Matthew Trueblood

The first step the Cubs took upon acquiring the fireballer was to change where he throws from. It changes a lot of other things about his game. Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports Since acquiring Nate Pearson in their first move of July, the Cubs have used him relatively sparingly. He pitched in each of the first two games of this week's series against the Guardians, but that was after a full week off. In his first fortnight in the organization, he only pitched three times. That's because the Cubs had some ideas about how to solve the command issues that have plagued him during his career, and while it's too early to draw wild conclusions, there are some encouraging results in that area. Here's a pitch Pearson threw in June, when the Blue Jays visited the Guardians. Nate 2.mp4 Here's one he threw this week, in the same ballpark and from the same outfield camera angle. Nate 3.mp4 I bet you can spot it right away, but in case you missed it: look for the outer edge of the left-handed batter's box. In the first video, as he sets, Pearson's body obscures that area. In the second, he's wide of it. The Cubs moved Pearson about a foot across the rubber, toward first base. He's not throwing from a new arm slot, and the mechanical tweaks they've made are minor, but they changed where he throws from. Let's explore what this means for Pearson's pitch mix, its utility, and his future. For these purposes, we'll stick to showing his four-seamer and slider, as I did above. Pearson has only thrown two sinkers as a Cub, and they were both in his first appearance for them. It would seem that the team doesn't want him to even worry about that pitch, which is a wise choice. They've also downshifted the usage of his curveball, although it's harder to say for sure that that change will have staying power in such a small sample. To be sure, the slider is his better breaking ball, so we can hone in on how it plays, especially off his four-seamer. The first impact of this change in mound position we can easily identify is that Pearson is hitting the zone more with his fastball. That's an important and welcome change. He was only throwing the heater in the zone about 51% of the time with Toronto this year, but with the Cubs, it's just under 60%. That's a dramatic difference, and it explains why he's yet to walk a batter in a Cubs uniform. Why does it work that way? Principally, when you change where a pitcher throws from, you force him to make a change to his release angle. We can now measure this angle, which is just the deviation from a straight forward line that the ball shows right out of the pitcher's hand. Is it going left or right? Up or down? Command comes from being able to consistently execute a release angle with a given pitch. Deception and swing-and-miss come from making those angles invisible or inscrutable to hitters. Here are Pearson's horizontal and vertical release angles on all his fastballs and sliders, with the Blue Jays and with the Cubs. As you can see, there's a tighter distribution of release angles on the left, though time might spread them out. What's more notable is the less drastic average release angle, especially horizontally, and especially on the fastball. From his new place on the rubber, Pearson can throw the fastball fairly straight, letting his velocity, movement, and a very flat vertical approach angle keep the pitch not only close enough to the zone to induce a swing, but lively enough to avoid getting hit hard. Speaking of that vertical approach angle, though, it's a key feature of Pearson's fastball, which would have relatively unimpressive raw movement without that factored in. We had better make sure he's not losing that ability to have the pitch ride and stay on a flat plane through the zone, because of this change. Here are his horizontal and vertical approach angles, which are the same as release angles but at the moment the ball is entering the zone, rather than at the moment the hurler cuts it loose. Here, we see a huge difference--a bigger one, even, than that in release angle. Pearson the Cub doesn't have his slider wiggling sideways as much when it reaches the zone, but achieves a clearer separation in the approach angles of the fastball and the slider, vertically. In other words, while they're tough to distinguish out of the hand and there's not much lateral angle change to give them away, a hitter will get two very different pitches, vertically, as the ball reaches them. A couple of outliers from his first two appearances even disguise the change Pearson has made since joining the Cubs. Here's the same approach angle chart, for his last three outings only. His fastball still holds its plane into the zone--as well as ever, in fact. The slider is just a vicious, vertical snarl down off it, and he's still throwing these two offerings at about 98 and 88 miles per hour, respectively. Pearson hasn't yet piled up huge strikeout totals with this altered setup and series of looks, but there's good reason to hope that that's coming. No relief pitching acquisition is guaranteed to be any kind of success. This pickup was very much a variation on last year's Jose Cuas trade, which came to nothing. Pearson has great raw velocity, a nasty slider, and some tantalizing secondary characteristics to his stuff, though. He's under team control two more seasons. And the Cubs clearly had an idea to make an immediate change, which could raise his ceiling for that remaining term of club control. It might never come to fruition, but Pearson has a real chance to emerge as a dominant reliever--not just a fine middle reliever, but a relief ace, like last year's version of Julian Merryweather. He'll be an important Cub to watch for the balance of this season. View full article

The Cubs' longest-tenured player last pitched on Aug. 5, and is not one of the team's probable starters this week in Cleveland. It's hard to forecast what's next for him, in a complex pitching picture for the resurgent Cubs. Image courtesy of © Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports There was enough of a Kyle Hendricks rebound, last month, to justify keeping him around as the team floundered and trudged toward what had a chance to be a deadline sell-off. Hendricks was clearly the worst of the team's healthy starters at the time, but he deserves the organization's respect and loyalty, and there was no urgent need to move on from him; the team appeared not to be a contender. Over the last few weeks, though, the team has found its gear. Jed Hoyer did trade reliever Mark Leiter Jr. at the deadline, but he also acquired Nate Pearson and made a major upgrade from Christopher Morel to Isaac Paredes at third base. They're still below .500, but only by a single game, and their weak remaining schedule makes it at least remotely plausible that they could reach the postseason, after all. That puts Hoyer, Craig