Matthew Trueblood

"We need to work on his high fives, because they're starting to hurt," said Cubs catcher Yan Gomes. If that's the biggest problem the Cubs have with regard to Adbert Alzolay, they've come a long way. The Cubs just might have a reinvented star reliever. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports It feels as though it took forever for Adbert Alzolay to matriculate from top prospect status to established big-leaguer. Inconsistency and injury conspired with the COVID pandemic to keep Alzolay in limbo until near the end of 2022. After his strong showing in the second half of last season, though, he's asserted himself even more forcefully in 2023, and this version of him feels an awful lot like a relief ace with staying power. Friday night was the third straight game in which David Ross called upon Alzolay, late in close contests. Unlike in those previous two outings, though, Alzolay took the mound this time in the middle of a very dirty inning. The Padres had runners on first and second with nobody out, and the runner on first would have been the go-ahead tally for San Diego. Instead, Alzolay got into the kitchen of Xander Bogaerts, inducing a double play. Then he struck out Fernando Tatis, Jr., thwarting the Padres' scoring chance and roaring off the mound with the minatory exuberance that is becoming his signature. He only threw six pitches, but added 0.375 in Win Probability, according to FanGraphs. That was more than the WPA he amassed even in his two-inning save against the Rays earlier this week. The fit of Alzolay's intensity, swagger, and intelligence to this kind of role has been apparent for two years now, but he got a last shot at starting during the woeful transition period of 2021. That elongated what had already been a painful process of setting him up for success in the majors. From when he first cracked prospect radars in 2017, he's been a known tinkerer--or, considered from a different angle, an unfortunate guinea pig in the Cubs' inconsistent and shifting pitching development system. He had to overcome multiple injuries, but he also had to withstand multiple changes to his repertoire. Once, he was viewed as a four-seam fastball guy, with a curveball and changeup as his best secondary offerings. That has changed several times since, but now he's firming up his pitch mix--and it's a pretty wild collection of stuff. Here's how Alzolay deployed his repertoire in 2022. Note that, functionally, he was going slider-fastball to righties, and fastball-cutter-changeup to lefties. He wasn't confident utilizing his slider against lefties, or his changeup against righties, but he was dependent on each pitch against the other type of opponent. He also didn't seem comfortable throwing the cutter against righties, and heavily favored his four-seamer over his sinker. Here's what he's doing with his mix in 2023. It's an oversimplification, but any time you visit a pitcher's Pitch Usage tables on Brooks Baseball, it's a good idea to look for the double red and/or double blue box pairs. Those signify that, be it on the first pitch and with the batter ahead or with the pitcher ahead and with two strikes, a pitcher is finding an understanding of how their pitch mix best works within the context of situation and encounter with a hitter. Alzolay is doing that, but he's doing more, too. Against righties, he's as likely to throw his sinker as his four-seamer, and nearly as likely to throw his cutter as to throw either. The power of his arsenal puts hitters on the defensive, and withholding his slider until he's ahead and can leverage it best is paying dividends, too. Against lefties, note that he's nearly scrapped his changeup. It's not gone, but he only goes to it late in counts, and then only sparingly. Meanwhile, he's gotten comfortable throwing his slider against them. Part of that is that he's tightened the break on that pitch this year a bit, making it harder to see and distinguish for lefties, but another part is that he's emerged from this spring with better feel than he's ever shown in the majors before. The Cubs' bullpen remains in flux, and Alzolay can't pitch every day. Bringing him in to chase a win from behind on Wednesday afternoon only becomes a more glaring error by Ross in light of the need to use him again Friday night. For now, however, Alzolay looks like a stand-in for the fireman role that belonged to Keegan Thompson for much of last season and the first fortnight of this one. He has the disposition for high-leverage work. He has the sheer arm talent to dominate. Now, finally, he seems to have an arsenal that he, his coaches, and his catchers understand, and one they have a plan to use well. In the short term, he can and should be the team's top relief weapon. View full article

Ooh, love that one. Royals have a surplus of infielders too. Worth watching.

