Matthew Trueblood

It's hard to remember a four-game series that featured as many twists and tense moments as the one the Cubs just finished against the Brewers in Milwaukee. In all likelihood, both teams' fans came away feeling that their side should have won, but the split was the most just outcome. It's just not clear whether it was enough for the Cubs. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports All the pieces and beats of the season matter. If the Cubs had come to Miller Park at 41-41, they wouldn't have needed to worry at all about a split of these four games. A split on the road is usually good enough, and splitting with a team ahead of you in the standings on the road is nearly always so. Since they came in at 38-44, though, they needed to seize this opportunity. They had to start closing the gap between themselves and the Brewers, as well as the Reds. They couldn't swing it. By the end of the series, it did seem as though the Cubs were slightly more talented than the Brewers. It's seemed that way for much of the season, and through half their encounters, it's especially seemed that way when they take the field against one another. Unfortunately, talent isn't like the tickets you win playing games at Dave & Buster's. You can't cash talent in for the wins missing from your record. Talent is more like the tokens. They give you the opportunity to succeed, but you still have to go play the games to win the real prizes. Since his return from the injured list in mid-May, Nico Hoerner is hitting .251/.304/.374. He's trying to adjust and evolve. He's tapped into slightly more power, after a start in which he was racking up singles but little else, and he's drawn a few more walks than he'd been doing early in the season. Still, the Cubs can't remotely afford for a player on whom they rely as a dynamic offensive force to run a sub-.700 OPS over nearly 200 plate appearances. Speaking of stretches of 200 plate appearances, Ian Happ's last 199 of them have resulted in a .204/.342/.327 line, He has three home runs over that span, despite hitting two in that one game in London. In his last 201, Dansby Swanson is hitting .235/.304/.399. Cody Bellinger is hot right now, but his home run Thursday was his first since the end of April. Within that span, Swanson and Bellinger have had good streaks. So has Seiya Suzuki, who's struggling mightily lately. Happ and Hoerner have managed to avoid any catastrophic slumps, though they haven't had even the brief heaters Swanson and Bellinger have enjoyed. The Cubs are two well-rounded power hitters shy of a serious lineup right now. Occasionally, they will be able to put up runs over the course of a few games, be it with the help of some poor defense or because someone like Yan Gomes (whose home run Thursday was his first since June 4, and his second since May 10) runs into one unexpectedly, but they just don't have the thump to consistently produce enough runs to win games. As I've written recently, there are things they could be doing to improve their chances. Miguel Amaya should be playing more, for instance. They could bring back Matt Mervis for another taste of the majors, to see how much he's learned during his sojourn in Des Moines. They could be left with no choice but to bring back David Bote, Edwin Rios, or Miles Mastrobuoni, in the wake of Nick Madrigal hitting the IL and Swanson leaving the game Wednesday with a bruised heel. Nelson Velazquez is a potential source of power, and has recovered from a crisis-level slump recently. There are, of course, trades to consider. Still, we have to wonder whether the team is even good enough at coaching and player development to make that stuff matter. Underachievement is a little too contagious in the Cubs clubhouse for my comfort. If they can't be counted upon to get the most out of their cornerstones, it won't matter what tweaks they make to playing time distributions, or even whom they acquire. Jameson Taillon starts Friday night in New York. He's becoming another, even more alarming exemplar of the team's inability to convert talent into real value. He represents the dangers of being as bad at that particular conversion as the team seems to be right now. He's returning to the home of a team for whom he pitched very well, and he'll set the tone for a series the Cubs absolutely must win. Hopefully, this will be the start of his turnaround, and the team will prove that they really can do something useful with talented players. Hope, alas, is not a plan. View full article

The Cubs have had some good and important wins in 2023, but Wednesday night's comeback at Miller Park was the best and the most important. It was a game heavy with implications, both good and bad, and it sets the stage for a pivotal showdown Thursday. Let's talk a bit more about it. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports First of all, Wednesday night was a reminder of how narrow a margin for error Justin Steele has, using his limited repertoire. The sixth inning, in particular, demonstrated his vulnerability. He nearly escaped that frame with the Cubs down just 2-1, but a slider that found the plate and was left up a bit became an RBI single by Brian Anderson. Anderson often runs reverse platoon splits at the plate, so he's an unlikely culprit for a key hit against Steele. That's true on the surface, anyway. The reason for Anderson's split profile, though, is the way his swing works. He's vulnerable to stuff with good vertical movement, but handles horizontal movement--especially toward him--well. That means that, to beat him, a pitcher like Steele has to be perfect. His stuff doesn't have special vertical movement. He's all about horizontal movement, steering in on righties and away from lefties. That can be very effective, but against a swing like Anderson's, it's trouble. The ball has to be in the right spot to get him. Obviously, precision always helps, but pitchers like Steele have to be able to succeed when they miss by six inches or so. Against most hitters, he can do so, but as Willy Adames's go-ahead home run and Anderson's cushioning hit showed, that won't always be the case. In particular, as the league gets better and longer looks at him, more hitters will punish his mistakes. As I've written several times, Steele's cutter-slider combo really is fully about its lateral movement profile. He does achieve decent depth on the slider, and occasionally, that cutter remembers that it started as a four-seamer and takes off at the top of the zone. Mostly, though, both pitches are ordinary from a vertical perspective. That's a source of weakness for him, and it will remain so, unless or until he develops another pitch that does stretch vertically or change hitters' eye levels. Of course, there will be nights on which he's precise enough to dominate even without that added dimension. He's a great pitcher, and it's been a joy to watch him thrive in 2023. Nonetheless, Wednesday night's start was rendered ordinary because of a legitimate shortcoming for him. That's just one takeaway from the game, though, and obviously, it turned out not to be the most momentous one. Hopefully, Dansby Swanson's heel contusion will also turn out not to be the big story. Swanson's eagerness to play every inning of every game catches up to him sometimes, not only in the form of offensive funks, but in little injuries like these. On a night that saw him hit into two double plays, Swanson seemed to stretch and reach a little extra with his final few strides on the second, which might have led to the bruised heel. Extra hustle--a scintilla of desperation, even--is to be expected on a frustrating night for a player who demands so much of himself. Things like a heel bruise are more likely to happen when one pushes past the limit, especially to a player who doesn't take even the occasional days off that