Counsell, and Hendricks in a bit of an awkward position. The team still doesn't have a surplus of healthy starters, but with a whole bunch of off days in this stretch of their calendar--they were off Thursday and Sunday, will be off again this Thursday and next Monday, and will have three straight Thursdays off heading into mid-September--they don't necessarily need to use all five of their arms each time through the rotation. This week, the team is skipping Hendricks's turn while they're in Cleveland, though it seems unlikely they'll move him fully to the bullpen. He could start this weekend against Toronto at Wrigley Field, ensuring that Shota Imanaga (who starts Monday night in Cleveland) won't have to work on four days' rest in order to stay in rotation. He could come back Sunday, if Hendricks pitches Friday or Saturday. In the big picture, though, it's increasingly clear that the Cubs don't want to entrust a start that might help determine their playoff fortunes in Hendricks. Jordan Wicks is on a rehab assignment in Iowa. The team recently signed Adrian Houser to fill in as depth at Triple-A, too. Sadly, it feels like the watch has to be resumed. Hendricks isn't yet in imminent danger of losing his roster spot, but every appearance will be a kind of audition the rest of the way. For as long as the team remains on the fringes of playoff contention, Hendricks will be under constant evaluation, and the organization will be looking for ways to improve upon his spot at the back end of the starting rotation. If the Cubs are to make the playoffs from here, they need to maximize their chances in every game. They know the chances of that are small, though, and won't want to risk the health of Justin Steele, Imanaga, or Jameson Taillon with very aggressive usage. Hendricks has value not only as a leader of the team and institutional memory of its fading glory, but as a source of potentially vital innings, even if they be steady but unspectacular. At the same time, the closer they get to contention, the more they'll feel pressure to try something else in his rotation spot. It's an uncomfortable paradox, and an unfortunately apropos microcosm of their season. Maybe, for both parties, there's still a chance to change the tenor of that season. View full article

Unsurprisingly, it's beneficial to slot the players with the least defensive responsibility highest in your batting order. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports There's meant to be some division of labor in baseball. Sure, you want the two-way stars, and you want dynamic players who help score or prevent runs in multiple ways, but a great team is built around the idea that everyone has something to contribute--and ideally, that means not putting too great an onus on any one player, or two. In other words, while high-volume offensive creators who also play premium defensive positions (Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jarren Duran, and so on) are exceptionally valuable, there's an inherent tinge of inefficiency to that kind of value concentration. In a world with more perfectly aligned resources, batting orders would roughly resemble the defensive spectrum introduced by Bill James nearly half a century ago. You'd lead off with your DH, your catcher would bat ninth, and the stepdown from one defensive position to the next would be smooth. Your first baseman would bat second, your left fielder third, your shortstop eighth. Obviously, that's just a vague hypothetical possibility. Players are too different from one another to, with any seriousness, try to map such a rigid and simple formula onto lineups. What you can do, more fairly, is loosely state the efficiency of a lineup based on how well it fits these principles. Do the hitters who play the corner infield and outfield spots and DH merit placement in the top five places in the order? Do the up-the-middle defenders play well enough in the field to stay in the lineup despite less-than-terrifying bats? Here's how the Cubs have lined up, almost every game since the trade deadline: Ian Happ - LF Michael Busch - 1B Seiya Suzuki - RF Cody Bellinger - DH Isaac Paredes - 3B Nico Hoerner - 2B Dansby Swanson - SS Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Miguel Amaya - C That's pretty good. It's reflective of the fact that Jed Hoyer has had a vision for this roster, all along. That doesn't mean the plan is flawless, or even all that good. Hoyer falls victim to the planning fallacy and ends up shorthanded or one star shy, time and time again. For the second year in a row, though, we're getting a prolonged stretch in which it's easy to see the thought process involved in building the team. This is the lineup Hoyer hoped would come together, with Paredes as the perfect replacement for Christopher Morel, settling down a few slots in both the offensive and defensive lineups at once. To wit: over the last 30 days, the Cubs have gotten more plate appearances by the five most offense-focused positions in the top five spots in the order than any other team, at 451. They've gotten more by the four defense-oriented positions in the sixth through ninth spots than any other team, at 306. They're as optimally aligned as anyone. They're a well-rounded team. Second, in both of these aspects, goes to the Cleveland Guardians, whom the Cubs will play at Progressive Field for three games this week. It's not as though the tumblers falling into place has turned this team into a juggernaut. They're 5th in MLB in runs per game since the trade deadline, at 5.6, but they're 22nd over that aforementioned 30-day window. Nor would we be noticing or commending them for their resurgence, if not for the offensive production from the guys the team explicitly expects the least from: the .763 OPS from those up-the-middle guys in the bottom half of the order the last month is around .030 higher than that being put up by the so-called sluggers hitting in front of them. Sometimes, baseball is that fluky. Not every hot streak means you've solved the game; not every cold streak means things are broken. Still, there's something real here. For one thing, this kind of lineup build is not solely about run creation. The implication of this kind of lineup is that they also prevent runs well, by playing strong defense. That's precisely what the Cubs have done lately. Opponents reach base on balls in play (be it via hit or error) less often against the Cubs than against all but five other teams, since the deadline passed. For another thing, there will be a leveling out and a balance found between the overachieving hitters whose main jobs are defense and the guys who are being paid big bucks to pile up big hits. Even when Amaya, Crow-Armstrong, and Swanson come back to Earth, it should be balanced out by steadily rising production from Happ, Suzuki, and Paredes. The Cubs have a lineup that shows off its careful assemblage. The next seven weeks will be about finding out how much tensile strength that construction has. View full article

