Matthew Trueblood

I think you felt it at the end there, the way you closed your comment: you're reading too much into the extremely limited big-league sample, and oversimplifying what the swing data tells us in context. Ballesteros has shown he can lift the ball, over larger samples against high-level competition outside the big leagues. The risk that he doesn't do so enough in the majors is real, but you're sweating it too much at this early stage. Given what he's shown us so far, we need at least another few hundred PAs to see how well he'll be able to tap into his power, but the balance of the evidence is positive, not negative.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images At the 2025 MLB trade deadline, the big hang-up the Cubs kept running into was simple: everyone wanted Moisés Ballesteros. The Nationals were interested in a package of Matt Shaw and Cade Horton in exchange for controllable southpaw MacKenzie Gore, but if Chicago wasn't willing to give up both of them, then Ballesteros had to be in the mix. When they talked to the Marlins about starters Edward Cabrera and Sandy Alcántara; when they talked to the Twins about pitchers Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax and Joe Ryan; and when they talked to the Pirates about Mitch Keller and David Bednar, Ballesteros was the name that came up every time. The Rays were interested in Ballesteros, in any deal for Drew Rasmussen. The Athletics liked him when the two clubs briefly discussed Mason Miller. It's not that Ballesteros is a top-10 prospect, globally, or anything. By most estimates, he's something like a top-50 guy. The buzz around him is more about the combination of floor and ceiling. The lefty batter will turn 22 in November. He hit .316/.385/.473 at Triple-A Iowa and .298/.394/.474 in his limited time with the big-league club this year; those are sensational numbers for any 21-year-old. He put up a lot of them while trying to cut the mustard as a catcher, notching 593 innings behind the plate in the minors. That's probably not his long-term role, but increasingly, it looks like he can hit enough to be a good player even if he's a first baseman and/or designated hitter. Ballesteros has a really good swing. That was the key takeaway from his stint in Chicago, late in the campaign. His bat speed (72.7 miles per hour, on average, although in fewer than 100 competitive swings) is above average, and he does that with a short stroke that can handle the high fastball. He also showed the ability to turn on the ball and punish pitchers who miss with anything on the inner half, including hitting one home run in Pittsburgh in September that one simply can't hit if one doesn't have above-average power. dnZiVldfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdWWlVsTlFCUUFBV1ZaWFh3QUhBZ1FEQUFBQ0FWWUFBRk1NQWxCWEJBVUhCUVFF.mp4 He has great feel for contact, especially within the strike zone, and he made progress even within the 2025 season in terms of not chasing outside the zone. Ballesteros looks like a good big-leaguer, and one who's ready to take over a full-time job in 2026. He's accumulated nearly 800 plate appearances with the Iowa Cubs; he doesn't need any more. Defensively, it doesn't look like Ballesteros will clear the bar to stick at catcher—but it's worth noting that one of his shortcomings (below-average framing skills) will be mitigated by the implementation of the ABS challenge system. He could use another full season of catching in the minors, if that's the plan for his long-term defensive home, but the likelihood that he's ever a plus behind the plate is remote, and his bat is so far ahead of the mitt that holding it back any longer to draw toward that improbable straight would be to misplay the hand. Thus, this winter, the Cubs will have to ponder trading him again. Interest in Ballesteros remains strong, and several of the teams to whom Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins spoke in July will be on the other end of the line again in November and December. They could move their young, budding slugger for the controllable pitching they so badly need, although Ballesteros alone won't command any of the players mentioned above, save perhaps Alcántara. It seems just as plausible, though, that they'll retain Ballesteros and promote him to a bigger gig for 2026. With Kyle Tucker likely to depart via free agency, Seiya Suzuki could be ticketed for a return to right field. That opens up the DH spot, and Ballesteros is a strong candidate to step into the breach. Fans will, naturally, prefer it if the team makes a splashy free-agent addition to fill the lineup spot vacated by Tucker. There are several good options out there. The front office might lock in, however, on a lower-tier target who could enmesh themselves in the lineup on a more versatile basis. That could be Harrison Bader, Andrew McCutchen, Lane Thomas, Mitch Garver, Rhys Hoskins or Starling Marte. Any of those guys might sign relatively cheaply. Bader and Thomas could factor in as platoon partners for Pete Crow-Armstrong, if the Cubs decide Kevin Alcántara isn't ready for that responsibility. The others would be more like half-time DH candidates, but they'd each have other ways to filter into the lineup—spelling Michael Busch or Ian Happ, for instance, depending on which of the group they sign. Integrating young hitters is always risky, but even teams with ample resources have to do it. The Cubs are no exception. They'll want to add a proven player who limits their exposure if Ballesteros struggles, but as the offseason looms, it looks more likely that they'll find a way to install him in their lineup next season than that they'll trade him, despite the demand for him on that market. View full article

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images, © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images, © Steven Bisig-Imagn Images If the Cubs were as good at scouting and player development as they keep telling fans (and themselves) they are, they'd have a pretty simple offseason ahead. They'd have amassed better homegrown pitching depth, and wouldn't be so obviously starved for swing-and-miss arms. They'd be in a position to place much more trust in their young bats, from the relatively established (Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Amaya and Matt Shaw) to those still breaking slowly into the rotation (Kevin Alcántara, Moisés Ballesteros, and Owen Caissie). As things stand, though, they're in no position to compete with the Brewers in the NL Central—let alone to make a deeper push into October—without a significant talent infusion from outside the organization. Kyle Tucker is likely to sign elsewhere this winter. He's in line for a contract in excess of $300 million, partially because of his talent and partially because other options in free agency are fairly limited this year. The Cubs will have to replace his production just to get back to where they were this past season, and while that production is more replaceable than it appeared it would be around Memorial Day, it's still one of the two titanic challenges of their offseason. The other, of course, is getting up to speed (literally, in part) with better pitching talent. Reunions with Kyle Schwarber or Cody Bellinger are "extremely unlikely," according to league sources, and those fits would be imperfect, anyway. It's much more likely that the Cubs let Seiya Suzuki retake his place in right field in 2026, with Caissie or Ballesteros sliding in as the long side of a platoon at DH and occasionally spelling Suzuki or Ian Happ in an outfield corner. Alcántara is ready to play at least a complementary role in the majors, too, and could be both the platoon partner to Crow-Armstrong and a versatile weapon to shield Happ, Caissie and/or Ballesteros from difficult matchups. The more plausible (and perhaps wiser, anyway) path to a major infusion of offensive value might be a splurge at the hot corner. Alex Bregman reportedly plans to opt out of the last two years of his three-year, $120-million deal (in reality, after accounting for deferrals, worth much less than that) with the Red Sox, and will be a free agent for the second year in a row. Eugenio Suárez will also be a free agent at the end of the World Series. Bregman, 31, was worth 17 runs above an average hitter in 495 plate appearances this year, according to Baseball Reference. Suárez, 34, was 20 runs above average in 657 trips to the dish. Either player would command a big deal this winter, though of course, Bregman's would be a much longer-term and more lucrative engagement. Age and a streakier profile will limit Suárez's earning power a bit. Nonetheless, each had a season very much in line with their prime production in 2025. Bregman's DRC+ (the holistic offensive value metric from Baseball Prospectus; 100 is average, higher is better) was 117 this year and is 116 for his career; Suárez's 2025 DRC+ of 105 is identical to his career mark. While neither is a defensive wizard at third base, each figures to stick there and acquit themselves well for a few more years. Speaking of defensive wizards, entertaining signing either of the two star third basemen invites the question: What becomes of Matt Shaw? It's a fair one. The Cubs should, if they can, include Shaw in a package for a starting pitcher this winter. Though he made some admirable adjustments along the way, ultimately, Shaw's rookie season was a major disappointment to anyone who held out much hope for him as a hitter—and, for those of us who doubted him, a seeming confirmation. Shaw's combination of smallish stature, unorthodox mechanics and a disorganized approach left him with an 87 DRC+ for the season, and he was utterly overmatched in the postseason. He could settle in as a fine utility man without making significant strides from here, but that wouldn't help the Cubs much. He should have more upside than that, if he can develop on a steady arc into his mid-20s, but that's not guaranteed—as his extremely uneven first season showed. Without question, Shaw still has some trade value. It's unlikely that he could headline a deal for a pitcher like Edward Cabrera, Sandy Alcántara, or Pablo López, but he could be a strong second piece alongside one of the lefty bats (Caissie and Ballesteros) whom teams believe in more as hitters, or as a co-headliner with a player further from the majors. The Cubs need more power at the plate, and they need to bolster their pitching staff. To do both, in a winter with a thin free-agent class and major financial uncertainty looming for the sport, they need to be active in both the trade and free-agent markets. Dealing Shaw and signing either Bregman or Suárez would be the best way to plunge ahead. