Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images It wouldn't even have crossed the mind of the 20th-century pitcher to try to beat you with nothing but speed and movement. The very best hurlers in the league in any given period—the Tom Seaver or Nolan Ryan type, with overpowering velocity at their disposal—might go right after hitters, but few of them had arsenals deep enough or control fine enough to always beat hitters that way, even at a time when most opposing lineups had a couple of hitters who would clear the fences just once a year. Thus, the most successful and praiseworthy pitchers in baseball would mix up their arm angles on you. Some had a specific pitch they threw from a slot distinctly different than that from which they threw the rest of their repertoire. Some would drop down unexpectedly in particular moments, when they felt the opposing batter was seeing them too well. This was not the exclusive demesne of junkballers, either. Seaver himself did it. So did David Cone, a generation later. John Smoltz did it. Varying one's arm angle was considered a viable (and often vital) way to deceive hitters and keep them on the defensive. It's become vanishingly rare, over the last 20 years. Some notable hurlers (Rich Hill, Clayton Kershaw, and Nestor Cortes, most famously) have dabbled with it, but the trend of the modern game is toward careful engineering and optimization of deliveries. Repeating your delivery is more prized than ever, and that means working from the same slot as much as possible. Advancements in our understanding of spin and other movement effects have allowed pitchers to create bigger differentials in movement between their offerings, so coming from different spots is less essential. In fact, the conventional wisdom has come to be that changing one's slot only gives away information to the hitter. In 2025, though, the Cubs' All-Star starting pitcher has defied that convention. Matthew Boyd is dropping down on his slider more all the time—and it's part of how he's stayed one step ahead of the league all year. Boyd has thrown his slider from a lower arm angle than his fastballs for the last few years, but the gap between the heaters and the slide piece has grown this year—and grown as the year has gone on, too. One might worry that this would make it too easy to distinguish the slider from the heat out of the hand, and Boy'd's whiff rate on the slider is down this year—but that's just part of the story. Here's the other part: Batted-Ball Data, Matthew Boyd Sliders, 2024-25 2024: 82 MPH exit velocity, 21° launch angle 2025: 78.5 MPH, 1° The median batted ball against Boyd's slider this year is a very weak ground ball. Widening the lens, of course, the results also justify his change, because he has a 2.61 ERA in 148 innings of work. Let's take a look at this in action, and see why it's so effective. In his last start, Boyd got Brice Turang out on a ground ball with a first-pitch slider in his first at-bat. Here's a pitch-by-pitch look at the second time the two saw each other. Boyd started Turang with another slider. QndvdmxfVjBZQUhRPT1fQmxKVlhWME1CUVVBQVZZS1VRQUhCZ01GQUFNR1d3UUFBRkJUQUZCUVZ3WUhBd1VD.mp4 Turang laid off this pitch, barely, but that's the kind of reaction you love to get from a hitter on the first pitch of an at-bat. An 0-0 swing should be an aggressive cut, or none at all; Boyd had Turang feeling very uncertain. He then tried the outside corner with a four-seamer, but missed. QndvdmxfVjBZQUhRPT1fRDFKWkJnSUZVd29BV1FRRVV3QUhVQUJRQUZoWEFBTUFCMUFBQTFaVFZ3QUhVd2RR.mp4 That pitch is working to the same side of the plate as the slider, but on an entirely different vertical plane. Since the slider is a sweepy-looking pitch, it's weird for the hitter to see the fastball play right in the same horizontal lane, even a foot and a half higher. Boyd was down 2-0 in the count, but he'd put some tricky things in Turang's way. QndvdmxfVjBZQUhRPT1fQlFZRVhGQUZCQWNBQUZjTFZnQUhCUUFIQUZnRFZ3UUFDd1lFQjFjREJnRmRVVmRm.mp4 When is a 2-0 sinker down the middle a good pitch? Only when it's been set up exceptionally well. Turang was waiting for a fastball in that zone, but he still mishit it. Why? Because Boyd had made it so hard for him to know what his pitch would look like when it came. Here are his release points for all three pitches in the sequence, side-by-side-by-side. There's so much funk in that first delivery (the slider), not only in that his arm is a bit lower, but in the way he strides slightly more across his body, helping create the angle for the pitch he's executing. This tweak is why Boyd throws the slider less often to righties this year, because it's a change conducive mostly to throwing the pitch to the first-base side of the plate and with deceptive sweep, but it's also why his whole ensemble has been so effective. By giving hitters such disparate looks, he disrupts the process of most guys throughout the league. The modern hitter is being optimized, too. They're working off the Trajekt machine, which can tailor the ball's flight to individual pitchers and pitches and even sync up video to simulate working against that hurler—but which can't be set to throw from two or three different places while mimicking one pitcher. Forcing batters who work relentlessly to find a small release window within which to track the ball to, instead, widen their field and see all his knees and elbows gives Boyd the edge. Not every pitcher has this much feel for the craft. Even some of those who do prefer to use it to hone especially precise location and command of their stuff, rather than to maximize deception. As Boyd gets set for his 26th start of the season Tuesday, though, his success this year is testament to the fact that the old ways of stumping great hitters still work. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images It would be pretty easy to dismiss the miniature hot streak Kyle Tucker went on this weekend. The Cubs were playing the lowly Angels, and Tucker got some very hittable pitches in the middle of the plate, from some pitchers right on the fringe of the big leagues. He had three home runs and a double, and he drove in a key run with an opposite-field single Sunday, but all of those hits came on true meatballs. For hitters of Tucker's caliber, though, getting your pitch is meant to be nine-tenths of the battle. Hitting that pitch hard somewhere—and often, specifically, over the fence to the pull field—is the last and easiest fight. When a guy like Tucker is going right, he crushes pitches like these. As of this weekend, it would appear that Tucker is right again. cU82ZWtfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGxNSEFsUlhCUUVBVzFvRkF3QUhCQVplQUFNRFZGQUFBVmRUVXdkWEExSUJBd1JX.mp4 Obviously, though, these hits were still newsworthy, because for a long time now, Tucker hasn't been right. He had four extra-base hits in Chicago's series in Anaheim. In 168 plate appearances from the start of July until the start of that series, he had had just four extra-base hits. The problem—well, part of it—lied in his bat path. I wrote about that issue earlier this month at Baseball Prospectus. It became popular (especially in the wake of one Cubs appearance on Sunday Night Baseball) to remark on Tucker's swing speed being down slightly, but that reduction really was slight. In fact, insofar as that problem was tied speculatively to the finger injury he suffered June 1, it does a poor job of explaining his downturn—not only because that downturn didn't really begin until the second half of that month, but because his bat speed actually spiked during that window—just when his production took a nosedive. Besides, Tucker really isn't a bat-speed slugger. That's how some players generate their power, but for many others, it comes from having the knack for efficient contact. It's about having such good feel for getting the barrel to the ball that the bat speed doesn't need to be elite for the ball to jump, and it's about doing that with loft in your swing so that the ball jumps off the bat in the air. Tucker falls into that class. The number to track with him was always his swing plane, because it's the path his barrel takes to the ball that makes him a star. During his downturn in production, Tucker