RandallPnkFloyd

We're at the end of May, and the Chicago Cubs remain atop the National League Central. Within the broader National League Context, too, they look like a legitimate contender when all three phases are working together. And while the pitching phase remains imperfect and unhealthy, there are signs of a framework coming together for the longer term of 2025. Notably, the bullpen in the season's second month was much improved from what we saw in the opening stretch of March & April. By ERA, it was a top-three group in all of baseball (2.67). In particular, Ryan Brasier, Caleb Thielbar, Chris Flexen, and Brad Keller were able to pitch through varying stages of the month without allowing a single run (though, of course, Brasier specifically did not return from injury until near the end of May). While some roles still need to be ironed out, there's a reliable group emerging, with the below names carrying the team through the month within those roles. #3: Matthew Boyd May Stats: 28.0 IP, 3.54 ERA, 3.04 FIP, 30.4% K-rate, 1.8% BB-rate, 1.04 WHIP Perhaps the best value signing of the offseason, Boyd finds himself among the top three on this list for the second consecutive month. Within a starting staff marred by injury (Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele), home run issues (Jameson Taillon), or overall inconsistency (Ben Brown), Boyd has been a steadying force for the rotation. What's been even more impressive is the gap between his strikeout and walk rates. While not quite at a career-best rate, Boyd's strikeout rate for the year (24.9 percent) is above his career average, with eight strikeouts in three separate outings within his last four. In those starts, he's punched out a combined 27 hitters against just a pair of walks. It isn't always a flawless outing, but the value of such stability cannot be overstated. #2: Drew Pomeranz May Stats: 10.1 IP, 0.00 ERA, 2.00 FIP, 32.5% K-rate, 5.2% BB-rate, 0.58 WHIP While even I have openly questioned how long Pomeranz can sustain his success while essentially throwing just one pitch, the veteran reliever just continues to simply not allow runs. He's barely allowing baserunners while finding success via efficiency. His 74.5 first strike percentage is a career high (by 14 percent), and he's getting called strikes a shade over 20 percent of the time. So, while he's not garnering massive whiffs (just 9.7 percent), he's freezing hitters into not swinging with his fastball movement. An encouraging sign is that the knuckle curve is starting to manifest a little bit more. He's thrown it at least 20 percent of the time in half of his last eight appearances. For a pitcher already filling up the strike zone with a hard, moving four-seam fastball, making that pitch back into a regular feature could be devastating for opposing hitters. For now, we'll take a month without a run allowed, especially when the last one (on May 31st) came as an opener in a shutout victory. #1 (May Cy Young) Daniel Palencia May Stats: 12.0 IP, 1.50 ERA, 1.35 FIP, 33.3% K-rate, 6.6% BB-rate, 0.75 WHIP Don't look now, but it appears that the Chicago Cubs may have found their closer. What started as Ryan Pressly's job was passed on to Porter Hodge prior to the latter's oblique injury. When Hodge hit the Injured List, Craig Counsell gave his most electric arm a crack at the ninth inning. Despite a blip in Miami during the month, Palencia has been excellent, recording five saves during the month. His 33.3 percent strikeout rate led the team's staff in May while he's gotten the ball on the ground almost half the time (48.0 percent). His 99.2 MPH average fastball velocity sits in the 98th percentile, as does his 2.1 percent barrel rate. It's just an extraordinarily enticing blend of outcomes for a guy that has ran with the opportunity to close games. The Cubs have other relievers that have been effective, but you want a certain degree of violence in the ninth. Palencia has got it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images Stop me if you've heard this one before: Michael Busch comes out of the gate hot. He slugs .500 in March and April, providing consistent power in a potent Chicago Cubs offense. The calendar flips over to May, the power disappears, the strikeout rate rises, and we're pondering whether what we saw in the season's first month was even real. While such a scenario may speak more to what we saw in 2024, it's hard to ignore the parallels between Busch's rookie campaign last season and what we've seen thus far in 2025. It's an imperfect comparison. Maybe even a dramatic one. But it's hard to ignore some of the similarities between his output in the early going of each campaign. The 2024 March/April iteration of Michael Busch looked like a long-term solution at first base. He hit .266, reached base at a .333 clip, and posted an isolated power figure of .234. His wRC+ checked in at 130. He also struck out at a rate north of 30 percent (more on that in a moment). When May rolled around, he looked like hardly the same hitter. The average fell to just .208 (even with a .342 BABIP). The ISO dropped nearly 70 points to .167. His wRC+ barely scratched above the "average" threshold, at 104. His K% managed to sit five points higher, at 37.2 percent. Busch would, of course, go on to stabilize in certain respects. Even if the power wavered throughout the year, he was able to cut the strikeout rate in each month as the season progressed, while improving his quality of contact. There was a maturity there that assured him of the first base position ahead of 2025. That position remains stable, but the same April-to-May trend remains present. In March and April of this year, Busch went for a .276 average. He ISO'd .245 and posted a 152 wRC+. The strikeout rate remained high, in a relative sense, but came down massively from last year's start (24.8 percent). But since the calendar read "May 1," we're witnessing a lot of the same things. Busch is hitting just .221 this month. His ISO has cratered in comparison with the opening month, at .147. His wRC+, as of this writing, is at 103. The biggest change is in the strikeout rate. It's still up from last month, but not what it was in 2024 (25.3 percent). Like last