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images As part of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (which took effect in 2022), players throughout the majors who are not yet eligible for salary arbitration have some extra ways to accrue bonus pay and service time. Winning (or placing highly in the voting) for certain awards nets automatic, standard bonus amounts, and if a player wins the Rookie or the Year or MVP Award despite not having otherwise qualified for a full year of service time, they're retroactively granted the extra service time needed to do just that, moving them one year closer to free agency. In addition, a wins above replacement formula agreed upon by the players union and the owners distributes extra bonus money to players who produced major value for their teams during those early, team-controlled, often minimum-salary seasons of their careers. That money is all paid from the league's central fund, so when Cubs players receive those bonuses, it doesn't increase the team's payroll or affect their competitive-balance tax threshold number. However, these payments can be very important. They alter the leverage relationship between players and teams (tilting the power toward the former), but they also improve players' morale during seasons when there can otherwise be some resentment about salary. Once awards season is over, we'll get a specific announcement about who receives what allocations based on this new bonus pool. However, it's safe to guess the following: Cade Horton will finish first or second for the Rookie of the Year Award, and thereby get a full year's service time for his first full (partial) season with the parent club; Horton will make a little over $1 million in bonus money, for winning the award and for the WAR he accumulated; Pete Crow-Armstrong will finish somewhere in the top 10 in NL MVP voting (though only if he finishes in the top five will that net him a direct bonus), and net roughly $1 million in bonus money in total; and Michael Busch will make somewhere around $500,000 in bonus money for the WAR he accumulated as the team's star-caliber first baseman. Matt Shaw and Daniel Palencia could also net modest amounts of money via this system, but the big earners will be Horton, Crow-Armstrong and Busch. Since Horton will earn a full season of service time, he'll also become eligible for free agency after the 2030 season, the same autumn when Crow-Armstrong will be able to hit the market. Because the Cubs made it to the Division Series before losing this fall, every player who made a substantial contribution to the big-league team this year will also receive somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000, sometime this offseason. That's not life-changing money, for big-league ballplayers, but nor is it an unimportant amount, for a player still making the six-figure salaries at the bottom of the big-league pay scale. In short, a few of the Cubs' most important players are about to have their official earnings roughly double—or better. To Horton, the money is just one part of the windfall coming to him. He's also going to gain significant earning power, by getting one year closer to free agency. For the Cubs, this is good news, too. They just have to be savvy and humble enough to see the upside. If the Ricketts family is interested solely in trying to squeeze every marginal dollar possible out of Crow-Armstrong or Horton, it's a nightmare of a development, because extending either player on a long-term deal on team-friendly terms just got a lot harder. In fact, it's probably impossible. The endorsement opportunities available to each (especially Crow-Armstrong) and the major infusion of cash reduces the leverage the team has in any long-term contract negotiation almost to zero. It only hurts them, in that regard, that each is also a former first-round pick who got paid plenty of money on their way into professional baseball, in the first place. Horton's acceleration toward free agency will also make it harder to insist upon any concessions in contract talks. However, if the team has already made their peace with the fact that they aren't (and were never) in position to extract a very team-friendly deal from either player, this extra money should only grease the skids. Crow-Armstrong and Horton can each afford to acknowledge the fact that the Cubs gave them great opportunities and developmental support to facilitate their accomplishments, secure in the knowledge that they've gained a lot of earning power and won't even have to seriously consider a lowball offer. Busch is a totally different story. Already set to turn 28 this winter and playing a position that will make him undesirable as a free agent by the time he gets to the market, he just doesn't have much of a path to nine-figure career earnings in the modern game. That's unfortunate, but payouts like these cushion the harsh realities at hand. Busch and the Cubs are unlikely to strike a deal that keeps him in Chicago beyond 2029, when he can become a free agent, unless it be on very team-friendly terms. (Think back to the long-term deals signed by guys like Whit Merrifield and Jeff McNeil, after they bloomed exceptionally late.) For him, the extra earning power (however small, in a relative sense, it might remain) is nice. He'll play in 2026 as a pre-arbitration player, too. Not until 2027 will he qualify for arbitration, so whatever extra money he can make up front will be a welcome change. When it comes to players like Crow-Armstrong and Horton, expect to see fewer extensions in years to come, except in cases where teams are willing to pay market-rate prices even several years before a player reaches free agency. That's the new nature of the sport, for first-round picks who make it to the majors relatively young. With this bonus pool in place—and especially on a good team, where playoff shares provide a nice boost and there's a good chance of earning even bigger such shares in the future—there's much less incentive for a player to give their team a discount, unless the team is taking a big gamble by guaranteeing them money before they've demonstrated that they can succeed in the bigs. For players who made far less money as amateurs entering professional baseball or who don't find a foothold until their mid-20s, the leverage remains with teams. Palencia and Busch are candidates to sign team-friendly deals with the Cubs. The downside is that those deals would hold less potential to be game-changers for the team, because those players (based on their skill sets, ages and risk profiles) are unlikely to be star-caliber contributors as they gain earning power later in their careers. If the Cubs do strike long-term deals with either Crow-Armstrong or Horton, meanwhile, expect them to look a lot like the one Bobby Witt Jr. signed with the Royals prior to 2024. Witt was a former top pick over whom Kansas City had little leverage, and his extra earning power based on the bonus pools allowed him to drive an even harder bargain. He got nearly $300 million in guaranteed money, despite signing a deal several years before he could become a free agent. Fernando Tatis Jr. got a similar concession from the San Diego Padres. The Cubs won't pony up that much for either of their best pre-arbitration stars, because neither player is quite at the level of Witt or Tatis. However, the new reality of the game—which will be reaffirmed this winter, as extra money flows to these guys in ways the Cubs can't control—affects the terms of any deal. Don't expect team-friendly extensions for budding stars anymore. The Cubs missed that window, and they'll need a wide-open checkbook to keep their young core together if it gels into the winning machine they envision. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images It was an extremely lucrative year for the Ricketts family, the owners of the Chicago Cubs, and there's a promise of more to come. The team hiked season-ticket prices, but still saw average attendance rise by over 1,200 fans per game. They got a windfall from the league in the form of reimbursement for two lost gates at Wrigley Field due to the team playing the Dodgers in Tokyo, which they didn't have to share the way they would ordinarily have to do. At midseason, they were announced as the hosts of the 2027 MLB All-Star Game, which will bring a new deluge of revenue and ensure that the market for season tickets remains fevered. They also, of course, made the postseason. That's hugely valuable, too. Though Tom Ricketts downplayed the financial benefits of even deep playoff runs after the team won the World Series in 2016, the facts are that teams make tens of millions from substantial playoff appearances—and get a meaningful boost even from a relatively brief run, like the one they made this October. Playing games at home in the playoffs is important. It's not as important as it might seem at a glance, because teams don't get to keep anywhere near the full amount they pull in for those games. The lion's share of gate revenues for the guaranteed games in a playoff series go to the players, and to central funds for the league and its alumni. For the non-guaranteed games (Game 3 of a Wild Card Series; Games 4 and 5 of a Division Series; Games 5-7 of a Championship Series or World Series), a small chunk of the revenue goes to the league, and then the two participating teams split the rest 50/50. So, for instance, if the Cubs made $4 million per game in ticket revenue for games played at Wrigley Field—a good enough estimate, at least for the early rounds—they saw very little of that for Games 1 and 2 of the Wild Card Series and Game 3 of the Division Series. Even for Game 3 of the Wild Card Series and Game 4 of the Division Series, they only got perhaps $1.5 million per game. However, there's also Game 5 of the NLDS (in the Brewers' more capacious, if less expensive, Uecker Field) for which to account, plus the smallish sums the team was able to rake in for each of the guaranteed games of each series. In total, from ticket revenue alone, the Cubs probably made about $7 million in extra revenue by getting to the playoffs this year. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Postseason games are merchandise movers for teams, as fans who might he eschewed a purchase of a playoff entry t-shirt or a jersey even a week or two before give in to the buzz and splurge. They also make considerable sums on concessions and parking, the latter of which they can comfortably charge more for because of the imbalance of supply and demand when the ballpark is stuffed to its gills. The Rickettses also benefit from owning several businesses and properties near Wrigley Field, which fill up and start ringing like cash registers when the stadium is full and the atmosphere is festive. Some of that money, alas, the owners will refuse to count as earnings they feel compelled to reinvest in the team, but the parking, concessions, merchandise and other direct revenue (for instance, when the team opened Gallagher Way for limited numbers of fans to pay a cover charge and watch the team's away games during the Division Series) all show up on Crane Kenney's balance sheet. That's to say nothing of the huge ancillary benefits of making the playoffs. The Cubs will make more money from advertising and marketing partnerships for at least two years in the wake of this appearance. The combination of a playoff appearance and the confirmation of the 2027 All-Star Game made it easier to secure season-ticket renewals, and attendance is likely to rise yet again in 2026; that would be a fourth straight season of improvement. That they're doing that while adding premium seating spaces like the one above the batter's eye and opening the infamous sportsbook down the first-base line means the team's gameday revenues have likely not only risen each year since the end of the pandemic, but risen by eight-figure sums each year. In total, the value of this playoff run to the team is likely to be roughly $25 million, frontloaded but spread over the next two to three years. That's not small potatoes, even for a business with annual revenues north of $500 million. Ricketts would surely deny that number; he's likely to try to put it closer to $10 million. Ricketts lies often about his team's financial status, and what he says on the subject should be largely ignored. The Cubs made a ton of money this fall—a difference-making amount of money. The pressure is on; the money dries up if a team falls back to the middle of the pack after a season like this one. This extra infusion of cash should prompt the Cubs to exceed the luxury-tax threshold in 2026, especially having reset their status by not exceeding that number in 2025. The Ricketts family's investments have paid enormous dividends, for themselves. They now have to prove their commitment to making it do the same for fans of the team. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Nico Hoerner's maturation as a hitter was one of the best stories of the Cubs' 2025 season. Hoerner, 28, made myriad adjustments in the penultimate season of the contract extension he signed in March 2023. Already an excellent contact hitter, he reduced his punchout rate to 7.6%, the best of his career. He improved at pulling the ball and more consistently squared it up, leading to a surge in his batting average on balls in play. He traded some fly balls, as the season went along, but hit more sharp line drives over the head of the third baseman and fewer balls right into the ground. While there's always another set of difficult adjustments around the corner for good hitters—especially ones, like Hoerner, who lack power—Hoerner turned a corner in 2025. He was 13 runs better than average at the plate, according to Baseball Reference, a run more than he added in the previous two years, combined. According to DRC+, the holistic offensive value metric at Baseball Prospectus (which evaluates a player's real contribution in a slightly more process-focused way), he was measurably above average (a 105, where 100 is average and higher is better) for the first time in his career. He did all that, of course, while continuing to play stellar defense at second base and run the bases brilliantly. He made $11.5 million in each of the last two seasons and will make $12 million in 2026, under the terms of the three-year extension on which he and the Cubs agreed in 2023. After that, though, he's due to become a free agent. As essential as he's become to the team, though, they should head into this offseason with the goal of avoiding that eventuality. Given how well 2025 went (for the team, as much as for Hoerner, individually), it's important to lock up the key cogs in the new winning machinery of the franchise. It's not easy to find good comparable cases to Hoerner. Most players with as much overall value as he offers have skill sets that figure to age better than his will. Most players as good as he is who have this kind of skill set sign earlier, more team-friendly deals, and aren't in line for market-rate new deals as they head into their 30s. Two players stand out as reasonable comps for Hoerner, based on what he does well and where he is in his career as he seeks his next deal: José Ramírez and Jose Altuve. Those are big names, and their games (at their peak, at least; Altuve is now well past that) are more complete than Hoerner's. Each has a good chance to be a future Hall of Famer; Hoerner would need to turn the level he just established into his norm for most of a decade to get into the same discussion. Altuve has an MVP award; Ramírez is a perennial top-five finisher for the award. Hoerner has yet to so much as make an All-Star Game. Thus, we'll want to study the deals each of them signed, but there'll still be some work left to do to equate them with Hoerner. Altuve signed a five-year deal with the Astros last February, worth $125 million. That deal began this season, just before Altuve turned 35 years old. He's still a good and well-rounded player, but he's much more limited than he was at his best. His speed has faded, and so has his power. The Astros are trying to permanently move him to left field, because he's no longer a viable everyday second baseman. It's a bit of a legacy move, acknowledging the vital roles Altuve played in two World Series championships for Houston, but he's also a good player, even now. Ramírez still had two years of team control remaining when he signed an extension with Cleveland in April 2022. It included $116 million in new money over five extra years of control—the first of which was 2024, when he was 31. He hasn't substantially declined at all yet, and made his fifth straight All-Star team in 2025. That deal, like Altuve's, reflects some degree of shared sentiment between player and team. Whereas Altuve's probably overvalues him in the name of honoring a franchise icon, though, Ramírez's comes closer to undervaluing him. It was the only way he was going to be able to stay with the Guardians for the long haul. Hoerner's extension, should he sign one, will begin in 2027. That's his age-30 season. He's notably younger than both Ramírez and (especially) Altuve, but his skill set—with its heavy reliance on speed, defense and contact—isn't likely to age as well as theirs. Nor is he capable of the same high-end outcomes as those two. All of that virtually washes out. Here's a deal that could work for both sides. Signing bonus: $3 million 2027: $18 million 2028: $18 million 2029: $20 million 2030: $20 million 2031: $20 million 2032: $21 million club option, with a $6-million buyout That would be a five-year, $105-million deal, with the chance to be worth $120 million over six seasons. It would keep Hoerner in a Cubs uniform through (at least) his age-34 season, but the Cubs' costs would also stay under control. A year ago, this would have been far too rich a deal to consider offering to a power-shy player already locked up until the end of his 20s. The success of both Hoerner and the team, though, has changed the calculus. It's time to lock one of the club's stars into place, to make it easier to plan their path forward as a contender in the National League. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Chicago Cubs pitchers walked batters at a lower rate than any other staff in baseball in 2025. They made use of a great team defense and pitched to contact, forcing opponents to beat them (if they could) with solo home runs. It often worked; that's how the Cubs won 92 games. In the NLDS, though, their luck finally ran out. First of all, the Brewers—baseball's most patient team—did force a few crucial walks. More importantly, though, they stayed dangerous in two-strike counts, and hit enough home runs to beat the Cubs—some of them solo, some of them three-run blasts. Brewers batters stacked up a shocking 10 hits in two-strike counts with two outs in the inning, including several of the pivotal plays of the series. Andrew Vaughn's series-altering homers in Games 2 and 5 each came in that situation. So did Jackson Chourio's three-run shot in Game 2 and William Contreras's first-inning volley in Game 5. Blake Perkins hit a full-count, two-out single to keep the rally going during the Brewers' destructive first inning in Game 1, and Chourio made it a blowout with a two-strike two-run single later in that frame. The Cubs worked ahead, but they could not put the Brewers away—not in at-bats, not in innings, and not in the series. It's why they're now at home. Plenty of credit for that belongs to Milwaukee; it's very much in their nature. They were the best two-out, two-strike offense in baseball this year, and they were in the top three in two-strike hitting regardless of base-out state. However, another major segment of the responsibility for the way all those pivotal at-bats unfolded has to be allocated to the Cubs. Chicago hurlers struck out 21.4% of opposing batters this season. That strikeout rate ranked 21st of the 30 big-league teams, the lowest of the 12 teams who qualified for the playoffs. The Red Sox, who fanned 22.1% of their opponents (18th-best) were the closest to them; the other 10 teams who made it to October finished in the top 13 in pitcher strikeout rate. When it comes to whiffs per swing, the Cubs were a ghastly 27th, and the identities of the three teams behind them tells the story: Rockies, Cardinals, Nationals. There are tradeoffs involved in chasing swing-and-miss arms. Those guys are very expensive to acquire, and very difficult to develop—to say nothing of keeping them healthy. That ability to limit walks stems in part from being willing to fill up the zone, which costs a few punchouts. Building the brilliant defense they have behind that staff is expensive, too; the Cubs are paying roughly $55 million in 2026 for the glove-over-bat profiles of key veterans Ian Happ, Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner. If you want to bolster your pitching, you have to be willing either to spend a lot more money or to lose some of that great fielding prowess. Nonetheless, this winter, the Cubs have to do it. Somehow, some way, they have to add lots of swings and misses to their pitching staff. They found out, late in the season and especially in October, just how far they can get with the kind of staff they've so assiduously constructed over the last several years: the Division Series. That constituted success in 2025, but it won't qualify as success in 2026. For now, that's the last season under contract for Happ, Hoerner, Seiya Suzuki, Jameson Taillon, Carson Kelly and Matthew Boyd. It's Swanson's age-32 season. The Cubs are steadily working in young hitters who they hope will make a big difference in the medium term, but they have to make some hay in 2026. On several levels, that's important to the long-term health of the franchise. Another second-place finish in the NL Central and second-round playoff exit would not be met as warmly, by fans or by ownership, one year from now. To avoid it, they have to induce more whiffs. Even the guys you think of as strikeout-capable on the Cubs roster struggled to punch people out during their brief playoff run this fall. Other than their top two left-handed relievers, no one missed bats the way the team needs to miss them to win more next October. Daniel Palencia: 3 strikeouts in 29 batters faced Brad Keller: 5 SO, 22 BF Andrew Kittredge: 3 SO, 21 BF Matthew Boyd: 9 SO, 45 BF Shota Imanaga: 6 SO, 30 BF Jameson Taillon: 7 SO, 32 BF Colin Rea: 3 SO, 33 BF Drew Pomeranz: 6 SO, 19 BF Caleb Thielbar: 5 SO, 16 BF Thielbar, Pomeranz and Keller are all impending free agents. Kittredge, Rea and Imanaga have club options on which the team will have to decide soon. There's every chance to remake this pitching staff this winter, except for one problem: there aren't a lot of great candidates to bolster the specific trait in which the team is deficient. Dylan Cease, Jack Flaherty and Michael King are the best strikeout guys in the starting pitching free-agent class; Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez are great lefties oriented much more toward ground balls than toward punchouts. Zac Gallen and Brandon Woodruff could hit the open market, but there are reasons to harbor major reservations about the ability of either to return to their previous levels of performance, especially with regard to missing bats. There are a fistful of good options in the relief market. The Cubs could (and probably will) also explore the trade market, where guys like (stop me when this list sounds familiar) Edward Cabrera, Sandy Alcantara, Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Luis Severino, Sonny Gray, Drew Rasmussen, Jacob deGrom and MacKenzie Gore might become available. They should certainly also address their scouting and development paradigm, to try to grow more hard-throwing pitchers who can miss bats from within their system. The difference between their bullpen and most of the others in this year's playoff field is less about sheer performance and more about the fact that many of the other pens are largely homegrown and hard-throwing, whereas the Cubs cobbled together a bunch of free-agent pickups and waiver claims to get this far. Next year, they need a full season of Cade Horton, but that's far from sufficient. They'll hope to get a bunch of big-league innings (and strikeouts) from Jaxon Wiggins, and to find another good arm or two in their system, but they need to get better at filling the pipeline with such arms. One way or another, though, they're going to have to plunge some resources into boosting their ability to strike out opposing hitters, and that's going to be very expensive. Since they also need to reinforce their offense this winter, the bills are starting to pile up on Tom Ricketts's desk, even before he can finish counting the money he made during the team's foray into the playoffs this fall. Whether he elects to pay those bills or pay the penalties associated with refusing to, it's too early to tell—and for fans, the frustrating truth is that the penalties for not ponying up won't be paid by ownership, if that's the way it goes. Instead, they'll be paid by fans and the team on the field, in the form of missed opportunities to win more games and advance further next autumn. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images In Milwaukee, one of the indelible images of this regular season came in late July, when the Cubs visited the Brewers for a suddenly crucial three-game series. Chicago had held a fluctuating but (generally) comfortable lead all season, but by that point, the Brewers had closed the gap. The teams entered that series tied, and Milwaukee's convincing win in the opener meant they led the division by a game going into action on Tuesday, July 29. Colin Rea struggled through four innings that day, allowing four runs, and the Brewers already led 5-2 when the bottom of the sixth began. Ryan Pressly still pitched for the Cubs back then—a symbol, by that juncture, of the Cubs front office's misallocation of lots of money over the offseason. He came on to pitch the sixth, trying to keep the game (and, perhaps, the division) within striking distance. He induced a foul popout, but then two walks sandwiched around an error by Nico Hoerner loaded the bases. It was an unhappy situation for the Cubs' dyspeptic manager, Craig Counsell, but he had little choice save to let Pressly try to fool the red-hot Andrew Vaughn. It did not, uh, work. On the first pitch, Pressly hung a curveball that Vaughn hit so savagely as to leave no doubt about its fate. Counsell was on the dugout phone to the bullpen before the ball cleared the wall. Brewers fans have savored that moment as the one at which the division was decided in their favor. Some Brewers players appear to have adopted it as a favorite highlight, too, with a celebration where they mime answering or making a call—and, in the case of Abner Uribe at the end of Game 5 Saturday night, hanging up after one. As a sick burn, that leaves a bit to be desired, but the original idea sure is evocative. That was the moment the Cubs were beat, even if there was two months of baseball left to play. Counsell's move from the Brewers to the Cubs was so much at the center of the narrative this past week that it's hard not to think of the series through that lens. Ordinarily, the managers play a relatively small role in determining the outcomes of games and series in the modern game, but this time, you could see the machinations and the countermoves stacking on top of each other. You could feel the weight of each decision, and you could grasp what was going on in each chess master's mind more vividly than usual. Pat Murphy beat Counsell at every key juncture, and that helped decide the series Saturday night. Maybe the league needs a way to force starting pitcher and lineup decisions to be made on a specific schedule, without either side getting the informational advantage. Right now, the question of which pitcher will