Matthew Trueblood

One potential reason to let CEJ opt out could be the impending addition of a pitcher who's not currently in the organization........... That's where my head is at the moment. I wonder if they try to bring Edwards back on the other side of what could be a rocky 40-man reorganization just after Opening Day. We'll see.

We now know the starting rotation for the first week or two of the 2024 Chicago Cubs' season. Manager Craig Counsell made the right choices among his existing options, but the team needs a much better one. Every team hopes to develop and retain a pitcher like Javier Assad. In his first 147 big-league innings, Assad has a 3.06 ERA, working in every role the modern game has dreamt up. Without elite stuff, he's generated tremendous results so far, including the ninth-best ERA among the 127 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2023. He doesn't pile up strikeouts, but he's great at forcing harmless contact, with lots of grounders and pop-ups and relatively few line drives coming off opponents' bats. Those are the reasons why Counsell and company elected to give Assad the fifth and final spot in the team's starting rotation to open the season, with Jameson Taillon shelved by back problems for the short term. Assad has an ERA of 7.00 this spring, but Drew Smyly's is even worse, and Hayden Wesneski has done nothing to change the minds of those who mentally moved him to the reliever column after his uneven 2023 and struggles against opposite-handed batters. Assad has a deep pitch mix, the deep respect of his teammates, and a recent track record of being a good starter in the big leagues. No one else they have in camp checks all those boxes. Crucially, though, a player who checks them all much more forcefully is available. J.D. Martinez and Blake Snell have each signed elsewhere, but one more Scott Boras domino has yet to fall: Jordan Montgomery, the workhorse lefty stranded on the free-agent market and looking likely to sign after the season begins so as to be ineligible for the qualifying offer this fall. Montgomery doesn't have exceptional strikeout rates, either, but that's the only knock against him, and it's a weak one. He doesn't walk hitters, doesn't give up much hard contact in his own right, and doesn't miss turns in the rotation. Last year, between the regular season and the postseason, Montgomery threw roughly 210 innings. The reason why the Cubs lag the Cardinals in the NL Central projected standings at Baseball Prospectus is that the site's PECOTA projection system views their pitching staff as below-average. Their projected DRA- (adjusted Deserved Run Average, where 100 is average and lower is better) is 102. Montgomery is projected for a 93 DRA- this season; Assad's is 106 and Smyly's is 102. Though it would probably push them up to the line of the second competitive-balance tax threshold, and could even nudge them past it, the Cubs should sign Montgomery. If it's still possible to get him on a medium- or long-term deal, in order to lower the annual average value and stay below that second threshold, they should do that. Letting Snell and Martinez sign with NL rivals at the prices they ultimately commanded was a huge missed opportunity; Jed Hoyer can make up for it by reeling in Montgomery to complete his offseason. Unless and until Taillon returns, Montgomery could slot into Assad's designated starting slot, freeing up the young righthander to piggyback with Jordan Wicks and to work in other long relief situations. He'd instantly upgrade the team's starting mix and stabilize the shakiest unit on the team. When Taillon does come back, the Cubs needn't jettison Wicks or anyone else. They can just flex out to a six-man starting rotation, something they quietly did for short stretches last year and that Counsell did for an entire season in 2021, with the Brewers. We don't have publicly available Statcast data on Assad's spring. It's possible he's worked on things to mitigate the high walk rate he's posted in his big-league career and/or to miss more bats, but it's hard to evaluate that from outside the organization. He's looked like the same guy on video, which is no insult, given the success he's had in his young career, but it means that he'll continue to be vulnerable in the same ways he has been so far--and that means his good luck could run out relatively soon. Despite the costs involved, the Cubs need to sign Montgomery and commit themselves more seriously to winning in 2024. Assad can contribute plenty without being locked into a starting role, and if they haven't upgraded their depth when worse injuries than Taillon's balky back spring up later this year, the team will regret it. View full article

In this final week before Opening Day, let's take a moment to preview the 2024 season for the Chicago Cubs' rivals. Today, it's the upstart Cincinnati Reds under the spotlight. Image courtesy of © Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK At various points throughout the 2023 season, I posited that the Cincinnati Reds would be the first Major League Baseball team to reach the postseason on vibes alone. Coming out of a lengthy rebuild (with a brief, half-hearted, COVID-ruined attempt at contention mixed in there), the arrival of multiple high-end prospects had the Reds’ stock on the rise. Ultimately, they ended up only one game worse than the Cubs, with an 82-80 finish. It didn’t result in a playoff spot, though, as they finished 10 games out of the division race and two back of the wild card. While they didn't make a postseason appearance last year, the 20-game improvement does leave plenty of room for optimism in the Queen City. They ranked fourth in the National League in ISO (.170) and eighth in collective wRC+ (98). The pitching will need to improve, however. The Reds were third-worst in the NL in ERA (3.83), which was largely due to a shallow starting group (5.43 ERA). One imagines that a full season of the likes of Elly De La Cruz, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, and Matt McLain could boost the offense, while additions Frankie Montas, Nick Martinez, Emilio Pagán, and Brent Suter could improve the pitching outcomes. They’re not division favorites, but they’re very much in the mix. Projected Record: 79-83 (FanGraphs), 78-84 (Baseball Prospectus) Key Additions: Jeimer Candelario Frankie Montas Nick Martinez Brent Suter Emilio Pagán Key Subtractions: Joey Votto Nick Senzel Harrison Bader Curt Casali Derek Law Projected Opening Day Lineup: 😄 Tyler Stephenson 1B: Christian Encarnacion-Strand 2B: Matt McLain