Matthew Trueblood

The Cubs' frontline lefty has now been shelved with one arm problem or another in three consecutive seasons. This is likely to be his longest absence of the three, and it's a major problem for the surging North Siders. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images The Cubs placed lefthander Justin Steele on the 15-day injured list Wednesday, with elbow tendinitis. It's the second time in seven months that he's landed there with that very ailment, after he missed the first half of September 2024. Steele was also shelved with a forearm strain in June 2023, not to mention the hamstring strains that stole significant stretches of his 2021 and 2024 campaigns or the back trouble that ended his 2022 early. Steele is a tenacious competitor, and so far, the arm-related injuries have been the ones that kept him out the shortest time. However, durability has been the biggest question mark about his value since before he even debuted, and has remained so throughout his career. As he's sidelined for the second time in such a short window with tendinitis, it feels unlikely that he'll be back as soon this time as he was last year. Tendinitis can vary widely and idiosyncratically in severity, and the median time missed with this injury over the last nine big-league seasons is just 17 days. However, that number is artificially lowered by the fact that some players (Brad Hand in 2022; Julian Merryweahter in 2020) were hurt so late in the season that there wasn't much time left to miss. This diagnosis led to so much trouble for Tyler Glasnow and Rob Zastryzny last summer that it ended each of their seasons. There's also some evidence that Steele has been dealing with this all spring, and that the Cubs knew about it. Firstly, of course, there's his significantly diminished velocity—including a further loss of heat in his most recent start, despite good results against the Rangers Monday night. Secondly, though, flash back to Sunday. When Ben Brown had to leave the game after four crummy innings against the Padres, Craig Counsell had a two-run cushion and 15 outs left to get. He didn't turn to Colin Rea, despite the fact that Rea hadn't pitched in the previous five days. On Monday night, by contrast, Rea came in and got the final six outs after Steele's strong seven-inning start. It sure feels as though the team knew Steele wasn't at 100 percent, and that they kept Rea ready in case they needed length behind or in place of Steele even in that game. It's unsurprising to get this news, then, because of what we've seen from Steele both very recently and throughout his career, and because of the way the team has been behaving. That doesn't make it less emergent a situation, though. Rea figures to step right into Steele's rotation spot, and the team will hope to get Javier Assad back by the end of the month, but at his best, Steele is better than either of those hurlers. If Steele is out for something closer to six weeks than to three, this time, there's always the risk of further attrition in the rotation, and it will be harder to replace Brown if he continues to look unequal to the task of starting games in the majors. This also takes a huge bite out of whatever hopes the team might have had to move to a six-man rotation as their schedule fills in. Fortunately, they still have ample off days for the balance of April and May, but if Steele isn't back by June, the team will need to find ways to get their starters the rest they need amid a heavy slate. Cade Horton was always part of the plans for this season, but the team doesn't want to make that call until they have to. That they're already down two key starters in the majors and prospect Brandon Birdsell leaves the team thinner than they'd hoped to be. This is part of why they talked to still-available veterans Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson last month. A trade could patch a hole in their rotation before one even fully opens, but only if the team can stay healthy and in a strong competitive position for the next several weeks. With Steele landing on the shelf already, the odds of that appear to have taken a hit. View full article

Through 13 games, the Cubs' major offseason acquisition is paying off in spades. If he keeps this up, he could—fairly easily—end up having the most prolific power season by any hitter for the North Siders in the Statcast Era. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images I still chuckle a little bit each time I type "the Statcast Era," but there's a bit less irony in it than before. We're up to 10 full seasons over which every (or very nearly every) batted and pitched ball has been tracked by Statcast. We have 10 years of exit velocities, launch angles, spin rates and sprint speeds. Thus, there's a real era defined by this technology, rather than a few years' worth of data. We can, with a straight face, start using Statcast numbers in historical contexts. In those aforementioned 10 years, the Cubs have only had three batters top 50 Barrels—the batted balls that blend exit velocity and launch angle in a way that yields hits most of the time and extra bases a plurality of the time—in a single season: Javier Báez, 2018: 56 Kyle Schwarber, 2019: 55 Kris Bryant, 2016: 53 That's pretty puny, honestly. The Cubs are dramatically underrepresented in that regard, league-wide. There have been 197 player-seasons of at least 50 Barrels, an average of about 20 per year throughout the game. Aaron Judge holds the record, naturally, with 106 Barrels in 2022—nearly double the highest total any Cub has posted. Judge (105), Shohei Ohtani (103) and Juan Soto (91) all had gaudy totals of them last year, too. The Cubs have not had that caliber of slugger, even in their World Series-winning peak season. Kyle Tucker could change that, and push the highest Cubs entry on that single-season Barrels leaderboard from a tie for 111th (where Báez's best year stands) toward the top 50. Already, he's cranked 9 such batted balls this season, including one that died only at the wall Monday night, when hitting a home run was impossible. He nearly defied Wrigley's fiercest anti-offense measures; that's how impressive his power has been. Technically, Tucker is on pace to break Judge's record for Barrels in a season. It's very safe to assume he won't maintain that torrid clip. However, the chances that he'll eclipse Báez seem to be superb. His approach changes last year and (already) this spring indicate increasing commitment to hitting for power. If he merely stays healthy, he seems like a lock to get to 65 Barrels or more. The weather at the Friendly Confines could decide whether or not he reaches milestone numbers of positive outcomes. (He would, for instance, be the first left-handed batter in over a century to hit 40 or more home runs for the Cubs.) The elements can't blunt the indicators of a great process at the plate, though, and Tucker is proving himself to be a breed of hitter the team just hasn't had since Derrek Lee's peak—and perhaps longer than that. Statcast records will still feel strange to talk about for a while. By now, though, we should be able to take them seriously enough to acknowledge what they're saying. Right now, the numbers are saying that Tucker is on a level of power production his team hasn't enjoyed from anyone in this era—be it that of Statcast, Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, or that of the Ricketts family's ownership. In that sense, he's a test of a kind that has never been offered to that ownership group before. View full article