start a playoff game can often be a legitimately open one until six hours before first pitch, as teams make use of openers and map out bullpen games. This can lead to a somewhat silly standoff—each team tries to wait and see what the other will do before announcing their own plans. It rarely makes a meaningful difference, of course, because (for instance) which pitcher one side starts very rarely affects the decision for the other side about the same, but there are exceptions. After all, an entire lineup card has to be made out, and while you want to adapt which players will bat where to suit the opposing starter, you also want to decide about them based on your own pitcher's tendencies and on the overall roadmap you expect that particular game to follow. Murphy and Counsell had a virtual staring contest before all five games, to varying degrees, waiting out each other's decisions and lineups to force the other to move first and allow them to work with an edge. Murphy won all the important battles of timing. Some of that is just because he has better personnel, with more ways to beat Counsell's options. For instance, Counsell finally relented, and the Cubs announced about eight hours before Game 5 that Drew Pomeranz would be their starting pitcher. That was a huge mistake, and the Brewers were set up very nicely to exploit it. Murphy wrote Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang and William Contreras into the top three spots on his lineup card. If you could play a version of baseball where the lineup has to be made out agnostically, without foreknowledge of the opposing starter, the Cubs would have been better off. Murphy probably would have batted two lefties and a righty in his top three, rather than two righties and a lefty. Counsell lost the war of wills, and the Brewers had the chance to align themselves optimally—but that's also the custom of the day throughout the league. It's not Counsell's fault that teams are expected to announce pitchers so the other team can set their lineups, and it's not his fault that the Brewers have better matchup weapons than the Cubs do. However, because of that very league-wide custom, starting Pomeranz at all was a massive gaffe by the manager. As I wrote Friday night, Pomeranz had already been overexposed to the Brewers lineup in a condensed time period, and (unlike, for instance, Caleb Thielbar) he's very platoon-vulnerable. Locking him into the first three batters of the game and letting Murphy decide which batters those would be was an extraordinary error by the Cubs' $40-million skipper. Thielbar would have been a better option. So would any hurler with reverse platoon splits, which is not all that uncommon a creature—but, again giving Counsell a break by acknowledging the shortcomings of the front office, it is so on the Cubs. Of active hurlers for the series, only Andrew Kittredge and Jameson Taillon fit that bill. Kittredge wasn't going to start, because stuff-wise, he's more dominant against righties, and Counsell wanted him to be available for a later, more flexible assault on a righty-leaning pocket of the order. Taillon was available, by all accounts, and maybe should have been the play, but it seemed like Counsell wanted to stay away from the starter who had worked just three days earlier, if possible. He had no perfect option, but he certainly had better ones. Pomeranz tried everything to get out the top three in that lineup, as long as by 'everything,' you only mean 'fastballs'. He threw seven straight to Chourio, and got a strikeout. He threw six in a row to Turang, and induced a (deep, warning shot) flyout. Then he threw six more in a row—20 straight heaters to start the game, from a guy whose velocity doesn't and didn't exceed 95 miles per hour!—to Contreras, and on the last of them, Contreras took him deep. It was a bad matchup and a familiar one for the hitter and it was always going to happen, once Counsell started Pomeranz. It was an unavoidable 1-0 deficit. Seiya Suzuki got the Cubs level instantly in the top of the second, though, and it felt like magic. Suzuki, who was very much part of the team's problem hitting high-velocity fastballs this year, went down and got a 101.4-mph fastball from Jacob Misiorowski, lining it over the wall in right-center for a game-tying dinger. Counsell had been rescued from his bad call. He had a run to work with. The trouble, of course, is that that was all he would get. After Pomeranz's inning of work, Colin Rea took over to start the bottom of the second. Arguably, Rea also could have just started the game, but it did make some sense to have Andrew Vaughn (batting fifth) be the first batter he saw. He pitched very well through 2 2/3 innings. wending his way through the Milwaukee batting order one full turn in short order. Though the Brewers did make some hard, threatening contact. Rea yielded only two baserunners through his first nine batters faced, and one came on an error by Dansby Swanson, which was quickly nullified by a double play. If Counsell had been ready with his hook after nine batters—if the hard and fast rule had been that Rea would face Milwaukee hitters just once each—he could have gotten the team through four frames tied 1-1, and wouldn't that have been sweet? Alas, he had a different plan in mind. He had at least some vision of going to Shota Imanaga after Rea; Imanaga warmed up during the fourth and appeared to be preparing to come in should anyone get on in the inning ahead of Sal Frelick. Instead, on another 3-2 count with two outs, Vaughn got the Cubs again. Counsell had been too slow. Seeing Rea a second time and getting a hanging slider, Vaughn untied the game with one swing, and there was no need for Imanaga, after all. Three batters later, Rea still hadn't escaped the inning and Daniel Palencia had to clean things up, and the game had swung the Brewers' way. The Cubs had one good chance to tilt things back in their favor. In the top of the sixth, having known all along he would need at least a bit of bridge work from his relief workhorse, Murphy went to Aaron Ashby to face the top of the Cubs order. Ashby was the Brewers' Pomeranz in this game: already spent, not in position to have much success based on his combination of heavy recent use and matchup fatigue, but in there, nonetheless. Michael Busch bounced a single into center field against him, and Nico Hoerner walked, and you could see the danger beacons flaring, the red lights swinging round in the minds of Brewers fans and (metaphorically) sweeping the walls of Uecker Field. Then, the rally disappeared, in a puff of smoke. Ashby found the necessary guts and stuff to beat Kyle Tucker, throwing a monster of a 3-2, backdoor sinker past his bat. Then, Murphy went to righty long man Chad Patrick, who set down Suzuki and (on, somehow, an even better pitch, a backdoor cutter that froze him) Ian Happ. The Brewers needed some good luck; Suzuki drilled a liner to left that just didn't carry over the head of Chourio. Still, they had escaped. Counsell's pitching moves had been too late; the offense could muster too little. It's a cruel thing, to ask a manager to go beat a superior roster 1-0 in an elimination game, but that is what the Cubs tasked Counsell with doing Saturday night. He had ways to do it, but he missed his chances. The bulk of the blame should go to the front office, and of course, the players were the ones who failed to execute. Counsell didn't call all 20 of those consecutive Pomeranz fastballs, or mislocate the fateful slider to Vaughn. He couldn't step in and swing for the overmatched hitters. However, the genius of Counsell never materialized in this set. Murphy outfoxed him in Games 2 and 5, and it made the difference in the series, as much as Milwaukee's better scouting and development or their players' better clutch performances did. Because the Brewers won the division in their first year without Counsell and the Cubs stayed home in October, perversely, the playoff whammy that seemed to follow Counsell and his Crew after 2018 had shifted firmly onto the Brewers for a year. Theirs was the fan base with the anxiety about an October showdown; theirs was the annoying litany of losses. But now, despite the Cubs having gutted out a series win over a Padres team they're better than in the first place, it feels like that onus is now back on Counsell. The Brewers broke through. The monkey is off their back for a good, long while. Rather than disappearing, though, that monkey has crawled right up onto Counsell instead—and with him, since the two sides have a contract with three more years and a whole lot of money on it, the Cubs. There's still every chance that Counsell can win a World Series with Chicago, but he helped ensure that they won't get that chance in 2025, and being outmanaged by his mentor-turned-lieutenant-turned-rival was a brutal way for the skipper's second season with his new team to end. View full article

I should have put my question more plainly: If you don't want to see Imanaga, who DO you want to see pitch for those 12 outs or so?

I do understand y'all's lack of faith in Shota, in a sense, because it's been rough lately. I guess I DON'T fully understand what people would have him do, otherwise. I think if you have a whole lot more faith in Colin Rea, it's based more in him having not had occasion to hurt you as recently, I guess? It's, there's, I just think whoever starts, you're gonna have to white-knuckle it until the march of short relievers begins. And then white-knuckle it some more. It's a lot like those who wondered if it was viable to start Boyd in Game 4, isn't it? Something about Churchill's take on democracy as a form of government...

