Matthew Trueblood

At this time of year, an MLB season becomes a war of attrition. It's about staying healthy, and about how well (if at all) the guys who aren't healthy can play through stuff. The Cubs suffered a brutal combo punch on Labor Day, from one guy struggling to play through something and one who no longer could. Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports It was, arguably, the cruelest hour in three years or more for the Cubs. Ahead 3-0 on Jared Jones and the Pirates after seven scintillating frames from Jameson Taillon on Labor Day, most of the team watched helplessly as Jorge López--a terrific story, a symbol of the team's resurgence, and a linchpin of their bullpen--blew the lead in a matter of moments in the top of the eighth inning. The team couldn't struggle back to level this time, the way they did against the lousy Pittsburgh bullpen last week on the road, and they suffered a crucial loss that looked like it would be a fairly easy win. That one hurt, and badly, but it's the kind of thing you know is coming. You can foresee it, accept it, and survive it. The Cubs weren't going to be undefeated the rest of the season, and while they need absolutely every win they can get, it's easy to make the case that they outplayed Pittsburgh Monday night--that they're still playing a good enough brand of baseball to flush that frustrating defeat and get another winning streak going. Besides, López was due for a bit of regression, and he'd been sidelined for a few days recently by a nagging injury, so it shouldn't have shocked anyone to see him stumble, even amid a sterling second half. No, the knockout punch came after the game. Right at the end of his postgame media availability, Craig Counsell revealed that Justin Steele will be scratched from his scheduled start Tuesday night against Paul Skenes, with elbow soreness. In his place, Kyle Hendricks will start opposite Skenes, for the third time this year. The baseball gods love their little, cruel jokes. There's no silver lining on that cloud--or even the promise of a brighter morning ahead. The dropoff from Steele to Hendricks as a member of the rotation is massive. So is the lost opportunity to expand the rotation to include six pitchers at times the rest of the way, to keep the fading Shota Imanaga fresh. The team needs to finish something like 18-6 from here to make the playoffs. Without their ace, that's simply not possible. Maybe Steele will bounce right back and make a start later this week. Early indications seem to be that the team isn't overwhelmingly concerned about this. On the other hand, this is a pitcher who was shelved with a lower back strain for the final month of 2022; spent a minimum stint on the injured list last summer with an elbow/forearm issue; and ran out of steam at the end of last season anyway. It's time to wonder whether he'll ever make it to the end of a season with his legs under him and his arm securely attached in all the right places. We have no reason to believe that this injury portends offseason surgery, or anything that severe, but the reality of the moment is sufficiently bleak: Steele isn't a true workhorse. That has big implications even beyond 2024. It means the Cubs need to be more aggressive in the winter pitching market. It means they're further from being the kind of team they expected to be this season than it appears--a gap that was already considerable. This loss, much more than the one that ticked into the standings table after the game, spells big trouble and big changes ahead for the Cubs. In the short term, though, it just affirms what most of us knew all along: they don't have it in them, this year. This team will finish just outside the postseason, for the second year in a row. They'll finish with a winning record in the second half for the third year in a row. All that means is that, for the third year in a row, they'll pick somewhere in the low teens in next year's Draft. That is a massive organizational failure, even in a season in which some very encouraging successes have also been in evidence. View full article

The Cubs' firecracker of a center fielder came up swinging fast and free, and missing everything. Now, he's figured out how to square up the ball--but a key tweak must come next. Image courtesy of © Daniel Kucin Jr.-USA TODAY Sports By now, the numbers might be familiar to you. Let's rehash them, though, because this turns out to be one of those times when selective endpoints are valuable tools, rather than red herrings. Through Jul. 26, Pete Crow-Armstrong was batting .180/.230/.292. For reference, in the years 2000 and 2001, Kerry Wood batted .216/.242/.261. From 1998 through 2001, then-Expos starter Javier Vázquez batted .235/.266/.281. There's an old tweet saying that the most vicious burn you can hurl at someone is, "Who is this clown?", because it not only calls the target a clown, but implies that they're not one of the better-known clowns. For his first 200 big-league trips to the plate, Crow-Armstrong not only hit like a pitcher, but hit like a fairly unremarkable offensive pitcher. The next day, everything changed. Rare--excruciatingly rare, almost unheard-of, and often only illusory--are cases in which everything changed for a hitter on one day, but it's hard to make any other case with Crow-Armstrong. Very visibly, that day, he went to a bigger, more rhythmic move with his lower half--a leg kick--in the load phase of his swing. Less obviously, but just as importantly, he debuted a slower but infinitely more controlled swing, with a much more on-plane bat path. New bat-tracking data made available to the public this spring via Statcast has allowed us, for the first time, to measure the efficiency of a player's swing. It's simple, though far from easy for us laypeople: given the observed speed of the incoming pitch and the player's bat, what is the maximum possible exit velocity, had the two met perfectly squarely? And what percentage of that theoretical maximum did the hitter achieve on a given swing? Here's a rolling chart showing the Squared Up% of Crow-Armstrong's swings, courtesy of Kyle Bland, a data whiz who works for PitcherList and ginned up a supremely useful app to digest bat-tracking data within a couple of days of the information becoming available. See if you can spot July 27. Again: baseball data just never tells you this neat a story. Transformations that radical do not happen that quickly. One day, Crow-Armstrong was limping along, struggling to square the ball up and create any real damage against big-league pitching. The next day, he began teeing off on almost everything. Since that day, Crow-Armstrong is hitting .330/.378/.551. He's become the heart and soul of the Cubs' offense, even as their everyday No. 8 hitter. In 121 plate appearances, he's only struck out 18 times, and he has 13 extra-base hits. Almost paradoxically, he started hitting it hard more often, hitting it harder on average, and reaching higher top-end exit velocities, all while both making more contact (which usually means accepting some weaker contact along the way) and swinging the bat slower. Wait, what? Yes. The above demonstrates the jump in Crow-Armstrong's contact efficiency. With this chart of his swing acceleration over time, we can see that that efficiency made up for a material sacrifice in terms of raw bat speed. Part of this is, simply, that Crow-Armstrong's adjustment both got more balls onto his barrel (rather than being mishits) and led to more contact, in general--as opposed to whiffs. During June and July, especially, his swing was very fast, but also steep and out of his careful controi. He had to guess at pitch type and location, fire, and hope to run into the ball. Even on hittable pitches, he often failed to do so. PCA Before.mp4 There's no question that adding