In an absolute sense, the most disappointing performances of the young season for the Cubs belong to veteran signees in each segment of the roster: Jameson Taillon, Eric Hosmer, Trey Mancini, Michael Fulmer. In an absolute sense, it's the bullpen where they've struggled most. Taking into account preseason expectations and the offseason strategy the front office pursued, though, the biggest red flag is that this pitching-and-defense club hasn't played good defense. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports The focus of most Cubs writers and fans, coming into this season, was on the spine of a great defense that the Cubs have constructed up the middle. That has panned out exactly as hoped, and might be the most exciting and compelling thing about this team thus far. Yan Gomes continues to look like the anti-Willson Contreras behind the plate. Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are not only brilliant defenders on the middle infield, but an increasingly coherent miniature unit, making plays and communicating flawlessly. Even Cody Bellinger was living up to the hype, and then some, before he got hurt a fortnight ago. Between catcher, shortstop, second base, and center field, the Cubs have 14 Defensive Runs Saved already, according to Sports Info Solutions. That's what the team needed. However, elsewhere, the club's defense has collapsed hideously. The corner infielders and corner outfielders have combined for -14 DRS, canceling out the great work up the middle. Good glove work from their pitchers and sound positioning have kept the team above average. Still, they're 10th in MLB in DRS at the start of June. That's not good enough, for a team built around pitching and defense and without a deep or dangerous enough lineup to slug their way to many tough wins. The Cubs weren't expected to be a playoff team this year, of course, but any version of the team that did get there was going to be one that converted batted balls into outs at an elite rate. Instead, the rival Brewers (first place in the division, four and a half games up on the Cubs) are the best fielding club in MLB. Some of this problem is already being ameliorated. Seiya Suzuki missed the first two-plus weeks of the season, but he's back now, and with some rough adjustments seemingly behind him, he's likely to be one of the league's best defensive right fielders the rest of the way. The Cubs rack up negative value whenever he's out of the lineup, because neither Miles Mastrobuoni nor Patrick Wisdom nor Trey Mancini have proved able to acquit themselves in the outfield this year. In general, though, that problem was short-lived and is already solved. It's harder to say the same, with confidence, about the other spots. Matt Mervis's glove looks (if anything) better than advertised at first base, but his bat hasn't been good enough to guarantee either everyday playing time or much job security so far. Wisdom and Christopher Morel still look uneven at the hot corner. Morel is clearly a better defender at second base, but the Cubs need him at third, and it hasn't clicked for him there. Most glaringly, Ian Happ has only occasionally looked like the guy who won a Gold Glove last year. He's trending in the right direction, to be sure, with a couple of fine catches and throws, but he's been as inconsistent out there as he used to be at the plate. To be worthy of the contract extension he signed in April, Happ has to be that strong defensive presence, even at an ostensibly unimportant defensive position. That hasn't been the case so far. In the NFL, you'll hear knowledgeable people debate which is more valuable: a great cornerback or a great pass rusher. In any particular case, obviously, the players' quiddities could tip the scale, but in its anonymous form, it's a fun philosophical argument. Ultimately, the point I find most cogent is this one: to have a significant effect on a play, everyone in the secondary has to do their jobs correctly. If even one guy is beaten, the cost can be massive. One shutdown corner only narrows the opponent's options. A great pass rusher, though, can alter a play without anyone else having to succeed. That's the way with the two components of run prevention, pitching and defense. A great pitcher is much more like a great pass rusher. They can take over games and make the defense relatively unimportant. A great defense, by contrast, requires everyone to be good. If there's a weak spot in the phalanx, the whole thing becomes vulnerable. Defense is a team effort, and building a great defense means prioritizing that side of the ledger in an extra decision or two about how to build the team as a whole. Right now, the Cubs are learning the hard way that they don't have strong enough supporting defenders for their star-caliber ones. If they hang around and become trade-deadline buyers, one thing they need to do is shore up their defense at the hot corner. In the meantime, though, they need the players in place to bring their full concentration and talent to bear at all times, because their margins for error are too thin to accommodate disappointing defensive showings. View full article

In a bold, innovative stroke, the 2023 Cubs got their June swoon out of the way in May. Thanks to the performance of the rest of the division, they aren't yet out of the race, but the Playoff Odds at various sites remind us how urgently they need a turnaround. Even at their early apotheosis, the Cubs weren't exactly favorites in the NL Central. Everyone knew, even as the Cubs fought to keep pace with the Brewers' hot start and to take advantage of the Cardinals' woefully slow one, that those two teams were deeper and more likely to contend than the Cubs were. Still, the difference in their apparent chances now (relative to after their 11-6 start) is tangible. The above is according to FanGraphs. Baseball Prospectus, alas, is even less sanguine about the Cubs. They view the Brewers as near-locks to win the division, and only give the Cubs a 9.6-percent chance to reach the postseason. In a sense, these are meaningless numbers. They're probabilities based on simulations and statistical models. We live in just one reality at a time, so for as long as the percentages here are above 0.0, it's possible to convince oneself that the team will simply beat the odds--that we live in a 90th-percentile world. Still, the more closely one follows the season (and especially this year's Cubs), the more intuitive and accurate the numbers feel. In mid-April, the Cubs peaked with a 32-percent chance at the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. If most fans are honest with themselves, they'll acknowledge that they feel somewhere just south of half as optimistic now as they did then. There's a determinism to these numbers, too. It doesn't need to (and won't) happen right away, but sooner or later, Jed Hoyer and company will use their internal version of these numbers to make decisions about whether to buy, sell, or hold at the deadline. Hoyer is dispassionate enough to make a few uncomfortable moves again this July, if the team doesn't earn at least some of his trust and further investment. The most salient fact here is that the Brewers are clearly ahead of the Cubs right now--not only in the standings, but in any objective projection of the rest of the season. The proper response to that reality