Matthew Trueblood

On a Chicago radio appearance Wednesday, ESPN's Jeff Passan predicted that the Cubs will sign "one of the four Boras guys" who remain atop the free-agent market and dominate the headlines of this dwindling offseason. Which one should it be? Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports Obviously, the focus for most Cubs fans over the last couple of months has been Cody Bellinger. It's Bellinger both the organization and the fan base know best, and Bellinger has been viewed as both the most likely and the best fit of this quartet. Two months ago, that was almost unquestionable, but a few things have changed. Let's update our preference list, shall we? 1. Blake Snell At the beginning of this winter, Snell and the Cubs didn't seem like a good or likely fit. He was in position to demand well in excess of $200 million, after winning his second Cy Young Award in the last six years this past season. He has tremendous stuff, and his command might be underrated, but his approach makes him both frustrating to watch and hard to project. Moreover, he's not exactly a paragon of durability. Those two Cy Young campaigns are the only two in his career in which he's reached even 130 innings. Yeah, we're past all that now. While Boras's style is to set a price and wait for the market to meet it, the probability of any team meeting his original one for Snell has plummeted. Snell's more likely to get a deal akin to that of Aaron Nola (seven years, $172 million) than to approach the Stephen Strasburg contract (seven years, $245 million) of several winters ago. With the Cubs having already reinforced the rotation with Shota Imanaga, they can afford to risk a few missed starts in order to land a true ace. 2. Jordan Montgomery It's much less clear in which direction Montgomery's asking price has drifted as the hot stove has burned itself through. He entered the marketplace well south of Snell and Nola in terms of earning power, but because his chief strength (excellent durability, with the capacity to pitch 180-200 innings per year and take the ball every time his spot in the rotation) is the weakness of so many others in today's pitching landscape, Montgomery might only be getting more valuable as spring training draws near. For reasons we discussed way back in December, though, he holds all kinds of appeal for the Cubs. This organization likes strike-throwers. They like guys who command the ball to both sides of the plate, and they even (anachronistically, almost) like a good curveball in a starter, rather than the increasingly popular sliders and sweepers that dominate the league. Add Montgomery to this rotation, and the innings the Cubs are projected to get from that unit rise significantly--as does the overall upside of the group. Signing Montgomery would also free up some trade capital for the team. 3. Matt Chapman The argument against Chapman is simple: He's not an elite hitter, and signing him would cost a bunch of money and a draft pick. He'd make both Nick Madrigal and Patrick Wisdom strictly bench players, and rob the team of any real opportunity to get something in exchange for them if they decide to move on from them. He's not quite redundant, but he doesn't solve the lineup's remaining problems all that nicely. He'd block the position for Matt Shaw, for whom that's the clearest path to playing time with the parent club right now. The argument for him is even neater, though: He's an elite defender. He's as good as Madrigal with the glove at the hot corner, and he's a much better hitter than Madrigal, even if he'd still hit sixth or seventh in an ideally constructed contender's lineup. He's no longer likely to get $150 million or so. A shorter-term deal is a very real option. Chapman would complete an infield defense that would Hoover up ground balls as well as any in the league, and he'd lengthen the lineup, although without solving the larger problem that the team's top hitters aren't imposing enough. 4. Cody Bellinger Putting Bellinger this low feels wrong, but there's a reason why he's still a free agent. In fact, there are several, but let's focus on one: the Cubs have refused to pay Boras's asking price for him. Resisting those demands got much easier for Jed Hoyer when he traded for Michael Busch last month. With Busch in the mix, the urgency to bring back Bellinger--the need for that left-handed bat, the need for a first baseman--diminished significantly. It wasn't a leverage play. Busch is a great addition in his own right, without regard to Bellinger. It did still increase the Cubs' leverage, though, and it makes bringing in Bellinger less critical. The other thing here is that, at this stage, Bellinger might not be the big investment the Cubs prefer to make in the lineup for the long term. Signing him makes it harder for Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alexander Canario, and Kevin Alcántara to carve out their roles (immediate or otherwise) in the outfield, or else it crimps and distorts the playing time allocations for Busch and Christopher Morel, since it seems the organization doesn't trust either guy at third base. It also forecloses the possibility of signing either Juan Soto or Pete Alonso next winter. Perhaps the notion of the Cubs doing that sounds laughable, anyway, given Hoyer's reluctance to pay up the way those stars require when they hit free agency, but Bellinger's long-term home is first base. The corner outfield spots are spoken for in the short term. Make Bellinger a Cub for the next six years (or more) and you can cross the top two names on next winter's market off right away. It's a part of the cost that has to be considered. Crazy though it might sound, there's a chance the Cubs could sign two of these players. In that case, though, it would almost certainly be Montgomery and Chapman. Montgomery is the only one of the four without a qualifying offer attached to him--the only one who wouldn't cost the team a draft pick. Chapman would, but if the team signed both Montgomery and Chapman but let Bellinger go elsewhere, they'd only lose a tiny bit of draft capital, because Bellinger would net them a pick just a round later than the one they'd lose for Chapman. Meanwhile, the team would get a lot better. They'd probably emerge as favorites in the NL Central, after all. All four of these guys are appealing. Ranking Bellinger fourth doesn't mean he's not worth trying to sign anymore. Since the Busch deal, though, he's become less of a priority, and some alternatives have surpassed him in terms of desirability. The endgame of this offseason is upon us. Soon, the Cubs (and these four free agents, plus a bunch of others) need to make their decisions and their moves. There are still plenty of talented players available, but their availability is as much an indictment of the Cubs front office as it is a salve for the frustration of fans. It's time to make the big moves on which the team has waited as long as possible. How do you rank these four remaining star free agents? Who would you want, if the team were to sign two of the four? View full article

