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As we hurdle toward Opening Day, today begins a series of pieces in which we'll preview the 2024 Chicago Cubs, position-by-position. Firstly, let's tackle the men behind the masks. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports The 2023 season was a transitional year at the catcher position for the Chicago Cubs in so many ways. After penciling Willson Contreras in as the primary starter at the position for the previous seven seasons, the team was finally forced to go in a different direction, emphasizing things like defense, framing, game-calling, and the ability to work with pitchers over the offensive production that someone like Contreras offers. Not only were they moving on from a franchise icon who helped them win a World Series, but the shape of the production from that position was also going to look very different. While Conteras initially had some road bumps in adjusting to catching the pitchers with his new team, the St. Louis Cardinals, he still produced from a raw numbers standpoint. As a catcher, the former Cub had a 139 wRC+ and produced 2.5 WAR in just 90 games at the position, according to FanGraphs. Cubs catchers for the whole season produced an 82 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR. Where does that leave the North Siders behind the plate for 2024? The Starter: Yan Gomes 2023 Stats: 116 G, 419 PA, .267/.315/.408, 10 HR, 5.0% BB%, 19.3% K%, 1.0 fWAR, 1.7 bWAR, 0.8 WARP 2024 Projections: ZiPS: 96 G, 347 PA, .250/.297/.388, 9 HR, 4.9% BB%, 20.2% K%, 1.0 fWAR Scouting Report: If it felt like Gomes had roughly a million big hits for the Cubs last year, well, it’s because he did. Per FanGraphs, the Cubs’ catcher hit .462 in high-leverage situations. That was third in all of baseball. He hit .287 in medium-leverage situations, and .215 in low-leverage spots. If clutch hitting were a skill, this would be a very impressive bit of sequencing on Gomes’s part, though I am inclined to believe this is simply a funny bit of small sample size theater. Regardless, it all counts, and when you put his performance in high-, medium-, and low-leverage situations into a blender, it came out to a roughly league-average batting line. Before last season, had you asked any Cubs fan or executive, if they would take a league-average line from Gomes in 2023, they likely would have signed up in a heartbeat. Where Gomes (unfortunately) took a step back was in those defensive skills, which the Cubs seemed to be emphasizing. In 2022, Gomes was a net neutral in framing, as he was worth exactly zero framing runs, according to FanGraphs. In 2023, however, he dropped all the way to -8.2 framing runs, one of the worst figures in baseball. That took him from being worth 8.0 Defensive Runs Above Average in 2022 to just 0.8 in 2023. Now, there are a ton of other little factors at play when evaluating the defense of a catcher, a lot of which still aren’t quantifiable. Cubs pitchers still all have nothing but tremendous things to say about Gomes and how much they like to work with him, and when you compare that to the Cardinals throwing Contreras under the bus just a month into the season, it’s easier to feel good about the change. With all of that being said, how Gomes rates as a pitch framer is certainly something to watch for in 2024. Other options: This is where the Cubs can, hopefully, take a big step forward this year. With Gomes no longer under contract after this season, it’s time to get a good look at Miguel Amaya, to see if he can take over the full-time role in 2025. The rookie hit .284/.395/.433 in his first 82 plate appearances last year, but finished the year on a down note, slashing .141/.257/.281 in his last 74 plate appearances. It’s important to note that in 2020, Amaya was a highly regarded prospect, with FanGraphs rating him third in the Cubs system and 65th in all of baseball. In the three seasons that followed, the former top prospect amassed just 304 professional plate appearances due to the pandemic and injury, all of which significantly dulled his shine. Now, with a full professional season and some time with the big league club under his belt, hopefully Amaya can recapture some of that potential this coming season. The Cubs have no other catchers on an already cramped 40-man roster, so I would be shocked to see them break camp with more than just Gomes and Amaya on the team. They have Jorge Alfaro, Pablo Aliendo, Joe Hudson, and Bryce Windham in Arizona as non-roster invitees, and will probably be able to stash at least one of those four at Iowa for depth. The Big Question: This, to me, is actually two big questions: can Gomes rebound defensively? His 2023 season is probably the best we can expect from his bat at this point. If Gomes can find some value with the glove again, his ability to produce at the plate becomes much less important. Will the Cubs be comfortable handing Miguel Amaya the keys? Gomes will be 37 this season, and as previously mentioned, is a free agent next offseason. Amaya should have plenty of runway to show what he can do this year. If he acclimates well and produces something like league-average offense and above-average defense, the Cubs should be comfortable handing him the full-time job going forward. If Amaya performs poorly, catcher becomes a huge question mark for this organization again, even as a couple more catcher prospects follow in his wake. View full article

Oh, what a relief it is. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Or, in this particular case, what happens when Scott Boras--known for getting large, long-term deals for his clients-- ends up negotiating with Jed Hoyer, who seems to have a strong disdain for handing out the exactly that kind of contract? As most of us discovered upon waking up on Sunday morning, the immovable object won. Cody Bellinger will be back with the Chicago Cubs for the 2024 season, and maybe more, as he agreed to a three-year, $80-million deal. He can make $30 million in 2024 and 2025, and $20m in 2026. He will also have the right to opt out after each of the first two seasons. Only a few hours have passed since I learned of the deal, but the more I reflect on it, there is no doubt in my mind that Hoyer got exactly what he wanted here. Regardless of whether you believe that Bellinger’s 2023 production is repeatable, he projects to be a valuable player. Most projection systems peg him as a two- to three-win player in 2024. Retaining that guy is absolutely a good thing in the short term. There were never any questions over that. The Cubs are a better team now than they were before pulling the trigger on it. The concern with Bellinger, as I have covered previously here at North Side Baseball, is both the fear of giving a huge contract to a guy who might have overperformed in 2023, and also that the Cubs have two major-league-ready prospects in Pete Crow-Armstrong and Michael Busch at the positions that Bellinger plays. With both of those things in mind, would the Cubs have been better off investing the potential Bellinger money elsewhere--like third base, for example? This contract is the best of both worlds. Not only do the Cubs get another useful player for this