SS: Elly De La Cruz 3B: Jeimer Candelario LF: Spencer Steer CF: TJ Friedl RF: Will Benson DH: Jonathan India Projected Opening Day Pitching Staff: Starting Pitchers Hunter Greene Graham Ashcraft Frankie Montas Andrew Abbott Nick Martinez Bullpen Lucas Sims (Setup) Emilio Pagán (Setup) Brent Suter (Setup) Alexis Díaz (Closer) Scouting Report The Reds’ cumulative .327 on-base percentage ranked 10th in MLB in 2023. Their 190 steals were the top number (24 more than the next-closest team). So the first thing you need to know about this squad is that they create traffic, then havoc. De La Cruz alone swiped 35 bags in only 98 games. McLain had a season of 27 in Double-A in 2022. Steer and India even combined for 29 last year. You’re going to see a lot of movement from this team. As far as their power profile goes, the .170 ISO was obviously one of the better figures in the bigs (11th overall), but it’s not necessarily over-the-fence pop, as their 198 homers sat 14th. There’s gap power and there’s speed. It’s a tough matchup for any staff to deal with. Where the Reds’ struggles could manifest is on the bump. Health was an issue, even more so than performance. Cincinnati used 17 different starters last year, with Ashcraft’s 26 pacing the group. Ashcraft and Greene – two of the projected stalwarts in a high-upside rotation – each missed time. Nick Lodolo – the other of that group – missed almost the entire year. When healthy, it’s a group with a sky-high ceiling. Greene as the ace & Ashcraft, Lodolo, and Andrew Abbott behind him is a group that could be the envy of most of baseball. But given the health concerns, it’s hard to put too much faith in that coming to fruition. That's why the team added Montas and Martinez. The aim is to give them more innings on the front end and take some pressure off what should be a formidable bullpen. Martinez may end up in a swing role, but it’s one he played well in San Diego. Suter and Pagán, while each past their prime, offer rubber-armed reliability in the relief mix. With that pair in tow next to Sims and Alexis Díaz, there’s a lot of stability for Cincinnati late in games. Their middle-relief corps offers volume, too. Sam Moll, Ian Gibaut, Tejay Antone, and Buck Farmer are just a few names in a group that runs deep. So even if the Reds continue to struggle on the mound, it won’t be because they didn’t attempt to avoid it. Ultimately, this roster will rely very heavily on upside. Both the offense and pitching present a great deal of it, but growing pains will also be part of all of this. If there’s a troubling aspect for an exciting club such as this, it’s that the NL Central does boast some of the beefier farm systems in all of baseball. So while they may have the most talent arriving at the top stage at present, the other squads aren’t going to be too far behind. One Big Question: How will David Bell configure the lineup? It’s not so much about the batting order as it is the players on the field. In declining his option, the Reds let Joey Votto walk and essentially announced Encarnacion-Strand as their starting first baseman, leaving Noelvi Marte on the opposite corner. Things became more complicated, though, as they signed Jeimer Candelario in free agency. With those three, in conjunction with McLain, De La Cruz, Steer, and India, the Reds essentially have seven players for five spots. Marte’s PED suspension clarifies things a bit, at least. The only worse way to get greater clarity is injury, and McClain has a still-nebulous shoulder problem that is doing just that. From the jump, Cincinnati will roll out a group that features Encarnacion-Strand at first, De La Cruz at short, and Candelario at third. Steer and India could be mixed in at first, second, or third, when not serving as the team’s DH. Upon Marte’s and McClain's return, however, it’s going to be fascinating to watch how Bell manages his group. Injuries happen. Poor performance happens. Suspensions – apparently – happen. But if this group is fully healthy and performing well, it’s going to be quite a murky setup for the man on the bench to handle daily. The Reds aren't the Cubs' biggest threat in the NL Central this year. They are, however, an interesting and competitive team. The head-to-head matchups between these two could go a long way to determining which (if either) makes it over the hump and into October this time. View full article

The Chicago Cubs' beloved, longest-tenured veteran sailed through the first four innings of his penultimate preseason start Tuesday night, but ran into some telling trouble in the fifth. Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports It was pretty clear that Kyle Hendricks's priority Tuesday night was sharpening certain pitches and experimenting with some uncomfortable sequences, rather than getting out the Arizona Diamondbacks. Still, he looked terrific over the first four innings. Using his curveball much more often than he does during the regular season, he sliced through the visitors' lineup the first one and a half times, stealing strikes with the hook and inducing plenty of weak contact with his more traditional sinker and changeups. In the fifth inning, though, the wheels came off entirely. Hendricks gave up four runs and didn't get out of the frame, as Arizona made solid contact on a handful of his mistakes and found the lines and gaps for multiple extra-base hits. The results don't matter, but the process within that inning reflected some important truths about Hendricks at this stage of his career--ones that are becoming inescapable and less easily mitigated than they used to be. Watching Hendricks (especially as a seasoned Cubs fan) is a joy, because you can really think along with him from pitch to pitch. By now, his arsenal and the way it works are intimately familiar, and it's possible to get inside his head as he stares in at the batter and calls his own game. That also makes it uniquely obvious when something isn't quite working right, though, and it can add a bit of anxiety and frustration when he comes off the rails, because the reasons for that are plain but not necessarily fixable. On Tuesday night, Hendricks started running into trouble in the fifth because he lost command of his sinker to the glove side. That's a tough pitch to execute, even for a control artist like Hendricks, and he had a couple of those offerings leak right over the middle of the plate after he tried to target the upper, first-base side quadrant of the zone with them. Seeing him for a second and third time in the contest, the Diamondbacks didn't miss those