The moment the Cubs consummated their 2021 trade with the White Sox--the one that sent Craig Kimbrel to the South Side and netted the Cubs two big-leaugers under long-term team control--a countdown clock started ticking. It's coming right up on 0:00 now. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports To those who have closely watched the evolution of baseball over the last quarter-century, it was immediately clear that Nick Madrigal and Nico Hoerner couldn't last long in a lineup together, at least for a team with aspirations of winning enough games to reach the postseason. Even as Hoerner made impressive defensive strides at shortstop in 2022, it was hard to deny that his long-term defensive home was at either second or third base. Meanwhile, the lilliputian Madrigal seemed like a locked-in second baseman. Positionally, there was a looming logjam, turned from a potentiality to an urgent reality when Dansby Swanson agreed to join the Cubs last winter. Because Jed Hoyer refuses to make a trade simply out of need and will find a way to hold onto a player until given what he thinks the player is worth or absolutely forced to let him go, Madrigal was still around in 2023, despite Swanson's arrival and Hoerner's fairly clear assertion of superiority in the battle to slide to second. The tiny contact specialist took reps at third base all spring, which seemed like a bit of a stunt, but he more than held up to his limited trial at the hot corner during the regular season. In fact, he was one of the best defensive third basemen in baseball. Even so, he didn't find any legitimate power. Nor did Hoerner, who stayed healthier and earned more consistent run than Madrigal and collected 688 plate appearances. Between the two of them, they went to bat almost 1,000 times, managed 43 doubles, legged out five triples, and only muscled up for 11 home runs. That's fairly crazy, in the modern game. Ever since the double-punch of two expansions in a half-decade and the crest of the performance-enhancing drugs problem coincided to alter the way fans consume baseball and its numbers, and ever since sabermetrics has gained a deeper foothold and begun pushing the game toward greater efficiency, power has become an indispensable, non-negotiable part of the package for good hitters. In fact, you can go all the way back to the integration of MLB in 1947, and you still see a pretty inexorable trend. Here's a chart showing the number of qualifying hitters with fewer than 15 home runs but at least an average OPS+ per team, for each season since Jackie Robinson began the process of legitimizing the National League. Not only has the trend been steadily (though imperfectly) downward, but we've seen some historically low figures over the last few years. In 2019, only three hitters were above-average at the plate despite having fewer than 15 homers: Kevin Newman, Wilson Ramos, and Kolten Wong. This past season, only six players cleared that bar: Luis Arráez, Mark Canha, Thairo Estrada, Steven Kwan, Lars Nootbaar, and Alex Verdugo. Those are easily the lowest figures in any full season. There was a brief time back in the late 1950s and early 1960s when it was almost as non-optional to hit for power in order to be productive, but even that wasn't quite this extreme. Obviously, the main driver of that trend is the steady rise in baseline strikeout rate throughout the league. In a league like that of 1952, wherein the average batter struck out under 11 percent of the time and the most whiff-prone regular (Eddie Mathews) was still south of 20 percent, it was much easier to hit for a productive average and get on base at a fine clip without clearing the wall. Now, that baseline rate has more than doubled, and hitters have to get to more power to make up for that. Madrigal and Hoerner are exceptions to the rule, in some sense. Maybe that counts for something. Hoerner struck out only 12.1 percent of the time in 2023, and Madrigal was way down at 8.2 percent. That makes them much more credible batters than most guys who have such a glaring lack of pop. Still, it sets a hard, low ceiling on their productivity. To wit, despite his great contact skills, Madrigal batted just .263/.311/.353, for a 79 OPS+, and Hoerner (even in what felt like a breakout campaign in which he fully made good on the promise he flashed in 2022) only had a 99 OPS+, himself. He's not even one of the six guys who cobbled together an above-average line without good power. That's why it just wasn't ever going to work, not for the long term. Madrigal could be a fine little backup guy, but as a regular, he paired with Hoerner to give the team too much in the way of competitive but non-dynamic offense. We can wish it weren't so, but we live in a world beyond that of José Cruz or Buddy Bell. The productive, actively valuable 10-15 homer guy is a dying breed, and no team can afford to rely on two in the same lineup, unless they have undimmed superstars packing the heart of their batting order. Instead of that, the Cubs have Ian Happ, who only managed a couple more home runs last year than would have allowed him to be on the lists above. They can't win with Madrigal in the lineup every day, not because of Madrigal's shortcomings, but because they already have their quota of underpowered players in an overpowered offensive environment. Yes, this is yet another in a long line of posts throughout the internet over the last year or more imploring the Cubs to trade Madrigal. I don't agree with what I consider a fairly facile set of criticisms of Madrigal's defense at third that have popped up on Twitter recently. There's been an intimation that somehow, because he plays more shallow and relies on a different playing style than Matt Chapman, Madrigal's brilliance with the glove last year is somehow fake or invalid. It's not that way. The up-the-middle positions are the demesnes of rangy, fluid athletes, making plays in space. The corners are a geographical proposition. It's perfectly acceptable, and very much the right choice for Madrigal, to play shallow and try to cut down the amount of range one needs, using exceptional quickness and the angles of the game. Some of history's great third basemen have done just that for over a decade. I also don't want to automatically disqualify Madrigal because he lacks power at the plate. The narrow aesthetic tastes of too many modern fans notwithstanding, there is something delightful about Madrigal's skill set. I want there to be more Dave Cash types and more Eric Young Sr. types, not fewer. Nor is he as bad as many believe. Surprisingly (but tellingly), PECOTA forecasts a 107 DRC+ (where 100 is average and higher is better) for Madrigal in 2024. Not striking out still has some value. However, he's not ready to accept a backup role, and that's the only one in which the Cubs can presently afford to carry him. Instead of risking falling into using him as a redundant piece of the near-everyday lineup, the team should find a trade partner for Madrigal and then make some alternative plans at third base. How would you prefer the Cubs handle third base this spring? If not Madrigal, who should get the bulk of the playing time there? Let's discuss it further, including kicking around the remaining outside options. View full article

