Matthew Trueblood

Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli talks about not using his high-leverage relievers to "chase" wins. Joe Maddon used to call the set of relievers he really trusted his "even and ahead guys." The 2023 Cubs' relief ace came in to pitch two innings with the team trailing by two runs Sunday, though. Is that a habit David Ross needs to correct? The Cubs entered this season with as little clarity about roles in the bullpen as they have had at any time in recent memory. There was no obvious closer, though it was fairly clear that Michael Fulmer would get the first chance to secure that job. There were multiple guys whose utility lied in their ability to go multiple innings, and none who fit neatly into traditional setup roles. Three weeks into the season, some of those fluid situations have crystallized, but others only seem more confused. Fulmer has pitched his way out of the closer gig, but no one seems to have pitched their way into it yet. Brad Boxberger might well get the next look, if the Cubs start playing some games that call for a traditional, hierarchical bullpen progression, but it's been a while since they had such a game. Mark Leiter Jr. is emerging as a potentially solid setup man, with a splitter that neutralizes lefties and a deep pitch mix. Brandon Hughes is back, which gives the team a true lefty worthy of high-leverage usage. The best pitcher in the Chicago pen, though, has been Keegan Thompson--but that's not the way David Ross has used him at all. Thompson's mysteriously diminished velocity this spring might have led the team to proceed cautiously with him out of the gate. That would explain why he came into the fifth inning of a game the Cubs trailed, in Cincinnati on April 3. After that, though, he did seem to settle into a higher-leverage role. He came in with a four-run lead against the Rangers on April 7, which is relatively comfortable, but then he pitched the 10th inning of a game against the Mariners, and he worked two scoreless innings against the Dodgers on April 15. He was, after that game, sporting a 1.08 ERA and holding opponents to an .074 batting average. Since then, though, Thompson's only two appearances have been a two-inning stint in a game in Oakland that the Cubs already led by four; and the two-inning outing with the team already trailing Sunday. Those are low-leverage appearances. There's no getting around that fact. Each of his last three appearances has been on at least three days' rest, and Thompson was passed over for Leiter in the game immediately before both his outing in Los Angeles and the one in Oakland, when the leverage was much higher. One issue there would seem to be that Thompson, unlike Leiter, doesn't have an exceptionally good weapon to use against left-handed batters. Still, if one had said that Ross would be slotting Leiter into a higher place on the bullpen depth chart than Thompson's before the season began, we would all wonder what had happened. Certainly, if we were told that that had happened despite Thompson having great surface-level numbers and had recovered his lost velocity, we would be flummoxed. It's possible the team is quietly protecting Thompson, and is unwilling to use him on one or two days' rest after a multi-inning appearance. That he's throwing hard again might just be a product of not being asked to pitch all that often. They might even be treating him as a reliever in rotation, the same way we're used to thinking of starters: a guaranteed two-plus innings every fourth day, but limited wiggle room to use him more often. They have enough similar guys (Adbert Alzolay, most notably) to try something like that, if they want, the better to keep their high-leverage short relievers fresh. That's not how it feels, though. It feels like Ross is chasing wins, sometimes. This has been a habit of his throughout his three-plus seasons as the team's manager. Maddon was an optimist in his clubhouse communication, but he only very rarely (if, ahem, sometimes in very notable circumstances) allowed that aspect of his personality to govern him when he was pulling levers within a game. Ross doesn't have that firewall. He believes his team can come back even when it's down by a couple of runs in the late innings, and he deploys his bullpen accordingly. Last year, Mychal Givens, Chris Martin, Scott Effross, and Hughes made a total of 177 appearances for the Cubs. Of those, 59 came when the team was trailing. One hundred eight of those 177 came when the Leverage Index of the contest was either low or middling, meaning none of those four were reserved for high-leverage appearances to the extent that many such relievers are. Ross doesn't give up on games, and that can be a good thing. It has probably contributed to the team's knack for comeback wins over the last few years. However, it also has a cost, and that cost rises when there's a lack of certainty about who should be pitching in the most important moments in the first place. This will be a trend worth watching over the next week or two. It's unlikely that Thompson takes over as a true closer, but he could slide into more of an "even or ahead" role if the relief corps continues to do basically what it has done so far. We need to see whether he's barred from returning on fewer than three days of rest after a longish outing, because that would affect his utility and our understanding of Ross's decisions. We also need to see whether Ross can continue to encourage and facilitate that resiliency from his team without wearing out his most trusted relievers. His tendencies might be why the team seems to have consciously constructed a very flat bullpen this year, without natural stratifications or anyone the skipper might not trust at all. Hopefully, a month from now, the team will have a couple of relievers who more consistently and clearly dominate opponents, and that will make things easier for both the manager and the fans. In the meantime, Thompson needs to be given a greater chance to really impact the team's win probability than his recent usage has yielded. View full article