a leg kick helped cue Crow-Armstrong to be more deliberate about seeing the ball. His swing now has phases and flow, and those things require a bit more reactivity, a bit more balance. It's why he's not missing hittable pitches much at all anymore, and why he can hit them with authority, even while lacking elite bat speed. PCA Now.mp4 Here, alas, is where I jerk the chain--just a little bit--to rein us all in. You didn't think this would be simplicity and sunshine beginning to end, did you? See, when he was going truly dreadfully, Crow-Armstrong's biggest problem was a lack of plate discipline so profound it could make Javier Báez (or Javy Vázquez, for that matter) blush. Crow-Armstrong chased almost half the pitches he saw outside the zone in June and July, trying to make things happen and to avoid falling behind in counts against pitchers whose polish, sequencing, and command he could not handle. Since making his mechanical change, he's also changed this--kind of. Here are his swing rates on pitches inside the zone, and beyond it, throughout the season. Seeing that blue line trending steadily downward will warm the cockles of any hitting coach's heart. That's pixelated job security, right there. That's a young hitter taking great instruction and screaming around a developmental corner at full speed. Only, look at the yellow line, too. That one is telling its own story. At his peak, in the first half of August when he was first starting to really feel his new superpower, Crow-Armstrong was swinging at fully 90% of the strikes he saw. I don't care if you're the secret grandchild of Ted Williams and Rod Carew: you can't sustain a high level of contact efficiency while swinging at over nine of every 10 pitches in the zone--let alone chasing barely a quarter of the time in the process. That bespeaks a hitter on a true, once-in-a-lifetime heater--but not one who has figured out the game in some semi-permanent way. Crow-Armstrong, in short, still needs to learn to swing less often, and this set of adjustments to his setup and swing hasn't much helped with that. I can buy that he's going to cut his chase rate into the 30s, rather than the mid-40s, and that's plenty valuable, but until he gets more selective across the board--even within the zone--there will be pitchers getting his report and nodding purposefully. At key moments, teams will start figuring out ways to retire Crow-Armstrong, by exploiting his hyper-aggressiveness. That does not, by any means, invalidate the huge changes he's made. They should continue to serve him well. The Cubs seem to have a credible big-league hitter on their hands, thanks to the way he's changed his usage of his. They just don't have a bona fide superstar, unless and until a very difficult--and, for many afflicted with such swing happiness, impossible--second layer of major changes is made. View full article

All wins count, and at this time of year, no playoff hopeful (however remote their chances) will turn up their nose at one. As the Cubs return from a triumphant 8-1 road trip, though, they do so knowing they'll need to play much better to make their recent surge matter. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports At long last, the 2024 Cubs have strung together some important wins, and when you glance at the scoreboard, they look impressive and earned. Over the last 30 days, in fact, no one else in MLB has as good a run differential as the North Siders'. That's the good news. The news of mixed valence is, of course, that they desperately needed to get this hot, if they wanted to revive and sustain any hope of reaching the postseason--and that they have to stay that way in order to get there. So here's the bad news: What they've done over the last two weeks is utterly unsustainable. Since Aug. 16, when they began a series against the Blue Jays that launched them into their current 12-3 heater, the Cubs are hitting .337/.430/.568 with runners in scoring position. That, itself, is far better than any team can keep up, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. Against five straight weak, sub-.500 opponents, the Cubs have taken advantage of a relentless parade of bad play by the other team. Errors have put them on the bases and helped them advance. They've even been bailed out on baserunning gaffes that should have resulted in outs. The Marlins, Pirates, and Nationals, especially, weren't ready to play serious baseball when the Cubs came to town in recent days. Miami traded as much of their roster as they possibly could in July. Pittsburgh and Washington are both showing the profound, problematic cracks in their depth, and their dreadful bullpens and defense almost forced the Cubs to win games this week. That doesn't diminish the value of the wins themselves. Though a team from a suburban county north of Atlanta holds the tiebreaker against them should both clubs end up with the same record, their losses to the Phillies this weekend reduced their edge over the Cubs in the standings to three games. Unbelievably, the Cubs are now within striking distance of a Wild Card berth. To claim it, though, they have to play much better over their final 25 games. They can't continue to count on getting a hit in a third of their at-bats when runners reach scoring position. They also can't continue getting middling starting pitching, as they have over these 15 contests. Cubs starters have a 4.12 ERA in that span, and while Kyle Hendricks's blowup in Pittsburgh is part of that problem, it can't explain away the team's strikeout rate (25th in MLB) or home-run rate (eighth-highest). Justin Steele, Shota Imanaga, Jameson Taillon, Javier Assad, Kyle Hendricks, and Jordan Wicks are capable of pitching better than that down the stretch, but they'll need to do so. The team is going to score many fewer runs from here on out than they have over their recent hot streak. They have to make up for that with better run prevention. Meanwhile, as Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya come back to Earth, the team is going to need to get more out of Cody Bellinger, MIchael Busch, and Isaac Paredes. Under Craig Counsell's able stewardship, the Cubs have shown more resilience, and frankly more sheer talent, than they evinced at any previous stage of this season. They have an outside shot at the postseason, which is better than they could say a fortnight ago. To convert their newfound possibility to reality, though, they have to maintain extraordinary focus and further improve upon their recent improvements. The Yankees, Dodgers, and Phillies won't give the team wins on a platter, the way their recent opponents have, and they can't afford to stop winning for a moment. This has been a fun bounceback, but it's not enough--unless they build upon it. View full article