mistakes. That's a tough problem to work around, because Hendricks's four-seamer is a pitch with limited and situational utility. He needs the sinker to be consistent, and times when his command of it has gotten loose have grown steadily more frequent over the last four or five years. Most of his problems have come to the arm side, and late in his outing, he did also start missing when he targeted that side of the plate, but it can be especially easy for lefties to tee off on him when he struggles to work the hard stuff across to the inner edge against them. Despite his changeup-forward repertoire, Hendricks hasn't generally been a reverse-split guy during his career. He was in 2023, though, as he neutralized lefties by staying away, away, away from them, enticing and teasing them with stuff they couldn't hit with any real authority. He showed that deft touch until the fifth inning Tuesday night, too, but got whacked around by lefties in the unfortunate frame. His ability to command the sinker deeper into games will be crucial this year. Over the last three years, when the fatigue has tended to loosen up his command a bit earlier than in the past, opponents have hit Hendricks hard the third time through the order. As has been discussed over the last few years (and as I documented neatly last summer), Hendricks's changeup is really two different pitches, and that was another thing that gave him trouble in the troublesome fifth Tuesday night. His nickel-curve style changeup to righties--one that behaves like a low-intensity, dipping cutter--continued to work throughout the game. It moved the way he wants it to, and he basically put it right where he wanted to put it. His more traditional, tumble-and-fade lefty changeup, however, was on the fritz, even before the fifth. It looked like it might have been intentional. Hendricks threw a couple of changeups to lefties that had the shape of the one he usually throws to righties, tacking gently toward their back foot instead of running off the plate away from them. It makes some sense if he wants to gain a feel for using both flavors of the cambio against lefties; it does set up and play off of some locations where he'd like to throw his sinker against them. Still, in the fifth inning, the Diamondbacks took advantage of it. They started sitting on the pitch, and whereas it found the ends of their bats for lazy outs in the early going, they got the barrel to it late. If Hendricks was doing an experiment, he gained valuable data, but if he wants to be able to use that version of his change to opposite-handed batters, he'll need to sequence and locate differently to get less confident swings. At the very end of the long fifth frame, two more good Arizona swings drew my attention. Hendricks left a curveball up in the meat of the zone, spinning lazily, and gave up a single through the left side. That was the first time he'd executed the pitch so poorly all night. No pitcher stays perfectly sharp and fresh throughout a full-length start, so mistakes like those are inevitable, but maybe that's another important datum. Hendricks might not be able to count on the curve later in a game, because his misses with it have always tended to be high and arm-side, which is the much more dangerous way to miss with a slow hook like that one. He doesn't bury it in the dirt, so he needs to know he's going to hit his mark with it or catch a hitter totally off-guard before committing to it. The other pitch of note was one Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. smacked down the right-field line for a double, chasing Hendricks. It came on a first-pitch changeup, with that signature dip and slide away from him, but Gurriel had been sitting on it and was thinking about the opposite field with it. That's another thing worth watching with him, and might be a reason why Craig Counsell will simply have to be proactive about taking him out the third time through an opposing lineup all year. The first couple times a hitter sees Hendricks within a game, he's likely to struggle, because while Hendricks's stuff isn't overpowering, he's too good at locating and tunneling his stuff for the hitter to put him on a particular pitch. Guys do their best to be ready for both the sinker and the changeup (whichever shape), but their inability to feel conviction about one or the other is key to the soft contact they tend to make. Gurriel went to the plate that third time confident that he could spot and attack Hendricks on the first pitch, believing he knew which pitch he would see and in what spot, as well as where he could best redirect it. That's been a sticky problem for Hendricks lately, because the arsenal is really relatively thin, and because he's had to bust out the curve earlier than he'd like in most of his starts since 2020, leaving little left with which to surprise a hitter late in a start. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projection system pegs Hendricks for an uninspiring 4.61 ERA this year, even after his resurgent 2023. Things like the above are why. It's not destiny, but it is reality. If the Cubs want to get anything close to the 3.74 ERA he gave them last year, Counsell needs to be more aggressive about pulling Hendricks than David Ross tended to be. Mostly, though, whether Hendricks can continue to be a solid starter depends on how well he makes some of the adjustments outlined above, after using this start to tune himself up and discover some of what will work (and what won't) in the coming campaign. View full article

Good hitters manage the count and avoid the ones that favor pitchers. No one can avoid getting behind sometimes, though, so it's important to have success even in those difficult circumstances. The Chicago Cubs' projected leadoff hitter started doing that last year. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports Of the 218 hitters who saw at least 1,500 pitches last year, Ian Happ was just south of average in the percentage of pitches seen in pitcher-friendly counts (0-1, 0-2, 1-2, and 2-2), at 36.7 percent. He's a patient and intelligent hitter, and he worked hard to get ahead, knowing the benefits of having the count in his favor. That helped him rack up 99 walks, easily a career-high total and second only to Juan Soto in the National League. Importantly, though, Happ got to some of those walks by being a tougher out when he did fall behind--especially from the left side, when facing right-handed pitchers. The numbers tell a clear story. Ian Happ, Behind in Count as LHH, 2021-23 Seasons Swing % Contact % Ball % AVG OBP SLG 95+ EV % 2021-22 54.1 70.4 39.8 0.174 0.187 0.323 36.8 2023 48.3 75 44.1 0.238 0.248 0.393 39.4 Although it feels counterintuitive, it's often beneficial to be more patient when behind in the count. Pitchers start hunting the chase for a strikeout in those counts. They don't give you much to hit. Conventional wisdom tells hitters to protect the plate in these situations, but Happ found success by zeroing in more than ever on areas of the zone in which he could do damage, and letting others go. As that increased ball rate shows, he didn't just produce more when ending plate appearances behind in the count; he also got back into good counts more often by being more selective. As this indicates, it wasn't about hunting any particular kind of pitch. Even when behind in the count, Happ was diligent about using his scouting reports. He sought specific pitches to hit against each pitcher he faced, knowing their tendencies and where a pitch he could handle might be. Until last year, he'd been in a more defensive mode in those counts, and the only damage he had done came when a pitcher made a genuine mistake. You can see this not only in the heat maps of his raw production, but in the way he covered the zone. Without thinking primarily about protecting the plate, he still did so, because he knew where pitchers were likely to try to get him out within the zone. This is a level of maturity and adaptability in the batter's box that eludes many hitters for their entire careers. It only came after several years of inconsistency and failure for Happ, but tellingly, perhaps, it also came after his first highly successful full season, in 2022. For a hitter with the right disposition, a year like Happ's 2022 isn't a platform on which to try to stand flat-footed and hold on as long as possible. It's a springboard. Happ actually had a lower OPS+ in 2023 than in 2022, but things like the above help us see past the raw numbers. He was better last year than the year before, not worse. He's still very limited as a right-handed hitter, and should bat in the lower half of the order against lefty starters for this Cubs team. He did improve his approach from that side last year, too, but not to the extent that he was actually good. Against righties, though, he's their rightful leadoff hitter. Happ's DRC+, which is Baseball Prospectus's flagship offensive metric and which goes a bit beyond the actual stat line (modeling the tradeoffs a hitter makes in terms of strikeout and walk rates, contact quality, etc.) to assess hitter value, climbed from 100 in 2022 to 111 in 2023. That was the best number he's posted in a season with more than 200 plate appearances. He should be expected to stay that productive (or more so) in 2024, because while he's no longer the scary power threat he was early in his career, he's a much, much more well-rounded hitter and a much tougher out than he was even a year or two ago. View full article

Well we're gonna have to clean up that hashtag, at the very least.

What if I told you I could raise a key Cubs contributor's on-base percentage by 10 to 20 points, and all it would cost was the already-crumbling illusion that baseball is a fully functioning sport? Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports Let me throw a couple of facts at you. At first, these will seem odd, disparate, and silly, but I promise to build a convincing connection between them. Josh Gibson, one of the best handful of players in baseball history, used a bat that was 41 inches long. That's a good five or six inches longer than any current player uses, but the rules still permit bats as long as 42 inches. Patrick Wisdom, one of the best handful of players on the 2022 Chicago Cubs, strikes out anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of the time. He wields bats ranging from 33 1/2 to 35 inches in length. In baseball history, there have been 1,763 documented instances of a batter reaching base on catcher interference. Nearly half of those have come in the last 30 years, though. Famously, Gibson (like his contemporary Babe Ruth) used a bat that mirrored his larger-than-life image among players and fans. Ruth's bats weighed in as heavy as 50 ounces, and were often nearly 40 inches long. That wasn't the norm even at the time, though, and in the modern game (with pitchers throwing much, much harder than they did then and a better understanding of the relative values of bat mass and bat speed in creating power), most hitters use something considerably smaller, even though most hitters are at least as big and strong as were Ruth or Gibson. Wisdom swings a good-sized stick, by modern standards, but he's six inches shy of Gibson. That's the game now. However, the game has also changed in other ways, including some fueled by equipment evolution. Above, I mentioned the 1,763 catcher interferences we have in the historical MLB record. Let's break it down further: Through 1946: 157 1947-71: 243 1972-81: 221 1982-91: 200 1992-2001: 191 2002-11: 194 2012-21: 387 2022: 74 2023: 96 For the first 60-plus years of well-documented baseball history (those where we can be pretty sure we're not missing a whole bunch of these types of plays), catcher interference was extremely rare. Catchers were sparsely protected, and their mitts were designed for conservative, close-contact catches right in front of the chest. They weren't eager to get hit by a batter attempting a swing, and they had very little reason to even risk it. In the 1970s, two members of the Cincinnati Reds began to change that. On one hand (literally), Johnny Bench revolutionized catching itself. An exceptional athlete who came along just as catcher equipment was also ready to take a quantum leap, Bench popularized a one-handed catching style and a different type of catcher's mitt, with a more fielder-like hinge and pocket. That, without even many of the involved parties realizing it, invented catcher framing. No longer was a catcher's influence over the umpire confined to politicking and a little bit of subtle leaning from a very inflexible position. Bench and the catchers who came after him began extending their arms forward to receive incoming pitches, and the ability to do that in a fairly fluid motion meant that they could start to sell strikes at the edges of the zone a bit more craftily. On the other side of the ledger stood Pete Rose, the most ruthless competitor baseball had seen in several decades. Rose realized that, as catchers (better protected by improved safety equipment and learning their new way to receive the ball) crept forward in the catcher's