This game breaks your heart, one of its former stewards warned us. It's designed to break your heart. Drew Smyly had the stuff to throw a perfect game Friday against the Dodgers, and he came achingly close. Despite the unlucky end to that bid for history, though, that start was a joyous masterclass from the rotation's wiliest veteran. From the moment Drew Smyly took the mound Friday, he was in command. He had both his fastball and his curveball working, and he had a quick epiphany: he would not need his cutter. Thus, he didn't throw one at all, Smyly hardly ever completely shelves that pitch. He technically went his entire final start of 2022 without the cutter, but that was in three innings of work and 62 total pitches. He just didn't need a third offering on Friday. It can be a tremendous challenge to face a team twice in a week, especially a team as dangerous as the Dodgers can be. Smyly met it, by changing up some of the basic patterns he'd deployed in the previous start. The communication between Yan Gomes and his starter was flawless, and they showed how effectively a pitcher can use sequencing even with just two pitches, and even when working very deep into a game. They leaned heavily on Smyly's curveball, but used the fastball to get back into counts on the very rare occasions on which they fell behind. Even then, the Dodgers were clearly caught in between, and could not square up the heat. Smyly was dotting the top inside corner of the zone to right-handed batters with the fastball, and when he can do that, righties are in huge trouble. He struck out Trayce Thompson both times that he faced him, using the curve early in the count to get him looking for it, then blowing the heat by him at the top of the zone. He also struck out Max Muncy the only two times he saw him, though, and that didn't even require the use of a fastball. Smyly threw Muncy seven curves, and got two swinging strikeouts from the encounters. Smyly threw left-handed Dodger hitters 32 pitches Friday, and 26 of them were curves. The righties had to fight a very balanced two-pronged attack, but all a lefty would have had to do was sit on the curve and wait for Smyly to make a mistake with one. If they did that, the mistake never came. The aging southpaw was that good. It's a better discussion for another time, but Smyly's fastball behaves much more like a four-seamer than a sinker, which is what the pitch-classification systems all call it. That's why, when the curveball is really working and he can locate it so masterfully, he really doesn't need the cutter. The vertical relationship between the heater and the hook is enough to get outs. With Jameson Taillon on the injured list, Smyly is the nominal third starter in the Cubs' rotation. They need him not only to pitch well, but to get deep into games at least semi-regularly. Holding up under that kind of workload has rarely worked for Smyly, but he seems to be enjoying a real and intriguing late-career renaissance. He doesn't overthrow. He knows his arsenal, and he's improved the command thereof. Watching him work Friday was a genuine pleasure, and a reminder of how far the Cubs have come in terms of their pitching plan over the last few years. The game obviously could have been much more of a milestone--even a historic moment. A check-swing dribbler spoiled that aspect of it, which was, yes, heartbreaking. There's a special cruelty in losing a chance at a perfect game on a defensive play that, while no one's fault in the true calculus, felt like a minor mistake by the two men who had come so close to immortality. Gomes had the right angle. Smyly had the right of way. They both just wanted it, so badly, that they missed whatever tiny chance still remained of getting it when that ball trickled off of David Peralta's bat. That didn't ruin the vibes, though. This Cubs team has something special going. They entered this season with hope--not the vague, "sure as God made green apples" kind of hope, but something real. There was a lurking concern about how deep they really were, though, and about how well some of their riskier offseason decisions might pan out. Not everything has come out perfectly, but in the early going, they're only increasing their own hope. Smyly was the quiet but crucial deal of the winter, perhaps. He signed for two years and $19 million, which is a reminder that he had a healthy market, but the two sides always seemed certain of a reunion. Now, that investment looks like a huge win for both sides. This demolition of an NL powerhouse came on the heels of such a crushing loss. During the last homestand, they had a similar swing of emotion and win probability within a single contest, with that comeback over the Mariners. The early signs of a club blessed not only with talent, but with resiliency and cohesion, are all here. Smyly is, surprisingly, a good emblem of it right now. There's much more to do, but for player, team, and fan base alike, that was an awfully big step in a good direction. View full article