are customary in the modern game. If it only costs him a game and a half, this is no big deal. The Cubs just need to hope the heel settles down, rather than getting increasingly stiff or sore over the next few days. This lineup already has too little firepower. They can't afford to be long without their slugging shortstop. Even without Swanson, the Cubs came back. They beat the game's least beatable closer, with a parade of flares and tough at-bats. The legend of Mike Tauchman continues to grow. He'll never hit for much power, but his approach--and his ability to pay off tough at-bats with more than the consolation prize of having made the pitcher work--has been exactly what the Cubs needed. As we said when he was called up, Tauchman wasn't designed to be a temporary rotation piece. They kept him in Triple A while they could, to avoid losing him to the vagaries of an early roster crunch. The plan, given the way things have gone, has to be that Tauchman is a permanent part of the team's outfield and DH plans, even if not quite a full-time one. Then, it was Adbert Alzolay's turn. Wednesday night was a huge test for him. He'd been ok, but not quite good enough, Sunday against the Guardians, and the story was the same Tuesday night against Milwaukee. The Cubs badly needed to hold a one-run lead, and Alzolay had to overcome two straight uneven outings. That he not only did so, but dispatched the Brewers in 10 pitches, might have been the most encouraging of the several good things that happened for the Cubs in that contest. On top of shaking off the bad juju of the last two games, Alzolay showed his best stuff in a while. His fastball topped 97 miles per hour for the first time since late April. Now, the Cubs have a chance to earn the series win they needed to keep themselves in the race when they arrived in Milwaukee. They just need to cap it off with a victory behind Marcus Stroman. Getaway days have been unfriendly to this team throughout David Ross's tenure, but they have to break the pattern. Stroman looked alright for most of his first outing after leaving his previous start with the beginnings of a blister, but things got away from him in the sixth inning. The Brewers are dissimilar from the Guardians, who keep the pressure on by putting the ball in play relentlessly. Milwaukee strikes out at one of the highest rates in MLB. Stroman just needs to be able to miss bats at the key moments, to avoid letting a rally spiral on him the way one did against Cleveland. One series can't turn around the Cubs' season. This team is still well below .500. With two thrilling wins under their belts and their ace taking the mound, though, they have a chance to stay afloat through the All-Star break. That's the gift that the Tauchman-led comeback Wednesday night gave. Now, they just need to make the most of it. View full article

As the Cubs' occasionally promising season circles the drain, they continue to carry one of the most promising players in their organization on the big-league roster. He never plays. What is the plan for Miguel Amaya, and why does every possible answer seem so discouraging? Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports A concussion suffered by Yan Gomes forced the Cubs to call up Miguel Amaya from Double-A Tennessee in early May. That stay on the roster only lasted about a week, but Amaya got the bump to Triple-A Iowa thereafter. Three weeks later, he was back with the parent time, this time thanks to his own stellar production and the team's need for a jolt on offense. Alas, either that wasn't really the reason (maybe it was a clerical error, and everyone was too embarrassed to say so!), or no one told David Ross that it was. Upon returning to the roster, Amaya started six out of seven games--three each at catcher and designated hitter. Since then, though, he's only been written into five of the 18 starting lineups Ross has constructed. During that time, he's gotten into the game late only twice (and one of those really came right at the end of his streak of playing every day, on June 11). He had only 19 plate appearances over the final 20 days of June, and started July by riding the bench, too. This can't be explained by performance. Since June 11, Amaya had batted .313/.421/.625 (before his pinch-hit strikeout Sunday night). Sure, that's in a minuscule sample, but he can't magically succeed in chances not given to him. Over the same span, in twice as many plate appearances, Yan Gomes is hitting .265/.375/.294. He's done well to grind out at-bats and extend innings by getting on base, but his power is on summer sabbatical. Gomes has gotten half the work behind the plate, and Tucker Barnhart is getting an even share of the other half with Amaya. Barnhart has hit .250/.333/.438 in 18 plate appearances, a searing hot streak that has his seasonal OPS almost up to .500, but even during it, he's fanned seven times. Obviously, Gomes and Barnhart are trusted, veteran receivers behind the plate. As glowing as everyone's comments about Amaya's defense have been so far, it's not surprising that Ross trusts both of them more than the rookie who's had so little experience even in the upper minors. This team is desperate for offense, though, which should have dictated an extra start or two for the man with some obvious and instant upside at the plate over the last three weeks. Failing that, Amaya could slot in as the designated hitter. Christopher Morel has gotten seven starts there over the span in question, and Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ each grabbed a little time there in order to manage their workload during the slog of late June in a long season. Still, that Amaya only fitted in twice in that role during this window is jarring. Where is Amaya being squeezed? It begins with third base, really. That's where the return of Nick Madrigal, and the everyday playing time he's gotten, has closed off an avenue to playing time in the field for Morel. Madrigal has been good, but as the Cubs drifted punchlessly through June (a month in which they were 24th in MLB in slugging average), he would have been a candidate to sit out occasionally in favor of someone who could cure that shortcoming. Morel finally got penciled in for a start at the hot corner Sunday, but even then, Amaya was benched. Here's where the rubber meets the road with the greatest force. It was Trey Mancini who started at DH instead of Amaya. Mancini, slugging .351 for the season but a positively sizzling .389 during this stretch that has seen Amaya sidelined, has 22 plate appearances since June 11. He's the first right-handed bat off the bench. He's gotten time at first base and at designated hitter. He's been a costly disaster, worth -1.2 Wins Above Replacement according to Baseball Reference and actually hurting the Cubs even more than that, but the skipper can't find the gumption to park him in the doghouse, and the front office can't summon the humility to admit their mistake and cut bait. Farming out Amaya again shouldn't even be under discussion. He's 24 years old, with good health and developmental momentum on his side for the first time in two years. As one of three catchers on the roster, he doesn't even pose a daunting challenge in the management of the roster. He's far from a guaranteed source of production, but the Cubs need to give him roughly twice as much playing time as he's gotten over the last 25 days. If they fail to do so, they'll shortchange themselves in both the short and the longer term. View full article

