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It didn't translate into the kind of success fans crave, but from 2019 through 2023, the Chicago Cubs derived a lot of value from successful development of pitchers scooped off baseball's scrap heap. This year? Not so much. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about the inner workings of pitching development. I was never a pitcher (lacking the mental fortitude to do so), and I possess only a rudimentary knowledge of what institutions like Driveline do, outside of increasing velocity. But I do know that the Chicago Cubs were starting to gain a lot of credit for their pitching infrastructure under Craig Breslow. This manifested in “bargain-bin” arms turning into viable relief options, before they were subsequently shipped out of town during the team’s recent reset. That was pretty solid process. Names like Scott Effross, David Robertson, and Brandon Hughes either broke out or reestablished themselves as part of the organization. Mark Leiter Jr. & Julian Merryweather, too. There was a time when Rowan Wick looked like a closer-in-waiting. Keegan Thompson & Adbert Alzolay have flashed good things. The team has a myriad of recent success stories in flipping the narrative around their in-house pitching solutions. But the team’s recent bullpen woes have started to dissolve any good will they’ve built up with their recent process. Alzolay struggled to sustain his success prior to (or perhaps because of) his injury. Thompson lost it to an alarming degree, as well. José Cuas was a disaster, and Héctor Neris is enduring the worst season of his career. This is all happening while names like Jeremiah Estrada & Trevor Megill have gone on to thrive outside of the organization. The process itself is, of course, not unique. Every team does some variation of what the Cubs are doing in terms of adding relief help. Find a veteran, help them develop or elevate a pitch, and hope you can catch lightning in a bottle. But the Cubs tried to sell themselves as having a high-end pitching development infrastructure, and their recent results appear to be waning relative to their organizational counterparts. Their bullpen ERA ranks 24th (4.49). The strikeout numbers look decent, but they’re walking opposing hitters at a rate tied with the Los Angeles Angels for the league’s fifth-highest (10.8%). Their collective velocity is in the bottom half of the league, while they are proving incapable of generating swings outside of the zone. Strike One has been an issue as well, with a first pitch Strike% that sits just 19th. I’m oversimplifying, but there’s just something broken within the Cubs’ process in their relief corps, especially coming off a year where they sat pretty nicely in each of those regards. It's especially frustrating, given that Craig Counsell’s ability to manage a pitching staff was purported to be a crucial factor in 2024. While the Cubs didn’t add much outside of Neris, that blend was supposed to be a boon for the organization this year, even with the current personnel. That hasn’t happened, and it’s already leading to grumbling about the job being done on the bench--valid or not. That idea applies to the larger questions starting to emerge regarding the “lab”, as well. Maybe it’s just a personnel issue. Some health issues and some young arms working through some stuff could be holding the staff back in larger ways than we might realize. But when you’re talking about a narrative, validity doesn’t always matter. And the narrative surrounding the lab is starting to shift toward something irrecoverable. Again, I’m not here to speculate on the effectiveness of the Cubs’ behind-the-scenes process in matters of pitching. We don’t know the intricacies, and we aren’t yet at a point where we can point to Breslow’s departure, given that (pretty much) the rest of the front office personnel remains in place. Something here is broken, though. And it’s costing the Cubs, in an increasingly dire way. View full article

For the second time on what's only been a four-game homestand so far, the Chicago Cubs overcame a huge, multi-run defensive failure to win a game. It was exciting. Maybe it will be galvanizing. But it sure isn't what this team was supposed to be about. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Identity is an interesting thing within the context of a major-league organization. You’re talking about those elements on which an organization hangs their hat. Last year’s Arizona Diamondbacks emphasized the collective: their roster, without many real standouts, performed in unison, demonstrating baserunning efficiency and excellent defense en route to a World Series appearance. This year, you’ve got the young and powerful Baltimore Orioles. The old(er), powerful New York Yankees. The young upstarts in Cincinnati who are absolute demons on the basepaths. Milwaukee’s ability to put balls in play and to thrive with a patchwork pitching staff. And so on. When the 2024 season began, one of the only sure things about the Chicago Cubs appeared to be their identity. With so few changes over the winter, they were again built around an efficient pitching staff that allowed balls in play, but soft contact overall. That was supported by an upper-tier defense, led by a legitimately elite middle infield. They had to excel on the margins, given a lack of offensive firepower, but it was believed that the pitching-and-defense formula they’d established could still allow them to succeed in one of the league’s weaker divisions. Of course, as we wade deeper into the month of June, the Cubs have undergone an identity crisis. The offense is essentially what could have been expected. Despite early plate discipline that might have led us to believe otherwise, the Cubs are 15th overall in runs and 20th in team wRC+ (97). May was worse, as they were 26th in the league in runs, 22nd in ISO (.131), and 23rd in wRC+ (88). Regression has come for some of their shiny early numbers. Other players have never gotten going. But without an impact bat, we can likely expect the team to continue scratching out runs in the most effort-intensive way possible. Again, not unexpected within the context of their identity. Instead, the problematic elements reside on the mound and the field. Sitting in the bottom five in fastball velocity in 2023 (93.4 MPH average), the Cubs were able to allow hard contact at one of the league’s five lowest rates. Only both LA teams, the Phillies, and Padres were better in HardHit% against than the Cubs’ 37.9% rate. That came in conjunction with the sixth-highest GB% (44.1). Their walk rate was in the top half of the league, at 8.4%. Even in allowing contact at a 76.8% rate on swings (10th-highest), it’s a formula that works. THat's true, at least, when you have a top-10 defensive unit. The Cubs were ninth in Fielding Run Value (14) to