The Cubs' biggest acquisition this winter has gotten off to a terrific start in Chicago. Dansby Swanson's defense and comportment have been exactly as advertised, but he's also batting .338, and he's drawn 13 walks in 19 games. Does this signify a change in approach that will lock in a new level for him? First of all, in answering that question, we have to be clear: Dansby Swanson's current plate discipline numbers would represent a major change for the established star. He's never drawn as many as 50 unintentional walks in a season, so he's doing that more than twice as often as has been his norm. When you watch games on Marquee Network, you also hear a lot about the rates at which Swanson is swinging even on a pitch-by-pitch basis. It's true that, for instance, he's offering at fewer first pitches in plate appearances than he ever has over a full season. There's something missing from that presentation of information, though. It overlooks a crucial fact about the numbers Swanson has compiled so far, which is that it's April. The weather discourages aggressive swinging. Players are still feeling their way to their optimal timing. Sometimes, guys just swing less often during the first month, trying to get their eyes and reflexes a bit more finely tuned for the long campaign. Swanson has done this, too. He doesn't always do it, and the effect isn't gigantic, but it's noticeable. Here's how often he's swung at the first pitch of plate appearances over the last four full seasons, broken down by month. Month 1st Pitch Swing % Aug 39 Jul 36.3 May 35.1 Jun 34.9 Sep/Oct 34.1 Mar/Apr 27.9 If you expand the query to how often Swanson has swung at all pitches, regardless of count, and then look at individual months within seasons, the same idea shines through. He's swinging at fewer pitches (39 percent of them) than he ever has before, over a full month, but second-lowest on the list is April 2022, and third-lowest is April 2019. That's not to say that Swanson hasn't made material changes to his approach that will continue to yield good results. After all, even if putting it in monthly context makes this performance seem less extreme, he's never been this patient for this long before. Still, it feels more likely that he'll steadily increase his aggressiveness as the spring bounces toward summer. The power that headlined his offensive skill set the last couple of years hasn't showed up yet at all, and he might need to trade a bit of his patience to access that power as his body and the weather allow that to happen more. Sometimes, too, an ostensibly more patient approach is just a reflection of a player not having confidence in his swing. There's some hint of that here. Swanson has whiffed on 33.9 percent of his swings so far. That would be the fourth-highest whiff rate he's had for any month over the last four-plus seasons. If he feels like he's likely to come up empty on swings, he's probably swinging less often in hopes of getting a few calls going his way and putting off the problem. That's sound strategy, and it's a good sign that he's done it so well in the early going. Swanson is famously streaky at the plate, and any adaptation that makes his infamous slumps less nightmarish will be welcome. Even so, considering all of this information, it's unlikely that we're seeing Swanson change into a starkly different hitter than he's been in the past. He's just settling into a new season, still seeking his timing, and he's hitting for average and drawing walks while waiting for the tumblers to fall into place. Ever since he began to turn a corner at the plate a few years ago, Swanson has demonstrated a mature and intelligent self-knowledge. His swing decisions last year--highly aggressive within the zone, relatively rarely expanding that zone to chase junk--were perfect for his skill set. He'll always whiff at an above-average rate. That makes it essential that he be ready for his pitch when he gets it, and often, that pitch will come early in an at-bat. He needs to be aggressive in order to be the best version of himself. At the same time, he can modulate that aggressiveness and alter his approach (in terms of which pitches he's looking for and where he tries to hit them) based on how he's feeling and how opponents are attacking him. That's all valuable. Hitting between Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ all season, it's not hard to imagine Swanson walking a little bit more than he has in the past. With the relative unfriendliness of Wrigley Field's right-center gap to right-handed hitters, we can also envision him hitting for less power than he did in Atlanta. where one of his key improvements was learning to drive the ball to that very sector. The bad news is that he's not likely to draw over 100 walks, or to hit .338, for that matter. The good news is that the fact that he's doing those things at this early stage reflects a real strength in his game, and that it might spell greater consistency for him as the season wears on. View full article