year, he's managed to increase the walk rate in the midst of struggles elsewhere. Busch has stabilized his game in comparison to last year, but the power dip in consecutive years is a rather jarring feature of his game. Especially because, at first blush, there isn't much in the way of indicators. He's experiencing a higher quality of contact (around 37 percent Hard%), has largely cut or remained steady in his whiff rates, and has virtually an identical groundball rate in May (37.5) that he did in March & April (35.5). Contact is quite similar, too. It actually defies logic. Busch has a higher average exit velocity in May. A steeper launch angle. A higher xSLG. He's finding the barrel with more frequency, too. Even with a slight increase on the chase-and-miss front, there is nothing that indicates Busch should be struggling to find power to this extent, let alone feature an ISO of just .107 in the last two weeks. So what gives? It might be as simple as where in the zone Busch is putting his bat. The following is Busch's zone profile in March & April: Nothing surprising here, especially given the power output. Swings in the upper two-thirds of the zone, as well as on the inner portion of the plate. When you look at Busch's swing against the above visual, it makes sense. And then you get to May: Some similar trends exist through the middle of the zone vertically. But there's more emphasis on the lower portions of the zone on the horizontal side. It may not be intentional, but you're talking about a guy with 19th percentile bat speed. As good as everything else looks, generating enough lift to create impact from where in the zone Busch is swinging more frequently this month is going to be a difficult task. For Busch, it looks like one he can't overcome at present. Michael Busch is very much the hitter we expected from a growth standpoint. The strikeouts are down, the contact is up, and the approach has remained steady even through a big ol' power dip. It appears he just needs to work on those pitches in the upper portion of the zone in order to get it back. View full article

Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images The names atop the FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement leaderboard as of this writing read as such: Aaron Judge: 4.6 Pete Crow-Armstrong: 3.1 The gap between the two notwithstanding, the Chicago Cubs' centerfielder has been the second-most valuable player in the majors thus far. We knew his baserunning and defensive prowess would carry him to a respectable figure there, regardless of his offensive contributions. To some extent, it has; his 3.2 BsR baserunning metric ranks sixth in the sport, and his Fielding Run Value figure of 9 paces the league. What really stands out through nearly two months of the year, though, is the power he's generated at the plate. Crow-Armstrong has already slugged 14 home runs in 225 plate appearances (a top-10 total), and boasts a gaudy .290 isolated power (ISO, the difference between slugging and batting average). So not only do you have a player with 97th-percentile sprint speed, but you have one who's putting the ball over the fence almost as often as anyone in baseball. An interesting thing to think about in this is whether we should have expected it. Since being drafted in 2020, the book on Crow-Armstrong is exactly what you'd imagine it'd be. Scouting reports may have indicated some power, but speed and defense were always expected to be the foundational components of his game. Was there anything sitting in the draft scouting or in his minor-league output that indicated such power was on the horizon? The following is a collection of scouting reports before or upon Crow-Armstrong's selection 19th overall by the New York Mets in 2020. I've included only a selection in which his power potential is noted. MLB Pipeline: FanGraphs: Baseball America: Baseball Prospectus: The fascinating part of these is that there wasn't a consensus on this aspect of his game. If you go through the remainder of those reports, you get the expected bits about the other tools. When it came to his pop, though, predictions varied widely in both confidence and direction. Crow-Armstrong's minor league output gave us little reason to think that power like this was in the cards early in his career. He hit 16 homers across two levels in 2022, and 20 between two in 2023. But while there was a slight increase between the two seasons, he hit only 15 between Triple-A and the major-league level last year. Given the variance in the initial scouting and the relatively low home run totals while scaling the ladder, it's impossible to say that we expected what he's done to this point. A fun aspect about Crow-Armstrong is that he can derive "power" from his speed, stretching singles to doubles and doubles to triples. But he's also flashed a Barrel rate around 14%, driving the ball to a degree that we didn't expect. Given the bat speed, which is up about 1.2 MPH from last year, he should continue to find success in putting the ball over the fence while driving up the rate-based power figures (ISO, SLG) courtesy of his speed. The other tools were already helping him to compensate for the hyperaggressiveness of his approach. But if you're going to continue to get star-level power output from him, this is a whole new ballgame. View full article