go along with a Defensive Runs Saved of 36 last year. They were above average in FRV at both middle infield spots, third base, center field, and behind the plate. Only the corner outfield spots and first base came up short. It was a unit that supplemented the type of pitching the Cubs had. While the Cubs did have some higher-velocity arms coming up through the pipeline, we still expected the identity to be very much the same, given the lack of turnover throughout much of the roster. However, that hasn’t materialized in the way that we expected. While the staff has managed to post the exact same average fastball velocity as ’23 so far, they haven’t been nearly as efficient. Despite giving up a touch less contact, they’re surrendering far more of the damaging variety of contact. Their 39.6 HardHit% against is the league’s ninth-highest. Their ground-ball rate has slipped to 42.7%, while their FB% has shot up from 34.9 last year (28th) to 39.0 this year (12th). Their walk rate sits as one of the league’s nine worst, at 8.6%. There have been individual successes within the staff, to be sure. But the collective isn’t proving nearly as efficient as they were in 2023. That has likely been a factor in the decline of the defense. The Cubs’ team FRV is at -16, which ranks 27th. Their DRS, at -15, is in the same spot. First base and center field are the only spots where the team is getting above-average defensive production, with left field sitting right on the threshold. Everywhere has been markedly worse. To reiterate: when your offense has the shortcomings that the Cubs’ lineup does, you have to excel in the other facets. And the Cubs most certainly are not. Much of this is something of an oversimplification, as we are painting the roster with a broad brush. At the same time, it very much underscores the implosion of the identity that the Cubs had planned to maintain for 2024. It’s not so much that they’re struggling to find one. It’s that they’re failing at maintaining the one they hoped was part of their very foundation. As such, it’s left them looking like something else entirely--something the apparent mirage of April prevented us from imagining. They're not a team without an identity, but something worse: a baseball team that just is not very good. Now, that’s not to say it’s a permanent outlook. But given their offseason conservatism, their inability to protect what was a fragile identity might just undermine it altogether. View full article

It's a sporadic problem. It doesn't crop up often, and there's no predicting when it will. Because Seiya Suzuki's defense is having such a huge negative impact, though, it might be a problem on which the team needs to act decisively. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports For myriad reasons, Saturday night was a messy affair between the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds. But the one play that sticks out most in my mind is the drop that Seiya Suzuki committed on a should-have-been-routine out in the second inning. The Reds had the bases loaded with two outs. Justin Steele looked to have worked his way out of it on a lazy flyball from Luke Maile, on which Suzuki and Pete Crow-Armstrong converged to put the inning to bed--except that Suzuki took charge and called for the ball, only to drop it. Like…dropped it. TGw3azlfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0ExUlpWd1lOWGdRQUNGUUxVd0FBQ1FOVUFGbFJXd01BVjFBQlZnb0RBUVFFVXdJQQ==.mp4 The Reds scored three on that play, and added one more tally in the inning. All four went down as unearned in the box score for Steele. While Suzuki went on to redeem himself with a game-tying grand slam, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this specific issue. And while you’d also like to afford him some grace given the conditions in which the teams were playing, it’s that lack of it being an isolated occurrence that has me wondering about his future in right field. There was the one last year in Atlanta. With two outs in the eighth inning of a game the Cubs led 6-5, Suzuki’s drop of a Sean Murphy fly ball directly led to a 7-6 loss. There was another in 2022 against the Dodgers, in addition to the small handful of balls lost in the sun during his time as a Cub. Errors (and misplays, like the one above, not officially labeled that way) are obviously going to happen. And it stands to reason that outfielders might be more impacted by weather – rain or problematic shine – than infielders, given the angle at which they need to field baseballs. Anecdotally (or perhaps in the purest sense of confirmation bias), it just seems like Suzuki’s occur at the most egregious times. A close game or a time at which the Cubs are scuffling in a broad sense and can’t afford another mistake. Or a combination of both, as we saw on Saturday. OU93M2pfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUZOWkFsSUdCd01BQ3dBRVVnQUFWQVZWQUFBTVVRVUFCQVJYQUFNRVZ3Y0hWUUVD.mp4 This wasn't even the first time this year that Suzuki has victimized Steele in a key spot. a1pucktfWGw0TUFRPT1fQkFkVEFRY0dYd0VBQ2xNQkJBQUFDQUpXQUZsV1cxY0FBVndFVVFSVVZGSmRVbEJT.mp4 The larger issue is that, while the most outlandish of mistakes obviously stand out, those are mere standouts in a troubling display of defense that Suzuki has demonstrated since coming over from Japan. In 2022, Suzuki stood 46th in Fielding Run Value, out of 68 right fielders (-3). Last year, he was 32nd out of 60 (-2). This year, he’s 24th out of 29 (-3) and in the 13th percentile of defense overall. In each of ’22 and ’24, he’s fallen on the negative side of both the range and the arm under the FRV banner. He’s also at an aggregate Defensive Runs Saved of -3 across the three seasons. Weirdly, coming in on fly balls to his right have been his biggest issue. He had a -1 OAA on such flies in 2022, a -3 last year, and is at -1 again this year. One imagines that having Crow-Armstrong to his right on (nearly) a full-time basis moving forward could help to mitigate that--even if it didn’t on Saturday. But the roster context certainly does make way for the possibility of Suzuki DHing in a more frequent capacity. Crow-Armstrong is here now, likely on a permanent basis. That’s going to push Cody Bellinger over to right sometimes. While the Cubs could (and will) play Bellinger at first base, Michael Busch needs his plate appearances, too. Craig Counsell loves Mike Tauchman, and at a certain point, he's out of places to play other than right field. David Bote’s return to the bigs does complicate this situation further, especially if Counsell wishes to have Christopher Morel DH more often. That's to say nothing of the outfield talent in the upper minors, if the organization ever wishes to deploy it. Regardless of the roster dynamics, it’s a strange fall for a player who had gained a great deal of respect for his glove, specifically, while still in Japan. That makes it even more difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s going wrong. But with Crow-Armstrong establishing himself as an everyday player and the Cubs’ bloat in that section of the lineup, it’s at least a realistic thought to question Suzuki’s long-term future on the outfield grass. View full article