Nico Hoerner is hitting .347 on this young season. A mere few weeks into the contract extension he signed at the end of March, he's making it look like an extraordinary bargain. The secret to his success lies where the secrete of most great hitters do, but in an unusual way. Every great hitter has great hands. They all have sharp eyes. They all have strength from elbow to fingertips. Nico Hoerner has all of those things, but he doesn't deploy them in especially traditional, straightforward ways. He has his own wrinkle, and it's a doozy. Let's look at what is a quintessential Hoerner hit, a single he cracked against the Rangers last week. 83b3bbd5-022a-4475-80d2-3c637badf451.mp4 And then let's hone in on a still from that clip that really captures what Hoerner does differently from the rest of the league. Look at the angle of Hoerner's bottom hand and wrist to the bat. For that matter, look at the top hand, too. That's not normal. The cooperation between his arms and the way they keep the bat even with his rotating torso is unusual, but that bottom hand--crooked so far that he's almost leading with his wrist, leaving the palm, thumb, and fingers slightly behind. This is the motion of a man gently shooing away a cat with the back of his hand, not an MLB-caliber swing. It looks like it would sap all the strength and bat speed from the whole thing. It doesn't. Hoerner has meaty forearms that let him apply plenty of force through contact, and he gets most of his sheer bat speed from his lower half. His bat whips through the zone in rhythm with his fast stride and weight transfer, and despite the fact that he really blocks himself off with the way he lands on the front foot, he generates plenty of energy that way. The still is also a little bit misleading. He extends through contact, and finishes with his hands seeming to reach up the bat, rather than gripping it in his fists. What he can do with that peculiar hand movement, though, is adjust the plane or speed of his swing more easily at the last moment. That's why he seems to make fairly solid contact even when fooled, and why he so rarely whiffs on anything. When he starts his swing, his top hand is almost cocked backward, and his bottom wrist is straight. As he executes his swing, he's slightly rolling the two, until it feels like his top hand is just a guide and his bottom hand is doing the real attacking. Letting his forearm and wrist lead that movement give him finer, smoother control of the bat all the way through the hitting zone. This wouldn't work, except that Hoerner keeps his hands about as close to himself (on average) as any hitter in MLB. In the clip above, he's reaching a bit for the ball, but even that doesn't look exaggerated. Here's a more typical Hoerner swing, and another single up the middle against Texas. 2b835de8-a8e6-49aa-96e3-782db7b19b81.mp4 His whole swing is such a quick and compact movement that Hoerner doesn't feel a need to extend his hands in search of great power or to separate his hips, shoulders, and hands to maximize torque. He keeps that parity between both arms; the chest and back; and the lower half as well as anyone, and it makes him quick to the ball. That style has drawbacks, too. Go back to the still shot of the first single, above. Note that it's a pitch on the outer part of the plate, but not even off of it, and that Hoerner still hits it off the end of the bat. That happens to Hoerner a lot, especially for a man who stands 6-foot-1 and has such a reliable eye for hittable pitches. By keeping his hands tucked in so close, including that way of gripping the bat that lends him extra control, he's missing the chance to barrel the ball up more often. On balance, though, it's all worth it. The extra control Hoerner derives from this quirk of mechanics more than makes up for the price he pays in extra-base hits. He could still make some minor adjustments, and he might find more power that way without sacrificing much pop. If he never changes a thing, though, he can hit for a high average in MLB for another several seasons, and he'll continue to be fun to watch. His hands make the bat more a precision instrument than a blunt object, and Hoerner is looking like a virtuoso to open 2023. View full article