Since breaking out of a prolonged offensive fugue on the Fourth of July, the Cubs are 20-12. They have an easier schedule than most over the balance of the season. Can they really climb out of the hole they dug over the first three months of the season? Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports When the old heads say that games in April count just as much as ones in September, this is the kind of moment they're anticipating. The Cubs made an impressive trade in the late stages of July, to close a month in which they asserted themselves as a better team than they'd looked like in May or June. They've started August impressively, too, and after being 39-48 on Jul. 3, they're now within a game of .500. There are two distinct problems. The first is that, having lost contact with the division-leading Brewers and still lagging even the third Wild Card spot by three games, they have a narrower path to the postseason than a team with some chance of winning its division. Thus, their very soft remaining schedule is a prerequisite for any sort of dream of a playoff berth, rather than a nice bonus that they could afford to live without. The second problem is that, during their long stretch of poor play earlier this season, the team lost their season series to Atlanta, the Reds, the Padres, the Mets, the Cardinals, the Pirates, the Padres, and the Giants. They split their season set with the Diamondbacks, but Arizona looks almost certain to win a higher percentage of their intradivisional games than the Cubs do, which would give them that edge, too. Thus, the Cubs have to be better than all but two of those, and can't afford to be tied with whoever's third. Taken together, those things mean that the Cubs need to go 28-15 the rest of the way. They need 87 wins to reach the postseason, and that's a tall order. They have a lot of theoretically easy series left, but they also have three-game engagements with the Guardians, Yankees, Dodgers, and Phillies. If they split those 12 contests (which seems sufficiently optimistic), they'd need to go 22-9 in their other games to get to 87. It's nice that this team is finally putting some pieces together. It's encouraging, especially because some of the engines of the recent run of success (most notably Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya) are players who figure to be important to the organization's future, one way or another. It's too early to get especially excited, because the damage done by the team's play from the end of April until nearly the All-Star break can't be easily wiped away. One healthy way to experience the rest of the season might be to break it into two chunks. Starting Monday night in Cleveland, the Cubs play 21 games in which the only truly tough team will be the first one they face--the AL Central-best Guardians. If they go 14-7 or 15-6 in that stretch, they leave themselves a legitimate chance to win a Wild Card spot. Their home series against the Yankees the weekend after Labor Day will mark the turn into the home stretch, and if they get there in good shape, they'll be able to afford to go 4-5 against New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, although even then, they'll need to be phenomenal (10-3) in the other series left on their slate. If they go 13-8 or worse in these next 21, the light at the end of the tunnel becomes a pinprick, or winks out altogether. Not having head-to-head games against many of the teams they're chasing means the Cubs will have to hope for help, and to avoid being reliant on that, they have to play like a 100-win team the rest of the way. It's fair, though, to be happy just to have this glimmer of hope, about six weeks after it looked like the season was over. View full article

It's a pretty simple one, too: stop relying so damn much on the video room. Image courtesy of © Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports In the bottom of the ninth inning of the Cubs' 3-1 win Saturday night, things got off to a chaotic start. Two different fans jumped from the stands onto the playing field during the break between the top and bottom of the frame, requiring security to remove them, and one managed to add injury to their own insult to the game, slowing that process down. Then, when the game resumed, White Sox batter Brooks Baldwin hit a tricky chopper to Michael Busch at first base. The angle of the grounder required Busch to range to his right to snare it, and the medium speed of it made beating Baldwin to the base impossible. However, Héctor Neris hustled over, and Busch made a well-timed, strong throw that led him right to the bag. Alas, Neris dropped the ball--but then, in an impressive recovery, seized the ball barehanded on a high bounce, while dragging his toe to hold the base in stride. First-base umpire Larry Vanover, understandably, called Baldwin safe. In real time, it was nearly impossible to anticipate and see that Neris would recover the way he did. On slow-motion replays, though, it was breahtakingly close, and it probably (though we're talking a 52% chance, maybe, not a 95% one) would have been overturned by a challenge. Alas, the Cubs didn't make one. They were caught trying to discern whether there was a good enough chance of that overturn or not, and when they asked for the review, they did so too late. That's inexcusable, but it's also sadly common. The Cubs aren't alone in this regard, but it's peculiar that it's become a problem at all. It's all born of an overly rigid process. For whatever reason, even knowing the rules that place a firm time limit on the decision to challenge, several teams cleave to a paradigm whereby every close play is subject to the same steps: Hold action with a gesture from the manager to the umps. Put a coach on the phone with the video room. Wait, wait, wait, until the video room staffer renders a decision. While perfectly sound as a general mode of operation, that system doesn't have sufficient flexibility. Late in games, or when an especially high-leverage play is under consideration, teams need to think less and act more. Waiting for the video room to make a call on a close and unusual play like the Busch-Neris one Saturday night makes no sense at all. Nothing material is lost if the play isn't overturned. The gain if it is, however, is huge. Counsell has won 14 of 24 challenges this year, but the denominator in that equation for success rate is more important than the numerator. No one wants a manager who blindly challenges everything, even when there's no hope. That's just creating needless delays, in a game newly committed to a crisp pace. When it's a close call whether or not to challenge and it's either past the midpoint of the game or a situation with above-average leverage in terms of win probability, though, teams should be much more aggressive about this, and much less dedicated to waiting out the video room. Having a fixed process is comforting, but it's also often self-defeating. Only 12 teams have made fewer challenges than the Cubs this year. Call it a coincidence if you wish, but the two teams who have issued the most are the Phillies and Guardians, who boast two of the three best records in baseball. Philadelphia's Rob Thomson has won a league-best 24 of those, and while Stephen Vogt has only won half of his total challenges, that still comes to 18 of them. By being half again as aggressive as Craig Counsell and company, the Guardians staff has earned four extra calls this year. Most of the complaints of paralysis by analysis in baseball are misplaced. This one isn't. The Cubs, and several other teams, should demand replay reviews more often, and with less deliberation--if only a little bit more and less, respectively. View full article