Let's forget the rough results recently--especially since they're mostly the offense's fault. When was the last time it was this much fun to watch the Cubs pitch, from a pure stuff and domination potential perspective? Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports For as long as I can remember – at least the last handful of years – I’ve had to go outside of the Chicago Cubs organization if I wanted to watch an exciting pitching performance. Whether it’s a stuff-based starter or a fireballing reliever, genuine excitement was to be found somewhere within the 29 other teams in Major League Baseball. That’s not to say that the Cubs haven’t had good pitchers in the last handful of seasons. They certainly have. Jake Arrieta wasn’t all that long ago, after all. Neither was prime Kyle Hendricks. Jon Lester and Pedro Strop provided some of my fondest memories in shorter-term Cubs history. And there have been interesting ones, too. Rowan Wick looked like a dude at some point. I enjoyed Scott Effross a lot. But there’s a certain watchability factor that Cubs pitchers have lacked in the last several years, even amid a solid collection of arms. The velo. The stuff. While the Cubs' overhauling their pitching infrastructure made such an outlook possible, we’d yet to see the fruits of that labor prior to 2024. Which is part of what made Ben Brown’s Tuesday start so special. It wasn’t only that he held the Milwaukee Brewers hitless across seven innings, mixing the fastball & curve to absolutely delightful effect. It was that the type of raw stuff he flashed – and has shown us all year – is something we’d typically have to seek elsewhere. A Brewers starter. Or a Dodgers starter. Or a Tampa Bay reliever. The tides are shifting, to a point where we don’t have to seek outside means in order to see special stuff. It doesn’t end with Brown. Shota Imanaga’s blend of upper-zone fastball against his splitter. Hayden Wesneski’s sweeper. The velocity of a Daniel Palencia or (now) Porter Hodge. Results notwithstanding in recent weeks, the watchability has risen when we’re watching the Cubs on the bump. Of course, there are more on the way. Cade Horton. Michael Arias. Brandon Birdsell. There are exciting arms in this system that offer far more of this type of energy than we’ve seen from inside the organization since the halcyon days of Kyle Farnsworth, Juan Cruz, Mark Prior, and Carlos Zambrano. That's to say nothing of the quality that you’re getting from Javier Assad and others who belong more to the previous era's outs-over-oohs-and-aahs ethos. But this isn’t about organizational quality. This is about the completely unquantifiable organizational excitement. You obviously want quality on the hill. But at some point, you also want flash. You want velocity and movement. Sure, there might be a bit more erraticism that presents itself as a result, – it’ll surely lead to some subsequent frustration when you’ve got a walk in a key moment – but you’re less liable to care, over an extended period, when your eyeballs are busy feasting on the physics-defying intensity of your own team's offerings. In the broader team context, it’s a small thing. It certainly doesn’t completely compensate for the struggles we’ve seen out of the collective roster over the past few weeks. But there is solace to be offered here, at the very least. Whether it’s Brown or Imanaga or Hodge, there’s at least a certain relief in acknowledging that the Cubs have finally done it. They’ve set themselves up such that, perhaps, it’ll soon be fans of other teams finding themselves tuning into the Cubs’ barrage of exciting arms for a change. View full article

The prerogative of the Chicago Cubs' front office has been to amass better depth and generate a stable, balanced big-league roster. Did they focus too much on that, at the expense of building one that can actually win? Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports At this point, you won’t find many positive words in any quarter about the Chicago Cubs. They’re in the midst of a horrific May, and a smaller stretch in which they’ve lost eight of 10. While the pitching has largely held up – or even been outstanding – the offense has been anemic, and the defense has largely been below-average. To that end, Matt Trueblood published a piece regarding Dansby Swanson and his contract earlier this week. In Year 2 of his deal, it’s a contract already looking problematic on multiple fronts. This includes the offense – where Swanson was already visibly the weakest of the available shortstops last winter – and the defense, which has long been the hallmark of his game. I’ve long been a fan of Dansby Swanson. His process as a defender and commitment to discussing the mental side of sport is extremely admirable. When he signed in Chicago, I doubt that even those who were fine with the deal had any delusions about what he brings. At best, it’s excellent defense and an average bat. Of course, what we’re getting now is at the left end of the spectrum of possible outcomes. The previous regime under Theo Epstein caught a lot of flak for the Jason Heyward deal, in which you essentially wound up paying for presence and defense. With Swanson, the Cubs are, to our knowledge, really only getting one of those things. There’s plenty of opportunity for redemption from Swanson, of course. We know he had a knee issue that could impact the defense we’ve seen in 2024. Getting his approach in order could help him to at least reestablish some offensive value within the streakiness he brings, which would be a net positive (since expecting offensive consistency is a fool’s errand at this point in his career). You could also make that statement for most of the lineup at this point in the calendar. What’s important to note in the larger context of the Swanson conversation isn’t so much his value and his contract in a vacuum. That’s an important conversation, but a separate one to what Swanson’s struggles are bringing to my own mind. Instead, my focus is on the process of this front office in assembling offensive talent. Swanson was never expected to be an offensive catalyst. He’s been in the league since 2016. If you think there’s more to his bat, then you probably shouldn’t be making decisions at this level. But what he was supposed to be was a supplement. When he’s on – even with the frustrating streakiness – he’s an effective secondary piece on your lineup. Of course, the same could be said of Ian Happ. The same could be said of Seiya Suzuki, or this version of