Quietly, the Cubs dedicated themselves this winter not only to getting better, but to being more situation-proof. Monday night's frigid frenzy on the bases demonstrated the value of that endeavor. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images With the air heavy and cold and the wind rushing down Kenmore Avenue to defend the left-field wall like a relief battalion in battle, the Cubs knew no one was hitting the ball out of the park Monday night. Justin Steele let the visiting Rangers take the mightiest swings they could muster, and Texas did register seven hard-hit balls against him, but most of that came on the ground—which was just as well, because nothing they put in the air went anywhere. Kevin Pillar and Wyatt Langford hit flies in the early frames that had Pete Crow-Armstrong and Ian Happ tracking back on the ball, only to veer slightly in at the last second, several steps shy even of the warning track. By the time Adolis García hit a ball squarely enough to even momentarily spook anyone, in the sixth inning, the whole stadium was in on the joke. Happ started at a sharp angle toward the wall in left-center, then ended up coming in a step as he corralled the ball. Not only did the Rangers fail to find extra bases against Steele, but they came nowhere near such a dangerous hit. Stopping the opponent from scoring is just one half of the battle, though. The Cubs have gotten a good amount of power on this young season, but they wouldn't be able to count on any for themselves Monday night. Unlike Texas, they did benefit from a certain kind of slugging, as Michael Busch landed a double down the left-field line and laced a triple into the right-field corner, but they didn't wait for those outcomes or depend on them. Right after Busch's double, Dansby Swanson laid down a rare sacrifice bunt, and then Miguel Amaya swatted a ball to the big part of the park for a sacrifice fly. It was the perfect way to play that situation. That was just the tip of the iceberg, though, and the Cubs stayed in the floe—er, flow—thereafter. Whenever they reached first base, they were predators, as hungry and as ruthless as polar bears. Nate Eovaldi couldn't hold them, and Kyle Higashioka couldn't punish their boldness. They stole five bases, on a night when many teams would have hesitated to let their players run for fear of injuries. As the game unfolded, it became increasingly clear that nights like Monday were part of Jed Hoyer and Craig Counsell's vision when they built this season's roster. Rather than power-dependent bench pieces like Patrick Wisdom, Trey Mancini, or Garrett Cooper, the team has exceptionally athletic ones, in Jon Berti and Gage Workman. Berti stole two bases as a lineup replacement for Nico Hoerner, and Happ, Crow-Armstrong and Seiya Suzuki each took one, too. After that outburst, the Cubs are tied atop the big-league leaderboard with 21 steals this year. They've only been caught once. The Rangers are above-average in steals this season, too, but only attempted one Monday night—and when they did, Amaya threw out Josh Smith at second. In the past, the team settled for loosely mimicking flexibility in their formula for scoring, by having contact-oriented but one-dimensional players Nick Madrigal and Mike Tauchman in the mix. They believe, with Kyle Tucker and Berti joining the existing crew, they now have more ways to score, rather than merely more ways to tell a story about scoring. They were proactive and aggressive, too, about adding Quintin Berry and Jose Javier as their new base coaches, with the express purpose of getting better at stealing bases. Increasingly, teams believe a variation of the old axiom about pitching, but turned to a new purpose: Stealing bases is not dangerous to good ballplayers. Stealing bases while tired is dangerous to good ballplayers. In other words, when there is pressure, stress, or fatigue at work, running the bases becomes a high-risk business. If carefully managed and planned for, though, the running game can be executed without undue risk, even in lousy conditions. That's part of why Berti was in for Hoerner, and Workman for Matt Shaw Monday night. The Cubs knew they would be trying to use their legs to make up for the weather, and they wanted fresh players they could install specifically for that duty. Be it the long ball or small ball, the Cubs will take what opponents are not strong or smart enough to deny them. That has not always been true over the last several years. In fact, it hasn't been true of any Cubs team since 2016. That's not to say that they are an especially serious World Series contender in 2025—they can't match that team for raw talent—but it's telling. Monday night was a statement win, because it was proof of the concept that these Cubs are more complete and better prepared than recent iterations. View full article

Though it's nice to (nominally) have a hard thrower in the starting rotation, the Cubs can't afford to keep using their slender righthander in that role if he's unable to consistently execute either of his important offerings. Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images Through three appearances, there have been flashes of brilliance from Ben Brown. Overall, though, the righty has failed to prove he can consistently throw strikes or effectively locate his sharp curveball. The resulting line—11 runs, with 9 walks, 2 home runs allowed and just 15 strikeouts in 62 batters faced over 11 2/3 innings—is as messy as his outings have looked, and while his stuff remains tantalizing, his spot in the team's starting rotation is necessarily becoming imperiled. Brown was all over the place in the first inning Sunday, giving up three runs to the Padres because of three walks and a hit batter. The visitors struggled to make high-quality contact on that first look at Brown, who can throw in the upper 90s and pairs his riding heater with a devastating breaking ball when he's right. With just a bit of bad luck and all that bad command, though, Brown put his team in an early hole. The Cubs offense took him off the hook, with a five-run outburst of their own in the bottom half of the frame and another two tallies on a second-inning home run by Kyle Tucker. Brown never truly found his feel, though, and worked the game right back into high-stress territory. He narrowly avoided damage after allowing back-to-back hits to begin the third, but in the fourth, he had no such luck. The chance for it wasn't even there. Brown got the first two San Diego hitters out in that frame, only to surrender a single and a home run on the third looks Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill had gotten at him during the game. Machado lined a first-pitch fastball. Merrill watched a curveball sail far above the zone, then hit a 1-0 curve that limped into the very heart of the zone out of the park. Brown was lucky to escape the inning without further damage: he threw just as bad a curve to Xander Bogaerts with a 2-1 count and another runner on base, but Bogaerts flied out lazily to Tucker in right. After four innings and 79 pitches, Craig Counsell was compelled to go to his bullpen, not by Brown's raw pitch count but by the extent to which the Padres had figured him out. That forced the Chicago bullpen to cover 15 outs against the relentless and talented Padres lineup, and the relief corps was not equal to the task. Single runs against Caleb Thielbar in the sixth and Porter Hodge in the eighth tied the game, as the Cubs offense failed to capitalize on the early opportunity they created by getting into the Padres bullpen quickly for a third straight day. A lone run against Ryan Pressly in the ninth won the game for San Diego. The inefficiency of their starter, despite working with a big lead, pushed Counsell's pitching staff to its breaking point. Against righties, Brown sprayed the fastball, missing the outside edge too often and struggling to find the top edge of the zone. Since hitters could set their sights lower on the heater, the curve was not especially deceptive. Against lefties, he looked even more uncomfortable, and the misses—especially up and down, and especially with the curve—were even more pronounced. He was in the middle of the zone with the breaking ball far more often than is viable, especially for a pitcher without a deep arsenal of other stuff to keep hitters off that pitch. That's not to say that there were no causes for optimism on the day. Brown threw two changeups, both to left-handed batters, and while one had the middle of the plate, both clearly fooled the opponent and set up strikeouts on the fastball. He'll need to locate the change with some