On his third try, Hayden Wesneski found his groove. As the Cubs steamrolled the hapless Oakland Athletics Monday night, their rookie starter put some things together in game action for the first time. Just over a week ago, we talked about how Hayden Wesneski altered the arm slot and release point on his four-seamer during the spring. It was a necessary change, because prior to that adjustment, he was throwing the four-seamer and his cutter from a different slot than his sinker, sweeping slider, and changeup. It cost him something in terms of movement and command of that fastball, but the tradeoff was worth making, in the long run. When I wrote last Sunday night, though, there wasn't yet any evidence that Wesneski was making the same difficult convergence of arm slot with his cutter. Monday in Oakland, though, that changed. For a bit of perspective, let's look at Wesneski's release points for 2022: Hayden W Now, here's the corresponding chart for the first two starts of 2023: Finally, here's where Wesneski released each pitch Monday night: Let's name what we can see. Obviously, the four-seamer got mixed in with the sweeper and sinker in terms of release point early in 2023, after being quite distinguishable in 2022. On Monday night, though, it was back off on its own, though less far than it used to be. The striking thing, perhaps, is the progress of the cutter. It was distinct in 2022, and stood out even more sharply in his first two outings this year, because of the convergence of the fastball and the rest of the arsenal. On Monday, he only threw a few cutters, but the ones he did throw were mixed in much more nicely. Instead of solely considering the release points of each pitch type relative to one another, though, take a moment to look at the absolute position of each cluster. Notice the small migration that has taken place. Wesneski has slightly lowered his release point and gotten it further toward third base, especially Monday night. When you see that, it's often a sign that a pitcher has moved over in terms of where they set up on the pitching rubber, but that's not what Wesneski did. He still sets up where he did last season, right around the middle of the rubber--though perhaps a little bit to the first-base side of true center. Rather, what Wesneski has changed is his posture throughout the delivery. Last year, he often showed some spine tilt, raising his release point and pulling it toward first base as he bent to his left just prior to release. This can be a tough thing to pick up on video, but watch his torso throughout the pitching motion here; 5489b70f-ebf0-4eac-818a-d4628d8bb7c9.mp4 And then compare it to this one: db69b14c-3394-4571-9366-242e311adefc.mp4 Wesneski stays more upright this year. He gets out around his front half more, as opposed to yanking that front side out of the way in order to pull the rest through. The result is a lower release point, because he's not driving his right arm up in the air with that tilt of the spine; and a wider one, because he's not peeling off toward first base as much and gets better extension of his arm through release. These are good mechanical tweaks for him. It's also good that he's clustering his release points a little more closely. He can stay at the four-seamer release point to which he reverted Monday night, if he also maintains this mechanical efficiency. He's not utilizing a truly distinct slot for any of his offerings, at this stage. The differences that remain aren't the kind that stand out and make it too easy on opposing hitters. That doesn't mean every outing will be as rosy as his final line in Oakland, of course. In fact, that one started out pretty rough, too. As hitters did in Cincinnati and against the Mariners at Wrigley, the ones in the anemic A's lineup took some early and confident swings on Wesneski in the first two frames. Only after that did he settle in and overwhelm them, and even then, he wasn't getting as many whiffs as you might expect him to induce when things are going well. What he did get a lot of, though, were called strikes. That's one key to all of this, and it feeds into the others. He'll be able to throw more strikes, especially with the sweeper and the four-seamer, with this increasingly repeatable and stable mechanical profile. Based on his body language and some of his misses, it's clear that he's still finding his way to that consistency, but it's available to him now in a way that it wouldn't have been before these refinements. There's much he will need to relearn, or reconceptualize, as he integrates his repertoire into a streamlined delivery. His fastball moves differently when working from this slot and these mechanics. He's in the strike zone more. He, his catchers, and the Cubs coaching staff will need to work together to find a remixed formula for the best possible outcomes for him. Until then, he'll be vulnerable to some early contact, and won't get strikeouts at the rate his stuff would suggest. There's bound to be still more trial and error as they all work through the options to find the best approach. Overall, though, that outing was wildly encouraging. It represented the next concrete step toward a polished, whole version of Wesneski, and gave more insight into how he can succeed even while he figures out both physical and mental aspects of his own evolution. There will be opponents who test him much more unforgivingly, and nights when his progress is less clear, but if anyone worried that the last two starts marked a semi-permanent stall in his development, those fears should have been allayed. 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Yeah. I fully expect (and I think it’s already been true of one game?) not to count every one-run game as one of these. That’s the interesting texture and nuance of it, I hope. But again, this is something I’ve never tried to do in real time before, so it’s going to be a learning and feeling-out thing, and we can also make some more general observations as we go.

Oh, I’ve thought a lot about this! Hahaha. I’m treating it as an experiment. If I get to 69 of these or something, it’ll only help me (and maybe all of us?) learn better how to pick out the 54 that really make or break things—or to call BS on the concept. The incidence of close games is bound to be higher because of their style of play. Maybe as we go, I’ll sense some gradient of real variability deeper than score or game flow. That kind of stuff is why I’m doing these.