box, he could let his bat drag and seek to hit the ball just before it arrived in the mitt--perhaps making contact with that mitt along the way. By rule, when that happened, he got first base. Few players in baseball history have wanted every 90 feet they could get (by whatever means) worse than Rose, so he took it via catcher interference 30 times in his career, including once in the 1970 World Series. That probably sounds like a vanishingly small number, but Rose's total was not only the record at the time, but 10 more than anyone else in the history of the game. A couple of times a year, he would nick the mitt and take his base, and that was an extraordinary frequency for the first century and change of baseball history. Rose played in a different era, though. Back then, opportunities for that kind of collision were virtually non-existent. It was still common for batters to slide up in the batter's box, and still uncommon for catchers to be truly crowding in from behind. That's changed. So has ownership of the all-time record for reaches via catcher interference--to Jacoby Ellsbury, who didn't get there by having one of baseball's longest careers and highest raw totals of plate appearances. Rose and Ellsbury still stand essentially alone atop the career leaderboard, but Josh Reddick had 19 of these. Carl Crawford had 17. Cubs folk hero Tommy La Stella had 16, and another three (the most ever) in postseason play. Memorably, La Stella reached on catcher interference in a two-strike count against Max Scherzer in the Cubs' wild fifth-inning rally in Game 5 of the 2017 NLDS. The Astros' Kyle Tucker already has 12 of these (the same number accumulated by new Cubs manager Craig Counsell). Given his youth and talent, it's very likely that he'll join Rose and Ellsbury, or surpass them by a substantial margin. As the list above shows, the frequency of catcher interference has exploded in the last 15 years. Of the 36 games in baseball history featuring at least two such plays, 22 have come since 2008. The only one ever to include three came on April 15 of last year. PITCHf/x gave us a way to (first) quantify and (next) augment pitch framing, and catchers have responded by encroaching on the hitter's space more with each passing campaign. Hitters are standing closer to the plate, because if you want to hit for the power the modern game requires, you have to. They're also standing closer to the back of the batter's box, because if you want to catch up to 103-mile-per-hour fastballs, you have to. The confluence of those trends happens just behind home plate, where it's just much, much more likely (though still very unlikely!) for the bat and the catcher's mitt to run into one another. On Aug. 1, 2021, just after the fire sale that ended the run for the Cubs' championship core, Wisdom came to the plate in Washington, where the team was tied 5-5 with the Nationals in the top of the ninth. The leadoff man in the inning, he took a strike, fouled off the 0-1 offering, then watched three straight balls. He fouled off the first payoff pitch, and on the next one, his stick caught the side of catcher René Rivera's glove. Wisdom got first base, on what is still the only catcher interference of his career. He was promptly erased on a double play off the bat of Matt Duffy, and the Cubs lost in the bottom of the ninth, but he did start a rally that night. Wisdom's game is power, and it's important that he swing a stick that allows him to get to it. The big question about his bat, though, is whether he can consistently get on base more often than he has throughout his career so far. His lifetime OBP of .298 won't keep him in the lineup, and when the Cubs need him, they won't get much help from him if that's the rate at which he avoids outs. He's plenty strong, though. What if you gave Wisdom a bat six inches longer and a few ounces heavier than his current one and told him to cut it loose, just like he's been doing for the last three years? At the bare minimum, you'd force an opposing catcher to back off, and damage their ability to frame pitches against him. If the league were too slow to make that adjustment, he could get on base an extra handful of times in a short span. This would drive people nuts. It's gimmicky and it's silly. It's also a fun thought exercise, though, because it forces us to confront the fact that baseball's margins have dwindled to zero in one critical zone, and that the impact of that compression is greater than we'd tend to imagine. Wisdom is a good candidate for it because, given his size and his problems with strikeouts and OBP, he's the guy who can make legitimate use of a bat that big and derive the greatest benefits from the stunt. There's an element of physical intimidation in this ploy. There's an element of cheeky rules manipulation. Still, it's hardly playing dirty. Hitters are under attack, in the modern game, and one of the ways we hardly ever notice in which that's happening is that catchers are closing off the space in which they might try to work, from behind. This might create more space behind the plate for Wisdom's teammates, too. It might take away a pitcher's backdoor slider or their just-hang-on fastball at the knees. Forcing a catcher to adjust his depth more than he's comfortable might alter a few things about the interaction of pitcher, batter, catcher, and umpire, which is becoming the essential one of the game. It's very silly. It's also a serious proposal. Patrick Wisdom should start carrying a bigger club to the plate with him. View full article

The Cubs podcast you barely knew existed and assumed had ceased to exist still exists, baby! Image courtesy of Matt Trueblood via Spotify for Podcasters After an accidental hiatus of a few weeks, the gang is back together and TINAR rides again. We spent our return episode discussing myriad Chicago Cubs topics, including: -The return of Cody Bellinger, and the subsequent demotion of Pete Crow-Armstrong -Christopher Morel's work at third base -David Bote's predicament and perpetual place in Iowa -Who will claim the final rotation spot(s) -How good Shota Imanaga and Michael Busch have looked lately -Miles Mastrobuoni We also play a fun little Cubs trivia game at the end. The show is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you find such shows. Enjoy! Apple Podcasts: Spotify: View full article

Yeah, now that (I think) they've gotten much better on the scouting side and are routinely getting guys with real upside, the next step is to consistently convert that--and you're right, Alzolay is a great exemplar for that.