is to get aggressive. If the team plays better over the next three weeks than they have over the last six, they'll put themselves in position to get help from the front office, and they can close the talent gap reflected in these projections. If they have a repeat of May, then June will just be part of a long July Goodbye. Let's talk about what those two possible outcomes would look like, in some detail. Firstly, should the team fail to make a quick recovery and push back toward the top of the standings, the Cubs do have some pieces to sell. It's not likely that they end up with as many appealing pieces as they had to sell in 2021, thanks to the rocky performance and injury that stopped Cody Bellinger's bounceback season in its tracks and to the extension to which they signed Ian Happ. Speaking of the Happ extension, that choice began to concretize and clarify the team's long-term core, and that should make them pause even at a move like the Scott Effross deal last summer. Trading any potentially significant contributor for the medium term will be harder, with Happ, Nico Hoerner, Dansby Swanson, and Seiya Suzuki locked into a core to which the team hopes to add Pete Crow-Armstrong and others in the next year or so. Still, if someone offers something akin to Hayden Wesneski for Mark Leiter, Jr., Hoyer would have to listen. If a bidding war develops over the services of Marcus Stroman, the Cubs might deal him, knowing he's likely to hit free agency again this fall, anyway. Even Drew Smyly, enjoying something close to a career year at age 34, has to be a trade candidate, despite being under contract through 2024. Kyle Hendricks would be a trade candidate. In the right roles, Trey Mancini and Yan Gomes could help a contender. If the Cubs aren't one, both of them would become available, too. Now that Christopher Morel's best self appears to be more or less the same as Patrick Wisdom's, trading Wisdom would seem to make sense, too. That's a lot of potential change, but the Cubs would have to act decisively if they continue to fall from contention. They did so in 2014, the third season of that full-scale rebuild, and it allowed them to take an unambiguous turn toward contention in 2015. Still, it's depressing to consider a third straight sell-off for this team, whatever boost it might give to an already-strong farm system. Let's briefly imagine, then, what it will look like if the team can even get their Playoff Odds figure back into the 30s. At that point, Hoyer and Carter Hawkins would need to go shopping. Much depends on the results of Justin Steele's MRI, of course, but for the moment, let's assume that he will return reasonably soon. In that case, the Cubs don't necessarily need another starting pitcher. Their more urgent needs are for bullpen and lineup depth. Cubs designated hitters are batting just .179/.259/.313 this year. Those would be poor numbers at catcher or shortstop. If the team hangs around, an easy and obviously necessary step will be to go out and trade for a more credible hitter, be he a true DH or someone who can rotate through that spot in addition to finding playing time elsewhere. Mancini has a bit more time to stake a stronger claim to that job, but his season has been so uneven and underwhelming that it's hard to imagine he'll do so. Matt Mervis should get a slightly longer leash, especially while the team lingers in this purgatorial region of the standings, but his numbers are those of a slightly overmatched rookie, not the slugger the Cubs need at first base. Mike Tauchman's arrival obviates the need to go get a fourth outfielder. However, the bench could still improve, not only by pushing someone out of rotation every day with the insertion of that mystery slugger, but by upgrading the backup catcher spot. Tucker Barnhart has been a bust of a signing so far. Those are the two paths that lie before this Cubs team. June (and especially, the stretch between now and June 19) will set them on one of them for the rest of the season. At the moment, fans can only watch the painful process of the team confusedly conferring as they stand at the crossroads. View full article

Because of the odd circumstances of his first season and the lousy injury luck that opened his second, it took us far too long to see the real Seiya Suzuki on any kind of consistent basis. At last, it's happening, and we can start to discern the size and shape of his value in an MLB outfield. Against one of the best pitchers on the planet Tuesday night, Seiya Suzuki collected two hits in his first two at-bats. The batted balls both had an exit velocity north of 111 miles per hour, and the second of them (at 113.2 miles per hour) was the hardest-hit ball of his career. It helped that Shane McClanahan is left-handed; Suzuki has crushed lefties of late. Still, the game was just one more marker on what has been an unstoppable climb for the Cubs right fielder this year. Suzuki has hit over 50 percent of his batted balls this season 95 miles per hour or harder. Contrary to popular opinion, he's not creating an inordinate share of that hard contact on the ground, either. He's elevating the ball often enough, and he's pulling it considerably more (around 39 percent, up from 28 percent in 2022), allowing him to reap something closer to the full benefit of that ability to make hard contact. He's taken a clear step forward, and games like Tuesday night remind us that he could still take another one. In some ways, Mookie Betts is a reasonable comparison for Suzuki. Their batted-ball data is quite similar. Suzuki whiffs more often, but has an equally discerning eye at the plate. An MVP award probably isn't in his future. After all, when Betts won his, he was 25. At that age, Suzuki was playing in NPB. Still, that's the level of sustained excellence of which Suzuki is capable. Because of the lockout-shortened spring training of 2022, some nagging injuries throughout last season, and the tragically-timed oblique injury he suffered this spring, we had to wait until now to see him hit his stride, but it was worth the wait. With a .310/.414/.552 batting line for the month of May, Suzuki is demonstrating the ability to live up to the cleanup role to which he's been assigned on this team. He might hit more doubles and fewer home runs than the average slugger of this era, because his hardest-hit balls seem to cluster in a slightly lower launch angle band than do those of most similar hitters, but his power, plate discipline, and pure hit tool all appear to be above-average right now. Nowhere is the comparison to Betts or the enforced circuity of his development more clear, though, than in right field itself. Suzuki struggled mightily with the adjustment to playing defense in MLB, where there are fewer domes, more day games, and different visual backgrounds to navigate. He lost an untenable number of routine fly balls in the sun, the sky, or the lights last year, and that problem even followed him into 2023. As he's been able to get healthy and take more reps, though, he's shown tremendous progress. That, too, was on display Tuesday night. Notably, Baseball Prospectus's new state-of-the-art defensive metric (Defensive Runs Prevented, or DRP) had him as 5.4 runs to the good even last season, when other metrics and (often) the eye test maligned him. This season, the other metrics are beginning to agree, and he looks much more comfortable reading the ball off the bat, leading to plays like the one above. He's already shown off an excellent arm, too. In a season marked by high highs and low lows, nothing has yet excited me quite as much as seeing Suzuki do what he's doing. He's the star the team hoped they were getting, at the discounted price made possible by the acknowledged risks of bringing a player to a new continent while paying a handsome posting fee. He's not only the key to the team staying in contention in 2023, but a cornerstone around whom they can build for the next few years. View full article

