Matthew Trueblood

In yet another gut punch of a loss Sunday night, the Cubs' offense continued to deftly avoid the big hit like it was their ex at a mutual friend's Labor Day cookout. One member of the team has positively bolted the party every time the clutch hit even feels nearby, though, and it's a major bummer. Image courtesy of © Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports No one wants to feel badly about Dansby Swanson's first year with the Cubs. He's been awesome. He's been delightful. His defensive play at shortstop is even better than advertised, and his leadership is surely one reason why the team even reached September in position to play meaningful games. He's one of the unqualified success stories of this season. If we're going to properly diagnose this team's inability to come up with the hits they need to win close games, though, we have to talk about this: Swanson has been dreadful in important at-bats, all year. Swanson has come to the plate 81 times in Late and Close situations this year, according to Baseball Reference. (That means it was at least the seventh inning, and the tying run was at least on deck, or else the Cubs led by no more than one.) He's batted .151/.235/.192 in those situations, without a home run. He's hitting .235/.309/.378 in 110 high-leverage plate appearances. He owns a .640 OPS in innings 7-9, and he's 0-for-7 with a walk in extra innings. He's got a .660 OPS against relievers, overall. It's not fair to Swanson to pull out these numbers and blame him for the Cubs' undoing, here. After all, that might not even be what this is. It might merely be the last trial of the insanely resilient, impossibly impossible 2023 Cubs. They might roar back, lock up a Wild Card berth, and even make a run into the postseason. Nor is it likely that this says anything permanent about him as a clutch hitter. The samples here are quite small. They could change with one mighty hot streak to close the season, and if he had such a clutch heater, it would probably be the thing that put the Cubs over the top and into the playoffs. Nonetheless, these numbers (and the much more visceral reality they describe) are an important part of the story of this season, at this point. Swanson is, by far, the player on the roster in whom the team has the most invested. He wasn't brought in to anchor the offense, and his overall production has been adequate, but if we don't at least acknowledge his futility in crucial at-bats, we'll end up placing blame somewhere else--and it's likely to be somewhere even more unfair, because it will be less rooted in objective truth. Cody Bellinger hit into a devastating double play in the third inning Sunday night, but Bellinger has been the engine of the team's offense. He owns a 2.8 Win Probability Added (WPA) for the year. His at-bats have, on balance, added that many wins to the Cubs' ledger, relative to an exactly average theoretical outcome for each of them. That leads the Cubs by a wide margin. Swanson doesn't quite take up the rear in that statistical category, but it's fair to say that he keeps dubious company. Three Cubs hitters have hurt the team's Win Probability more than Swanson (-0.6) this year: Trey Mancini, Miguel Amaya, and Tucker Barnhart. Amaya's offensive struggles down the stretch have been very unfortunate, but he's a rookie playing infrequently, trying to manage the responsibilities of being a backup catcher for a contending team with a thinning pitching staff. You know what happened to Mancini and Barnhart. I can recommend adjustments, mentally and physically. Swanson pulls off the ball too often when he comes up in important situations. Trying to pull the ball and play the hero, ironically, he thwarts that very objective. I covered that aspect of things in the piece I wrote 10 days ago about Swanson's struggles. It runs deeper than just getting pull-happy, though. Swanson also seems overly aggressive, in general. He has a .631 OPS in plate appearances in which he swings at the first pitch, which is 28 percent worse than the league does when they do so, on average. When he takes the first pitch, his OPS is .812--21 percent better than average. Yet, he swings at 33.5 percent of first pitches, which is solidly higher than the league average. He needs to take a more patient tack. Even if he falls behind on called strikes, he might get a better look and a better idea of how to square up the next pitch. The payoff of early-count swinging for him this season has been miserable, so he needs to adjust. Neither of those changes are as easy to make as they are to prescribe, though, and even if he made them, he might be no better off. A lot of this is bad luck, or at least bad luck frosting on a cake made of imperfect process. There's no easy five here, and there's no value in vilifying the man who every Cubs fans hopes has another half-decade of fruitful time in Wrigleyville ahead of him. It just has to be out there. The Cubs keep losing, and inarguably, this is a significant reason why. View full article