A hurler who came up to the big leagues with Craig Counsell is back under his aegis, and it's working like a charm--thanks to greater comfort and a couple of obvious tweaks. Image courtesy of Nick Wass In a rubber match against one of his former teams Wednesday afternoon, Jorge López had the latest of several great outings for the Cubs. His two scoreless innings included two strikeouts, and he earned the win, since starter Javier Assad had left too early to claim it. That showing brought López's ERA in a Cubs uniform down to 0.54, in 16 2/3 innings. After almost two years of being thoroughly lost, the peripatetic López finds himself at home in the Cubs' rebooted relief corps. When the Orioles permanently moved López to short relief in 2022, he took to the role and exploded onto the scene, netting Baltimore a great prospect haul in a July trade to Minnesota. Thereafter, though, he collapsed again. With the Twins, then the Marlins, then the Orioles again, and this spring with the Mets, López struggled with mental health (even spending a stint on the injured list while with the Twins for that express reason) and with the physical aspects of pitching, including the simplest task of the pitcher: throwing strikes. López is, by all accounts, a genial and deeply well-meaning person. He has so often battled with the pressure and stress of this job, though, that he was running out of chances in MLB when he arrived in the Cubs organization. He was cut by the Mets after an ugly incident in which he erupted in frustration after a bad outing, including hurling his glove into the stands. His problems with New York (and in previous stops) were not by any means confined to psychology. There were real alignment, pitch mix, and command problems that needed to be addressed, and with the Cubs, in a reunion with the first manager he had in MLB, López has made those changes. Prior to this season, even, López made the first of a few needed changes. By sliding toward first base in his setup on the rubber, he created more room for his arsenal and augmented his ability to land a fairly varied pitch mix in the strike zone. He's a different pitcher when he can hit the plate with all his offerings than when he's struggling to get the ball to one edge or the other; that's true of most hurlers. With the Mets, though, it didn't pay off, because López was trying to be too much like a starting pitcher, even working in short relief. He threw both his four-seamer and his sinker to both lefties and righties, and he balanced his secondary offerings fairly evenly. That works for some pitchers even in bullpen roles, but López's command isn't good enough to put him in that fraternity of the flexible. Besides, his stuff is good enough to dominate hitters with just two or three pitches, as long as he picks the right ones for a given matchup. When the Cubs got ahold of him, López changed his approach, much for the better. Combine the changes in pitch mix with those in alignment on the mound, and López is locating much better since joining the Cubs, to both lefties and righties. To the former, that means more elevated fastballs, especially thanks to the increased reliance on his four-seamer, at the expense of the sinker. He's also getting inside on those lefties a bit more often, which has helped him prevent the hard contact that plagued him at some previous stops. To righties, meanwhile, it's meant stretching the zone laterally, with sinkers in and sliders down and away. He's still not completely overwhelming or overpowering hitters. López's strikeout rate as a Cub is barely over 20%, though he has cut his walk rate a bit. He's thriving mostly with a better capacity for limiting damage on contact, and sustaining that in relief is always tricky. For now, though, the Cubs have found a gem, and it's a feel-good story for both López and his new, old skipper. He's set to be a free agent this winter, but given the circumstances of his arrival and the degree of his success, it wouldn't be surprising to see the two sides work out a deal to keep him on the North Side for 2025. He seems comfortable here, and that's no small thing, for him or for the team. View full article

The sturdily built second baseman has spent too much of this season trying to evolve into some next-level version of himself, with more power. That's not happening, and he needs to let it go. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports At his best, Nico Hoerner is an old-fashioned sparkplug. He can hit .300, with plenty of walks to push the on-base percentage associated with that average toward .380. He can steal bases and wreak havoc for opponents. Be it from the top of the order or as a rally-starter in the bottom half of it, Hoerner can be a dynamic offensive weapon. We know all this for sure, because he did it just last year, going .297/.377/.391 and stealing 23 bases after the 2023 All-Star break. This season, Hoerner has not been at his best. For the season, he's hitting .256/.325/.343, with 27 extra-base hits and 20 steals in 461 plate appearances. He's just not the player who keyed the team's offensive resurgence in the second half last year; the team has had to work around his subpar contributions. When you look at the essential numbers that inform most hitter evaluations, though, it's hard to see what's missing from Hoerner's game. To be more fair to Hoerner, let's compare his performance this year to all of last year, rather than focusing on a stretch that might have been at the outer edge of his capacity. Seasons PA BA OBP SLG ISO K% BB% BABIP ExitVel LaunchAng Hit95+% Chase% Miss% WOBA 2023 688 .283 .346 .383 .100 12.1% 7.1% .312 86.4 10.4 33.3% 30.2% 12.5% .322 2024 465 .254 .325 .341 .086 10.8% 7.3% .279 85.9 9.6 28.9% 31.8% 12.2% .297 You can pick nits here. Hoerner is hitting the ball slightly less hard, and he's expanding his zone slightly more often. In broad strokes, though, this is the same hitter. He's sustained one of the lowest strikeout rates in baseball. Almost