consistency in order to be effective with it, but since he's had so little success locating the two pitches he trusts, anyway, he might as well give it a more robust chance. He also continues to show good vertical movement on the fastball. His change in arm slot this year makes sense, given the arsenal to which he's committed. The questions are: Can he throw enough strikes from that altered angle to make the stuff play? Is the change making it harder for him to work that changeup in as a tertiary weapon? Those questions will take considerable time to answer, though, and Brown might not have much of that precious commodity to spare. Javier Assad is up to four innings in extended spring training in Arizona. He could be ready to return from the oblique strain that disrupted his ramp-up early in spring training before the end of April. It was already a mild surprise that Brown won the fifth starting job over Colin Rea, who has pitched well when called upon in relief. Meanwhile, Cade Horton had a very encouraging first start in Iowa. Baseball has a name for two-pitch hurlers without good command, be it a dearth of precision in location or a lack of consistent execution and movement: Reliever. Brown's stuff is exciting, but so far, he's shown only intermittent signs of the ability to either stay healthy or perform at the standard demanded of big-league starters. Barring a rapid improvement in multiple facets, Brown is unlikely to stick in the rotation much longer. View full article

Before it fades too far into the rearview to be visible on the receding horizon, let's talk about the extraordinary play the Cubs' center fielder made Sunday, albeit in a lost cause. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images I don't need to tell you that Pete Crow-Armstrong made an incredible throw to notch an outfield assist while the Cubs were in Arizona last weekend. You've probably barely stopped talking about it. It was a marvelous play, a combination of several things that make the young outfielder special all rolled up into one moment: athleticism, competitiveness, ambition, technique. Wasn't it marvelous? Here's the thing: You and I might not be thinking about the same play. It was this play, from Saturday's Cubs win, that drew most of the oohs and ahhs in its aftermath. MDRPV3JfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlFZQ1ZWWlJBbFFBWFFZQ1VnQUhBUWRmQUZsVFZGVUFCUUVCVlFGVFZBSlZCd29B.mp4 There's good reason for all the hoopla, too. Don't attend solely to the throw itself. Look at the hyperathletic way Crow-Armstrong set himself up for it, starting with the high kick of his left leg just before he makes the catch. That got his crow hop going before Josh Naylor was even allowed to leave second base. This isn't just sensational athleticism, in the form of exceptional accuracy on a quick release and a live-armed, whippy throw. It's also technical excellence. He lined himself up perfectly, got his body in motion before catching the ball and knew how to transfer all that energy to the right places, in the right order. However, I'm talking about the throw Crow-Armstrong made Sunday, even as the horse was leaving the barn and the Diamondbacks were completing a comeback to hand the Cubs a deflating loss. V0F3ZFpfVjBZQUhRPT1fVUFWUlUxTUZYd1VBWEFjQ1hnQUhCMVZVQUZsVFZWUUFBQWNGQ0ZCWEFGSlhVZ01F.mp4 It's less visually arresting than the throw that nabbed Naylor. Because it came on a single by a pitcher pulled off the opposing bench, to take down a second runner after one insurance run had already come home, the vibes around it are much less thrilling. As a pure baseball play, though, I want to make the case that it was even more remarkable. Crow-Armstrong started this play 307 feet from home plate, and was shaded slightly toward right-center field. I would argue that he should have been playing even shallower, but the modern orthodoxy is to play about 325 feet from the plate (a bit deeper, in a cavernous center field like Chase Field's), and the Cubs probably didn't have any kind of scouting report on Ryne Nelson as a hitter. To be safe, he was well-positioned by guarding the opposite-field gap and being at a shallow but respectful depth. However, the ball Nelson punched through the infield (just past the reach of the drawn-in Dansby Swanson) was very much the kind of hit you should expect from a pitcher. It had an initial exit velocity of almost 90 miles per hour, but because it was hit practically straight down, it had taken a few high, lazy bounces and was into its dribbler era by the time it got to the outfield grass. It wasn't truly back up the middle, either, but a fair distance to the left of second base, with some sidespin that seemed to keep it rolling and skipping toward left-center. The production crew did us no favors on this play, on either team's broadcast. In fairness to them, though, it probably looked like a fairly easy two-run single. They did the series of quick cuts that is customary on such a play: Center-field camera shows the pitch and initial contact. Cut to high camera behind home plate, where we see the ball elude Swanson. Quick cut to show us the lead runner scoring. Back to the panoramic view, to find Crow-Armstrong fielding and throwing. Quick cut back to the plate for the close-up on the second runner. When the truck uses that sequence, they read the play as unlikely to yield high drama, other than the rising action of runs crossing the dish. If they'd thought Crow-Armstrong would have a play on Eugenio Suárez, they'd have stuck with Shot No. 4 much longer, panning downward to the plate or cutting later to an angle that would help us see if the runner would be safe or out. Neither broadcast's producer, in other words, properly accounted for Crow-Armstrong's warp-speed ballet. He sprinted in and across (few outfielders are truly great at charging ground-ball singles, but even the ones who are usually struggle when they have to come in at a true diagonal like this one), picked the ball cleanly, turned his shoulders against his direction of movement to set himself and fired the ball practically on the run. As was true when he nailed Naylor, he was lethally accurate. This broad genre of play happens several times a year: outfielder throws out runner trying to score from second on single. Under all the relevant circumstances, though—given all the ground Crow-Armstrong had to cover and the way the ball just died on its way to the outfield—it's an extraordinary achievement within its category. Crow-Armstrong has been uneven so far, on the young season and across his career. Defensively, however, he's increasingly dazzling, not only creating value with raw athleticism but demonstrating daring and polished skills that other outfielders can't match. The play he made on Sunday, while not enough to keep the Cubs in the game, is perhaps the best example of that to date. View full article

The Cubs lefty has a unique arsenal, but as he adjusts to the reality of diminishing velocity, he's been forced to tweak it. His early struggles show the problems that come with embracing change. Image courtesy of © Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images Over his first three starts of 2025, Justin Steele has averaged just 91.1 miles per hour on his cutter—the famous "Mississippi fastball" Steele thinks of as a four-seamer, but which still moves more like a cutter more often than not. He's losing velocity; that's not up for debate. Learning to pitch with less heat is an unavoidable part of finding success into one's 30s, though, and since Steele will turn 30 this July, it's hardly a surprise that he's having to do so. We've talked, over the last year, about how he tried to weather this storm by using the offerings differently, and by leaning back into the three other pitches he knows: the curveball, the changeup, and the sinker. There's one more noticeable change he's made, which I've touched on in the past but want to flesh out here. This is the scatterplot showing Steele's movement by pitch type for 2023, courtesy of FanGraphs. This was (unless we haven't yet seen it at all) Peak Steele. This guy