We’ve reached the peak of human excitement–or at least, the top of the North Side Baseball community’s top 20 Cubs prospect list. Today, we talk about one of the most exciting young outfielders in the entire sport. It was harder to say goodbye to Javier Báez than to any of the other Cubs who departed at the 2021 trade deadline. Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant were, at their best, better players. They’d been bigger contributors to the 2016 team that won the World Series, even though Báez had huge hits in the NLDS and was co-MVP of the NLCS that year. Rizzo and Bryant were faces of the franchise while Báez was still a wild-styled prospect with a mixed reputation. Still, by 2021, Báez was the one who made the team go, and his was the personality that kept the team interesting after it ceased to be excellent. That made it almost impossible that fans would embrace, let alone adulate, the player acquired in return for Báez. After all, what were the chances that a prospect the team got for just half a season of Báez’s services would even be of similar overall value on the field, let alone the same kind of charismatic daredevil Báez is? They seemed to be near zero. That’s what makes Pete Crow-Armstrong such a welcome miniature miracle. 1. Pete Crow-Armstrong - CF Age: 21 2022 Stats (A/A+): 101 G, 471 PA, .312/.376/.520, 16 HR, 9.2% BB, 21.7% K In answer to the question, “What if Albert Almora had plus speed, to go with those instincts and that ability to play the ball perfectly in flight?”, Cubs fans finally have an easy answer. Just point to Crow-Armstrong, who makes the same graceful, improbable catches Almora made in a radius about 10 feet wider. He’s blessed with the same proprioception and eye for the ballistics of a ball in flight as Almora, but he’s a better athlete in every facet: faster, stronger, and with a better throwing arm. If he were called up immediately, Crow-Armstrong would be a co-favorite for the Fielding Bible Award in center field before the end of this season. He’s not merely a true center fielder, but a true star-caliber defender there, which puts very little pressure on his bat to make him a credible regular in the majors. Still, if he’s going to have the long career and make the All-Star appearances the Cubs hope for, he’ll have to hit, and there lie all of the truly relevant questions remaining about his game. Last season, as a 20-year-old splitting his time between the two levels of Class A, Crow-Armstrong showed off some genuine pop. He hit those 16 homers despite playing in two pitcher-friendly parks and leagues, and he added 20 doubles and 10 triples to those, testifying to both his gap power and his speed. He also stole 32 bases in 43 tries. Those stats bespeak the tools–the way he can physically outmatch most players in the minors and many even in the majors. More importantly, though, he visibly improved as the season progressed. Early on, he was getting away with some swing habits that won’t work as he reaches higher levels: a lot of length in the back side of his swing with his hands, and a slightly lunging swing (reminiscent of another left-handed power-speed Cubs outfielder of yore, Corey Patterson) that left little chance for solid contact when he was fooled. By season’s end, he was more upright, allowing him to handle high fastballs better. His two-strike approach was cleaner, and he was better able to use all fields. That doesn’t mean he’s ready to step in and produce numbers as gaudy as those he’s put up in the minors anytime soon. Barring further refinement of his swing, he will strike out more as he climbs the ladder, and it could be the one obstacle to him taking over the leadoff role in the long term. He’ll have to rebalance his approach as he encounters more pitchers who can get him to swing and miss, too, and that will naturally dampen his power somewhat. Still, the two-way center fielder with All-Star upside is a rare breed even in today’s game, and the Cubs have had so few of them in their 150-year history that they can be counted on one hand. Crow-Armstrong could change that, as soon as the end of this season. There’s one more thing worth talking about with him, too, and it’s the thing that makes his placement atop this list both easy and thrilling: he’s absolutely nuts, in the best possible way. Irrepressible, thoughtful, and beloved by his teammates, he has the makings of another clubhouse cornerstone, right alongside Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ, Dansby Swanson, and Seiya Suzuki. His hustle borders on recklessness, but mostly in a good way. His intensity seems infectious, rather than affected or offputting. He’s even a baserunner as magical as Báez. That makeup seems like the secret ingredient that will help him bridge whatever gaps remain between himself and his goals. View full article