Look at the featured picture for this post. There's over 3,000 games of MLB experience in it. There are four very tired legs (for different reasons), and two very good players doing their desperate best to win a crucial ball game. It's a sad photo, for Cubs fans, but there's a lot of pride there. Image courtesy of © Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports Evan Longoria will have to stick around somewhere for one more season, if he wants to eclipse 2,000 regular-season games in the big leagues. Saturday night was his 1,983rd, but he's been a part-time player for the last three years, and he entered this contest only late, as a pinch-hitter. He hasn't appeared in even 100 games since 2019, before the pandemic hit. He was, a few moments before Gabriel Moreno stroked a single to right field, seen taking his lead off second base, still kicking his legs and flexing his feet the way men of a certain age do when they need to summon their best speed but know they have a few muscles left to wake up. Yan Gomes has been around almost as long as Longoria, but was never an everyday player. (Longoria was one for, more or less, a decade.) He was playing his 1,074th career game, and 106th this year. As of last night, he's now played in more games and taken more plate appearances in 2023 than he had in any season since 2018. He'd caught all 13 innings of this seesaw game. He couldn't have kicked his legs even the way Longoria was doing, if he tried. Baseball, as it often does, saw these two old men (as the game sees anyone in their mid-30s) at its diamond's two magnetic poles and decided to bring them together. The ball was hit hard enough by Moreno to create a chance for a play at the plate, but Seiya Suzuki's throw was to the wrong side of home plate. Longoria, with all the speed that has allowed him to steal zero bases since the start of 2022, hurtled toward Gomes. Gomes collected the ball and dove across the dish. His play was as good as it could have been. It was, Cubs fans have to fear right now, like the performance of his whole team that night, and down the stretch of this harsh season: his honest best, but not good enough. Longoria got his hand in. The Buddhists say that the source of all suffering is desire. They weren't alone in discovering this, but they have a knack for putting things clearly. The Stoics knew the same thing. The idea that we suffer primarily because we have the capacity and the tendency to want things has nestled at the center of many literary works over the years. Alexandre Dumas put these words under the pen of his protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo: Why did Saturday night's loss hurt so badly, four and a half numbing hours after the game began? It wasn't the Cody Bellinger would-be home run that sailed just foul. It wasn't the uncalled hit by pitch that changed one of the Cubs' extra-inning rallies (another bit of Bellinger misfortune). It wasn't the fact that Hayden Wesneski almost had the game won, only to take a line drive off his upper back that then fell into no-man's land on the infield. It wasn't even the maddening inability of the Cubs offense to find its gear and to cash in opportunities over this last fortnight, a stretch that now represents a life-or-death crisis to their resilient, contending team. No, it was the fact that the team has come this far. It was the fact that this team, which seems to have survived so much and come together so much and maybe (if you believe in this sort of thing, and if you're a little naive about baseball's inescapable cruelty) even earned so much, has led us all to want something. They've made a playoff berth (and briefly, though no longer, even a division title) seem possible. They've altered the states with which we're comparing their present one, and in the comparison lies suffering. A Buddhist Cubs fan might think to nickname Moreno "Desire." It seems like everywhere the Cubs have turned when they've needed an out or a base over the last 10 games, they've found Moreno instead. He's thrown out runners from behind the plate, and he's piled up hit after damaging hit in the batter's box. That he was the one to land the winning punch in the halfhearted slugfest at the end Saturday night only seems fitting. That William Contreras had a game-changing home run Friday night for the Brewers, as they all but sealed the division crown, underscores something that lurks at the edge of one's consciousness with Moreno, too: Both of those guys changed teams this winter. Both were had at trade prices the Cubs could have afforded. Gomes has been great, but he's running out of old man magic, and the other half of the catching position has been lousy all year. It’s hard not to watch Longoria beat him to the plate and reflect that the Diamondbacks only needed Longoria for a moment at the end of this game, whereas the Cubs badly needed Gomes all the way through it. The Diamondbacks’ rookies are better than the Cubs’. The Diamondbacks’ deadline additions are better than the Cubs’. That’s why, even though the Cubs’ core might be stronger and better than the Diamondbacks’, Arizona keeps winning these games. Again, though, we're just comparing one state to another, there. It's in the desire that the suffering lies. Still, for all the bad juju and the bad vibes and the scary standings screenshots, it's not over. The Cubs have 13 games left, and at this moment, they remain in playoff position. It's down to a half-game lead on two teams against whom they do not hold the tiebreaker, and one full game on another one, but they do cling to their position. This is already the most resilient team in Cubs history, for my money. Alas, they look like they've run out of magic--and really, out of energy. With Michael Fulmer returning to the injured list Saturday, his season seems surely over. The Cubs are scrambling to cover innings. Three-fifths of their Opening Day rotation (Marcus Stroman, Drew Smyly, and Hayden Wesneski) appeared in relief last night. They can't find the clutch hit, or the clutch out. They don't seem utterly overmatched. They're not falling apart quite the same way the 2001 Cubs or the 2018 Cubs or the 2004 Cubs did. This is a collapse with its own character. They're just slightly tired, and a hair too thin, and they're also relentlessly unlucky. Yet, it can all still change. There's a vital corollary to the Dumas quotation above. The next sentence the Count wrote to his dear friend, who had known such pain and loss in his life, was this: "He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness." After Sunday, the Cubs don't have to see Gabriel Moreno anymore. They have one last home stand, and then a road trip against two teams who shouldn't have much for which to play. If there's one thing they've surely earned this year, it's the benefit of the doubt, while any hope remains. View full article