still sat at 92 mph on that cutting fastball, and often touched 95. This was the Cy Young Award vote-getting version of him. I placed a marker around the center of his cluster of heaters, to give us a rough focal point for them. That was his fastball shape that year, and it was basically one offering. Pitchers often have slightly more angular scatterplots of movement for each pitch type, roughly matching their arm angle, but Steele's special skill is imparting spin and using seam effects to achieve movement his arm slot can't produce. That's why he's always been so tough to square up, for opposing batters. It's also been part of the engine for his slider's deceptiveness. Here's the same chart for 2024. You can see multiple changes here, most of which I've discussed at length in the pieces to which I linked above. The slider, for instance, is tighter and more consistent, and not necessarily in a good way. The fastball shape is especially compelling, though. This time, I've placed two markers, because I want us to notice the way the blob of his movement has both shifted position and changed shape. In 2024, to start using more of the zone and stay ahead of hitters who were zeroing in on his less zippy pitch mix, Steele started throwing two fastballs that (while not quite fully distinct) are different in intent and location. He's thrown more true four-seamers, with backspin and true carry toward the top of the zone to his arm side, and he's continued to throw the cutting, dippier version to the glove side of the zone. He's showing such good command of both pitches (and still that natural wrinkle that hitters can't account for) that it shows up as one continuous pitch, but there's been a change. Now, here's his 2025 plot. It's early yet, and much can change. When I look at this, though, I see those fastballs starting to become even more distinct, with Steele trying for a bit more arm-side movement on a subset of them and then still bearing down to steer others in on the hands of right-handed batters. The danger, there, is that every tiny adjustment (mental, physical, positional, or a mixture thereof) you make to facilitate some run on a fastball slightly compromises your ability to achieve cut on a fastball. Steele's arm angle has dipped very slightly this year, which doesn't necessarily matter; it's not a major shift. Sometimes, though, a pitcher's arm angle dipping just a bit implies that they're having a harder time getting to their consistent, desired release point at the same angle they've always used, and in Steele's case (whether it's happening for that reason or because of intentional manipulations aimed at utilizing multiple shapes), it's led to more fastballs that carry, rather than cutting, even to the glove side. At 91 miles per hour, those fastballs can get hit hard. Just as importantly, the more of them there are, the more confidently hitters will start to distinguish the fastball from the slider. As we've seen this year, when righty batters can find any way to sit on or identify Steele's slider, they can do a lot of damage against it. One way to see this visually is to consider the relationship between the spin axes on Steele's pitches and the movement they actually achieve. He's very good at achieving unexpected movement, of the kind a hitter struggles to see and predict. With just a tiny change in arm angle, hand position, or body position at release, though, a pitcher can lose the fine command of that relationship. Here's the comparison between Steele's spin-based movement expectation and his actual movement for 2024. Even though he doesn't throw with an over-the-top arm action, Steele has always gotten behind the ball and imparted backspin on the ball like a higher-slot guy. Hitters see that and expect a fairly straight four-seamer, but because of Steele's grip and his release angle, the pitch usually cuts more than the spin would imply. His slider, naturally, drops less but sweeps more than the hitter expects, even if they can pick up the spin difference out of the hand. Here's the same comparison chart for 2025, to date. Remember, these bars reflect the frequency of movement in each of the indicated directions, not the magnitude of that movment. So, this isn't showing (for instance) that Steele is getting more two-plane movement on his slider; it's just showing that getting that true sideways veer is a bit less common. The fastball is our focus, though. Look at how much more often he's imparting spin that implies just a bit more arm-side run, this year. If he were actually achieving cutting action as often as in the past, that would be more than ok: it would make his stuff devastating. In reality, though, that's not only not happening, but is basically impossible. If a pitcher starts to spin it in a direction that indicates a bit more run and a bit less carry or cut, even if they have seam-shifted wake on their side, they're going to achieve a bit less cut and a bit more carry when they were hunting cut. For Steele, that's going to mean more effectiveness high and to his arm side—but less command to the glove side, where that pitch really sets up his slider. If hitters know the fastball will straighten out on him a bit when he tries to work to his glove side, and if his slider tends toward sweeper shape a bit less often, he's getting much more hittable. This doesn't all have to come from Steele trying to cleave his fastball into two pitches, either. Some of it might be about his efforts to bring along the sinker and the changeup, each of which require a bit more extension and/or pronation from his arm—exactly the opposite of the things he's trying to achieve when he throws the cutterish heater. It might be possible for Steele to smooth all this out. As he gets better and better feel for the sinker and the change, he might be better able to stay in his mechanics properly for the fastball and slider. He might learn to manage this delicate manipulation of his pitches better as he goes. For now, though, he's in the middle of a fairly inevitable, dangerous adjustment period. It's not easy to succeed at 91 mph in the majors these days, even with left-handedness and funky shapes on your side. Steele is being forced to thread a needle, and he's not yet deft at it. Whether he can become so will be a huge question for the balance of this season, and beyond. View full article

The Cubs have gotten seven extra-base hits from their catchers in as many games to start this season. That's good by any standard, but it's only part of the story. Last year, they got just 37 extra-base hits from that position all year. Image courtesy of © Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images It was a fun, unexpected, special moment when Carson Kelly bounced and rolled into third base late in Monday night's blowout Cubs win over the A's. By reaching third base on a fly ball that bounced off the wall and got away from the Sacramento defenders, Kelly became the first player in over three decades to hit for the cycle while wearing a Cubs uniform. Fans of a certain age were very well aware of that fact, because for several years, now, it's been peculiar that the Cubs had gone so long without getting that specific type of massive day. For one thing, it's funny that Kelly became the first guy to do this since 1993, because he arrives just at a time when the Cubs have lots and lots of better candidates to do so. Pete Crow-Armstrong, on his best day, threatens the cycle just by showing up. Matt Shaw, Seiya Suzuki, and Kyle Tucker not only combine speed and power, but have the aggressive instincts on the bases to get to third on balls where some players with similar raw speed would hold up at second base. Nico Hoerner is built to come up a homer shy of the cycle, really, but he runs into about 10 homers a year, so it wouldn't have shocked you if he'd done so on a night when he also managed to do the other three things. In the years since 1993, the team has featured Christopher Morel and Javier Baez; Kris Bryant and Starlin Castro; Alfonso Soriano and the young (as well as the old) Sammy Sosa. If Corey