RandallPnkFloyd

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images That the Chicago Cubs' bullpen hasn't been a total catastrophe serves as something of a minor miracle in this 2026 season. Despite a fWAR figure that ranks just 24th in the league (-0.1), they sit comfortably in the top half of the league in reliever ERA (3.82), walk rate (9.2 percent), and groundball rate (42.6 percent). Those elements have helped them to remain afloat in the face of consistent instability permeating throughout the individuals in the group. The absence of stability in the team's relief corps stems from a few different factors. Its construction is one. Injuries, both internally and within the rotation, have represented another (perhaps even more significantly so). In the face of such turmoil, one unassuming arm has emerged as a source of stability for Craig Counsell in the form of Hoby Milner. Our Jason Ross last discussed Milner in this space back in April. Therein, he noted some of the successes that Milner was experiencing in the early going but also confronted some of the red flags. At that point in the year, the veteran southpaw was rolling at a 2.39 ERA but a FIP over six, with a sharp decline in his typical groundball tendencies. Milner ended April with 15 innings pitched and a 2.40 ERA. His strikeout rate, though, sat at 8.6 percent, a low number even by his modest standards. His 6.9 percent walk rate was also up a bit from his career norms, with a .192 opposing batting average that indicated some good fortune in the face of uneven trends. There were some role changes and subsequent usage tweaks at play that impacted him, but the bottom line was that the results weren't completely jiving with the underlying trends. Fast-forward almost exactly two months to now and many of the concerns around Milner's early performance have stabilized. As of this writing, he has a 3.38 ERA to his credit and a 4.20 FIP. He's still outperforming the peripherals a touch (4.94 xERA, 4.71 xFIP), but there's been a progression over the last three months that helps to illustrate his value as a steady arm in this bullpen. The two months since April have looked as follows: May: 10.1 IP, 2.61 ERA, 2.33 FIP, 15.9 K%, 4.5 BB%, 50.0 GB%, .250 opposing batting average June: 9.1 IP, 5.79 ERA, 4.39 FIP, 12.8 K%, 5,1 BB%, 40.0 GB%, .294 opponent batting average At first blush, the idea that Milner not only has his red flags behind him (as the headline posits) but is also a source of stability would seem outrageous. After really find his groove in May, the surface numbers are more indicative of a player falling back toward the regression feared by some of the trends back in April. However, it's important to note that Milner had an especially poor outing back on June 5. He allowed six earned runs in just a third of an inning. In his other nine innings of work, he's allowed zero runners to cross home plate. Which means that the image of Milner as a reliable arm in relief is still very much intact. His usage is starting to support that idea as well. In Jason's piece, he noted the increased usage of Milner's sinker given some of the higher traffic on the basepaths, as well as the higher-leverage situations into which an increased role had pressed him. That came at the expense of his sweeper. In the stretch of time since, he's gotten back to the arsenal we generally expect: The shift in usage from being sinker-heavy to blending the sinker and sweeper more effectively comes as a result of Milner not being asked to handle make-or-break moments, while also being deployed against left-handed hitters more frequently than righties. That June 5 outing notwithstanding, he's regained his form in limiting baserunners while also maintaining strikeout and walk trends more akin to his career norms. As a result, Milner has been able to maintain his status as perhaps the most stable arm this relief corps has to offer. He's taken on more work than any current member of the bullpen (34.2 IP), and while the early turbulence forced him to take on an increased role, the early red flags — the traffic, absence of strikeouts, and waning groundball contact — are largely behind him. Given how messy the configuration of this group of relievers has been (mostly for reasons which are out of their control), that Milner has settled back into his usual self speaks to exactly what the Cubs were hoping he'd provide as a veteran soft-tossing lefty. View full article

Image courtesy of © Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images Pete Crow-Armstrong contains multitudes. Almost immediately upon making his Chicago Cubs debut with a 2023 cup of coffee, it was clear that there would be multiple sides of the Crow-Armstrong experience. He's a player with loud tools capable of doing things rarely seen on a baseball field, in all phases of the game. There's also an erratic quality to his game, wherein his immaturity as a hitter can compromise those tools in a way that prevents them from manifesting with as much consistency as one might prefer. Since he became a full-time player during the 2024 season, we've seen each end of that spectrum. The 2025 season, specifically, illustrated the layers of his performance, with a first half that garnered buzz as a National League MVP candidate before it faded entirely in the second. But we've never seen a Pete Crow-Armstrong