As projection systems begin trying to predict the season ahead, the Cubs absiolutely refuse to endear themselves to any of them. We kvetch about that at some length. Image courtesy of Matt Trueblood via Spotify for Podcasters In their comfy, customary Monday night recording, Matt Trueblood, DJ Fochs, Tom Nurse, and Todd Trueblood get together for the latest episode of This is Not a Rebuild. We digest and process the news of Bobby Witt Jr. signing an 11-year deal with the Royals, break down the impact on the NL Central of Corbin Burnes being traded from the Brewers to the Orioles, and loudly tap our feet. We're all waiting, Jed. Do something. Dooo something. In the absence of further moves, though, the gang does also try to parse the new projections up at Baseball Prospectus and elsewhere, which don't look kindly on the Cubs. They distinguish between such projection systems and the betting markets, which label the Cubs as favorites to win the NL Central in the probabilistic expectation that they'll sign one or more of the top remaining free agents. After closing out Cubs talk with some spitballing about the potential forms improving the roster from here might take, the pod closes with a bit or errata (not erotica; we deeply regret the error) and some local basketball talk. Which locality? You'll have to listen to find out! Here's the full audio of the pod, via Spotify: And here it is on Apple Podcasts: Cody Bellinger can't stay a free agent forever... can he? You'll hear our answer to that within, too. Enjoy. View full article

Baseball Prospectus has rolled out the first complete version of their PECOTA projections for 2024, and they don't shine a kind light on the Cubs, pending further additions. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports In the first PECOTA-projected standings for the coming season, the Cubs sit five full games back of the division-leading St. Louis Cardinals. Betting markets have held up Chicago as favorites in the relatively weak NL Central for most of the winter, but crucially, those lines bake in a certain set of weighted expectations for the balance of the offseason. In other words, all the bettors pushing the odds in the Cubs' favor throughout this process have been assuming that Jed Hoyer and company will improve the team, even from here. Pure projection systems like PECOTA make no such guesses. The players not yet signed are simply value floating in the abyss, and teams get the records their current rosters support, based on projected performance. At the moment, despite their lousy 2023, the Cardinals impress that system the most. That makes sense, too. While the Cards have traded a couple small pieces (remember the Tyler O'Neill deal?) this winter, they've spent most of it making modest additions to a starting rotation that was their greatest weakness last year. They are the most complete team in the division. PECOTA forecasts 85.2 wins for them, and just 80 for the second-place Cubs. In one sense, that's generous, because the system does (at least) see the current Cubs as the head of the class of losing teams in a losing division. The Brewers and Reds are each projected for 78 wins, and the Pirates are all the way down at 73. The Shota Imanaga and Héctor Neris signings and the Michael Busch and Yency Almonte trades have moved the needle at least that much, although maybe we should say, instead, that the Corbin Burnes trade did so. The Brewers were projected as clear leaders for second place before they gave up Burnes. At any rate, what the system doesn't yet see from the Cubs is that same level of completeness--that marriage of depth and excellence that make a playoff-caliber team. Yes, signing Cody Bellinger would help with that. Bellinger is projected for a 101 DRC+ (where 100 is league-average and higher is better), which certainly sounds underwhelming coming off a season in which that number was 112, but he still has 2.6 projected WARP, and his bat would be a notable upgrade from Pete Crow-Armstrong, who is projected for just an 87 DRC+. That only makes up a portion of the gap between the Cubs and Cards, though, so barring multiple significant moves, the system thinks the Cardinals are better. That needn't shatter the hopes of any fans, on its own. The Cardinals feel like the kind of team you'd build to win a game that was only a projection system. They're old, and they have established stars with long track records of success. That's the kind of player projection systems tend to overrate, so it's possible St. Louis won't really improve on their woeful 2023 as much as PECOTA thinks. The Cubs, meanwhile, are leaning on players (late-blooming ace Justin Steele, NPB import Shota Imanaga, rookies Busch and Jordan Wicks, and more) on whom a projection system might hedge, to a greater degree than are the Cardinals. Projections aren't destiny; they're just data. On the other hand, we should regard it as telling that the Cardinals not only have an advantage on the Cubs, but lead them by a handful of games. That's how an inherently conservative framework like a projection system tells you that there's a yawning gap between two teams. Despite listing them second, the system only gives Chicago a 20.2-percent chance to win the Central. It's possible for the Cubs to outplay the Cardinals this season, but without at least one or two upgrades for the roster, it won't be likely. Happily, it's not too late to make those upgrades. In addition to Bellinger, the market contains the likes of Matt Chapman, Brandon Belt and J.D. Martinez, all of whom could be good fits at the right price. It contains. too, a handful of interesting or helpful pitchers. That's good, because PECOTA regards run prevention as the greater problem for the team. The Cubs are projected to allow 57 more runs than the Brewers and 33 more than the Cardinals. These standings are an open and earnest invitation to the Cubs to get more aggressive, because they need to get better to position themselves against St. Louis and they already have an edge on each of the other teams who could try to unseat the Cardinals. There will be other projection system rollouts this month, and the systems will all be updated accordingly when roster moves happen. At the moment, though, the Cubs aren't good enough to go any further than they did in 2023. View full article