Cody Bellinger. Or Nico Hoerner. Probably Michael Busch, too. The Cubs have built their entire ship out of secondary bats, all while hoping that maybe someone like Christopher Morel could evolve into the gamebreaker that this lineup is dying for. But it’s hard to imagine that that bat is on its way. Morel has already outperformed what his skill set said he should be. On the farm, Pete Crow-Armstrong is a glove-first guy. Brennen Davis can’t stay healthy. Alexander Canario can’t find an opportunity. Owen Caissie and Kevin Alcántara represent the potential for such a presence in the lineup, but you’re still talking about prospects. And within the prospect conversation, you’re talking about an organization who appears about as conservative in pushing their youth to the higher levels as any team out there. And that’s really the issue, isn’t it? Conservatism. Jed Hoyer won’t push the envelope on the trade market. Or in free agency. Or in graduating prospects. There’s some obvious oversimplification there, especially as it relates to prospect development. But, ultimately, you’ve spent this time rebuilding the organizational depth, but at what point do we see it activated and deployed in a meaningful way? Until that question has an answer, this is the type of offensive profile we should expect to continue to see on the North Side. Secondary bats are safe. They have a floor (for the most part). Can’t whiff if you don’t swing the bat. Therein lies the problem. The Dansby addition is something of a microcosm for a larger issue plaguing this organization in its current form. We obviously aren’t privy to the conversations happening behind closed doors, especially as it relates to trades and transactions. Maybe Hoyer is trying, and has been trying hard since last fall, and a bigger move just hasn't come together. Maybe there’s a character thing they like about this current group. For our eyes, though, it looks like a front office content to play it safe and bank on hope above all. Until Jed Hoyer is willing to shed safety and take a big swing, I fear we’re going to be stuck watching a whole lot of mid on offense for the foreseeable future. View full article

His sterling defense in a first season-long exposure to a new position was, in a sense, a good enough reason to keep a former first-round pick and valued trade acquisition for a year. When even that little value bump won't stick to him anymore, though, all that's left to say is goodbye. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports I’ve written about Nick Madrigal – and the Cubs’ third-base situation, at large – several times over the past several months. With Madrigal, in particular, I’ve been on different ends of the spectrum. From generous about his future to questioning his purpose on the roster, I’ve been willing to maintain some flexibility when it comes to the team’s shortest position player. Let's dispense with that, in favor of something more concrete: Nick Madrigal should not be a member of this Chicago Cubs roster. It wasn’t one specific play that led to this idea taking root for me. That would be reactionary. Even if Madrigal’s error on a would-be double play proved to be the death knell for the Cubs on Monday afternoon, in the big picture, it’s the broader problem(s) with this team in recent days/weeks that make his ongoing presence untenable. They can’t score runs. An important function of baseball, you need to score more runs than your opponent to generate wins. And if you’re not going to score runs, you absolutely need to prevent them at an elite level to have any hopes of making progress in the standings. By that definition, the Chicago Cubs have outgrown any justification for Nick Madrigal’s presence here. Offensively, he offers you very little--maybe even nothing. There are 329 players with at least 80 MLB plate appearances thus far in 2024. Madrigal’s .037 ISO is one of the five worst. His 18.1 HardHit% is one of the six worst. It’s soft contact, while putting the ball onto the ground almost 60 percent of the time. When your skill set requires you to hit your way on base, it would behoove you to… hit your way on base. But with a player like Madrigal, there’s an excuse to be made for regular appearances if the defense is up to snuff. Especially when you’re coming off a strong defensive year at a position where the starter is still making a transition to full-time duty. It’s logical. However, even that has run its course to a pretty astonishing extent. Again, Madrigal had a nice 2023 in his first year at third base. He posted a FRV of 8, an OAA of 10, and a DRS of 8. Regardless of your metric of choice, he was great. There were those who were less sure of the metrics based on the eye test. Regression has largely proven those folks to be correct. Madrigal’s broad metrics include a -2 in each of FRV & OAA and a flat 0 in DRS. More troubling, though, is his success rate at the hot corner. At third base, he’s maintaining a success rate of 69 percent against an estimated success rate of 74 percent. It’s worse when he has to move in either direction. To his right, his success rate is 67 percent against an 83 expected figure. To his left, it’s 67 percent and 73 percent expected. So while he’s been fine in plays that don’t require movement (75 percent vs. 73 percent expected), he hasn’t offered any real upside there. Morel has shown improvement but has still struggled with adjusting profitably in the big picture. If you’re looking for a defensive presence for late situations, shouldn’t that instead be going to defensive whiz Luis Vázquez, who has toiled purposelessly on this roster for the better part of a week? Simply put, the defensive justification for Madrigal being a part of this roster goes out the window between the overall output and the more specific miscues like we saw Monday. When the Cubs hired Craig Counsell this winter, they positioned themselves as a serious baseball team. They didn’t follow that up with genuine roster upgrades that might have further cemented that mindset. I fear that continuing to roster Madrigal, in particular, unravels any hypothetical seriousness altogether. View full article