Baseball doesn’t lend itself well to momentum. The closest thing, old heads will tell you, is the next day’s starting pitcher. For the Dodgers, though, not even a huge advantage in that department was enough. The Cubs won a game they had no business winning Sunday, and they’re starting to get a good vibe going. Every team will win 54 games in the long grind of an MLB season, and every team will lose 54. The other 54 determine the outcome of your season. When you lost on an excruciating walkoff sequence the previous night, though, and when it’s getaway day at Dodger Stadium, and when you’re sending your fourth starter out to face one of the co-favorites for the NL Cy Young Award, you tend to mentally chalk that day’s contest up as one of the inevitable losses, and not even worry much about it. Under the intense and demanding leadership of their new core, though, the Cubs didn’t approach Sunday’s game that way at all. For one thing, Drew Smyly managed to avoid almost all trouble, and got David Ross 17 outs. He wasn’t missing bats, but he stayed around the strike zone, and little of the Dodgers’ contact was both solid and in the air. When Smyly has his three-pitch mix working, even if his curve isn’t dipping quite enough to generate whiffs, he can battle his way through five or six frames on the strength of good defense and enough guile to escape a jam. Only Chris Taylor, who cracked a solo home run against him in the third inning, managed to put a run on Smyly Sunday. That set a new tone for the game. It turned out to be the Cubs’ starting pitcher who lent momentum to the game, and that made it (unexpectedly) winnable. The offense continued to push the envelope. Nico Hoerner was picked off when he made an early break for second base against Julio Urías in the first inning, but Dansby Swanson and Cody Bellinger each stole a base. Bellinger, who had reached on an error, went to third on a ground ball and scored on an infield dribbler in the fifth, tying the score. Ian Happ could have broken things open in that same frame, as the team loaded the bases ahead of him with two outs. Again, though, a southpaw got the better of him. This time, Dave Roberts didn’t even have to do any maneuvering. Urías went right after Happ and induced a weak flare for an inning-ending groundout. At that moment, it again felt like the game could slip away from the Cubs, as it did Saturday night. Instead, the very next inning, Patrick Wisdom and Bellinger cracked back-to-back home runs. That’s the kind of offense that brings wavering games back from the brink of loss. That combination of relentlessness and suddenness has eluded the Cubs for most of the last four seasons, and the appearance of it in this game is no guarantee that they’ll sustain it. For one day, though, the Cubs gave themselves a bit of room to breathe. It almost wasn’t enough, of course. A bit of wildness from Adbert Alzolay and a fly ball that Seiya Suzuki lost in the California sun put the Dodgers within a hit of the lead. Mark Leiter, Jr. came on to put out the fire, though, and had what feels like his third or fourth huge outing of the year already. His splitter is one of the most valuable weapons in the Cubs’ bullpen. The spin rate on the pitch, thus far this year, averages just 909 revolutions per minute. Of the 141 pitchers who have thrown at least 25 changeups or splitters this year, only the Reds’ Fernando Cruz has lower spin than Leiter. That makes the pitch tumble and fade as well as just about any splitter for which one could hope, and it was devastatingly effective against Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy in this series. Leiter isn’t a true relief ace, or anything. The Cubs still don’t have one, though Keegan Thompson looks like that kind of pitcher on his best nights. It’s beginning to look like they have another in what’s becoming an impressive line of highly effective committees out there, though, and every game gives David Ross, Tommy Hottovy, and the rest of the pitching infrastructure more information about how best to deploy the unit. On Sunday, they learned that they can count on Leiter and Michael Fulmer on back-to-back days, at least in limited matchups, and that Leiter isn’t someone teams will solve after a single look. More importantly, of course, the team managed the improbable series win. They now go to Oakland, where the 3-13 Athletics await, with a very good chance to sew up a winning West Coast swing. The outline of a team that stays above .500 for more than a couple of weeks to open the season is coming into focus. Third Bucket Record: 3-3 View full article

The first two comments here took my first answer, which is the 400s-turned-300s, although the restrictions to access of the whole ring up there make it less good than it used to be. Your piece itself hit on my second one, though, which is: aisle 220! (Or 219, or 222. What I like is the value, and the centeredness, and the relatively easy egress to the concourses, all with a clean view of the action. Fun exercise!