Patterson, Arismendy Alcántara or Brennen Davis had panned out as the team hoped they would, they'd belong in the same conversation. At various points, they've had some of the game's most dynamic young hitters, the kinds of guys you actually expect to hit for the cycle. Yet, the last two to manage it are the slow-footed first baseman (Grace) and the middle-aged catcher (Kelly) whom you don't even expect to homer very often. Baseball is beguiling that way. It also seems, at first blush, like Sutter Health Park is going to play as very friendly to hitters, so it might be that Kelly's will be just the first in a long line of unexpected outlier offensive performances. It was just one game, and in itself, it means little. The proof of that is in the new bond between Kelly (Chicago-born, but a year after Grace achieved his cycle) and Grace, in defiance of all those players whom you might have thought could do it at some point. More saliently, though, we're starting to see clearly that the Cubs were right in their bets about the catching position this offseason. Not all of their roster construction choices look so sagacious, but in making the winning bid (a modest, two-year one) on Kelly and retaining Miguel Amaya as the primary backstop, the team looks awfully smart. Amaya already has four doubles and a torrent of hard contact on the young season. What was a black hole in the lineup last year looks like a relative strength this season. It's unlikely that Amaya and Kelly finish the season with an aggregate batting line much better than average, but average production itself would be above-average relative to catchers throughout the league. It's too early to tell for sure whether he's made a change that will allow it to stick, but Kelly's swing speed is up about 2 mph this year, relative to the early part of last year. Amaya, for whom bat speed was never the problem, seems to be increasingly comfortable with the set of big adjustments he made at the plate last summer. The biggest part of their games will continue to be defense; that's the nature of catchers. Already, though, each are reminding us all that there's a lot of value in having a backstop who can lengthen the lineup, too. View full article

Remarkably, the superstar right fielder has undergone a stepwise evolution into more of a lethal slugger, without losing anything major in the process. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images The new batter stance and contact point data that went up on Baseball Savant one week ago include several pieces of information. We don't yet have access to pitch-by-pitch data on contact point or stride length for individual events, but we do have each player's average: Depth in the batter's box (relative to the front edge of home plate) Distance from the plate (relative to the inner edge of the dish) Distance between front and back foot in their stance Angle (in degrees) of openness or closedness in stance Contact point, relative to the front edge of home plate Contact point relative to the player's center of mass Each of these tells us something in itself—in a vacuum—but some of them are much more powerful than others. Where even the less obviously valuable data can play up, though, is when we compare players not to each other, but to various versions of themselves. If a hitter changes where they set up in the box based on the handedness of the opposing pitcher, or based on the count, or if they have a very different contact point on balls they hit hard than on those they hit weakly, that can tell us as much as (or more than) how they rank on a league-wide leaderboard in that regard. Kyle Tucker is a great example. None of his numbers in terms of stance or contact point (or, for that matter, in terms of bat speed) put him at the very top or bottom of a leaderboard. When you break out the partial samples provided by these data over the last 21 months, though, you can see different versions of Tucker—including a particularly intriguing new one, just emerging. In the second half of 2023, Tucker was a hitter who set up very deep in the batter's box, maximizing the amount of time he would have to track the ball before making a swing decision. His stride was short; his swing was focused on balance. He had a deep contact point, over 4 inches behind the front edge of home plate. He stood close to the plate, where he could keep his swing short and still cover the outer third fairly well. Here's what that looks like in Baseball Savant's new graphics package for these data: And here's what it looks like, looks like: S3dib2VfWGw0TUFRPT1fVndVRUFBY0hWVkVBWEZvQVZRQUFBZ01BQUFBQkIxQUFBbE1DVVFKUUJ3UlFBd1ZT.mp4 In 2024, he made a noticeable change. He only played half the season, but the samples on things this focused on a player's process don't need to be large at all to be telling. Tucker set up slightly less deep in the box, with his feet slightly more spread out. He moved slightly off the plate, the better to get his arms extended on pitches down and in and generate power when pitchers attacked him there. His average contact point moved infinitesimally forward and slightly toward him, which fits neatly with that shift. His stride remained conservative, but he shifted his weight slightly more to put more energy into the ball. The data tells that story; so does the tape. R1pWYW9fWGw0TUFRPT1fVlFCVFYxVUZBRkVBQ0FRR1V3QUFBZ1lEQUFNSFZGSUFVVk1IQXdRQ1ZBQUJCUVpT.mp4 Now, the samples this year are so small that we do need to wait just a bit before making any asseverations about what his changing data mean. Nonetheless, the changes are stark and suggestive. Tucker is noticeably farther up in the batter's box this season, and has again shifted a bit farther from the plate. That's to facilitate a much more aggressive set of swing moves, whereby he's striding farther, opening his front hip more, and generating more torque. He's much more likely to pull the ball with authority, especially on the inner half. He's much more focused on handling that pitch, specifically. And he's going and getting it considerably farther out than he was in the past. What doesn't show up here is that Tucker is also markedly more "hitterish" in the box. He's moving a bit more in his stance, and watch the way he paws at the ground with his back foot as he prepares to attack the pitch. There's been a shift in mentality here, expressed in his physical movements. V0F3ZFpfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFnQVZnSUNBRkVBRGdRTEJ3QUhWVkJlQUFBQVVsSUFCRlZRQndZSFV3SmNDQWRR.mp4 Tucker's average swing speed is up to 72.6 mph this spring, from 71.8 in 2023 and 72.1 in 2024. He's built a swing with more danger in it, but so far, he's not paying a big price in terms of more strikeouts or fewer walks. He's capable of generating hard contact from foul line to foul line, and he's trying to make as much of that hard contact pay off in the form of extra-base hits as possible. This might just be one of several adjustments he'll make throughout this season, but it's fascinating to see a wildly successful hitter making fairly pointed changes over the last year and a half. Tucker seems to be aiming for a big season of power production as he gears up for free agency, and that doesn't just have to be for selfish reasons. That is likely to be the most valuable version of Tucker, too—and now, we can compare it to the last couple versions in ways that go deeper than BABIP, or even exit velocity. View full article