the whole difference between last year and this year is in his worse BABIP, and as you can see, it's not like he was clobbering the ball before and is now just hitting dribblers. What's missing, leading to a deeply damaging sag in his outcomes on balls in play? In short: he's trying to pull the outside pitch way too much. Last year, Hoerner batted .312 and slugged .392 on pitches on the outer half of the plate. Especially in that second half, he was sensational at simply shooting the ball--sometimes on the ground, sometimes on a line toward the gap--to right field, often on pitches his opponents thought were just setting him up for later in the at-bat. This season, those numbers are .240 and .272, respectively. He's making more contact on pitches away from him, but having far, far less success. One problem that creeps into Hoerner's game often is the quest for power. Nico Hoerner will never successfully hit for power; it's not in him. Frequently, though, feeling pressure to produce even more than he does in his most successful forms, he tries to generate that punch, and it's always bad for him. In this case, it's meant trying to get around the ball and drive it to left field, even when it's on the outer part of the plate. Here's his binned spray chart for pitches on the outer half (or off the plate away) for each of the last two seasons. It paints a clear picture. Trying to pull and drive the outside pitch has Hoerner rolling over the ball more, so he's hitting more ground balls. He is successfully putting more of those batted balls to the outfield in left and center, but with his limited raw power, there's not much value in that. He was much harder to defend when he could attack right field, from the gap all the way to the foul line, more consistently. Hoerner has to get back to thinking opposite field when pitchers work him away. He also has to get back to being aggressive on the bases. Last season, Hoerner attempted a steal in 13.7% of his opportunities, and in the second half, that number was 15.4%. This season, he's at just 9.8%, despite going 20-for-22 and only having been caught on two pickoffs in April. Like Pete Crow-Armstrong, it seems possible that he just can't be thrown out, on a traditional steal attempt. He should be pushing the envelope more than he is. So much of this--so much of life, really--comes down to honest self-knowledge and self-understanding. Hoerner can be a powerful offensive force, but he has to stop trying to do it the same way Seiya Suzuki does. He's a singles hitter, but one with tremendous speed. He can have the same impact as a doubles hitter, and put up even gaudier numbers in the process. If he regains that concept of himself, he could steal another 20 bases over the next seven weeks, not least because he would be on base more. If he doesn't make that change, he'll continue to struggle, and the Cubs will have to head into the winter seriously contemplating a move that would send Hoerner elsewhere to make room for a needed offensive upgrade. View full article

What do we owe to each other? Sometimes, we're helpless to change the big, bad things of the world, but when we take as much from a place as baseball fans have taken from Venezuela, part of what we owe in return is our attention and our effort. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports There is an unfortunate tendency, in the United States, to think about much of the rest of the world as less cultured or civilized. That assumption is racist and xenophobic, and it's also objectively wrong. To wit: don't assume, merely because nothing material is being done about it, that there's massive ambiguity or confusion about what happened in Venezuela's recent national elections. On Jul. 28, millions of voters went to the polls in that nation, and its robust computerized voting tabulation system yielded reasonably clear results. President Nicolas Maduro lost, according to the best data that has made it out into the international public sphere, by a wide margin. Opposition challenger Edmundo González Urrutia won, and should be president right now. Instead, Gonzalez and his party are under a new investigation, instigated by Maduro's top prosecutor. The government has upended the will of the Venezuelan people and declared Maduro the winner, wielding fake or manipulated election results as a cudgel. Mass protests are underway, but the government is powerful and ruthless, and the international community (whether stretched too thin by the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, or unwilling to engage in any infringement on national sovereignty, even in what seems like an egregious breach of that privilege) has not mustered any meaningful intervention. At what must be the most difficult moment of his young life, Cubs reliever Adbert Alzolay is speaking up. In a series of tweets over the last several days, he's drawing attention back to this issue over and over, even as he braces for career-threatening Tommy John surgery. Please notice that the above is in English. Alzolay tweeted and retweeted multiple things about the election and the ensuing unrest in the days before that post, but on Monday, he turned his message toward his English-speaking followers. Nor was it only that one post. We know, of course, that athletes are not politicians, and that many of them carry deeply confused or flawed political opinions. Like the rest of us, they are prone to statements that might be too strong, or self-interested. What Alzolay is trying to tell his (predominantly) American followers, though, is worth hearing and passing on, not as an endorsement of González or of any particular political ideology, but because it boils down to a simple truth: wrong was done here. This isn't right, and attention needs to be paid. The wrong won't be righted unless and until the world tunes in. The Carter Center issued a strong statement about the elections, back on Jul. 30. Do not, under any circumstances, take Alzolay's word for what happened, but do know that the international diplomatic and human rights advocacy community backs him up on it. We can not change the outcome of the Venezuelan elections. Paradoxically, though, it is our duty as baseball fans to try. It is our duty, as fans of Alzolay and Willson Contreras, of Luis Arráez and Ronald Acuña Jr., of Johan Santana and Dave Concepcion, to repay what we have gotten from Venezuela, by caring about the people who still live there (or who are fleeing, sometimes for their lives) in the same way we have chosen to care about the few who have come into our lives through this channel of entertainment. Call or email your Congressional representative. Talk to others about this developing crisis. And keep listening, to Alzolay and others who speak up about it. View full article