The Cubs had chances to make themselves more comfortable Saturday night in Los Angeles, but they missed them, and the Dodgers didn’t make the same mistake when the door finally opened a crack for them. Jameson Taillon still hasn’t fully found his form for the Cubs yet, and the team paid the price for that on Saturday, even though Taillon managed five scoreless innings. The cost took the form of Taillon having to leave after five, because he’d expended too much energy and showed Dodgers hitters too much of his repertoire in order to survive a rocky first inning and a half. One could argue that he would have been lifted at that point anyway, with Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, and J.D. Martinez due for their third looks at him in the bottom of the sixth inning, but David Ross’s recent managerial style and Taillon’s status as a well-paid workhorse make it more likely he’d have gotten the sixth if he had more left in his arm by then. If that had been the case, Keegan Thompson and Mark Leiter, Jr. probably could have carried the Cubs home. Instead, they needed a third reliever, and Michael Fulmer simply didn’t have his best stuff. As we’ve mentioned before, it’s always a bad thing when your closer is off, but some guys have a greater margin for error than others. A walk here and a bloop single there hurt less if a pitcher has the ability to consistently miss bats at an elite rate, but Fulmer doesn’t have that skill. In fact, at the moment, no one in the Chicago bullpen does. Ross didn’t make any mistakes, in going from Taillon to Leiter (one inning, against a pocket of the lineup for whom the Cubs view him as a good matchup), Thompson (two frames, looking as sharp and gassed up as he has at any point in 2023, and with better command of his slider than he’d had in his previous two outings), and Fulmer. It just didn’t quite work. The Dodgers nudged across the winning runs with a single through the infield, a batted ball that would have been a sure out prior to the advent of the rules constraining defensive shifts. The bigger problem in the game was the Cubs' failure to produce more than one run, especially when they had a chance to add to that cushion late. Patrick Wisdom absolutely obliterated a ball to dead center field, giving the team the 1-0 lead to which they would cling for much of the game. Beyond that, though, they couldn't create any runs, and even good chances were in short supply. Would you believe that, entering Saturday, the Cubs ranked second in MLB in expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) against breaking stuff? Even taking actual run value, rather than using sometimes-wonky expected stats, they ranked fourth. That was hard to see in the way things unfolded Saturday night, though. Michael Grove had both his slider and his curveball working, and the Cubs were flummoxed. They whiffed eight times on 20 swings against his breaking balls, and watched another 11 of the offerings go by for called strikes. They had no answer for it, and did no better against the Dodgers bullpen. Dansby Swanson appears to be in the first funk (that counts) of his Cubs career. One can read the following as either reassuring or exasperating, but this is a normal part of his game. It will be wonderful if the Cubs find ways to shorten or (eventually) eliminate stretches where he looks utterly lost at the plate, and it was good to see him gather himself enough to draw a potentially pivotal walk in the eighth inning, but his strikeouts and empty plate appearances can sometimes pile up for a week or two before he finds his heat again. Ian Happ had a chance to break the game open, on the heels of the Swanson walk. The bases were loaded with one out, and (for the second time in the game) Dave Roberts elected to bring in a southpaw to turn Happ around in a key situation. Though he did nominally even things out in terms of his platoon splits last year, it's important to remember that Happ is still very limited as a right-handed batter. His .788 OPS against lefties last year was built on a .425 BABIP in a sample of 137 plate appearances. He still struck out far too often (28.5 percent of the time), and crucially, he hardly ever walks from that side. He drew just seven of them as a righty all last season. On the Marquee broadcast, Boog Sciambi mentioned Happ having a great idea of the zone from each side, but it's simply untrue. All of that was made worse, of course, by a dreadful call of strike one on the first pitch to Happ, which was well outside. That pitch changed the at-bat, because Happ still got ahead in the count and might have been in position to work a rare right-handed free pass, or at least get a fat pitch to hit. Instead, he expanded his zone and made a bad out, and Seiya Suzuki followed that with a plate appearance that reminded all viewers that he's been facing Triple-A pitching and worse for the last couple of weeks. There wasn't much to be done, there, except for Happ to take a slightly better approach. He has to be more ready for teams to target him with lefties in those spots, and he has to make some adjustments. Ross might have had more options to consider, though, if the roster were more optimized. He'd already burned Luis Torrens in a dance with Roberts the previous inning, deciding he preferred Edwin Ríos against Yency Almonte to Eric Hosmer against Alex Vesia, even at the cost of Torrens. That, like his pitching choices, was a sound decision that just didn't pay off. If Matt Mervis had Hosmer's place on the roster, though, the choice would have been much more interesting, and Ross might well have kept his starting DH in there, keeping both Ríos and Torrens available. Better still, if Torrens, Ríos, or Nick Madrigal were replaced with Christopher Morel on the roster, Ross might have entertained going to Morel during that long sequence somewhere--be it as the pinch-hitter for Hosmer (or Mervis) in the seventh, or instead of Happ against Caleb Ferguson in the eighth. He probably wouldn't have done the latter, anyway. Again, Happ just has to get better as a right-handed hitter, and as a manager of the moment when he comes up in clutch situations. Still, the absence of Mervis, Morel, and even Nelson Velázquez was felt Saturday night. The Cubs are built around pitching and defense, but any team that wants to win a series at Dodger Stadium also needs to have some punch. Because they currently have such a deeply flawed offensive squad, Chicago couldn't hold onto a lead in a winnable game, and they still feel more like a team fighting to stay afloat than one swimming confidently toward a particular destination. Hopefully, be it via a roster shakeup or a series of small improvements by key veterans, they can change that soon. Third Bucket Record: 2-3 View full article

Well, horsefeathers.

Interesting dilemma here now. Do you bring the infield in?

Wisdom. Whew! Man of the match.

Wayyy too careful with the tying run there when Muncy then comes up as the go-ahead one, for me. Hate it. Lock in now, Keegan..

It's too early to know anything with Seiya. I feel like Happ's had consistent trouble with getting jumpy and mismanaging the moment when he comes up in the clutch--even last year. That's the next box to check in his evolution. Hope he can manage it.

That strike one call was BRUTAL, man.