration is gearing up for this police action, too, they've moved back toward a Teddy Roosevelt-era relationship with much of the Caribbean basin, where a great many professional baseball players are actually from. Baseball will continue to move forward, trying as hard as it can to ignore all of this. Many fans will, too—or at least, they will continue to treat baseball as an escape and a reprieve from all worries about the wider world. That's understandable. The league itself has little choice; most individual fans don't know how to do anything other than pursue their established routines. Because sports are art and are always interacting with the world around them, though, this firewall will continue to be breached. It will be breached more and more often, as teams try to celebrate Roberto Clemente Day later this month in a way that doesn't draw hard scrutiny from the administration. Just as many teams scaled down or sanitized the language of their statements on Jackie Robinson Day, they will do so with Clemente's. The league will quietly lobby for ongoing protection of their players from the worst consequences of the administration's policies, but they won't publicly speak up for the millions of people being endangered for looking or speaking like those players. With each big-league city into which troops are sent, that silence will seem more ludicrous, and more people's lives will be materially affected. It will feel sillier and sillier to pretend that baseball—an everyday game, a sport that measures and marks our seasons and gives us daily reassurance that all is normal, all kosher, all good—really makes sense. The community that makes up baseball will be strained more and more. We can't immediately reverse this, but nor should we ignore it. If nothing else, it's important that we remember the smell of Wrigleyville in the morning—and the scents we ought to refuse to let the Trump administration mix into that potpourri. View full article

Image courtesy of © Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images Starting pitchers don't get better the third time through the opposing lineup, and no pitchers dramatically outperform their numbers with nobody on base once someone reaches. Those are immutable truths of baseball, around which lots of modern player evaluations and most in-game strategic choices are built. If you meet a pitcher who has great numbers the third time through the order within a game or whose opponent OPS is 100 points lower with runners on base, you're meeting a fraud; a charlatan; a mountebank. Don't believe a word they say, and don't you dare invest either your faith or your team's precious playoff hopes in them. I've warned you. Lots of others have warned you. We've known these things for 30 years, and for half that time, they've been repeated ad nauseum on every respectable analytical website about baseball. You can't claim not to have been cautioned. Here's the thing: Javier Assad might be special. Consider his opponents' career numbers: 1st time facing opponents in game as a starter: .265/.336/.415 in 457 plate appearances 2nd time facing opponents in game as a starter: .241/.318/.431 in 441 plate appearances 3rd time facing opponents in game as a starter: .237/.330/.364 in 201 plate appearances Nobody on base: .274/.346/.453 in 764 plate appearances Runners on: .210/.296/.339 in 574 plate appearances Those sample sizes aren't all that big. You might be waving your hand dismissively right now. I get it. I was the one warning you, just a minute ago! We're on the same side here, bub. Only, I do want to draw your attention to this: These numbers have patterned themselves pretty much the same way across each of the four big-league seasons of which Assad has pitched at least a part. It's not like he just fluked into one year of a wacky split, and it hasn't washed away. Also, I guess we should notice and acknowledge that he takes the sting out of bats the third time through the order the same way he does when men reach base—not by becoming a sudden strikeout machine or anything, but by sapping hitters' power. You can point to Assad's tremendously deep repertoire, and the fact that pitchers with bigger mixes do tend to do better as they see opponents a second and third time, but that's insufficient to explain what's happening here. You can credit him for what has always seemed a well-balanced mental approach on the mound, and tell yourself a story about him being a fairly durable late bloomer who had lots of time to refine his craft in the minors, but that doesn't adequately explain his splits with runners on, either. This is just noise, right? His 3.44 ERA has to regress toward his 4.58 FIP. His 108 career DRA-, which says he's markedly worse than an average pitcher on the fundamentals, has to tell us more than the ERA, even though he also doesn't give up many unearned runs. Don't buy the magic beans. Keep walking. You can't give the ball to Assad to start a game in October, or even entrust him with a rotation spot over the likes of Jameson Taillon or Colin Rea. This is all a put-on. Unless it isn't. Your call. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Watching Cade Horton pitch over the last six weeks has been one of the game's great pleasures. With his compact frame and his almost twitchy, attack-mode mound presence, he evokes memories of Jake Peavy at his best—but, naturally, Horton throws harder. He's armed with everything a contemporary starter needs, but he works like an old-school ace. When no one is on base, he's not working out of the stretch in the name of efficiency. He takes a wide, even, square stance on the mound, stares daggers at the hitter over his high-held glove, and then works a fast-paced, high-energy motion and cuts the ball loose. He's exceptionally quick in getting back to the rubber, choosing his next pitch and delivering it; he's one of the fastest workers in the big leagues. That changes somewhat with runners on base, as you can see by comparing his splits to those of his highest-volume