was too flat to the ball. Some of that might have been for reasons other than the finger issue. In fact, there were almost certainly multiple factors. Still, that was what was happening. During that fallow period, Tucker had a lot of swings like this one against balls right in the middle of the zone. VndNb1JfVjBZQUhRPT1fVkZkV1ZWWUdCUW9BQ0FFQ1V3QUhCUVpXQUZnTUFnY0FBZ1JUQ1FZRkFGQlhVbEZS.mp4 This pitch isn't down, but he's on top of it, in a bad way. His bat drags through the zone too flat; he's not whipping the barrel down to carry it up through the pitch, the way he does when he's at his best. Here's another example of the phenomenon. Different platoon matchup, different pitch, but same enticing location—and a similar unwelcome result. cU82NHpfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JsTUFCVllEVWdNQUFBQURVUUFIQVZJRUFBQlRWMU1BVjEwTVZnVlhCZ05VQUFFRA==.mp4 The above is why Tucker survived in the lineup a long while, even as he struggled to put the barrel on the ball. He missed a great pitch to hit here, but that happens even to the best hitters, occasionally. By fouling the ball off, he wasted a great opportunity, but he didn't get himself out. Foul balls earn a batter chances to square one up and hit it straight, or to keep making good swing decisions and draw a walk. Ugly though things got, Tucker did scratch his way on base reasonably often during his profound slump. His base of skills is deep enough to keep him (almost) palatable even when he's off. Now, though, he's clicking again. Even on this measly single Sunday, you can see it. WEQybDJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlZCWVVBWlJCQVFBQUFjR1hnQUhBbFFEQUZoVFcxWUFCd0FGQTFjRFVsSlZBMVpm.mp4 It's all in the tilt. Here's a screenshot of Tucker making contact on that pitch against the Cardinals: And here's one of him connecting against Hendricks: He's slightly behind this ball, but because he's on the best plane for his address of the ball, he gets good wood on it and hits a slicing liner the other way, with little chance of getting caught. He's more upright, in terms of his stride, but with more lean in his body to make room to work "under [his] front side," as he and several other Cubs talk about often. Here's the same screenshot for his groundout against the White Sox. And, as a capper, his contact point on the homer we looked at to start this off. You can see, in comparing these two shots, how it helps Tucker to have (presumably) more comfort and confidence in his bottom hand. It has the important job of shearing upward to pull the bat through the zone. At any rate, though, comparing the screenshots should make clear what we also saw in that scatter plot above: more tilt means much more power potential, within the context of Tucker's swing. This doesn't mean Tucker will automatically remain locked in for the rest of the year, let alone the playoffs. However, it's highly encouraging to see him rediscover the stellar swing that eluded him for a long stretch. Chicago needs him as the centerpiece of their lineup, and this weekend, he finally looked like that centerpiece again. Creating lift by swinging with his natural tilt, Tucker is back to driving the ball. View full article

Yup. And in fact, Megill took pride in throwing the heat just as much as Palencia does as recently as last year—but ran into the same issues Palencia has lately and realized he needed to adjust. I think we're starting to see Palencia do so, too. Funny how many little parallels there always are between these two teams.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Just in time, Daniel Palencia figured it out. He entered Wednesday night's game against the Brewers with a two-run lead to protect and just three outs to get, but because he was facing baseball's best team and most dangerous lineup, that was destined not to be an easy assignment. He struck out the scrappy but overmatched Anthony Seigler using (mostly) his triple-digit fastball, but when he tried to do the same to Brice Turang, the Milwaukee second baseman cracked a line-drive single to center field. In a 1-2 count against one of baseball's best contact hitters (Caleb Durbin), we got a glimpse of Palencia's way through the threat posed by the Crew. He struck Durbin out with a vicious slider, low and away. He tried a similar approach with pinch-hitter Danny Jansen, but missed with the first and left the second too much in the zone; Jansen pulled a single that scored Turang. Pinch-runner Brandon Lockridge would then steal second, and suddenly, the Brewers had the tying run in scoring position. This is where, quite often, Palencia gets himself into trouble. He has a terrific fastball, capable of getting to 102 miles per hour and with good two-plane movement. The problem is that he overuses it. More than two-thirds of the pitches he throws are heaters, which both allows hitters to anticipate it and passes up some of the swing-and-miss potential so evident in that slider—and even his splitter, on the rare occasions when he can command that offering. Retreating to that approach in the face of mounting pressure, Palencia walked Sal Frelick. The Milwaukee outfielder goes into a defensive shell against top-end velocity, so he was safe from giving up a go-ahead homer as long as he stuck to the heat, but the right thing to do was to mix in a slider somewhere in the sequence and go for the punchout. He never did. Palencia did trust the slider enough to go to it three times against Isaac Collins, a switch-hitter batting left-handed, and it was the only thing that worked in the sequence. Collins whiffed on each of the first two sliders he saw. Alas, on 3-2, Palencia missed non-competitively with the pitch, loading the bases. That meant that everything came down to Palencia against Brewers slugger William Contreras. He was nearing 30 pitches, and his adrenaline had him a bit uneven, but Palencia did find the high side of 100 miles per hour again with Contreras in the box. He got two quick, called strikes on balls in the lower, outside quadrant, to go ahead 0-2. Then, he threw one 101.4 miles per hour at the letters. Contreras was extremely ready for it, though. He hit a sharp line drive to the right side. Nico Hoerner speared it, saving the game and allowing Chicagoans a huge sigh of relief—but that was very nearly a score-flipping single. Palencia did have Contreras set up for that location, given where the two previous heaters had been, but the right way to execute that sequence is to go even higher—eye-high, rather than chest-high, to either get an easy whiff or put that new sightline in his head. Then, he needed to throw him the slider low and away, just as he did to Durbin. If Palencia can start to trust and develop sequences like that, he'll become a truly dominant big-league closer. Four of the six whiffs he induced Wednesday were on his slider; it's a very good pitch. Right now, however, he only fully believes in his 'gasolina'. That conviction is important, but so is mixing things up, so great hitters can't sit on and time your triple-digit fastball. Come October, the Cubs need Palencia to have taken the next step as a pitcher. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images The Cubs don't prize bat speed. Almost every team in the league does, by now, and the Cubs certainly don't truly disdain the ability to swing fast, but Chicago is willing to zig against a league-wide zag in this regard. If you sort all batters with at least 25 competitive swings this year by average bat speed, the Cubs have no one inside the top 125, and only three players in the top 200. Well, that was true until a week ago, anyway. Owen Caissie's power is his calling card. If he didn't have very good bat speed, it would be both surprising and profoundly worrisome. The more dependent a player's profile is on power, the more non-negotiable it is that they swing fast. Good bat speed is one of the key foundations of slugging. It's a relief, then, to see that Caissie has swung the bat at 75.1 mph since arriving in the big leagues—43rd-fastest among the nearly 600 players with at least 25 swings. Teams have bat-tracking data even for players in the minors, though it tends not to be as complete or as accurate. Thus, the Cubs knew Caissie swung fast before they called him up, but there's another question to be asked that goes beyond the validity of data, too: how reliably can a hitter get off his 'A' swing against big-league pitchers? It's not hard to find examples of players who took a long time to learn to do that, because the big-league strike zone is slightly larger than that in Triple A, and because big-league pitchers have many more ways to manipulate opposing batters and ruin their timing. Plenty of young hitters (even ones with prodigious talent) come up and find themselves caught in between, or struggling to execute a swing that can cover all the offerings their new, better opponents can throw for strikes. Caissie will almost surely go through that kind of adjustment period at some point, but in his first 14 plate appearances, he's shown the ability to do those difficult things and still swing fast. There's one more fun wrinkle, too. This one, too, was known in advance, but it's stark to set it into a big-league context. Caissie has a swing with above-average tilt, in addition to that sheer swing speed. Only 22 hitters have an average bat speed of 75 mph or higher and a swing tilt of at least 33° this year. (The league averages are 71.8 mph and 32°, respectively.) Here they are. This isn't a list comprised exclusively of superstars. Former Cubs farmhand Alexander Canario's inclusion is the most glaring reminder that this kind of swing will get you plenty of chances, but not necessarily bring you unmitigated success. Much depends on whether you can consistently make contact, and famously, that's been Caissie's one weakness throughout his minor-league career. There's a firm and lowish ceiling on the contact rate one can achieve when swinging this fast, with a tilted barrel designed to generate loft. On balance, though, it's an exhilarating thing to see from the Cubs' top prospect. If you take out the guys on whom the jury is necessarily still out (White Sox rookie Colson Montgomery, the oft-injured Triston Casas), it's fair to say that swinging this fast with this plane gives a hitter about a 60% chance of becoming a star-caliber slugger. The chances of being an actually bad player are remote—around 10%. Caissie will have to prove he can sustain these swing characteristics whenever the league forces a big round of adjustments, and much of that might happen next year, rather than right now. As things stand, though, he's right in line with the sluggers who have lit up the league throughout this season, and it's encouraging to see that merely coming to the majors and seeing better pitchers didn't rob him of that ability to exercise his talent. View full article

For my part, I've been trying to ensure we're all clear on the fact that they're NOT catching the Brewers. I agree that any notion of doing so is delusional. The year you're thinking of, by the by, is 1977. I think they started 47-22 that year and still managed to finish 81-81.

Victor: this take is crazy. If you're really itchy to blame the Cubs for this, the way to do it is to question whether their poor development/instruction infrastructure at the big-league level is a major factor in Tucker running into this roadblock. But Kyle Tucker is a much better baseball player than Cody Bellinger; you're not going to find anyone credible who'd take Bellinger over him, or who would even regard it as especially close.

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images If you're in an optimistic frame of mind, Cade Horton coming down with a blister isn't the worst news. The Cubs have been trying to keep his workload closely managed, but even so, Horton has already surpassed 115 innings pitched this year. That's after throwing just 88 1/3 in his first pro season of 2023, and 34 1/3 last year before being shut down with arm trouble. He should be in position to pitch as many as 140 innings this year without causing harm, but that number's already right around the corner. With Javier Assad having made a successful return from the injured list and Jameson Taillon set to do the same Monday night, moving Horton to the injured list for the rest of August might be the right thing for his long-term future and the club's roster management conundrums. Assad was optioned to Triple-A Iowa earlier Monday, but not even the relatively short-term plans actually include him being stashed there. Nudging Horton aside and embracing a rotation of Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd, Colin Rea, Assad and Taillon (with reinforcement from Ben Brown) makes a certain kind of sense. Let's be realistic, though: most Cubs fans are (understandably) not up to much optimism right now. The realist's slant on this news is much more grim. With the team embarking on a long stretch without off days to alleviate stress on the pitching staff, losing Horton could fracture the entire structure of that group. More to the point, Horton has been an indispensable part of that staff ever since he arrived. Entering Monday, the Cubs were 11-5 in his outings this year. In the time since his debut, they're 37-31 in games he doesn't pitch. Horton was their talisman. Though Boyd and Imanaga have been more consistent, Horton has been just as important—and since the All-Star break, he's been their best overall starter. With Horton sidelined and the offense suffocated by Freddy Peralta and the Brewers, Milwaukee cruised to victory in the first game of Monday's twinbill. That didn't change anything important in the division race, which the Brewers will win fairly easily. However, the loss brought the Cubs down to 70-54, which means that they'll need to play above-.500 baseball the rest of the way to reach 90 wins. Their fight, now, should be for the top Wild Card spot, and winning 90 games will almost certainly be required to grab that position. Without Horton, though, they could end up scrambling just to hold onto playoff position. Things are getting much more precarious than the team's fans hoped they would become, back in May or June. Maybe Horton won't even be forced to miss a start. He might be ok to pitch, on a weekly basis, and just need to make adjustments to his pitch mix (maybe his curveball particularly exacerbated this issue, for instance) or tolerate the pain involved. Maybe the blister will be treatable and non-recurring. For that matter, maybe Taillon and Assad will step into their spots in the rotation and win games at the same rate Horton was, on the strength of their own performances and an offensive resurgence. Right now, though, the future of the 2025 Cubs is suddenly much murkier. Horton was one player they were ill-prepared to lose, after having already lost trade acquisition Michael Soroka almost as soon as they got him. We won't know more for a few days. but the balance of this series just became more important—not because there's any hope of catching Milwaukee, but because that team is good enough to keep beating the Cubs all week and leave the team on the fringes of the playoff picture by the weekend. Without Horton, the stability the team might hope to establish thereafter will be harder to find. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Give Nico Hoerner credit. He's a consistent hitter, not just from year to year but from week to week and month to month. Right now, many hitters in the Cubs lineup every day are in fairly severe slumps, but Hoerner can't be thus accused. He's batting .293/.340/.376 for the season, and a hilariously similar .293/.340/.380 since June 1. He's batting .330 (although virtually without power) since the All-Star break. Many fans will also be tempted to heap an extra layer of praise on Hoerner for one column on his stat sheet, in particular: his strikeout rate. Hoerner has been an elite contact hitter for almost his whole career, but he's taking that to a new level this year. He's fanned just 36 times in 477 plate appearances, a 7.5% clip that only Luis Arraez has outdone. When Hoerner swings at pitches in the zone, he makes contact 94.5% of the time, an eye-popping career-best number, and he also touches the ball almost 75% of the time when he chases outside the zone, according to Statcast. Here's the thing: at a certain point, there are diminishing returns on that level of contact skill. Unlike Arraez (who averages 62.6 mph on his swings), Hoerner (68.4 mph bat speed) is capable of creating some measure of damage when he swings. As long as he remains this locked in on simply meeting the ball, though, he's taking that danger away from himself. Hoerner swings at the first pitch in about 25% of his plate appearances. That's reasonably patient, but he could (and should) be even more so. He goes to a more tilted, defensive swing when he gets to two strikes, and fouls the ball off a lot in those counts, but before then, he's one of the least likely hitters in the league to hit a foul ball. Only three players put a higher percentage of their zero- and one-strike swings in play than does Hoerner: Chandler Simpson, Ernie Clement, and Mookie Betts. Simpson is the fastest player in baseball, which is why that approach (at least kind of) works for him. Clement hits the ball in the air a lot, especially to the pull field, so it works for him, too. Betts is having a rough season, weakened by a virus he contracted in the spring. When he's right, though, he, too, gets lots of value out of making so much contact because so much of it is toward the wall to his pull field. That's not Hoerner. He sprays the ball, and he hits grounders and line drives. Thus, his contact rate (and especially his in-play rate) is too high, at least for his current approach. If he's going to put the ball in play this reliably when he swings, he needs to swing less. The Brewers' Sal Frelick is a great model. He's batting .296/.358/.416 this year, on largely similar underlying numbers (contact rate within and outside the zone; chase rate; bat speed and exit velocities) to Hoerner's. What's the difference? Frelick swings at about 44% of pitches; Hoerner swings at almost 49% of them. Frelick only swings at the first pitch 20% of the time. In other words, he's giving himself chances to draw walks, or to get mistakes he can hammer. Hoerner, more anxious to avoid the strikeout, is making more outs instead of fewer; they're just outs on balls in play. He's also losing access to power, even if his power is fairly limited, anyway. This has been a perennial problem for Hoerner, and it's hard to harbor much hope that it will change at age 28, roughly 2,700 plate appearances into his big-league career. However, if Hoerner wants to earn the trust of Craig Counsell at the top of the batting order (and if he wants to be a better engine for the Chicago offense, there or elsewhere on the lineup card), this is what has to change. He's swinging too much, given how often those swings result in underwhelming contact. He's been a useful hitter, but he can be a much better one by being more willing to whiff—or just by forcing opposing pitchers to throw him an extra strike or two. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images This is what you want, as a baseball executive. Jed Hoyer tried to spend bigger money and land more established relievers this winter, failing to sign Tanner Scott and bringing in the failed project that was Ryan Pressly. However, through good work by the front office to scour the minor-league free agent market, trade for players who were out of chances in their old homes, and develop existing options, the team now has a strong corps of options to get high-leverage outs when needed and protect leads. Daniel Palencia's emergence as a sturdy relief ace has been not only welcome, but desperately needed. The low-wattage free-agent deal the team gave to Caleb Thielbar has paid huge dividends. They scooped up Brad Keller as a flier on a minor-league deal, and he's become their chief setup man. They also made small trades to acquire Ryan Brasier and Drew Pomeranz in the spring. Once summer came, they upgraded again, this time by dealing for Andrew Kittredge and Taylor Rogers. As I discussed yesterday, with Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad returning to the starting rotation, Ben Brown becomes another potential weapon in short relief. That's eight names. Braiser hasn't been quite trustworthy, and he's fifth on the list for right-handers, so let's consider him a fringy arm and a non-factor. The other seven, though, make up the kind of bullpen teams want to have when they get to October. They can give teams many different looks, which not only makes for uncomfortable at-bats for opponents but gives Craig Counsell myriad matchup choices in the middle and late innings. They also have an element of that overpowering nastiness you want from a playoff pen, especially in the persons of Palencia and Keller. There are two ways pitchers can differ from each other, thereby "giving the other team different looks" within a game. First, there's how you throw. This means handedness, of course, but it also means arm slot and position on the rubber. If possible, forcing a batter to change the release point on which they're trying to lock in from one at-bat to the next is always valuable. The Cubs can do that well, now that they've added Rogers and Kittredge to their mix. Thielbar is a short guy who comes from close to straight over the top, on the third-base side of the rubber. Pomeranz is much taller and works with a classic three-quarters slot. The nice thing about Rogers, in this specific group of lefties, is that he works from a low three-quarters angle. He's as tall as Pomeranz, but doesn't pitch like it. If an opposing lineup has a pocket of lefty batters on whom Counsell wants to make life tough, he can go to Pomeranz one trip through and Rogers the next. Kittredge brings a different dynamic than Keller or Brown, because both of those two are very tall and stay that way through their deliveries. Kittredge stands just 6-foot-1 and works deep into his legs in his delivery, so his release point is much lower than those of his compatriots. It's pretty similar to Palencia's, really, but now, let's look at the other way in which pitchers can offer different looks: what they throw. This is about velocity and pitch mix, but it's also about pitch shape. Rogers brings a whole different set of movement patterns to the mound, relative to Pomeranz and Thielbar. The latter two aren't radically different from one another in this regard, except that Thielbar has more breaking ball variations than Pomeranz does, but remember, they're very different in how they throw. A few chances to discern Pomeranz's curve from his fastball doesn't prepare a batter well at all for the challenge of doing the same thing with Thielbar, at his higher slot but lower release height. The righties vary a bit less in how they throw, but look at how different their stuff profiles are. Brown's four-seamer is all about carry. Keller's is really a high-powered cutter. Kittredge leans mostly on a sinker. Meanwhile, Palencia has a run-ride heater that looks nothing like any of the others'. The relationship of each guy's heater to their main breaking ball is unique, with different tilt and spin differences. There's not much overlap among these seven arms, once you study both ways in which pitchers can change what a hitter sees. If Counsell often had the luxury of handing a lead to this group of arms, the Cubs would be cruising toward the postseason and still nipping hopefully at the heels of the Brewers in the NL Central. Alas, it hasn't gone that way. In only half of the team's 24 games since the break has the bullpen inherited a tie game or a lead (not counting long relief appearances, like Brown's two recent ones behind Assad and Michael Soroka). They haven't been perfect even in those situations, but the fact that the starting rotation and the lineup can't conspire to give them a lead with which to work is much more troubling than any stumbles they've had in terms of holding those leads. The bullpen is the place where the spotlight shines brightest, when the pennant race heats up. Relievers get a disproportionate share of attention in October, and the Cubs have that part of their roster figured out (for the moment). Right now, though, it doesn't matter. They're not playing well enough in the other, larger, more important areas to make their relief depth the kind of advantage that makes a difference. View full article

Sorry! When I write late at night, I write *weird*.