The Cubs' would-be Cy Young contender pitched four gorgeous, scoreless innings in the biggest game of the team's season Friday night. It's just that he also pitched two other, snakebitten ones. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports It's mid-September, and every MLB player is tired. Justin Steele, 28, is not unusually tired. He's not folding under the pressure of this pennant race or cracking under a workload he's never borne in a single professional season before. Steele pitched six innings against the Diamondbacks Friday and averaged higher velocities on each of his two key pitches than the numbers he's posted for the season. His slider wasn't quite as sharp as usual, and that turned out to be a fatal shortcoming, but those nights happen, as surely as do the great days when everything's working and 12 Giants shrink to ants as they trudge back to the dugout, bats in hands. A pair of three-run home runs felled the Cubs, both off of Steele. One came in the first inning, and one in the sixth. One came off the fairly thunderous bat of Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. The other came off pesky lefty speedster Alek Thomas. There should be important differences between the two, and there are a couple. There should be some narrative that we can weave--some tale of woe and incompetence, or at least of noble but doomed struggle against mounting weariness--but there really isn't. As best I can surmise, no one is at fault for these. They just happened. The other guys live in nice houses, too. I was frustrated with the first home run. It felt like a lapse from Steele and Yan Gomes, after a two-out walk to Christian Walker on which Steele's cutter wouldn't obey him and missed on every side of the strike zone, four times in a row. The first-pitch slider to Gurriel seemed like a get-me-over, when what he needed was to shrug off the rough walk and rediscover the feel for that cutting heater. It really, wasn't a bad pitch, though. That's a little higher than you'd like the slider to be, and it hummed in at 84 miles per hour, so it was a bit firmer than usual for Steele. A little bit of the burbling frustration and (perhaps) nervousness of that moment leaked into it. Still, it's not a pitch that begs to be hammered. Gurriel seemed to be sitting all over it. That was the real problem. Maybe, based on the fact that Steele had missed so badly with four straight heaters, Gurriel knew to switch up his approach in the moment. Based on the information Steele had on him, though, it was a fair guess that he would do well by starting him with the breaking stuff. Gurriel had seen 31 first-pitch breaking balls from lefties this year before that pitch, swung at only eight of them, and come up with zero hits. Nor was Steele falling into some predictable pattern. Only 42 percent of his first pitches to righty batters with runners on this year have been sliders. Gurriel does find most of his over-the-fence power against southpaws on the softer stuff, but in that situation, it was the single Steele and Gomes really wanted to avoid. Gurriel hammers fastballs off lefties, low on trajectory but high on exit velocity, so they went with the pitch that had a chance to buy them a strike and open things up. They got burned. If Gurriel guessed right because of the previous at-bat or the knowledge that they'd want not to let him line a single off a fastball, then he earned that homer. The shortest answer, though, is that that was a tough matchup, and Steele caught a bad break. The Thomas homer deserves a bit more of a raised eyebrow, perhaps. It, too, came with two outs, and right after a maddeningly perfect opposite-field single by Gabriel Moreno, on a fine pitch. Tommy Hottovy had come to the mound to reset things, but Steele still looked upset afterward. This time, he made a genuine mistake, and Thomas punished it, relatively underpowered though he is. Was it a mistake to try for a slider on the outside corner, though, or did Steele just miss, near the end of a cursed outing in a hard final month of a long season? Again, it looks like the latter. Thomas has a bit of a slider-speed bat, so you can always make the case for hammering away at him with the heat, but Steele doesn't have even average heat in the first place. Overpowering guys, at least speed-wise, is not his game. On the outer edge of the plate, that pitch probably gets the ground ball Steele was seeking, and ends the inning, keeping the Cubs in the game going into the final act of the drama. It was two first-pitch sliders--no gathering drama, no at-bat in which a cue or a call was missed or in which Steele gave in, however begrudgingly. The Diamondbacks seemed to sit on his slider in his last start against them, and got virtually nothing from it. They seemed to sit on it again Friday night, and this time, they were rewarded. They whiffed on six of their 15 swings, but all of those swings were exceptionally aggressive. This isn't how almost anyone thinks of baseball luck. Luck is the bad bounce, the bad call, the untimely gust of wind or the rainout when your ace is scheduled and everyone's bat is hot. Luck is a blooper landing between three good defenders, not a 411-foot home run. Yet, sometimes, luck is absolutely that last thing. If it's true that an eighth of an inch on the bat can be the difference between four bags and a pop-up, Steele was an eighth of an inch from getting out of two jams. The Diamondbacks' runs are not in any sense unearned; they were won by great swings. Still, all the numbers and the matchups say Steele could have gotten away with it. Maybe he even should have. He just didn't. Every now and then--and especially, perhaps, when you're a team that got so hot in the summer that it was possible to almost forget how bad you were in the chilly spring--the baseball gods flick your ear with a fair-and-square thumping, instead of leaving any way for you to squirm out of the responsibility. Steele made mistakes. Not all mistakes were punished, but these were, and now he's out a Cy Young shot, and his team is suddenly under threat in the playoff hunt. The Cubs got consolation, at the end of the game. Marcus Stroman's return from the injured list was not exactly triumphant, given the score, but he looked terrific. If he's a force the rest of the way, the thinness of the relief corps will feel less dire. The team cracked three home runs in the ninth inning to tighten a loose game and force Paul Sewald into the game. Maybe that will pay off in the final two contests of the series, which they now need to win badly. Still, that kind of succor is hollow at this time of year. Every win is precious, and every loss is sawtoothed. Steele got unlucky. That's the bone-rattling truth of it. You can get beaten at just the wrong times, halfway by accident, and it can be curtains for that night, when the team needed the win so badly you all tasted the adrenaline in the backs of your mouths the moment that first home flew out of the park. Keep calm, and win the weekend. That's the attitude the team needs. Alas, it's not as simple as saying it. Bad luck, like a threatened snake, can strike twice. The Cubs have to play better, and they have to get luckier, and they're running out of time to get both of those forms of relief. View full article

There are only 15 games left in the 2023 Chicago Cubs' regular-season schedule. They'll need to win 10 or more to take the NL Central, and at least eight to comfortably make the playoffs. Aligning their starting rotation will be key. Image courtesy of © Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports It feels as though injuries are threatening the depth of the Chicago roster almost everywhere, with Adbert Alzolay and Jeimer Candelario hitting the injured list this week. At the moment, though, the team has established a certain level of stability in their starting rotation. This weekend, they'll send Justin Steele, Kyle Hendricks, and Jordan Wicks to the mound for three games against the Diamondbacks. If they reach the Wild Card Series, in a perfect world, they would start those three guys again, in that order. Between this series and that theoretical one, though, there lurks a lot of important and high-stakes baseball. Three off days jammed into the final two and a half weeks makes things much simpler, because the team can afford to do exactly what the moment seems to demand: skip Javier Assad for one turn and delay his next start until next weekend, against the Rockies. Because of the day off on Monday, Steele can come back on regular rest after just three games, next Wednesday. That gives the team the choice to skip either Assad or Jameson Taillon, who would be the starters for the first two games of that series against the Pirates at Wrigley Field if the rotation were uninterrupted. It's important to skip one of them, because that sets up Steele to pitch the following Tuesday in Atlanta, with an eye toward having him available for a potential Game 162 start on the final Sunday of the season in Milwaukee. Much-maligned though he's been all year, Taillon has pitched better lately. He frequently gets unlucky, and doesn't seem to respond well to those instances of adversity, mentally. However, he still gives the team a chance to win almost every time he takes the mound, and his outing last Friday against Arizona showed what can happen when that bad break never happens. By contrast, Assad has given up a scary amount of hard contact in each of his last two starts, and while he competed impressively and worked out of trouble several times across those two contests, he ultimately came apart in Colorado. If he's just giving up sharply-hit balls, the team's elite defense has a chance to absorb the damage, but his control abandoned him this week. A break (during which he could still be available for an inning or two in relief) seems in order. If Taillon starts next Tuesday and Steele goes Wednesday, it would line up Hendricks to make his final start at Wrigley Field for 2023 on Thursday evening against Pittsburgh. Then, Assad could slide back into the rotation on Friday, giving Wicks an extra day before he comes back Saturday. Taillon would go Sunday, and the following week, it would be Steele, Hendricks, and Wicks in Atlanta, with Assad, Taillon, and Steele lined up for the showdown in Milwaukee. If that last bit sounds unappealing, remember two things. Firstly, the Wild Card Series runs Tuesday through Thursday, right after the end of the season. That means that whoever goes Friday could be available no sooner than Game 2, and Saturday's starter would have to wait until a potential Game 3. The Cubs could flip Assad and Wicks and have the latter lead off the set against the Brewers on that Friday, to set the tone for the series, but it's possible that the Cubs will be staring at a potential Wild Card Series in the same venue, against the same team. Keeping the Brewers from getting a look at Wicks before the playoffs, if feasible, would be desirable, and anyway, the Cubs have to win their series in Atlanta in order to have a chance to catch Milwaukee. They might as well use their most reliable starters in that tough environment. It might sound presumptuous to worry about hiding a pitcher for the playoffs or lining things up this far in advance, but again, the schedule brings the team both reprieve and constraints. They can get one of Steele or Hendricks four starts the rest of the way, but not both, unless they send each of them out once on short rest--which, for multiple very good reasons, they will not do. Two straight Mondays off means that Steele can't come back Monday after pitching next Wednesday, and thus, Hendricks can't pitch on the final Tuesday without displacing Steele. That doesn't mean the Cubs won't get creative with the rotation. Marcus Stroman isn't slated to return in a traditional starting role, but it seems like he's gearing up to be ready for more than a single inning of work in a game. As the schedule unfolds, the front office will gain information about the team's place in the standings. They could, for any of a few reasons, elect to add a bullpen day into this schedule somewhere, led by Stroman, Hayden Wesneski, or Michael Fulmer--or by Ben Brown, if the hard-throwing prospect can smooth out the control issues he's had in his turns as a reliever while working back from a lat injury in Triple-A Iowa. Still, the path forward looks fairly straightforward. The Cubs need wins, and their essential starters are in place. More than any miraculous arrangement or deployment of them, they need good execution from them. If they get it, they'll have at least three extra starts to map out two weeks from now. View full article