coming season, but this also takes a lot of pressure off of both Crow-Armstrong and Busch, who previously figured to be in the mix for the Opening Day start in center field and at first base, respectively. Now, if one or both of those guys struggle, Bellinger can easily pick up the slack at either position. If they both end up being awesome in their rookie years, the Cubs have the ability to pivot from Bellinger and reinvest that money elsewhere, given the short-term nature of this contract. With this move, we’re probably looking at the finished Opening Day roster for this year’s Cubs, save small moves at the edges. Factoring in Bellinger’s $26.7-million annual average value, the estimated tax payroll is $230.7 million, according to Spotrac. The competitive balance tax threshold is $237 million, and if Bellinger opts out of his contract after this year (which I suspect will likely happen, unless he has a completely disastrous season), his salary for tax purposes would bump up to $30 million, bringing the Cubs about $3m short of the tax threshold. I would be shocked if the Cubs decide to pay the tax for this season. We can debate whether they should, or shouldn’t, but it’s just not happening. Coming up a few million dollars short gives the Cubs the flexibility to take on some additional salary midseason, as well. Should the Cubs decide to surprise us all, the second threshold is at $257 million, which would give the Cubs about another $20 million to play with. But I digress. I am fairly certain this is it for the North Siders, and given the financial constraints that Tom Ricketts has put on this organization, I think Jed Hoyer deserves some credit here. Clearly, he wanted Bellinger back, but only on his terms. He knew that Chicago was the best fit for Bellinger, and was more than willing to wait it out and get a little bit uncomfortable. Bellinger, on the other hand, now has the ability to prove that his 2023 was not a fluke and hit the market again next winter, without the potential loss of a draft pick attached to him--similar to what fellow Boras client Carlos Correa did with the Minnesota Twins. With all of that said, the real winners here might be the fans. We can all now shift our focus to the actual season, rather than having the Bellinger negotiations at the forefront of any legitimate discussion. Reading any Cubs coverage from spring training was getting old, with the redundant mentions of one more potential free agent signing. Now, the focus can turn to on-field stuff. How will the Cubs deploy Bellinger and utilize his versatility? Does this mean Crow-Armstrong or Busch starts the season at Iowa? With Matt Chapman likely not joining the team, will Christopher Morel get a legitimate chance to play third base? Stay tuned. View full article

A lot of people seem to have much higher expectations for Almonte than I do. I hope I am wrong there. From a development standpoint, Iowa might be the best starting point. Though I also think that even last year’s version of Wesneski, particularly if deployed intelligently, is one of the 13-14 best pitchers on the Cubs. And for a team that should be serious about making the playoffs, he’ll have to be on the roster.

As spring training reaches full steam with the start of Cactus League play this weekend, the Chicago Cubs have several key storylines to watch. One vital one will be the development and role assignment of one of their most intriguing young arms. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports Following a 2022 debut in which he threw 33 innings, accumulated 0.7 FanGraphs WAR, and posted a 2.18 ERA, expectations were always going to be far too high for Hayden Wesneski coming into 2023. Then, the young right-hander struck out 22 hitters in just 17 spring training innings last year to earn the fifth rotation spot for the Cubs, and the sky, it seemed, was the limit. Since you’re reading this article on a Chicago Cubs-focused website, you probably know how that went. Wesneski was mostly bad in 11 appearances and 10 starts prior to losing his rotation spot. He allowed 13 home runs in 50 ⅔ innings, and put up a 5.33 ERA during that time. Wesneski spent the remainder of the season shuttling between the bullpen and Triple-A Iowa, to fine (but certainly not great) results. He struck out 43 in 38 ⅔ innings after losing his spot in the rotation. That’s good! He also walked 19 hitters. That’s bad! His 3.72 ERA was decent enough, but his 4.86 FIP suggests some overperformance there, and a 3.72 ERA is just not that great for a guy coming out of the bullpen anymore, anyway. Heading into 2024, the Cubs have several additional options in the rotation that they didn’t at the start of last season. Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, and Kyle Hendricks are all back, and figure to take up three rotation spots. Shota Imanaga was brought in to bolster the rotation behind Steele. That means Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks, Drew Smyly, and Wesneski are all left to battle for that fifth spot. And that doesn’t even include Ben Brown, who is knocking on the door. Caleb Kilian is also still on the team, and might get another shot at some point. Luckily for all of those guys, as Jed Hoyer always says, it takes far more than five starting pitchers to get through a season. So, what might the role in 2024 look like for Wesneski? This entire conversation starts, and ends, with Wesneski developing a pitch that he can use to get lefties out. Recently, I took a look at Jameson Taillon and his struggles with getting left-handed hitters out in 2023. They hit for a .420 wOBA against Taillon in the first half of the season. Wesneski was almost that bad for the entire season, with lefties slashing .298/.369/.617, good for a .411 wOBA. That was 12th worst in all of baseball, according to FanGraphs. So what gives? Wesneski has an elite slider that he relies on to get right-handed hitters out. And it works very well for him! Right-handed hitters slashed just .202/.269/.348 against the Houston native, and struck out 25.9 percent of the time. Per Baseball Savant, hitters slugged just .231 against his slider, and it was worth eight runs on its own. The issue here is that Wesneski doesn’t have another reliable pitch to get outs. At least not yet. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have a single other pitch that had a positive run value last season. And as most are aware, sliders are one of the least effective pitches to throw to a hitter with the platoon advantage, since it breaks toward the hitter, not away from them. So you can see where his issue with getting lefties out stems from. While the slider did hold up pretty well against lefties from a results standpoint, he clearly wasn’t all that comfortable throwing it. He went to that offering 42.6 percent of the time against righties, by far his most-used pitch. His slider usage dropped all the way to 27 percent against lefties. Instead, he used his four-seam fastball most often, and it got crushed to the tune of a .488 wOBA. For me, Wesneski’s role in 2024 starts in the bullpen, until he proves he can get lefties out, or at least not allow them all to turn into prime Hank Aaron. If deployed correctly, which I have faith in Craig Counsell to do, he absolutely has value there. He’ll almost certainly have opportunities to show a refined approach against hitters with the platoon advantage. I am sure teams would throw left-handed pinch hitters at him often. Hopefully Wesneski worked on both his changeup and cutter this offseason, either of which would give him a much better chance at retiring lefties. It will be most important to watch those two pitches this spring in Cactus League action. If he proves he has developed something in his arsenal beyond the slider, or is successful with a new approach to lefties, he should be right in line to make a start as soon as one is available. But until that happens, I think Wesneski’s 2024 role remains out of the bullpen, deployed exclusively against right-handed hitters as often as possible. What will you watch most closely as Wesneski and the Cubs ramp up over the next month? Join the conversation right here. View full article