So, uh, what now? Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs started what is, technically, the second half of their season Sunday night with a game that neatly summarized their first half. It was, in turns, infuriating, depressing, wildly exciting, and then deflating. The ultimate culprit in their failure was bad luck, but that didn't change the fact that they also had a talent shortfall, and that shortfall was a factor, too. For the weekend, the Cubs outscored the Guardians by one run, but lost two games out of three. One step forward, two steps back. That's the season, and that's the story of Sunday, too. It's hard to imagine that the Cubs can keep running Jameson Taillon out there every fifth day, but they've done it 14 times, now, and they're now 2-12 in those games. Taillon put them in a hole it seemed like their feeble offense would have no hope of escaping, but the bullpen did admirable damage control, and Christopher Morel hit a home run to give a little bit of juice back to the crowd in the bottom of the eighth. Then, just the way the team climbed off the mat to make a surge throughout the middle of June, they miraculously put themselves back in the catbird seat in the ninth. It took a pair of cheap dribblers to first base breaking their way, but they strung together enough good outcomes to come back from four runs down and tie the game. It was a good moment. It couldn't last. Adbert Alzolay hit a frequent snag for this team, when he was unable to fan Amed Rosario and equally unable to give in and work around him. Rosario hit a single that could almost have been a groundout, but instead just led to a collision between Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner that gave every Cubs fan a scare unlike any since Justin Steele left a start a month ago with forearm trouble. Jose Ramirez hit what could have been a go-ahead single, but Jared Young (who'd made an error earlier that contributed to Taillon's continued misery) made a stellar stab, took the out at first, and held both runners. Up the rollercoaster had risen. Now it had to fall again. Josh Naylor had the same at-bat Rosario had had, only from the left side. Alzolay has only walked six batters all season, and eight since returning to the majors in the second half of last season. He's always around the zone. It's one of the things that makes him a great high-leverage reliever. Every now and then, though, it's a bug, not a feature. As happens too much to Taillon, and occasionally to Stroman, and to Julian Merryweather, and to other Cubs, Alzolay couldn't find a way even to pitch around Naylor, let alone to retire him. Sometimes, hitters show Chicago hurlers that they have them measured--that their swings are an unsolvable fit with the pitchers' offerings and their shapes--and the Cubs just can't figure out how to escape the plate appearance without giving up the deciding blow. Naylor's ground ball up the middle wasn't so different from the one Morel hit to bring the Cubs within a run in the previous half-inning. It was well-hit, but a ground ball. It got through because the infield was drawn in, and so two runs scored, instead of one. This time, the Cubs had no answer. They went down so meekly in the bottom of the 10th that whether they trailed by one run or two hardly ended up mattering. It was an anticlimactic ending to a great game. That, again, is how it's felt to follow this team for much of the season. Pat Hughes is fond of remarking that .500 teams don't simply win a game, then lose the next day. Baseball isn't like that. The 2023 Cubs are starting to have the uneasy vibe of a .500 team, even though their run differential rides on the high side of that and their actual record rides on the low side of it. They'd lost 10 of 14 when they arrived in San Francisco just over three weeks ago. They won 11 of their next 13, through the first game of the London Series, but since then, they've dropped seven of eight again. There's not much time left on this ride. There are four weeks left until the trade deadline, and one week left before the All-Star break. In that week, everything is going to come to a head. The Brewers and Reds are six games up on the Cubs. Milwaukee and Cincinnati play themselves nine times in these next four weeks, but before that, the Cubs go to Miller Park for four games. They then wind down the unofficial first half with a weekend set in New York. If they don't win at least four of those seven games (and really, five is the target figure), then the team will be deadline sellers. This is their last stand. They don't seem ready for it, at all, and luck has been so steadfastly against them all year that they hardly seem to have a chance. The only solace to be found is that, every time we've had such certainty about anything so far this year, that certainty has been immediately shattered. View full article

When MLB announced the pitchers and reserves for the 2023 All-Star Game Sunday, the Cubs landed three players on the National League roster. It was a good moment for the team, and a well-deserved honor in each case. Image courtesy of © Peter van den Berg-USA TODAY Sports Remarkable even in the absence of anything truly spectacular, Dansby Swanson has come exactly as advertised this season. Of the stars the Cubs could have signed to big deals to be their shortstop over the last two winters (Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, Carlos Correa, Javier Baez, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Trevor Story), only Swanson, Seager, and Semien made the All-Star cut this year. It's a huge and needed victory for the front office that Swanson, their first megadeal signee since Jason Heyward, has been the caliber of player they believed they were buying. Swanson's defense was the sure thing, for many, but it's been a subtle and steady joy to watch him every day at shortstop. He plays nearly every inning of nearly every game, and his hands and feet are in the right position more often than those of any other shortstop in the game. That his arm is weaker than those of the other elite defenders at that spot is not only surmountable, but almost a non-issue, because he's so good at charging the ball when necessary; modulating his exchange and release to account for the speed of runners; and thinking through each situation. Offensively, though he's not on track to deliver the power for which some might have hoped after he clubbed 52 homers in his final two seasons in Atlanta, he's been the most reliable hitter in the lineup. With a more patient approach and less focus on lifting the ball, he's increased his contact rate and avoided the long slumps that pockmarked even his breakout campaigns. It's been a slight disappointment to see him run the bases with extreme conservatism, and the team needs power more urgently because he's delivering less of it than anticipated, but his overall contribution has been terrific. Steele and Stroman don't even come with the minor reservations one can tick off about Swanson. Despite a missed start by Steele due to forearm tightness, the duo have combined for 24 Quality Starts in 33 turns in the rotation. Only three moundsmen have had Quality Starts in a higher percentage of their outings than Steele: Logan Webb, Clayton Kershaw... and Stroman. Steele leads the league in ERA, and the only caveat that requires is that, if Chicago relievers hadn't allowed five of eight bequeathed runners to score after Stroman left games, he might have snuck in below his teammate. To have their co-aces and their $177-million shortstop all headed to Seattle, and to still be five games below .500 at the halfway point of the season, is a mixed blessing. The Cubs have to hope this trio sustains their brilliance in the second half, and that they can better support and leverage those performances. Still, Sunday was a good day, because it marked a big moment in the progress of the franchise, as well as for each of those individuals. View full article