You can't spell 'Craigtember' without 'C-R-A'. Meet the Cubs' Counsell Relief Ace, and quake in fear, rest of the National League. Image courtesy of © Rafael Suanes-USA TODAY Sports The worry, if you were a Cubs fan long about mid-June, was that Craig Counsell's magic doesn't work without an elite bullpen--that the team's failure to build a great relief corps would doom them in their first season under their new $40-million skipper. They still might be doomed for 2024, but thanks to Porter Hodge, we have a fresh reminder that Counsell brings the magic with him wherever he goes. Hodge, 23, debuted on May 22. His first three appearances were all low-leverage affairs, and after a rough showing on Jun. 6, he made a brief sojourn back to Triple-A Iowa. Since returning, though, he has slowly established himself as one of the best relief pitchers in baseball--and the kind of bullpen catalyst Counsell specializes in developing and empowering. Now up to 31 appearances with the big-league team, Hodge has had 27 scoreless outings. That 87.1% rate is second-best in MLB, among hurlers with at least 15 relief appearances. Only the Guardians' Hunter Gaddis edges him out, and then only narrowly, at 87.7%. Hodge has fanned 33.6% of opposing batters and owns a 1.80 ERA. Since he made it back from Iowa on Jun. 21, opponents have a .433 OPS against him. He's become, if not the sole closer, an implicitly trusted relief weapon, and the linchpin of the league's best relief corps. Indeed, since Jun. 1, the Cubs lead MLB in Scoreless Appearance Rate (SAR) from relievers, at 75.4%. Through the end of May, their SAR of 63.7% was better only than those of the Rockies and White Sox. It took time for this bullpen to come together, and the story is about much more than just Hodge, but he's the most important piece of the puzzle--not just because he's performed so well, but because he's a walking affirmation of the staying power of Counsell's capacity for turning rookies into relief aces. Pitching in high-leverage relief in MLB is excruciatingly hard--both physically and mentally. Few pitchers can meet both types of challenge and succeed as closers or high-usage setup men right away when they arrive in the majors, but under Counsell, that miniature baseball miracle has happened numerous times. Josh Hader and Devin Williams are the famous examples, but not even the only ones. Now, he's demonstrating the same ability to manage a young pitcher through the minefield of a rookie campaign under the pressure of backend bullpen work, in a new place and without a coaching staff in which he had much say. Whether the Cubs can pull off the comeback from their dismal first half or not, Hodge's breakout season is a testament to the value of their manager, and to the mental toughness of the hurler himself. It's also a reinforcement of the organization's belief that they've come a long way in terms of pitching development. All of those things are important, but if the team can string together enough winning streaks to sneak into the postseason, they'll be doubly so, and much of the credit will belong to the pairing of veteran manager and inexperienced flamethrower. View full article

There's a funny little freedom in the fact that this team already seems to be stuck paying the luxury tax. Image courtesy of © Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports The San Francisco Giants have placed left-handed reliever Taylor Rogers on outright waivers, making him available to teams to claim, if they're willing to take on the balance of his contract. Rogers, 33, is a somewhat complicated case, that way, because his contract is hefty. After signing a three-year, $33-million deal prior to 2023, the southpaw is still due about $14 million: $2 million for the rest of this year, and $12 million in 2025. That's more than most teams are willing to take on, at this time of year. Most teams aren't in the unique, uncomfortable position the Cubs are in, though. Already likely to pay competitive-balance taxes this year (by the reckoning of their own chief decision-maker) and now chasing a remote playoff chance with full knowledge that falling just short would be a worst-case scenario for their season, the team should be both highly motivated to improve and only lightly discouraged by the money attached to Rogers. If they feel he can help them, they should pounce. And they should feel he can help him. Rogers has pared down to become strictly a sinker-sweeper guy, in this later phase of his career. He's a good one, too. His 2.45 ERA overstates his excellence, cushioned as it is by the fact that he pitches at home in San Francisco, but he has a strong strikeout rate (28.2%) and limits walks (7.7%). He's very, very good at spin mirroring; hitters don't get a good chance to discern the difference between his two offerings. Yet, they move very differently. A former closer for the Twins and Padres, Rogers has settled into more of a middle relief role for the Giants. He's pretty expensive for that kind of arm, but he would represent a roughly cost-neutral upgrade from Drew Smyly as a left-handed relief weapon for the Cubs going into next season. In the meantime, he'd help them in September, too, because Smyly is the only lefty on whom the team can count in the bullpen right now. Snapping up Rogers right now is a no-brainer. It would save the team the trouble, uncertainty, and thorny market realities of the winter ahead, when they will have plenty of money to spend but could easily end up giving a multi-year deal to a pitcher just like Rogers, or another misbegotten deal for roughly the same amount on a one-year deal to a lesser hurler, like Héctor Neris. Shoring up the highly fluid relief corps a bit right now would make things easier as the team tries to build a more robust contender for 2025, and it would incrementally improve their odds of making an improbable run to October this year, too--at which point Rogers would also have huge value for them. If the team is going to pay the luxury tax this year, anyway, they should eagerly add the paltry remaining money for Rogers to their rolls, knowing that Smyly, Kyle Hendricks, Tucker Barnhart, Trey Mancini, and plenty of others are coming off their books going into the winter. They have money to spend. They have an immediate and a medium-term need for relief help. They have an opportunity to use their flexibility to fill their needs and make it easier to focus on more important things. They should seize this moment. View full article

The savvy southpaw's first Stateside summer has seen some ups and downs. Hitters see his stuff coming and swing wildly--although with very mixed results. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports It's easy to miss just how roughly big-league batters have treated Shota Imanaga lately. Because he put up such gaudy numbers prior to his first rough start at the end of May, his full-season stats still look good. Since May 29, Imanaga has made 15 starts, and while he's struck out 82 batters and walked just 13, he's also surrendered 19 home runs. Imanaga's ERA over that span is 4.47. His last start that didn't include surrendering a home run came Jul. 10 in Baltimore. This weekend, in nearby Washington, D.C., he'll try to demonstrate anew the abikity to keep the ball in the park. Simply put, the league has adjusted to Imanaga. That hasn't rendered him a bad pitcher, but he's been more like Jameson Taillon than Justin Steele. He's a control artist, right now, capable of missing some bats but not of avoiding the occasional ambush. Hitters have learned what to expect from him, and they're going to the plate ready to swing the bats. It's one thing to be a pitcher who fills up the zone and forces opponents to swing. It's quite another to be literally the pitcher against whom batters swing most often. That's probably not a good thing, in Imanaga's case. He throws too many flat-VAA fastballs, tough to square up but a boon to hitters when they do; and too many splitters, which miss bats like crazy when well-executed but have a higher error rate in terms of movement and location than most sliders or curveballs would. He's been a subtle, perpetual, and assiduous tinkerer, but Imanaga has stuck pretty closely to those two pitches this year. They're his bread and butter, and he insists upon being able to trust and lean on them. It's made him deleteriously predictable, though--or at least, it's made things too easy on the opponent, because they can craft a swing that handles both the fastball and the splitter. Familiarity has also caused trouble for Imanaga. Even as he's begun to diversify his arsenal, he's also begun seeing teams a second or third team within the season. Hitters have made adjustments upon getting an extra look at him, and not just from start to start. Here's a chart showing the times through the