Image courtesy of © Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images There are two stories, here. The temptation is to focus primarily on one of them, because it's more urgent and also more fun. Owen Caissie is coming to the big leagues, a fortnight after the Chicago Cubs elected not to include him in a deadline deal to upgrade their starting pitching. They'll add a fairly thunderous left-handed bat to their lineup, albeit one whose viability in the majors has not yet been tested. With Kyle Tucker and Pete Crow-Armstrong each in prolonged power slumps and Seiya Suzuki becoming increasingly inconsistent, there are at-bats to be had—because there's a profound need for this addition. Caissie coming to the majors, then, is like the news telling you that the Thwaites Ice Shelf has collapsed, and Miami has just 24 hours to evacuate—right when Taylor Swift is about to host a listening party for her new album in South Beach. (Please, don't freak out. Neither of these things are true. Don't get cocky about Thwaites; that's gonna happen and it's gonna be bad. But it's another day's crisis. Swift's album, presumably, will be every day's solution for the foreseeable future.) It's urgent, and it's also sexy. You want to know everything, and you want to obsess over the ramifications, even though there's also a real element of risk... you know what, I'm getting carried away. You get the point. We will, I promise, talk about the glacier-turned-tidal wave heading straight for Taylor Swift that is Owen Caissie. First, though, I want to make sure we talk a bit about Miguel Amaya. He's a lot more like a species of coral that went extinct, which will be reported on NPR and get a tiny little blurbicle on the World News page (but not the front page) of the New York Times's website. It's very sad, and it profoundly matters, but the temptation is not to talk about it—to let the urgent outstrip the important and to reach for positivity in a world of gloom and doom. Let's resist that particular temptation. Baseball needs a third signal. When Amaya hit that slow chopper toward shortstop and headed for first base at a dead sprint, he surely hoped to be 'safe', and to be sure, the umpire would have been wrong to call him 'out'. Amaya hustled hard for that infield single, and not for his own glory. The game was on the line. It was the first time Amaya had gotten to take the field with his big-league teammates in almost three months, and the foundering Cubs needed a win, and they were only up 2-0 and there was a rally on, if he could just leg out that hit. He did. But in the moment when Amaya's left foot hit first base, and in the moment just afterward when the call was made, he was anything but 'safe'. It's an odd form of relief (and not yet a very settled one; we'll see whether something more severe emerges upon closer examination after swelling subsides) that X-rays were negative and that the early diagnosis was an ankle sprain. In real time, it looked worse. Amaya stepped on the base, and an invisible land mine exploded. He was lifted off the ground by some spasm of pain and fear and the body's reflexive self-protection so strong that he vaulted into the air and nearly flipped as he fell, landing basically on his shoulder. Weapons of war are no subjects for jokes, so understand that I mean it when I say that watching him was very much like seeing someone's body respond to the massive force of an explosion. It looked involuntary; it looked like the air underneath him was bouncing him off the sky like a mini-hoop basketball above its bed. It looked like his career would end in a heap behind first base at Rogers Centre. 'Safe' was a cruel joke of a word to characterize the play, even if it was technically accurate. Amaya has been through the professional wringer. He signed with the team more than a decade ago, in July 2015, but he couldn't hit even in Rookie ball his first two seasons. He finally got untracked in 2018, and played fairly full, successful seasons that year and in 2019. He was knocking on the door of the majors, at least enough to merit being added to the 40-man roster and shielded from the Rule 5 Draft. Then, COVID hit. Amaya did get to go to the alternate training site, but he didn't see game action that year. In 2021, he needed Tommy John surgery on his right arm. In 2022, he suffered a Lisfranc fracture in his left foot—the same lower leg he injured Wednesday. In 2023, the towering incompetence of Tucker Barnhart's Cubs tenure forced the team to call Amaya up and let him ride the bench quite a bit. From 2020-23, during his years of being eligible to be optioned to the minors, Amaya got all of 144 games and 538 plate appearances under his belt. That's all part of this story, because it highlights how cruel the game can be. Amaya survived those career shocks, and he survived having an OPS around .500 at midseason last year, because he's tough, adaptable, and talented. He entered this season hoping to prove that last year's second half was a step forward he could sustain, and he was doing a tremendous job—until he strained his oblique in May. Now, one game into his return after a long and maddening absence, he's had the game taken away from him again. Maybe it really is "only" an ankle sprain, but if his reaction was any gauge, it could still be the kind that ends his season. This has become, improbably and tragically, another lost season in the unlucky career of Amaya. His teammates and his coaches love him. His absence will be felt, and if this injury affects his ability to lay claim to a major chunk of the playing time at catcher next year, it could be that he never gets another chance as good as the one that danced before him for much of the last year, but never stayed comfortably within reach for long. Alright, now, let's talk about Caissie. Reports emerged late Wednesday night that he would come up to (presumably) replace Amaya. Craig Counsell only had to spend one day worrying about playing with a three-catcher positional roster. Now, though, he has to answer even harder questions: How can Caissie find important playing time, to continue to develop and begin to adjust to big-league stuff, while the team also chases a playoff berth? Where does he fit? To answer that, it's time to get a bit more familiar with Caissie. Most of those reading this already have a passing familiarity with him, but the scouting report is roughly thus: A big, left-handed Canadian outfielder, capable of playing either corner but not (except in emergencies) center field. Tons of raw power. It's not at the top end of the scale, but Caissie swings fast and can hit the ball hard, including over 450 feet when he attacks a pitch and catches it out front. In the minors, he's even hit for a solid average, because simply hitting the ball hard on a consistent basis allows one to find hits fairly often against the inferior defenders and worse positioning that prevail in the minors. His big weakness, besides a dearth of defensive value, is strikeout vulnerability. Caissie has fanned in 28.2% of his trips to the plate at Triple A. That's trended sharply down recently, but then again, Caissie has amassed over 930 plate appearances at that level since the start of last season. You'd expect him to be figuring out the league and demonstrating that he needs a new challenge, by now, and while he's done that (he's batting .292/.393/.573 for the Iowa Cubs this year), he hasn't answered the major questions about whether his shaky bat-to-ball skills will allow him to get to his power in games against better hurlers and defenses, in bigger parks and with bigger strike zones to cover. It's vaguely possible the Cubs are calling up Caissie just because they're in Toronto, and it should be easier to get him through customs and into Canada for the one game left on this road trip. Amaya's loss leaves a hole shaped more like Moisés Ballesteros than like Caissie, and when the team has needed stopgaps before, they've turned to Ballesteros. For now, though, assume Caissie really is coming up to join the team for the rest of this season. In that case, you have to figure he'll play, and play fairly often. Prospects of his caliber don't get called up for bench duty and observation; nor should they. In all likelihood, Caissie