Just when things seemed almost hopeless, Marcus Stroman might have saved the Cubs’ season. Their record is lousy, but Stroman is one argument for persisting in optimism. Let’s talk about what a contract extension might look like for him. Already this season, we’ve seen multiple reports that Marcus Stroman would prefer to sign an extension with the Cubs, rather than either being dealt at the trade deadline or hitting free agency this fall. That probably shouldn’t shock us. For one thing, Stroman is already 32 years old. It makes sense for him to seek long-term security–and the big payday that comes with it–as soon as possible, rather than risk having a downturn in the second half and being less valuable than he might have hoped when the time comes to decide between his $24-million salary for 2024 or free agency. Because he’s been given a qualifying offer in the past, Stroman also doesn’t have anything to gain from being traded. The Cubs can’t make him that offer this fall and limit his free-agent value artificially, even if they retain him all year. Thus, Stroman has no reason to want to go elsewhere, likely moving to a smaller market and losing the fan capital he’s amassed in Chicago already. Even with the convenient alignment of his incentives, though, it seems like Stroman feels an authentic connection to the Cubs and to Cubs fans. To watch him pitch throughout the last year, especially during home games, has been a joy. He comes up with big outs, and his outbursts of exuberance and exultation have been welcome reminders of what is missing too much of the time at Wrigley Field lately. Stroman cares deeply about winning. He relishes the passion of the fans when the game is close and the outcome matters. That’s enjoyable and admirable. If the team can keep him around for a reasonable price, they ought to do it. What’s a reasonable price, though? That’s the key question. Since July of last year, when Stroman returned from the injury that sidelined him for a month, he’s pitched 164 ⅓ innings. His ERA is 2.57, and while his underlying numbers don’t fully support that figure, it feels a bit more sustainable than those peripherals would predict. He’s back to getting ground balls at a truly elite rate, for the first time since 2018. He’s missing more bats than he did back in 2018, too. Finding comparable players for Stroman is vital to estimating what it would cost to extend him, but it’s not easy to do. Most pitchers who are right around his skill level are much less durable than he is. Most who are as durable as he is are either considerably worse, back-end starters, or true aces, a class to which he also still doesn’t seem to belong. Worse, pitchers who do roughly approximate both his ability and his durability still feel like bad fits, because he’s a unique athlete for the position. When the White Sox signed Lance Lynn to a two-year extension in July 2021, Lynn was pitching similarly to Stroman. He was around the same age. He didn’t strike hitters out at an elite rate, but he was still well above average overall. Lynn got $38 million in new guarantees, and the equivalent to that deal now would likely be adding two years and around $40 million to Stroman’s guarantee for 2024, thus making it a three-year extension. Hyun-Jin Ryu was even more akin to Stroman, when he hit free agency after his stellar 2019. He got $80 million over four years from the Blue Jays. That seems like a more likely deal to strike, especially given the leverage Stroman has. Even Yu Darvish’s lucrative new extension with the Padres is a relevant guidepost, though Darvish is older, has a different style, and signed under different circumstances than Stroman. The problem with either comp is that neither Ryu nor Lynn remotely resembles the lithe, explosive Stroman. He’s a dramatically different athlete than those guys are. That’s the fact that shines through in almost any analysis of this situation one might attempt. It’s important to keep in mind, always, that Stroman is a unique pitcher and person. If he and the Cubs are going to find common ground and extend their relationship beyond 2023 or 2024, it will happen because the Cubs understand that. View full article

One year ago Wednesday, Ken Rosenthal wrote a column saying that firing Joe Girardi wouldn't solve the disappointing Phillies' problems. A few days later, the Phillies fired Girardi, and it immediately solved their problems. Firing David Ross won't solve the Cubs' problems, but, you know? Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports It feels, for all the world, like the 2023 Cubs are doomed to another season of untenable irrelevance. In fact, there's a real and lethal sense of existential dread settling over Cubdom, and it's not unearned. It's heavy, and it's impenetrable, and it's not just in the heads or the itchy Twitter fingers of fans. Hopelessness hangs over this team, and is perilously close to defining it. Sometimes, the written word just can't do what images and video can. I encourage you, then, to ponder this moment from NBC's The Good Place. That's not the way I prefer to see people behave, in times of trial and adversity. It's not the primary reason why, from June 3 onward, the Cubs went 65-44, including 20-9 from that day through early July. Crucially, too, Ross isn't Piniella. A similar display of fireworks from him wouldn't feel as authentic, wouldn't have the same catalytic effect, and wouldn't wake this team up the same way, because of who he is, and because of the very different composition of this team, compared to that one. Still, Piniella had something in his back pocket. He had an ace in the hole. It doesn't feel, at all, as though Ross has that left in him. In his book about the 2016 Cubs, Tom Verducci relayed a poignant anecdote about Ross. In the thundering quietude of the clubhouse after the Cubs lost Game 4 of the World Series and fell behind 3-1, someone fired their glove into the back of their locker. Ross rebuked the doubters, and told the team he would be in the lineup the next night, and that he would ensure they won. That works from a beloved veteran mentor. It doesn't work the same way for a manager. If Ross could replicate that recipe, surely, he'd have done so by now--not only this year, but when the should-be contenders of 2020 flagged at the end of the shortened season, or when the 2021 squad collapsed so thoroughly and embarrassingly in the month running up to that year's trade deadline. The 2023 Cubs probably aren't the 2022 Phillies. They're probably not the 2007 Cubs, either. However, they're dramatically more talented and complete than their record reflects. Their run differential, alone, tells us that much, but even it doesn't tell the full story. Even more importantly, with the Brewers just 28-25, the gap the team would need to close to get right back into the mix is smaller than those faced by either of the aforementioned teams. Since their 11-6 start, this club is 11-24. That can't continue, and while it feels like firing Ross won't put an end to it, they have to try something. It doesn't have to be Peeps, but this chili needs some new ingredients. View full article