order penalty for all pitchers with at least 15 starts this year, with the increase in batters' production from the first to the second trip through the order on the x-axis and that from the second to the third time through on the y-axis. The extra lines on the grid are the league average for each stat, so players (like Steele) in the lower right quadrant suffer more the second time through, relative to their peers, but less the third time. Imanaga is in the upper right portion, seeing a greater loss of effectiveness with both turns of the lineup card than an average starter. Some of that might be management of fatigue, as he's spent the season adapting to a new schedule and pitching on a shorter average rotation than he did while he toiled in Japan. However, if you've watched Imanaga pitch this year, you know it also feels like the hitters are just seeing him better and more ready to combat that splitter as games unfold. His next adjustment needs to be bolder implementation of one of his tertiary weapons, to keep hitters a bit more off-balance and make them swing with less frequency or confidence after the first time through the order. Those adjustments will wait, at least in part, until the winter. The Philosopher and his coaching staff will need time to digest and reflect on his first year with the Cubs, and they can more readily make sweeping, baseline gameplan changes heading into spring training. However, some of it needs to start now. Remote though their chances are, the Cubs have some semblance of hope to climb back into the NL playoff hunt. Since one of their top priorities this September should be the development and further preparation of Imanaga for 2025, anyway, the team should be working with him to alter the plan of attack right away. Imanaga's not a true-talent 4.47 ERA pitcher. Then again, neither is he the guy whose ERA stayed south of 1.00 for two solid months to open the season. Down the stretch, the Cubs need him to find a productive place between those two figures, informed by the need to get hitters a little less trigger-happy when they step into the box--particularly in the middle and late innings. If they can get something more akin to April and May Imanaga over his final half-dozen starts of the season, they'll enjoy both improved chances to make something of this desperate season and greater confidence about their rotation picture heading into the offseason. View full article

It comes down to this. The Cubs have left themselves a 28-game season, in which a merely winning record is not remotely good enough. They'll have to get scorching hot to redeem this season, but there's no turning back now. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports Winning series wasn't good enough. The Cubs needed a genuine hot streak, and a genuine hot streak means sweeping some people. With a scintillating comeback Wednesday afternoon, the team asserted itself, finishing off a three-game sweep in Pittsburgh that launches them into an off day on a surge of momentum. They've won four straight series, are 17-9 since the trade deadline, and have made much of this headway on the strength of strong performances from their young players. The odds against this late surge amounting to anything are long. The Cubs trail Atlanta by 5.5 games, and you can count it as 6.0, because Atlanta holds the tiebreaker. In that hot month of play, they've only gained a game on the Braves in the standings. If the team goes anything less than 20-8 the rest of the way, they have almost no chance to make the postseason--and crucially, finishing just outside the playoffs for a second straight season would be a worst-case scenario. Last year, the Cubs drafted 13th, after an ultimately unhelpful strong finish to 2022 and a bit of bad luck in the Draft Lottery. They picked 14th this July, after their late charge fell two games shy of the playoffs in 2023. Some better fortune or a truly nightmarish September could put them back in the top 10 next summer, but right now, they're angling toward another pick in the same range. For a team reluctant to spend the way big-market behemoths should and facing four division rivals who all get extra picks to bolster their Draft classes each year, that would be a disaster. The team is trending too much toward the recent patterns traced by the Bulls, in the NBA: be competitive, draw fans, settle into the unhappy medium of the league, and wallow perpetually in averageness. To break free of that bad cycle, they need to convert this year's fake rally to a playoff spot, and that's a very tall order. They've made these difficult circumstances for themselves, and have only themselves to blame, but that doesn't matter, now. They can't afford to think conservatively. For the next 28 games (or however many they play before cooling off again and tumbling out of the race), the Cubs are running for their lives, and they need to act like it. When the 2018 Cubs entered September, they held a reasonably comfortable lead over Craig Counsell's Brewers. They didn't collapse, either. From Sept. 1 through the end of the scheduled regular season, Joe Maddon's team went 16-12. Counsell's Crew went 19-7, though, to close the gap and force a Game 163--which, of course, they also won. Counsell led Milwaukee to a 20-7 record after the calendar turned to September again the next year, to seize a place in the Wild Card Game. They started calling it Craigtember, in Wisconsin. The Cubs' kick began in August, but it has to stay just as strong from here. The cruel facts are that even that kind of heater won't be enough this time. The Cubs need Counsell to work his magic, but they have to do it even better, and they'd still need more help than the Brewers got from the Cubs in catching them six years ago. Since they've locked themselves out of the cellar, though, the only place to go is forward. Two 20-7 months made Counsell famous. Pushing that to 21-7 on the third go-round might just get them across the line in time to qualify for the playoffs. We might as well see if he's capable of helping a team find that one more tick of greatness, when it really counts. View full article

After stealing eight bags against the hapless Pirates Monday night, the Cubs rank eighth in MLB with 120 steals this year. They need to run much, much more, though. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports You can do lots of math around the breakeven success rate on stolen base attempts. In some situations, the odds are in a team's favor even if they're only 68% to succeed when sending a runner. In other situations, the number creeps past 75%. Much depends on the game state, but the identities of the batter (and those due up behind them) and the pitcher count for something, too. The weather conditions matter. Injury risk has to be priced in, at times. It's a tricky calculation. Let's start, then, with a simpler one: Divide 120 by 143, and you get 0.839. That's the Cubs' success rate on steals in 2024: 83.9%. You can do lots and lots of math with breakeven rates, but they all come in well below that. The Cubs are eighth in MLB in Go Rate, a metric that divides steal attempts by plate appearances in which a player had a clear opportunity to attempt a steal. Based on the frequency with which they've succeeded, they should be thinking more about Go and less about Rates. Obviously, not everyone can or should steal bases. However, as the season has unfolded, it's become increasingly clear that the Cubs have several players capable of thievery--and that they're coaching them up well. Seiya Suzuki was a downright bad basestealer over his first two seasons in MLB. With 15 steals and 12 times caught stealing, he was actively hurting the team by taking off. He was caught on his first attempt this spring, on Apr. 14, too. Since then, though, he's 