will work his way slowly into the mix, by spelling some of the team's struggling sluggers. He can't take over for Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field, but his presence as a power source might make it easier for Counsell to rest Crow-Armstrong in favor of Willi Castro. Meanwhile, there's no reason Caissie can't play for two or three days at a time in favor of Ian Happ (.192/.295/.378 in his last 200 plate appearances), Tucker (four extra-base hits, just one of them a homer, since July 1) and Seiya Suzuki (.226/.331/.403 since July 1, and with just a .300 OBP for the season against righties), giving each of them a chance to catch their breath and/or make needed changes. Starting with Tuesday's game, the Cubs are in the midst of a stretch during which they'll play 23 games in 23 days. They have a doubleheader Monday and just one day off between now and Sept. 4. Castro is a valuable resource for resting Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw, Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner, but Caissie introduces the possibility of substantially replacing Tucker, Suzuki or Happ on any given day. What kind of production can we fairly expect from him the rest of the way? Well, projection systems offer room for cautious optimism. The ZiPS model, published at FanGraphs and curated by Dan Szymborski, projects him to hit .242/.320/.383, which sounds underwhelming but would be a material upgrade over what Happ, Suzuki or Tucker (factoring in the platoon advantage, in Suzuki's case) have given the team lately. PECOTA, powered by Baseball Prospectus, forecasts an even more encouraging .257/.321/.421. This is not an instant star, but it would be enough to bolster a struggling lineup during an overcrowded segment of their schedule. We can try to answer the question of what to expect differently, too. There are 12 batters with at least 300 plate appearances either in the majors or at Triple A who fit a series of criteria I applied to metrics tracked in Robert Orr's app, showing hitters' approach, their ability to drive the ball in the air to the pull field, and the quality of their contact more broadly. These are all hitters who avoid chasing too much; make at least a tolerable amount of contact when they swing within the zone; and hit the ball very hard, including hitting it in the air enough to create lots of expected value, but who also whiff a lot and don't pull the ball in the air at as high a rate as one would like. Four of the 12 have played mostly in the minors this year: Hao-Yu Lee Gabriel Rincones Luis Campusano Caissie The other eight are big-leaguers: Bryan Reynolds Josh Bell Fernando Tatis Jr. George Springer Mike Trout James Wood Matt Olson Juan Soto For the most part, these are highly productive sluggers, and it would be great if Caissie could match their output. That's unlikely, of course. It's a lot harder to make this list when facing major-league hurlers than when facing minor-league ones. It's a good snapshot, though, of what kind of player he's been and what fans might hope to see him develop into, even down the stretch this year. One more way to shape expectations, a bit less rosily, is to look at the scouting grades on Caissie's tools on FanGraphs. That site has always been a bit lower on him than the rest of the prospect industry, worrying (very fairly) that his swing-and-miss will get in the way of establishing himself as a regular at the highest level. Three other players are in the same range in terms of present hit tool grade as Caissie, and (like Caissie) also have above-average present game power. They are: Heriberto Hernandez Orelvis Martinez Samuel Basallo That's a pretty exciting group, too. Martinez is having a nightmarish setback of a season, but Basallo (two years younger than the very young Caissie, who just turned 23 last month and is already a seasoned Triple-A veteran, and also a catcher) is one of the top prospects in baseball. Hernandez, meanwhile, might offer the best lens through which to view what's possible from Caissie the rest of the way. He maintained a double-digit walk rate all the way up the ladder in the minors, and has seen that dip below 9% in the bigs. However, he's batting .299/.354/.507 for the Marlins, with seven home runs in limited action. Losing Amaya means not only the setback of a beloved player no longer being part of the team the rest of the way, but no margin for error when it comes to catcher injuries. Since the team already cut Jon Berti to make room for Amaya's return, they're a bit of a strange puzzle when it comes to the bench. Caissie, though, is a nice consolation for the injury. If Counsell is willing to mix him in, even if it offends one or more of the veteran sluggers, Caissie can help this team reach the postseason, and be more dangerous there. It's just a matter of finding time for him to learn, and of accepting the huge risk involved in giving him that time. View full article

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images Reese McGuire survived the reinstatement of Miguel Amaya from the injured list this week. Instead of cutting McGuire, the Cubs designated Jon Berti for assignment. For now, at least, the team will carry three catchers in their 13-man pool of position players. Barring something unforeseen that forces them to take a different tack, the hope seems to be that they can keep all three around until September. At that point, they'll be able to add another position player to their roster, while still retaining the three backstops. If that seems like a lot of temporary roster ossification in the name of holding onto McGuire (who's batting .235/.250/.459), it is, but there's a reason for that. With Amaya on the shelf, McGuire and Kelly formed not only a respectable offensive tandem at the game's most defense-first position (other than pitcher), but one of the most formidable impediments to opponents advancing on the bases of any team in the league. They haven't merely been good; they've been elite. Baseball Reference offers a table showing the number of Stolen Base Opportunities (SBO) against a catcher, defined as any plate appearance in which a runner was on first or second with an empty base in front of them. We might reasonably call that stat, instead, Advancement Opportunities, because there are other ways (balks, wild pitches, passed balls, and so on) than steals to move up, but we can leave the label as it is. We're going to use it only as a rough-hewn denominator. The same page also offers totals of Runner Bases Added (RBA). This is the total number of bases taken against a catcher via steal, passed ball or wild pitch. Finally, there's Runner Kills (RK), which is the number of runners the catcher threw out on the bases. These stats are also tabulated at the team level. To give a sense of the context of these numbers, the median teams in the league have allowed 159 (the Rangers) and 153 (the Guardians) Runner Bases Added. The Marlins are worst in the league; they've allowed runners to take 223 bases against them. The Royals are the best, at 104—although that might change, because they traded defensive whiz Freddy Fermin to San Diego last month. The median teams (the Athletics and Giants) have 32 Runner Kills, with the White Sox leading the way with 45 and the Angels bringing up the rear at 19. The Cubs are, for the season, second-best in baseball at preventing Runner Bases Added, at 113. They're great at stifling the running game, but it's not just deterring and cutting down basestealers. The team's catchers have also been superb at blocking balls in the dirt and shortening secondary leads for opposing runners. Only the Royals have them beat in that department. Chicago is just fifth in Runner Kills, at 41, but the four teams in front of them have allowed an average of 170.5 Runner Bases Added. One sure way to rack up Runner Kills is to be somewhat bad at stopping the running game; teams start getting more aggressive and the number of outs rises, but not as fast as the number of advancements. A good way to quickly estimate the efficiency of a catching corps (and their batterymates, who also play a major role, of course) in containing runners, then, is to find the number of Runner Kills per Base Added. The Cubs lead