The Cubs did make a few moves to bolster their bullpen this winter, but they stayed well clear of the elite reliever market. They already have a top closer in whom they trust, and the reason is simple: his slider--er, sliders. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports Making the full-time move to a relief role in 2022 unlocked a lot of things for Adbert Alzolay. With an extra mile per hour or two on his fastball (thanks to being able to cut loose so much more in short bursts), everything has played up, but Alzolay's breakout 2023 campaign seemed to be primarily about his slider. Opponents whiffed on 40.6 percent of their swings against the slider, leading to 38 of his 67 strikeouts. Superficially, it was a power arsenal, and a neat pairing for the right-handed Venezuela native. In reality, though, Alzolay has developed three distinct breaking balls--his bread-and-butter slider, a cutter (thrown harder, and primarily to lefties) and a sweeper (slower, and primarily to righties). Those lesser cousins to the true slider play underrated roles in helping Alzolay dominate the way he did when he was healthy in 2023. Rounding out and defining that suite of breaking balls was a pivotal development for Alzolay last year. He found a consistent shape for the slider, and swapped out what had been a mostly ineffecitve curveball for the sweeper, while gaining greater utility on the cutter by focusing its deployment on left-handed batters. Unlike many relievers (who confine themselves to one fastball look in the simple showdown of a single inning), Alzolay employs both a four-seamer and a sinker, leaning toward the former against lefties and the latter against righties. The four-seam heater has above-average run to his arm side, so it and the slider pair nicely. For that same reason, though, when Alzolay wants to get up and in on a lefty, the cutter is highly valuable. It stops those hitters from eliminating that quadrant of the zone and sitting on the slider low and in, and it makes them less aggressive in their swings against the four-seamer on the outer half. Against righties, the slider's tight but sweepy shape is a good match for the sinker, but for bigger movement and a change of speeds that can make the sinker more effective inside, the sweeper was a key addition. Alzolay's curveball was, briefly, his best breaking pitch, but see how the sweeper has greater lift? That makes it a much better partner to his sinker than the curve could ever be, and the slider is better with his four-seamer than the curve is. Five-pitch relievers are a rarity for a reason. It can be viciously difficult to sustain the feel for that deep a repertoire, given the constraints of being a reliever. A closer like Alzolay doesn't have the luxury of doing side work on a fixed schedule. They don't get the same opportunities to implement new things or make adjustments. With the four-seamer, the sinker, the slider, the sweeper, and the cutter, though, Alzolay has enough ways to find outs to succeed in all kinds of game situations and against all kinds of hitters. He might not be as consistent as a conventional two-pitch monster with triple-digit heat and a slider with an optimal spin axis, because there will be days when one of his indispensable weapons will not be at full power. He's going to be versatile and impressive, though, and his steady improvement to reach this level of excellence in relief is a credit to both the player and the Cubs' pitching infrastructure, which improves with each passing season. Research assistance provided by TruMedia. View full article

We've all talked at length about the reduced strikeout rate Cody Bellinger enjoyed in 2023. Today, though, let's focus on the one area of the zone where he saw the greatest transformation from his previous period of struggle. Image courtesy of © David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports If Cody Bellinger can hold onto the gains he made in 2023 in terms of strikeout rate, it will certainly boost his production for 2024. On its own, though, putting the ball in play isn't enough. It's perfectly possible to hit the ball meekly and poorly and come up with results not far removed from the ones you'd have had if you'd taken a more fearless swing and just missed altogether. Last year, though, Bellinger did quite a bit more than that. What got attention was that he even touched the ball in many of those situations, but what made him phenomenally valuable was the way he hit it. Specifically, Bellinger started genuinely going with that pitch, rather than being so much in a mode of trying to create power that he rolled over and hit weak ground balls to the pull side. Here's Bellinger from 2020-22, with his exit velocities and launch angles plotted and the expected wOBA (xwOBA) of those batted balls shown by the color of each data point, but only on pitches on the outer third (or beyond). Right away, let's compare that to the same chart for 2023. Again, this is only batted balls on pitches that were at least on the outer third of home plate. There are a fair number fewer lazy fly balls in the 2023 sample, but they've been replaced mostly by weakly hit balls with a launch angle just above 0. That's still not exactly a recipe for much more production. Yet, he did see such a jump, from a sub-.300 SLG for 2020-22 to a .456 mark in 2023, on those outer-third offerings. Is that evidence that he just got lucky last year, after all? Well, no. Firstly, Bellinger put many more balls in that part of the zone (and beyond it) in play than he had previously. He whiffed much, much less often when swinging at outside pitches in 2023 than from 2020-22. It was easy to ignore and hard to fully articulate when he was hitting 40 home runs per season, but Bellinger has always had great feel for contact. That's why he was an MVP, and even over the previous few years (when he was anything but an MVP), he didn't have a disastrous whiff rate on outer-third pitches. In 2023, though, he shored up what wasn't even a notable weakness, per se. Again, we're not talking about a guy solely getting lucky. He got the ball moving. If he'd hit it precisely the same way he had in previous years, though, there might not have been much value in hitting it more. Bellinger made his bones by being great at pulling fly balls, and it's very hard to pull fly balls on the outer edge of the strike zone. His revelation, of course, came when he realized he didn't need to do that. Instead, Bellinger started going the other way more. His average exit velocity on the outer third plummeted last year, but the direction of those hits earned him plenty of value. Here's where his batted balls on pitches on the outer third went from 2020-22. He stopped trying to yank those pitches last year, and the difference was night and day. Whereas the differences between the plots of his exit velo and launch angle were so subtle you had to study them to see them well, these jump off the page. The gray dots that represent launch angles around 20 degrees were the keys; Bellinger was shooting the left-center gap for soubles, even on pitches where hitting a home run or a more traditional double was out of the question. It would come as a shock if Bellinger went out and hit .307 again this year. That's not his history, and after all, he did have some good luck. However, it's equally silly to assume he'll regress into the .250 range, or worse. We know his strikeout aversion should have some staying power. He returns to Wrigley Field, where there's some incentive for him to keep aiming for left-center field, anyway. Mostly, though, this just seems like a welcome maturation at the plate. Bellinger still will (and still needs to) occasionally turn and burn on a ball in order to hit a home run, but he's improved at knowing when pitchers might work the outside edge on him; seeing the pitch out of the hand when they do; and staying on the ball, to take it to the opposite field. Though it never happened in 2023, we could see Bellinger bat second at times for the Cubs in 2024. With his low ground-ball rate and good overall skill set, he's a terrific candidate for that role. If pitchers continue not to be able to get him out away, they'll have to try him inside more often, and thence could come even more power. In any case, he's a newly versatile offensive weapon. Research assistance provided by TruMedia. View full article