11-for-15, a respectable 73.3% success rate. Ian Happ is now 11-for-13 on the season, and 9-for-10 since Jun. 1. You already know about the exploits of Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nico Hoerner, and even Dansby Swanson, who has made speed a newly important part of his game over the last five weeks. In the modern game, with the pitch clock as a subtle mechanism for timing a pitcher up and the rules against disengagements as a deterrent to throwing over to limit leads, it doesn't require blinding speed to effectively steal bases. The Twins, for instance, are one of the slowest teams in the league, but some of even their slowest players are also their best basestealers. They simply catch pitchers, not napping, but triaging their tasks and sliding the slow-footed runner down their mental priority list. Anthony Rizzo used to exploit this brilliantly. During one stretch of more frequent play earlier this year, Patrick Wisdom did it well, too. Michael Busch might be the next project for the coaching staff. A good on-base guy whose feel for baserunning is better than it seems, he's shown no comfort at all stealing bases so far this year. He should have that ability, though. He just needs to learn to use it. Just 2-for-3 so far this year, he would be a good candidate to sneakily take a half-dozen bags down the stretch, if the team can help him commit to the bit--even if it means getting caught a couple of times, for learning purposes. The thing is, if you're getting caught as infrequently as the Cubs are and hitting for power as inconsistently as the Cubs are, you need to be running even more. The team is third in MLB in Go Rate in the month of August, but there's room to push further, and they should explore it. For as long as the team remains theoretically in the playoff race, every run counts, and their aggressive style on the bases is paying dividends. Those dividends could be even bigger, if the team got even more ruthlessly daring. View full article

The quintessential throwback shortstop of his time is throwing his game back to a style he's never actually played before. Image courtesy of © David Richard-USA TODAY Sports The constant in Dansby Swanson's game--the meat in the sandwich, around which toppings and bread styles can change without the essence materially doing so--is his defense. His offensive contributions have always been variable, prone to long slumps and impressively long streaks. However, the shape of that production has been fairly consistent. Swanson is a power-over-OBP guy. He hits for average, maybe, sometimes, as a product of hitting the ball hard when he's seeing it well, but he runs a high strikeout rate and a low-to-average walk rate. His strength at the plate lies in his ability to rack up extra bases more often than many shortstops. In his final three seasons with Atlanta, when he came into his own at the plate, he had a .265/.324/.451 slash line. He averaged 21 home runs and almost 50 extra-base hits per year, even though one of those seasons was the pandemic-shortened 2020. That power--the foundation of his offensive game, at his peak--has been missing for a long time, now. It was a crisis that threatened his viability as an everyday player. He batted .212/.282/.350 in the first half of 2024, after going .212/.297/.346 over his final 200 plate appearances in 2023. The batting averages there drag down both of the other numbers, but viewed another way, the fact that his isolated power fell from .186 over a three-season stretch in Atlanta to .137 over a full season's worth of games from August of last year through the break this year indicates a lower quality of contact. He wasn't hitting for average for the same reason he wasn't hitting for power: too many rolled-over ground balls, too many whiffs, not enough juice behind the ball when he hit it. Those are three different problems, but they're also related. They're about what you're looking for, as well as how your body moves. Fixing them is difficult, because when you're experiencing all of them, you're very much in multi-system failure. Like a knot that has been pulled tighter and compounded by tangling and time, it's hard to get the situation unwound even far enough to identify and tackle the underlying issue. For the moment, it seems like Swanson has given up on trying to be his whole, natural self at the plate. That sounds bad, but it might be exactly what the moment demanded of him. Since the All-Star break, Swanson is batting .268/.339/.366, a combination of modest-but-solid batting average and below-average power you just never see from him. He's commanding the strike zone much better, with his strikeout rate down from 27.0% before the break to 20.5% and his walk rate up from 8.3% to 10.2%, but his batted-ball data all says that those changes are a matter of giving up power to put the ball in play. That jibes, too, with what I broke down on Swanson almost three weeks ago. As that article pointed out, Swanson is getting on base with some dribblers and some bloopers recently. Even his double in Sunday's finale in Miami was a space-finder, rather than a wall-banger. He's become an effective hitter, for a little over a month now, purely piling up singles and walks. The key to making that a dynamic offensive profile, though, is speed. It takes a little bit of it to reach on those choppers to the left side, and a little bit of it to get to second on those maybe-doubles that require some courage and hustle. It also takes a good deal of it (and another helping of nerve) to steal bases. Swanson isn't slow, per se, but he's not especially fast, and he has absolutely never made that a substantial part of his game in the big leagues. He did steal a career-high 18 bases in his walk year with Atlanta (almost everyone lucky enough to reach what can be readily identified as a walk year will set their career high in steals in that season; it's just good business), but he was caught seven times in the process, washing out most of that value. Remove that year from the equation, and Swanson has never stolen more than 10 bases in the big leagues--at least, he hadn't, before now. At the All-Star break, Swanson (whom many believe has been hampered this season by a nagging knee injury that might require further intervention this offseason) was just 5-for-8 in steal attempts on the year. He took bags in back-to-back games in the team's mid-June trip to San Francisco, but otherwise, he hadn't even attempted a steal since May 1. After swiping third after hitting a double Sunday afternoon, Swanson now has nine steals in as many tries over the last five weeks. He's up to 14 on the year. In the first half, Swanson attempted steals in 6.2% of his opportunities. Since the break, that rate has more than doubled, to 14.3%. He is, in one way of looking at it, pretty much what Nico Hoerner has been for the last few years--not quite what Hoerner has been when he's been going well, but what he's been overall. There's a solid batting average and good plate discipline here. There is, suddenly, a huge speed element. Power is still absent, and that should concern us. The fact that Swanson has come out of the break running so well and so eagerly is encouraging, since it would seem to tell us that his knee is feeling better after five days off--but the fact that his power didn't come back might mean that it's gone in a more lasting way than we previously guessed. For now, what matters is that Swanson is finding ways to make big and valuable contributions to the team, even in the absence of what has typically been his signature offensive skill. Maybe he can come out on the other side of these struggles as a better and more well-rounded hitter than ever, but in all likelihood, what we're really looking at is just a great competitor getting creative in the pursuit of utility. That leaves a whole universe of possible futures on the table. View full article