The most familiar of the Cubs' non-roster invitees in the bullpen is, paradoxically, not at all the pitcher you remember. He's still essentially himself, but an incredible number of things have changed. Image courtesy of © Scott Taetsch-USA TODAY Sports You remember Carl Edwards Jr. as the guy with the high-riding mid-90s fastball and the sizzling overhand curveball. That version of him--the guy who had a strikeout rate north of 33 percent from 2015-18, who also limited hard contact, and whose only weaknesses were occasional wildness and a slight shortfall in durability--is gone for good. Now, after a perambulation of professional baseball that has taken him through five other big-league teams and the Triple-A affiliates of all five, he's back, but only part of the fastball and curveball came with him. If he's going to win a place in the Cubs bullpen, he'll need to do it with the new tricks he's added to his bag. Though he did it before the term reached the level of popularity and wide comprehension it now enjoys, Edwards was one of the great modern practitioners of the cut-ride fastball. His four-seamer was occasionally called a cutter, especially on broadcasts, even though its vertical movement would have made it an outlier in that category as much as its lack of arm-side run makes it so among four-seam heaters. Working from the middle to the first-base side of the rubber, Edwards hammered away at hitters with that fastball and his big hook, which could surpass 3,000 rpm in spin rate and snapped nastily off the high plane of his heat when he was controlling it well. Just about everything he threw seemed to move to his glove side, away from fellow righties in the box. I've decided to use 2017 as a reference season, because it was Edwards's most complete and best in a Cubs uniform. Here's what his pitch movement looked like at that time. The movement differential on those pitches made them impossible to hit. The only challenge was to throw them with command on any kind of consistent basis, and eventually, it did prove to be a challenge he wasn't up to. With his impossibly slender frame and all the humping up and whipping involved in his delivery back then, he just couldn't repeat his delivery well enough to execute either of his primary pitches consistently. Nor, over time, could he hold up and sustain the intensity of that stuff, in terms of either velocity or spin. He fizzled badly for the Cubs in late 2018 and in 2019, and it took a while for him to find a foothold after they set him adrift in the middle of that season. Here's what Edwards's arsenal looked like in 2017, from behind the plate. Again, everything was targeted to one side of the plate, and he basically aimed high with the fastball and low with the curve, with varying levels of success. It was just that simple, approach-wise, though. Edwards would finish his fastball pretty far out in front of the rubber, despite that very over-the-top delivery, because he left his long legs carry him reasonably far down the mound. On the curve, though, he would make a more conscious effort to stay back and wrap his hand around the ball through release, so his release point was higher, with less extension toward the plate. It's no headline story when a reliever with two impressive pitches buckles under the weight of his unimpressive control and a body not built for the gig. This is only a story because, improbably, Edwards sank into the sands of time, then came back up, a much less dominant but more varied hurler with a new angle and a viable skill set. He pitched 94 innings with the Nationals over the last two seasons, with a 3.07 ERA. The strikeout rate is way down, and he still issues too many walks, but Edwards is a usable reliever again. He was only available on a minor-league deal because of the injuries that limited that innings total so much. How has he done it? Let's revisit each of the charts we examined above for 2017, but update them to 2023. Here is how Edwards's pitches each moved last year. Hey, we've got a new member in the club! That purple blob way off to the last of where the blue and red of the fastball and curve sit in their same stark contrast is a new changeup, which Edwards forged during the years he spent scrapping just to remain in affiliated baseball. The guy who so naturally spins the bejesus out of the ball that his fastball sometimes hummed into a cutter by accident still gets that kind of movement on the fastball, and the curve has a slight glove-side flare to it, but he figured out how to pronate and get a changeup to fade well off the line of that heater. Opponents had a .188 average and zero extra-base hits against Edwards's changeup in 2023. They whiffed on over 32 percent of their swings against it. He had tons of success with the offering, one that would have felt completely foreign in his arsenal a few years before. He also found more consistent success with the fastball and curve, though, and it wasn't because of an element of surprise. Rather, as you can see above, he slightly improved his command of both ptiches, and all three came to set one another up better than they had in the past. The latter thing happened because Edwards also moved across the rubber. He now pitches from the third-base side, where he can aim his glove-side offerings at the outer half to a righty and keep them on the plate better if he misses slightly. The change also steepens the horizontal angle he creates for opposing hitters. In fact, last year, only the Astros' Phil Maton had a higher Horizontal Approach Angle Above Average than Edwards's on a four-seamer. That's why, even as he's lost 1.5 miles per hour on everything and a couple inches of ride on the fastball, Edwards still limits hard contact well. Nothing about his primary location targets for the two old pitches has changed much. Edwards has just used that move on the rubber to create more dramatic angles with it, and the changeup (along with that slide; he couldn't have thrown an effective version of this change from the side of the mound he used to stand on) to pitch away from left-handed batters. He'll always count as thin, but Edwards has inevitably filled out a little, and between that and a bit less of the loose, extraordinary arm speed he used to have, he's found an ability to repeat his delivery better. Maybe moving along the rubber has done so, too; it helps him align and lock into certain cues in the rotation of his body and the twisting of the kinetic chain all the way through release. He's getting more extension and has ratcheted his release point even higher. Health will be a massive variable for Edwards this spring. Don't write him into the bullpen in anything but light pencil, just yet. If he does show the ability to bear up under a big-league workload again, though, Edwards has a better chance than many might have assumed to crack the roster. Lefties hammered him last year, but righties had a .484 OPS against him, the best mark of his career. He's evolved and survived, altered what he throws and how and from where, and the numbers say he's found a new, successful formula. Where do you slot Edwards as a candidate for one of the few ostensibly available spots in the Cubs' relief corps? Are you excited to have him back this season, for either real or purely nostalgic reasons? Weigh in below. Research assistance provided by TruMedia. View full article