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images If you can count on Pete Crow-Armstrong to do one thing, it's this: he's going to swing. It was the prevailing concern coming into his first full season at the major-league level. Could he tamp down the aggressiveness, in order to realize his offensive upside? And if he couldn't, how long could he compensate with the other areas of his game before it started to become problematic? Those concerns were amplified when it was something he continued to demonstrate early on. Even now, in what is increasingly looking like a genuine breakout campaign, the trend continues. Only Boston's Ceddanne Rafaela has a higher swing rate than Crow-Armstrong's 61.3%. It's not like he's zeroed in on the strike zone, either. In fact, his 43.8% chase rate is up from last year's mark. The overall swing and whiff rates remain virtually identical to last year. So, even if you were hoping for modest growth in the approach, the numbers aren't indicating that it's on its way to fruition. But what if it also is? Sure, Crow-Armstrong is still hacking in a way you'd prefer to see toned down at least a marginal amount. There's something to be said for contact, however, and he's finding ways to get the bat on the baseball. The contact rate is up about one percentage point, overall, but is especially up inside the zone; he's gone from a 73.2% zone contact rate in 2024 to an 81.6% rate in 2025. That's an encouraging concept on its own, but is especially so given that he's become slightly more aggressive depending on the situation. When he's behind in the count, Crow-Armstrong is more aware that soft stuff is coming—and doing a better job of laying lumber on it. When a pitcher is ahead, the chance of a breaking or offspeed pitch goes up. Against an aggressive swinger like Crow-Armstrong, it represents a tremendous advantage. But it looks, so far, like he's keen on taking that advantage away. The whiff against fastballs has remained constant, but he's managed to cut each of the breaking & offspeed whiff rates by about 13 percentage points. That's massive. It's not flawless, of course. The above is indicative of overall whiff, but he's also dropped the chase and whiff rate on those two pitch types. So far, however, he's just switched what he's sitting on. In pitcher's counts, he's looking for the soft stuff and trying to catch up to the fastball. That's led to more chase above the zone and less contact against the heat. But objective no. 1 in working your way from behind in a count is getting the offspeed and breaking pitches out of the way. Fight them off, and live to see another pitch. It's fairly conventional baseball wisdom, but Crow-Armstrong has embraced and weaponized it as he's worked to build up his contact ability in the face of still-questionable plate discipline. It's working, and serves as yet another thing that makes this man one of the most dangerous hitters on the planet when he's going well. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Ben Brown will take the ball for the Chicago Cubs on Monday night in Miami for his ninth start of the year. He's up to 16 starts, 24 total apppearances, and 97 innings in the majors, going back to last year, but it doesn't feel like we're all that close to feeling certain about a long-term role on Craig Counsell's pitching staff. Could he be a rotation fixture? Maybe. An effective multi-inning reliever? Perhaps. A lockdown guy in the late innings? Sure. At present, Brown's role is locked in not by performance, but by circumstances beyond his control. A spring injury to Javier Assad pushed him into the starting five. Further injuries to Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga ensured he'd be there for the foreseeable future. The performance to date, though, has been something of a mixed bag. Brown's ERA currently sits at 4.75. His FIP (3.32) indicates he should be at least a little better in the broad scheme of run prevention (though his xERA does still sit at 4.18). He's inducing more ground balls (43.0%, but from roughly 37% last year), but is also in just the 34th percentile in Hard-Hit% (43.4). His strikeout rate is the selling point: a sturdy 26.2%. Somewhat surprising is the fact that Brown is more along the average line in walk rate; his 8.4% walk rate is not egregious. I say that's surprising, because Brown's starts are heavily dictated by what type of command he demonstrates that day. On occasion, he's looked untenable as a starter, but he does appear to be on his way to stabilizing there lately, thanks to one key element: strike one. That seems like an obvious concept. Yes, if you did not know, a pitcher's success is heavily reliant on what type of command said pitcher is able to demonstrate. But with Brown, the line seems a little bit finer than with a more seasoned starting pitcher. Until his last three starts, Brown was unable to work his way deep enough into games. He threw four innings in his second start (vs. San Diego), four innings in his fourth start (vs. Arizona), and 3 2/3 innings in his fifth start (vs. Philadelphia). He ran up pitch counts of 79, 100, and 80, respectively, across that trio of outings. That's 259 pitches in exchange for just 35 outs, averaging roughly 23 pitches per frame. When you're working with a bullpen that hasn't been terribly reliable through the first two-ish months of the year, efficiency is desired above almost everything else. From a command standpoint, those were his three worst outings of the year—again, somewhat obvious when you look at the raw pitch counts. But Brown hit the zone for strike one only 54.4 percent of the time against San Diego and 66.7 percent of the time against Philadelphia. His first start against the Athletics notwithstanding, those are his two worst first-strike rates of the year. If you factor in overall Zone% (while again excluding the A's start), those three account for his worst starts of the year in terms of zone efficiency. He went 54.4%, 52.0%, and 50.0% across those three outings. Obviously, you don't want to fill the strike zone all the time, but you need to at least entice hitters to swing on occasion. But something has happened in each of Brown's last three starts (Milwaukee, San Francisco, Miami) that should increase confidence in his longer-term viability as a starter. He's been more efficient. He's maintained a first-strike rate of at least 71%, while catching the zone at 59.5%, 58.3%, and 66.7% rates, respectively. With the exception of a start against the Dodgers back on April 12, those are his three highest rates in both respects. Focusing on the concept of strike one specifically, an interesting thing happens when he's working with a higher rate: With the exception of that wonky start against Philadelphia, the higher the first strike rate, the lower the ERA in a given start. The above graph would look much smoother had it not been for the April 26 outing. Nonetheless, it does give us a nice little visual as to what Brown can accomplish when he's working with efficiency to open up counts. Not that any of this rings as surprising, but