The Cubs are, to put it mildly, not where we thought they would be by now, based on where they were when this month began. What happened? And how (if at all) can they fix it? Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports On May 1, the Chicago Cubs were 19-12, just 0.5 games behind Milwaukee for the top spot in the National League Central. The St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates scuffled out of the gate, sitting 14-17 & 14-18, respectively, and occupying the bottom two spots in the division. We’re close to a full month out from that, and things look somewhat the same, but also very different. The Cubs still sit in second place, but their 27-27 record looks much less impressive. They’ve fallen to 4.5 games back of the Brewers and are only a game ahead of St. Louis following their weekend mini-sweep. Pittsburgh remains in play, just 2.5 games back of the Cubs for that second spot. Suffice to say, things have not gone well this month. It isn’t a secret. The Cubs have struggled to compensate for injuries up and down the roster, in addition to massive slumps from a handful of key players. The plate discipline they demonstrated early in the year has waned, with consistently impressive pitching performances unable to compensate for such offensive shortcomings. All this, while the bullpen was forced to find its footing with no margin for error. The story of the season to date is one of two very different offensive ballclubs. The April Cubs were ninth in the league in runs (149). They walked at the league's eighth-highest clip (9.6%) and reached base at the 11th-best rate (.318). There wasn’t a ton to be offered in the way of power (.150 team ISO), but they were creating problems for opposing pitchers through the grind--and winning games as a result. The May Cubs have been… well, not that. This month’s iteration ranks 27th in runs (76), with four games yet to play in the month. They're ahead of only the White Sox, Atlanta, and Cincinnati. They’re striking out at the league’s sixth-worst rate (23.9%), and while they’re still walking (Monday excepted), they aren’t maintaining any kind of on-base presence: their .300 OBP ranks 18th. The modest ISO has fallen further, at .128 for the month (25th). Their 75.1 Contact% also sits 25th, including the league’s worst contact rate within the zone for the month (82.4%). So while some of the approach elements do remain, the team has been entirely unable to parlay patience into anything of value at the plate. It’s hard to be surprised about where the Cubs are. It’s not as if they came out and set the world on fire on offense; it was a collective effort leading to early success. The rare impact they did get came from the likes of Michael Busch, Christopher Morel, and Seiya Suzuki. Apart from a brief homer-centric stretch from Morel, the pop has disappeared for each. Busch’s ISO is almost .100 lower this month. Suzuki’s is almost .150, albeit with fewer games played due to injury. Only Morel’s has increased, and that's as much because he's stopped finding singles as anything positive. In a general sense, it’s not a terrible formula. You have a collective approach centered around grinding out difficult at-bats and forcing your way on base. Then, the impact bats come through and do what they need to do. It’s a formula that many elite teams maintain. But then, the Cubs aren’t an elite team, and banking on upside above track record was never a surefire plan. For that reason, the Cubs’ offensive woes this month shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise. This was a team that did do some things well at the plate last year. They were eighth in walk rate, sixth in OBP, and actually ended up top-10 in runs scored. However, they were middling when it came to quality of contact and over-the-fence power. Their needs were fairly obvious. Instead of making proven, star-caliber upgrades, they banked on upside from the likes of Busch, Morel, and Suzuki. Last year’s Cubs team also hit well situationally. They were top-10 in average and OBP with runners in scoring position. This year, the Cubs are 20th in average with runners on and 22nd when they’re in scoring position. The steps back from players they hoped would jump forward have been glaring. While the Cubs may not be as bad offensively as they’ve been this month, they were never going to be a good offensive club. They simply weren’t built that way. They were constructed in much the same way they were last year: needing efficient pitching and high-level defense. I’m fine with building a team that way, in theory. If you do so, though, those elements must excel to compensate for the offensive shortcomings, both in the short and in the long term. They’ve largely been able to do that on the bump, but haven’t had the defensive efficiency to support such an infrastructure. When the offense can drum up a few runs, the other elements can’t hold it--and vice-versa. This is the team they built. It has to be excellent on the fringes just to have a chance. They paid Craig Counsell a lot of money to facilitate that process. Injuries haven’t helped him in Year 1, but neither has the roster construction. There are positions where the team is getting no production whatsoever. There is not a consistently lethal power threat. That this was foreseeable doesn’t make it any less frustrating from an outside perspective. There are probably solutions inside the organization--and outside, too. Either path, however, is going to require Jed Hoyer to step outside of his ultra-conservative comfort zone. Living there got the Cubs into this very predicament; he’ll have to vacate in order to get them out of it. Which doesn’t lend itself to a ton of optimism at this point. View full article

This was supposed to be the year for Seiya Suzuki. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports Seiya Suzuki's first two seasons were good. Maybe even above average. His second half of 2023 (149 wRC+, .254 ISO) was supposed to indicate another level to be reached. The front office appeared confident enough in such a breakout that they neglected to add much of anything on offense this past winter. That’s likely an oversimplification (and fails to acknowledge the other bats that were supposed to “take steps forward”) but does speak to the new level that was supposed to be reached in 2024. Suppose there’s any accuracy in that statement, though. In that case, it’s likely led to a fair bit of disappointment on the part of Jed Hoyer & Co. Because this season, to date, has been anything but the emergent campaign we had anticipated coming in. Seiya’s probably never been worse. The slash includes a .252 average & .316 on-base. The K% is 24.8 & the walk rate sits at only 6.8. ISO’s at .165. His wRC+ is at 109, while the OPS+ is at 107. Now, those numbers could obviously be much worse. There are regulars in the very same lineup that lend credence to that statement. But while there are certainly other depths to explore, each of those figures represents the worst we’ve seen from Suzuki in a Cubs uniform. The easy explanation for Suzuki’s woes lies in the approach. His Swing% is at the highest it’s been (41.6). He’s been much more aggressive on pitches outside the strike zone than last year, with an O-Swing% growing almost three percent (26.1). He’s whiffing much more as a result (10.6 percent). This is while pitchers are coming into the zone quite a bit less than they did last year. The contact rate has plummeted (74.5 after an 80.8 mark last year). Suzuki saw 4.19 & 4.18 pitches per plate appearance in