the league in that metric, pretty easily. They're at 0.36; the closest team to them is the Phillies, at 0.30. Let's talk about the individuals involved, though, because their specialties are different, and Amaya's reintroduction is an interesting wrinkle. There are 99 catchers who have been behind the plate for at least 100 Stolen Base Opportunities this year, including all three Cubs. If we use that threshold to eliminate guys with tiny samples that make their numbers meaningless, it's easy to derive rate stats for RBA and RK. Simply put: what percentage of SBOs yield an advancement, whether it be via steal or something else? As it turns out, the average in that area is 10%. What percentage of SBOs result in a runner being thrown out, via back-pick, caught stealing, or a thwarted attempt to advance on an errant pitch? That figure is about 2%. Those are your baselines. Of those 99 catchers, only Fermin, Hayden Senger of the Mets, and Korey Lee of the White Sox have held runners to a lower Advance Rate than Kelly—and then only by tiny margins. Kelly roughly halves the rate at which runners advance, relative to the average catcher; his Advance Rate is 5%. Both Amaya (8%) and McGuire (9%) are also better than average, but this is Kelly's superpower. The nine wild pitches and three passed balls in his huge volume of time behind the plate are extraordinarily low numbers; that's why he's also rated as an above-average blocker in Statcast's Catcher Blocking Runs metric. In that same pool, though, no other catcher in baseball has a higher Kill Rate than McGuire's 5%. Kelly and Amaya are each about average in that regard, at 2%, but (whether purely because of circumstance, or because his sheer arm strength scares them less, or because he has more balls get just a bit away from him) runners do test McGuire—and he makes them pay. His 14 RK have come in 301 SBO. The other four catchers with 14 RK have gotten there in an average of 738 SBO. McGuire's framing has been solid, too. His role with the pitching staff is important, just as Kelly's and Amaya's are. Holding onto all three of these guys makes sense, because slowing the trip around the bases as well as any other team in the league has helped the Cubs keep opponents' run totals down throughout a long season in which they've battled several pitching injuries and a month or so in which their offense has left little margin for error. Bringing back Amaya could partially alleviate that lack of scoring. However, Kelly and McGuire were already doing an unimpeachable job of helping the team stay afloat even while not scoring much—and while Amaya is good at the same things, he's not quite on the level of the two teammates he's rejoining in the catching rotation. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Although he made one mistake too many and gave up a back-breaking three-run home run Tuesday night, Javier Assad looked much the way he has for most of his big-league career. That was encouraging, because although he does it in a style somewhat nervous-making and uncommon in the modern game—scattering hits and walks even when he's having success, keeping runners off of home plate but not always off of any of the other bases—Assad has been a very effective pitcher over the years. Assad is up to 298 career innings, with a 3.47 ERA. On the other hand, the man who relieved him in the Cubs' series-opening loss to the Blue Jays has a 5.04 ERA, in barely half as much big-league time. It's too soon to give up on Ben Brown (who, after all, pitched four innings of one-run ball in relief of Assad), but not too early to start planning his move to short relief. In fact, with Jameson Taillon slated to return either this weekend or during next week's five-game, four-day fight with the division-leading Brewers, Brown should be ticketed for that role as soon as possible. It's not just that he has only two reliable pitches. That's never ideal, for a starter, and Brown's changeup has been so lousy that he truly is a two-pitch guy, but other pitchers do survive with that particular limitation. Rather, the problem with Brown—the reason he's been crushed this season, and why he needs to move away from starting games and pacing himself—is that his two-pitch combo only plays up when they're each thrown in the upper ends of the velocity ranges he can reach with them. Against the knuckle-curve Brown throws at an average of 87 miles per hour, opponents have a .410 weighted on-base average (wOBA) when the pitch is below 87 and a .240 when it's above 87. Against his fastball (which averages 95.8 mph), they have a .393 wOBA when it's below 97 and a .362 when it's above it. Even the latter differential, which sounds small, is really quite large. Because he's thrown few four-seamers over 97 while working as a starter this year, the sample size there is small, and some batted-ball luck is getting the better of him. He's much better at missing bats when he gets up to 97 or higher, and all 10 of the home runs he's allowed on heaters this year came on pitches under 97. Part of the issue is that Brown has a relatively straight fastball, so every tick takes on disproportionate importance. Even a pitch without very good movement can avoid getting hit hard if it's in the upper 90s, but anything close to average velocity will get hammered because it's just not visually fooling hitters and they have time to get the barrel to it. However, another factor is location. Here's where the fastballs on which Brown has given up hard contact this year have been located. That probably doesn't surprise you. Middle-middle fastballs tend to get hit hard, and overwhelmingly, when he's getting hit hard, it's because he's throwing the ball there. Now, here's where he gets whiffs with the fastball. Again, nothing counterintuitive, but there was at least a bit of a factor you couldn't guess in advance. High fastballs miss bats, but for some pitchers, it's the ability to locate that high heater to the glove side that makes it work. Not Brown. His whiffs cluster in and above the top, arm-side corner of the zone, on the inner part of the plate to a righty and the outer part to a lefty. To be his best self, he needs to consistently land the fastball there. Here's where Brown throws his heaters at less than 95 mph this year. You can easily imagine why these pitches are getting blasted. He's on the right side of the plate more often than not, but a little lower than you'd want. More troublingly, he's also over on the glove side of the dish almost as often, and never above the belly button when he is. That's not going to work, at the lower end of Brown's velocity register. He doesn't have the wiggle or the hop on his heat to live there. Here's where Brown throws fastballs at 95-96. The command is a lot better in this range. It seems as though, when you see Brown dip below 95, he's tired and likely to be misfiring altogether, whereas if he's in this 95-96 band, he's merely pacing himself. The location won't make up for the shortcomings in movement, but at least he's not leaving the ball out over the plate. What about when he's between 96 and 97? I'm not showing you movement, just location, but it's in this band (when he's starting) where he tends to get the liveliest movement on his heater. That's good, but the inability to stay out of the middle of the plate is bad. In his current role, this is the sweet spot, but you want something more from him—something that combines being hard to hit on a raw stuff basis and landing where he needs it to, in order to get whiffs and avoid barrels. How about when he's throwing 97 and above? It's not just velocity that protects his fastball when it's sizzling. The way his arm works when he cuts loose at that level also tends to send the ball sailing a bit, riding and staying on the outer edge to a lefty, and the inner one to a righty. I'm not even going to waste time showing you where he has the most success and the most trouble with his curve. It's what you'd expect: down and away from a righty good, middle of the plate bad. Here's where his curves land when he throws that pitch less than 87 mph. And here's where they go when he throws harder than 87. Night and day. Now, a couple of factors deserve to be mentioned, so they can also be considered. Firstly, there are reasons why a pitcher might add or subtract consciously, based on intended location, especially with the breaking ball. If you want to steal a strike with a curve when a hitter is hunching on the fastball, bigger (and slower) can be better, for instance. Second, what 97 and above look like from Brown when he's throwing 80 pitches in an outing might be totally different than what they look like when he's throwing 18 of them. His heater might really straighten out on him, in a bad way, when he gets up to 98 or 99. However, these heatmaps show us something: When Brown works with conviction and finds his best velocity, his pitches tend to end up in favorable places, as well as having more sheer stuff to them. That makes him a superb candidate for the transition to short relief—especially because he hasn't found the success the team was hoping for in his work as a starter. Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd and (when he does re-join the roster) Taillon are locked in as starters for this Cubs team. Assad, Colin Rea and Cade Horton (the latter constrained not by the quality of his appearances but by the fact that the team will manage his workload down the stretch) are all in line for starts, too. Losing Michael Soroka almost right away hurt, but the Cubs still have enough starter options to move Brown to the bullpen for good—a luxury they didn't enjoy until now. Not every struggling starter is a good candidate for the big boosts we sometimes see when pitchers pivot to short relief, but Brown's strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies make him an exceptional one. Given the way his stuff works (and the specific ways it works better when he can crank things up to maximum effort), Brown should be an integral part of the team's bullpen by the time their Wild Card Series matchup rolls around. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images In the days leading up to the 2025 MLB trade deadline, Cubs fans talked almost constantly about the chances that the team would acquire a frontline starting pitcher controllable beyond 2025. In a summer trade market that featured only mid-tier rental starters, the jewels of a potential deadline bazaar were Washington's MacKenzie Gore; Miami's Edward Cabrera and Sandy Alcántara; and Minnesota's Joe Ryan. The Cubs themselves focused on various high-end players with team control beyond this year, too, but ultimately, they acquired four players (Willi Castro, Andrew Kittredge, Taylor Rogers and Michael Soroka) who will all become free agents this fall. None of the four quasi-aces named above were dealt at all by the end of July, so the Cubs were not alone in finding the price tags on each (especially Gore and Cabrera, on whom they had the most active discussions) exorbitant. Chicago also checked in on controllable relief aces Jhoan Duran and Mason Miller, who were traded, but didn't come close to acquiring either flamethrower, sources familiar with their deadline discussions said. Interestingly, though, teams who talked to the Cubs about players (all six of the names above, as well as some others) under team control through either 2027 or 2028 came away with the impression that the team was assigning little value to those years. There are multiple reasons why a team might feel that way, including the baseline injury risk for all pitchers, the nature of even high-end relievers as long-term assets, and the specific medical histories of a few of the arms in question, but one high-ranking front office member with another team felt that the uncertainty of labor relations between the league and the players union played a role in their thinking. Behind the scenes, the threat of a lockout that could curtail or distort the 2027 season (and the promise of a salary cap for which the owners intend to fight, which is why a lockout appears so likely) is a constant talking point, and it did color some trade talks throughout the league last month. "We just felt, if we're going to move this player, the return has to reflect the fact that they're under control at a below-market price [through those seasons]," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss details of trade conversations. They went on to say that the Cubs' counteroffers and the tenor of their expressed interest "didn't seem to acknowledge how valuable those years are." The source said neither the possibility of a lockout nor the uncertainty about the financial landscape of the game beyond 2027 was directly discussed, and could only speculate about the Cubs' motivations in discounting those seasons more heavily than the would-be selling team did, but they had a specific sense that the term of team control in question was being weighed differently by the two clubs. A source briefed on the Cubs' internal discussions said the specter of a lockout was not explicitly named as a reason to reduce offers or hold hard lines on any given players, but that "uncertainty about the system" beyond 2027 was a consideration. At first, this might seem to clash with the idea expressed by GM Carter Hawkins in the wake of the trade deadline. "Teams are trying to find that guy that can lock down the eighth or ninth inning, but that also costs a lot. That costs a lot of future wins," Hawkins said in a post-deadline interview with ESPN. "We have a responsibility to the 2025 Cubs but also the 2032 Cubs. That’s not always popular in the moment, but it’s decisions we have to make." Hawkins, though, was talking about weighing the present against the future—in the context of players, like top Cubs prospects Owen Caissie, Moisés Ballesteros, Kevin Alcántara, Jaxon Wiggins and more, who will be under extremely low-cost team control through at least 2028 and can't become free agents until at least the fall of 2031. In the eyes of the team, those players' value will be relatively unaffected by any disruption to 2027 and by the possibility of changes to payroll caps or competitive-balance measures under whatever new Collective Bargaining Agreement is implemented thereafter. By contrast, for players who will hit free agency after either the 2027 or 2028 seasons and who might have hefty salaries for those years even via arbitration, the implications of even a partial reduction of the 2027 season or of changes to payroll and draft compensation rules could be hugely significant. It's fair, perhaps, to view the Cubs as valuing the 2025 and 2026 teams as very important; the 2029-32 teams as very important; and players whose pivotal contributions might come in 2027 and 2028 as somewhat harder to assess. The particular construction of this team might have led them in that direction especially forcefully. They were never all-in on 2025, but they're very much all-in on the two-year window comprising this year and next. After next year, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Nico Hoerner, Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon and Carson Kelly are all due to hit free agency. Dansby Swanson, 32 next February, is under contract through 2029, but is likely to have to move to second base by 2027. Shota Imanaga's contract contains a complicated option on which the Cubs must make a decision this fall, but is likely to end up being in a Cubs uniform through 2027. Imanaga turns 32 on Sept. 1, though. Justin Steele is under team control through 2027, too, but his future is entirely uncertain after his Tommy John surgery in April. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, Matt Shaw, Miguel Amaya, Cade Horton and Daniel Palencia are the long-term core of this team, all under control at least through 2029 and all looking like solid contributors. With so much uncertain beyond 2026, though, the Cubs took a cautious approach at the trade deadline. They intend to try to win this year, and next, but they elected to remain extremely nimble and to maximize organizational depth for at least one more acquisition period. This winter, it will be interesting to see whether their decisions about pursuing Kyle Tucker in free agency and otherwise loading up for the final year of the Happ-led veteran group are as colored by the looming questions about the years thereafter as their activity at this trade deadline appears to have been. View full article