For the first six weeks of this season, the Cubs leaned on their most veteran southpaw as one of the dependable starters in their rotation. For the final (ahem) six, they might ask him to prop up their bullpen with an overhauled attack. Image courtesy of © Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports After a hot start to the season, the wheels came off for the starting version of Drew Smyly. His stuff was not nearly intense enough to get outs, once he lost the perfect command he seemed to have over most of his first 10 starts. By August, he was being shelled so severely that there was no justification left for him to be in the rotation. Belatedly, the Cubs brought up Jordan Wicks, added him to the starting group, and relegated Smyly to the bullpen. There, however, the old lefty has found rejuvenation. On Monday night, Smyly got five huge outs and took the win in the Cubs' comeback victory over the Rockies. That makes 10 2/3 innings for him since he moved to relief in mid-August (working around the foolish attempt to restore him to the rotation in Detroit later that month). In those outings, Smyly has only allowed nine hits and issued three walks, and he has 15 strikeouts. The formula is familiar, because so, too, is this transition. Smyly went from the rotation to the bullpen for the 2021 Braves, as well. That year, he made the move in September, and finished the season with 11 innings of relief work and a 1.64 ERA. Then, he worked out of their bullpen in the playoffs, too. The surface-level numbers were much uglier, but he worked 7 1/3 frames and very slightly added to their Win Probability in the games in which he appeared. Using him to soak up innings also kept Atlanta's arms fresh enough to let them complete their run to a World Series title. Back, then, Smyly went from throwing his fastball and curveball in rough parity as a starter to using his curve 60 percent of the time as a reliever. Lo, he's doing that again this year. In 2021, though, Smyly was tired, and (perhaps) not fully healthy. Thus, his fastball sat at roughly 91 miles per hour even after his move to the pen. This year, there's something else going on. That velocity spike is huge. A guy with a fastball that sits 94 and touches 95 and a curveball that sits in the low 80s is a much more intense, difficult matchup for opposing hitters. It's a game-changer. This version of Smyly doesn't need to be a mop-up man or to fill a long-relief role of any kind. Plainly, because he's been a starter and because he's already done it several times in the last month, he can get more than three outs at a time, but this Drew Smyly is a high-leverage arm. This Drew Smyly eases the pain of losing Adbert Alzolay. This version of him makes the Cubs' relief depth downright exciting, for the balance of the season and into October. Smyly might still need more rest between appearances than a typical reliever. David Ross will have to be careful to give it to him. Monday night was a perfect demonstration, though, of the fact that Smyly can shift and save a game in his reliever incarnation. The Cubs have created one last unexpected relief arm (albeit one who everyone already knew had that potential), and it couldn't have happened at a better time. View full article

Mhm. And absolutely every such petition is granted, and absolutely every team can find a player to use as that injured guy for replacement.