Though it's suddenly far from being their only flaw, the Cubs' bullpen has been a persistent problem this year. Three relievers currently pitching for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs could change that, and it's nearly time to give them their chance. It's no secret that the Cubs' relief corps is a mess. They not only lack effective pitchers, but don't seem to have any idea how to deploy the guys they do have. David Ross looks lost. Cornered by a long outing Friday that made Javier Assad unavailable Saturday night, Ross turned to Jeremiah Estrada, Brandon Hughes, and Mark Leiter, Jr. to finish out a game in which the Cubs trailed by multiple runs by the middle innings. This farrago of penmen has been so uneven and inscrutable this year that it's impossible to pin down the ones Ross is supposed to trust and utilize for high-leverage situations, but by any reasonable reckoning, all three of those guys are on the list. That Ross used them to chase a victory the team simply didn't have in it, after letting Michael Fulmer enter in a medium-leverage situation on the back of yet another ineffective Jameson Taillon start, illustrates his bewilderment about who can help him and how to get the most out of any of them. If this team is going to turn things around (a prospect that looks increasingly far-fetched, but one on which no one should yet be willing to entirely give up), they need to radically remake the bullpen. Luckily, they have the arms to do just that, working for the Iowa Cubs. This week needs to see the front office perform one more shakeup, in the hopes of waking up their somnambulant roster. The easiest call-up will be Codi Heuer, who pitched a clean inning for the I-Cubs Saturday, striking out two and issuing no walks. Heuer is eligible to come off the 60-day injured list on Tuesday, and although his numbers during his rehab stint have evinced some of the erraticism endemic to returnees from Tommy John surgery, he's honed in on the strike zone better as the time has passed. He's frequently reaching 98 miles per hour with his fastball. His changeup and slider are right in line with their previous forms. He should be with the big-league team as soon as he's allowed to be, and could quickly earn back the closer's role he briefly held near the end of 2021. Whereas Heuer was always likely to be a key cog in this team's bullpen, few would have guessed in July 2021 that fellow former White Sox farmhand Bailey Horn would be in a similar position. He is. Horn has a 1.96 ERA in time split between Tennessee and Iowa this year. In just over 18 innings of work, he's fanned 29, while allowing only nine walks and eight hits. He's throwing 95 miles per hour from the left side, with near-elite carry. He has two distinct flavors of breaking ball: a big, slow curveball that changes eye level and speed against righties; and a slider that is firmer and hades away from the neat vertical line of movement implied by his delivery and shown by his fastball and curve, against lefties. The curve might not play as nicely in MLB as it has in the minors, but he has enough funk in his fast-paced delivery and enough command of that rising fastball to have a good chance at being a solid complement to Hughes. Heuer was part of the Craig Kimbrel deal. Horn was the return for Ryan Tepera. To fully bring the trio of relievers the Cubs traded in 2021 back in their new skins to help the 2023 club, then, we need only account for Andrew Chafin. Hello, Daniel Palencia. After a brief detour to the development list (while the team wisely aborted any effort to make it work for him as a starter), he's gotten the bump from Tennessee to Iowa, and he's been converted to relief. I said it on this week's edition of the unofficial podcast of North Side Baseball, This is Not a Rebuild: I still think Palencia could lead the Chicago Cubs in saves--not down the road, but in 2023. Certainly, it helps that no Cub currently has more than two of those (they only have six as a team, thanks to being so lousy and losing nearly all their close games), but I would be willing to be that bold even if Fulmer or Leiter had four or five of them right now. Palencia reminds me (not physically, but in terms of stuff and career arc) of Edwin Diaz and Jhoan Duran. Díaz was a starter in the Mariners system until May 6, 2016. One month after his move to the bullpen, he debuted in the majors on June 6. By the start of August, he was the team's closer. Durán, with his fastball often touching and even exceeding 100 miles per hour but unable to stay healthy as a starter in 2021, made the move to the bullpen in the middle of spring training in 2022. He made the Opening Day roster for the Twins and has been their relief ace basically since Day One. He might not be quite as ready as Heuer or Horn, but Palencia showed even in his first taste of Triple-A competition that he has the stuff to move smoothly into an MLB bullpen. Like Durán has continued to do, he still throws four pitches in relief, but unlike Durán or Díaz, he might not have a truly devastating secondary offering right away. Even so, his fastball and the ability to utilize multiple offerings should make him immediately effective. By the by, he made his last start in Double A on May 6, too. If we assume that Leiter, Hughes, and Adbert Alzolay are more or less locked into the bullpen mix for now, there will need to be some bloodletting whenever the team calls up Heuer, Horn, and Palencia. Fulmer should be the first to go, but Julian Merryweather can be right behind him. Though both were solid offseason pick-ups, it's pretty clear that neither is going to even have significant value at the trade deadline--let alone help the Cubs avoid needing to think that way. There will be some challenging juggling ahead. Thanks to the front office's failure to formulate or stick to a clear plan for the usage of Assad, they're running out of times they can option him during the season. That will force Estrada to stay on the Chicago-Des Moines shuttle a bit longer, even if the team doesn't elect to rapidly activate these three young hurlers. Michael Rucker still has options, so he figures to start riding some buses soon, but merely keeping fresh arms out there isn't going to solve the Cubs' problem. They need to get a couple of dominant pitchers with bat-missing stuff slotted in for late-inning use, so Ross can stop guessing and put his relievers in a better position to succeed. Heuer, Horn, and Palencia give them the best chance to achieve that turnaround in the minuscule amount of time they have left to do so. View full article

Yeah, man. Maddon was fired after 2019. Ross took over in 2020, and yes, they won the division in that first year, but they ran out of steam before the end even then, and that was a 60-game season. I’d call this a fourth straight year of not meeting what should be a realistic standard of competition and credibility, even if actual winning was a bit of a reach in two of those.