like we're seeing this June. It's hard to imagine this is where we are after the start in which Crow-Armstrong found himself mired back in April. He finished that month with a .241/.307/.362 line and a 88 wRC+, while striking out roughly 30 percent of the time. Things progressed steadily in May, and his blazing hot streak really began on May 22, but (like Sammy Sosa did back in 1998) he really began to find the national spotlight once we reached June. The numbers this month read as follows (79 plate appearances): Batting Average: .437 On-Base Percentage: .481 Slugging Percentage: .930 K%: 22.8 BB%: 7.6 Isolated Power: .493 wRC+: 282 It's nearly impossible to communicate the immensity of that output, especially when the month is just about gone. The sample isn't exactly small at this point. To add some further context, this is where the second-best hitter ranks in each of the above this month (save strikeout and walk rates, which are only notable given how reasonable they are within Crow-Armstrong's wider body of work with respect to plate discipline): Batting Average: .391 (Yordan Álvarez) On-Base Percentage: .473 (Shohei Ohtani, though Álvarez is tied with Crow-Armstrong) Slugging Percentage: .783 (Ohtani) Isolated Power: .433 (Ohtani) wRC+: 234 (Ohtani) It would be unreasonable to suggest that Crow-Armstrong possesses the comprehensive skill set and consistency required to match hitters like Álvarez or Ohtani over a larger sample. However, the fact that he isn't just ahead of them but comfortably so speaks to just how obscene his output this month has actually been. It far exceeds anything he did in in the first half of his breakout 2025 season. And the above was all before he did this on Tuesday: Such is the nature of a stretch like this that Matt Trueblood already invoked Sosa's 1998 heater when discussing his output earlier this month (with plenty of additional nuance beyond the numbers). To update the comparison, since May 22, Crow-Armstrong is batting .387/.466/.811, with 21 extra-base hits. From May 22 through June 23 in 1998, Sosa hit .325/.358/.921, with 24 extra-base hits. Only 12 of Crow-Armstrong's long hits were homers, whereas an impossible 22 of Sosa's were, but this is what a run like Sosa's looks like in the modern game. Perhaps, though, there's a former NL MVP out of the Cubs organization of an even more recent vintage to which we can draw comparisons. Kris Bryant took home the award in 2016 as a sophomore, in what would end up being the peak of his career. That season, he posted a line that ran .292/.385/.554 with a .262 ISO and a 148 wRC+. The output that season was massive. His best month that season was August, wherein he went .383/.472/.748, which looks a whole lot like Crow-Armstrong's line over the last 31 days—but is worse. The best player in his best month on a championship team falls short of where we're seeing Pete Crow-Armstrong in June of 2026. We could even extend it to a player who has been a comp for Crow-Armstrong since the two were part of the same 2021 trade: Javier Báez. In 2018, there was a real case to be made that Báez should have taken home the MVP award over Christian Yelich—though he peaked a little too early to make it convincing. His best month that year came in July, with a line of .333/.347/.606, an ISO of .273 (though his .288 in August was higher), and a 155 wRC+. Again, we're not even in the same ballpark in comparing that to Crow-Armstrong's June. Of course, none of this is to cast aspersions on some of the most beloved Cubs of the modern era at the individual peak at the absolute pinnacle of their powers. It's to showcase just how absurd this version of Pete Crow-Armstrong has been in June. With the torrid month he's had, he's run his overall line on the season up to .287/.366/.529. He's been 50% more productive than an average batter for the year. There isn't a player in the sport who has accrued more fWAR on the season than Crow-Armstrong has, which also speaks to the fact that he's remained the sport's best defensive center fielder in the midst of this offensive explosion, an impressive feat in itself. It often feels like as long as Shohei Ohtani is in Major League Baseball, he's the National League's lock for the MVP award, but there's a real case emerging for Crow-Armstrong to steal one. Regardless of the award implications, it feels like there's something of a foundation being laid for Pete Crow-Armstrong this month. Between the steady improvement in May and the explosion in June, it does feel like we're watching a player settle into his skill set and demonstrate a level of maturation at the plate that can fuel a lasting brilliance. The month itself is important because it's among the most enjoyable things in the sport to watch a player performing at this level for nearly four consecutive weeks. What happens next, though, could prove just how important it is, for the long run. View full article

