Matthew Trueblood

On Wednesday night, the Cubs turn to Jameson Taillon and ask him to help save their sinking season. Last time out, the right-hander won his first game as a Cub, thanks to (for now) giving up on some changes he and the team tried to make after he signed this winter. What can we learn from that? Image courtesy of © Ray Acevedo-USA TODAY Sports If the Cubs signed Jameson Taillon because they thought they could reinvent him or turn him into an ace, then they were foolish and irresponsible with their $68 million. Several teams and a great many players suffer from this systematic error lately. Because of the revolution in player development and technology-driven instruction, many parties within the game have begun to think of every player as an optimizable asset--a piece of wet clay that can be endlessly reshaped and altered. Even some of the would-be balls of clay think that way. In reality, by the stage of a career that someone like Taillon (or, say, Tyler Chatwood) has reached when they achieve free agency, that clay has dried out naturally, or it's been kiln-fired to create a nice piece of pottery. It's taken on shape and function, beauty and identity, but it no longer has that easy fluidity. It's not as malleable as it used to be. Smart teams know that, and they pay for what players who sign as major free agents already are, not what they might quasi-magically become. Taillon, who has had two Tommy John surgeries already and had made a major repertoire change in the process of returning from his second (after being traded from the Pirates to the Yankees), was excited by the potential the Cubs saw in him, They pitched him on another, miniature overhaul of his arsenal, and he was on board. It flopped. Starting with his outing against the Reds on May 27, though, Taillon has reverted to a version of himself that has had lots of success in MLB--a comfortable, familiar version, with plenty of value in its own right. To the relief of everyone, it looks like trying to reshape this particular clay has not broken it. Here's Taillon's pitch usage against right-handed batters by start this year. And here's the same against lefties. The Cubs had encouraged Taillon to become more of a sinker-cutter guy. That's not surprising. The Yankees utilize four-seamers as often as almost any team in baseball, whereas the Cubs lean toward the sinker and cutter extreme. The thing is, the very innovation that turned Taillon into such a solid starter for New York was ditching the overreliance on sinkers that held him back during his time with the Pirates. To think he would find success (or at least immediate success) by going back to what hadn't really worked for him was an odd error in judgment by the Cubs' pitching brain trust. Trying that was a significant risk, too, because it could have proved to be impossible to just go back to what had been working for him. However, with Yan Gomes as his guide, Taillon seemed to snap right back into his Yankee form. It's not just about pitch mix, either. Because of the movement profile (release point, arm angle, spin, seam orientation) on his stuff, he's an extreme fly-ball pitcher. He's embracing that again now. He's gotten back to using the top of the strike zone consistently. A fly-ball guy has to keep the ball up, to get more pop-ups and lazy fly balls, and fewer hard line drives and homers. Here's where Taillon's pitches were located in his starts prior to May 27: And here are his locations from the last two outings: There's plenty of cause to feel optimistic about Taillon. He should be able to sustain these changes, because they're really just about getting back to something with which he'd gotten comfortable over the previous two years. It might be too little, or too late, or both, but these adjustments were necessary, and they're the right ones. Hopefully, Taillon and the Cubs can keep making adjustments, and that might even include reintroducing some of the changes they envisioned over the offseason. For now, though, the team needs the best version of Taillon he can give them every turn, and that best version is one more akin to what he was before arriving than to that into which the team tried to transform him. View full article

Monday night found Cubs pitchers struggling to miss bats and paying both an actual and a psychological price for it. Meanwhile, their hitters struck out 12 times and were similarly compromised. Unfortunately, that's nothing new, for a team that still lags the league in generating whiffs on the mound and in controlling the zone at the plate. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports When home-plate umpire Phil Cuzzi gave a slightly generous outside corner to Padres southpaw Blake Snell early Monday, the trouble started bubbling up quickly. Cuzzi's calls helped ensure that nothing came of an early Cubs rally. Then, in the bottom of the second inning, Cuzzi did not make the same mistakes on a couple of Kyle Hendricks pitches just off the plate. David Ross blew up, earning an ejection for arguing balls and strikes, but that was as ineffectual as it almost always is. Three pitches later, Gary Sanchez hit a two-run home run, and the Padres were off and running. Fans obsessing over umpire zones is one of the most tired things about the culture of baseball in 2023. Often, the strike zones shown on TV broadcasts are misleading (though more often vertically than horizontally, where the conflict arose Monday night). More importantly, the actual impact of a missed call here and there is much smaller than fans have come to believe, and the errors balance out to a much greater degree than most people realize. Then, too, there's the fact that certain pitchers and catchers can significantly influence the way the umpire sees some offerings on the edges of the zone. When teams argue with umpires, though, it's something different than when fans do so. Politicking and fighting over the zone by players and coaches isn't just a matter of relentlessly airing grievances and pressing selfish interests. Different teams rely on winning at the edges of the zone, and specifically on getting calls there, to different extents. Unfortunately, it's become a perennial part of the Cubs' identity that they depend more on those calls than almost anyone else. That leads to more bickering, more frustration, and the risk of losing games because of the distraction that ensued when the umpire becomes the center of anyone's attention. Why is this so? It's a byproduct of the well-known weakness of the Cubs pitching staff, which is an inability to miss bats. In 2023, only the Rockies have induced whiffs on fewer opponent swings on pitches within the strike zone than have the Cubs. As has been often documented, the Cubs don't have as many hard-throwing hurlers as other teams, and they don't throw as many of the pitches (especially sliders and four-seamers) that induce whiffs as most other teams do. In the modern game, hitters do too much damage when they make contact for a pitching staff to survive long with a below-average strikeout rate. Thus, since the Cubs can't get whiffs within the zone, they need to either induce a lot of swings outside the zone or get a very high number of called strikes. Alas, they have a below-average O-Swing %, according to Pitch Info, ranking 20th in MLB. Hendricks only got six swings and misses against San Diego Monday night. Marcus Stroman only got five on Sunday, though he still managed to have an excellent outing. In a four-game series, Cubs starters combined for just 34 swings and misses, be they on pitches inside or outside the zone. When that element is missing from your game, you become more dependent on umpires and on catcher framing, and since one of those things varies more from one night to the next than the other does, it becomes an unhealthy area of focus. Cubs hitters have a similar problem, though. Overall, the lineup has hitters who make contact at about an average rate, but some of that comes from guys who make a lot of contact when they expand the zone. As a team, the Cubs rank sixth in MLB in out-of-zone contact rate, but they're 24th in making contact within the zone. They also swing less often than an average team, both inside and outside the zone. In short, the offense is forcing umpires to make a lot of calls, and they can't afford even the occasional miss on a ball off the edge, because they whiff too often within the zone (and don't have the power to consistently score enough without winning the battle for the strike zone). On the pitching side, this is clearly a problem of roster construction. The Cubs have tried to live too long without the velocity and the strikeout stuff that define the modern game. They have to zig back toward the league, because their years-long attempt to zag has only cornered them into needing an elite defense, an elite defensive catcher, and a friendly umpire to win more often than not. It's less clear whether the offensive problem is also one of talent identification and acquisition, or one of approach. Maybe the team just needs to better grasp the situations in which they need to be dialed into a certain part of the zone, versus those in which they need to seek contact wherever it can be found. Maybe they're not adequately anticipating what pitchers will try to do against them. Watching them, it often feels as though that's the case, but it's a hard thing to quantify or falsify. It could be that the hitters just aren't good enough to execute a relatively sound plan. It's fine to have a few pitchers on the staff who depend on getting called strikes more heavily than most. When virtually the entire staff leans on that, though, it makes the team vulnerable to especially good or patient offenses; a bad night for the umpire behind the dish; or plain old bad luck. Worse, when one of those things does pop up and the team has a tough game, they end up tied in mental knots. Fighting with umpires is counterproductive, even when it's necessary, because it externalizes the team's locus of control and sets them up for failure. Phil Cuzzi didn't beat the Cubs Monday night. Gary Sanchez, Manny Machado, and the rest of the Padres did. If there were any culprits in the loss beyond those in the home whites, they were in the Cubs dugout, and back in Chicago in their offices. It's important to understand that this team's exposure to umpire influence is its own fault, and that they won't win anything when they let themselves believe that umpires are winning or losing the game for them. View full article