After another brilliant start Friday at Wrigley Field, Justin Steele wakes up Saturday as not only the MLB leader in ERA, but a heavy favorite to make the National League All-Star team. Famously, he's done it mostly with two pitches: his fastball, and his slider. Less famously, though, Steele has another weapon in his arsenal: lying. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports I've written more than once about Justin Steele's fastball this year. Way back In April, I first documented the fact that his cut-ride fastball really lacked what we would typically call 'ride'. Last week, I wrote about Steele again in advance of his start in London, with the new information that Pitch Info has reclassified his heater as a cutter, not a four-seamer. Since then, though, Steele has made an appearance as an in-game interviewee on Marquee Sports Network, and during his outing Friday, analyst Lance Brozdowski spent considerable time weighing in with data-driven insights on Steele's fastball. Both Steele and Brozdowski repeatedly referred to Steele's fastball as a four-seamer, and Brozdowski compared it metrically to other four-seamers. All of this--probably unintentionally, in Brozdowski's case, but perhaps on purpose in Steele's--is part of a campaign of propaganda that is helping keep Steele's excellent streak going. As I documented in those previous pieces, Steele's fastball just isn't a four-seamer, by any ordinary standard. Its movement (and the way some of it is derived from seam orientation) screams cutter. His grip and his hand motion through release say cutter. The pitch is a cutter. However, no pitcher is obligated to call their stuff by the name that best objectively matches what the pitch does. Pitch classifiers needn't automatically hew to what they say, but pitchers are allowed to think about a pitch in a certain way, if it helps--even if we see something totally different. In Steele's case, there's no reason not to keep talking about it as a four-seamer, so that's what he's doing. It's hard for me to believe that he's unaware of its continued metamorphosis into a cutter, something well up the fastball-to-curve spectrum from his slider but decidedly moving in that direction. If he can get hitters to keep thinking four-seamer and swinging four-seamer when he throws it, though, it can only help him continue to miss barrels and induce ground balls with the pitch. For a cutter, Steele's heat actually rides pretty high, yet he has a 75th-percentile ground-ball rate on that offering. For a four-seamer, the frequency with which he gets grounders on the pitch would be downright elite, in the 94th percentile. Obviously, hitters aren't sitting at home waiting to hear Steele's thoughts on his own repertoire before going out and trying to hit him. Nothing he or anyone else says can radically alter what happens when he takes the mound. Pitching rarely requires anything radical, though. Small shifts and small violations of expectation yield small but crucial advantages. Putting the wrong idea in a hitter's head--whether he does it in an interview, or with his alignment and the slight crossfire action of his delivery, or whether algorithms do it for him by misreading and misreporting his pitch mix--gives Steele a leg up. That's not to say that the southpaw's success is smoke and mirrors. It isn't. His slider is as valuable as his cutter, especially against fellow lefties. It's just a fun way to celebrate and cerebrate on his breakout. He's winning with command, and tenacity, and good movement. He's also winning with deception, and some of that deception isn't physical or visual. It's verbal. View full article

On Wednesday afternoon, New York Mets owner Steve Cohen indicated that his team would become sellers ahead of next month's trade deadline, if they didn't start winning games. They lost in maddening fashion Wednesday night. Sharks are circling the $400-million beast that is the 2023 Mets roster. Could the Chicago Cubs be one of them, with an eye on New York's star first baseman? In a 1-to-1 deal, barely more than a quarter of respondents are down with giving up the organization's top prospect, even for a sure-thing slugger with a year and a half of team control remaining. That's probably about right, really. Crow-Armstrong has significant upside, and the Cubs have control of his services until at least 2030, without commitment or a major financial outlay in the short term. Most importantly, perhaps, it doesn't feel as though Alonso would put the current team over the top, although it might make them favorites in the anemic NL Central. Another 14 percent of voters, though, would consider a deal in which some other pieces changed hands, and the Cubs and Mets have a lot of ways to balance the scales in such a deal. Coming off back-to-back implosions by Jameson Taillon and Drew Smyly, the Cubs might feel that they need help in their starting rotation, and the Mets have some guys in whom the team could be interested. New York also has veteran relievers who could give a boost to the bullpen. Even with a sweetener, it would be difficult to part with a player who some project to play elite defense in center field and produce at an above-average clip at the plate for one at the bottom of the defensive spectrum, despite the unimpeachable track record of the latter. To do it, one would need to believe highly in Alonso. As I've probably implied heavily enough already, I meet that criterion. Having Alonso for two potential pennant races has value, but landing him this summer would also set the stage for a potential contract extension with him. Alonso's body might not look like one that will age well, but his skill set says he'll keep slugging into his 30s. One should never, ever pay more in a trade based on the ability to extend a player's contract, though, unless the whole deal is contingent on that extension. That wouldn't be the case here, so we need to focus on the term of team control Alonso has at the moment, not on how much longer he could theoretically be a Cub if they traded for him. The benefits to the big-league team from the acquisition of Alonso would be huge, but would they be enough? And do they outstrip the alternatives by enough to justify such a high cost? Let's answer the second of those questions first. Even if Paul Goldschmidt becomes available next month, the Cardinals and Cubs are not getting together on a deal like that. C.J. Cron is the poor man's Alonso, the one the Cubs could land at a much lower price. He's on a very cheap deal that expires at the end of this season, and although he's been limited by injuries and looked a bit depleted this year, he had good seasons in 2021 and 2022. That's the bargain deal available as a short-term patch. Otherwise, the Cubs would have to ride out 2023 with Jared Young, Trey Mancini, and Matt Mervis at first base, and hope to see enough from either Young or Mervis to give them faith in them for 2024. It's possible the Cubs could win the division without getting better at first base. Those three incumbents have the talent to produce more than they have to this point. Christopher Morel and Patrick Wisdom could spend a little time there down the stretch, and each of them has power to contribute to the lineup. The team's viability this year depends more on getting Taillon and Smyly back on track, and on the production of their long-term core hitters, than on any addition they might make. Still, Alonso would be a huge improvement, and he'd materially increase their chances of reaching the postseason. He'd also solve the position for 2024, whereas (at least absent a hot and seemingly sustainable finish by Young or Mervis) they currently have a hole there, and would be looking at Cron, Rhys Hoskins, Garrett Cooper, or Brandon Belt in free agency. As Mancini has ably demonstrated, buying second-tier bats at offense-first positions is often an unhappy business. The final question to answer is whether it would really take Crow-Armstrong to get Alonso. When a multi-time All-Star with more than a year of team control is available, and the selling club has leverage, it's fair to start with any team's top prospect. The Cubs have great depth in their system, though. Could they do a more desirable deal that doesn't involve Crow-Armstrong? It's plausible. It would probably cost them one of Cade Horton, Jordan Wicks, and Ben Brown, plus Kevin Alcantara, but it's plausible. Is giving up two of that group, and perhaps another sweetener, better than doing what the Mets did when they traded for Javier Baez in 2021, and just giving up one prospect with major upside? I can see a case for either side. There's even more to consider here, like whether Cody Bellinger fits into an Alonso conversation, but that can wait for another time. For now, I'm eager to hear whether others feel that Alonso is worth all this commotion--let alone one of the best prospects the Cubs have had since their super-core of 2015 and 2016. View full article