his first two seasons. His P/PA thus far in 2024 is at 3.94. Suzuki has especially struggled with off-speed stuff. Despite being the pitch he sees the least, Suzuki is swinging at exactly half the off-speed pitches he sees and whiffing at 46.7 percent of them. He’s chasing them at a 32.4 percent clip. All of this just reads as someone who is at a comfort level of exactly zero at the plate right now rather than anything mechanical. There's just an aggressiveness here that reads, instead, as impatience. He doesn’t look comfortable. It looks like he wants the plate appearance over in an expedited fashion. Anecdotally, there have been a handful of times since his return from the IL when Suzuki steps to the plate. I take my eyes off the screen, and the three-hole hitter walks up. Which, unfortunately, isn’t something that we can necessarily quantify. Nor do we know the impact of his oblique injury on his current performance. Logic absolutely would indicate that any presence of discomfort is wrought by the worst type of injury a hitter can try to come back from during the season. But we’re outsiders here. Even more unfortunate, though, is that whatever discomfort Seiya Suzuki may be experiencing – physical or otherwise – is that it’s manifesting itself as a serious hurdle for the Chicago Cubs’ lineup at large. A team that made their bones early on the merit of a collective approach has lost all sense of it. As someone who consistently hits near the top of the lineup (he has hit second all year), there will be an onus on Seiya to rediscover some sense of discipline in hopes that it trickles down the lineup. View full article

The Chicago Cubs lost another game on Saturday--something we’ve become rather accustomed to, in a nightmarish month of May. However, one element of this one stood out as being particularly difficult to stomach. Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports With two outs in the eighth inning, the Cubs held a 4-3 lead. St. Louis had runners on first and second. A Matt Carpenter single scored Alec Burleson from second--but that probably should not have happened, if it were not for the continued shortcomings of Cubs backstop Miguel Amaya manifesting in a crucial moment. Seiya Suzuki fielded the ball in right and made a perfectly adequate throw home. It wasn’t a great throw, really, but it should have done the job. After all, Amaya fielded the ball here: Now, these screenshots can be misleading. It doesn't just matter where each player is; it matters how fast they're moving. Because the throw took him to the first-base side of the plate, Amaya had to corral the ball, turn, and lunge, and there's no way to accelerate to match the speed of a diving runner in that situation. Still, a lot of catchers make the tag at the front corner of the plate here. Amaya, however, did not: In fact, although Craig Counsell did challenge the play based on the importance of the situation, Amaya clearly missed Alec Burleson at that front corner and got him only deeper in the slide, too late. He whiffed. The Cardinals would go on to add three more in the inning. If not for the broader context of the Cubs’ catching duo this season, this wouldn't feel as important and inauspicious as it does. After all, Amaya made great tags to seal wins on dramatic throws last July in Milwaukee, and last month in New York. But defensive miscues in matters of baserunners are an alarming element of what Amaya brings to the table, and that's starting to overshadow his scattered moments of heroism, while magnifying all his other weaknesses and missed chances. The Cardinals scored their first two runs in the third inning on Saturday, on a Paul Goldschmidt single with two outs. St. Louis had runners on second and third at the time. Lars Nootbaar stood on second, courtesy of an uncontested steal. It was one of two uncontested steals Amaya surrendered on the night, with Nolan Gorman adding one in the sixth. Amaya's inability to control the running game cost the team at least one run. The Cubs lost by one. The St. Louis Cardinals are not an aggressive running team. They ranked 26th in the league in steals coming into Saturday. So, for Amaya to allow a pair in an uncontested fashion – even if only one would go on to score – is a fairly egregious occurrence. But it's also one we have, unfortunately, become quite familiar with. In 577 innings behind the dish in his young career, Amaya has allowed 60 steals on 67 attempts, including 29 in 33 tries in 2024. Free bases cannot happen for a team that lives on the margins in the way the Cubs do. But not only are they happening, they’re happening at an astounding rate. Baseball Prospectus’s Throwing Runs (ThrR) metric essentially tracks catcher throwing in a run-based measurement. There are 77 catchers who have caught at least one game this year. Amaya’s ThrR (-0.4) ranks 76th, ahead of only Omar Narváez. His Swipe Rate Above Average (SRAA), at 0.027, is also ahead of only Narváez. As much improvement as we’ve seen from Amaya in the cumulative sense, the inability to control the running game remains a rather glaring component. To date, though, we haven’t seen consistency in the way the opposition attacks such a shortcoming, even if we’ve seen it in some spots (early this month against Milwaukee, most notably). That could change in the coming weeks, though. We recently talked about the Cubs’ upcoming schedule. That includes Milwaukee for seven, Cincinnati for six, and Tampa Bay for three across the next month. All three teams rank in the top five in the league in stolen bases. So while we haven’t seen it yet, in the consistent sense, it’s possible the real hammer is yet to fall on Amaya. No two tag plays are the same. Amaya failed to execute on a crucial one Saturday, but you can live with that. Teams racing around the bases as soon as they reach first is a different story, though, and it’s not one that ends well for the Cubs. View full article