The key to Cody Bellinger's 2023 resurgence was a profound change in approach, which yielded a huge decrease in his strikeout rate. One essential question around his free agency has been: Is that sustainable? Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports When he first came up, Cody Bellinger could both hit for power and make contact at a fairly high rate. From 2017 through 2020, he posted a 21.5% strikeout rate (lower than the league average for that span) and a .274 isolated power number, well above the league average. That's a rare and special combination, and it made Bellinger a rare and special hitter. During this period, he won the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year Award; MVPs of both the 2018 NLCS and the 2019 National League; and a World Series ring, which he helped make possible by hitting .243/.378/.595 combined in the NLDS and NLCS in 2020. We all know what happened next. Bellinger had such an atrocious 2021 and 2022 that the Dodgers cut him loose after the latter campaign. During that span, his ISO crashed down to .162, and his strikeout rate spiked to 27.1 percent. These numbers obviously don't tell the whole story, even if they gesture toward the series of injuries that hampered Bellinger over those years, but they give us the spine of something. In 2023, with the Cubs, Bellinger batted .307/.356/.525, and while neither his batted-ball data nor his ISO was quite as impressive as at his early-20s peak. his strikeout rate was better than ever. He fanned only 87 times in 556 plate appearances, which comes out to 15.7 percent. In his career before 2023, he'd had an average strikeout rate of 23.2 percent, so in 556 trips to the plate, you'd expect him to punch out 129 times. Compared to his career norms, he trimmed 42 strikeouts from his expected figure. (If you'd like to factor in the fact that he walked less often, too, and thus actually put 64 more balls in play than expected, you're at your leisure. We're only focused on how many fewer strikeouts he generated than was expected, be it by walking, hitting, or desperately tossing the bat backward to create catcher interference.) That 42 number matters, because back in early 2022, Bill James did a very quick-and-dirty study for his website, BillJamesOnline. Until late last year, James ran that site for many years (with fluctuating levels of help and collaboration) and churned out a largely unsung second act's worth of good sabermetrica, after getting very famous for his first act's worth of (mostly offline) material. Anyway, at the prompting of a reader, James sat down and studied how hitters (like Matt Olson, who had effected a huge drop in strikeout rate in 2021, relative to his first few seasons in the big leagues) follow up after they drastically reduce strikeouts from an established career level. James found 126 hitters who had a season in which they struck out at least 35 fewer times than would have been expected, based on their career strikeout rates. That's one of the lovely James hallmarks, using a raw number of expected strikeouts conserved, rather than leaning on rates. It hearkens to his early days of exploring this realm, when rates were essentially unavailable and (given the state of home computer technology at the time) unforgivably laborious to calculate en masse. James worked in very simple mathematical terms, often because he had no choice, and he got so used to it that even in 2022, he was still speaking a simpler and more direct numerical language than the one we've embraced online these days, even though he understood and used those more Excel-friendly tools as needed. It didn't just elucidate his study; it also strengthened it. Hitters with greater volume in a given season had a greater chance to cut away the requisite number of expected strikeouts than those with less playing time. Of those 126 hitters, James found, 116 had a lower strikeout rate after that season than they had had in their careers prior to the punchout plunge. The study took the actual season of that huge change out of the equation, in other words, and still found a lasting effect on the player's strikeout avoidance skills. James admitted a certain measure of awe in that rate of "success," or staying power, north of 90 percent. I share it. That's a stunning finding. So, going forward, we should expect Bellinger to hold onto a substantial portion of his newfound contact skills. He might not--in fact, he probably will not--run a 15.7-percent rate going forward, but he's likely to come in south of his 23.2-percent norm. He's a guy who makes contact at an above-average rate, now. That's real, and it should stick around for him, even over the life of a long-term free-agent deal. Maybe we can also draw some intrigue from the pattern Olson followed, after James performed that study. Prior to 2021, Olson had fanned in 26.1 percent of his plate appearances in the big leagues, and he was a tremendous slugger, with a .254 ISO. In that 2021 campaign, he brought the strikeout rate down to 16.8 percent, but in the two seasons played since then (and since the study that offseason), he's bounced back toward his previous norm: 23.8 percent. That's still a non-negligible improvement upon his previous rate, though, and here's the thing: Olson's ISO in those two seasons with Atlanta has soared to .279. I doubt that Bellinger will get all the power that made him the league's MVP half a decade ago back. I doubt he'll remain one of the dozen best contact hitters in the game. Given James's quick study and its extremely convincing results, though, it's reasonable to believe that Bellinger will still be a good contact hitter for several more years. This is far short of being the kind of thing that justifies paying a player $200 million, but it should slightly bolster your belief in Bellinger. It's a good time to share it, too, because James recently shared on Twitter that he had a stroke. He's a complicated figure, as firebrands all eventually become, but after shuttering his site last year and with his 75th birthday happening this year, we're running out of chances to celebrate James's foundational importance to the sport and its close observation. How much store do you set by Bellinger's improved contact rate last year? Do these data make you any more confident about the staying power of his array of recent adjustments? Check out the study here for more information. View full article

There's little the Cubs can do to force the hand of Scott Boras, so another week might drift by as we all fret the decisions of his top-tier clients. Jed Hoyer and company could add a few low-level pieces while they wait, though. Image courtesy of © Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs have a mild roster crunch, but they're not short on money to spend. While the likes of Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman ponder their choices, Chicago could decide to plug a few smaller holes (or reinforce a few sag points) and bolster the clubhouse. Eddie Rosario, OF Everyone's assumption has been that Jed Hoyer's comments last month about the team's focus on adding bats who can handle right-handed pitchers were merely coded references to Bellinger. For a moment, though, let's take him at his word--firstly, by taking seriously the 's' at the end of 'bats' in his remark. If the team would like to add another batter who hits righties even on top of Bellinger (or Chapman), Rosario is the kind of under-the-radar name who might fit. In 2023, the free-swinging outfielder hit .258/.305/.457 against northpaws. That was with Atlanta, and whatever they had going on, it's probably not terribly wise to assume it will come with him to a new destination. Rosario is an underrated and established hitter, though. Go all the way back to 2019, and his line against righties is pretty much the same: .255/.298/.467. You have to protect him from lefties, and he's not a plus in the field, but nor is he unplayable in the corner spots. At 32 and with a good personality to inject into a clubhouse, Rosario has a bunch of value as a complementary player on a low-dollar, one-year deal. If the Cubs could be more confident that Pete Crow-Armstrong is going to man center field all year, they could more easily move on from Mike Tauchman. As it is, they need him as a contributor, and it's a bit tough to fit both him and Rosario on the roster. In all likelihood, Rosario would take the spot of one of Miles Mastrobuoni, Nick Madrigal, or Patrick Wisdom. Thus, in a sense, this is most plausible if the team signs Chapman, rather than Bellinger. In either case, though, he could have tactical value. Keeping Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki fresh will be important in 2024, and shielding Christopher Morel from righties against whom he matches up badly is imperative. Brandon Crawford You'd sign Rosario partially for the vibes, but partially, too, for the juice in his bat. You'd sign Crawford mostly for the vibes, because he's one of the more respected players in baseball, but you'd also sign him for his glove. This would be a much simpler substitution, roster-wise: signing Crawford would come at the direct expense of Mastrobuoni. He'd become the backup middle infielder, an occasional third baseman against right-handed starters, and a late-game defensive sub, as well as a leader who would mesh gorgeously into an intense, winning-focused clubhouse. Crawford is at an age where retirement is an inevitable talking point, and his offensive numbers the last two years have only forced that conversation to get louder. However, teams have shown some interest this winter, and Crawford is reportedly open to moving to second or third base. To find a job just about anywhere in MLB, at this point, he'll need to be ok not only with changing positions, but with changing roles. If he does prefer that to retirement, though, the Cubs should stay on his agent's call sheet. Jake Odorizzi Though only 34 years old, Odorizzi was out of baseball last season. He's looking to make a comeback, though, and he's the type of short-outing starter (with the option to swing into relief work and be valuable there, too) with whom Craig Counsell has had great success in the past. His four-seamer no longer has quite the elite ride it once did, but Odorizzi learned to pitch with some wiggle later in his career, and his splitter remains a great weapon. It might not even take a guaranteed roster spot to lure Odorizzi, who's a Midwestern boy and very much enjoyed his stop in Minnesota a few years ago. On a minor-league deal that pays north of $2 million if he makes the roster, and/or one that gives him an opt-out in the middle of March should he not find a clear path to the big leagues with the Cubs before then, he could make a lot of sense for the Cubs. Hoyer and Carter Hawkins have admirably addressed the overall pitching depth, but one more compelling name in the mix would boost everyone's confidence a bit. What do you think of these three names? Can the Cubs keep shopping while they wait to hear more about their top targets? Who else would be on your list? View full article