Since the All-Star break, the team's formerly All-Star-caliber shortstop has looked a bit more like his All-Star self. Can the good times last? And if so, is this team alive and kicking, after all? Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports For nearly a year, Dansby Swanson's bat looked dead. From Aug. 1, 2023 through the recess for the All-Star break last month, Swanson batted .212/.286/.368. In 570 plate appearances, he struck out 26 percent of the time, walked 8.8 percent of the time, and hit 18 home runs. It was a very long stretch of futility for a player who turned 30 right in the middle of that stretch, over the offseason. There were no guarantees he would ever be especially useful at the plate again. That could still turn out to be true. We're only 69 plate appearances into the second half of this season, and there's all kinds of noise in the data. However, it sure looks like Swanson got healthy, inspired, or otherwise fueled up over the four-day break last month. He's a whole different hitter since the start of baseball's unofficial second half. He's hitting .317/.391/.400 over this span. His walk rate is up to 11.6%, and his strikeout rate is down to 20.3%. He hasn't yet homered, but hits are everywhere for Swanson over the last three weeks. In the first half, he hit far too many ground balls, and also too many high pop flies. The trouble spots in the graphic above are the big gray bars just south of 0 degrees of launch angle, which mean he was hitting a lot medium-speed, routine ground balls; and the pale salmon bar just above 30 degrees, which means he was hitting a lot of fly balls that were almost threatening, but not quite. Here's the same chart for the admittedly tiny sample he's accumulated since the break. Those easy grounders are almost nonexistent, lately. His high liners and low fly balls are better-struck. And see that cluster of deep blue, way below the equator in terms of launch angle? It's not how you'd want to try making a living, but those slowly hit balls straight into the ground are often viciously difficult to convert into outs. Swanson has four infield hits on such balls already in the second half, and sometimes, the difference between a strikeout and even this ostensibly unpromising contact can be night and day. Dansby Chop.mp4 Indeed, Swanson has made far more contact since the break, and part of that is being willing to adapt his swing and his approach, rather than try to blast away on every swing. Mostly, though, the promise lies in the fact that Swanson seems to have figured out how to time up his upper and lower halves better. Consider two 0-1 sliders, 11 months apart, both thrown to Swanson at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. Last September, he pulled off the ball, got it off the end of his bat, and flied out lazily. This is typical of a lot of his contact over the final two months of that season, and throughout the first half of 2024. Not So Good Last Year.mp4 Now, here's how he looked at the tail end of this July. Same pitch, different swing, very different result. Dansby Drive.mp4 Swanson waits a bit longer to transfer his weight in his lower half, and is more balanced when he does so. Meanwhile, his hands stay closer to his body much longer, and then he fires. This is a swing that can adapt much better to various pitch types and locations. It doesn't lend the hitter as high a maximum possible exit velocity, but that's fine. Here, let's isolate the crucial moment, for easy comparison. Each of these stills are when the ball is about 10 feet from home plate. The image on the left is a hitter who's worried about being on time, so he's cheating everywhere. The front hip is leaking open more, and he's on his front foot. The hands are way out there, trying to get extended--but really, just trying not to get jammed, should the pitch be a sinker inside. The one on the right is a hitter who's trusting his bat speed. He's actually going to contact the ball just as far out in front as the one on the left; he's just going to be far more under control as the barrel accelerates. Swanson probably isn't totally fixed, just yet. This change to his timing and posture is positive, but it won't turn him into a superstar. However, it's the change he's been needing to make for months, and it could well mark the turning of a corner. Swanson still has the physical tools to be a .750 OPS guy. The challenge is being consistent enough, in both pitch selection and these finer points of the movements of hitting, to translate that ability into production. For a long time, Swanson was unable to meet that challenge, and the Cubs' offense is one (uninspiring) thing when he's thus mired. When he's doing what he's doing lately, though, that offense is an entirely different thing, and the Cubs are an entirely different team. The team desperately needs its star shortstop to keep those hands close and quick. View full article

We know, as of about a year ago, that it was possible. But some things have changed. Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports If the season ended today, Pete Crow-Armstrong would be tied for the fourth-most stolen bases in a season by a player who was not caught stealing during that campaign. He's 21-for-21; the only guys who have gone whole seasons with more steals and no times caught are Chase Utley (23, 2009), Alcides Escobar (22, 2013), and Trea Turner (30, just last season). Obviously, that's cheating a bit, because the rules have changed and bases are bigger, and those two things have made stealing bases easier. It's also cheating because teams used to allow (or even force) fast runners to go more often, decades ago, making it almost impossible to get through a season without being thrown out. You were supposed to run until they started nabbing you. And finally, it's unfair because it's perfectly possible Crow-Armstrong will be thrown out before the season ends, anyway. Or is it? Last year, it was possible to catch Crow-Armstrong stealing. In fact, it happened 10 times, between Triple-A and the big leagues. Two of those were in the majors. One was a busted play on a would-be steal of home with runners at the corners. Here's the other one. Got Him.mp4 Stealing bases is a skill. It requires exceptionally good technique, although the rigors of the discipline are less stern in the age of the pitch timer. Stealing third is an especially tricky skill, too, because the throw down to that base is shorter for the opposing catcher, and because the angle you want to take from your lead off of second base toward the base is a bit different than the one you create when you take off from first and are heading into second. The count of your strides and the timing of your slide should be different going to third. As you can see above, last year, Crow-Armstrong didn't have those skills. He also just wasn't a very good slider, period. A good headfirst slide is, more than most fans realize, more of a launch than a dive. You don't want to hit the dirt too soon, too far from the base, both