Through six games, the Cubs' reshuffled, reinforced bullpen hasn't looked good. For fans, the impulse is to demand immediate action, but the front office's job is to maintain perspective and be patient. Image courtesy of © Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images For some fans, the juttering destabilization and freefall of Sunday's blown lead against the Diamondbacks brought a far-too-familiar-tasting portion of their stomach up to the back of the throat. The game felt so much like late 2023, when no lead the lineup built could be enough. It felt, most of all, like the infamous game last April in San Diego, where the Padres slowly worked their way back from an 8-0 deficit and laid bare the vulnerability of the whole Chicago relief corps. In those prior cases, you could point out the potency of the offense(s) against whom Cubs hurlers proved so ineffective, but it felt thin and watery—like an excuse, not a real explanation. At the outset of an anxious season, many will feel the same way about any similar argument this time. Nor is that without merit, There are real and reasonable questions to be asked about the likes of Nate Pearson (four walks and just two strikeouts in 19 batters faced), Ryan Pressly (four walks, one strikeout), Ryan Brasier and more. Jed Hoyer and company leaned into amassing depth and embraced a lower-velocity, lower-whiff set of profiles in the wake of losing out on Tanner Scott; that comes with significant risk. At the same time, the case is a sound one—better, even, than the one you could make for not sweating the collapse against the Padres last year. There's a case to be made that the Diamondbacks have the league's most potent offense. If they don't, they're in the top three, with depth, a balance of skills and handednesses, and true superstars in the persons of Ketel Marte and Corbin Carroll. The Cubs bullpen got knocked around in a four-game series in the desert, by an elite run-production outfit for whom they're an especially poor matchup right now. If Pearson can get back on track, or if the team ends up trusting and turning to younger, harder-throwing arms Luke Little, Daniel Palencia and Jack Neely later in the season, or if the team makes further additions at (or before) the trade deadline, they'll be much better able to contain Arizona's offense. It's utterly unsatisfying, but sometimes, the most salient fact about a game or series is that you ran into a very good opponent at a very bad time. Unfortunately, though, the Cubs have another date with the Snakes at Wrigley Field in the third week of April, so they can ill afford to just wait out this stretch and have a better assemblage ready later in the year. If they have a new-look late-season bullpen, it'll never see the likes of Josh Naylor, unless the two teams meet in the postseason. Free agent David Robertson has made no announcement about his future. He's very old, and signing him would feed into the same narrative some want to build around the "Age" column of the current bullpen's stat sheet, but in fact, Robertson was not only dominant in 2024, but harder-throwing than ever. He's a former Cub, so the front office has some level of existing familiarity and comfort with him. They don't have that pre-existing intimacy with Lance Lynn, but they could circle back to him as a bullpen option; he marketed himself to some teams as a late-game reliever this winter. They're also one of the teams who has most closely monitored Brooks Raley's rehab from Tommy John surgery, and could sign him to fortify the lefty side of the pen. Each of those players has been on the team's radar already, and they might circle back to one of them if the relief unit continues to scuffle this week in West Sacramento. For now, though, the best advice is not to let a hard weekend at Chase Field plunge you too deeply into despairing reminiscences about the last two seasons. This team is better and deeper than that one; this bullpen has a higher floor and a higher ceiling. It's just not yet clear whether either thing is high enough. View full article

The lineup was held in check in the Tokyo Series against the Dodgers, but in their domestic opener, the Cubs made a statement: this team will be dangerous. Image courtesy of © Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images There are questions hanging over this Cubs season that can't be answered in just a few games. After a pair of disappointing showings and a week's wait for another game that counted, though, the team had to withstand a rising tide of criticism and pessimism among fans and media members. A single victory won't erase that trend, but they thumped the Diamondbacks 10-6 on Thursday night, to at least get the goose egg out of their win column and start accumulating some cause for confidence. Miguel Amaya looks every bit as good this spring as he did during his hot stretch last July and August, which is terrific news. Amaya hit two doubles that drove home half the team's runs Thursday, each jumping off his bat at over 100 miles per hour. That comes after he smoked an RBI double during the Tokyo Series, and after he batted .500 (and slugged .808) in his limited Cactus League play. His plate discipline needs to tighten up, but he's shown that skill in the past, and the hard contact he's making already is very encouraging. Ian Happ was a very suitable engine for the offense from the leadoff spot Thursday, too. He had a double and a home run, each hit at 109 miles per hour. Kyle Tucker had two more narrow misses, if you're a person jonesing for the high of that first home run by the newly acquired star. Tucker's still pulling off the ball a bit when he has leverage in the count, trying to do too much, but it hasn't been hard to see how good a hitter he is, and his one hit did bring home an important early run. Dansby Swanson saved Michael Busch from an error on a 3-6-3 double play, and ordinarily, you feel good about such plays ending up as a fielder's choice. Swanson, though, stayed on the base as he corraled a throw too far to the third-base side of the baseline, and then threw accurately back to Busch from a leaning kneel. Without that bit of defensive wizardry, it's not clear whether Justin Steele would have survived the fifth inning. Two Steele starts into the young season, it's far too early to panic, but not too early to note some concerning trends. Steele only induced four swinging strikes in 77 pitches, his fewest in a regular-season start since May 31, 2023. His velocity is down this spring. Obviously, the value of Steele's unique fastball shape is that it can work even at a lower velocity than most pitchers require. As Cubs fans know well, though, even pitchers who don't rely on speed get into some trouble once they've lost enough of it. Steele threw 92.4 mph and could top 96 when he broke out in 2022. Last year, he sat at 91.8 and barely touched 95. In his early starts this year, he's at a flat 91, and hasn't even hit 94 yet. There's time for all that to turn around, of course. As I mentioned in the wake of the Tokyo Series, there's a case to be made that Steele shouldn't have pitched in Japan, after his ramp-up was slowed down by an illness earlier in the month. If this loss of velocity is real, though, he'll have to adjust to his new reality. In fact, there's already some evidence that he's doing so. The less dominant Steele is capable of being with the heater, the more reliant he becomes on his slider, and the more he needs the trio of complementary pitches we saw him work to revive as tertiary options last year. That's the way he's trending to start 2025, too. If he's the multi-talented competitor he's always expected himself to be, Steele can survive at 90 or 91 miles per hour. As the Cubs ponder their rotation for a potential playoff series this fall (let alone in future years), however, they'll have to be cognizant of this. Arizona is a tough opponent, and the Cubs always seem to have a hard time when they play them at Chase Field. They got the better of them Thursday, though, and came away with some positives to savor—even as a new lurking area of concern came into sharper focus. View full article