Yup. I can't remember what my moment of revelation on those lines was, but a few years ago. I tried to tell people at the time of the Taillon signing that if that deal was predicated on him continuing to be a mid-rotation guy with a balanced skill set, it was fine, but that if it was predicated on him going into the Pitch Lab and coming out some kind of Darvish clone, it was bad. Haha. And certainly I wouldn't give Smyly even one more dollar today than before I dug into all this. I find these kinds of dives interesting just because of what they can teach us about pitching, plus what I said to @Irrelevant Dude: He wants and intends to start, so let's make sure we know what him succeeding in that endeavor would look like. TYLER CHATWOOD! That was my "pitch design isn't a panacea" moment. Lol. And it was a painful one.

Heh. That's fair; it's a big bite. I will say, unless he's traded, Smyly is going to come to camp looking to fight and scrap for the chance to start. We might as well acquaint ourselves with the things that would have to happen for that to pan out.

In recent days, the Cubs have taken a couple concrete steps to upgrade their bullpen, especially in its ability to get out left-handed batters. What could that mean for their most expensive reliever, who began last year as a starter and wants to be one again? If he brings these new toys to camp, he deserves a serious look in the rotation, even if it means sending Wicks back to Iowa for a bit or trading away someone like Assad or Wesneski. Those guys could help the Cubs get better in other areas, and Smyly (while unlikely to have much trade value, given his salary and last year's numbers) might be a diamond in the rough, for the third or fourth time in his career. What do you think, pitching people? Is it too crazy to dream on a restored Smyly as a starter in 2024? Is there hope for the splutter? Research support provided by TruMedia. View full article

I'm not good with grand gestures. I just wrote "I'm Sorry!" in gasoline in this parking lot. Will someone please hand me a match? This, then, is my mea culpa. I have been proven about as wrong as wrong gets. I think there were sound elements to my thought process at the time--Collier was young for his class, the son of a big-leaguer, and an advanced hitter for a prep infielder; Lee was extraordinarily polished, and more toolsy than most college shortstops; pitchers really are pretty risky, and Horton was unusually unproven for such a high pick at his level and position--but I got it very wrong, and the Cubs' scouting department (under Dan Kantrovitz, with the oversight of Jed Hoyer) got it almost unbelievably right. Friday night, MLB Pipeline unveiled their Top 100 prospects list, and Horton ranked 26th. That's been more or less his exact position on each of the major global rankings issued so far. Admittedly, Lee is a few spots higher, but Lee also signed for about $1.25 million more than Horton, so the Cubs could not have gotten Ferris if they had taken Lee instead of Horton. That's important, of course, because Ferris was the centerpiece of the trade that brought the Cubs Michael Busch, who's somewhere between 50th and 75th on most of the major lists. Besides, it was Collier I really wanted them to take, and he's not even on the newly revealed list. Baseball America just ranked him 10th in the Reds system, alone. Collier still has plenty of time to get into gear, developmentally, but the Cubs are going to realize tangible, big-league benefits from their choice in 2024, which the Reds certainly won't be able to do. If he stays healthy, Horton will pitch in the majors this season. Busch is likely to be the team's Opening Day first baseman. Horton and Ferris were a master stroke from Kantrovitz, who took over the Cubs' scouting department just a few months before the world stopped and surely didn't feel like he got to make decisions outside the long shadow of COVID until early 2022. There are still plenty of ways for it to turn south, but a year and a half after a draft is a good time to evaluate it. That's when you have a sense of the validity of the decisions that were made at the time, because they have translated either into big-league value or the expectation thereof, be it by studying much more complete and precise scouting reports or top prospect lists, or because the players involved have actually reached MLB, or because they've been traded for other players. Right now, in a sweet spot for discerning the quality of those choices, the Cubs look incredibly smart. If things pan out as they now have a right to hope, the Cubs might get the long-term ace of their rotation and a staple of their lineup for half a decade out of the choice to pass on Lee or Collier in favor of Horton and Ferris. No matter how much I believe in the practice of targeting tooled-up college hitters or extra-young, talented high-schoolers, I have to acknowledge that the team's scouting staff (and the player development folks who brought along Horton and Ferris for a year and a half after the selections were made) got this absolutely right. If the Cubs are able to claw their way out of a frustrating period of failure and become the perennial powerhouse they ought to be in the NL Central, we might well look back at the 2022 Draft as the moment that things turned sharply for the better. How did you feel about taking Horton at the time? Are you a believer in Horton and/or Busch as 2024 difference-makers? Just how big a dope am I? Feel free to answer any of these below. Just keep in mind: I still have all that gas splashed across the concrete. View full article