teammates. Lately, though, we haven't even had to see much of the slowed-down version of Horton, because batters are rarely becoming runners. Against the team from suburban Atlanta on Wednesday, Horton didn't allow a hit, working five sparkling innings on just 75 pitches before being lifted for workload management reasons. He struck out six, and the only baserunner he allowed came on a 10-pitch walk in the first inning. He was in command all night, as he has been for most of his last several outings. We continue to see him do new things, too. On Wednesday, his slider—the pitch Statcast labels as a sweeper, but which he never engineered to behave that way and which he throws like a regular slider, in terms of grip and arm action—was a bit slower and bigger-breaking than usual, which meant that his curveball was humming in at the same speed the slider was. He also had good, consistent run on his sinker and his changeup. Compare that movement array to his start against the Angels in California last month, and you can see how his stuff continues to evolve. He's getting better command of the two pitches that work to his arm side all the time. The breaking stuff has always been great, but learning how his fastball plays in the majors and how to use the sinker and changeup in contrast with his more natural movement profile has unlocked new levels for him seemingly each week over the whole summer. There will (and probably should) be controversy over Craig Counsell's choice to lift Horton so early in a close game Wednesday, after the bullpen coughed up the 1-0 edge they had and the team lost 5-1. Horton's previous workloads are so small that the Cubs have worked a bit scared with him all year, wary (arguably, more than science and medicine support) of letting him take on a normal amount of work in the starting rotation. When he's on the mound, though, Horton becomes more and more the main character of the 2025 Cubs' story with each appearance. As much as many have made of the notion that trading for Kyle Tucker put the Cubs all-in for 2025, the organization itself never thought of things that way. They define themselves as a team trying to build a young core for a long winning window, and in Michael Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Matt Shaw, they've found at least three strong pieces of that core over the last two years. Horton makes four, even before one gets to the questions of whether Miguel Amaya or Daniel Palencia can carve out lasting places in that group. Given the price of starting pitching on the open market, he's phenomenally important to the team's medium-term future, which is why they've handled him so carefully thus far. Games like Wednesday's can be a bit frustrating, but they're ultimately encouraging. Come October, Horton will still be in position to have outings like that one, and each one will mean a great deal more to the team (both present and future) than this one did. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images In a blink, it seems, the Cubs have raced out to a four-game lead over the Padres for the top Wild Card spot in the National League. Chicago had just a one-game edge on San Diego going into the long weekend, but they took two out of three from the Rockies in Denver—while the Padres lost a series to the lowly Twins in Minnesota. Now, thanks to their big comeback Monday, the Cubs have taken two straight from Atlanta to start the week, while the Padres have lost twice to the Orioles. Each team has played two straight bottom-feeders, but the Cubs are 4-1, while the Padres are 1-4. That's flipped the script for the fight between the two to finish the season with home-field advantage for what looks like an almost inevitable Wild Card Series showdown. Practically speaking, the Cubs' lead is only three games. It's four in the standings at this moment, but the teams split their six games early this season. The second tiebreaker between teams is intradivisional record, and for the moment, the two are tied in that department, too. Each is 24-18 against their division rivals, with 10 more games to play. For the Cubs, those 10 come in the form of a seven-game road trip to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in the middle of the month, and a three-game series to close out the season against the Cardinals. For the Padres, it means a whopping seven games against the Rockies and a season-ending set against the Diamondbacks, at home. That's a fairly encouraging run-in for each side, but those games with Colorado make it easier for the Padres. In any scenario in which the two teams end the season tied, the Padres will almost certainly have finished with a better intradivisional record, too, so effectively, the Cubs need to stay one game ahead of them to have home field come September 30. That's a reasonable thing to hope for, though far from a guarantee. After Wednesday's finale against the Orioles, the Padres' schedule fills in around those division games as follows: 3 vs. Reds 3 @ Mets 3 @ White Sox 3 vs. Brewers Meanwhile, around those three remaining series with their divisional also-rans, the Cubs get: 3 vs. Nationals 3 @ Suburban Atlanta 3 vs. Rays 3 vs. Mets You can, loosely, cancel out the Mets series, and the Reds and the Rays are close enough in quality and peskiness to expect each team to do about the same thing across those six games. There's no clear schedule advantage either way. Because the Padres' overall slate is quite easy, they've got a shot to go 14-9 or so even without getting scorching hot. To hold them, off, then, the Cubs have to go at least 11-12. That should be doable. This week's wins have been huge, but the Cubs have to take care of business the rest of the way. With the division race essentially over, the goal has to be to ensure that the season doesn't end at some other park, without bunting being hung at Wrigley Field. That objective is within reach now, thanks to a great recovery from last week's sweep in San Francisco. It's just not a sure thing yet. View full article