Whatever else has gone on in this mixed bag of a season, the Cubs have to be thrilled with what they've gotten from Dansby Swanson. The biggest thing they did this winter appears to be the thing they did best, and it's paying off in a huge way. With Swanson, however, it's worth asking: Can it last? Image courtesy of © Ray Acevedo-USA TODAY Sports A major and important narrative around Dansby Swanson, when he hit free agency last fall, was his inconsistency at the plate. Often, hitters get slapped with "inconsistent" in error, and just as often, "inconsistent" is a euphemism for bad. In Swanson's case, though, it genuinely felt like he was a good bet to produce average-ish offense for the season--but that it would come with high peaks and low valleys. Here's a chart that tracks a rolling average of Swanson's expected wOBA (xwOBA; essentially, overall production at the plate, adjusted for what would have been expected based on how often he swung and missed and on the quality of his contact on batted balls) over 50-plate appearance windows throughout 2021. As you can see, he was capable of getting very, very hot, but he could crater to well below the league average (that red line) for noticeable stretches, including a true meltdown that September. Though his bat came back to life for the memorable 2021 postseason, Swanson started 2022 cold, as well. His chart for that season is less extreme, but paints a similar picture. He got hotter than ever in late June that year, and did manage not to bottom out as completely when things went badly, in mid-August and in late September. Still, one can see how he struggles with prolonged stretches of below-average expected production. This season, with a new team and a new role, Swanson has taken a new approach. Obviously, he's been very good, but he also seems to be a bit less hot-and-cold. This could still easily change, of course, but so far, Swanson has only very briefly and very mildly slumped this year. At the other end of the spectrum, when he's hot (as he is now), he seems to be every bit as able to dominate as he's ever been. So much of this is due to his impressively disciplined approach. Last month, The Athletic writer Eno Sarris used data to show that players who join new teams--especially via free agency--tend to swing more upon arrival than they did before, perhaps in an effort to impress people and earn their big paydays. Swanson has not only resistend that, but gone the other direction. He swung at nearly half of all pitches last year, but that number is down to 44 percent this year--a career low. He's attacking the first pitch less often. He's expanding the strike zone less often. Pick an indicator of a calm, patient approach at the plate, and Swanson is demonstrating it. None of that means that he will never slump. Even with an increasingly refined approach, he could tire as the long season goes on, especially given his insistence upon playing every day at the diamond's second-most demanding defensive position. Fatigue has seemed to play a role in his previous slumps. He'll have to meet the challenge of playing that often and being this good even as he nears an age at which players at his position usually begin to decline. Still, this start is extraordinary, and there couldn't be a more thoroughly encouraging set of signs. Swanson has been as advertised defensively, and he's been the OBP threat (with enough slug to cash in unlikely rallies started by the bottom of the order) the Cubs have needed in the top two spots in the order for years. With an improved approach, he might have put his truly disastrous month-long slumps behind him, and if so, he's taking the step from star to superstar on our watch. View full article

The Cubs offense failed to score Saturday night, as Yu Darvish and the Padres steamrolled through a lineup that reflected David Ross's sense of helplessness in that matchup with his hitters going the way they are. Is yet another miniature shakeup in the cards? Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Though it sounds like Justin Steele's forearm strain is mild enough not to warrant major concern, the Cubs placed him on the injured list Saturday. That was to be expected. It was a mild surprise, though, that they called up Miguel Amaya again to take Steele's place on the roster, rather than replacing him in a simple one-for-one with another pitcher. It means that, at least in the very short term, the team is back to carrying 14 position players and just 12 pitchers, and it raises urgent questions about the roster status of a couple of position players. Edwin Rios got a very rare start Saturday, and went 0-3 with three strikeouts. He's spent all but 14 days of this season on the roster, having been optioned to Iowa on May 5 and called back up May 19, yet he's only taken 34 plate appearances. By and large, Ross hasn't trusted him, and he's hurt the team more by being a nearly dead roster spot than by performing poorly. When he has gotten his limited opportunities, however, he's also failed to make anything of them. He's batting .071/.235/.214 on the year. Ríos should be farmed out again as soon as possible, but realistically, he has nothing to prove at Triple A. Designating him for assignment when the team returns Codi Heuer from his rehab assignment and the 60-day injured list would be an easy way to create the necessary roster spot. It's possible the team could retain him even in that case, because he signed for more than the minimum on a guaranteed deal this winter, and has never been outrighted before. If he cleared waivers, which is plausible, the Cubs would have the right to stash him in Iowa without carrying him on the 40-man roster. Tucker Barnhart is, in some ways, similar to Ríos. His batting line for the year looks terrible, as he also struck out three times in three trips last night to fall to .156/.257/.172 on the year. The sample for him is 74 plate appearances, which is more robust, but still relatively tiny. Unlike Ríos, he does have the excuse of being a catcher (and the defensive value that comes with manning that spot) to soften the shock of those numbers, but they remain unacceptably miserable. At 32 years of age, Barnhart isn't likely to bounce back much at all. Amaya's return to the big leagues suggests that the Cubs take a similarly dim view of their backup catcher. It might not mean that they want to get rid of Barnhart urgently, but it certainly means that they intend to use him in a more limited way. When Yan Gomes needs a day off but a lefty or split-neutral righty is on the mound for the opponents, it might be Amaya who gets the nod over Barnhart. When a lefty comes into a game Barnhart started, Amaya will probably pinch-hit for him. Even then, this call-up has to reflect some amount of peril for Barnhart. Heuer looks like the next likely addition to the roster, and a hitter (Ríos) will probably have to go when that happens. That might yet be delayed a bit, though, because Heuer gave up two more runs in Iowa Saturday and has an ERA of 10.00 there. His stuff has looked good, and he seems healthy, but the team probably wants to see his results catch up to that stuff on a more consistent basis. After that, depending on how his progression continues, Cody Bellinger could soon return to the roster, creating a decision point about Barnhart. Sending Amaya back to Iowa would be a bummer, but losing Barnhart (who can't be optioned or retained via outright assignment) would shorten the Cubs' MLB-capable catching depth a bit too much. That's one reason why they tried to retain and play Luis Torrens early in the season--keeping their powder dry at a position where there just aren't that many qualified options. The Cubs erred this winter, whiffing big-time on too many of their fringe additions to the roster. It's clear that they tried to get much more left-handed, anticipating a bigger effect from the restrictions on defensive shifting than we have actually seen, but they focused too much on that goal and too little on just finding players who could hit. Barnhart wasn't brought in for his bat, anyway, but Ríos and Eric Hosmer both were, and neither has panned out at all. Nor did Torrens, or (sliding up the scale of money involved a bit) Trey Mancini. Mike Tauchman and Miles Mastrobuoni have been better, but the team had to keep Tauchman in the minors until a long-term space opened up on the roster, because he's out of options and they'll lose him if they have to designate him for assignment. That Mastrobuoni has batted leadoff at times for Ross is less egregious than many fans seem to believe, because his on-base skills are decent, but it seems to come out of the same misbegotten mentality--matchups rather than talent, batting a lefty with patience atop the order against a tough righty even if it means losing at-bats for better overall hitters--that brought all of these uninspiring extras into the fold over the offseason. Whatever its flaws, the construction with which the Cubs opened the season is the most dynamic one this lineup can achieve, and they need to re-commit themselves to it. Nico Hoerner - 2b Dansby Swanson - ss Ian Happ - lf Seiya Suzuki - rf Cody Bellinger - cf Once Bellinger returns, this needs to be the lineup at least until the trade deadline. In the bottom half, Ross and the front office can continue to mix and match, platoon, and experiment, but those five should stay right there against both lefties and righties. Even until Bellinger gets back, the top four there should be inviolate. In the long run, the team needs to embrace the fact that its short-term upside and its long-term health both require the same actions: let the kids play. Matt Mervis needs to get daily action. Amaya needs to siphon off time at catcher and