Matthew Trueblood

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

Image courtesy of © Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images In one sense, there was always a clear and present danger that Pete Crow-Armstrong would regress from the heights to which he soared in the first half of this season. His hyper-aggressive approach left no real floor beneath him; a cold snap from him was bound to be uglier than the same level of struggle by most other hitters. Nonetheless, the profundity and the shape of his tailspin since the start of the second half—.212/.261/.363, with just three home runs and seven walks in 162 plate appearances, against 41 strikeouts—is jarring. Even that sample lumps in a relatively hot second half of July, during which Crow-Armstrong clubbed a bunch of doubles. Since August 1, he's batting .162/.217/.231, and has only five total extra-base hits. It's simple, in a way: Crow-Armstrong hasn't yet been able to correct the problematic overstriding that crept into his swing way back in June. It's left his swing a mess, and lately, it's made him look shockingly uncomfortable in the batter's box. As strange as it sounds, often, hitters are aware of problems like these but find them hard to solve. Crow-Armstrong knows he's been making himself late on fastballs and more prone to chasing soft stuff through this mechanical flaw, but in the heat of battle, it's hard to pay off the early work he and Cubs hitting coaches have put in to fix that issue. You can see this in something like his Attack Angle, which is what Baseball Savant labels the angle between the ground and the movement of the sweet spot of the bat at the player's contact point on a given swing. It's a number that gives us a sense of a player's timing: a lower Attack Angle means a hitter isn't working up through the ball as much at contact, which means they're a bit later than when they have a higher number. Higher/earlier isn't always better, and every hitter has their own ideal range of attack angles based on their bat path and timing signature. For Crow-Armstrong, though, a steeper-than-average attack angle is where all his best production comes. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Run Value Per 100 Pitches by Attack Angle Under 6°: -3.4 6°-12°: -5.6 12°-18°: 1.1 18°-24°: 5.5 Over 24°: -3.8 Understanding that, look at this chart of his Attack Angle by month, broken down by pitch category. It's only a moderate problem that Crow-Armstrong isn't getting up to 20° or so against softer stuff. The big problem is that he's been on the wrong side of 10° against fastballs since the start of August. That, in turn, stems from the aforementioned overstriding. As he described to me in July, that flaw lengthens the portion of his swing behind his body and makes it harder for him to work underneath his front side. It leaves him late on heaters far, far too often. There's one more illustrative quirk to help understand what's going on, though. In Crow-Armstrong's first 445 plate appearances of this season, he was hit by a pitch three times. In his last 118 times up, he's been plunked four times. You've probably noticed him seeming to spin out of the way of dangerous-looking high fastballs more often lately, too. It happened as recently as Sunday—a couple of times. TUE3WWRfVjBZQUhRPT1fVlFGVkIxY0dBQUFBREZVSFhnQUhWdzlYQUZrRkJ3UUFBMWNBVkFzRVZBRmRWUVZm.mp4 You might be tempted to think that pitchers have seen Crow-Armstrong getting longer to the ball and decided to start pounding him up and in, even to a reckless extent. Alas, it's even worse than that: Crow-Armstrong is doing this to himself. Here's a side-by-side look at Crow-Armstrong's stance and stride, for May (when he was devastatingly good) and August (when he was atrocious). There's no secret knowledge required here. Just look at the images. He's starting a hair farther off the plate, but he's crept slightly forward in the batter's box, and his stance is less spread-out. He's overstriding, and he's striding right into the ball with his overlong, late-starting swing. He's jamming himself hopelessly on almost everything. There's no path to consistent, solid contact with this stride signature and Crow-Armstrong's lack of plate discipline. That's not good news. It's like a diagnosis of cancer that, while not fatal, requires major surgery. Crow-Armstrong's poor plate discipline leaves him with no way to get right at the plate except to fix this major mechanical problem—no secondary way to succeed or mitigate failure—and this is the kind of mechanical problem that usually only gets fixed in offseasons. There's a chance that he can correct it, and if he does, he could quickly get back to doing what he did until roughly mid-July. Fatigue (mental and physical) is surely a factor here, but it's not as though the league has simply figured him out and switched to doing something he can't combat. Unfortunately, though, the solution to the problem he's having is tougher to unlock than it would be if pitchers were attacking him differently. It's all in his body, his eyes, and the hitting computer that is his brain. To get turned around before next February would take a possible but difficult (and very rare) feat of self-correction, in the midst of the grind of his first full season in the majors. This is actually something the Cubs do well. They fixed Crow-Armstrong himself last