it does matter more to Brown than to others. He faces two major limitations, beyond or alongside whatever lack of command shows up on a given day: His fastball shape is a drag on the utility of his plus velocity. He's induced whiffs on fewer than 19% of swings against the heater in each of his big-league seasons, and when batters do put that pitch in play, it's often in the air, with some authority. Ball one isn't just a head start on a walk. He can't afford to work from behind, because when hitters can sit on the fastball, they do major damage. Relatedly, Brown has just two pitches in his arsenal. That both makes it easier for hitters to lock in on the fastball when they have count leverage, and risks leaving Brown more exposed than most pitchers the second and third time through the order if he works deep counts. He needs to get quick outs. The way to get quick outs is to throw strikes and take control of the at-bat. There isn't quite enough data yet to say that Brown should be opening up with a specific pitch type. It is worth noting, though, that three of his most efficient starts have come in three of his four starts where he opened up with the four-seam the most. Regardless of type, it's ultimately about strike one. If Brown's got that, he's got everything. View full article

Image courtesy of Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images On the last day of April, there was one hitter in Major League Baseball that featured a better wRC+ than Chicago Cubs catcher Carson Kelly. That hitter was Aaron Judge. Yes, as the calendar prepared to flip over to May, the only hitter demonstrating a more impressive offensive performance is the guy known for being perhaps the best pure hitter on the entire planet. We had no reason to think what was happening was sustainable. Nonetheless, Kelly maintained a 257 wRC+ through nearly 70 plate appearances. His 22.4 percent walk rate led the league. Each of his average (.360), on-base percentage (.507), and isolated slugging (.480) fell somewhere in the top five among hitters with at least 50 PA. His Hard-Hit% sat sixth, at 60.6. There were plenty of encouraging things happening underneath the surface, too. Kelly's chase rate over that stretch was just 12.8 percent. Even Kyle Tucker, who was as choose-y as anyone in the Cubs lineup, was expanding the zone at a 22.8 percent clip. Kelly's whiff rate was just 7.0 percent, while his contact rate sat at nearly 84 percent. It all had Kelly looking like not only the ideal signing for a Cubs team looking for a bit of an offensive bump from behind the plate, but one of the best signings in recent Major League history. Of course, the regression monster comes for everyone eventually, especially when you're talking about a veteran catcher with only a modest history of offensive success. Now halfway through May, the monster has consumed him almost entirely. While we're obviously looking at a smaller sample only halfway through the month, Kelly's output nevertheless has dwindled quite gravely. Going into Friday's game against the White Sox, he's hitting only .182 this month; his OBP has plummeted to .289. Part of that is due to the reversal of his strikeout & walk rates. The former has doubled to 18.4 percent while the latter checks in nine points below his mark through April 30th (13.2 percent). The power has been nonexistent compared to what he turned in last month, with just a .121 ISO through two weeks of May. His wRC+ this month is at just 74. So not only has he not been the second-best hitter in baseball, he's now 26-percent worse than league average. [Editor's Note: Kelly did record two hits, including a double, and a walk in five plate appearances in the series-opener on Friday. Nevertheless, his stats remain in precipitous decline from his otherworldly start.] Worse yet is that at least some of these struggles are due to Kelly's own lapse in the approach. His chase rate has more than doubled (26.1 percent) despite almost no movement in his overall Swing%, which means that he's exchanged a disciplined, in-zone approach for a useless expansion of the zone. He's making contact at a rate six percent lower than he did last month, and even that's with only a two percent dip in the rate at which opposing pitchers come into the strike zone. Without the level of discipline that Kelly was able to showcase in April, the most telling trend in all of this emerges: As it would turn out, it's harder to generate quality contact when you're not concentrating your swings within the strike zone. Or at least it is when you're a hitter without elite upside that has a delicate balance to maintain in order to find offensive success. Instead, you make softer contact. Softer contact means less batted ball luck and less elevation. Not that his April BABIP was tremendously high (.289), but it's at .200 in May. His GB%, on the other hand, has spiked from 40.0 percent in April to over 60 percent halfway through May. It's not a difficult mystery to solve. Kelly's inability to drive the ball is derived largely from a ballooning of the zone in which he's willing to swing. It's unfortunate reality for Carson Kelly that his (expected) regression has been wrought almost entirely by his own hand. Pitchers haven't altered their approach much, either in terms of usage or zone. But Kelly's loss of discipline in the approach bears the weight of such regression. What's even worse is the timing of the offensive step back. Without Ian Happ in the lineup, Craig Counsell had shifted to a willingness to deploy both Kelly & Miguel Amaya in the lineup, with Kelly getting two of his last three starts as the team's designated hitter. Given the struggles, though, it doesn't appear to be a role he's long for, ynless the approach finds some refinement and a return to form in a most expedient fashion. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images If it looks like the Chicago Cubs are struggling to score runs, your eyes are not deceiving you. After hanging 5.9 runs per game in March and April, they're down to 4.9 in May. After reaching base at the league's second-highest clip (.341) during the season's first month-plus, they're sitting 22nd thus far in May (.295). They were the league's third-best team in March and April by wRC+ (124). In May, they're ranked 15th (100). Now, it's not as if the Cubs suddenly became a merely average offense just because the calendar flipped, and there's a sizeable gap in the sample between 31 games of March and April and the dozen they've played in May. There's clearly a struggle happening right now, though, given that they've dropped a run per game and are scraping across any run production they can find of late. Central to the team's offensive production is Kyle Tucker, which likely means that central to the team's current "struggle" is... Kyle Tucker. After blazing out of the gate and looking like an early candidate for National League MVP, Tucker has sort of fallen off in May. The only question is whether this is cause for concern or if Tucker is simply confronting the ebb and flow of baseball. Tucker's first five weeks were stellar. He turned in a 158 wRC+, reached base at a .386 clip, and ISO'd .270. He was lifting the ball in the air almost 75 percent of the time (between flyballs and line drives), which worked in tandem with a 43.8 Hard-Hit%. He walked (15.2%) more than he struck out (12.4%). Even being pinned down slightly by a .276 BABIP, he was able to be the driver of the team's elite run production in the season's first month. May hasn't been as kind to Tucker. He's hitting a mere .217. His groundball rate has spiked to 42.5%, after lingering around 25 percent in the opening month. And while we recently discussed the contributions he was still able to make in the midst of such struggles, it does feel like those have become fewer, given the Cubs' need to scratch runs across rather than operate in a smoother, easier offensive fashion in matters of scoring runs. So should we start to worry about the state of Tucker's offensive game? Not necessarily, long-term, given his status among the game's top hitters. But is there something plaguing him at present that we should worry about? The short (and perhaps obvious, given the aforementioned status) answer is no. Sure, there are a couple of figures that have dropped (or, in the case of groundballs, risen) dramatically. But his wRC+ is holding steady at 120 for the month (148 for the year). He's hitting the ball hard with more regularity this month (45.0 Hard-Hit%) and has continued the trend of walking more than he's striking out. He isn't approaching the zone any differently, and there isn't any discernible difference in the types of pitches at which he's swinging. To say nothing of the fact that his percentile distribution still looks like this: Instead, it looks like what's unfolding for Tucker is a matter of bad luck, above all. His BABIP this month has plummeted to .189. That's not a unique situation in the larger context of the team, given that the Cubs' .234 collective BABIP ranks 29th this month. If there was a telling trend within his approach or some sort of change in his ability to generate quality contact, maybe we'd be having a different discussion. As it is, the struggles of Tucker appear to be entirely outcome-based. The unfortunate reality is that it's part of the game. You're going to have runs like this where things just aren't falling. Elite as Kyle Tucker may be, he isn't immune to such streaks. As long as the underlying data suggests he's working in the same fashion, it's just a waiting game until things start to fall for him. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images For about two full seasons, Drew Pomeranz was a steady-as-they-come major-league starter. Then came the struggles that resulted in a bullpen transition, where he spent another two years as one of the more dominant relief arms the game had to offer. Then came the injuries; then more injuries. Four years of injuries and subsequent minor-league deals later, Pomeranz is emerging as an important component of the 2025 Chicago Cubs. The sustainability of that importance, however, is a matter of some debate. Through eight appearances (7 2/3 innings), Pomeranz has yet to allow a run. His command has been excellent, with a 7.1% walk rate that is the lowest since he entered the league in 2011. Strikeouts are down from his previous work as a reliever, but still holding above his overall career average (28.6%). It's the underlying stuff, though, that is much more fascinating. In terms of sustainability, the top things you look for are generally contact rate, contact quality, batting average on balls in play, and strand rate. Even with those tools, though, it's hard to tell what's what when you're looking at a pitcher who has yet to allow a run as he nears double-digit appearances. Opposing hitters are swinging at pitches from Pomeranz exactly half the time. They're making contact at a 76.9% rate and posting a reasonable 37.5% hard-hit rate. They've managed a BABIP of just .150, with Pomeranz (obviously) sitting at a 100% strand rate. Given a somewhat high volume of contact juxtaposed with brutal batted-ball luck on the part of the opposition, one imagines regression is on the way. But that's not necessarily the source of any apprehension. Pomeranz has induced an expected batting average of just .181, and an expected ERA of 3.17. By being able to manage the quality of contact and generate a lot of flyballs, he can survive a profile slightly light on swing-and-miss. Instead, the bigger concern lies within the usage: When Pomeranz made the transition to the bullpen, he became a two-pitch guy. That's not at all an uncommon scenario for relievers. But the 70/30 split works better if a pitcher works at a higher velocity level than Pomeranz does. While Pomeranz has been able to generate swings on the knuckle-curve, he's not getting the results you'd hope from that pitch. It got lots of whiffs during his stint in the minors, but in the big leagues, he's yet to get even one swing and miss on it. He's also throwing it outside the strike zone almost 74 percent of the time in the majors. Obviously, with a pitch like that, part of the objective is to not hit the zone. But you need to mix it in there at least on occasion, to garner swings to get the whiff side activated. Again, that was happening in the minors, but it hasn't translated to the bigs so far. His movement profile is really illustrative: There's too little consistency in his curveball movement. That's why he's leaned harder on the heat and missed no bats with the hook since coming to the majors with the Cubs. It's that idea, alone, that has me a little bit apprehensive about how long this success can last. He, of course, has a track record of success—especially on the relief side. The movement from his fastball will help him remain effective. Perhaps he's able to regain some confidence in the breaking pitch. That would certainly serve him in factoring into not only this bullpen, but high-leverage situations. Until then, it's a middle-relief game. View full article