The Cubs' $68-million starter had a rough time last year, and if the team wants him to bounce back to his previous overall level, something might need to change. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports In retrospect, Jameson Taillon’s first season in a Chicago Cubs uniform almost went exactly as expected. His 4.84 ERA is a pretty big jump from his 4.00 mark for his career, but the gap isn’t yawning, at least given the fickle nature of pitchers. He still managed to throw 154 ⅓ innings, a good total in the current era wherein pitchers are much more often deployed in shorter bursts. Sure, his 1.6 FanGraphs WAR is his lowest total in any season in which he has thrown at least 100 innings. Yet, he averaged just 2.1 Fangraphs WAR over his two seasons with the Yankees. So while Taillon sure didn’t impress many in Chicago in his first year with the team, he proved himself to be a reliable back-end starter, even in a down year. What can we expect from him going forward? The veteran righthander’s poor performance in 2023 can be chalked up to one thing: his results against left-handed hitters. Lefties hammered out a .363 wOBA against Taillon in 2023, according to FanGraphs. For reference, a .320 wOBA is considered average, and Austin Riley posted a .363 wOBA last year. Essentially, every left-handed hitter that stepped into the box against Taillon last year was as productive as Riley. That was a surprising problem, because Taillon was roughly split-neutral in his two seasons prior to joining the Cubs. In 2021, lefties had a .316 wOBA against him, while righties were at .304. In 2022, lefties were at .309 and righties .307. In no way was this a predictable issue for a typically steady starting pitcher. Taillon’s season was also a tale of two halves. His first half was disastrous, as he had a 6.15 ERA heading into the All-Star break. His second half was miles better, as he posted a 3.70 ERA to close the season. Again, this change in performance can be attributed to how he pitched against left-handed hitters: In the first half, they had a .420 wOBA (equivalent to Corey Seager) against him. In the second half, it was a much more playable .308 wOBA (approximately Miguel Amaya). What was different? To understand this, let’s go back to the 2022 season, when Taillon posted a career-best .309 wOBA against lefties. That season, he started throwing a cutter. He threw it 13.3 percent of the time against opposite-handed hitters, with great results: a .303 wOBA against, with only a 76.8 MPH exit velocity on balls in play to back that up, according to Baseball Savant. He attacked lefties with fastballs up and in, cutters in on the hands, curveballs down in the zone, and changeups away. In 2023, Taillon doubled down on the cutter usage, throwing it 21.8 percent of the time against lefties. The changeup was almost completely scrapped, as he threw it only 5.9 percent of the time, down from 17.3 percent of the time in 2022. Cliffs notes: he went from throwing four pitches against lefties in 2022, to only three pitches in 2023. And it turns out his cutter got absolutely crushed: left-handed hitters put up a .450 wOBA against his cutter in 2023. Coming back to Taillon’s Jekyll-and-Hyde first and second half performances this past season, and remembering what we now know about how he attacked lefties in his successful 2022 campaign (fastball up and in, cutter in, curveball down), here were his fastball locations to lefties in the first half of 2023: That is all over the place, to put it nicely. And here are the locations of his cutters before the break: Interesting! This looks to me like Taillon was throwing his cutter exactly where he wanted to. It was the fastball over which he had no control. What makes a cutter good, and split-neutral, is how it plays off of a fastball. It looks like a fastball just long enough, until it breaks a little bit down and to the pitcher’s glove side. In this case, because he wasn’t controlling the fastball, they likely never looked similar enough, causing the cutter to get hit as hard as it did. Now, let’s see how his fastball location changed in his much more successful second half: Much more consistent! Though at the same time, he wasn’t throwing it up and in like he did in 2022. What about his cutter location in the second half? Oh! So Taillon completely changed his approach with his cutter from the first half of the season to the second half. Instead of attacking hitters inside with both pitches, he started trying to attack them away and off of the plate. While he did perform significantly better against lefties as a result, what is interesting is that he still gave up a .393 wOBA against lefties on fastballs and cutters in the second half. That was down from .468 in the first half, but the exit velocities and launch angles of the balls that were put in play suggest that the batted-ball results were roughly the same. It was actually Taillon’s curveball that carried him in the second-half against players with the platoon advantage: they hit for just a .186 wOBA and had a 31-percent strikeout rate against the pitch. Those numbers were significantly better than the .344 wOBA and 24.4-percent strikeout rate that lefties had against the curveball in the first half. A curveball coming in from a right-handed pitcher is going to start up and away to a lefty, so my theory on this is that hitters found the curveball much harder to identify when it was paired with both the fastball and the cutter on the outside half of the plate. I also think it’s possible there’s some sample-size theater going on here: Taillon’s first-half FIP of 4.90 is not too far off of his second-half mark of 4.36, suggesting that the performance gap between the two halves was not as wide as the ERA would indicate. What does this all mean for Taillon in 2024? I’d wager that his approach to lefties was a big focus for him during this offseason. When he takes the mound, pay close attention to it. Will he bring his changeup back? Where is he going to try to locate his cutter and his fastball? It all very well may determine if the remainder of his contract is looked at as a bust, or a solid investment. View full article

Thanks for sharing! Love hearing stories like this about players.