July, and Miguel Amaya, too. They fixed Seiya Suzuki with a hard reset in 2023 and Matt Shaw with one this summer. However, it's awfully late in the campaign (and some of the bad habits his body is in are awfully ingrained) to get him right now. If Craig Counsell still believes it's possible to catch the Brewers for the division title (it's not) or that it's important to hold onto the top Wild Card seed in the National League (it is), he's unlikely to sanction a multi-day reset for Crow-Armstrong. He believes too much in the value of his center fielder's glove to give time for the resurrection of his bat. That dilemma is a thorny one, and it might become the limiting factor for a Cubs team that wants to go deep into October—but that also has to get there, first, and that can't afford not to have Crow-Armstrong running down balls in the outfield any more than they can afford not to have him hitting the ball. At this juncture, it's unlikely that Crow-Armstrong will rediscover the magic at the plate in 2025. That's a major disappointment, but a hard reality. If he does turn things around, it will be the best story yet in a season full of interesting ones. It could even be the defining narrative of a team that goes all the way to the World Series. For now, though, temper those expectations—or at least, root for a few days worth of Kevin Alcántara and Willi Castro in center field. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images There are few things (if any, at all) like a robust Wrigley Field crowd on a holiday. The Rickettses' renovation has disassembled the soul of the place and sold off a bit of it, hoping no one will notice on the other side of the reconstruction, but Wrigley remains a baseball palace, and a good Cubs team that lasts until the glare of summer starts to slant toward autumn brings out its best colors. When the Cubs fell badly behind early on Monday, though, it started to feel like the place was too crowded—not with people, but with weeks and weeks stacked on top of each other, all squished into five innings. Baseball is a summer game, which makes this Cubs season awkward, because the team has not truly had a good summer. They had a good spring, and since early June, they've been merely treading water. The anxiety of a good team that might not be quite as good as hoped—that slowly watches their division lead melt away over six weeks, then quickly watches the usurpers run away with the thing over a nightmare fortnight—has piled up for almost three months now, and when visitors from Atlanta raced out to a 6-1 lead before the holiday crowd still searching for its summer highlight at the unofficial end of that season, it looked like that anxiety would keep rising like bile in the throat all through September. Wonderfully, the team sensed that challenge, absorbed it, staggered under its weight—and then answered it. All day, Kyle Tucker looked bad—fidgety in the batter's box, uncomfortable, noncommittal at the worst possible moment on a crucial fly ball to right-center field. Early on, Pete Crow-Armstrong looked similarly so. Colin Rea still looked the way he did in San Francisco, and the rightful worries of many that he will continue to peter out over the final month seemed confirmed. But then: Matt Shaw drove a gorgeous double into the left-field corner, scoring Dansby Swanson in the fifth. It was a continuation of Shaw's pull-centric second-half breakout, a poignant evocation of Ryne Sandberg's stellar summer in the year when Sandberg left us. Swanson stroked a double into left-center in the sixth, scoring two runs to halve the remaining deficit. This is a subtler but no less vital trend. Swanson had a good road trip and has gotten into the habit of diving out and finding the barrel on balls over the outer third of the plate, where pitchers love to work him, pulling it not down the line (like Shaw) but to left-center. Swanson had eight extra-base hits to left-center field in the first half; he has eight in the second half. New Cub Aaron Civale shut down Atlanta for three innings, making his first career relief appearance in style. His velocity was up a tick from his season averages, and not seeing the opposing lineup multiple times looked like the advantage it should prove to be all month. That gave the team time to catch up. Carson Kelly came through twice, with a game-tying two-run homer in the eighth and a walkoff single (which could have been a double, if it had needed to be) in the 10th. Kelly is, arguably, the best avatar of the team's season as a whole. He started like a house afire, but since Miguel Amaya got hurt in Cincinnati in late May and Kelly had to take over as something closer to an everyday backstop, he had batted .232/.302/.338. It's fair to wonder how much better than that Kelly can be the rest of the way, just as it's fair to wonder whether the Cubs can really recapture the magic they seemed to have harnessed early in the aseason. For at least one day, though, the answers to both questions looked encouraging. Not all is copacetic. The Cubs aren't going to catch the Brewers in the NL Central, which means they'll have to play a best-of-three series just to reach the Division Series. They still have dubious starting pitching depth, and their bullpen has sprung some leaks lately. The engines of their early success on offense (Tucker, Crow-Armstrong and Seiya Suzuki) are