because that sudden friction will slow you down much more than gliding low above the ground and because the moment your chest or midsection hits the dirt, you lose all ability to adjust your direction or avoid a tag. In the air, you have more options. Crow-Armstrong, above, slid hard and early, hit the dirt too hard too soon, plowed into his own dislodged helmet, and was unable to change his path to the base. It was his first series as a big-leaguer. We should be gentle. But he lacked technique. This year, though, he's mastered the rudiments. He's taking aggressive, bouncing leads, and his jumps are making most steal attempts non-events. Opponents are trying stuff, but it's mostly not working. Few of his steals have even been close plays. Let's take a look at those few, to see what we can learn. Let's start back at third base, again. Almost.mp4 This one is almost proof that you could, theoretically, throw out even the skilled-up Crow-Armstrong. He gets a solid jump, but the Phillies aren't quite caught by surprise, and he slides much more efficiently, maintaining his speed all the way to the bag, but it's still pretty darn close. Look how much the ball beat him by. But, the fact that the ball beat him by this much and he was still safe tells you something, too. Firstly, wow, is Crow-Armstrong fast, and that better headfirst slide lets him decelerate much more smoothly into the base, such that a tagger has to be incredibly quick. The shorter distance on the throw helps, but the timing of the play makes it hard to aim that throw low and slightly to the inside of the base, where it would optimally be. The catcher has to throw to a moving target and knows an errant throw means a run. Most throws to third are chest- or shoulder-high like this, and right on the line, out of a conservatism that won't work against Crow-Armstrong. Here, though, they come even closer. Ohhh I Dunno.mp4 The pitch takes Curt Casali nicely into his throw, and Matt Chapman positions his body beautifully for a quick tag. The throw is slightly inside the line, although still higher than you'd put it if you had all day to get it off. Crow-Armstrong's jump was just too good. He had them beaten before the ball even got to Casali. Because of his sheer speed and the frequency with which he gets such great jumps, teams have tried to anticipate and thwart him. Here, the Cardinals tried an increasingly common tactic throughout the league, with Pedro Pages getting into position to throw before the pitch is even thrown. The thing is, doing that makes it harder to catch the ball. Tried to Set Him Up.mp4 Another, more traditional approach is the pitchout. Could've, Maybe.mp4 Maybe in some near-future version of the game in which the old fundamentals are more carefully observed, that play will work again. Pitchouts are shockingly rare these days, though, and it shows. Hunter Greene didn't look comfortable throwing the ball there, and Luke Maile didn't make a good throw. If he had, the Reds could have retired Crow-Armstrong. Here's the proof of that. If that throw is a bit higher--if it can be caught on the fly by Jonathan India, right on that same line--the tag is on Crow-Armstrong's leg before his hand reaches the base. In the real world, though, the throw got to India on a short hop, and his glove was going up instead of down when he caught it. He had no chance to get it back down before Crow-Armstrong reached the base. Teams are doing everything they can come up with against Crow-Armstrong, but his speed is elite and his baserunning nous has caught up to it. It's almost impossible to catch him now. He stole 10 bases without being caught in Triple-A, in addition to 21 in the majors, and he swiped three bases in as many tries in Cactus League play. He's stolen 34 bases without all that close a call this year. It's definitely possible, though. Crow-Armstrong can still be thrown out. Here's how we know. Def Could've.mp4 They had him! This was Crow-Armstrong's first big-league steal of the season, and it could have stopped this discussion before it began. Jeff McNeil just had to not trip over the base on the way to the throw. The throw was on the money, and it had Crow-Armstrong dead to rights. That's not to say it would have been an easy play. McNeil would have caught the ball right above the base, and had to reach out to get Crow-Armstrong before he reached the bag. It was a very makeable play, though. This is just the final wild card of the new version of the game. There's the fact that catchers are selected for framing pitches, rather than throwing; there's the inability to throw over more than once or twice to hold runners, and the way each throw emboldens and empowers them; there's the incredible speed of a player like Crow-Armstrong; and then there's the big old base, which not only makes it easier to reach and hold the bag upon arrival but can pose a hazard to an inattentive fielder. He can be caught, but these attempts to see how it would happen only underscore how unlikely it is on any given try. Crow-Armstrong should keep running; it's vital to the Cubs' efforts to stay dangerous and balanced all the way to the bottom of the batting order. View full article

This winter will bring change to the Cubs roster. They'll need to be opportunistic and aggressive. One team with whom they might need to get together on a move will occupy the visitor's clubhouse at Wrigley Field for another two days. Image courtesy of © Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports It's not too early to start thinking about the 2025 Chicago Cubs. In fact, that's what the team should be spending the balance of the 2024 season doing. Their recent promotion of Matt Shaw, James Triantos, and Kevin Alcántara to Triple-A Iowa shows that they're doing just that, and if they want to think a little more concretely about it, they can closely watch their opponents this week: the Minnesota Twins. We're already a year or two into the slow deflation of the local TV rights bubble in baseball. Bally Sports has been a disastrous partnership for the league, but the cliff over which several teams' rights contracts have careened was coming, either way. Several teams have been limited in their spending power recently by the loss of part of the revenue to which they'd become accustomed from that source, but the Twins are one of the most acutely affected--and that will remain true this coming winter. Minnesota re-signed in a semi-emergency move with Bally Sports North early this year, but they're not going to be back on that platform in 2025. Already, too, their payouts from Bally have declined. Their revenue streams are thinning and the Pohlad family, who owns the team, have given strict orders for a long-term cap on payroll. This is a fairly recent development, though. That's important, because right before that cutback went into effect, the team's front office spent rather handsomely. Carlos Correa