Desperate for a win, and to generate some positive momentum for their season, the 2009 Chicago Cubs turned to Carlos Marmol in the eighth inning of a game against the then-Florida Marlins. It was May 1, and the Northsiders, up 8-5, needed their best reliever to start performing as such. Image courtesy of Brock Beauchamp To that point in the season, Marmol had a 6.00 ERA, and had just given up four runs to the Arizona Diamondbacks in a disastrous outing a few days prior. After walking the first two hitters he faced, Marmol then struck out the next three in a row, putting out the fire that he had started. This was the essence of Carlos Marmol: enter a game, walk a bunch of guys, then strike a bunch of guys out. Rinse and repeat. His appearances were never smooth, and while I don’t think anybody ever felt like the game was securely in hand when he took the mound, he almost always got the job done at the end of the day. I feel like, due to the rocky nature of his outings, Marmol has become forgotten in Cubs history. However, he just may be one of the greatest relievers that this franchise has ever seen. Marmol signed with the Cubs as a 16-year-old catcher and outfielder in July, 1999. After hitting only one home run and posting a .559 OPS in the minor leagues in the 2002 season, Marmol officially converted to become a pitcher that offseason. Following a steady rise through the minors as a starting pitcher, Marmol made his major-league debut in 2006, at age 23. He ended the year with 19 mostly unsuccessful appearances (13 starts and six out of the bullpen), as he had a 6.08 ERA and an even 1.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio. The right-handed pitcher made his 2007 debut on May 19, with a scoreless inning of relief, and thus began his reign of chaotic dominance. He would finish the season with a 1.43 ERA, third among all relievers, and his strikeout rate of 33.7% was second. His walk rate, while bad (12.3%), was 18th-worst. (Remember Some Cubs bonus: future Cub Brandon Morrow had the worst walk rate among relievers that year, at 17.3%.) I would be remiss to discuss Marmol’s strikeouts and walks without mentioning the culprit for his effective wildness: his slider. Nobody, Marmol included, had any idea where that thing was going to end up when he threw it, but man, was it nasty. Batters hit only .167 against him in 2007, which was fourth-lowest in MLB. If he was capable of getting the slider anywhere near the plate, hitters were either swinging and missing, or hitting very soft contact somewhere. The wild relief pitcher followed up his 2007 season with an equally good 2008 season. Then, he really started to lose control of where he was throwing the baseball. The 2009 season saw his strikeout rate drop to a still-good 27.8%, but coupled with a rise in walk rate (to a major league-leading 19.4%), the slippage made him (for that one season) a good, but not great, pitcher. Which brings us to 2010. That strikeout rate jumped right back up, and Marmol led all qualified relief pitchers with 2.7 WAR. He set the all-time record for the best K/9 ratio for a pitcher (minimum 50 innings) with 15.99 strikeouts per nine frames. (Another Remember Some Cubs bonus: In our current era of strikeout mania, this has since been broken several times, with Aroldis Chapman currently holding the record at 17.67 K/9 in his 2014 season. Marmol’s 2010 season remains a Cubs record, though.) Marmol’s 6.7 WAR from 2007 to 2010 was eighth among all relievers in baseball. His 33.9% strikeout rate led all relievers, and his 14.9% walk rate was fifth-worst. He hit 30 batters, which also led all relief pitchers and further compounded the issue. But still: to underscore just how unhittable he was, and to add to the list of things he led relievers in, hitters hit only .152 against him. His slider was worth 53 runs above average, according to Statcast, which made it the third-most valuable pitch for a reliever across those four seasons. For those curious: Heath Bell’s fastball was worth 55.6 runs above average, and, of course, Mariano Rivera’s cutter was worth 54 runs above average. Make no mistake about it: Despite the walks, during his four-year peak, Marmol was elite. Then started a downward trend: he continued walking and striking everybody out in the 2011 and 2012 seasons, but his slider went from completely unhittable to somewhat hittable, which inflated his ERA to 3.76 across those two campaigns. He was designated for assignment by the Cubs in June of 2013, in the wake of a really rough start to the season. He would go on to throw 21 ⅓ innings for the Dodgers to finish 2013, and then 13 ⅓ innings for the Marlins the following season, and would never appear in a major-league game again after that. For his Cubs career, Marmol ended up with 6.8 WAR, per FanGraphs. That’s third all-time for Cubs relievers. Bruce Sutter and Lee Smith are well ahead of him, with 16.1 and 14.9 WAR, respectively. Passing two Hall of Famers is tough to do, though, so coming third on this list is nothing to sneeze at. He was far from perfect as a pitcher, but that is also what made him so fun to watch. Watching him walk the bases loaded was never fun in real time, but it only made it so much more fun when he’d strike out the side immediately after that. View full article

The endgame of free agency is just about upon us. The Cubs still need a bat for the heart of their order, and the options are dwindling. Image courtesy of © Jonathan Dyer - USA Today Sports Last week, we took a look at the ZiPS projections for the 2024 Chicago Cubs. Within that article, I had openly wondered if, based off of those projections and the current roster, Cody Bellinger was the best investment for the Cubs to be making with their remaining money this offseason. Matt Chapman is also available, and while he had a worse 2023 season by most metrics, his expected statistics were better; he’s likely to cost less money than Bellinger; and ZiPS projected him to outperform Bellinger in 2024. With both players still on the board, and both linked to the Cubs, I thought that this comparison deserved a much deeper look. As previously mentioned, if we look purely at what was actually produced in 2023, Bellinger would by far be the better investment, especially considering he is two years younger than Chapman. Player AVG OBP SLG HR wOBA WAR Matt Chapman .240 .330 .424 17 .328 3.5 Cody Bellinger .307 .356 .525 26 .370 4.1 However, if we were to look at each player’s expected stats and batted-ball metrics, courtesy of Baseball Savant, we see a completely different story: Player Barrel % Launch Angle Exit Velocity xBA xSLG xwOBA Matt Chapman 16.8% 18.3 93.4 .229 .454 .336 Cody Bellinger 6.1% 17.2 87.9 .268 .434 .327 Chapman hit the ball significantly harder and at roughly the same launch angle for the entirety of a season in which he slugged more than 100 points lower than Bellinger and hit nine fewer home runs. Does this automatically make Bellinger a bad investment, and Chapman a good one? Sorry, but no. If things were that easy, then there’d be a whole lot less intrigue in baseball. As Cubs fans, we all know the story with Bellinger in 2023, but in case you need a refresher: Bellinger posted a career-low