Thursday marked the end of a long period during which the Chicago Cubs faced unusually fierce competition. Friday opens a stretch during which they'll play a lot of contests within their division. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports As of this writing, the Cubs have only played 10 of their 51 games against their rivals from the National League Central. None of those were in April. May has seen three against Milwaukee and seven against Pittsburgh. They’re an even 5-5 in those games, with two wins against the Brewers and three scattered across their two series against the Bucs. Starting Friday, however, we’ll see a massive bump in their time spent with division rivals. The Cubs will head to St. Louis for three with the Cardinals this weekend. They’ll then move up to Milwaukee for four next week. Returning home, they’ll face the Cincinnati Reds for three. After a brief intermission against the White Sox, they’ll then head to Cincinnati for another four. There’s another three in there against each of St. Louis & Milwaukee before June meets its end. That’s 20 division games of the team’s next 36 tilts, including 14 of 16 early on in the next stretch. One likes to imagine such a schedule would be favorable for the Cubs, who have been a clear division frontrunner from the jump. Neither of the Cardinals and Reds have gained traction at any point. The Pirates started their swoon-after-good-start much earlier this year than last. And there’s no way the Brewers can sustain their shocking start. At least, that was the April mindset. Now, though, we’re not so sure. The Cubs are finishing up a May in which they’re 25th in team wRC+ (89), striking out at the sixth-highest rate in baseball (24.0%), and offering very little impact offense (.137 May ISO ranks 20th) or contact (35.2 HardHit% is 26th). They’ve become more active on the bases – 20 steals, perhaps out of necessity – but can’t capitalize on a third-ranked walk rate (9.9%) with any sustained on-base presence (.301 OBP). The pitching has remained… fine. They have a 3.30 staff ERA (9th), the third-best K% (24.7), and a top 10 GB% (43.8). Starters are top 6-7 pretty much across the board, and the bullpen has stabilized, thanks to better health of the staff at large. Despite very little offensive support, they’ve maintained what has been a strong start to the year. That, at least, makes this next stretch a promising one. The Reds remain one of the worst offensive teams in baseball. Their 67 wRC+ in May is dead last. Both they and the Brewers are in the 10 highest strikeout rates this month, with the Cardinals also in the top half. While the latter two teams can take a walk (8.8 and 9.0 BB%, respectively), the Cubs’ command of the zone should force them into contact. Lest we be worried about surrendering hard contact, the Brewers have spent May sitting 14th (39.9%) in HardHit%. That’s the best of the trio, with the Cardinals 23rd (36.0) & Reds 30th (32.8). Only Milwaukee is in the top half in ISO (.169). Also lending itself to at least some form of optimism is the fact that the Cubs aren’t going to run into nearly the type of pitching they have in recent weeks. None of those three teams have a Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish, Jared Jones, Paul Skenes, Chris Sale, or Max Fried. In fact, all three teams rank in the bottom half of the league in starting pitcher ERA, with Milwaukee and Cincinnati both sitting in the top half in BB% (in the bad way). St. Louis’s strikeout rate (20.6%) leads the way at 15th, with the 23rd-ranked Reds (18.5) and 24th-ranked Brewers (18.4) much lower. Cincinnati is also the only staff of the three that offers actual velocity (95.2 MPH average on four-seam), though with some command issues. It’d be nice to think that the next stretch offers the Cubs’ hitters, in particular, a window to get back on track. They’ll still face some quality arms, to be sure. But they appear to be clear of those that have given them so much trouble in recent weeks. This is an opportunity to re-establish the approach and get some of these bats moving, whether they’ve been injured or struggling from a pure performance standpoint. Regardless of that element, it’s hard to envision this as anything other than a crucial stretch for the Chicago Cubs. From July onward, the Cubs will only have 22 games remaining against division foes, with the next stretch accounting for almost half. If the team is serious about a division title, this is probably the stretch in which they need to prove it. View full article

The Chicago Cubs lost a game 9-2 on Wednesday. It was another in a long line of frustrating May losses, to say nothing of the fact that it was probably closer than that score might indicate. What is notable, however, is the fact that Atlanta starter Max Fried was perfect through five innings. It was just the latest instance of what seems to be a growing trend for these Cubs in 2024. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports The “trend” in question is the team’s recent habit of remaining entirely dormant offensively early in games. It’s led to three no-hit bids on the part of the opposing starter in the last few weeks. Before Fried, it was the Mets’ Luis Severino who flirted with one at the end of April. Paul Skenes didn’t allow a hit through six innings of his own, just last Friday. Given the Cubs’ offensive woes over the last six weeks, it almost seems more a matter of when than if they’ll allow a starter to finish the job. At the same time, I’m not attuned enough to the majority of major-league offenses (outside of my own sphere) to know if the Cubs are any kind of exception. They’re squarely in the middle of the league in plate appearances with runners on, so the general picture doesn’t indicate they’re doing anything alarming. Nonetheless, it is worth at least taking stock of those three particular outings to compare them to the Cubs’ own bigger picture. On Apr. 29, Severino threw eight innings against the Cubs. He allowed just one hit – a flare from Dansby Swanson – which turned into an earned run. He struck out five and surrendered a pair of walks. The Cubs made contact at a 75-percent clip when swinging against him. Even if they hacked at almost 35 percent of pitches outside the strike zone (51.5 percent of all offerings). The Cubs were able to elevate, with as many fly balls as grounders in the game. The issue was the quality of contact. Half the balls they put in play were categorized as Soft contact, and they didn't have any Barrels against the formidable former Yankee. Severino was fastball-heavy, getting lots of ground balls with his sinker. His average four-seam fastball sat at 96.2 MPH. The low slider earned him whiffs, at almost a 70-percent rate. The Cubs went on to win that game, but Severino was surgical for much of the evening. He induced hyper-aggressiveness, with ground balls and whiffs born of the Cubs not working to get their pitch. Paul Skenes represents a different case entirely. He threw six innings, struck out 11 against only one walk, and never did give up a hit. The Cubs swung at 54 percent of his pitches, including 42 percent outside the strike zone, and put the ball on the ground 85.7 percent of the time. Against that velocity, there wasn’t any soft contact to speak of, but also only one hard-hit ball. When you’re driving the ball into the infield grass, it doesn’t necessarily matter, anyway. Skenes primarily deployed his four-seamer and his “splinker” there. The Cubs swung at roughly 65 percent of the former and whiffed almost 45 percent of the time. The four-seamer averaged 99.3 MPH. It was hilarious, though not actually funny. The Cubs lost that one 9-3. In that case, it was more power than the Cubs’ lineup could handle at that juncture, especially considering