Frustrating inconsistency and buzzard's luck have defined Jameson Taillon's first season with the Cubs. Tuesday night's start was sadly typical. At times, Taillon cruised, and showed the stuff that made Chicago want him, even at a hefty price. Two home runs ruined his night, though, and they could have been avoided. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports It seemed like Brandon Marsh spotted something extremely early against Jameson Taillon. Over a month in to a fairly grisly slump, Marsh suddenly found the aggressive, powerful swing that went missing for him during that period of struggle. He hit two home runs against Taillon, accounting for over half the Phillies' runs in the game, but they weren't lightning bolts that struck without warning. The first pitch Taillon threw to Marsh in the game was a fastball in the upper half of the zone. It had too much of the plate, and wasn't quite high enough, which was one of Taillon's big problems all night. Marsh fouled it off, but his swing was absolutely vicious and the exit velocity on that foul ball was (unofficially) a billion miles per hour. Taillon was, sensibly, more careful with his next pitch, another fastball that was called a ball, up and away. On 1-1, though, Taillon and Yan Gomes tried to come inside on Marsh. The pitch was a cutter, above the belt and on the inside corner, but Marsh obliterated it. One might fairly have said, as the Cubs broadcast did on Marquee, that it was a good pitch--at least in a vacuum. No pitch is thrown in a vacuum, though. Given what Marsh looked like on the first pitch of that plate appearance, the pitch Taillon threw on 1-1 wasn't a good one at all. An even worse sequence happened the next time Marsh stepped to the plate. Taillon and Gomes got ahead of Marsh this time, with a fastball that was called a strike on the outer edge and a changeup Marsh fouled off, just off the corner. Again, though, Marsh's swing was an aggressive and dangerous one, and the foul ball was struck sharply. On 0-2, the Cubs went with a fastball above the zone. Marsh laid off, but Taillon and Gomes were still in good position, ahead 1-2. They tried to put him away with a curveball low and in. It stayed both over the plate and above the knees, though, and again, Marsh left no doubt. Good pitchers (and catchers) read opponents' swings. It's one of the very important mystical aspects of the art and craft of pitching. It's related to another one, too. Good pitchers also know how to work around a hitter when they don't have a good way to get them out. In neither situation Tuesday night should Taillon have simply given up and walked Marsh. There has to be some middle ground, though--some way to pitch around a guy without completely capitulating. It takes command, and unfortunately, Taillon's control is far ahead of his command right now. It also takes the right mental approach. At some point in an at-bat in which a hitter is taking swings like those two foul balls by Marsh, a pitcher has to start thinking of a walk as an acceptable, even noble outcome. They have to flip a switch and begin thinking that the hitter will need to expand the strike zone and get themselves out, and that that's ok. Marsh, as it happens, was an especially good candidate for that treatment Tuesday night. He's been swinging at too much junk for the last month; it's why his power disappeared for a while. Maybe he would have laid off Taillon's stuff outside the zine, but it's perfectly possible he would have gotten himself out. We'll never know, because Taillon (as too often happens for him) was unwilling to take that chance and stay well out of the area where damage can be done. The aggravations went far beyond Taillon on Tuesday night. It was just one of those games, where nothing seems to go quite right. Dansby Swanson hit two balls very well, if a bit less well than Marsh did, and both died well short of doing any damage. Nico Hoerner, who ultimately drove home the Cubs' only run in the eighth inning, just missed poking an RBI single through the right side earlier in the game. A mishit blooper just barely got over Hoerner and fell into right-center field for one of Philadelphia's runs. Junior Valentine allowed a fairly large strike zone, and that happened to suit Ranger Suarez much better than it suited Taillon. You can chalk almost all of that up to bad luck, but all of it (and especially the fact that Marsh easily cleared the fence twice, while Swanson showed only warning-track power) also points toward the Phillies' superior overall talent. It was the kind of game that is both closer than the final score makes it look, and clearer than a recitation of its action makes it sound. The Cubs just had that wonderful homestand, and then a highly productive road trip that started with four straight wins. To end that trip with an unfortunate loss to the Cardinals was no big deal, but to let it become a two-game losing streak in the first game back home, despite the days off and the fact that the Phillies are no juggernaut this year, was a bummer. There's time to turn things right back around in the 12 games left before the All-Star break, but that loss put a whiff of danger back into the air, mingled with the smoky haze. Wednesday night needs to be the start of a bounce back. View full article

The Cubs are a better team than their record shows. In the National League, they rank fourth in runs allowed per game and sixth in runs scored per game. Tom Ricketts has said he expects the team to be buyers at the trade deadline. If that's true, their focus should be on adding a bat to their lineup. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports It's probably surprising to some to hear that the team is above-average in run scoring, at least on the senior circuit. They went through a long fallow period at the plate, and their weaknesses (being on the wrong side of average both in strikeout rate and in power) can make them disproportionately frustrating at times. Nor is their current standing a wholly accurate picture of how their season has unfolded. We're taking this measurement of their relative production during a fairly long hot streak, which juices everything. Let's talk, then, about lengthening the lineup. The team needs to hit for more power, without striking out more, and they need help at first base, designated hitter, and/or third base. Here are three players who could be fits. Andrew McCutchen, Pirates DH/OF It's been a welcome surprise to see McCutchen hit so well in his return to his original team. Although long ago relegated to outfield corners and despite a couple of severe leg injuries over the years, McCutchen has remained a sneakily great athlete. He's not hitting for exceptional power this year, but his overall line--.271/.394/.431--would be an upgrade for almost anyone, and certainly a big one for the Cubs. McCutchen also has nine steals in 12 tries this year, and he's only struck out 55 times in 277 plate