very much stuck in neutral, even though Tucker's swing mechanics seem to have improved; none of the three look good in the batter's box right now. However, this team is deeper than it has looked for much of the summer. Ian Happ's torrid stretch continued with a homer Monday, and he was always meant to be an important part of the lineup; he just went into a prolonged funk that took him out of that role for a while. Swanson and Shaw (and, to a lesser extent, Nico Hoerner) are valuable complementary pieces who can take over an occasional game themselves, which is how this team came to seem so thoroughly dangerous back in April and May. The season has aked this team hard questions, and they haven't always found satisfactory answers. For the throng that filled Wrigley Field to begin September (and the throngs yet to come, throughout this month and (the team hopes) the next one), though, real satisfaction will hinge on how they do on the remainder of the test. They rediscovered their formula for wins just in time Monday. Now, they have to multiply the recipe to make a bigger batch. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Carter Hawkins knows Carlos Santana; they overlapped in Cleveland. Craig Counsell knows Santana; he managed him in the second half of 2023. Willi Castro knows Santana; they played the 2024 season together with the Minnesota Twins. Aaron Civale, Caleb Thielbar, and Colin Rea have all been teammates, too. Santana is one of the game's most universally beloved veterans, yet another signing that affirms the Cubs' strong belief in the value of relationships and of clubhouse chemistry—and in the significance of proverbial skins on the wall. It will be easy to enfold Santana into a veteran-led and veteran-stuffed clubhouse, but how to fit him into the daily plans on the field is a bit thornier a question. Arguably the best defensive first baseman in the league, Santana can always provide that value as a glove man, but he becomes the third first baseman on the roster. He's a career .274/.372/.447 hitter against left-handed pitchers, but in a down season at age 39, he's shown major cracks even in that skill. He's hitting just .235/.328/.353 this year versus southpaws. At that rate, he's no meaningful upgrade over Justin Turner, and he's certainly not going to start ahead of Michael Busch against righties—save, perhaps, to rest Busch once or twice if the Cubs find themselves in a comfortable position over the final week. That's the bad news. The good news is that Santana's bat speed, swing path and contact numbers are little changed from last year, even against lefties. He's done two things a bit too often this year, for his profile. First, deeply uncharacteristically, he's chasing a bit more outside the strike zone. Plenty of hitters would be happy to be chasing just 25% of the pitches they see outside the zone, but Santana's extreme patience was a huge part of his success for a decade and a half. To see that trait wobble might indicate that age is catching up to him, even if he can get his bat up to speed just as well when he does fire. The other thing he's done too often this year, from the right side, is hit the ball straight up in the air. That can be fluky, though, of course, and most of those problems came in the first half. Santana hasn't lost the ability to strike the ball well or the ability to lift it against lefties, so if he reins in his plate discipline even by a tiny increment, he should be helpful. Turner (2 Defensive Runs Saved, according to Sports Info Solutions) and Busch (0 DRS) can't keep up with Santana (11) even at this advanced age, so whenever he is in the game for defense, he'll be a noticeable upgrade. There's also some tactical value to unlock, here. Santana might be a more trustworthy bat against left-handed pitchers than Kevin Alcántara, in Counsell's view, so perhaps there will be times when he'll pinch-hit for Pete Crow-Armstrong before giving way to Alcántara for late-game defense. He might also bat for Reese McGuire at times, letting Carson Kelly filter in thereafter. Santana will certainly be good for the internal vibes of the team, which are already good. Whether he'll add material on-field value depends on whether he's in full-fledged decline or just had some bad luck in the small sample of a partial season's platoon splits. As the Cubs gear up for the postseason, however, he makes as much sense as anyone they could have brought in to round out their expanded September bench. The versatility of Castro and the athleticism of Alcántara make it easier to fit him in, too. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images In the glory days of what Brewers fans affectionately dubbed 'Craigtember', the Cubs would have an embarrassment of riches and an endless number of ways to utilize them come Monday. They claimed righthander Aaron Civale off waivers from the White Sox Sunday, displacing lefty reliever Tom Cosgrove from the 40-man roster but givin them a proven veteran with the ability to deliver bulk innings throughout the final month of the regular season. Civale, 30, has not had a banner year in his final season before becoming eligible for free agency. He started the season in the Brewers' starting rotation, but immediately got sidelined by a leg injury and was then displaced by the promotion of rookie phenom Jacob Misiorowski. Wanting to prove to offseason suitors that he can be a valuable starter, Civale requested a trade, and was sent to the White Sox—where he's stuck in the rotation, but posted a 5.37 ERA in 13 appearances. Civale won't be Plan A for any spot in the rotation with Chicago, and he's never appeared in relief in the majors during a regular-season game. On the other hand, he's never appeared in relief in the majors during a regular-season game—which is to say, the upside of such a conversion has yet to be explored for him. He has a six-pitch mix, not counting a sweeper he's cut out of the mix he had last year, and streamlining that—perhaps even reintroducing the sweeper, in the process—could unlock some things for him. So, too, could an extra tick or two on his fastballs. His four-seamer and sinker each sit around 92 miles per hour, but his cutter drives his approach, and it's only 89-90. Bump that up, or rejigger that whole mix and increase the usage of his other heaters, and his profile changes in an intriguing way. With the change from the old structure of September rosters (whereby teams could carry all 40 of the players on their reserve lists) to the new one (whereby they can add just one batter and one pitcher on September 1), however, this addition creates a mild crunch, even for a team hungry for quality innings. Civale's roster spot could come at the expense of Ben Brown, who fills a similar role (but not well) right now. The second half of August saw the Cubs wheel through a handful of guys in that final relief slot, including Jordan Wicks, Luke Little, Gavin Hollowell, and Porter Hodge. With Ryan Brasier and Michael Soroka both on the injured list but aiming to return by mid-September, there's room for Civale in the short term, but someone will be squeezed out of the picture in the second half of the month. Though he's not coming in as a planned part of the rotation, Civale certainly could make starts for the team over the final four weeks. The Cubs' place in the postseason looks very secure, and although they should keep pressing to ensure that they host the Wild Card Series, they'll surely spend a portion of the month trying to ease the workload of starters Cade Horton and Matthew Boyd, among others. A skipped start for Horton or a lengthening to six men in the rotation is very plausible. So, too, is a piggyback arrangement whereby a starter like Horton, Colin Rea or Javier Assad might depart after four innings in favor of Civale, who would work a similar length and save the bullpen a day's work. Until Jameson Taillon returns from the injured list, at the very least, starter-style innings are available. Opposing batters have just a .679 OPS the first time they see Civale in a game this season. That rises to .818 the second time and .877 the third time. By cutting out the third time altogether and limiting second looks at him for opponents, the Cubs could get some good innings out of Civale down the stretch. It's easy, at least, to see why they're going to give it a shot. Only after the first week or two of the month will the roster math start to get tricky. View full article

Image courtesy of © Stan Szeto-Imagn Images Last August 18, the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Cleveland Guardians 2-0. It was part of the signature annual kick the Crew makes to knock back all challengers and assert themselves as the rightful champions of the NL Central. It was also a new high point for Colin Rea. The Brewers had had to rely on Rea much more than expected in 2023, but they'd phased him out in August and kept him on very short leashes throughout September. He'd re-signed on a modest deal that November, but after Brandon Woodruff's season was canceled by shoulder surgery and Corbin Burnes was traded that winter, Rea emerged as an utterly unexpected de facto No. 2 starter for Milwaukee in 2024. He could not have met that challenge more impressively. After seven scoreless innings with five strikeouts and just four total baserunners allowed that day against Cleveland, Rea had pitched 135 innings for the 2024 Crew and had a 3.52 ERA. In a season full of surprising and impressive performances, Rea's was one of the most important. The Brewers could not have won the division without him. From that day on, though, they were a lot better off when someone else was pitching. Rea wouldn't have another good start the rest of the way. He was rocked for 10 runs in four innings in San Francisco on September 11. Twice in the final three weeks, he was pushed back or skipped in the rotation and made appearances out of the bullpen instead. All told, starting with his August 24 start in Oakland, Rea had a 7.52 ERA. The Brewers hadn't handed him the ball at all in their Wild Card Series loss in 2023, and although you'd have assumed they would in mid-August, they never did turn to him in their three-game loss to the Mets in October 2024. All of that (not least, the nightmarish appearance in San Francisco) felt rather relevant and immediate Wednesday night, as a fairly different Giants team did a fairly similar thing to Rea and boat-raced the Cubs, eventually winning 12-3. It's not that Rea's success to this point has been entirely fake, and it's certainly been meaningful, but you need to know this, and you (or at least the Cubs) needed to keep it in mind all along: Rea is a guy who runs out of steam at the end of a full season. That's why