The Cubs' 2023 first-round pick is a good player, and he's hit very well in the upper minors this season. That said, there are big adjustments (and therefore, plenty of risk) left to make for him, and it's premature to hope he can help the big-league team any time before the middle of next season. Image courtesy of © Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK One of the privileges of living in our time is that we all have considerable access to highlights of even minor-league players. It's easier to get tangibly excited, and to gain a real sense of a player's strengths, than it was for fans who wanted to follow top prospects a decade or two ago--let alone those who sought to do so in the 20th century. We've had that ever-growing treasury of highlights for several years now, as decent broadcasts proliferated through the minor leagues and intrepid Twitter users learned to clip them and share short videos. Only very recently, though, have we also gained advanced data on some players in the minors, so we can try to marry up what we see on Twitter with what the numbers say. This is a crucial step. No one shares highlights of a great pitching prospect giving up two ringing doubles in one inning, or of a future slugger striking out three times. We can, and do, get carried away when we focus only on highlights. The numbers ground us, and for players who reach Triple A, we have better numbers than ever. If that preamble has you a little bit nervous about what I'm here to say about Matt Shaw... well, good, actually. That's appropriate. While Shaw is a legitimate and solid prospect, Twitter hype around him is getting out of control, and the major purpose of this piece will be to rein it in a bit. Shaw, 22, has had a very good first full season in professional baseball, but there are big questions remaining and some important things he will need to work hard to change this winter, if he hopes to contribute to the Cubs at the MLB level any time before next year's All-Star break. Shaw has 433 total plate appearances this season: 371 at Double-A Tennessee, and 62 at Triple-A Iowa. For the Smokies, he batted .279/.373/.468, and since his promotion, he's barely missed a beat, hitting .255/.387/.451. The highlights are flying, fast and furious. Ah, but when it comes to the minor leagues, neither the highlights nor the surface-level success tell a full story. After all, the question for Cubs fans is: Will Shaw soon, or eventually, be able to hit the best pitching in the world? And the problem with the International League, as a place to seek answers to that question, is that those aren't the best pitchers in the world. If you want to know how Shaw will fare when he does encounter that level of competition, you have to look under the hood--and you have to watch the highlights with a critical eye, rather than a merely excited one. Here's one important data point: Shaw is whiffing on 29.9% of his swings so far against Triple-A pitching. He's done better against fastballs, but that only underscores the problem here. His whiff rate on offspeed and breaking pitches is around 42%. We don't have pitch-type breakdowns for his time in Double-A, but we can say that his overall whiff rate there was a more manageable 23.2%. That's good, but not exceptional, and probably not good enough for a hitter most people expected to be a hit-over-power player in the big leagues. Then again, Shaw has shown a bit more pop than those same people might have expected. He only has 32 extra-base hits on the season, but 17 of them have cleared the wall. In his short time in Iowa, he's hit 13 balls at more than 100 miles per hour off the bat, and his 90th-percentile exit velocity is 106.2 miles per hour. It's impressive that, in just a few weeks at the level, he already has at least one batted ball with a triple-digit exit velocity and a positive launch angle against five different pitch types. Is there a whole lot more power here than was projected from Shaw? In short: probably not. That's a slightly cruel pun, but a necessary one. Shaw is listed at 5-foot-9, which might be generous. Being short does not disqualify one from hitting for power, of course. José Altuve does alright for himself. So did Dustin Pedroia, to whom Shaw has drawn the odd comparison anyway. The smaller you are, though, the more work has to go into generating power. So far, in his professional career, Shaw is doing that work with a huge leg kick. You can see it in the video above. You can also see how vulnerable that will be to elite stuff, especially from more polished and wily pitchers. Shaw false starts while waiting for the pitcher to kick and fire. That can happen, if a hitter is balanced and very talented, which Shaw proves himself to be by staying through the ball and driving it the way he does. Still, pitchers with more looks at him and more, better pitches at their disposal will wreck him until he creates a more balanced timing element for his swing. When we talk about timing in hitting, we tend to think of making a fast enough swing to keep up with the fastball, and about having hands smart enough to adjust the bat path when it turns out not to be a fastball coming. It's really more than that, though. The fight to get timing right starts before the pitcher even delivers the ball. It's an adversarial dance between batter and pitcher, and when you use a leg kick as big as Shaw's, you can pretty easily be forced out of step. Moreover, we shouldn't fail to notice the low number of overall extra-base hits, just because more than half have cleared the shallower fences of the minor leagues. If Shaw can't consistently produce gap power, the pressure on his profile increases. He'll have to either adopt an Isaac Paredes- or Altuve-style pull-heavy approach designed to get him to 20-plus homers (unlikely to work, in his case), or dramatically increase those contact rates. Doing the latter with the leg kick intact is even more unlikely than Shaw maturing into a surprise slugger. Athletes good enough to find success this far up the competitive chain have already been through some adjustments, and know they'll have to make more. Shaw might very well make a big set of changes this winter, quieting his leg kick or modifying the way he balances his body during it, and come to camp next year ready to compete for a roster spot. He's nowhere near ready to have success in the majors yet, though, and in fact, it would be wise to keep a lid on optimism about him for the time being. He's likely to be a big-leaguer, but paradoxically, his success in his pro stops so far doesn't actually augur stardom. Rather, pro pitchers have shown him what he'll have to do to catch up to and eventually beat their betters. Hopefully, Shaw and the Cubs see that writing on the walls, even as fly balls keep carrying over them off Shaw's bat. View full article