strikeout rate by making a whole lot more contact and shortening up with two strikes. This led to him hitting .281 with two strikes, second to only contact machine Luis Arráez. The bad news? That .281 batting average came along with an unsustainable .387 BABIP. Did Bellinger find a new way to succeed as a hitter, or did he dink and dunk his way to a batting average that will be difficult to repeat? The other area where Bellinger far outperformed his expected statistics is on fly balls. According to Baseball Savant, Bellinger posted a .497 wOBA on fly balls in 2023. His xwOBA, though, was just .344. That difference of .153 was the 12th-highest in all of baseball. One way a hitter can outperform his expected stats like this is by pulling a lot of his fly balls. Not only are fences shorter in the corners (and thus, you do not have to hit the ball as far), but almost any hitter’s power is going to be out in front of the plate, after they have generated more bat speed. All of that aside, even if you only account for hard-hit baseballs, hitters still perform better when they hit the ball in the air to the pull side. MLB hitters as a whole posted a 827 wRC+ in 2023 when they hit a hard fly ball (95 mph or more) to the pull side, per FanGraphs. That drops to a 271 wRC+ on hard-hit fly balls to center field, and a 337 wRC+ on hard-hit fly balls to the opposite field. Well, 45.5 percent of Bellinger’s hard hit fly balls were to the pull side. That was 15th in MLB among players who had at least 50 of those batted ball events. He was very good at hitting the ball in the air, hard, and to the pull side. Which brings me back to Chapman and those Baseball Savant expected stats. On fly balls in 2023, Chapman posted a .381 wOBA. His xwOBA? .547. That difference of .166 points was sixth-worst in all of baseball. If you have been following to this point, I have a feeling you know what is coming next. The Blue Jays’ third baseman did not pull a lot of his hard-hit fly balls. In fact, he only pulled 9.5 percent of them. Not a typo: 9.5 percent! That was the worst mark in baseball, and if you’re thinking that that sounds really bad, well that is because it is! The worst mark in 2022 was Alec Bohm at 17.3 percent. I had suspected, with this knowledge, that if we looked at a spray chart of all of the outs that Chapman made in 2023, that we would see a whole lot of long fly outs to center and right field. You be the judge: I’d say we found the reason for the underperformance, or at least one of them. Has this always been an issue for Chapman? While he hasn’t ever excelled at pulling fly balls, it was never this bad: in 2022, he pulled 37 percent of his hard-hit fly balls, and in 2021 he pulled 33.3 percent of them. This parallel is just absolutely fascinating to me. Two players, both linked to the Cubs, and both would slot in perfectly at positions of need, with Bellinger taking over center field or Chapman taking over third base. One far overperformed his expected stats, in no small part due to pulling a lot of his fly balls. The other far underperformed them, in no small part due to pulling, somehow, almost none of his fly balls. Which would be the better investment for the Cubs? I know the actual production from Chapman was not great for the last two months of the season, but I would tend to think his propensity to hit his fly balls the other way is easily fixable. Matt Trueblood wrote about this back in early December. He would also cost less, and figures to be elite defensively at third base for a few more years. On the flip side, while I do think Bellinger could continue to overperform on his fly balls, I don’t think his two-strike results are sustainable, and I have less faith in him sustaining his good defense in center field as he ages. Who's your guy? Is there another big-name free agent the Cubs should consider instead of either one? Lay it on us in the comments. View full article

With spring training coming into sight on the horizon of this winter, it's projection season, baby. Let's look into one system's take on the Cubs. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports A couple of weeks ago, ZiPS projections officially went live for your 2024 Chicago Cubs. For the uninitiated, ZiPS projections are a way of projecting a player’s future performance by utilizing recent adjusted stats, to compare them to a past player of a similar age and position, created by Dan Szymborski. For more information, you can read the 2024 introduction here. Note that ZiPS is simply a baseline for a player. Plenty of players will significantly outperform a projection, and plenty of players will dramatically underperform them. What ZiPS provides is the most realistic performance for a player. You can also check out the Cubs projections here. Let’s take a look at what these projections might be telling us for the upcoming season, and for the rest of the offseason, for the North Siders. Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are legitimate cornerstones in the middle of the infield. ZiPS projects the Cubs’ middle infield to combine for 8 WAR, with Swanson contributing 4.1 of that and Hoerner chipping in 3.9. A lot of that value comes from the defensive side of the ball, which is typically much more difficult to project. Hoerner is projected for just a 98 OPS+, and Swanson comes in at 104, but regardless, the Cubs should feel comfortable at these two positions for the coming season, and (given the contract status of each player) several more after that. Are we 100% certain the Cubs need to re-sign Cody Bellinger? Ok, I am not really going to argue that the Cubs shouldn’t be re-signing Cody Bellinger. I am all for them spending money on improving the team, and Bellinger would do that, hands down. What I am saying, though, is that Bellinger is projected for 2.7 WAR, a 108 OPS+, and just 19 home runs in 544 plate appearances. Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected for an 88 OPS+, but because of the defensive value, comes in at 1.7 WAR in 531 plate appearances. With the recent acquisition of Michael Busch to play some first base, I think it’s safe to say that Crow-Armstrong won’t be getting 531 plate appearances if Bellinger comes back. If the Cubs only have a certain amount of money left to spend, Matt Chapman figures to cost less money; wouldn’t block one of the Cubs top prospects from getting playing time; and has not produced less than Bellinger’s projected 2.7 WAR since his rookie season in 2017. ZiPS sees the free agent third-baseman producing 3.6 WAR, 25 home runs and a 117 OPS+. Look, Chapman is not without his warts. He is older than Bellinger and had a rough close to his 2023 season. But his batted-ball data was better than Bellinger’s, and ZiPS seems to support that he might be a better investment. Just a little food for thought. Busch deserves an everyday job, and should contribute right away. ZiPs is plenty bullish on the Cubs’ newest top-100 prospect. The projection system thinks Busch will be the fifth-most valuable position player on the team, with 2.5 WAR and a 111 OPS+. I think that if the Cubs could lock that type of production in now from a rookie, they absolutely would. ZiPS loves the Shota Imanaga signing. On the