last year was the first time he even got a chance to pitch all the way through one as a big-league starter, or at least a facsimile of one. The hurler has made some important adjustments this year, and he has a chance to find success from time to time even down the stretch. He's not an automatic loss, if you have to hand the ball to him to start a playoff game. That shouldn't be the plan until other options have been exhausted, though, because his decade-plus in pro ball provides ample evidence that he won't have his best blend of stuff and command by the time the calendar flips to September, let alone October. Rea kept the team in the game during his previous outing, a 4-3 win over the Brewers, but he also walked five and struck out just two in that contest. The cracks are starting to show, and they're not merely the product of random fluctuation. They're part of a systematic tendency to fade a bit, which is far from unique to Rea and has to be baked into your evaluation of him. A few weeks ago, a Cubs fan might fairly have held out hope that that wouldn't matter much. Now, though, it's fair to look around and wonder just how well the Cubs can get from here to the end of the regular season, let alone what happens when the playoffs begin. Jameson Taillon went back on the injured list Tuesday, with a groin issue the team insists is minor. That might be true, and this might be purely about maintenance, but it's the second time Taillon has been shelved just when the team seemed to need the stability of a veteran starter every fifth day the most. On Tuesday night, after the Taillon news was announced, Matthew Boyd had his fourth shaky outing in the last six. Boyd isn't kaput, either, but the Cubs are much more reliant on him than they are on Rea (or even Taillon), so his unsteadiness is even more concerning. His command has wavered badly, after looking masterful for the entire first half. With 153 1/3 innings pitched, Boyd has gotten more outs this year than in 2022, 2023 and 2024 combined. It's fair to wonder whether the ability to control and manipulate the ball the way he has for so long can hold up much longer for him, before he'll need an offseason to recharge. A bit of command erosion indicates that Boyd and Rea, in their mid-30s, are getting to points their bodies are having a hard time adjusting to, because they really haven't done this before—or haven't done it in many years. For Cade Horton, that subtle sign was the blister that took him out of his start against Milwaukee last week. He came right back and dominated the Angels, but no one is likely to forget that he, too, is pitching past any precedents his body understands. Shota Imanaga and Javier Assad should be solid starters down the stretch. Beyond them, though, lie major questions even about some of the hurlers who have performed best for the Cubs this season. The loss of Justin Steele, the inability of Taillon to stay on the mound, and the busted bet on Michael Soroka all loom large at this moment. They have 29 games left to play this regular season. They only need to win, perhaps, 10 of them to ensure that they reach the postseason, but if they want to host the Wild Card Series matchup in which they're most likely to face the San Diego Padres, they probably need to go 15-14 or 16-13. At this moment, that feels like a tall order. The team's bullpen is solid, but it's neither spectacular nor overwhelmingly deep. Craig Counsell can't simply offload the middle innings he no longer wants to depend on Rea or Boyd or Horton to occupy to the pen, because he doesn't have the horses out there. He has to spend at least the next fortnight managing largely to keep people healthy and let his struggling arms work through a period of adjustment, hoping they and their bodies can lock back into a groove by the time the bunting is hung from the railings. Two losses in San Francisco are not a major problem; the Cubs are almost certain to make the playoffs even if they're swept out of town by Logan Webb Thursday. On and off the field, though, this trip has now begun to demonstrate where the team's weaknesses are and what the biggest challenges will be as they race toward the finish line of the season. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images In a perfect world, perhaps, Ian Happ or Nico Hoerner would be having a better season. Happ had a .360 on-base percentage in 2023. Hoerner has never had one higher than .346 over a full campaign, but (like Happ) he's had half-season stretches wherein he sits around .390. If either player was having that kind of 2025 campaign, Craig Counsell might have them slotted in atop the batting order on a regular basis. Their skill sets are well-suited to that job, when they're playing their best baseball. Right now, though, that's not the case. Happ is fighting for his life, batting .202/.315/.395 since the start of June. Hoerner is a metronome, but that's not a full-throated compliment: he's a metronomic .280/.335/.370 hitter. Given his druthers, Counsell wants more of a threat at the top of the order, and if he's going to make an exception to that rule, it needs to be for someone with a truly difference-making ability to get on base and avoid outs. Neither Happ nor Hoerner is clearing that bar. By default, then, the job has fallen to Michael Busch. Counsell moved his starting first baseman to the first spot on the lineup