appearances. He'd slot in as the regular designated hitter, limiting Trey Mancini's playing time unless and until he shows he can hit and handle first base adequately. Lane Thomas, Nationals OF He's only 27, and still has two years of team control beyond 2023. It's unlikely that the Nationals will desperately try to move Thomas. However, this season has made clear that that team is far from contention, and he could be their best trade chip this summer. That's thanks to 36 extra-base hits (including 14 homers) in 328 trips to the plate this season, good for a .515 slugging average. Thomas has big tools. He strikes out often, so he won't solve that problem for the club, but he would be an excellent complement to the outfield mix of Ian Happ, Cody Bellinger, Mike Tauchman, and Seiya Suzuki. Adding Thomas would allow David Ross to keep all of those guys fresher, by rotating them through the DH spot and playing matchups better. Jeimer Candelario, Nationals 3B Since he's a free agent at the end of this year, Candelario would be much cheaper to acquire than Thomas would be. He's also much tougher to strike out than Thomas is. That comes at some cost in power, but if the Cubs feel that the rest of their lineup has found some productive stability, they can afford to add a player who keeps the line moving, as Candelario does. His batting line for the year is .260/.335/.466, which is (adjusting for the era and run environment) darn close to a perfect match for the production a believer might have expected from him when he was a Cubs prospect, several years ago. The above only scratch the surface. If the Cubs do go shopping next month, they'll have even more options than these. As a starting point, though, these three hitters are fine examples of how the team can shore up a lineup that isn't yet deep enough to support a championship run. View full article

Though they couldn't complete a sweep of the Cardinals in the London Series, the Cubs remain pretty hot. With an off day Monday ahead of a crucial 13-game stretch before the All-Star break, now is a good time to assess the team's chances for the postseason. Image courtesy of © Peter van den Berg-USA TODAY Sports Two models of Playoff Odds projections dominate the national conversation: those on FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus. On each, the Brewers dominate the Cubs in terms of likelihood to win the NL Central, and neither gives Chicago much chance to claim a Wild Card berth. As the team has heated back up recently, though, their odds have steadily risen--especially according to FanGraphs. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projection system has been more pessimistic about the Cubs since before Opening Day, and that pattern persists, though the gap is small. BP gives them a 19.2-percent chance to reach the postseason, including a 16.5-percent shot at taking the division title. That model does have the Cubs as a clear second-best in the division, though, whereas FanGraphs sees the Reds as a legitimate, essentially equal contender. Obviously, since the Reds are currently leading the division, there does seem to be a kernel of truth to that. At bedrock, though, the two models say the same thing. The Cubs are not the favorites in the division, thanks especially to their dreadful stretch of play from mid-April through the beginning of June, but they're viable, thanks to a solid foundation of talent and the weakness of their division. These projections are rooted not only in their record, but in their roster and the talent those systems see in it. There is one other robust Playoff Odds engine out there, though. At Baseball Reference, they don't look at projections and roster composition. Rather, they use a rolling sample of a team's last 100 games played (even if it spans seasons) and adjustments for strength of schedule to project future performance. The system accounts both for opponent strength over that 100-game sample and for the strength of schedule for the balance of the season, and simulates the remaining schedule 1,000 times each day to come up with Playoff Odds. In that system, the Cubs aren't fighting with the Reds for second place, or trying to get above 25 percent in terms of total chances to reach the postseason. In the Baseball Reference system, the Cubs are the division favorites. By this system, the team is just on the right side of a coin flip to win the division, and will still have some chance of winning a Wild Card if they miss out on that. It's certainly a system that favors the Cubs in ways that could feel meaningless. Of their 100-game sample, nearly a quarter is the final stretch of last season, when they went 16-8, in a weird and low-pressure environment. That boosts them significantly, and so does the fact that the system is based solely on recent performance, rather than on projections at an individual level. Every projection system is somewhat skeptical that Marcus Stroman and Justin Steele are this good, but this system is just looking at their results. Ditto for Christopher Morel. There are some reasons to doubt the utility of this kind of system, but there are also some reasons to think the Cubs are given short shrift by some modern projection systems. On balance, it feels like the true chances they have of reaching the playoffs lie somewhere between the numbers given by the two types of system, but that could just be cognitive biases at work. At the very least, getting hot for the last two-plus weeks has positioned the Cubs to view themselves as buyers ahead of trade season. Whether it's an outside chance or a very good one, they clearly have a shot at winning this tepid divisional contest. The next fortnight will really illuminate things, though, and should clarify a lot of things. By the time that stretch is over and the All-Star break comes, the Cubs will no longer be leaning much on last season's strong finish in the Baseball Reference model. They'll also have played four more games against the Brewers, so we should have a better idea of which team is better. The Wild Card odds are especially interesting, though, and the first series after their English holiday will shine a spotlight there. According to PECOTA, the Cubs' Playoff Odds actually rose yesterday, even as they lost. Their own loss and wins by the Brewers, Phillies, Marlins, and Diamondbacks were outweighed by losses by the Mets, Reds, Pirates, Dodgers, Padres, and Giants. In the more balanced schedule environment and with so many teams making the playoffs, the Wild Card races really open up, and they do it early. The Phillies come to Wrigley Field Tuesday night. That series, between a 40-37 team and a 37-39 one, will be an important test of the Cubs' mettle. By the weekend, we'll have another valuable set of data points to inform estimates of the team's Playoff Odds, even though there will still be much uncertainty, and even disagreement between models. View full article