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images It's a race to 27 outs. There's never a doubt, with Craig Counsell, that that's what a playoff game is about. He uses an extremely short leash on starting pitchers in October, because as much as starters might be the drivers of narratives about teams and their seasons, they're not the best batter-for-batter options to win the race to 27—at least not beyond the middle of the game. Counsell got 4 2/3 innings from Matthew Boyd Thursday in Game 4 of the NLDS, which is just over halfway to 27. It's the most he's asked of any pitcher in the Cubs' seven playoff contests. That won't change Saturday night. The Cubs and Brewers will reconvene where their season series (and this postseason showdown, too) began, at Uecker Field in Milwaukee, with both teams' seasons in the balance. The candidates to give Counsell meaningful length are Shota Imanaga (the most likely starter) and Colin Rea, with Michael Soroka and Aaron Civale as less likely options. No matter who gets the longest assignment(s), though, a good chunk of the game will be handed off to some combination of the five pure relievers Counsell really trusts. There are three key questions the manager has to answer, when trying to select where and how to use his bullpen in a high-stakes game like Saturday's. Which relievers are especially good matchups for particular opposing batters? Who's been overexposed during the short series, especially to particular batters? How tired is everyone involved, and what constraints does that fatigue place on their availability? The first and third considerations are obvious, but the middle one can often be hugely important, too. We talked about this during the Padres-Cubs Wild Card Series, and with good reason. The more a given batter sees a particular pitcher within a series, the better they hit them. It's not unlike the times-through-the-order penalty, for the number of times batters see a starter within a game. One major drawback of the way Counsell has deployed his pitchers is that, once a series reaches its terminal stage, there's not much novelty left to mine out in that bullpen. If the skipper trusted Soroka to come in and try his hand again, he'd have a pocket of the lineup at which to aim him that hasn't seen much of him yet, but the trust circle only circumscribes five players right now: Brad Keller, Daniel Palencia, Drew Pomeranz, Caleb Thielbar and Andrew Kittredge. Most of the Brewers have already seen each of those guys a time or two—and the "or two" there is very important. Seeing a reliever twice in a series is normal, and doesn't seem to make a huge difference. That third time can be real trouble. Here's the chart showing how many times each relevant matchup has already happened in the last week. Pitcher/Batter Yelich Chourio Turang Contreras Vaughn Frelick Durbin Perkins Bauers Ortiz Collins Keller XX X X X X X X Palencia XX X XX XX XX XXX X X Pomeranz XX X XX X X X X Thielbar XX X X X X Kittredge X X X X X It might well have passed without your notice, but in the top of the sixth inning on Thursday night, there was a warning Counsell will need to heed in Game 5. Palencia, working for the third game in a row, got two quick outs, but then he allowed a scorched line-drive single to Andrew Vaughn, who was seeing him for the second time in the series. After that, Caleb Durbin lifted a fly ball to left field for the third out. It wasn't all that threatening to look at, but it left his bat at 90.1 miles per hour and with a 31° launch angle. That's a very narrow miss. If Durbin is just a hair quicker, that's a home run. It was, not entirely coincidentally, the third time he'd faced Palencia in the series. Counsell has deployed Palencia and Keller in a relatively matchup-agnostic way. They are, for him, situation guys, rather than pocket-of-the-order guys; their stuff and their skill are meant to work against anyone. Such hurlers aren't immune to this kind of effect, though, so if Palencia is to be used in Game 5, it needs to be at the bottom of the Milwaukee order. If Durbin bats seventh, that'll mean squeezing him into the 8-9-1 lane between Durbin and Jackson Chourio, who has already seen Palencia twice, himself. If Durbin bats sixth, there's a bit more breathing room, but only if Jake Bauers starts in place of Vaughn. You can't—you absolutely can't—let Palencia face Frelick, who hit all 12 of his home runs this season against right-handed pitchers, for a third time in this series. It needs to be Blake Perkins, Joey Ortiz, Christian Yelich, and (if necessary) Chourio, who famously got the better of Palencia with the killing blow in Game 2 but popped up on the first pitch in Game 4. Chourio still hasn't seen a slider from Palencia, and has only seen four pitches against him, period. This is the nuance and complexity the Cubs coaching staff has to consider going into this game. Everything matters that much, and every decision has that many layers and dimensions. Caleb Thielbar would also best be used against that wheel from the bottom to the top of the likely Milwaukee lineup card, since he has yet to face Perkins, Bauers, Ortiz, Yelich or Chourio in this series. Because the only batter he's faced more than once is Brice Turang, though, Thielbar can be deployed pretty flexibly. Expect him to get three outs for the Cubs somewhere in the second half of the game, and to see Counsell prioritize shielding Palencia from overexposure over getting the matchup of handedness or personnel exactly right for Thielbar. Andrew Kittredge is the skeleton key. Used so heavily in the Wild Card Series, he's been given lighter duty so far, which makes him an obvious choice for at least three outs on Saturday. His best stretch would include Turang, William Contreras, Vaughn, Frelick and Durbin, who generally do bat in connected (if somewhat interchangeable) places in the Milwaukee order, since he hasn't faced any of them yet in the series. Neither Turang nor Frelick is a great fit for Kittredge, from the Cubs' perspective, but he'll probably have to face at least one of them in any road map to the end of the game that results in a Cubs win. If he could start a clean inning against Turang, he'd be in decent shape, with a chance to erase him via a double play even if he reaches base. If Kittredge has to come into a dirty inning, it should be against Contreras. Pomeranz is a bit of a spent weapon. He's already seen Yelich and Turang twice each, and Frelick once. More than Thielbar, he's a matchup lefty; good righties make nervous fits for him. Only if there's a chance to attack Frelick with two outs in an inning or to make him the key man in a stretch where there's some margin for error should Counsell turn back to Pomeranz in Game 5. That leaves Keller, and again, it's more likely that he's used situationally than that Counsell thinks especially hard about matchups with him. If at all possible, Keller should be kept away from Yelich, against whom he's already pitched twice in the set, but the rest of the Milwaukee lineup is in play. It helps that he has yet to see Turang or Frelick at all, in the postseason. It's not hard to imagine another five-out save from Keller, although if he starts his appearance seven spots from Yelich and ends up having to face him with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, it might very well be that overexposure decides the series. Let's address the third question, posed way back at the top of this piece. How much has everyone been used, and what does that tell us about their availability? Counsell said Friday afternoon that he's not ready to name a starter, but that everyone except Boyd is available. 'Available' can mean a lot of different things, though. MON TUE WED THU FRI TOT Palencia 18 0 15 10 0 43 Soroka 0 0 0 0 0 0 Keller 0 0 19 15 0 34 Kittredge 0 0 18 0 0 18 Pomeranz 9 0 15 15 0 39 Thielbar 0 0 11 10 0 21 Rea 60 0 0 0 0 60 Civale 0 0 0 0 0 0 Brown 0 0 0 0 0 0 Count this as another reason to expect less of Palencia and Pomeranz, along with the matchup exhaustion effects explained above. Each has pitched three times in the last five days, including in both home games of the series. Both Keller and Thielbar also appeared in Games 3 and 4, but not having worked in the first two contests means each is that bit fresher, in addition to not having been seen as much by Brewers batters. Rea, Civale, Soroka and Ben Brown are fresh as daisies—but again, that only matters insofar as Counsell believes any of them can get big outs for him in the first place. It's some combination of Imanaga and Rea for, one hopes, 12-15 outs. It's Kittredge and Thielbar for a solid six, with an option for as many as nine. It's Palencia and Pomeranz if you find just the right crease and it's Keller the rest of the way. Does that get the Cubs to 27 "before"—that is, with fewer runs crossing the plate first—the Brewers? It's impossible to know. Milwaukee has a pitching advantage, going into this game. They have smoother avenues to Out 27. Nonetheless, the Cubs have a road map of their own. If they stick to it and their offense punches through against the high-octane arms they'll see in the top halves of innings, they can advance to the NLCS and get ready for another date with the Dodgers. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images It didn't feel like Ian Happ's home run in Game 1 of the NLDS mattered very much. Decades ago, when sportswriters wanted a succinct way to sneer at Sammy Sosa for what they perceived as a dearth of clutch ability, they would say that all his home runs seemed to make a 9-1 game 9-2. Happ's solo shot off Brewers starter Freddy Peralta literally made a 9-1 game 9-2, and it felt like something worse than meaningless. It felt like a moral victory, at the time of year when those aren't supposed to exist. Within the context of that game, of course, it truly didn't matter. The Brewers went on to win easily, 9-3, and the contest was even more lopsided than its final score implied. October, however, isn't about individual games. It's about series, and in the context of the series, that homer turned out to have real heft: education, emotional weight, and foreshadowing. It all paid off Thursday night, when Happ strode to the plate with two on and two out in the bottom of the first inning, in a way Anton Chekhov would be proud of. Happ, of course, is the Cubs' longest-tenured player. He's the only guy left who has been in the organization since before they won the World Series, but when they did that, he wasn't yet a member of the big-league team. He came up the following May, and although no one knew it at the time, the dynasty he hoped he was joining was already in decline. Even as Happ had some productive seasons, his teammates stalled out or succumbed to slumps and injury. The team won a dramatic Game 5 over the Washington Nationals to reach that fall's NLCS, but it would be their last time there as a group. They were caught and passed by the Brewers for the division title in 2018. They missed the playoffs in 2019. The pandemic hit, and then the free agency of a half-dozen vital Cubs stood in the doorway brandishing its club, and the team simply came apart. Happ and Willson Contreras were the last ones left in the burned-out remnants of the palace Happ didn't get to live in back when the fruit was fresh from conquered lands and the tapestries were still thick and gorgeous. Unlike Contreras, though, Happ stuck around, electing to embrace the possibility of a revival for which he would be the elder statesman, instead of the latecoming youngster. He signed an extension in April 2023, which not only guaranteed him payment from the Cubs through 2026 but came with a no-trade clause—a rare concession by the team, and one on which Happ insisted. When he signed that deal, he probably hoped that he would see October with the team just six months later; it wasn't to be. The bitter disappointments of 2023 (when Happ came alive down the stretch but the team couldn't manage even the 84 wins required to qualify for the postseason) and 2024 (when they didn't, truthfully, even come especially close to making it that far) began to color Happ's legacy, just as the 2018-21 stretch discolored those of the guys who had won the World Series without him years ago. That wasn't fair, because Happ was improving even as he entered the phase of his career wherein many hitters begin to decline. He had his first steadily productive season as a full-time player in 2022, when he was finally shifted to the right defensive home for him in left field. He was about equally good in both 2023 and 2024, delivering solidly above-average offense and plus defense. Stubbornly, though, the team kept losing (or didn't start winning enough, anyway), and Happ struggled to evolve into a good clutch hitter. That part came last for him, and when that happens, fans have already long formed their opinions of you before you start making the impression you want. Come it did, though. He's now a .254/.353/.464 career hitter in high-leverage situations, and a .239/.327/.444 guy in late-and-close spots. It took a long time for him to become a balanced enough switch-hitter that teams couldn't exploit him by turning him around with a lefty reliever in key spots, and it took his gradual change from an all-or-nothing slugger to a more balanced, 20-homer type of guy for him to become less exploitable when the opposing hurler was hunting a strikeout. He became that kind of well-rounded, dangerous hitter, but still, it took (seemingly) forever for his signature moments to begin to come. Entering this year, Happ had zero career walkoff hits. On April 22, though, he ripped a walkoff single to beat the Dodgers at Wrigley Field. Not even two months later, he slashed another one to beat then-Pirates relief ace David Bednar. He did come up with big hits, couched comfortably in a lineup where opponents feared three or four other guys more than him. He became Big Hit Happ, in a way. More broadly, though, he scuffled. After a reasonably strong start, Happ slumped for much of May, June and early July. He went on the injured list for the first time in his career, with an oblique strain, and he almost certainly rushed back from it. It took a long while for him to get right. It took the All-Star break, in fact. When that break came, he was fighting (a losing battle) to keep his OPS above .700. Since then, though, he's been nails. Happ shored up an otherwise disastrously slump-prone lineup for much of the second half, batting .266/.368/.491 in 261 plate appearances. He swatted 17 doubles and 11 home runs, and was the beacon of consistency on a team full of suddenly bewildered batsmen. Subtly, he came up as clutch as ever, keeping the lineup afloat until enough of his teammates reawakened to get them into the postseason relatively comfortably. The playoffs were not kind to Happ, until Thursday night. He had a tremendously well-struck double against the Padres, and that homer against Peralta in Game 1, but those were his only hits in 24 trips to the plate. He needed to break out of that, and come up with the big hit for the team. He'd been able to extend the occasional rally with a walk, but facing Peralta with two outs and two on base, they didn't need him to extend the rally. They needed him to convert it. Let's flash back, one last time, to Saturday. In the sixth inning, Peralta had started Happ with a nasty slider, then gone upstairs to jump ahead 0-2 with a fastball. Happ had laid off a curveball, which is how he earned the slightly lazy fastball that he punished to center field. Peralta's execution wasn't good enough, but you can see what he was thinking there, and you can see the signs of how well he pitched for most of Game 1. His slider and curve were located right where he wanted them. So was the first heater. His stuff all had a great, very vertical shape, and he had good command of all of it. Not so in the first inning Thursday night. That would be a major factor. Peralta threw six breaking balls to batters before Happ in the first inning, and most of them had much more glove-side movement than he's typically had on them of late. Here's a chart showing his pitch movement from the first inning, alone. Lately, when he's been right, those two wiggliest sliders and the not-so-deep curve have not been there; he's consistently thrown the ball with a 12-to-6 movement pattern. Since he wasn't placing those offerings where he most wanted to, though, Peralta started Happ with changeups. He got to a 1-1 count with back-to-back cambios, retreating to the pitch with which he was most comfortable for most of this season against lefty batters. Then, he came up to the top third of the zone again, trying to take the crucial 1-2 lead in the count. This pitch was where he wanted it to be, or close thereto. He didn't miss down with it, the way he had in Game 1. Happ, however, was ready for it. He doesn't usually hit pitches in that spot to the pull field. When he's on time for it, he usually hits a sharp line drive the other way. On that pitch, though, he sought to ambush the ball, and it worked. On a pitch above his wheelhouse and on the outer half, he sent a no-doubt dinger deep into the bleachers in right-center field. That at-bat in Game 1 had mattered; he'd carried something from then to now. Those two walkoff singles be damned, Ian Happ found his signature Cubs moment. Who knows what will happen Saturday? The Cubs could complete a comeback that would sit like a rock in the stomachs of the Brewers and their fans for years to come; they could earn a chance to play for the National League pennant. They could also, of course, be sent home after all, valiant but doomed in their effort to undo the damage of Games 1 and 2 at Uecker Field in Milwaukee. At this moment, it doesn't matter. What happened in the first inning Thursday night is why you want your team to reach October. The upswell of emotion when Happ connected—from the stepwise increase of the crowd's cacophony to the blossoming feeling of joy on behalf of Happ, the organization's best soldier—is what makes these series wonderful. Winning pennants and trophies is only part of the point. The bigger, better part is that warm feeling in your breast that came after the stinging high fives and the bear hugs. It's the looks on the faces of the fans in the picture at the top of this page. It's the way this game can feel like a story written by a great author, rather than just another experience in this random and often cruel world. It's the depth of connection you felt, in that moment, with No. 8 in white—and the way his combination of loyalty and dauntless work culminated in such a remarkable reward. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images What the Cubs have gotten from Brad Keller this year is remarkable. Even if you spotted the potetial for a great fit between the Cubs and Keller, as we did last November, it would have been hard to guess that he would move into short relief and emerge as the co-relief ace of a playoff-bound team. Keller pitched 69 1/3 regular-season innings with a 2.07 ERA. Having never struck out even 20% of opposing batters in a season at the major-league level before, he topped 27% in his first season as a full-time reliever. He got ground balls and limited walks. He held opponents to a .512 OPS. He was dominant. Down the stretch, he was as good as ever, on a results level—but that's hidden the fact that he's had to make some significant changes to stay ahead of the curve and find things his body can do at the end of this very long year. Pitching in short bursts out of the bullpen is easier than starting, in that one doesn't have to pace oneself for as long an outing or find ways to get the same batters out two or three times in a game. However, as many hurlers will tell you, the routine of being a reliever can be much tougher than that of a starter, and learning the rhythm of that role poses major challenges. Pitchers have to learn when they can fit a side session, if they need to work on a given pitch, but they can't make themselves unavailable for the game that day in the process. They have a harder time scheduling their weight-lifting and other conditioning than do starters. For many pitchers, the end of a first season working in relief becomes very draining, very suddenly. Happily, Keller's stuff has generally held up, and he's had the adrenaline of a team surging to the postseason to keep himself amped up and focused. However, that doesn't erase the grind. As the year has progressed, we've seen Keller gain and lose feel for certain pieces of his unusually wide arsenal, and he's had to scramble to fix some things by either shelving a pitch or emphasizing its cousin for long stretches. The distinction isn't this clear or unidirectional, but it's helpful to separate Keller's season into two segments. When we do, we can spot some changes he's made, and then we can make note of the ways those changes manifested on Wednesday. Firstly, seemingly losing his feel for the sweeper, Keller has ratcheted down his usage of that pitch and booster his usage of the true slider, in its stead. That's been especially notable against right-handed batters, because the sweeper was a bit of a staple for him until August. Now, he doesn't seem to trust it at all. As you can see, Keller's also gone to his sinker considerably more here in the playoffs than he did in September. That's a revival of a strategy he turned to in the middle of the summer. and it's mostly about the fact that his very cutterish four-seamer paired better with the sweeper—whereas his sinker (more of a running two-seamer, in shape) plays better off the hard slider. We're seeing Keller go to his slider more often against lefties, too, actually. All of that is happening for a simple reason: Keller's velocity is trending slightly downward, and so is the carry on his heater. A slight loss of velocity on his fastballs but a substantial loss on his secondary offerings tells you that he's trying to lock in on shape, rather than speed. That's working, but it requires some changes of tack. By contrast, he's maintained a great feel for spinning the ball, so it makes sense for him to lean into the pitches that rely on spin for big movement and rely less on pure power. Keller's breaking stuff has become a muddle, in a way. He no longer has two distinct breaking ball looks, for the time being. He's throwing the slider much more than the sweeper, but even when he tries the sweeper, it's not taking off to the glove side the way it has in the past. It's just a slower version of his slider, in those moments. He's consistently found better depth on the pitch, though. Keller's slider is now a pitch that will move down more than sideways, by a substantial amount. That can make it slightly less effective against righties, in that he'll induce fewer whiffs this way, but he can keep this version of the breaking ball on the plate much better than he could with the sweeper-first attack. To set up that slider, Keller has also ventured more into testing the glove side of the plate with his sinker. Righty batters are looking for his four-seamer or for the sinker in on the hands, but Keller has gotten a bit more adroit at throwing it on the outer third. That's setting up the slider better than the same pitch can when thrown inside. This is a big flurry of adjustments for a pitcher to be making at this time of year, but Keller is in a unique situation. As a former starter with a five-pitch mix whose team is counting on him for big outs, Keller feels he has ways to overcome bugs that pop up within his mix or that emerge from accumulating fatigue. That brings us to Wednesday night. The Cubs were clinging to a 4-3 lead when, with two outs in the top of the eighth, Craig Counsell called upon Keller. He entered a dirty inning, with two runners on base, and his job was to get out Caleb Durbin. He couldn't. In fact, he walked Durbin on four pitches, and you could be forgiven for feeling very concerned. The last we'd seen Keller, he was limping toward the finish against the Padres in the Wild Card Series, and he couldn't make it. Asked to pitch two innings that night, he'd come out for the second of them and utterly gone to pieces: two hits, two hit batters, a wild pitch. He was all over the place. Durbin's at-bat looked like evidence of more of the same. Jake Bauers was up next, now with the bases loaded. That was terrible news for a wild Keller, because Bauers has been very patient at the plate all season—and he'd already had the two best and most productive at-bats of the game for the Brewers, by then. Keller missed high and away with a first-pitch fastball, and you could be forgiven for watching only through your fingers. Then, in a semi-miracle, he simply locked it back in. Bauers's patience can be a double-edged sword sometimes. He wasn't going to swing at a 1-0 pitch with the bases loaded and the tying run at third base, almost no matter what. Keller hit the upper third of the zone with a fastball, and he was back in the count. Then, he fired home a changeup that also landed for a strike, and he was back in charge of the at-bat. Bauers had let him back into it, to be sure, but Keller made quality pitches. Having changed the slugger's eye level and messed with his timing, Keller then went back to the top rail for a swinging strike to end the frame. It was a huge mistake, and (essentially) classic Keller, the guy we've seen more of throughout this season. There was no one else Counsell would trust to secure the win in the ninth, but there wouldn't need to be. Keller had walked Durbin because he couldn't find the feel for his sinker, so he simply stuck tightly to his four-seamer the rest of the way. He didn't really have the touch on his slider, either, but he landed the changeup in the zone another time or two en route to a strikeout of Blake Perkins. He got a first-pitch swing from Christian Yelich on a slider he'd meant mostly as a way to steal a strike, and when Nico Hoerner snared the resulting grounder and threw out Yelich, the game was over. It was as low-stress as such outings come, and it was made possible by Keller quickly determining what was working and doing it, eschewing what wasn't quite right. No Cubs reliever threw even 20 pitches Wednesday, which is important. They'll have 28 hours between first pitches, with the late start Thursday night for Game 4. Everyone should be available, and relatively fresh. Keller has reasserted himself as the ace the team hoped they had at the back end of the game, at least for now, and he did it by re-centering himself and using all the tools available to him to escape a desperate jam. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Baseball remains a wonderfully complex and nuanced game. There are many ways to win, and many ways to lose. There are still multiple successful styles available to a team aspiring to play deep into October. You don't have to be built around power, or loaded with high-priced stars. However, one thing is increasingly non-negotiable: you have to win the velocity battle, somewhere. That. as much as anything else, is why the Cubs are now one loss from heading home for the winter, in the first full week of October. They're a well-rounded team. They play excellent defense, and they have plenty of offensive talent, too. Alas, they're running into the wall that awaits every team in October, and they don't have the juice to burst through it. Cubs hitters, by and large, can't hit good fastballs. On pitches 97 miles per hour or faster, the Cubs had the third-lowest batter run value per 100 pitches in the league during the regular season, according to Statcast. Obviously, the league hits worse than its overall average on those pitches; velocity matters. But the fact that the Cubs lag so far behind the rest of the serious contenders in that ability is catching up to them in a major way. Among Cubs who saw at least 50 pitches that fast this season, only Kyle Tucker and Michael Busch had a positive run value on them—and Busch just barely cleared that line. Obviously, with Tucker ailing and playing like a much worse version of himself over the last few months, that means the Cubs lack any kind of threat against pitchers who throw exceptionally hard. Meanwhile, Seiya Suzuki, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Dansby Swanson, Nico Hoerner, Carson Kelly and Justin Turner are all at least 2 runs worse than average per 100 pitches seen when pitchers ramp up to 97 and above. That's down in the range where 'overmatched' becomes an appropriate label. The natural assumption might be that bat speed is the problem; the Cubs also have some of the slowest swing speed in the league. As it turns out, though, bat speed bears little relationship to success against high-velocity pitches. Suzuki and Crow-Armstrong swing fast; it does them no good. Busch is one of the slowest swingers on the team against hot heaters, but it works for him. Rather, the issue here has to be that the team isn't calibrating their best players' approaches properly to handle great velocity. What's missing is hard to pin down. Maybe they're sitting on the wrong offerings, or trying to cover the strike zone too thoroughly. Maybe the pitfalls of Crow-Armstrong's aggressive approach are preventing him from being able to time the fastball. Maybe Suzuki and Swanson, who are so much more patient, are starting too late. In all likelihood, each of the players struggling is doing so for a different reason. That's the biggest problem the team faces: that solving their overarching issue doesn't seem like a switch the coaching staff can flip. There are too many small things making up the big thing holding them back from producing runs in the postseason. With Game 3 of the NLDS right around the corner, the offseason looms, and there might be solutions to find there—but what everyone has been really hoping for is the lineup to wake up and do damage before they get knocked out. View full article