is on a long-term deal with the team. So is Pablo López. Byron Buxton still has a few years left on his own long-term deal. That's in addition to a fistful of players who are due to start getting paid pretty well via arbitration in 2025, and the cumulative effect is that the team will need to find ways to cut payroll this winter. Enter the Cubs, who need to think flexibly about how to add high-end talent to their organization. Pairing up with a team in the Twins' position in trade can help them accomplish that in one of two ways: Acquiring a player who would otherwise be unavailable, but whom their current team can't afford to retain; or Taking on a bad contract that gives that team some spending power back, and getting a valuable prospect in the process. Buxton and Correa are probably off-limits, and the complexity of moving and valuing either of their contracts would be prohibitively difficult. López is getting a big raise next year, but he's the Twins' ace and they value him too much to let him go. There are, however, three players who stand out as good trade candidates. Ryan Jeffers At 27, Jeffers is battling through a very difficult season. He's a catcher who takes his duties seriously and acquits himself behind the plate, but he's not a plus defender. At his best, his value has been bat-first, but this year, he's a mess at bat. The timing is bad for the player and the team, because he gained arbitration eligibility this past winter. He's making $2.43 million this year, and that number will go up next season. If the Cubs are open to a project at a relatively low cost, Jeffers figures to be available this winter, and while he's good enough to earn a tender even from the payroll-limited Twins, his surplus trade value will be low--and the team will be motivated to realize it. Christian Vázquez The other catcher for the Twins this year is the man the Cubs tried to outbid the Twins for two winters ago. Minnesota ended up shelling out $30 million over three years for Vázquez, and there's still one year of eight-figure obligation left after this campaign ends. The respected veteran and defensive specialist could be a great fit for the Cubs next year, whether they stick with Miguel Amaya or try to move on to Moises Ballesteros. The Twins need to move one of Vázquez and Jeffers, and if it be the former, it would be a pure salary dump. The Cubs would even need to get more net value in the trade. Normally, that kind of deal just doesn't happen, but the Twins need to get something done. Jhoan Durán We saved the best--or at least the most intriguing--for last. Durán is due to become arbitration-eligible this winter, and because he throws a million miles per hour and has racked up an impressive number of saves in his young career, he'll get expensive in a hurry. Nor is he clearly the Twins' relief ace at this point, given the impressive progress of Griffin Jax. This acquisition, of course, would be costly, but if you're among those who have dreamed about Mason Miller at all this year, bend a thought toward Durán. If the Twins are sufficiently enticed, they'll be happy to let a high-octane relief weapon go, given the needle they need to thread financially. The Cubs need to fill one or more need this winter via free agency, but they'll also need to fill some via trade. The Twins are a promising partner. There might not be a perfect fit, but there are plenty of possible ones to explore. View full article

The Cubs' incumbent right fielder isn't one, really, and they have 30 million reasons to spend the final several weeks of this season getting a good look at the player who will man that spot in 2025. Image courtesy of © Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports Though it wasn't quite for the reasons one might have hoped, during Cody Bellinger's absence in the wake of cracking his ribcage running into the wall early this season, Pete Crow-Armstrong gained a foothold as the team's regular center fielder. Meanwhile, and for much more exciting reasons, Michael Busch established himself as the team's everyday first baseman. Therefore, after Bellinger returned late in May (and once the lineup found its equilibrium again), a new arrangement emerged. The two youngsters mostly held onto their spots, and Bellinger slotted in most often as... the right fielder. From Jun. 4 through the day on which Bellinger broke a finger and was lost for another three weeks, the Cubs played 33 games. In 17 of them, Seiya Suzuki started in right field, but in 14 others, he started at DH, and he made one start in left field. For a stretch from Jun. 22 through Jul. 3, Bellinger made eight of the 11 starts in right field. Once Bellinger got hurt again, the experiment ended, but it could be on the verge of beginning again now. While Kyle Hendricks is the consummate teammate and tries not to spread blame when things go against him, he was evidently frustrated by Suzuki's failure to catch a very catchable ball in his last difficult outing. He's not the first Cubs pitcher to feel thus victimized, by a long shot; Suzuki really doesn't seem to be capable of playing an MLB-caliber right field. Too many balls fall in, somewhere between routine and truly difficult and closer to the former. Bellinger is going to be the answer at that position for 2025, not just because Crow-Armstrong and Busch have locked down his other two obvious positions, but because he's younger and better out there than Suzuki. Right now, he's not capable to retaking the spot. His finger is still bothering him when he tries to throw hard, according to Craig Counsell, so he'll remain in the DH spot at least for this week's series against the Twins. Suzuki, for his own part, is out of the lineup Monday night, with neck soreness. Whenever Bellinger is back to full strength, though, he's the logical choice to play right field, with Suzuki and his formidable bat sliding to DH on as permanent a basis as everyone's health permits. The last time the team was even in position to kick around these considerations, Christopher Morel was still a complicating factor. Playing either Bellinger or Suzuki at DH meant leaving Morel at third base, where his defense was untenable. The injury to Bellinger temporarily solved that problem for them, in a bad way. Then, the Morel-for-Isaac Paredes trade permanently addressed it, in a positive way. With Paredes locked in at third base, the DH spot is wide open for Suzuki, and Bellinger can settle in as a right fielder, where he's less likely to get hurt than in center and a superior defensive option to Suzuki. On Monday night, Mike Tauchman takes Suzuki's place in the outfield. Tauchman, too, is a better defender than Suzuki, but he's purely a stopgap solution. As soon as Tuesday night, we could see Suzuki back in right field. With Bellinger's digits healing, though, the countdown to the end of Suzuki's tenure in that spot should very much be on. View full article