Image courtesy of © Robert Edwards-Imagn Images Moisés Ballesteros' second-half audition in 2025 was so impressive that the Chicago Cubs felt comfortable handing him the reigns to the designated hitter spot full-time in 2026. Through 66 plate appearances, he posted a .298/.394/.474 line with proportionally-appropriate 18.2 percent strikeout and 13.6 percent walk rates and a 143 wRC+. The power remained fairly modest (.175 ISO), but he showcased enough of his steadiness that the role was his ahead of this season. Unfortunately, that small sample has not translated into increased success for Ballesteros. He's gotten his opportunity and even the occasional assignment behind the plate, but the iteration of "Mo Baller" the team is seeing over a much more expanded sample in 2026 is a far cry from last year's version. Prior to his gut-punch of a demotion, Ballesteros accrued 175 plate appearances to his name. His line reads a disappointing .231/.303/.385, with a 20.6 percent strikeout rate and a 9.7 percent walk rate. The power that did manifest last season has basically evaporated so far this year, with an ISO of just .154. There's a bit of bad luck baked in there, with a .259 batting average on balls in play, but it otherwise adds up to a hitter that has been below average as illustrated by his 93 wRC+. Much of the reason for this has come as a result of Ballesteros' inability to adjust to how opposing pitchers are working him. Part of what made Ballesteros such an appealing hitter for this group was his contact-oriented profile, supplemented by his ability to make adjustments. He's a mature hitter with fluid mechanics capable of handling various parts of the zone with good efficiency. That combination of factors is what had many believing he could stave off regression after a hot start to the season. Yet the regression monster has, nevertheless, come for Ballesteros due to declining battled ball luck working in conjunction with a deliberate approach on the part of opposing pitchers. The waning luck in his batted-ball fortunes is a little bit less in his control, of course. Ballesteros went for a .345 BABIP in April before it plummeted to just .122 in May. It's rose back up to .300 in June, but that leads us into the second issue with Ballesteros' performance at the plate: Ballesteros' bat path is leading to him both leaning a bit on the late side and consistently under fastballs. Despite above-average bat speed (73.3 MPH), he's working with a 9 degree attack angle that lands close to the flatter side. The former can't compensate for the latter. Which is why we're seeing this kind of trend from opposing arms: In kind of an inverse from what the rest of the Cub hitters are getting, Ballesteros is getting a steady diet of fastballs rather than an increase in breaking pitches. His 51.8 percent rate of fastballs seen represents a seven-percent increase from the season's opening month. That's problematic for Ballesteros, given his run value of -3 against four-seam fastballs and a -1 run value against sinkers. That distinction is important, too. Because while the overall fastball rate has jumped as the months have progressed, sinkers have become an especially relied-upon pitch for opposing hurlers. The nature of his flat bat means that the sinker is going to yield the type of groundball contact that it's designed to. That's when you get something like the obscene 65 percent groundball rate we saw from Ballesteros this month. Of course, the breaking pitches still play their role in all of this. Once pitchers get ahead of Ballesteros via the fastball, whether four-seam or sinker, they're able to get him with a pitch type against which he has a 29.6 percent swing-and-miss rate. That's his highest against any of the three primary pitch groups, which also fails to mention that breaking balls generate the lowest rate of hard contact of any pitching against Ballesteros (36.1 percent). This all means that a significant adjustment must be made on the part of Ballesteros for him to begin to reach the levels of success he demonstrated last year. Either he needs to adjust his swing to get out on the fastball quicker, or adjust the plane of the swing so that he can generate more positive contact against the increasing amount of sinkers and the steady amount of breaking pitches. Luckily, it appears that at least one of those adjustments was beginning to manifest just before his trip back to Iowa. Ballesteros had an intercept point just three inches in front of the plate from March to May that has since progressed to 6.5 inches in June. That could help him to combat fastballs, at least early in counts. The mechanical adjustment likely remains the more paramount one, however, considering his rapidly rising groundball rate. Regardless, that the Cubs have let their young bat go this far into the season without mechanical adjustments does look like something of an indictment of this coaching staff. As opposing pitchers adjust to a young hitter, there's a certain onus on the staff to aid in making the proper adjustments. Craig Counsell quipped about not messing with Ballesteros given his natural IQ. Perhaps some time in Triple-A will allow the organization to revisit that approach. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images Despite a home run on Wednesday night, Dansby Swanson has been one of the more consistently broken components of a collectively broken Chicago Cubs lineup. His line of .176/.280/.318 features career worsts across each of the three categories while his wRC+ of just 71 is indicative of a player performing well below average at the plate. Despite the value he's still able to provide with his plate approach (and with his work with the glove and on the basepaths), he's been objectively bad as a hitter in 2026. Swanson has long been considered a player who needs to sit on four-seam fastballs to find success. The 2025 campaign notwithstanding, his run value — indicating his runs added or prevented within a specific situation or specific pitch — has landed on the positive end of the spectrum in each year of his career. In most of those cases, that pitch has served as his highest mark in that category. Things started to shift last year, when Swanson posted a run value of -10 against four-seam heat. While he was still able to generate hard contact (62.1 percent of the time) and find some positive outcomes (.409 slugging percentage) against it, he also whiffed more than 30 percent of the time, a career-worst rate by a wide margin. His chase rate jumped up to 27.1 percent (his highest since 2018), indicating a potential over-reliance on four-seamers, at least in the sense that it didn't necessarily matter where it landed in the zone, he was going for it. Nevertheless, the fastball still represented an area of success when you consider the volume he was getting against the outcomes. The run value came as more of a byproduct of his aggression rather than a regression against the pitch itself. Unfortunately for Swanson, opposing pitchers are keen to his history. For the third consecutive season, Swanson has seen a decrease in four-seamers his way, with the rate he's seeing the pitch sitting at 24.0 percent in 2026. Worse yet in his case, that rate has continued to decline as the season has progressed: Not only is Swanson seeing far fewer four-seam fastballs, it's happening while he's getting pounded with sinkers. The rate of four-seamers he's seeing has dropped by about seven percent while the sinker rate has jumped by about the same. This presents a couple of different issues for Swanson. The first is his actual outcomes against the sinker. He's putting the ball on the ground 44.1 percent of the time, feeding directly into what the pitch is designed to do. Of course, that's when he actually makes contact. He's had a tremendously difficult time adapting to this world of increased sinkers, with a swing-and-miss rate that sat at 12.5 percent in May now resting at an obscene 52.9 percent in June. It's no mystery what's happening here: The swing timing data only shows fastballs, with May and June illustrated above. Swanson's distribution in May looks largely like it should, but when you shift attention to the orange portion of the above (indicating June), it gets rather messy. The veteran shortstop is swinging over the baseball 24 percent of the time in June. That's an alarmingly high rate that is 11 percent higher than the next closest hitter against that pitch type. When you consider that data along with the visual above, it's clear that this is an exclusive byproduct of the increase in sinkers. A central issue within all of this is that we haven't seen the appropriate adjustment from Swanson. There hasn't been anything in his approach to help mitigate this. Nearly all of his mechanics that we can track (tilt, attack angle, etc.) remain nearly identical to what we've seen in the past few seasons. That there hasn't been a discernible change as the year has wore on and this has become more evident represents a paramount concern actively working against hope for Swanson to work his way out of this. There was this perception of Swanson that he, a hitter who needed the hard stuff to survive, was getting hit heavily with breaking and off-speed pitches as a means for opposing pitchers to minimize his impact at the plate. Instead, the call is coming from inside the house. It's the heaters proving to be his enemy this year. Coming at him in this new form appears to be something he's not yet ready to combat. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs signed Alex Bregman this past winter, there was an immediate thought that pushing Matt Shaw to the bench and, subsequently, into a utility role, would help to boost a reserve group that had been quite lackluster during Jed Hoyer's term as president of baseball operations. That sentiment itself was something of an oversimplification, but 2026 has shown us that it had at least a kernel of truth embedded within it. Hoyer's time atop the Cubs' front office has been anything but black-and-white. While the choices made under his stewardship merit their own lengthy discussion, he's largely been adept at finding value for certain spots, like Michael Busch at first base or a host of reclamation arms for the bullpen, while struggling in other respects. One of those latter components has been his consistent inability to build out a bench. Consider, for a moment, some of the players we've seen on the pine at Wrigley Field since 2023: Mike Tauchman (751 PA, 109 wRC+) Patrick Wisdom (476 PA, 97 wRC+) Miles Mastrobuoni (255 PA, 57 wRC+) Trey Mancini (263 PA, 75 wRC+) Justin Turner (191 PA, 71 wRC+) Jon Berti (107 PA, 42 wRC+) David Bote (48 PA, 104 wRC+) Vidal Bruján (47 PA, 42 wRC+) There was also a smattering of small-sample names like Edwin Ríos, Garrett Cooper, Willi Castro, Gage Workman, Carlos Santana, and two turns of Nicky Lopez at various stages. To say nothing of the rotating cast of characters that have been utilized as depth behind the plate (Tucker Barnhart, Tomás Nido, Luis Torrens, etc.). Context and associated mileage varies for each — Tauchman, for example, was closer to a regular