The Cubs' starting rotation has been anchored by veterans all season. It's clear that they want those guys to carry them. With a rookie staking his claim to a potential playoff start, though, they might not have that option. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports Monday will mark the next big test for Jordan Wicks. The slate of opponents over his first three starts in MLB (Pirates, injury-depleted Reds, Giants) has mixed in various ingredients of difficulty, but ultimately, it's been fairly soft. Wicks has mowed down all three lineups he's faced, but the Giants made a lot of early contact and had frequent traffic on the bases Wednesday. Now, WIcks has to survive at Coors Field, where rookie pitchers can get into all sorts of trouble. As far as these things go, Wicks is fairly well-positioned to find success even in the thin air in Colorado. The Rockies, after all, might be worse than any of the other three teams he's faced since being promoted to the majors. His arsenal also figures to work well against the notable effects of pitching at elevation, as he leans heavily on the changeup (a pitch whose action isn't as much diminished as that of breaking balls) and gets a lot of ground balls. He's also shown plenty of poise already, upon coming up and being asked to contribute to a contending rotation. We're now at a point where, beyond just stopping a gap and getting the team to October, Wicks has many fans hoping to see him starting games once the team arrives there. How likely is that? At first glance, I was dubious. When sketching a potential playoff pitching staff this weekend on Twitter, I left Wicks off altogether, imagining that the team might elect to shut Wicks down and go forward with their more experienced arms--including Marcus Stroman and Michael Fulmer, should they return from their injuries and join the team soon, as seems increasingly likely. The more I looked at Wicks's amateur and professional career arc, though, the more plausible I began to think it was that he might stick around in the rotation until the whole team's season is over. Innings pitched is the most familiar unit by which to measure year-over-year workload for pitchers. I prefer batters faced, because it more neatly estimates both the pitch count and the amount of real work the pitcher had to do. To cover our bases, though, let's look at both figures for Wicks, going all the way back to 2019. Here are his last five seasonal workloads, along with his age that year. 2019 (Age 19, Kansas State): 84 2/3 innings pitched, 369 batters faced 2020 (Age 20, K-St. and the Northwoods League, both seasons truncated by COVID): 46 IP, 168 BF 2021 (Age 21, K-St. and High A): 99 1/3 IP, 426 BF 2022 (Age 22, High A and Double A): 94 2/3 IP, 402 BF 2023 (Age 23, Double A, Triple A, and MLB): 108 IP, 441 BF Wicks is just now venturing past his previous career high in workload. I'm not a huge believer that year-over-year workload should dictate decision-making for most pitchers, but even granting that teams do let that color their thinking, Wicks doesn't look like a guy anyone ought to worry about very much. He's been very carefully used and prepared for this kind of opportunity. He probably could have pitched more the last two seasons to set a higher platform, but the team skipped a couple of starts this summer to ensure that if they needed him on the parent club, they'd be able to use him through the end of their season. If some indicator within his pitching data changes in a concerning way, or if he falls apart and struggles over the next two starts, we can reconsider. Right now, however, I'm inclined to say that the Cubs should be planning on Wicks as a valued member of the playoff roster, whether it be as a starter or not. Presumably, Justin Steele and Kyle Hendricks will be the first two starters in a playoff series for the team, unless they're both needed in some frantic push just to get in at the finish line of the regular season. To have any need of a fourth starter, the Cubs would need to win the Wild Card Series, which is going to be tough. That means that, at least for that first series, there's just one possible start to be doled out to Jameson Taillon, Javier Assad, and Wicks. Overall, it's Assad who has done the most to earn that shot, with his stellar work and slightly longer track record. Ross loves to demonstrate trust in veterans, though, so Taillon might have a leg up, if he pitches well the rest of the way. In all likelihood, Wicks's role on the playoff roster (at least right away) would be as a long man, getting ready almost the moment the game starts when Taillon takes the mound and coming in at the first sign of trouble. That would still be a huge moment, though, and it's an exciting victory for the team that Wicks is in position to earn it. Now. he and the team just have to finish the job, and it's Wicks who can fully restore their momentum with a strong showing Monday night. View full article

Yep, that’s the big question. I suspect he’ll play more than most are fearing but less than most hope. Haha.

I don’t think they called PCA up to sit. This is different from the Canario situation, as I noted—not least because, really, Canario didn’t have a clear role with this team. PCA does.

Correct. The restrictions on that have always been mostly a matter of minimizing shenanigans involving other teams dropping or swapping someone to you. Anyone who’s in the organization by 8/31 is playoff-eligible, and that’s not even really because of “loopholes”: the league was never trying to stop that from happening. They just wanted to stop a player acquired through some bizarre backdoor transaction in September from being eligible, and the best tool for that was the 40-man roster rule. It’s a really tangled web of rule breaking and rule changing because of weird moves over many decades, but that’s the short version.

That sound you heard was the gauntlet hitting the floor. The Cubs aren't going to coast toward the second or third Wild Card spot, and they're not going to wait and see how some struggling veterans rebound. Their future just became their present. Image courtesy of © Lily Smith/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK Jeff Passan dropped the bomb on Twitter. Pete Crow-Armstrong is really, truly being added to the Cubs roster, right in the thick of a playoff race. Presumably, the move will happen Tuesday because the Cubs face lefty Kyle Freeland Monday night. That underscores a key difference between this move and, say, the promotion of Alexander Canario back on Sept. 1. Crow-Armstrong is here to play. It might not be every day, and it might disappoint some Cubs fans to find him near the bottom of the batting order to start, but he's not getting a peek or a perk here. He's part of their plan to reach October, and to be dangerous once they get there. The obvious, immediate impact here is on the team's defense. Cody Bellinger and Mike Tauchman have been admirable, satisfying center fielders this year. Each has made a few highlight-reel plays, and they've cobbled together average defense at a position where poor fielding cost the team two full wins in 2022. That said, both are playing at their absolute maximum when they manage average defense in center. Crow-Armstrong takes things to another level. He'll steal extra outs for Cubs pitchers and stop runners 90 feet sooner at times down the stretch, even relative to Tauchman and Bellinger--though those two figure to play plenty out there, too. It will be interesting to see what the corresponding roster move is. One possibility (the cleanest and most encouraging) is that Canario will be sent back to Iowa, having gotten a taste of big-league life and a fortnight of big-league paychecks before finishing out his season in Triple A and setting himself up for the Arizona Fall League. After Jeimer Candelario left Sunday's game with back tightness, though, it's very conceivable that he could be headed for the injured list. Even if that's not the case, Candelario might need to be used more sparingly in the coming days, which would create the perfect opening for Crow-Armstrong. Nick Madrigal would, in that case, become the full-time third baseman, and Bellinger the everyday first baseman again, except perhaps against certain left-handed starters. That would open center field for Crow-Armstrong, without taking Tauchman out of the lineup; the latter could be the DH. Even if Candelario is regularly available, expect an arrangement much like that described above, with the wrinkle being that Tauchman's playing time would be constricted somewhat. The Summer of Mike Tauchman is over, it being after Labor Day and all, and while he's stayed afloat recently, a walk feels like the best possible outcome when he comes to bat of late. Crow-Armstrong can take a chunk of his playing time without the team losing much of anything offensively, even if there's an adjustment period ahead for the dynamic rookie, and as we've already said, the defensive gains will be huge. Crow-Armstrong probably won't start every day, even against righties, but he'll be out there a lot. David Ross likes his veterans, but he will also immediately spot the tactical value of this skill set on this roster. On days when Crow-Armstrong doesn't start, he'll get in often as a defensive replacement and/or a pinch-runner. His speed and his glove can both have an outsize impact, especially during this trip to the expansive outfields of Colorado and Arizona. If and when the Cubs reach the postseason, that leveraged value is redoubled. If this move doesn't get you excited, check your baseball pulse. It's not enough, on its own, to give the Cubs a majority chance of catching either the Phillies (for the top Wild Card spot) or the Brewers, but it bumps their chances, and it expresses the sense of urgency this team ought to feel--not because they won't be back next year, but precisely because they will be. View full article