When trying to determine whether a team should come in for criticism or praise at the end of a season or an offseason, it's important to have one or more objective standards by which to measure. By mine, the Cubs had a sufficiently strong winter. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Two winters ago, Jed Hoyer and his staff brought in Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki on multiyear deals. Last winter, they signed Dansby Swanson and Jameson Taillon. In each offseason, they also made smaller, shorter-term, supplemental moves, like signing Mychal Givens and David Robertson before 2022 and bringing in Cody Bellinger and Michael Fulmer (while also re-signing Drew Smyly) before 2023. While those moves were (obviously) insufficient to turn the Cubs into a playoff team in either campaign, I counted both as successful offseasons. As much as every fan base wants their teams to acquire one or three of the top five free agents in any given winter, the reality is that that's possible only in one of every two or three winters, and then only for certain teams. To be sure, the Cubs are among the teams for whom that should sometimes be possible, and we've discussed the possibility that Jed Hoyer's aversion to long-term deals with superstars will be a lasting problem at some length here. However, as I've tried to shape a consistent standard by which to distinguish successful winters from failures, I've circled back repeatedly to a very simple one: Every winter, a team should be acquiring more than one player they project to be above-average and who are under team control for multiple seasons. They should also be acquiring more than one additional player who makes them better for the coming season, without regard to whether they're a star or whether they'll be around beyond that campaign. By that reckoning, this, too, has been a successful winter. Shota Imanaga and Michael Busch were each solid, valuable additions at non-premium prices, and the Cubs can keep them around for up to five and six years, respectively. Bellinger, Héctor Neris, and Yency Almonte are each likely to be shorter-term members of the team, but they all make the Cubs more robust for 2024, and all three could end up being around for 2025, as well. That, obviously, does not mean that the Cubs shouldn't go make another late addition to their roster. They could use a better left-handed reliever, and they could absolutely use Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell, as I wrote yesterday. Understanding the team's desire to maintain a balance between its present and future, though, I think the above markers are the right ones by which to judge every offseason for them, and since they checked both boxes this time around, they've had a successful winter. Very often, especially in the modern sports media culture, we allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. That the Cubs didn't sign Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto this winter is undeniably disappointing, because those are generational talents who would have transformed the franchise in a way that none of the players they've brought in (or brought back) do. It's also mildly frustrating that the team didn't cash in some of its trade capital for Juan Soto or Pete Alonso. Notice, though, that each of them would have fallen into the second, lesser bucket of winter acquisition anyway, and recall that the team did use a significant amount of prospect capital to land Busch, and those misses feel much more palatable. There were enough open avenues to asserting themselves as NL Central favorites this winter that the Cubs do have to answer for the fact that they haven't done so. On balance, though, they've checked the right boxes for a third straight offseason. Do that two more times in the winters ahead, and they'll begin to see some of the longer-lasting, sustainable benefits that come from the approach, the way the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals have done over the years. As we turn our eyes away from the winter and toward Opening Day, how would you grade the Cubs' offseason? Why? Comment below. View full article

There is a cycle on which MLB free agency operates, whereby (about halfway between any two CBA negotiations, or about twice a decade) the league engages in de facto, nearly undetectable, unpunishable collusion, as a means of putting the squeeze to the players union. It's happening right now. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports This was all just this side of cute, until about the beginning of February. It still hasn't definitively worked, because Scott Boras has convinced the first three of his high-profile clients to sign this winter to do so on deals that give them opt-outs after every season. Still, we're at the point where it's inarguably troubling to see the same old playbook being run. The owners are trying to corner the players union, and soften the ground for themselves ahead of the next CBA negotiation fight. As a result, they've dug in their heels, and (as it very often is) it's two starting pitchers who are left somewhat out in the cold. Jordan Montgomery is far less likely to be amenable to signing a short-term, opt-out-laden contract than were Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, or Rhys Hoskins. Unlike Bellinger and Chapman, he was traded this season and wasn't offered a qualifying offer, and that means he could have one attached to him next winter if he wanders back out into the marketplace. Unlike Chapman and Hoskins, he's coming off one of the best seasons of his career, and can't feel especially confident of being able to go back out there next winter and make any more than this. Some of the same goes for Snell. He does have that qualifying offer hanging around his neck this winter, but he's also coming off his second Cy Young Award in the last six seasons. It would be very difficult for him to raise his stock much from here, and easy to have it sag significantly. For their part, teams aren't likely to like the idea of signing Snell or Montgomery to a Bellinger- or Chapman-type deal, anyway, because those contracts operate very differently for pitchers than for hitters. Carlos Rodón is the illustrative case. He signed a two-year deal worth $44 million with the Giants prior to 2022, but it included the right to opt out of the second, slightly richer season of the pact. At the trade deadline that year, the deal became a poisoned pill. Teams were too afraid that Rodón would get hurt and forego his opt-out, becoming $22.5 million in dead money on their books the following winter, to trade for him, and (since he didn't ultimately get hurt) the Giants lost him via free agency after that season. Snell and Montgomery are both healthier and more established than Rodón was when he signed that contract with San Francisco, too, so they'd have to get something closer to $60 million over two years (or, like