other side of the runs ledger, the newest member of the Cubs' rotation is projected to strike out 25.6 percent of opposing batters, pitch to the tune of a 117 ERA+, and add 2.9 WAR over 137 innings pitched. Friendly reminder: one WAR on the open market is typically valued at roughly $9-10 million. Getting almost three WAR out of someone who will earn $10 million this year would be an absolute steal for the Cubs. Justin Steele is projected to take a step back - but that’s ok. The Cubs’ ace has a projection of 2.9 WAR and a 114 ERA+, one season after contributing 4.9 WAR and a 146 ERA+. The innings are definitely a factor here, as ZiPS is projecting Steele’s WAR in 153 ⅓ innings, rather than the 173 ⅓ that he threw in 2023. As Szymborski notes, however, ZiPS typically deflates projections for pitchers. For reference, 2023 American League Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole is projected for 3.8 WAR, down from 5.2 last year. Also, both Steele and Imanaga are right outside of the top 10 in WAR for National League pitchers, where Steele finished fourth last season. The Cubs absolutely have a solid 1-2 punch in their rotation. Some reliability in the bullpen would be nice. Outside of Albert Alzolay, Julian Merryweather, and Luke Little(!), no other relief pitcher projects to have an average or better ERA+. And while Little’s projection has me excited, forgive me if I don’t want to rely on a rookie with 6 ⅔ major-league innings to his name. The group projects for 2.9 WAR as a whole, which is fourth in the NL Central, ahead of only the Cincinnati Reds. Alzolay alone projects to provide almost half of that WAR, at 1.2. Fortifying the bullpen with some reliable arms before the season starts is a must. What has you most excited from these projections? What has you most concerned? Does it color your opinions on what the team should do next? Discuss in the comments, while we wait to see what the team does to augment their projected win total. View full article

In our running series on not-quite random Cubs of yesteryear, it's time to tackle one half of the late 2000s Cubs' Cajun Connection up the middle. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports The 2008 Chicago Cubs demonstrated just how fun a baseball season can be when everything goes right. Geovany Soto broke out as the team’s starting catcher and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award. Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano and Derrek Lee provided steady production and star power toward the top of the lineup. Ryan Dempster’s move to the starting rotation worked out, as he made the All-Star team and finished sixth in the National League Cy Young Award voting. Jim Edmonds was picked up off of the scrap heap and produced a team-high 135 OPS+ (minimum 100 plate appearances). Mark DeRosa hit 21 home runs and solidified himself as a fan favorite. Despite all of those players, it was the 5’9” utility infielder who led the team’s position players in WAR at Baseball Reference. That’s right: in just 284 plate appearances, Mike Fontenot tied with Soto for the most WAR on the 97-win 2008 Chicago Cubs, at 3.3. Michael Eugene Fontenot was born on June 9, 1980, in Louisiana. After hitting .556 with 13 home runs during his senior season at Salmen High School, he was drafted in the 21st round of the 1999 MLB Draft, but he opted to attend Louisiana State University instead of beginning his professional career. This ended up being a wise decision for the small infielder. As a freshman, Fontenot was the everyday second baseman. He hit .353 and broke the LSU freshman record for home runs, with 17. For the curious: this has since been broken by Dylan Crews, who hit 18 home runs during his freshman season in 2021. Crews, notably, was picked second overall by the Washington Nationals in the 2023 MLB Draft. After winning the College World Series with LSU in 2000, and a stellar sophomore season, Fontenot was taken 19th overall in 2001 by the Baltimore Orioles. He would go on to play three minor-league seasons for the Orioles before being traded to the Cubs in the offseason between 2004 and 2005. In hindsight, Jim Hendry deserves a ton of credit for getting something substantial (Fontenot and Jerry Hairston Jr.) in exchange for Sammy Sosa, in a February trade wherein he seemed to have no leverage whatsoever. Fontenot would go on to make his major-league debut in 2005, though it wasn’t until 2007 when he established himself on the roster. Following an injury to Ramírez, Fontenot was made the team’s starting second-baseman, reuniting him with former LSU teammate Ryan Theriot, the starting shortstop. In June of that year, Fontenot hit .397, though his production for the season cratered thereafter, as he hit just .214 the rest of the way. His flash-in-the-pan performance in June was enough for the Cubs to keep him around as a utility player for the 2008 season, and that paid off handsomely. As a frequent pinch-hitter and the second baseman when DeRosa slid out to right field, Fontenot hit .305/.395/.514, which earned him the moniker Little Babe Ruth, as coined by Ron Santo. As we already said, he led the team in WAR at Baseball Reference. At Fangraphs, his 3.1 WAR was fourth among the Cubs position-player group, behind Ramírez, DeRosa, and Soriano. Given that Fontenot had about half the plate appearances of those guys, this is still impressive. His 134 wRC+ bested everybody else who amassed at least 100 plate appearances, other than Edmonds. No matter how many times I have verified that stat, I still have a hard time believing it was true. Mike Fontenot and Jim Edmonds were, statistically, the Cubs' two best hitters in 2008. On a club loaded with stars who spent half a decade or more making eight-figure salaries for the Cubs, two guys who I think people often forget were even on that team were indispensable. (Side note: shoutout to Micah Hoffpauir, who had 80 plate appearances and produced a 143 wRC+ that year. He won’t get his own column, so consider this note a remembrance of him.) Given his production in a part-time role in 2008, Fontenot was awarded the everyday second base job for the Cubs in 2009, but he was never able to match the production he had that magical summer. Despite a decent start to the season, he would finish the year with a batting line of .236/.301/.377. Fontenot resumed his utility duties in 2010, until he was eventually traded to the Giants for Evan Crawford in August of that season. Of course, Fontenot won a World Series later that year with the Giants, and he would go on to play small parts of two more seasons: one with the Giants in 2011, and one with the Phillies in 2012. After playing the 2013 and 2014 seasons in the minor leagues with the Tampa Bay Rays, Fontenot finished playing professional baseball. Mike Fontenot, despite his size, is not an underdog story. He was a first-round draft pick, after all. He does, in my opinion, represent what many, myself included, love about baseball. The fact that a 5’9” utility infielder can have one magical season, and be one of the best hitters on a 97-win team filled with All-Stars, shows that no matter how many numbers are crunched, and how much analysis happens, sometimes, in baseball, randomness occurs. Call it luck, or call it a short-lived prime, but the 2008 Cubs--one of the best Cubs teams of this century--would not have been who they were without Mike Fontenot. What are your favorite memories of Fontenot? View full article