As the Cubs cast a wide net in their search for a left-handed bat to bolster their lineup, they might need to consider switching away from the big-name free agents and focusing on a trade alternative. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports It's impossible to sugarcoat this: Ryan Noda swings and misses at a catastrophic rate. He whiffed on nearly 37 percent of his swings last season, in his first exposure to the big leagues. Of the 362 batters who came to the plate at least 200 times last year, only eight had a lower contact rate. Noda, 27, struck out 34 percent of the time. It's why it took him so long to get a big-league look, and it's an ongoing threat to his viability as a hitter. You can find many examples of a grooved swing in the modern game, but few are clearer or more glaring than Noda. When the ball isn't in the meaty part of the strike zone, he usually doesn't even touch it. That's the bad news, and it's pretty bad. Again, this is a player who just broke in last year, on the wrong side of his 27th birthday, with the worst team in baseball. On the other hand, there's good news. When Noda connects, the ball goes. He ranks highly not only in average exit velocity, but in the 90th-percentile exit velo, too. He lifts the ball, but not the way many fly-ball guys do, where pop-ups or lazy, high flies become a problem. Noda's swing is designed to hit high, hard line drives, and when he connects, he does just that, at a high rate. Put the good and the bad together, and you have a volatile but valuable profile. Noda hit .229/.364/.406 last year, and his power numbers were dampened by playing his home games in Oakland. That uninspiring raw line was good for a 123 wRC+. That's eerily similar to the 119 put up by Christopher Morel, and akin to some optimistic projections for Michael Busch. Noda, like Busch, is an escapee of the Dodgers system, where there was never going to be room for him in the lineup. As he proved after being a Rule 5 draftee, though, not being good enough to crack the Los Angeles lineup doesn't mean you're not good enough to crack any of several others throughout the league. Noda's only viable defensive positions are first base and left field, but he acquits himself in each spot, and he's a credible DH, with all that power and the discipline not to expand his strike zone. Adding Noda wouldn't cure what ails the Cubs, per se. They'd move from one slightly uncomfortable, highly fluid state on offense to another. They'd have to move pieces around constantly, to get Noda, Busch and Morel the amount of playing time each deserves, while also shielding each from bad matchups. If what they want is a hitter who will punish right-handed pitching, though, Noda is a good candidate. Why, then, would the A's trade him? In short: he's of no use to them. Noda turns 28 in March. The A's will be moribund for the balance of his prime, and holding onto anyone with trade value who won't be good five years from now is a fool's errand for them. Instead, they could ask for any of a handful of young players who might have bigger warts or be further from helping the team, but who won't age out of their usefulness before the team's new park in Las Vegas gets built. The Cubs have money to spend, and in addition to Cody Bellinger, guys like Brandon Belt and Joey Votto remain available. Already, though, Jed Hoyer has shown a greater appetite for moves that yield long-term value at lowish costs than for those that come with less risk but an exponentially higher price tag. Noda might be in the sweet spot. Would you give up anything of consequence to mix Noda in with the Cubs' existing power hitters? Can they afford to wait on a slow-thawing market for left-handed thump? Let's kick around the options. View full article

It's one of those places where, as we get a ton of insight into the game over time, the lines between "luck" and "real phenomenon that still might not repeat itself even if not actively adjusted" become blurry. I don't think Swanson got unlucky in 2023. He miiight have gotten a bit lucky in 2022. There were real tradeoffs involved in some of the adjustments he made last year, and this looks to be one of them, to me. That doesn't mean he won't lock right back in, with a winter's unconscious reset of everything. So, we'll see. You're right, he's certainly earned his keep so far. I'm not as sure as you are that I'd rather have him than Bogaerts or Turner, but they did get so much more money and so much longer deals than his that it probably washes out even if you think either or both of them are slightly better, and more than washes out if you think he's right on their level. Comparing him to Correa, at this point, is almost impossible. Talk about two vastly different career paths.

The Cubs can have relatively few complaints about the player to whom they committed themselves for seven years last winter. He had a great first season on the North Side. There's just this one thing... Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports In his final two seasons with Atlanta, Dansby Swanson crushed the ball in the middle third of the plate. In what seems to be the best-maintained environment for hitters in all of baseball, Swanson stayed locked in on doing damage when pitchers were in the middle of the plate, and he rarely missed. Of the 261 hitters who took at least 600 plate appearances in 2021 and 2022 combined, Swanson had the 25th-highest wOBA on pitches in the middle third. Obviously, hitters are good in that area, even on average. They batted .292/.312/.527 on those pitches across the two campaigns. To stand out in that crowd, then, you have to put up huge numbers. Swanson did, batting .328/.351/.634 in 441 plate appearances that ended on pitches in that area. His batted-ball data was all markedly above-average, although he had to trade a bit of contact to generate that high-quality damage when he did connect. It was the right kind of tradeoff. In 2023, that part of Swanson's game fell on hard times. He ranked 216th of 293 batters with at least 300 plate appearances on middle-third wOBA, with a .252/.287/.447 line. He chased a little more, whiffed a little more, hit the ball a little less hard, and lifted the ball a little less, and it all added up to a 50-point dip in BABIP and a loss of about .130 in isolated power. He made up for some of that shortfall in other areas, as evidenced by the similar overall numbers he put up (a 107 DRC+ in 2023, compared to 110 in 2022; a 104 wRC+, compared to 116 the previous year), but the deficiency was real. Swanson really only did significant damage on the inner third of the plate in 2023, whereas in 2021 and 2022, he had been able to cover the whole strike zone in a dangerous way. Some of that is about approach. Notedly, Swanson became more patient at the plate in 2023, which is part of how he made up for doing less damage on contact. With his selectivity came a slightly deeper contact pont; he met the ball later in its flight most of the time. However, there's also a mechanical aspect to analyze here. Let's look at a couple videos of Swanson putting a hard swing on the ball in the middle third of the plate. First, from 2023: QnZHcTVfVjBZQUhRPT1fRHdSV0JRWlZBZ0VBWFZNSFZnQUFWMUplQUZsV0FsQUFDZ2NOQlFJQ1VsQUhVZ3BX.mp4 And then from 2022: T1pkQUdfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUZKU1VRWlFBZ29BV1FOVFV3QUFCMU1GQUFNQ0JWa0FCQU5UQkFJQ1VBVlVVbGNF.mp4 Compare Swanson's swings on these offerings--especially his lower half. In his final season in Atlanta, he was doing what the Braves do best: attacking the ball with ferocious intent. Yet, he didn't overstride, or get so deep into his legs that he had to come back up as he swung. His barrel got under the ball enough to lift it, but his foundation stayed under him the whole time, so there was no wasted motion or energy. In 2023, he's doing a lot of the same things, but the stride gets slightly overlong on him, and he does sink deeper into his legs, forcing him to come back up as he's swinging. He meets the ball cleanly, but without as much authority, and it dies shy of the track in left-center field. Now, here's a swing on which Swanson did all of those 2022 things, but from 2023: cThrUnZfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdGVEJsMVZVbFFBQVZZS1VRQUFBd0FEQUFBQ1dnY0FVVmNOQ1F0WFZ3TlFCRlpW.mp4 We can talk a bit about pitch selection here. Bailey Falter sped up Swanson's bat in an 0-2 count with a fastball, and missed his spot pretty badly. Angel Perdomo, by contrast, threw almost as hard on the pitch that induced a lazy fly out, but it was a changeup. That helps explain why Swanson's stride got longer and his hips lower on the pitch he wasn't able to crush. This is part of why Swanson has always hit fastballs well and offspeed stuff less so. Still, that slight mechanical change is telling, because it's why Swanson was still good at attacking the inside pitch this past year, but struggled with stuff down and out over the plate. When a pitcher comes inside on you (and especially up and in, and especially with anything hard), it forces you to be shorter, quicker, and taller in your swing. That accords with what Swanson needs to do better and more consistently, anyway. As a hitter, it can be hard to trust your eyes and your strength enough to stay tall and extend your arms to generate power on pitches down and away, but for a guy like Swanson, that trust is essential. If he wants to get back to driving the ball productively even when it's not inside on him, he has to stay fresh enough and explosive enough to stay tall and still swing hard. Do you think the Cubs will get an offensive season from Swanson to match his best in Atlanta, over the balance of his contract? What other adjustments do you want to see from him this year? Let's talk hitting. View full article