Image courtesy of © Gregory Fisher-Imagn Images The nature of baseball is such that discerning anything after three games is virtually impossible. Pete Crow-Armstrong might be giving us an exception. Over the winter, I floated the idea of the Chicago Cubs center fielder in the leadoff spot. I was hardly the only one. The justification was a combination of Crow-Armstrong's traditional skill set for the spot (read: he's fast), combined with the fact that Ian Happ's contract only runs through 2026. Thus, while it wasn't necessarily going to be in the cards for 2025, it's not unreasonable to foresee the team giving him some run there should Happ find himself on another roster in the not-too-distant future. An oblique injury to Happ is giving us our first look at just that scenario. Unfortunately, given Crow-Armstrong's penchant for swinging wildly, it's largely going about as expected. The trio of games in which he's hit out of the top spot has featured 13 plate appearances. Within that, he's recorded two hits (one home run) against six strikeouts. His slash reads .167/.231/.417, with a wRC+ of 80. His Swing% checks in at 60.3, his contact rate is 61.1%, and his whiff rate is 23.8%. Essentially, we're seeing the warts in his game become magnified when transitioning to a role in which on-base percentage becomes paramount. Not working in his favor is that Happ himself has evolved into the ideal leadoff hitter for this game. Despite the lowest power output of his career (.113 ISO), his .364 OBP is the highest of his career. The on-base outcomes, despite both modest power and speed, have allowed the larger bats down the lineup to generate runs with the fixture on the bases that Happ has become. With Crow-Armstrong, you're not getting that. While the approach has been better, per the eye test alone, he's still been prone to the same bouts of chase that we've seen in the past. It's why his overall swing and contact rates haven't changed that much. There's still a streakiness inherent in his game that makes him ill-suited for the role at present. The Cubs offense works because they're getting 'em on at the top and knocking 'em in from the middle. Crow-Armstrong's erratic approach strips you of that. It's not an unfounded decision by Craig Counsell—in theory, at least. Get one of your top hitters this year an extra appearance or two, while simultaneously hoping to catch a little lightning with the speed. It was also, in all likelihood, temporary by design. But in the wake of Happ's injury resulting in a stint on the injured list, the pivot to someone like Nico Hoerner (and his contact-oriented approach) might just be better. Crow-Armstrong simply isn't ready for this yet. View full article

Image courtesy of David Durochik/Diamond Images via Getty Images Under Jed Hoyer, the Chicago Cubs have been a mixed bag in matters of the draft. There have been some successes on both sides of the ball, mostly in the form of guys we think will be impactful in short order (Matt Shaw, Jordan Wicks, Luke Little, James Triantos, Brandon Birdsell). There have been some likely failures, too, where the hope doesn't ring through as strong (Burl Carraway, Ed Howard). Some draftees have been traded away. Others — including some those mentioned on either end of the above spectrum — have seen injuries stall their development. There have been some changes in the front office throughout his tenure, but the reality is that the draft hasn't been a source of talent acquisition for the big league level under Hoyer. The team's best work with young names in his time at the helm has come in the form of prospect acquisition via trade (Pete Crow-Armstrong, Ben Brown). Beyond Porter Hodge, we just haven't seen the wire-to-wire type of development that a team aiming for organizational stability would hope to demonstrate. Cade Horton can change that. And not just on the development side. With the confirmed arrival of the team's top pitching prospect this weekend, the current regime has an opportunity for the narrative to flip in their favor. Not only would Horton represent one of the very few that this front office has selected to reach that level, but he possesses the type of upside that even those they've acquired and developed (Brown, Hayden Wesneski, etc.) do not. You're talking about frontline starter potential. An upper-90s fastball combined with a wipeout slider combined with decent-enough tertiary offerings. There's likely something of a workload still to be built up, but nothing in his profile is like what the Cubs have featured in recent years. To have a pitcher of this caliber go start-to-finish within the system would be a monumental success for Hoyer & Co., especially when you factor in 2024's health setbacks. To say nothing of what it would mean in the present for the big league roster. They were already down Justin Steele. Now they're down Shota Imanaga. Ben Brown remains an iffy proposition depending on his command in a given start. The most stability you're getting out of the rotation right now comes from Matthew Boyd, who is outpitching a number of his peripherals. Horton's arrival (and, ideally, his success) would be a morale boost to the pitching staff. Imanaga's IL placement and the 14-5 loss to San Francisco still linger. They're not healthy. The bullpen — while better than it was at the start of the season — remains at least somewhat unstable. Getting Horton out there against major league hitting with a legitimate chance at sticking around long-term is massive. For Jed Hoyer, and the perception of the front office at large, Horton's debut could signal the health of this organization in the immediate future. No pressure, though. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images In the wake of the Chicago Cubs' failed pursuit of Alex Bregman, the signing of Justin Turner to a one-year deal was largely viewed as a positive. Despite some declining elements of his game, a veteran hitter committed to the craft looked to be a quality addition to a group in need of some supplementation off the bench. "Despite" is doing a lot of work in the previous sentence, however. And while there are certainly some unquantifiable components that he brings to what has been one of the league's most successful offenses, those initial concerns we had around Turner are manifesting at their maximum—which, obviously, isn't a good thing. Turner's slash on the year includes a mere .170 batting average. He's reaching base at just a .270 clip, even with a reasonable 11.1% walk rate. It's not like the skill set is entirely diminished within that. Particularly from a cerebral standpoint. Turner's approach remains ever-solid, with chase and contact rates that are fairly in line with what he's turned in over the past handful of seasons. From a pure discipline standpoint, he's been exactly as advertised. But one of the main caveats with signing Turner was that you weren't getting the actual hitter that he'd been in years past. That's not a shocking statement, given that you're talking about a 40-year-old hitter. Bat speed falls off a cliff in one's late 30s. There are ways to work around that. In Turner's case, though, it's become a real issue. While a high volume of impact wasn't necessarily expected, the Cubs are getting no impact out of their veteran infielder. The eye test alone could tell you that, but the numbers do, too: Nor is it any kind of mystery. Turner's bat speed is in its third (well, probably more than that, but we only have data for three) consecutive year of decline, to the point where it's the seventh-slowest of hitters with at least 50 swings on their ledger. His rate of fast swings (classified as any swing over 75 MPH) is a literal 0.0%. To see that lack of hard contact depicted above continue its decline is just verification of what anyone who has watched him swing a bat this year already knew to be true. Making matters worse is how much of that contact is on the ground. Exactly half of Turner's balls in play are of the groundball variety. That both is and is not surprising. On one hand, Turner isn't swinging in the portions of the zone designed to general groundball contact: But on the other, he's just late. He's a catch-it-out-front guy, but in just under two years, he's gone from hitting it 39 inches from his own center of mass to making contact at 34 inches. A deeper contact point is a bad sign, for the guy who made "gaining ground on the pitch" a famous mindset in the modern game. It's all wrought by Turner's poor bat speed. That the approach and contact trends remain in his favor provides some value, I suppose. But when you're generating virtually nothing when the ball winds up in play, a real problem presents itself. The Cubs signed Turner not just to contribute off the bench, but to shield Michael Busch (and, more indirectly, guys like Gage Workman or Nicky Lopez) from facing lefties. As good as Busch has looked, he still has just 19 plate appearances against southpaws. Turner's been the only alternative they've really explored, despite a wRC+ of just 53 against lefties. No immediate solution has presented itself in Turner's stead. He's going to remain on this roster, as long as there's an absence of approach-oriented veteran hitters available. The money the team spent on him helps ensure that, but since neither Workman nor Matt Shaw proved able to do anything useful early on, there's also no one around you'd rather have take those chances. Nor is anyone in a hurry to push the beloved Turner out through the back clubhouse door. But aside from whatever intangible qualities he's providing, there simply is not a lot he does for the roster at present. It's a problem. But unlike the Cubs' marquee veteran with already-alarming peripherals on the mound, it's one without an immediate solution. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images Dansby Swanson is at it again. This is roughly the third time in a calendar month that we're talking about the offensive side of the Chicago Cubs' glove-first shortstop. While the season thus far has worn on barely longer than that, it's the third time he's demonstrated a marked change in his approach to hitting. When we last saw Swanson, he was struggling. The strikeout rate had skyrocketed, largely due to Swanson's overeager hunt for the fastball. Not only was he sitting on that pitch, he was swinging at it with little regard for where it was within (or outside of) the strike zone. It reached a point where a seven-game stretch saw roughly a 50% strikeout rate. Within that stretch, he only mustered four hits. We're barely 10 games clear of that run, but things have already shifted for Swanson yet again—to the point where he's sort of mashing. In his last 11 games, Swanson's slash includes a .357 average, a .386 OBP, and a .286 ISO. His 187 wRC+ is easily pacing what has been a wildly successful group of Cubs hitters in those contests. (Ian Happ is second, at 150.) There's been some substantial batted-ball luck, courtesy of a .444 BABIP, but he also continues to drive the ball (40.0 Hard-Hit%) and has gotten the launch angle down toward creating more line drive contact (11.8° is roughly a 5° drop from his 2025 average). Ultimately, though, we can attribute this stretch to a simple tamping down of the zone expansion. When Swanson expands his zone, he gets himself into trouble. When he's disciplined, he's good. That sounds too simple, but it's true—and even truer of Swanson than of most players. It's not a perfect correlation, given the steady drop in chase rate and the sudden spike in offensive production, but the evidence is highly suggestive. Because Swanson has a swing geared for in-zone damage but is prone to whiffs even within the zone, it's especially valuable to him when he keeps the edges of the zone well—and