As the season begins in earnest, we asked several North Side Baseball writers to offer up bold (but plausible) predictions. Here's what we came up with. Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images The 2025 Cubs will be a fascinating team, one way or another. They're at a stage of the competitive cycle wherein desperation is right at the doorstep, but they also have the talent required to win their division—and perhaps even make a deep run into October. Here are some of our writers' specific and supportable (if a bit outlandish) predictions for the season ahead. @1908_Cubs (Jason Ross): Pete Crow-Armstrong will lead the team in FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement. Bryan Jaeger: Crow-Armstrong will lead the National League in stolen bases. Matthew Trueblood: Kevin Alcántara will Wally Pipp Pete Crow-Armstrong. Look, by now, I'm well-established as the Grinch where Crow-Armstrong is concerned. He's an utterly electrifying player, when he does something good. Few players can be more fun to watch. Too often, though, he's flailing at absolutely everything, and it worries me deeply that he lacks the feel to hit and the raw power that allowed Javier Báez to survive so long with such weak plate discipline. He also plays so recklessly that a major injury feels almost inevitable. I hope I'm wrong about that part, but if Crow-Armstrong does go down for two months after a collision with a wall or a teammate in June, he might never get his job back. This is, equally, a statement of confidence in Alcántara. He's flashed terrific tools throughout his tenure in the minor leagues, but until this spring, the risk that he would never tap into his power was very real—unavoidable, even. Though he only got limited time with the big-league team in an interrupted Cactus League campaign, Alcántara showed real progress in terms of lifting the ball. He looks poised for the big developmental step that has seemed attainable all along. If he's consolidating his offensive skills just as Crow-Armstrong is sputtering, the team will eventually need to give their less-heralded young outfielder a shot. Other Predictions: @Brandon Glick: Matt Shaw will be sent back to Triple-A Iowa; Gage Workman will take over as the starting third baseman. @Seth Stohs: Cubs starters will rank among the bottom half in most important pitching categories. However, they will have a top-5 bullpen led by Ryan Pressly, who will lead the league in saves. This cluster of forecasts does a good job of capturing the exceptionally wide range of possible outcomes for the Cubs this year. Drop your own bold predictions in the comments below, and get ready for a major rollercoaster of a season. View full article

Gather round, read it here first. The season will go like this, see. Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images Ok, soothsayers we (probably) aren't, but 33 writers across the DiamondCentric family of sites tried their hands at predicting the season to come. Here's how it shook out. The Standings AL East There's no question that the Red Sox won the winter, among the teams vying for supremacy in the league's traditional powerhouse division. They traded for Garrett Crochet to raise the ceiling on their starting rotation, then signed Walker Buehler to fortify the back end of the same group. The coup, though, came when they won a multi-team bidding war for Alex Bregman. With Bregman and Rafael Devers as the anchors of the lineup, the team is more well-rounded than it's been in the past. They also have three of the best prospects in baseball. That said, this remains an intensely competitive group. The Sox won the plurality of votes from our writers, but every team except the Rays garnered at least one vote. Even after losing the Juan Soto sweepstakes, the Yankees had an active winter. Without Gerrit Cole, they're not the favorites, but New York remains dangerous. It's the Orioles, though, whom our group collectively views as the greatest threat to the Sox. Their young hitters will have to make up for an underwhelming pitching staff, but Baltimore gets Félix Bautista back as the anchor of their bullpen. AL Central We have a lot of Twins familiars in our sample, but in this case, there's no detectable bias in the predictions. Maybe that's the result of many Minnesotans being frustrated by the team's lack of high-visibility additions and uncertainty about the sale of the club, but it's also about the shifting power dynamic throughout the division. Everyone but the White Sox has a chance to win this division, and everyone but the White Sox got some support. The Tigers got nearly as much support as Minnesota, thanks (presumably) to defending AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal and reunited partner in crime Jack Flaherty. Their offense remains high-variance (to put it mildly, and perhaps too nicely), but Detroit proved they have lots of ways to beat you. The Royals, too, have a superstar at the center of their success, but a bit less depth and a bit more risk of regression than Detroit. Undersold here, perhaps, are the defending champion Guardians. AL West Somewhat stunningly, this is the one division where all five teams earned at least one vote in the survey. I wouldn't have guessed that even the Angels' mothers love them that much, by now, but someone who works here loves them enough to believe they'll shock the world and get back to October. If they do, DIsney should make Angels in the Outfield 2, and every deadbeat dad should be required to relinquish his parental rights to a golden-hearted stranger who really loves their kid. In fairness, though, if there's been any division in the history of baseball the 2025 Angels could actually win, it might be the 2025 AL West. The Astros aren't intentionally leaning into a rebuild, but they might end up in one by the All-Star break. The Rangers seek a rebound after a disappointing defense of their first-ever World Series title. Some major offseason investments have turned the West Sacramento Athletics into a more competent version of themselves, and they're a relocated version of themselves, but they're still very much themselves. The Mariners, meanwhile, did nothing this winter to supplement their roster, but it's a good roster; there's a reason they've won 353 games over the last four years. NL East Juan Soto defines the Mets' offseason, but it's Clay Holmes who might define them as a team and a project. He was fairly expensive, by any standard this side of New York, but he's also unproven in his new role. He's indispensable to the New York starting rotation, and they're a smart and well-equipped outfit. They might very well turn him into the frontline starter they envision, even though his success to date has come as a late-game reliever. The Mets are a very high-upside, very modern, slightly strange outfit. At least that last thing reassures us that some things never change. They're not the favorites in this group, though, at least by the reckoning of our pundits. Instead, the defending champion Phillies and the Atlanta club that backed into (and then fizzled out in) the playoffs last year are more or less the co-favorites. Both of those semi-dynastic teams are getting a little harder to hold together, but each currently has enough youth coming up to reinforce their veteran cores. NL Central Nationally, the Cubs are considered obvious favorites, but it's the Brewers who have had the run of the place in recent years. That could certainly change, but it's not guaranteed to be a change in favor of the Cubs. The Reds hired Terry Francona last fall to increase the viability of their own designs on the division, and will have the benefit of dynamic infielder Matt McLain back after he missed 2024 with various injuries. Even the Pirates have support in some corners, presumably because Paul Skenes is Paul Skenes. He won't be enough to get that anemic offense over the hump this year, but the division just gets more chaotic by the year. Our group still feels the Cubs are most likely to win, but the voting reflects the unpredictability of the whole network. NL West So many of the divisions yielded fascinating vote distributions. So many of the divisions offer at least some degree of fascination. This one is the exception. I can't even bring myself to show you this chart. It's just a circle. All 33 writers voted for the Dodgers, which is really the only rational prediction. The defending World Series champions added the defending NL Cy Young Award winner, re-signed their slugging corner outfielder and brought in another. They won the non-monetary bidding war for Roki Sasaki and the very monetary bidding war for both Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates. There's