The Cubs have stars in each corner outfield spot going into 2024. After trading for Michael Busch, they might well have first base locked down, too. The places to play a big, defensively limited slugger are all but gone. However, there's one minor-league bat who just might force his way into the picture, anyway. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports It's not as though Owen Caissie is a sure thing. He struck out over 30 percent of the time in Double A in 2023, a red flag consistent with the rest of his professional track record. That's why the Cubs aren't banking on him. On the other hand, Caissie hits the stuffing out of the ball. Baseball America gathered exit velocity data on all the hitters who made their Top 100 prospects list this month, and Caissie's average of 93.3 miles per hour was fourth-highest. Playing (primarily) at a higher level of competition, he matched the average exit velocity of elite prospect and top 2023 draftee Dylan Crews. Caissie batted .289/.398/.519, and his maximum exit velocity was over 117 miles per hour. That kind of power puts a player in league not just with big-leaguers, but with the best sluggers in that league. He's just a half-step behind Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. He's right in line with Joey Gallo. That's what makes Caissie too fascinating to overlook or discount, in the medium-term future. Like those hitters, he will strike out a lot, but like them, he also shows patience and a good eye at the plate. He walked over 14 percent of the time last year, at a very young age for his level of competition. (Five months younger than Crews, Caissie played the whole season at Double A.) He's not as good a pure hitter as Judge or Ohtani. The question is whether he can be as good as Gallo, because if so, he can still be tremendously productive in the big leagues. To that end, let's talk about not just how hard Caissie hits the ball, but where. Here are Caissie's spray charts for 2021 and 2022, as he ascended through the lower levels of the minors. He was a good hitter during those two years, but not a great one. In 659 plate appearances, he hit 32 doubles, two triples, and 18 homers. That's not bad, given the leagues and parks in which he was playing and his extreme youth. It's just that it wouldn't make him a viable big-leaguer, given all the strikeouts he's sure to rack up. Frankly, it's impressive that a player as young as Caissie was able to generate even fairly modest power numbers with such an opposite field-focused approach. Caissie was hitting with authority to all fields, but it's hard to hit for big power without consistently pulling the ball in the air, and he didn't do it. Let's turn to his 2023 spray chart. Now, that is more like it. That's how you have to hit the ball in order to make up for striking out over 30 percent of the time, as Caissie seems certain to do in the bigs. In about 130 fewer plate appearances than over the previous two seasons combined, Caissie had 31 doubles, two triples, and 22 homers. Without losing the ability to hammer the ball to the gap in left-center field, he started consistently elevating, and doing it to his pull field in right. Had Caissie been in MLB, his rate of pulling the ball to far right field (basically, the two rightmost sections of the charts above) would have led the league. Since he wasn't, it was Gallo who led in that category. That doesn't sound especially complimentary, but Gallo is better than his reputation. He's been wildly inconsistent since the onset of the pandemic, but he was highly effective in his early 20s, and even in 2023, he posted a 104 wRC+, with 21 home runs in 332 plate appearances. If Caissie truly had Gallo's power (including the ability to actualize it), he'd already be in the big leagues. Pulling the ball more, putting it in the air more, these are vital aspects of getting to more of an individual's power, but they aren't the whole picture, and one can't answer all the important questions about that picture without climbing above Double A and seeing some more advanced pitching. With Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Michael Busch, and Christopher Morel already on the roster, the Cubs don't have a lot of available playing time for a player like Caissie, who's only cut out to be a corner outfielder or a first baseman, if not a DH. If they re-sign Cody Bellinger, the eye of that needle will only get smaller. Caissie's already had a full season in Tennessee, though. He's on the verge of the big leagues, where he'll have to either pass or fail the test the great pitchers there will pose. If he can continue developing on the arc he described this past season, he can force his way into the team's plans sooner, rather than later. How do you think Caissie fits into the Cubs' short- and longer-term plans? Do you expect to see him make a significant impact in the big leagues this year? Discuss below. Research assistance provided by TruMedia. View full article