the presence of both Nick Madrigal and Miles Mastrobuoni in the lineup on that particular day. That brings us to Wednesday night against Atlanta and Max Fried, who carried his no-hitter into the sixth. Fried was four-seam- and curveball-heavy, with the slider and sinker working their way in there, too. The 57.1 GB%, as such, comes as no surprise. The Cubs hacked at virtually half the pitches Fried threw and swung at 38 percent of pitches outside the strike zone. Contact was scarce, with a whiff rate of 35 percent. So if we take all three close calls, this is what we’re left with: 51.8 Swing%, 38.2 O-Swing%, and 66.8 Contact%. Their contact trends include a 22.2 HardHit% & a 61.6 GB%. It’s genuinely uninspiring. But is it out of character? The Cubs’ Swing% is ninth in the league, at 47.9. They’re more patient on pitches outside the zone, at 27.1%, but also feature one of the 10 lowest contact rates in the league (75.4%). They’re 23rd in the league in Hard Hit% (37.0). The Cubs are also running one of the higher strikeout rates in the league, with a 23.2% clip that ranks 11th-highest. Their 26.7% whiff rate is 10th-highest. Perhaps the positive is that they’re generally better at elevating than we saw in two of these three instances, with a 41.8 GB% that aligns with their output against Severino. We aren’t really going to glean anything from three starts. We’d have to dig far deeper than even the Cubs hitters are digging themselves right now, examining velocity against breaking pitches, etc. The team has run into a plethora of upper-tier arms lately: Skenes twice, Jared Jones twice, Dylan Cease, Chris Sale, etc. That’s not going to help run production on a nightly basis or contribute positively to the peripherals. At the same time, while these starts may not indicate that a full, nine-inning no-hitter (or worse) is on the horizon, it at least does underscore some issues with this offense since the beginning of the year. The team's discipline has waned, and virtually every positive thing they were doing has wilted along with it. Health is a factor, sure. But one certainly starts to wonder, given the frequency at which the Cubs appear to be flirting with the negative end of history, how much of that early discipline was real versus a much more troubling offensive identity. View full article

The Cubs' newest starting pitcher has been a scintillating success so far in MLB. But what's made him so special isn't even the value he's produced; it's the magic within him to stir fans' blood. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports Shōta Imanaga is reviving me. As a non-impartial observer, it’s extremely easy to become jaded about the Chicago Cubs. Juxtaposed against their fellow big-market teams, the Cubs' lackluster results and passive roster construction make it a short trip to Cynical City. And yet, the rookie pitcher is rapidly helping to soothe such a mindset. The quantifiable stuff is obvious. He’s been objectively great across his first nine starts. A 0.84 ERA, a 27.8 K% against a mere 4.3 BB%, and an 8-1 record for the team are causes for celebration. He has not only surpassed expectations, but cemented himself as one of the game’s elite starting pitchers. To have no qualms about throwing around the ‘E’ word this early in his career says it all about his statistical performance. But the magic of Imanaga lies in the unquantifiable things around the actual performance--the things you don’t necessarily put down on the stat sheet, but you can see. You can feel them, even as someone well outside of the actual organization. It's his pitching philosophy manifesting as pitch mix from a conceptual standpoint. It's the emotion he demonstrates on the mound. It's his love of Dunkin' lattes. All of these work together to render Imanaga one of the more exciting players we’ve seen on the North Side, after the doldrums of the last handful of seasons. In a world of absolute gas from the pitcher’s mound, with pitchers physically destroying themselves in pursuit of more velocity, it’s legitimately refreshing to watch something like Imanaga’s approach. The level of confidence and intention there. Using a lower-90s fastball in setting up the devastating splitter. Of course, that should hardly be a surprise from someone nicknamed the “Throwing Philosopher.” The leaving of his self-authored “pitching bible” on the desk of Jed Hoyer was an early entrant into the Imanaga lore. There are pitchers who approach with means beyond velocity, but the paradoxically excitable and cerebral nature of Imanaga makes him a remarkable arm to watch each time out. The Cubs are, generally, a team short on big, public-facing personalities. Imanaga fills that gap in two ways. The first is with his genuine display of emotion on the field. We saw it against Pittsburgh. We saw it against San Diego. With the struggles (and now the absence) of Adbert Alzolay, we haven’t gotten quite the injection of emotion from Cubs pitchers in big moments. It makes sense, given the subtle personalities involved. But Shōta’s willingness to display such emotion stirs joy. The other is in his ability to drop a banger quote at any possible moment. Whether it’s quoting Steve Goodman at the introductory presser, citing Spider-Man as a means of establishing landmarks in New York, using the Wrigley Field crowd as his alarm, or acknowledging the sure frustration out of the Dunkin Donuts baristas, he’s allowing actual personality to shine through. We don’t get that much from these Cubs. Sure, Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ talk a lot on multiple platforms. But you’re not really getting anything more than stoic, generic insight. Because of his quotable nature, we’ve even heard a few that have gotten buried in the depths of the internet. He noted reaching a flow state during starts, speaking to his confidence. He’s mentioned not feeling like an established arm until he’s faced everyone. These are good things; they bespeak an awareness and the overall intellectual element that Shōta brings to the mix. And as someone with my tastes, this is what I’m here for. I want fun. I want to think. The incredible thing about Shota Imanaga is that he allows me to do both--even encourages me to. The Cubs haven’t had an arm so unique in recent memory. Sure, they’ve had good pitchers. But what Imanaga brings is beyond good. He has confidence and swagger, but the kind that you can tell is born of intensity, rather than ego. He’s thinking constantly, though not in any cumbersome manner. It’s one that seeks to benefit his persona and his skill set. We should all strive to live in such a headspace. It boils down to what Shōta said in his introductory press conference, in which he invoked Steve Goodman. Because when he’s on the mound, we certainly relax a bit, thinking that the Cubs are, indeed, going to win today. View full article