than a true bench player — but it otherwise lands as a wide net of past-prime, post-hype names from which the Cubs were hoping to get some level of contribution and got very little outside of defensive versatility. That's an important note within all of this, too. Hoyer and company have often sacrificed production from their bench in favor of movable pieces that lacked offensive tools. There's a certain logic in that mindset when you're utilizing maybe the last piece or two on your roster, but when the collective reserves over the last handful of years are mutually exclusive with any notable offensive contribution, you run into the types of problems which this organization has experienced. The good news to all of this is that those issues appear to be at least moderately behind the Cubs in 2026. There are four names now locked into bench roles for at least the short-term: Shaw, Miguel Amaya, Michael Conforto, and Pedro Ramírez. From a logistical standpoint, that's a group that covers the top objective in your reserves in that they're able to cover each position on the field. More importantly, though, it's a quartet that provides actual value off the bench. From your reserves, you're not necessarily looking for loud offensive production. You want players who can help the team to remain stable defensively while keeping them afloat offensively in the event of an injury or a starter's singular off day. With Seiya Suzuki staving off a longer-term injury over the weekend, the Cubs are finally in a position where they appear to have that. Shaw is central to this given his increasing flexibility around the diamond. He's logged time at first base, second base, third base, and each of the three outfield spots, including 16 appearances in right field. While his bat remains a relative deficiency, his penchant for at least avoiding strikeouts has his wRC+ afloat at 105. It's not a completely dissimilar profile from someone like Ramírez, whose first 40-ish plate appearances have yielded identical 8.1 percent walk and strikeout rates and a 108 wRC+. The real offensive value off the bench has come in the form of Conforto and Amaya. Conforto's June is off to a rough start, but he's still turned in a .216 isolated power figure and a 118 wRC+ across more than 100 plate appearances to date. He's also walked at a 14 percent clip, which has compounded with his power output to compensate for a strikeout rate over 30 percent. Amaya, meanwhile, has an on-base percentage over .350 and a 109 wRC+ when stepping in for Carson Kelly behind the plate. That's a group that Craig Counsell can work with. Save for someone like Tauchman in the last few years, the Cubs have been forced to deploy an extensive collection of bodies capable of handling a glove but not so much a bat. Even if hasn't come together with complete intention — Ramírez was called up upon an injury to Shaw, Conforto emerged from a group of four potential throw-it-at-the-wall candidates in the spring — the result is a bench that finally looks respectable in comparison with what the Cubs have worked with in the past few seasons. Jed Hoyer doesn't have a ton of recent wins to his name considering the state of the pitching staff and absence of early returns on Alex Bregman, but the bench is certainly something for him to hang his hat on. View full article

Image courtesy of © John Hefti-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs acquired Michael Busch ahead of the 2024 season, they were acquiring a player with significant offensive upside but without a defensive home. They gave him one almost immediately, taking a player who had primarily held his post at third base (with the occasional spell at second) and inserting him as the team's full-time first baseman. The early returns on Busch's defense were varying levels of fine. In that 2024 season, he ranked eighth in Outs Above Average among first basemen (2). That painted him as an above-average defender at the position, but it was the gradual improvement that was notable. His -1 OAA in March and April ranked just 21st before he jumped to the top of the leaderboard with 4 OAA in May. He remained above the average threshold for each of the next two months before slipping back under it in the final two months of the season. It's difficult to gauge a defender's quality over a one-month sample at any point during the season given the need for defensive metrics to develop over a larger one, but the variance in the OAA figure does speak to a player adjusting over time. There was steady improvement before some regression, and unfortunately for Busch, that kind of adjustment wasn't a mere one-year thing. The 2025 iteration of Busch found himself under that average threshold, finishing at -1 OAA for the year. He particularly struggled in moving to his right, where he posted -4 OAA (working to his left, he was at 1). This is where we run into a couple of notes about the nature of being a first baseman, especially as it applies to the world of defensive metrics. For one, players are not always entirely within your control. As a first baseman, you are more at the mercy of your teammates as the endpoint of a defensive play rather than the starting line. The Cubs got top-five play out of their middle infield in 2024, which compensated for the bottom-five work they got from third base. In 2025, though, Dansby Swanson's