Ehhh. I mean I agree completely about his potential (assuming, and this is a big and generous assumption, that they have some idea of how to shore up his command, rather than just his stuff). But I don't really agree about caring solely about bottom-line numbers. And I would argue his surface stats are especially misleading, such that trusting him with any moment that could cause them to miss the playoffs or be evicted from them would be malpractice. There might be times when there's no other choice. We saw that kind of thing happen in the 2017 playoffs. But Friday, they had other avenues, and they actively chose Cuas with virtually no safety net. I'm just arguing that that demonstrates faith he doesn't yet merit.

These days, we have great tools for noticing when a pitcher makes an interesting change. Sometimes, though, we're too quick to get excited about them. Image courtesy of © Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK When the Cubs acquired José Cuas, many were quick to notice and discuss what the team saw in him. Cuas not only brought an extreme release point and valuable movement characteristics on his fastball to the table, but had the potential to tweak his breaking ball and unlock something he never quite accessed while pitching for the Royals. The hope was that the Cubs could bring him in and get immediate help based on careful usage, but also that they could develop him into a more prominent weapon in the longer term. They've mostly managed the first objective, and they've taken some of the most important steps toward the second. Cuas has a 1.20 ERA in 15 innings as a Cub, thanks to a much higher ground-ball rate than he had with the Royals. He's only allowed one of eight inherited runners to score, though he's also bequeathed eight baserunners to other relievers, and only one of those has come home, so his ERA is somewhat deceptive. Cuas only has 10 strikeouts in 63 batters faced, though, and has walked 12 opponents. Both of those rates are miserable, and would augur big trouble ahead, absent any other information. Some fans and analysts have been excited (rather than worried), though, because they've noticed that Cuas rebuilt his slider about three weeks ago. Here's a scatterplot of his pitch movement this season, before the Cubs went to Detroit on August 20: That's when he altered his slider. Here's the plot showing his movement since that time. As you can see, there's a whole lot more movement on his revamped breaking ball. It contrasts especially nicely with his sinker. That pitch, coming from the most extreme lateral release point in baseball (no one throws from further toward third base than does Cuas), could be a nasty, bat-missing breaking ball. Between when he unveiled that new offering and when he entered Friday's game in the eighth inning, he had pitched eight innings and allowed just one run, on two hits. He earned enough of David Ross's trust, especially against right-handed batters, that Ross turned to him in that eighth inning of a tie game. In truth, though, that trust isn't yet earned. Cuas's more compelling movement is nice, but unless and until it's paired with better control and command, it's not nearly enough to make him trustworthy in that kind of situation. In those aforementioned eight innings, Cuas had only allowed the two hits, but he'd also walked four, against just four strikeouts. The limiting factor, or at least the first of them, is his inability to land that sweeping breaking ball in the strike zone. Here's where those sliders, with all that movement, have ended up since he made the adjustment. Considering just how much it moves, that pitch might occasionally draw a chase from a right-handed batter, if it's been set up by the sinker. It's not a pitch Cuas can throw at all early in counts, though. Hitters don't even have to respect the possibility of it until they see at least one strike with the fastball, or at any time when they're ahead in the count. He was actually better able to use the slider he had before. It didn't have the same extreme movement, but he could put it in and around the strike zone with reasonable frequency. An even greater problem is Cuas's utter inability to command the sinker right now. That's too many misses off the armside edge of the plate, but it also means hitters can sit on the version of the pitch that wanders too much over the white of the plate and hit it authoritatively. On Friday, that's just what happened to Cuas. On the first pitch of his outing, he threw something of a meatball to Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., who singled sharply on it. Then, to Gabriel Moreno, he showed that inability to find the strike zone that has led to so much traffic on the bases. The slider, however nasty it might be in theory, is irrelevant to Cuas's profile right now. Until he demonstrates the ability to throw strikes with the fastball, the pitch might as well not exist. Cuas still has the potential to emerge as a worthy high-leverage reliever, but that potential has not been tapped yet. Ross erred in going to Cuas with so little margin for error on Friday, and it will continue to be an error to use him in any similar spot, until they fix the command deficiency that has rendered his good raw stuff only halfway useful. Meanwhile, when faced with the temptation to get excited about a player having made an adjustment that shows up in their advanced data, we all ought to be careful not to ignore the feedback of actual results. Valuable changes are those that generate real value--not just hypothetical improvements. View full article