card just before the All-Star break, and for most of the weeks since, he's kept him there. The results have been disastrous—Busch is hitting just .195/.252/.367 in that span, and the Cubs offense continues to wobble between serviceable and maddening—but the bulk of the blame for that falls further down the batting order. With Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Seiya Suzuki all struggling similarly over longer periods (or even more intensely, over a similar period), who's had time to focus on Busch? Counsell entrusted Busch with the job because he brings a balance of on-base skills and power that can often catalyze the offense. Even amid this painful stretch (which has included hitting into some bad luck), Busch has occasionally looked worthy of that trust, but moving up and leading the crew seems to have messed with his approach a bit. That's a shame, because Busch has a somewhat delicate but extremely productive approach when he's on. He's been significantly better this year than last year, because he's locked in the best version of that approach for a bit longer than he did in his rookie campaign. That's included a few things: Being on time for the fastball Getting aggressive at the front end of counts, including hunting hittable first pitches Attacking the ball more with power in mind after gaining leverage in the count Busch's whiff rate on heaters is down this year, as he's learned to cover the upper half of the zone better without compromising his ability to drive the ball in the air. He's swinging at 38.9% of 0-0 pitches he sees, up from 32.0% last season. He's also hitting an eye-popping .295/.583/.541 in plate appearances that reach ball 3, which is good even by the standards of those advantage counts. Being more aggressive and creating more hard line drives has made Busch a better overall hitter. His hard-hit rate is up from 39.9% to 46.3% this year. He already has eight more Barrels, according to Statcast, than he had all last season. His average exit velocity is up. His expected slugging average is about .060 higher than his actual slugging average; he's find the good part of the barrel much more consistently. Swinging more often early also means that he's striking out less often, down from 28.6% last year to 24.6% this year. On the other hand, and unsurprisingly, Busch is also walking much less this year. He drew a free pass in 11.1% of his plate appearances in 2024. This season, that figure is 8.8%. Part of that is because he's swinging at those first pitches more often, and that's fine. Trading a walk for a good pass at the ball and the high chance of an extra-base hit is a profitable exchange. However, there's also a bit of a shortfall to notice in Busch's game when it comes to finishing his walks. Only 40.8% of the plate appearances in which he's gotten to three balls have eventually become bases on balls this season. Of the 600 player-seasons with the most plate appearances reaching those counts since 2021, Busch's 2025 ranks 480th in walk conversion rate. He's in the top quintile in hitting for power with three balls in the count, but the bottom quintile in turning those counts into walks. Whether that represents a problem in need of fixing is a thornier question. A bit counterintuitively, an extra-base hit on 3-0 or 3-1 is less valuable than one that comes on 1-2, or even at 0-0. That sounds silly—you get the same number of bases, either way—but you have to think a bit about the array of other possible outcomes for that plate appearance when the pitch comes in. It's good to make more of a 3-1 count than just a walk, but it's even better to create a jolt without needing to get ahead first—to bail oneself out of a pitcher-friendly count, most of all. If you don't have the knack for driving the ball when you're ahead in the count, you can still work those walks. Busch, instead, has hammered the ball in those counts—but lost some walks in the process. He's actually been quite good after falling behind early in counts, relative to the rest of the league. He still gets to power in two-strike counts, too. Those are all signs of a great hitter. and it's not as though Busch is expanding his zone or making bad swing decisions when he does get ahead. On balance, though—given, especially, that aforementioned ability to make high-value contact even when he gets to two strikes—maybe the right approach for Busch, specifically, is to swing a bit less often when he's ahead. That would tend to lead to more walks and a higher OBP, even if it comes at the cost of a little bit of power. Even amid this slump since the All-Star break, Busch hasn't been the problem with the inconsistent Cubs lineup. He's having a profoundly impressive season, and only when Tucker is at his best does the team have any better hitters. The leadoff spot has been unkind to him, though, and whether he needs to make a mental adjustment to suit his altered role or be shifted back down in the order a bit, the Cubs need more and better performance from him the rest of the way. He might process at-bats better with some others ahead of him, to watch and learn, or with runners on base who help shape the pitcher's plan in a more predictable way. Then again, he really might just be in a rut of bad luck and bad sequencing. At his best and at his worst, Busch is one of the most trustworthy bats on this roster. View full article