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Remember Some Cubs season. Are you ready to walk down memory lane with the guy who (briefly) made Augie Galan relevant again? Image courtesy of North Side Baseball & Brock Beauchamp The date was August 29, 2002, and the Cubs were in Milwaukee for what was, essentially, a battle for last place in the National League Central. Mark Bellhorn stepped to the plate in the top of the fourth inning, facing lefthander Andrew Lorraine. Bellhorn, hitting right-handed, hit a home run to deep left-center field, plating Alex Gonzalez and staking the Cubs to a lead. But the rally didn’t stop there. Lorraine was chased from the game just six hitters later, replaced by the right-handed Jose Cabrera. Thus, Bellhorn came back up to the plate, with two outs and two on, in the same inning. Being a switch-hitter, he took this plate appearance from the left side of the plate. Miraculously, Bellhorn did it again, hitting a home run to deep right field, giving the Cubs a nine-run lead and making baseball history at the same time. There have been many instances in baseball history in which a player has hit two home runs in the same inning. It has happened 60 times, to be precise. On this day, however, Bellhorn became just the second player ever to hit a home run from each side of the plate in the same inning, joining Carlos Baerga, who did so in 1993. Kendrys Morales has since done the same feat, and they are still the only three players to accomplish that feat. This is both the beauty of Mark Bellhorn, and the beauty of baseball: On any random day, in any random game between two teams that are a combined 61 games below .500, you can witness history, from a player that would only go on to hit 69 home runs for his entire career. It's a nice thing. Bellhorn was drafted out of Auburn University by the Oakland Athletics in the second round of the 1997 MLB Draft. Despite performing well in most of his minor-league action, he hit only .198/.296/.316 in sporadic playing time at the major-league level from 1997-2001. He was unceremoniously traded to the Cubs on November 2, 2001, for a young minor leaguer named Adam Morrissey, who would never appear in the major leagues. He started the 2002 season with the Cubs at the big-league level, and thanks to his ability to play multiple positions, he found himself filling in as a utility player for much of the early season. The versatile defender appeared in games at all infield positions, as well as two innings in left-field, for the Cubs that season. Bellhorn really seized his opportunity to become a full-time player, with home runs on back-to-back days on April 11 and 12, and never looked back. His .258/.374/.512 batting line was good for a 135 wRC+ on the season, a figure that was second on the Cubs behind Sammy Sosa and 31st in all of baseball, according to FanGraphs. Unfortunately for Cubs fans, Bellhorn failed to live up to his 2002 season the following year. His power cratered and he hit only .209/.341/.317 in 173 plate appearances, before being traded to the Rockies. He eventually ended up with the Boston Red Sox for the 2004 season, where he regained his old form and became a postseason legend, helping the hungry Red Sox end their 86 year World Series Championship drought with clutch home runs in both the ALCS and World Series. Afterward, following three very unsuccessful seasons for the Red Sox, Yankees, Padres, and Reds, Bellhorn returned to the minors for good, before eventually retiring in 2009. In some ways, Bellhorn was a bit before his time. From 2002 to 2004, his 27.4-percent strikeout rate was second-worst in baseball. On the flip side, though, his 14.7-percent walk rate was 15th, and when you factor in the home runs, his 45.3-percent three-true-outcome rate was fifth. If Bellhorn was around today, maybe he would have been appreciated just a little bit more. Even at the time, though, he was a cult favorite in the Windy City. View full article

Look, we're all rooting for Pete Crow-Armstrong or Owen Caissie to be the best redheaded outfielder of the 21st century for the Cubs. Let's just get clear on the fact that they do have a standard to meet. With so much buzz around Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto this offseason, the continued globalization of baseball has been obvious. Ohtani and Yamamoto, who came to MLB via Japan’s professional baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), are joined in free agency by Shōta Imanaga, who is also hoping to become an MLB star. Most probably remember Matt Murton for his sensational MLB debut season in 2005, or for his fiery red hair. What many may not know, or have forgotten, is that after his MLB career fizzled in 2009, Murton made the jump to NPB and became a star in Japan. Matthew Henry Murton was born on October 3, 1981, and was drafted into Major League Baseball by the Boston Red Sox in the supplemental portion of the first round of the 2003 draft. After steady production in his first year or so in the minor leagues, the outfielder was traded to the Cubs in the 2004 deal that is, perhaps, more famously known as the Nomar Garciaparra trade. What is funny in retrospect about the Garciaparra trade is that Murton actually produced more than double the WAR that Garciaparra did for the Cubs, according to both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. [Ed. note: I'm glad you can laugh about this. "Funny" is not the word this 1989 baby would use for that turn of events.] Murton got the call to the big leagues in July 2005, after hitting for a .343 average across the two highest levels of the minors to that point in the season. He continued hitting for a high average with the Cubs, as he went on to hit .441 that July, and he finished the year with a .321/.386/.531 slash line. His emergence earned him the everyday job in left field for the 2006 season. He continued his steady performance, to the tune of a .297/.365/.444 slash line, and his 2.8 WAR was actually good for third among the position players for what was an otherwise dismal Cubs team, according to FanGraphs. With the additions of Cliff Floyd and Alfonso Soriano heading into the 2007 season, Murton was relegated to part-time duty, and was sent down to Triple A after not producing much for the first few months.. However, upon his recall in July, he hit .310/.375/.543 to close out the year, and proved to be a valuable platoon partner with the left-handed hitting Floyd in right field for a division-winning team. In a crucial late-season game against the Brewers, he hit a huge home run. Alas, that was about it for Murton in a Cubs uniform. With Kosuke Fukudome heading to the Cubs the following season, and the completely random emergence of Reed Johnson and Jim Edmonds, Murton didn’t see the field much in 2008, and was a throw-in to a July trade with the Oakland Athletics for Rich Harden. Murton only got 31 plate appearances the rest of that year for the Athletics, and