The Cubs are developing the terrible habit of wasting very good pitching performances. Last weekend in Cincinnati, there was little David Ross could have done to prevent that. Friday at Wrigley Field, he was the biggest culprit. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports As I've documented recently, David Ross doesn't run a bullpen quite the way most other managers do in MLB in 2023. He seems to have a flatter hierarchy and less bifurcated mentality about his relief corps, and it can be difficult to tell (from the outside) in whom he truly has faith at a given time, and how much. Recently, injuries and fatigue have made it even harder to suss out who he likes, and when he likes to use them. Exigency has dominated his decisions of late. On Friday, though, there were some rapid revelations about where he has everyone lined up, and not all of them flatter the skipper. Before we delve too deeply into that, though, let's pause to set the scene. After six innings Friday, the Cubs and Diamondbacks were tied 0-0. Zac Gallen and Jameson Taillon, half-improbably, put on perhaps the best pitchers' duel of the season to date, and neither ever truly blinked. Rather, Ross lifted Taillon, who had thrown 77 pitches in six innings, with a season-high nine strikeouts and just two baserunners allowed. He'd worked under slightly more stress than those simple facts relate, because both times that a runner had reached base, it was Corbin Carroll, and he then matriculated to third via a stolen base and a throwing error each time. Still, removing Taillon at that stage was an extremely proactive move. It's not radical, by the standards of the modern game, but it was certainly surprising. If anything, Ross has recently erred on the side of letting his starters go deeper than expected. He let Javier Assad and Justin Steele each complete eight innings within the last week, and he pushed Jordan Wicks to his failure point in Wednesday's win over the Giants. With Wicks and Steele, though, Ross had ample margin for error. With Assad, he was managing around an exhausted bullpen. This time around, he was walking a tightrope, with no runs on the board from his offense, and he had a fresh and healthy pen. (That last fact is pivotal here, and we'll soon revisit it.) He probably also remembered Taillon's outing in Detroit last month, when he had a no-hitter through five innings, and then was knocked out of the game before escaping the sixth, having allowed a grand slam to pulverize a four-run lead. In light of all that, I find no fault with the decision to turn to the bullpen early, even though I think it was a close call and am sympathetic to those who balk at that choice itself. In Taillon's stead, Julian Merryweather took the mound for the seventh, and he immediately redeemed Ross's dubious decision, punching out all three Arizona batters. It was an exciting performance--the kind of thing that first reclaims the crowd (who had been slightly confused and enervated, at first, by Taillon's disappearance), then jolts them. Merryweather was the right man for the job, if Taillon wasn't. The Cubs couldn't do anything with Gallen in the seventh, though, so the game remained tied going into the top of the eighth. When the bullpen door opened this time, it was Jose Cuas who emerged. That's when everything got fairly confused. Prior to Friday, Adbert Alzolay hadn't appeared in a game since blowing the save in the second game of last Friday's doubleheader with the Reds. That was the end of a turbulent week for the Cubs' formerly untouchable closer, and during the ensuing week of inactivity, Ross let it slip that he was dealing with something. It's become clear that the issue is as benign as that ostensibly euphemistic description would have you believe. It's only natural, and delightfully normal, for Alzolay to be dealing with some fatigue, soreness, or even tightness at this stage of a season in which he's been relied upon pretty heavily. Last year, he pitched only a small handful of innings, after a long injury rehabilitation. We don't think about reliever innings the same way we count them for starters, but they count, too. When Cuas entered the game to begin the eighth, though, a minor panic swept Cubs Twitter, and not without foundation. If Alzolay were down again Friday, with such an obvious and high-leverage slot available, it would be a full week of inactivity, and there would be no hedging or explaining it away. Just as urgently, though, if Alzolay was unavailable, it made the decision to send Taillon to the showers so soon much less defensible. As it turned out, Alzolay was available. He'd come in, in fact, to pitch the ninth. By then, alas, the Cubs trailed by a run, so it was a bit of a waste, other than as an occasion to restore his confidence and prove to everyone that he's healthy. That's because, upon entering the contest, Cuas made a mess, and Mark Leiter, Jr. was unable to clean it up. After the fact, and even in the moment, much was made of the short recent run of success Cuas has had, since tweaking his slider under the guidance of the Cubs' pitching development team. I'll have a separate piece about that tomorrow, but for now, know that the adjustment is real, but the story is much more complicated. It was also mentioned that, with three right-handed batters due to start the inning, Cuas made more sense than Leiter, who runs reverse platoon splits when his splitter is working well. Leiter's splitter was back in the arsenal Friday, but it wasn't enough to get out the pesky Carroll. Cuas had left with two runners on base and one out, and after getting one strikeout, Leiter almost got an inning-ending lineout from Carroll. The ball fell inches in front of the sliding Seiya Suzuki, though, and the lone run of the game came home. Charged with facing Geraldo Perdomo, Carroll, and Ketel Marte, Leiter got two of them, and he came excruciatingly close to getting the other. Ross was managing his bullpen in the new mold, which dictates that skippers seek out specific matchups based on handedness, pitch type, and swing paths. The argot en vogue is a "pocket"--a section of the opponent's lineup suited to that particular hurler. There's nothing wrong with using pockets as one tool for managing bullpens, especially given how many innings teams typically ask of their relievers these days. It's a valid paradigm. However, it can also be a trap. It's a product of one of the more pernicious traits of modern sport, and of modern society, which is that everything has to be justified by a sheen of optimization, and that once that sheen is in place, the elected course of action becomes unassailable. By and large, fans on Twitter shrugged at Ross's failed strategy for the late stages of the game, pointing to the pockets he picked as ones that made sense. I'm all for process over outcome, but the ability to explain a line of thinking does not perfectly justify it. Pockets aren't the only valid way to conceptualize bullpen usage, and they're not well-suited to games like Friday's, when the starter went deep (and might have gone deeper) and the full strength of the bullpen is at the manager's command. To be clear, my objection isn't particularly to saving Leiter for that pocket of the Arizona lineup. It's in entrusting to Cuas such a delicate situation, even against Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., Gabriel Moreno, and Jordan Lawlor. If Ross was deeply committed to using Leiter against the set of lefties and switch-hitters at the ends of the Diamondbacks' lineup card, he needed to be willing to use Alzolay early, and go to him to work the eighth instead of the ninth. If that sounds outlandish, because it breaks from the traditional role Alzolay has carved out in the bullpen, so be it. Pocket thinking is inconsistent with the rigidity of the closer's role. Ross could have left Taillon in for the seventh, facing Tommy Pham, Christian Walker, and Alec Thomas. That would have saved Merryweather for the righties who began the eighth, while keeping Leiter available for the lefties if needed, and then Alzolay could have worked the ninth. He could also have elected to trust Leiter against the relatively non-lethal righties, starting with a clean inning, in the eighth. The path he chose was, by any reckoning other than the hyper-modern one that seeks an objectivist refuge from criticism at the expense of better, nuanced decisions that embrace the risk of rebuke, the worst possible one. Clearly, because a data-driven adjustment has altered Cuas's profile, he's been convinced that he should trust him quite a bit. That's an error. Because the Cubs weren't able to touch Gallen, anyway, it looks like a relatively bootless transgression, but those taut, challenging games are the ones they need to win--not only to knock back rivals like Arizona and Cincinnati and keep pace with the Brewers and Phillies, but to learn how to win them if they get an opportunity to do so in October. If nothing else, there was an open lane to extending that game to extra innings, where Gallen surely would have been lifted and the Cubs might have broken through. Hopefully, Ross learned from this defeat, because the Cubs can't afford any more avoidable ones for the balance of the campaign. View full article