at designated hitter, from Barnhart and Trey Mancini. Christopher Morel needs to get a chance to prove that he can (or can't) more rapidly adjust against big-league pitchers, and Nelson Velazquez needs to come back up whenever an injury or other move creates an opening for him. Velázquez has traded a tiny share of his power to trim his strikeout rate this year, and it's working. That ought to be rewarded. If Morel can prove himself as a more competent defensive third baseman than has yet been in evidence, Velázquez could even take the place of Mastrobuoni--the very exchange of theoretical matchup value for real talent that we're looking for. In the meantime, the clock ticks. The Cubs' offense was never supposed to be the team's primary area of strength, but right now, it looks like an enfeebling weakness. Until they start carrying a riskier but more compelling corps of hitters, and especially until they start putting those hitters in better positions to succeed, that isn't going to change. The trade deadline is only eight weeks away. View full article

On Friday night, the Padres had right-handed starter Michael Wacha on the mound. Nonetheless, Matt Mervis was not in the lineup, and Trey Mancini struck out in all four plate appearances. This needs to be nipped in the bud. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports In the first few weeks after his call-up, Matt Mervis was in the Cubs lineup virtually every day. He made his first start on May 5, and started eight of the next nine contests. He was in there at first base for 16 of the first 20, in fact. However, his sluggish start (a frightening .188/.268/.297 batting line, with too many strikeouts and too many ground balls) seems to have cost him the trust of David Ross. Trey Mancini has been in five of the last seven starting lineups, and four of those starts have been at the direct expense of Mervis. Twice, Mancini has started over Mervis despite a right-handed starter being on the mound for the opponent. If Ross was hoping to fructify the offense by going to his veteran soi-disant slugger, it hasn't worked, because Mancini is now down to a season line of .247/.320/.338. The difference between him and Mervis is solely that Mancini has had good luck on his batted balls, whereas Mervis has had buzzard's luck on his. It's not just about the starting lineups, either. In the last start Mervis did get, Wednesday against Tampa Bay, Ross pinch-hit for him with Mancini in order to gain the platoon advantage in the seventh inning--but that led to a second plate appearance for Mancini later on. Plainly, the Cubs are trying to win this season. They can't make all of their decisions based on optimizing player development, especially while the scramble for position in the unimposing NL Central is still ongoing. Mervis has whiffed on nearly half of all non-fastballs he's seen since coming to the big leagues. That's a catastrophic rate, and while his ability to adjust as he ascended through the levels of the minor leagues implies that he'll bring it down, the fact that teams can currently throw him soft stuff so fearlessly is a major problem. However, they need to balance the urgency of winning with the importance of making a clearer short-term commitment to Mervis, because they need information about him, and the only way to get it is to have him try to hit big-league pitchers. We can't learn anything about him by having him ride the bench against right-handed starters, or by sending him back to Iowa. If the Cubs need to add a first baseman at the trade deadline, they need to know it by the start of July, and the window for properly evaluating Mervis is already shrinking. Taking an even wider-angle view, they need to know by this winter whether they have any kind of long-term solution at first base in Mervis, and they won't know that if he misses out on 60 or 70 plate appearances due to Ross's preference for a veteran who looks just as prone to whiffs and ground balls as Mervis does. This was a pitfall into which the team fell too often in their last competitive cycle--robbing themselves of the chance to seriously judge the fitness of a prospect or young player by focusing too much on optimizing the lineup every day. Maybe the Cubs' hitting coaches are working with Mervis on something specific, and they feel he can best lock in those adjustments by getting an extra day or two off. That's valid, if it's true. Players often struggle to implement swing (or even stance or setup) tweaks in-season, because a lot of good cage work can be undone by the muscle memory that kicks in when a pitcher in a different uniform is trying to get you out in a game setting. Maybe Ross has just been trying to give Mervis a gentle mental reset. That's a reasonable approach with a rookie, too. If this continues any longer, though, it will go from suspect to flagrant. The Cubs need to know whether Mervis can hit, and they can only find that out by having him play. View full article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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