made his way to the Colorado Rockies for the 2009 season, where he again saw very little playing time. This led him to the Hanshin Tigers of NPB, where he became a legend. Not only was Murton one of the best players in NPB during his first season over there in 2010, he broke the single-season hits record, previously held by Ichiro. He finished his first season there with 214 hits and a .349 batting average. Shogo Akiyama has since broken this record, with 216 hits in the 2015 season. The outfielder enjoyed five more fruitful seasons in Japan after 2010, before attempting an unsuccessful MLB comeback with the Cubs in 2016, and then the Tigers in 2017. After that, Murton called it quits for good. Murton was a high-contact player in his time in MLB, as he struck out in just 14.1 percent of his plate appearances for his career. That can be a valuable player, but Murton didn’t add a ton of power, and for someone who was relegated to a corner outfield spot, power hitting is a must. Thus, he struggled to make a major impact in MLB. But through perseverance and a willingness to give it a go somewhere else, Murton was still able to make an impact on baseball somewhere else in the world. That is a great and noteworthy accomplishment. [Ed. note: As was that homer in 2007. I was at that game. It was nuts.] View full article

The Cubs' ace southpaw had a fascinating, two-act 2023 season. Comparing and contrasting his first- and second-half selves can help us understand the whole and feel out the right expectations for 2024. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Despite an impressive close to his 2022 season, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who straight-facedly predicted that Justin Steele would receive Cy Young Award votes in 2023. Sure, he showed that he could have big-league success, but his two-pitch arsenal and lack of elite stuff left many skeptical that his 0.98 ERA in the second half would carry over into the next season. Yet, here we are. Steele cut his walk rate in half, while holding steady in almost every other important statistic en route to finishing fifth in the voting for the National League Cy Young Award. Does this make him a bona fide ace, or did we just witness the best season of the left-hander’s career? Let’s start by taking a look at the numbers behind what was, essentially, a tale of two halves for the Mississippian. Split IP HR/9 K% BB% AVG WHIP BABIP FIP xFIP First Half 91.1 0.39 22.01% 5.16% 0.230 1.06 0.286 2.84 3.86 Second Half 82.0 1.10 27.30% 4.89% 0.272 1.29 0.353 3.22 2.72 Stats Courtesy of FanGraphs Results-wise, this looks like two completely different pitchers. One doesn’t strike a ton of guys out, but manages contact well, giving up just 0.39 HR/9. The .230 batting average against is supported by the good, but not completely unsustainable, .286 BABIP. The second-half pitcher strikes out a lot more opponents, but doesn’t seem to manage contact quite as well. As a reminder, Steele is a truly unique pitcher. According to pitch-tracking data at FanGraphs, Steele was the only qualified pitcher in all of baseball last year to throw only two pitches more than five percent of the time. Some came close: Spencer Strider and Patrick Corbin are mostly fastball and slider pitchers, like Steele, though they at least mix in a changeup to opposite-handed hitters. With Steele, whether you are a righty or a lefty, you know you’re getting a fastball or a slider. Steele succeeds with that arsenal by pitching inside to righties with the fastball, which really behaves like a high-velocity cutter, and then burying the slider down and in to put hitters away. What makes that so tough to hit is that both of those pitches look so similar, yet behave so differently and come in at such different velocities that the hitter typically doesn’t know whether the pitch will break out of the strike zone or stay right in the meat of it, until it’s too late. All of this is to say that a lot of Steele’s success, and lack of hard contact, hinges on his ability to control the fringes of the strike zone. If he leaves a fastball out over the plate, where the hitter doesn’t have to wonder if it’ll break out of the zone, it’s going to get hit. And it goes without saying that a slider (from any pitcher) that is left out over the plate is going to get hit. With that in mind, let’s take a look at Steele’s pitch locations in the first half, compared to the second half: I certainly do not proclaim myself to be a genius; it also doesn’t take a genius to see what is going on there. In the second half, Steele left far too many pitches out over the middle of the plate, where hitters could swing much more freely, rather than nibbling in that fringe area just outside the strike zone. This helps explain the jump in batting average and homers from the first half to the second half, both of which are supported by his hard-hit rate going from 20.9 percent in the first half, to 35.5 percent in the second half. Come September, when every game was a must-win situation for the Cubs, Steele’s Zone rate, per FanGraphs, was 50.8%. That was his highest for any month this season, and would have led all of baseball for the full season. Coincidentally, this was also his worst month of the season by ERA, with a mark of 4.91. This also, in part, explains the jump in strikeouts. Pitching in the zone more often means more strikes, which means more strikeouts. It’s simple math, at that point. Unfortunately, for a pitcher like Steele, sometimes the margin between good and average in baseball is razor-thin, and since he doesn’t have great, raw, swing-and-miss type stuff, the jump in strikeouts, as a result of pitching in the strike zone more often, also coincided with much louder contact. Are his relative struggles late in the season a blip on the radar, or a sign of things to come? If I am being honest, I came away from this exercise more confident in Steele’s projection going forward than I was beforehand. Despite the jump in ERA, Steele’s 2.23 xFIP in September suggests that he may have been the victim of some bad batted-ball luck. His 3.86 xFIP in the first half suggests that he might have gotten lucky to achieve those results. Instead, I’ll pose another question: have we witnessed two different versions of Justin Steele that can both be effective? We’ve seen one who strikes fewer guys out, but limits hard contact and walks so that it becomes very difficult to string several runs together; and one who gives up harder contact, but limits walks and gets enough strikeouts to balance things out. From a raw results perspective, we may not see another season for Justin Steele like this past one. His 30 starts were an unprecedented workload for him, and it’s so difficult for someone without overpowering stuff to pitch to a 3.06 ERA. At the same time, though, Steele’s second-half issues seem very correctable to me. If he can get back to pounding the edges of the zone like he did in the first half, he can become that guy again. Alternatively, he can keep filling up the strike zone like he did in the second half, and we can hope that his luck evens out. Either way, I look forward to seeing what 2024 brings for the ace of the Chicago Cubs. View full article