One of the undercurrents of the 2023 season for the Chicago Cubs is a building interest in (and anxiety about) Marcus Stroman's contract situation. As of now, Stroman can opt out of his three-year deal before the final season of it. Many fans, like Stroman himself, want to see the Cubs lock him up on a long-term deal. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Tom Ricketts, with exactly the same mealiness of mouth to which we've all become accustomed, keeps telling interested fans (including those who chanted passionately for a Stroman extension at a public event in London this weekend) that that decision rests with Jed Hoyer and the front office. That's a feckless copout, but it's also the right thing for an owner to say at the moment, in this particular case. As I've written about in two recent articles here, the Cubs have an acute and important problem in their starting rotation: a dearth of whiffs on pitches within the strike zone. The starting corps for this team is good, but their greatest weakness is a lowish strikeout rate, and even when they find whiffs, they have to do so by inducing opponents to expand their strike zone. Stroman, with his heavy sinker but sinker-heavy arsenal and focus on getting weak contact, is as guilty of this as anyone. That fact looms over whatever negotiations the Cubs might enter into with Stroman. It can't help but do so. If the rest of the rotation were missing bats like the 2003 Cubs, they could afford to commit to a front-of-the-rotation guy with limited strikeout skills. When they already lag the league in that regard, though, it's hard to justify what would surely be an investment of over $20 million per year in a pitcher who would ensure that the problem persists for years to come. Strikeouts aren't the end-all, be-all, of course. Stroman does so many other things well, and watching him pitch in 2023 has been a joy. If he sustains this level of dominance (even without an elite strikeout rate or the arsenal typical of the modern ace) all season, then the decision to extend him gets easier. It might well be that Hoyer isn't interested in a midseason negotiation for that very reason--because he knows the rotation needs a greater diversity of skills (and a greater proficiency in this one vital one), and isn't yet sure whether Stroman can fit into his grand plan for the unit. There's a simpler, more likely reason, too, though. Right now, Stroman's $21-million option for 2024 hangs over every conversation the Cubs could have about him--with his agent, or with other teams. Assuming Stroman stays healthy, he's on pace to easily clear 160 innings this year, which would boost the option to $23 million. It's still a no-brainer for Stroman to decline that, if he reaches the end of the year and still has both his health and sparkling numbers, but that's the figure with which the Cubs have to deal. As we learned with Carlos Rodon at last year's trading deadline, teams don't like trading for players on expiring deals that could, after all, not actually expire. Rodon had a longer and more worrisome injury history than Stroman's, but the same fear--that a player might come over in trade, get hurt, and squat on the team's payroll for a huge sum the following season--creeps into the picture. Even if teams don't authentically feel a concern about that, they'll try hard to convince the Cubs that they do. Thus, Stroman's trade value will be mitigated. Obviously, the hope (especially during this hot streak for the team) is that it will also be irrelevant, because the Cubs won't want to trade him, anyway. In that case, though, we still have to grapple with how the option affects leverage in an extension discussion. Through the deadline, it's a huge roadblock to those talks, because it creates such a leverage imbalance between the two sides. Even later in the campaign, it's likely to do so, especially as it becomes more clear that Stroman will earn his incentive bonus for innings pitched. Even if Hoyer badly wants to keep Stroman, it's very unlikely that the Cubs and their star right-hander will find the common ground needed to get a deal moving (let alone finished) before the end of the year. Once the team forces Stroman to actually exercise his opt-out, they can get aggressive about keeping him, without either side having a cudgel to wield. There's tremendous risk in that approach, because another team could just as easily get aggressive with Stroman at that point. He's been tagged with a qualifying offer before. The Cubs can't tie him to draft-pick compensation, and they won't get anywhere during a minuscule exclusive negotiating period. This, though, is where we circle back to what Stroman does (and doesn't do) well, and how it fits into the Cubs' philosophy of pitching. It's not really a coincidence that the team landed him in the first place, just as it's not a coincidence that they were able to re-sign Drew Smyly or that they acquired Jameson Taillon this past winter. Those guys all have the same flaw. None miss bats with regularity in the zone. On the free-agent market, almost every team dings them for that flaw more than the Cubs do, because almost no team believes as much in the ability to have success without that skill as the Cubs do. In a bit of a reversal of the Stroman situation, the Cubs have a club option on Kyle Hendricks for 2024. If he continues to pitch well, they could (just through inertia) retain Hendricks, Smyly, Taillon, and Justin Steele as the nucleus of their rotation next year. Hendricks hasn't yet qualified for this list, but of the 300 pitchers who have gotten at least 150 swings on pitches in the zone this year, Taillon ranks 167th; Smyly is 220th; and Steele is 244th. Stroman is all the way down at 268th. However good these guys are at skills like keeping the ball on the ground, getting weak contact, and earning called strikes (and each is pretty good), that's a problem. Hayden Wesneski (215th on the list of 300) is not a solution to this problem, at least in the short term. Ben Brown could be, as he seems to be earning plenty of whiffs in Iowa, but inserting him means moving on from at least one (and likely two) of the incumbent starters. The only ones not firmly under contract or team-friendly cost control for 2024 are Hendricks and Stroman. This is why, in the very near term, the team really could look to trade a starter at the deadline, even if they're acting primarily as buyers during that window. It's also why Hoyer hasn't yet engaged Stroman on extension talks. To be worth keeping at all, he needs to be an ace, and while that's what he's been throughout the first half, it's a hard thing to be without the ability to miss bats in the strike zone. If Stroman demonstrates a lasting ability to thread that needle, he could sign a deal worth over $25 million per year, for as many as five or six seasons. The Cubs could be the team to give that to him. First, though, he has to get to the finish line of this season with the egg on his spoon intact, and then the Cubs would have to make some tough decisions about what to do with other members of the current and prospective rotation. For that matter, committing that much to another starter (with, presumably, Taillon locked in for big money over three more seasons) would force some dilemmas on the positional side of the roster, too. In all, it's easy to see why the team has elected to wait on working out a long-term deal with their short king. It might come back to bite them, but their existing roster, his skill set, the parameters of his current deal, and the questions that remain about so much of their future make it impossible to act immediately. View full article