Sometimes, the most valuable thing in the world is a bit of self-knowledge. Knowing one's limitations is valuable everywhere, but especially in the batter's box. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs signed Ian Happ to a contract extension in April partly on the strength of the good season he had from the right side of the plate in 2022. He has always been a patient, powerful hitter from the left side, but last year, he was a more complete switch-hitter than he had ever previously showed. He hit .305/.350/.438 against southpaws last season, which was easily his strongest showing against them since his rookie season of 2017. It was certainly not the primary reason why the Cubs wanted to keep him around, but that improvement was a crucial part of the overall success that did lead the team to retain him. Here's the thing: that year was a lie. Happ himself would probably tell you so. He struck out 39 times in 137 plate appearances from the right side, and he drew just seven walks in those trips. He ran a .425 batted average on balls in play, not because he scorched the ball or took advantage of overshifted defenses, but because a .425 BABIP can happen pretty easily over the course of about 90 balls in play. Even a handful of his 12 extra-base hits weren't really him hammering a ball and finding a gap, but rather, ground balls that happened to stay fair and scoot past the third baseman. By and large, Happ has lacked power and plate discipline from the right side throughout his career. He's not a total zero, but he's the guy you slot in at the very bottom of your batting order against a lefty, not a middle-of-the-order hitter, which is what he can legitimately be as a lefty swinger. He got off to an atrocious start in this regard in 2023, too, and it looked like last year might be a welcome but ultimately meaningless blip in a career of ineptitude against lefties. He was batting .158/.256/.211 against them through May 15. Notice, though, the gap between that batting average and the OBP. That came about because Happ started taking a much more patient tack in his trips against lefties, almost right away. Certainly, that was his plan by the middle of May. Since May 16, he's hitting .243/.330/.430 off of lefties. In 125 plate appearances, he's drawn 15 walks, and he's only struck out 25 times. He's socked four home runs off of them in that time, too--twice as many as he managed in all of 2022. The secret to his newfound success isn't in what he started doing; it's in what he discontinued. Happ is just not swinging as much against lefties as he's done in the past. In his career, the only season in which he had a lower swing rate against southpaws than the 46.3 percent he's putting up this year was the shortened 2020 campaign. Very often, he's been well over 50 percent. We rarely talk about it this way, but every swing is a tiny statement of faith in oneself. On any given pitch, a swing guarantees a strike, whereas a take can get you closer to a walk and/or better able to sit on a pitch you can hit with some leverage in the count. You should only swing when you think the probabilities and payoffs of that decision make the cost worthwhile, and the worse or less often you hit the ball, the less frequently that decision makes sense. Happ has (probably not in so many words) noticed that he can’t hit right-handed, and he’s adjusted accordingly. Here's his swing rate by pitch location as a right-handed batter in 2022. Here, by contrast, is the same chart for 2023. Look at the way he's cut the plate in half. Pitchers can still get him out away, if they can locate on the outer edge. Happ will simply bet on them missing that target. He's ready to hit the ball hard if it's over the heart of the plate, and he's going to take it for a ball if it's a miss away. If they hit the corner, Happ tips his cap, because he's come to understand that his right-handed swing just can't produce anything valuable by chasing out there. Knowing what he can and can't hit hasn't led Happ to start mercilessly crushing left-handed pitching. He doesn't have that in him. His strikeout rate has plunged, though, and with a few walks to keep the line moving and a small improvement in power, he's become a competent hitter in any matchup. His expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA), based on batted-ball quality and strikeout and walk proclivities, has never been higher than .291 against lefties. That's a miserable number. An average xwOBA hovers just a little above .320. This season, though, Happ's is at .314. If he keeps this up, he'll be a perfectly cromulent third hitter in David Ross's batting orders, even in October. Speaking of matchups and of the postseason, though, that's another dimension of Happ's game that deserves a quick touch. Historically, he's been a jumpy and lousy hitter in clutch moments. In 2021 and 2022, especially, he seemed to get overanxious when he had the opportunity to come through with a big hit. This season, he's learned the value of continuing to press the rally, even if it be by leaving the big blow to the next guy. It's made him much better. Here are his swing rates and wOBA by season, when batting with the tying or go-ahead run either at bat or on base in the sixth inning or later. Ian Happ in the Clutch Season Swing % wOBA 2017 52.5 0.292 2018 44.4 0.365 2019 45.8 0.494 2020 46.4 0.254 2021 47.5 0.332 2022 49.3 0.242 2023 42.1 0.436 Obviously, Happ sometimes comes up in moments like that as a left-handed batter, facing a righty. Even in those cases, though, he's learned to be more patient than might be his wont, because it's going to help the team in the long run if he gets on base in front of Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki. It's also instructive to see that, good hitter or bad, it sometimes pays to take a more calm approach in a moment that feels anything but calm. Often, it's the pitch you lay off that earns you the mistake you turn into the killing blow. Happ has always shown an awareness of that, in general. It has tended to get away from him when the moment gets big, but this year, that's changed. Swinging dramatically less often would be a decent prescription for what ails several hitters through the league. Only certain guys are capable of it, though, and among those who have some impressive power seasons on their resume, it's understandable if ego interferes with that kind of adaptation. Happ hasn't allowed it to do so. He knows what he does well, and where he's weak, and he's doing his best to make his strengths stronger and his weaknesses less exploitable. It sounds easy not to swing, but Happ is proof that it can be both difficult and devastatingly effective. View full article