Most Cubs fans agree that the early stages of this season have been disappointing. Increasingly, there have been calls for changes in baseball leadership for the team. Those aren't out of line, but we need to clarify a couple of things. Image courtesy of © Lucas Peltier-USA TODAY Sports A couple of weeks ago, after another close and winnable game slipped away for the Cubs against the Cardinals at Wrigley Field, I wrote a column saying that David Ross will not be able to get the team back over the hump and into contention. Many people responded to that piece by saying that the fault for the team's poor start really lies with Jed Hoyer, and that he should be the one on the hot seat, instead. In fact, that's been a theme on Cubs Twitter: that the talent deficit with which he's worked makes it too hard to evaluate Ross, and that the front office should be held accountable instead. Before we go any further, let me reiterate one thing I said in the original piece about Ross: I'm not calling for him to be fired immediately. A small but growing number of fans is saying that, but not me. Timing a decision like that, in my opinion, requires more information than any of us who do not have close and regular contact with the organization can credibly claim to have. What I do want to make clear, though, is that the idea of Hoyer (or, extra laughably, Carter Hawkins) being fired before Ross is a fantasy, and not even an especially well-plotted one. The Cubs hired David Ross as the successor to Joe Maddon, after the 2019 season. Jed Hoyer didn't step up to the top baseball executive job until Theo Epstein departed, after the 2020 campaign. While he was certainly in the room and a valued minority partner to Epstein, Hoyer essentially inherited Ross. He had to navigate ownership limitations on spending that made short-term contention almost impossible, and he had to turn over several key roles in the front office, but he didn't enjoy the privilege of doing all that with a clean slate. For all of those reasons, and more, Hoyer and Hawkins will get to fire Ross and hire another manager, before the ownership group seriously considers firing them and shopping for a new front office. That's just the way it is, and Cubs fans should be glad of that. In the rare cases when that hasn't been true (most notably, with the Angels, dating all the way back to Mike Scioscia's time there), it's created a mess and a lack of direction for the franchises involved. The 2023 Cubs continue to tantalize us. They look good enough to contend for the largely unguarded crown of the NL Central, and the likely claimants to the Wild Card berths in the senior circuit haven't exactly run away with things. It might be that they need to make a change, so as not to waste and miss the opportunity before them, If they do so, though, or even if they make a change in leadership this coming fall, it will be Ross who gets the axe. There's little point in arguing about that. When the issue of Ross's job security comes up, changing the focus to Hoyer instead is a needless distraction. View full article

A couple of softly-hit balls fell in, and the defense behind him wasn't what it needs to be. That said, the Cubs' erstwhile ace made too many mistakes Thursday night to excuse his loss on those bases. It would have been wildly unfair to expect vintage Kyle Hendricks on Thursday night. In his first appearance on a big-league mound since last July, Hendricks was bound to be a bit less than dominant. He was, but he also showed flashes of the good version of himself. His velocity was fine, and the movement on his changeup (both versions) was encouraging. He looked just good enough, in fact, that there was a lot of talk about his bad luck. In the Mets' three-run second inning, Hendricks allowed four straight two-out hits, none of which were clean, blistered batted balls. His shaky control from the first inning was tightened up, though, and after that (before running into more trouble in the fifth) he would lock things down. Naturally, some fans even dismissed the damage he did allow, because some of the key hits seemed so fluky. I understand the impulse, but I don't think pretending that bad luck was the driver of his bad numbers is necessary, even for those determined to find optimism in this outing. Again, based on his sheer stuff, Hendricks looked good enough to have a chance to stabilize and be a workhorse for the back of this rotation the rest of the year. However, he was the catalyst for his own misfortune Thursday night. All four of those hits in the second inning came with two strikes. All four came on changeups, and the last three came on changeups in the strike zone. These were still not dreadful pitches. Last year, when things went especially sour, Hendricks was missing over the heart of the plate with those, and they were getting hit out of the park. These, at least, stayed on the edges, which is why they induced seemingly innocuous contact, rather than thunderous homers. Still, it's neither the fault of his fielders nor a product of bad luck that Hendricks gave up those hits. In those counts, with that pitch, based on the way they had them each set up, Hendricks needed to throw those hitters strike-to-ball cambios. The pitch needed to dip below the zone, even if not by much. When people talk about Hendricks having a thin margin for error, this is what they mean. It's not that he can't afford to attack the heart of the plate; plenty of pitchers only find danger there. It's that Hendricks has to be able to execute that kind of pitch, and so at a high rate. When he misses just a little, he falls behind in counts, or he gives up seemingly weak and unearned hits. That's always been true. At his best, Hendricks not only hit those spots with good movement and deception, but repeated the trick with staggering consistency and accuracy. That feel--that special skill--deteriorated badly in 2021 and only intermittently resurfaced in 2022. That he didn't have that feel back in his first start in 10 months is no big deal. We just need to be clear about what was and what wasn't really going on there. Next time out, Hendricks does need to better locate those two-strike changeups. If he can't, he's not going to regain even an attenuated facsimile of his former glory. View full article