During press availability ahead of this weekend's London Series, a few members of the Cubs were asked about baseball history. Justin Steele was quick to pipe up with what he knows about the historic ties between the sports of baseball and cricket. He probably didn't realize it, but he's an especially interesting person to mention that connection. Image courtesy of © Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports Earlier this season, I wrote about the fact that Justin Steele's four-seam fastball really wasn't one, anymore. Now, even the foremost classifier of pitches and pitch data, Pitch Info, agrees. According to Brooks Baseball (fueled by Pitch Info and Baseball Prospectus), Steele's primary pitch is not a four-seamer, but a cutter. As I wrote in the first place, though, that's not bad news. It just underscores the uniqueness of Steele's approach. He's throwing hard, and the firmness of a cutter with that much movement is a problem unto itself. It's just silly to call the pitch a four-seamer, because it doesn't compare helpfully to any other four-seamer in the league. By contrast, comparing it to other pitchers' cutters can be illuminating. When Steele, Dansby Swanson, and Ian Happ were asked about the history of baseball Friday, Steele was most confident in his reply. It's interesting that Steele would be the one to say that, though, because his evolving style evokes one of the subtleties of cricket. In that game, there are several distinct and semi-distinct styles of bowling (the cricket equivalent of pitching). Some of the difference is more label than reality, but it's possible to move from one style and emphasis to another, adjacent one, in a way that is meaningful. If we believe and embrace that Steele's fastball was once dominant because of its cut-ride action, with rising movement at the top of the zone, then he was what cricketers would call a pace bowler. However, the rise on that pitch continues to deteriorate, or at least disappear. (We'll try to parse whether it's intentional, whether it's advantageous, and whether it's worrisome shortly.) At this point (look at the way the vertical movement on the pitch has changed even in this month, let alone over the last year!), Steele is much more akin to a swing bowler in cricket. Yes, he throws hard, in a certain way, but his effectiveness relies on movement and deception, not on pure power. Indeed, that ability to overmatch hitters with balls thrown right over their bats for swinging strikes seems to be virtually gone. Going back to the first graphic above, you can see that Steele is increasingly reliant on two pitches: his cutter and his slider. In fact, on Baseball Prospectus's Pitch Info-driven PITCHf/x Leaderboards, Steele's slider isn't compared with other typical sliders, but rather, with sweepers. Because he (unlike most pitchers in baseball this year) is not typically talked about as being part of the trendy emergence of the sweeper, that's a bit jarring. I probably wouldn't go along with that categorization, because the way Steele's slider plays off his cutter is quite different than the way many pitchers want their sweepers to play off their primary fastballs--usually four-seamers or sinkers. The differential in lateral movement between the two is just not as dramatic as a pitcher usually wants it to be when thinking sweeper. Steele's slider has more depth than the average sweeper, too, making it more like a true slider. Either way, though, he's now depending on two pitches that exist on the same easily blurred spectrum. He's really seeing his margin for error shrink, although his command and execution of that simple pair of offerings are currently so good that he more than gets away with it. It would help if, even if only from time to time, he were able to generate more of that rising action and a little less of the cutter's dip and swerve, but he hasn't shown that ability at all since last summer. Because he only seems to be committing with increasing intensity to an approach he'd already established, I'm inclined to think he's doing this on purpose. That's the optimistic view. Even if it's somewhere shy of fully optimal, plunging into a mode of operation that's working so well is good business. He can always tweak things if (and when) the efficacy of that attack begins to diminish. Another possibility, alas, is that he's quietly compensating for some physical limitations here, and that his evolution is really an attempt to outrun a boulder bouncing downhill for as long as possible. He has a long injury history already. He lost the end of last season and a fortnight of this one, and the latest injury was of a kind that is often a forewarning of major elbow trouble. If Steele has transitioned from a cut-ride four-seamer to a true cutter because he's hurt, red isn't an alarming enough color for the flags. Those worries can wait for now, though. On Saturday, Steele gets to show the whole baseball world what he can do, by taking the ball and working his swing-style magic on Cardinals batters. Cricket fans in the crowd and the TV audience will note many differences from what their favorite bowlers do, but Steele has just enough understanding and connection to the roots of his preferred game to evoke the nuances of an older one when he's at his best. View full article

Over the next two days, the Chicago Cubs take an international stage, and they become (however imperfectly) one of two foci in the ever-shifting elliptical baseball universe. The London Series against the St. Louis Cardinals is just two games, in a season of 162. Yet, it's undeniably special and different. Does that mean it's also especially important? Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports This question, of course, has no one answer, and the answer that holds true for one individual might be useless to another. It's easy to acknowledge that fact and shrink from the challenge of even considering the question. After all, why parse something on a general or collective level when the specific and the individual are all that matters? Still, I think it's a conversation worth a few minutes of our thought. At its heart, this question is one that makes baseball a thing worth caring about. It's a question of how much weight to assign to any given moment in our lives--of how much to allow a sense of special occasion and raised stakes to increase our responsiveness to a particular set of outcomes. It's a question, too, of whether the outsized impact of moments like those is just the self-fulfillment of a prophecy. Rivalry games always give us cause to pause and ponder this question, but there are too many of them, and the question starts to feel squishy. It's easy, when we ask whether Cardinals games in Chicago or St. Louis have greater importance than games against any other opponent, to see all the complicating factors that render the question unanswerable: the standings, the vagaries of the starting rotation, the unpredictable but usually long and low-intensity undulations of a season. A series like this, though--with its special location, heightened pageantry, and even temporal disruptions--sets itself firmly apart from the series on either side of it. What the Cubs just did in Pittsburgh and what the Cardinals just did in Washington will not bleed over into this series. What the teams do against one another in London will not affect how they each play when they return home. If a baseball season is like a prestige TV series, this series is a bottle episode. You know the ones. A subset of the cast (usually via some highly unusual enforced isolation) face a set of problems, dangers, or questions that don't bear much on the bigger arc of the season to which the episode belongs. It might tie in, and a good one usually involves some character development, but it's not really moving the big story forward. In Hollywood, bottle episodes are necessary evils. They're byproducts of the inevitable crunches on the budget and the calendar that come from the heavy lift of putting together the best possible show every week. Until the last few years, MLB hasn't had an equivalent to that experience--at least since the days when teams would squeeze exhibitions against interleague opponents or their Triple-A affiliate into empty days on the schedule. As they try to globalize their product, though, the league has created the same feeling. Viewing this series through that lens brings some clarity to things, too. Keeping each game in perspective--caring enough about it not to let games slide by and slip away, but not so much that it makes giving proportional attention to the games before and after it--is the eternal challenge of being either a fan or a part of a baseball team. To do that with these games, don't stress overmuch about their final scores. Just look for character development, and for the other redeeming quality of any good bottle episode: reminders of what makes you like the show the rest of the time. View full article