play at short slipped closer to the middle of the pack, while third base play remained in the bottom 10 of the league. So while Busch was still adjusting to the position, the fact that he wasn't getting the same brilliance from his infield cohort didn't do him any favors. There are also myriad factors that go into a metric like Outs Above Average that present certain limitations for a first baseman. Distance and time to the ball in play, distance from the base, and the speed of the runner are all factors. Positioning for first baseman helps them in this sense, but also leaves out some nuance that we might need to measure players at other positions given that they're where a play typically ends. The sample itself is smaller, and it ends up a bit more black-and-white for a first baseman. In Busch's case, the fact that he was still adjusting to the position while getting less consistent play from his infielders didn't indicate linear development between 2024 and 2025 in the way you might want to see from a player expected to hold it down in the long-term. The struggles he had moving to his right represented a need in an individual area of improvement, while bumping up the quality at a spot like third base would mitigate factors beyond his control. Because of that, we're able to see the value of the combination of steady play from Busch himself as a first baseman and the impact his fielders have on that. Which is likely why his play is looking better than ever in 2026. This season, Busch is atop the leaderboard for OAA by first basemen (6). It's a number matched by only Atlanta's Matt Olson, and one that not only serves as the best among his position but ranks 16th in the league overall. Perhaps even more important are some of the secondary elements that illustrate defensive quality. While Busch struggled mightily moving to his right in 2025, he's been extremely good at it in 2026. He's at 1 OAA moving in each direction and at 3 OAA moving in on the ball. Further, after posting a 76% success rate against a 76% estimated success rate last year, he's actually making more plays than expected this season. He's at a 79% success rate against an expected figure of 75%. Only San Diego's Ty France has a higher success rate added than Busch. Busch has his own role within all of this, of course. Now in his third year in the position, we're seeing a player settling in. That's evidenced by the fact that these numbers have improved despite almost no change in his starting position (both in depth and in angle). He's just become more adept at making plays, with his 10 scoops this year also setting him on pace to exceed his number in each of the last two years. Making the plays you need to make is one thing, but being able to make the read on picks is such a crucial part of first base play that the growth is evident within each part of this defensive spectrum. Quality infield play has helped. The Cubs are seventh in the league in defense at second (5 OAA), third at shortstop (8 OAA), and 10th at third base (1 OAA). The latter figure is obviously the most notable given where it's sat in each of the last two years, but Swanson's play regaining its form after a tough spell has also aided Busch in his defensive growth. When you factor in the offensive production from Busch, there's a certain confidence in his ability to man the position as a long-term staple. Not that either of the last two years were putting that in doubt, but we're looking at a player who has made strides without significant adjustment, indicating that time itself can be a great equalizer when you're hoping for a player to develop a specific facet of their game. That and the quality of his infield peers, of course. View full article

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images When the Chicago Cubs signed Michael Conforto to a minor-league deal late in the offseason, it was not a move met with much enthusiasm. Even as a needed left-handed bat off the bench that wasn't expected to fill a key role for the team, the fact that Conforto was coming off his worst season at the big-league level merely added him to a group of past-prime, post-hype bats to potentially fill such a role. And yet, not only did he emerge from that group with a roster spot out of camp, he found success. Across March & April, he slashed .300/.421/.433 with a 145 wRC+. What he lost in the average and on-base rate in May (.250 & .345, respectively) he compensated for in power; no Cub touched the .354 isolated power he posted in his 55 plate appearances that month. Even as the warning signs of a waning offense began to manifest, Conforto continued to provide steady value. The calendar has since flipped to June, and Conforto finds himself in a much different place and standing with the team. It's a minuscule sample thus far (16 plate appearances), but that offensive value that Conforto was providing has begun to not only decline, but evaporate altogether. For the 33-year-old, it's not so much the absence of production in a small sample; struggling at the plate is not an uncommon trend among the collective given how things have transpired for the lineup over the past few weeks. You could almost forgive him for turning in a .067/.125/.067 line with a -46 wRC+ considering that it wouldn't look entirely out of place when juxtaposed with his peers. Instead, the much larger