Bellinger, $80 million over three) to sign on to such a deal. That's going to be a tough sell on both sides, for all the reasons enumerated above. It's fairly blatant market manipulation. It's in bad faith. In a slightly more just society, the union would be able to make a case to the National Labor Relations Board and get the owners sanctioned for this repeated behavior, which you can also spot in the offseasons entering 2013, 2014, and 2019, always with a dual goal: Put pressure on agents and union leadership by frustrating players and withholding a greater share of their revenues, to establish leverage for the coming negotiations; and Create a false anchor that can then be phonily pulled up in the final offseason before the actual negotiations. This move--giving richer deals right in the shadow (on either side, chronologically) of CBA deals, fighting tooth-and-nail for the last dollar in the years furthest from them--is designed to put the players on the wrong side of public opinion, once conflict (a conflict the owners are inviting, even fabricating) does burble up. Alas, we don't live in that kind of world. So, let's briefly consider a more creative structure of contract for Snell and Montgomery, and ask ourselves whether the Cubs (hardly overcome with great options at the back end of the rotation) are in position to offer them. Instead of a straight opt-out deal, and instead of a traditional long-term deal (which both pitchers deserve, but which sure doesn't seem to be coming at this point), the best solution available to all involved is probably some version of what Boras once dubbed the "swell-opt". In short, these would be deals similar to Bellinger's and Chapman's, but the salaries would be frontloaded, and the team would have the right to void the hurler's opt-out clause by exercising a large, multi-year option instead. To take that from abstract to concrete, let's talk about Snell. He's the one who would give the Cubs rotation a truly different and level-changing new dynamic, but he'd cost a pretty penny. The Cubs could, plausibly, offer a three-year, $67-million deal to the two-time Cy Young winner, but $31 million of that would be paid in 2024. Then, Snell could choose to stick around for $20 million in 2025, or opt out, with the Cubs getting a chance to exercise a five-year, $150-million deal in order to prevent that. After 2025, Snell would also have the right to opt out, or else claim $16 million for 2026. The Cubs could void his opt-out by exercising a four-year, $100-million option for 2026-29. The structure would be different for Montgomery, who is older and doesn't have the QO attached to him this winter, but that's the general idea. It's a deal that includes some substantial risk on both sides, but there's also tremendous upside for both parties. At this point in the spring, it's something Boras should be open to. The Cubs should be willing to simply pay either Montgomery or Snell upward of $150 million for five or six years, but since they clearly aren't (and have the backing of a collusive market in that respect), this is the kind of happy medium place where they could meet Boras. According to Baseball Prospectus, the Cubs' offense is just fine. The PECOTA system projects them for a 102 DRC+, meaning the offense is above-average, as-is. They fall short because they're also projected for a 102 DRA-, meaning the pitching staff is almost exactly as below-average as the hitters are above that line. Montgomery and Snell are the remaining ways they could address that before the season begins. This kind of deal is how that would, in all likelihood, need to look. What do you think of this contract structure as a compromise between the Cubs and the top remaining free agent arms? Do you view the owners' behavior as legitimate? Sound off below. View full article

Having started the Cactus League opener last week, the Chicago Cubs' 2021 first-round pick is clearly on the inside track toward their fifth starter job for 2024. On Wednesday, he took another step toward winning the job, but some yellow flags remain. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports In his exciting and eventual debut last September, Jordan Wicks racked up strikeouts by leaning on the pitch that first made him famous: his changeup. For much of the rest of the season, though, he didn't miss many bats, with that offering or any other. The most memorable outing of his season might have been the last game in which the Cubs seemed to have a clear and unbreakable hold on a playoff berth, on Sept. 6 against the Giants. That day, he faced 27 batters and got 20 outs, giving up just one run, but he only struck out one batter, and he only got three swings and misses in 97 pitches thrown. His three-inning appearance against the Brewers Wednesday in Maryvale, on the northwest side of Phoenix, rhymed with that Giants game. Wicks only allowed two hits, and he held the Brewers scoreless. He even got two strikeouts. On the other hand, he allowed some hard contact, and the ball was always moving. The Brewers would have scored, had Alexander Canario not come up exceptionally quickly and made an accurate, strong throw to nail Garrett Mitchell at the plate on a would-be RBI single in the first frame. A Matt Shaw error didn't help matters. That was similar to Wicks's first game of the spring, when he himself failed to convert an easy out on a dribbler back to the mound. Each play was a byproduct of the fact that Wicks isn't yet keeping the ball out of play the way high-end starters do, though. It was the same way late in his start against San Francisco nearly six months ago, when a grounder back to him started the rally with which the Giants finally pushed him out of the game. When he works inside to set up a right-handed hitter for the changeup away, it really does devastate them. Wicks did just that to both Christian Arroyo and Vinny Capra in the second frame. As much as anything, he might need to adjust the way he thinks about modulating his pitch mix throughout a start, and begin looking for more of those whiffs right away. Establishing the fastball and filling up the zone early sounds good and like it would allow a hurler to have more success late in a game, but that matters relatively little if he gets hit too hard before turning toward his swing-and-miss stuff. These same Brewers taught Wicks that lesson (or tried to) the hard way in his final start of 2023, launching two homers and scoring six runs in a game that saw the southpaw record just five outs. Wicks did a superb job of coming up to the big leagues and pounding the strike zone. That's no small feat, for a southpaw starter without above-average velocity. He's done the same this spring. When we think of pitchers with good enough control to prevent walks, we tend to assume it comes with a different kind of control--control over the whole game, in the sense that things always feel relatively calm. That, alas, is not yet the case for Wicks. I wrote about how he can change that, earlier this month. Tweaks to his pitch mix and sequencing could help him get more whiffs, because that is possible with his stuff--especially the changeup. He already does a good job of remaining poised and bearing down when traffic starts to pile up on the bases, but there are ways for him to turn another corner. In the early returns from spring training, though, it looks like he'll continue to deal with a certain level of chaos in the majority of starts this year. Quelling that chaos through excellent competitiveness and pitchability is admirable, but to consistently win games in the big leagues, Wicks will have to start nipping that chaos in the bud. View full article