especially deleterious when he lets them get fuzzy. While this surge is definitely encouraging, it's not as if we should expect it to be the new and permanent norm. The strikeout rate has still been north of 28% over this more recent stretch. He's still whiffing at a huge rate when he does chase. Those issues were present the last time we took a look at Swanson's offensive game, and are still salient—but their side effects have been mitigated because he's started to calm down the element that gives them such potency when he does slump: that tendency to chase. Given those still-existent factors, the last two stretches of play for Swanson might be indicative of what we might continue to see in 2025. When he has the plate discipline somewhat reined in, he should produce impressively. In those periods where he's opening up the zone more frequently, the dips are going to continue to manifest. This is why he was known, long before he even signed this seven-year deal with the Cubs, as one of the league's streakiest hitters. It's who he is. If Swanson can layer this development with either some additional contact outside the zone or (at least) a modest increase on fastballs away from the zone, then maybe we're having a more optimistic conversation. In the interim, though, we should probably expect continued variance. That's why it's so important that the team keep him surrounded with great offensive talent, as he has been all year. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images No team in baseball features a better trio on the outfield grass than the Chicago Cubs. There isn't a whole lot of room for debate here, either. As a group, the Cubs' outfield ranks first in fWAR (5.0), well ahead of the New York Yankees (4.2) and even farther ahead of the Boston Red Sox (3.0). While it would be an oversimplification to attribute the team's early success specifically and solely to that group (given the success of Michael Busch and the tandem of Miguel Amaya and Carson Kelly behind the plate), it's certainly been the outfield leading the way. This was always possible, but it was far from guaranteed, so seeing it come to fruition is as encouraging as it is satisfying. The acquisition of Kyle Tucker was obviously a boon. With such little positional flexibility when the offseason began, moving Cody Bellinger out of town and finding a suitable replacement for Seiya Suzuki's glove in right represented one of the only paths toward legitimate addition within the lineup. Tucker has been crucial to the team's early run to the top of the National League Central, but it's been far from the only element driving the offensive (and defensive, for that matter) pace thus far. In addition to pacing the league in fWAR, the Cubs' outfield leads the league in isolated slugging (.236) and strikeout rate (16.5%), while sitting top five in batting average (.291), on-base percentage (.367), and stolen bases (21). Their 22 home runs are tied with the Yankees atop the leaderboard, as well. To say that it's a potent group would be an understatement. Tucker has been as advertised. Plenty of ink is still to be spilt over the team's efforts to retain their new-ish superstar, but even with a little bit of a recent "cold" streak, he's still a top-10 position player in most categories. His 168 wRC+ ranks seventh, while his walk rate (15.3%) continues to outpace his strikeout rate (11.7%). While Tucker had the ability to raise the floor of what this group could produce, it's been Pete Crow-Armstrong who has pushed the ceiling upward. Not all of the stats look great. He's still reaching base at a barely a .300 clip, but he's tamped down the strikeouts on his way to producing a 139 wRC+. That's all despite a very cold start. The power has really manifested, to the tune of a .287 ISO that even narrowly surpasses that of Tucker (.285). We knew the speed would be there, and lo: 12 steals. The mildly ironic thing is that the star-level play we see from each of Tucker and Crow-Armstrong on a daily basis has overshadowed the contributions of Ian Happ atop the lineup. He's running a 120 wRC+, with virtually no power to speak of (.102 ISO). Generally a slow starter, that Happ is already a worthy contributor without the power (which we don't typically see until May, anyway) really gets moving speaks to the actual ceiling of this group. Then there's the defensive component. The Cubs lead the league with 10 Defensive Runs Saved in the outfield, even with Tucker rating a bit below average. It helps that Crow-Armstrong is jumping his way to covering more ground than almost any individual outfielder in baseball, but Happ's defense looks legitimately good in the face of metrics that have soured on him throughout his Gold Glove run. It's the combination of offense and defense that has given the Cubs two of the nine most valuable players in baseball—and we're not just talking outfielders. There are 162 qualifying position players in the league. Crow-Armstrong ranks third in FanGraphs WAR, and Tucker sits ninth. Happ's farther down the list, at 63rd, but it's nearly impossible to overstate the level at which this outfield has performed. They've been much-needed, too. While catcher (Amaya/Kelly) and first base (Busch) both sit in the top seven in positional value, the middle infield spots have both been middle-of-the-road. Third base is near the bottom of the league (28th). Seiya Suzuki's phenomenal production as the DH is vital, but since his defensive homes are in the outfield, he feels like an extension of that corps. Consider some of the groups that were projected to be among the best in the league on the grass in the National League alone. Arizona. San Diego. Milwaukee. FanGraphs's preseason positional power rankings had the Cubs eighth in left field, 12th in center, and fifth in right. They've blown them all away. And then you get into the value of pushing Suzuki into a full-time role as the designated hitter. It's this group that has not only made the Cubs into a legitimate NL contender, but a singularly watchable winner. After a handful of years of middle-tier, outright boring baseball, the Cubs have become one of the most exciting teams in the sport on the strength of their outfield. View full article