A major mechanical change made early last month has drawn a lot of attention, but it might be a bit of a red herring. Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports As baseball fans, it can be frustratingly difficult to see the difference between a player making good moves on the mound or at the plate, and one who's failing. So many of the mechanical separators, in this game of inches played on several acres, are subtle enough to completely slip by even a relatively engaged fan. It's not an easy game to love, sometimes. That's why, as fans, we get especially excited when a player makes a successful adjustment that runs toward the broad and obvious. It's reassuring. The game opens up for us a bit, because we feel like we can see what's happening. It's hard to figure out why Kyle Hendricks's sinker won't quite tuck into the landing spot he was aiming for anymore, but it's easy to see what changed for Miguel Amaya during the first week of July. For those who missed the story, it was well-documented by Marquee's Andy Martinez. During an interregnum in which they gave backup catcher Tomás Nido three straight starts to reset their young catcher, the Cubs coaching staff approached Amaya about utilizing a toe drag--another name for it might be a toe turn; it involves turning the heel of the batter's front foot skyward and the sole of their cleat toward the pitcher--instead of the leg kick that had been his way of getting into his stride for his whole life to that point. Amaya felt deeply uncomfortable, but he agreed to try it--not just because, as Martinez reported, the team asked Nelson Cruz to endorse the mechanical tweak, but because (as Cruz basically relayed to the youngster) there really wasn't much to lose. From mid-April through the time of that change, Amaya batted .164/.234/.207, in 155 plate appearances. He was, in a sense, very lucky the Cubs had no real alternatives to him throughout that time. That's a slump long and deep enough to terminate a career. As I wrote when Statcast began publishing bat-tracking data in early May, Amaya was one of the stars of that reveal, from a Cubs perspective. However, the headline of that very article lays bare what held him back: "Miguel Amaya Has to Rediscover His Plate Discipline." He was swinging at everything, and that was holding him back, far more than any mechanical element. That said, there's no doubt that mechanics and approach have a relationship to one another. Let's turn around the concept for a moment, to demonstrate. Here's Amaya, from early June, being frozen on a breaking ball up in the zone, the kind of pitch he should have hit and that was in the zone from the moment it left the pitcher's hand. Amaya Frozen.mp4 Let a lot of pitches like that one go, and you don't last long in the league. The problem was that, with the leg kick, Amaya was wired into one particular pitch type every time he dug into the box. He had to guess along with pitchers, because his timing was not very adaptable. If he got the breaking ball when he was sitting on a heater, he either flailed hopelessly at it or locked up completely. Relatedly, pitchers could beat him with even mediocre fastballs on the inner half, because in order to leave anything for the breaking ball, he had to start a little bit too late to get to inside heat. Amaya Whiff June on Sinker.mp4 One of the chief advantages of the toe drag is that it's a very balanced, adaptable timing mechanism. Cruz is not its most famous practitioner, by a longshot: it's what Shohei Ohtani does in the box. Making the change to a toe drag has, by any reasonable criteria, worked gorgeously. Since being reinstalled in the lineup with his new setup and timing mechanism on Jul. 7, Amaya is hitting .299/.341/.506, in 85 plate appearances. He's cut his strikeout rate nearly in half. His grand slam on Thursday afternoon was an affirmation of his huge progress over the last month and a half. There are two natural questions to ask, in the wake of this turnaround. The first is much more important: Can he sustain this? The second is purely for our intellectual curiosity: Is the improvement a direct result of the mechanical change? Unfortunately, I'm not sure the answer to either question is "yes," at least so far. Let's dig in on it. We can start with good news. Remember that high-and-away slider that locked up Amaya with his old moves in the box? Here's a similar pitch, on the other side of his change. Amaya w Toe Turn.mp4 You can see that extra balance, and the ability to slightly alter when he fires his hands, while tracking the ball well. This is why he's made more contact since the change, and why he's able to hit for average with the new swing--at least so far. With a smaller set of moves in his lower half, Amaya can also get his barrel cleanly through and hit the inside fastball more squarely. Amaya Gets Hands In.mp4 That's two different problems we could clearly identify in his attack before going to the toe drag, at least partially solved by the switch thereto. That's exciting, especially as mere anecdotes within the broader context of those gaudy numbers since the change. Why, then, should anyone think the mechanical change inessential to the improved results? Well, consider this chart, showing the rolling average of Amaya's chase rate by week throughout the season. This is the percentage of pitches outside the strike zone at which he swings. As we discussed above, there is almost always some relationship between mechanics and approach. Still, what the right side of this chart suggests most to me is not an epiphany about plate discipline fueled by a mechanical cleanup. Rather, it looks like an overly aggressive hitter swung less often for a while, due to a deep discomfort with a new physical swing. We don't even really have to speculate to say that. In the piece by Martinez linked above, coaches acknowledged that the transition was difficult for Amaya. If he's going to go back to swinging at nearly 40% of the non-strikes he sees now that he's comfortable in his swing again, as has been the case for much of August, the good times are not going to last. On the other hand, swinging more because one is more comfortable can be a good thing. It can mean one has figured out how to really use a new or modified swing. In that case, it would be a good thing to see a hitter change their swing rate, within reason. They might just take off as a slugger. Indeed, Amaya and the coaches talked about his feeling weak and unable to generate power when he first made the switch to the toe drag. The cage work was uneasy, because he couldn't get the force he wanted to--the force he was used to--into his swing. Over the last few weeks, that's changed. That cavernous drop in his rolling average swing speed for the early part of July is Amaya really struggling to generate the bat speed that is a huge part of his game. The new swing was not an easy install. The big jump to a level beyond the one he established early this season after that, though, says he's gotten through that difficult period of adjustment. He's figured out, even without the near-superhuman strength that allowed Cruz and allows Ohtani to do it, how to create lethal bat speed with the toe drag in place of the leg kick. The homers he's hit over the last week are clear evidence of his consolidating talent. Amaya w Toe Turn on Heat.mp4 That said and shown, though, Amaya's average and high-end exit velocities are both down since the change. Even now that he's creating more bat speed than ever, he's not squaring the ball up measurably more than he did with his old swing, in terms of getting actual exit velocity out of his swing speed. Furthermore, since ratcheting the speed of his swing back up, he's also whiffing and chasing more. Here, then, is a grand unified theory of the Miguel Amaya Renaissance, complete with a forecast of its future: Amaya needed a change that would spark a turnaround, not primarily in his address of the ball, but in his pitch selection and plate approach. Multiple mechanical changes might have accomplished this, because part of the effect was designed to be akin to a placebo: Boost his confidence, so he can regain a sense of control and take a more focused tack in the box. However, the toe drag nicely facilitates Amaya's natural power, as evidenced by some of its other famous users. It also directly addressed the major vulnerability of his swing, which was manipulable timing, which made the fit felicitous. Some of what we've seen since the change is the result of better swing decisions, which could just as easily have been made without the mechanical tweaks. Importantly, that improved decision-making has eroded recently. Most of his future viability as a first-division backstop depends on those swing decisions. Still, the simultaneous increase in swing speed and swing rate recently tells us Amaya is getting more comfortable with the new setup. In the long run, that's a good thing. Will Amaya finish turning the corner and enter the offseason as the team's clear first-string catcher for 2025? It's hard to guess, right now. However, with this better understanding of what's been happening since he made his swing change, we can reasonably hope to have a better sense of it by the end of the season. Six more weeks to study the integration of hitting concepts with this still-new timing signature should give us some real and meaningful insight into Amaya, and either way, that insight is highly valuable. His toe drag might not be a panacea, but it's an important step in both his development and his long-term evaluation. View full article