When the Cubs signed Marcus Stroman on the eve of the lockout in late 2021, they envisioned helping him reclaim the top of the strike zone with his four-seam fastball. In 2022, it didn't work. This year, though, that's changing. Image courtesy of © Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports There's no full-scale reinvention happening here. Marcus Stroman will (probably) always be a sinker-first pitcher, and the Cubs prefer to have their pitchers sink or cut their fastballs, anyway. When pitching coach Tommy Hottovy and the rest of the team's pitching infrastructure got ahold of Stroman, though, they did have some idea of finding greater utility for his four-seamer. Stroman has always had above-average spin on his stuff, especially his fastballs. His short stature ensures a low release point. Those things, in combination, should ensure the ability to attack the top of the zone and get whiffs with a riding four-seamer. That's the theory, and it's why Stroman was open to trying it out. It did not work. Last year, Stroman used his four-seamer about 12 percent of the time throughout the first two-plus months of his campaign. During that time, he had an ERA of 5.32. After he returned from the injury that sidelined him from early June through mid-July, his ERA dropped by more than half--and so did his use of the four-seamer. The correlation there does not imply causation, in either direction. Stroman's cutter took a beating early last year, too. He struggled with location and sequencing. His problems went beyond the fastball, in whatever form. Still, it's clear that the 2022 version of Stroman was not able to make effective use of that pitch, in the broader context of his arsenal. Stroman is no quitter, though. Height doesn't measure the willingness to make thoughtful adjustments, and to try again if something doesn't work, any better than it measures heart. He's come back in 2023 with a better plan for weaponizing the fastball. He's almost exclusively using his sinker and slider (or sweeper, or slurve, or maybe it's really some of all three; he befuddles each of the major pitch-classification systems) against right-handed hitters. Against lefties, though, he's a kitchen-sink guy, and one of the many looks he's giving those hitters is the true, rising fastball. His velocity is down by a mile per hour, but Stroman is getting just as much spin on it as he achieved last year. His spin efficiency is, technically, diminished, yet he's getting more movement--more rise, and a bit more run. Partially as a result of that (but also because he's locating and plotting it better), he's getting those whiffs he and the Cubs imagined when they first started tinkering with this last year. In fact, of the 361 pitchers who have thrown at least 50 four-seamers this year, Stroman has induced whiffs on the 14th-highest share of opponents' swings. He gets a lot of help from the fact that he's using the pitch only tactically and selectively, but even so, his results are staggeringly dominant. Here, in a nutshell, is why. Here's a pitch Stroman made in a 1-2 count against the Twins' Byron Buxton, in what was otherwise his only truly bad outing of this young season. 8c298c18-7c07-4d83-a40a-72019090f414.mp4 And here's one to which he went on 2-2 against Kyle Schwarber, in his last start against the Phillies. 075b24c7-2cfc-430b-aaee-e523d6c282d4.mp4 These are both fastballs up and away. What's striking, though, is how perfectly Stroman located each, given that Buxton is right-handed and Schwarber is a lefty. Using the threat of the rest of his repertoire to his advantage, Stroman is throwing that four-seamer to a spot where hitters think it's a very hittable sinker, and getting relatively feeble swings when it turns out to be a pitch with such different movement. The problem Stroman had with his four-seamer last year was that he couldn't keep it out of the meaty part of the strike zone. It still didn't get hammered, but it was often fouled off and rarely missed altogether. This year, only 11 pitchers have had a lower Called Strike Probability on their four-seamers than Stroman, according to Baseball Prospectus. Hitting the edges and using the top of the zone better has naturally led to more whiffs. This is part of a broader strategy with which Stroman seems very comfortable this year. He's not nibbling, exactly, but he's not giving in to anyone. His walk rate is up, not because he's lost any capacity for throwing strikes, but because he seems determined to work at the edges of the zone and try to force weak contact. Before the season began, he talked about the trust he had in the team's reinforced defense, and that seems to have been a very earnest sentiment. Stroman is chasing some strikeouts, but only indirectly. What he's primarily doing is trying to keep the ball in the park, and trusting that even if he issues an extra walk or two, he can then get some quick, low-danger contact, and that his fielders will come through for him when that happens. He's done that with a bifurcated pitch mix based on handedness, and with some loving tweaks to his mélange of pitches--and with a newly badass old-fashioned fastball. View full article

The Cubs' offense has yet to be shut out in 2023. They have seven above-average hitters on the active roster, even with Cody Bellinger on the injured list. To get the most out of that group, though, they need to jettison one of their persistently below-average ones. Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports Nick Madrigal started the season a little bit hot. He had a .345/.387/.414 batting line through his first 31 plate appearances, and had struck out only once. Since then, though, he's batted only .203/.239/.250. In 67 plate appearances, he has eight strikeouts. That would be a fine strikeout rate for an average hitter, but Madrigal's profile relies on extraordinarily high contact rates. His dearth of power (and the resulting inability to draw walks, as pitchers hammer away at the strike zone) make every punchout a problem. Even as he's cooled off, though, Madrigal has played too often. During Nico Hoerner's stint on the injured list, David Ross even batted him leadoff. It's clear that Ross, perhaps due to the influence of the front office, is overly attached to Madrigal, who was the centerpiece of the trade that sent Craig Kimbrel to the White Sox in 2021. He won't stop using Madrigal. Jed Hoyer needs to take away the option. If Madrigal's playing time comes at the expense of that of Christopher Morel, Patrick Wisdom, or even Trey Mancini, it's not a well-spent resource. Speaking of options, sending Madrigal to Triple-A Iowa is technically on the table, because he has not yet exhausted his minor-league options. The problem there is that the Cubs need 40-man roster space. They'll soon need to restore Codi Heuer to the 40-man, as he comes off the 60-day injured list. The team has too many players on the 40-man who need to be in the minors already. An organizational depth chart without Madrigal on it has much more room for players who have shown greater promise. Nelson Velazquez doesn't look like a replacement for Madrigal at first blush, but with Morel and Miles Mastrobuoni around to serve as utility infield options, Velazquez can take that roster spot and add better offense without hurting the defense. Alternatively, since it seems unlikely that the team will