concern lies here: Conforto's ability to make contact has plummeted. His already-modest 73 percent contact rate between the first two months of the year has fallen to just 62.5 percent in June, while his whiff rate has leapt from 28.6 percent in May to 46.9 percent here in June. His chase rate has also risen by roughly 12 percent, sitting at 35.1 percent in our current month. When the zone expands in the way that we're seeing from Conforto, the result is a player who has struck out eight times in 16 plate appearances. That's where the understanding of some struggle begins to dissolve. If Conforto was still demonstrating a quality command of the strike zone and putting balls in play, you could accept some substandard production considering that it wouldn't be unique for this group. However, losing all semblance of an approach and contact makes it a different story entirely. Considering those comprehensive struggles, it's not as if Conforto is at risk of losing his roster spot. As a key source of left-handed hitting off the bench, he'll likely be given an opportunity to straighten things out, even if Matt Shaw's return eats into some of his playing time. However, Conforto was already walking a fine line as a guy in on a minor-league pact from the start. Those type of players don't get the same type of run to learn by making mistakes. Which means that his path will be narrow and he'll have to navigate these newfound struggles within a much lower volume of playing time than a starter might. With how driven this cold snap is by a complete collapse in his plate approach, rather than any mechanical deficiency, there could be some optimism that Conforto reigns it back in. If not, his Cinderella run may already be at its end. View full article

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images It wasn't so long ago that the vibes around the Chicago Cubs felt immaculate. Fresh off an offseason that had them signing a notable bat in Alex Bregman, acquiring a closer-to-frontline-than-the-rest-of-their-rotation arm in Edward Cabrera, and leaning more heavily on established arms for the bullpen than reclamation projects, the thought was that their busy winter would yield benefits in the National League contention picture. The buzz was so palpable that MLB.com's Thomas Harrigan asked the following question after the release of Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections: Just how large is the Cubs’ edge in the NL Central? Such a line of questioning seemed warranted upon PECOTA's release, which had the Cubs atop the National League Central with 90.5 projected wins. That was exactly 10 better than the Brewers' 80.5-win projection and carried with it a nice 69.0% chance of winning the division and a robust 95.7% chance of reaching the postseason. That same energy carried over to FanGraphs upon their own release. While not quite as bullish on the percentages, FanGraphs had the Cubs at a 35.6% chance of winning their division on March 23. That was more than 10 percentage points better than Milwaukee's 24.3% odds. The gap was even wider in the general postseason odds, with the Cubs checking in at 53.9% and the Brewers at just 41.7%. Then came the Cubs' strong start. On May 7, the Cubs' chance of winning the division reached 63.4%, while their playoff odds topped out at 91.2%. The former figure trounced the Brewers' mere 12.4% odds, while the latter was up on their division rivals by roughly 40 points (50.8%). Since that point in the calendar, the Cubs have won just eight times while losing 20, with a 10-game losing skid baked into the middle of all that. It's done a number on their odds of both winning the division: And reaching the playoffs at all: The first visual comes as little surprise; the Cubs' struggles (in conjunction with the rapid ascent of the Brewers) has created a significant gap between the two sides in the standings. At this point, the 7.5-game gap not only has the Cubs in fourth, but may also be too much to overcome, given the teams' respective projections for the remainder of the year. That the Cubs' odds are looking so grim in a more general NL context speaks to the overall magnitude of their recent struggles. Since May 8, only the San Diego Padres have scored fewer runs than the Cubs' 95 and no team has demonstrated less on the power side than their .121 ISO. While that's happening, their staff ERA (4.93) is one of the league's five worst, with a home-run rate on fly balls (17.7%) that easily leads the league. Given that, it's not as if the waning optimism surrounding the Cubs' playoff odds is limited to FanGraphs. PECOTA may not have the Cubs following these struggles through to a massive decline in wins in their current projections (87.4), but the odds are not in their favor. They're currently looking at division odds that have shrunk to a mere 25.8% and playoff odds that are resting at 78.5%. It's not an unsurmountable deficit to overcome, according to these data, but it does speak to just how much these recent woes have impacted them in their postseason outlook. Whether that will or can change given the team's current roster construction and injury situation remains to be seen. But even at this point in early June, a swoon like the one the Cubs are on has massive ramifications for later on. Even if it still feels kind of early to be worried, it isn't. View full article