Accidental close “Heart Attack” Héctor Neris is out, and with the focus shifting to the Cubs’ future, it’s time to identify and install the Cubs’ next closing pitcher. Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports Bullpen depth, health, and reliability have eluded Craig Counsell’s squad at some critical junctures of the 2024 campaign. Yet, amid a late-season renaissance from the unit, the North Siders’ next long-term shutdown closer just might already be on the roster. Let’s take a look at the standout candidates. Porter Hodge Splashing onto the scene earlier this summer, the sturdy 23-year-old righthander wields a terse but effective pitch arsenal, featuring a nasty fastball employed 66.2% of the time. With his penchant for throwing strikes and an ERA of 2.08, Hodge can blow it by opposing batters as well as anyone on the team this season, but his youth is what could make him a serious threat for years to come. It’s probably too early to tell, but the possibilities are tantalizing. Tyson Miller Don't mess with the Chicken Man. Since coming over from the Mariners, Miller has more than impressed. Though he is just over half a decade older than Hodge, Miller is elite when it comes to keeping other teams’ batters from reaching base, ranking in the 98th percentile. Versus Miller, opposing hitters have only managed an average exit velocity of 87.5 MPH, and a barrel rate of 7.0%. When Adbert Alzolay was at his best, he forced a ton of ground balls and got hitters out faster than the Old Style kegs run out at Bernie’s. Albeit with quirkier, less overpowering stuff, Miller can do much of the same. Jorge López Far from being a “horrible teammate”, Lopez has been a revelation since moving to the “City of Broad Shoulders”. With an ERA of 2.44 and a WHIP of 1.25, López looks inspired right now. His off-speed stuff dazzles, set up by a sinker he deploys 37.7% of the time. He is a longer shot for this role, especially considering his past performances, impending free agency, and age (31), when compared to his fellow closer candidates, but he touts a level of maturity and consistency that piques your interest. Honorable Mention Drew Smyly Smyly is not a viable candidate to be the Cubs’ closer of the future, but, he’s delivered a striking number of quality, low-stress appearances for the Cubs in 2024. This year, in 50 innings of work, Smyly lays claim to 43 punchouts, and is yet another Cubs’ pitcher with a sub-3 ERA of 2.88. His veteran presence and steadiness are an example of the confidence and stability needed in the Cubs’ next elite closer. The fact that Héctor Neris is no longer a Cub feels like one of the biggest wins of the season, purely from the standpoint that increasingly disgruntled fans wanted him gone--and so, too, did the Cubs’ brass, evidently. The Cubs need a closer who can get the final three outs better than anyone else in their division, and hopefully, better than the whole rest of the league. Is he already on the team, or will a winter shopping spree be the remedy? View full article

Even after leading the month with a walkoff double and a home run the next day, the team's erstwhile fourth outfielder has been virtually invisible. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Back in spring training, Craig Counsell was proactive and firm. He sat down with Mike Tauchman right away to tell him he would be on the team, because Counsell rightly saw the immense value of Tauchman's offensive stability and defensive versatility. A high-OBP left-handed hitter who can acquit himself at all three outfield spots when the need arises, Tauchman was a perfect fit for the Cubs early in the season. While he was sidelined by a groin strain in June and July, though, the ground shifted. Firstly, it's become increasingly clear that the team itself understands the fact that Seiya Suzuki needs to be an everyday DH. That created some opportunity for Tauchman earlier in the year, but with the team trying hard to give a long runway to Pete Crow-Armstrong and evaluate him for a future role, it's ultimately squeezed him. With Crow-Armstrong in center and Michael Busch firmly established at first base, Cody Bellinger has taken over in right field. For as long as Busch, Crow-Armstrong, Ian Happ, Suzuki and Bellinger are healthy, it's clear that Counsell sees no room in the lineup for Tauchman. Entering Wednesday night's game, Tauchman has only 16 plate appearances in August. He last started on Aug. 7, and even pinch-hit opportunities have been scarce. The player Counsell was so excited to install as a heavily used rotational piece is now an afterthought at the far end of the bench. Some of this is planned obsolescence, of course. The team hoped Crow-Armstrong and Busch would assert themselves, and if they did, it was bound to make it tough to find playing time in the outfield and DH spots. Still, it's surprising, not least because the Cubs could have traded Tauchman to a contender at last month's deadline, giving him a chance to play a role like this on a team with a chance to win a World Series--and picking up some minor prospect in the exchange. If they were going to keep Tauchman, it seemed to make sense to create at least a modicum of playing time for him down the stretch, so they can make a more informed decision about retaining him on an arbitration-determined salary for next season. By stashing him as deep in the dugout as they have, they're missing that opportunity, after letting the chance to get even a fringe prospect in return for him slide by the boards. Injuries, sustained failure from Crow-Armstrong, or an unexpected opt-out by Bellinger could restore Tauchman's relevance going into 2025. Even if Crow-Armstrong flames out, the team would probably next hand off center field to Kevin Alcántara, but having Tauchman as a platoon partner and cushion for the young player could come in handy. A Bellinger departure would open up a lot of left-handed playing time. That makes it reasonable to keep Tauchman, but then, the team also has to make room for Owen Caissie on the 40-man roster come November, and if Caissie turns out to be a capable regular, he's likely to get there by the middle of next season. In other words, in even the rosiest scenario for Tauchman, he probably spends another first half floating around to find playing time, and then gets marginalized again next June or July. In that case, he would no longer have any trade value, so the Cubs have missed their penultimate chance to move him. Their last one will come this winter, by which time they surely hope to have a clearer idea of how Crow-Armstrong, Bellinger, Suzuki, Happ, Busch, Caissie, Alcántara, and Moisés Ballesteros can help them in 2025. What they probably won't have, though, is much good intel on what Tauchman can offer them. It's hard to demonstrate positive or negative future value with one's arms folded over the dugout railing. View full article