carry 24 hitters for long, they can just give Madrigal's playing time to those aforementioned hitters--including and especially Morel, whose hot streak since being called up really makes clear how redundant Madrigal is. As impressive as Madrigal's progress as a third baseman was, he's ultimately no better there than Wisdom. He's not as good a second baseman as either Hoerner or Morel. With Cody Bellinger sidelined for a bit with his bruised knee, a plausible argument might have been made that Madrigal provided valuable infield depth, such that Mreol could patrol center field every day. With Mike Tauchman in the mix, though, that's far less important. Against most righties, in the short term, Tauchman should play center, leaving Morel to play third or be the designated hitter and keeping Mastrobuoni available off the bench. Eric Hosmer is gone. Luis Torrens lasted less than a month. Wesneski and Keegan Thompson have been returned to Iowa to polish off their rough edges. It's clear that the front office at least wants to win this year, and to send the message that they're serious about performance and accountability. Letting go of Madrigal is a necessary step in that process. View full article

There was something gnawing at me. It was tough to put my finger on it, but just as Christopher Morel's eighth home run in his first 11 games of 2023 sailed over the fence, the penny dropped. This is what the 1990s were like. Last Tuesday, Danny Rockett (on Twitter at @SonRanto, one of the deans of the metaphorical delegation from the real-life Wrigleyville to its digital counterpart) ran a Twitter poll asking fans of whom Christopher Morel most forcefully reminds them. He gave three options, and invited other suggestions. The responses were quite evenly mixed, including many people who took advantage of that offer to identify their own comps. With all due respect to Danny, these weren't especially compelling comparators, in my opinion. Morel doesn't have anything approximating Aramis Ramirez's hit tool. He doesn't have the plate discipline or the defensive skills that allowed Ben Zobrist to first find a foothold, then blossom into a true superstar. Yet, his power is a louder tool than Zobrist ever had, and he's better able to make real use of his athleticism on the diamond than Junior Lake ever was. Morel probably isn't a long-term, everyday infielder, but he's also unlikely to be a well-rounded utilityman with value in all facets and on both sides of the runs ledger. What Morel looks most like, as he comes up on 500 career plate appearances, is a rough-edged, toolsy outfielder with top-shelf power. What he looks like is Sammy Sosa, and while I'm not projecting that he'll hit 600 big-league home runs, that's an awfully exciting comparison. Here's the cruel twist, though: For much of his career, Sosa was a dazzling, enlivening star on soporific Cubs teams. His flaws made him ill-equipped to be the best or second-best player on any serious contender for the first half of his Chicago tenure, and the obnoxious egalitarianism of baseball rendered him unable to singlehandedly lift them very far for much of the second half. Watching Sammy Sosa was always fun, but it was empty calories. That's not a commentary on the substance or the style of Sosa, but on the fact that too often, the Cubs were so relentlessly and (sometimes) inexplicably bad that one could have exactly as much fun by checking the highlights on SportsCenter to see Sosa homer as by watching the whole game. That's the vibe of the 2023 Cubs right now. Morel is not a force on par with peak Sosa, of course, but he's been a burst of sizzle and spark in his first fortnight with the parent club. Alas, he's just the latest guy taking a turn. Nico Hoerner has had a similar stretch during which he put on a really fun show. Patrick Wisdom's power binge was every bit as thunderous as Morel's. Cody Bellinger showed us a glimpse of his considerable former glory, early on. Roughly twice every time through the rotation, a starter has a wonderful start that makes most of an entire game fun and watchable. It's not adding up to anything. The maddening reality is that a lot of things have gone right for the Cubs this year, but they're 20-26, and they're watching a lot of the teams over whom they grabbed what felt like a potentially critical early edge get right and sail right past them--often at their direct expense. Somehow, for the fifth straight season, this team is less impressive and less consistent than it ought to be. The familiarity of the players, the makeup of the front office, the man on the top step of the dugout, and many things about how the organization tries to win have changed in that time frame, and they've had very different levels of expectation going into each of those seasons, but the results seem obdurate. That's why it feels like it did 20 or 30 years ago, right now. Even the team's successes feel a bit like hiccups. Just when they begin to feel almost trustworthy, the page turns, and Cinderella turns back into a franchise forever selling hope. The farm system is on the upswing, but fans old enough to remember $4 bleacher seats know that when the big-league product is on the downswing, the farm system is always on the upswing. Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins are superficially smarter than Ed Lynch, and even than Andy MacPhail, but they seem no closer to resolving the perpetual extra gravity that drags the Cubs downward than those men got. Ownership was bad then, and ownership is bad now, but ownership changes far less quickly and easily than front-office or on-field personnel. If it's bad owners holding the Cubs back, there's no way to tell when a light might emerge at the end of the tunnel for the Cubs and their fans. If the Ricketts family is the kind of ownership group that can at least be overcome by better front-office work, Hoyer and Hawkins need to start doing it. There is too much talent and too much money on the field every day for the Cubs to be excused for their recent play. Fans can do little to improve the situation, but the standard the franchise is setting is too low. Coming into this season, the baseball world had relatively low, muted expectations for the team. To see them demonstrate that they have the talent to prove those people wrong, yet consistently fail to actually do so, makes it feel like the bad old days are here again. Given that the charm and the affordability of Wrigley Field have been irreparably damaged by the Ricketts's myopic cash grabs throughout the last decade, fans can't even fall back on something ineffable and separate from winning as solace during times like these. Just at this moment, it feels like the Cubs' owners successfully got rid of everything that made the Cubs unique, except for the mysterious, constant losing. View full article