no other team in the league who can match them for pure talent. That doesn't mean they'll win it all, but expecting anyone else to win—at least in the division, over 162 games—would be foolish. AL Wild Card Berths With the Rangers, the Red Sox, and the Twins as our projected division winners on the junior circuit, the competition for the other three places in the American League playoff bracket still looks intense. The AL is such a muddle that only the barely-lovable Angels and the White Sox failed to secure at least one vote as a playoff hopeful. My biggest takeaways are: Collective confidence in the Rays is surprisingly low. After not getting any votes as division champions, they also only received five tallies as a Wild Card contender. They're always easy to underrate, but this also seems fair. It's hard to argue that they're better than any of the Orioles, Red Sox, and Yankees, and once you're fourth in your division, there's zero margin for error on the path to the postseason. Our writers see the Rangers either as a boom or as a bust. Unlike the Twins (7) and Red Sox (9), Texas only got four votes as a Wild Card team. If they don't win the division, our staff seems to think, they're out altogether. NL Wild Card Berths As a group, we're much more confident about who will take the remaining spots after the division winners in the NL. New York, Philadelphia and Arizona are the kinds of teams you're used to seeing win division crowns, and although none of them are technically likely to do so this year, we still view them as having a very strong chance to make the tournament. That's bad news for our writers and fans of the Cubs and Brewers, since the lane for either of them to make it seems narrow—but by the same token, that raises the stakes of the showdown between those two teams for the NL Central title. We largely view the league as follows: Locks for October: Dodgers, Atlanta, Mets, Phillies Very Likely, But Frozen Out from Certitude by Dodgers: Diamondbacks Others in the Mix: Cubs, Brewers, Padres, Reds If it's just one playoff spot to divide between those last four teams, it'll have to be the winner of the Central, which is bad news for the Padres. Pennant Winners We asked our writers to predict who will play in the World Series, and as you'd expect, it was a true free-for-all in the wide-open American League. In the NL, by contrast, chalk prevails—although several brave souls dared pick against the Dodgers. Since the legend doesn't quite show all the teams who got support, here's how voting broke down on the AL side: Red Sox/Orioles: 9 votes each Yankees/Rangers: 5 votes each Royals/Tigers: 2 votes each Twins: 1 vote This chart is absolutely screaming for the first Mariners pennant ever, or the Guardians to sneak through somehow. It's the most logical distribution, though, based on the makeup of this weird, wild circuit. Maybe it's best to just think of the AL Central collectively as a wedge the same size as those of the Yankees and Rangers. This captures the difference between the two league dynamics nicely, doesn't it? No chaos here. The Dodgers got 25 of the 33 votes; the Phillies took half of the remainder; and the Brewers, Mets, Diamondbacks and Atlanta claimed just one vote apiece. It's the Dodgers' world. We're all just living in it. Can the Dodgers Repeat? Next, naturally, we asked who will win the Series. Given that our voting shows a lack of profound faith in any particular American League team, it's probably not a surprise that writers also showed a strong belief that (should they get that far) the Dodgers will finish the job in the Fall Classic. Of the 25 voters who said they;ll win the pennant, 19 see Los Angeles taking home the piece of metal at the end of the season. If they don't, things get more interesting. Somehow, the Phillies got more support (five votes) as Series champs than as pennant winners (4). I'd say we'll have a stern talk with the writer who chose them to do the former without the latter, but who knows? Maybe they're projecting some kind of vacated championship situation. It's that, or Google Forms is a frightfully limited piece of software. You decide. Also receiving support as predicted champions: Red Sox - 3 Orioles - 2 Yankees, Blue Jays, Mets, Brewers - 1 As was true with the Twins, I'll remark that our heavy representation of Cubs knowers didn't seem to engender undue confidence in them. No one selected Chicago to win the pennant, let alone the Series. Awards We got a wide variety of answers on who will win each MVP award, including a whopping 12 different players in the American League. Only three players got three or more votes, though, and one lapped the field: Bobby Witt Jr.: 13 votes Aaron Judge: 4 Gunnar Henderson: 3 Julio Rodríguez, Mike Trout, Corey Seager: 2 Adley Rutschman, Alex Bregman, Brent Rooker, José Ramírez, Rafael Devers, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 1 In the NL, the field was more limited, because it was even more dominated by the favorite: Shohei Ohtani: 19 votes Juan Soto: 4 Bryce Harper, Kyle Tucker, William Contreras: 2 Elly De La Cruz, Francisco Lindor, Ketel Marte: 1 Since Ohtani is (ostensibly) going to pitch again this year, he really is hard to pick against. That Witt gained such a commanding upper hand (in our estimation) over Judge is a mild surprise, but then, Judge will turn 33 years old in April. It might be about time for age to lend Witt the edge. Another 12 different people received votes for each Cy Young Award, and again, there was a much more even mix of opinions in the AL than in the NL. American League Garrett Crochet: 7 votes Logan Gilbert, Tarik Skubal: 6 Cole Ragans: 4 Eight others: 1 each National League Paul Skenes: 14 votes Zack Wheeler: 5 Shota Imanaga, Corbin Burnes, Spencer Strider: 2 Seven others: 1 each Crochet's status as the favorite is in keeping with our group's general confidence about the Red Sox. That Skubal and Ragans got so much support is a good reminder of how tough (if only inconsistently so) the AL Central is. Catch either of those guys, Seth Lugo, Joe Ryan, Pablo López, Bailey Ober, or Tanner Bibee, and you're in for a long 0-4 day. Skenes's phenom status is untarnished, so far. If he can stay healthy, it's not at all unfair to expect that he'll contend for this award. However, he'd be the first player to actually win it in their first full season since TIm Lincecum in 2008. The Rookie of the Year votes were equally interesting and even more varied, but there are too many names to walk through all of them. Let it suffice to say that Jackson Jobe (5 votes), Roman Anthony and Jasson Dominguez (4 each) are the co-favorites in the AL. Roki Sasaki (13 votes) is a relatively prohibitive favorite in the NL, but Matt Shaw (6) and Dylan Crews (5) are both viable candidates, too. Sasaki seems to have some important hurdles to clear en route to becoming the frontline starter the Dodgers expect him to be, but his raw stuff is too good to ignore—not least because we've already seen how well it plays against high-level pros in Japan. Alex Cora (6 votes) has the narrowest possible lead over A.J. Hinch and the Mariners' Dan Wilson (5 apiece) in the voting for the AL Manager of the Year, while Craig Counsell (8 votes) beat out Terry Francona (5) and Torey Lovullo (4) more handily in the NL. No matter what the question, our group is more certain of the answers in the National League—not because we're any less familiar with the American, but because that league is so much more balanced and (therefore) unpredictable right now. When it comes to the Manager of the Year Award, specifically, though, the right answer might be the one one writer gave to both league's questions: "Who cares?" The season ahead will be full of extraordinary performances by talented young players. and with good races in tight divisions. These predictions won't all come true, but trying to guess what's coming is part of the fun of this game. The good news is, starting Thursday, the bigger, more constant fun of the game is on tap: Games. Glorious, everyday, non-hypothetical games. Happy Opening Day. View full article