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There’s nothing baseball fans love more than overreacting to some small piece of data from early in the season. So, let’s do just that! Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images There can be some value in early season statistics. Certain numbers can portend future success, or failure. Kyle Tucker only had two hits in his first 19 plate appearances? That stinks. I also don’t care. I won’t pretend to know for sure what kind of season Tucker will have, however, I am certain that he will finish with a higher batting average than .125. As Billie Joe Armstrong once sang, wake me up when September ends—or, in this case, when April does. Tucker busted right out of his pseudo-funk Saturday, anyway. To me, one figure that is worth monitoring at this point is swing speed. Most everyday players for the Cubs have upwards of 20 competitive swings logged. Swing speed is not a statistic that allows outliers the ability to drag a player’s average swing speed down. Baseball Savant measures this by looking at the top 90 percent of a hitter’s swing speeds. If you look at swing speeds by month for the Cubs last season, almost all players' best and worst months, by swing speed, were within roughly 1 mph of each other. This seems to stay pretty consistent, which is what you'd expect. It's a lot like a pitcher's velocity. If it didn't stabilize quickly, that would be weird. I mention this because Pete Crow-Armstrong is not only leading the Cubs in average swing speed, but increased his average swing speed from 70.6 mph in 2024 to 74.3 mph so far in 2025. His average exit velocity and hard-hit rate have followed suit. All stats courtesy of Baseball Savant: Year Average Bat Speed Fast Swing Rate Hard Hit Rate Average Exit Velocity 2024 70.6 mph 8.0% 36.8% 88.9mph 2025 74.3 mph 38.9% 53.8% 94.0mph Crow-Armstrong did have considerably more variance in his swings last season than most players. His fastest swing speed month was March/April, when he averaged 71.9 mph. His slowest was September/October, when he averaged 69.0 mph. Neither figure touches 74.3 mph, though, and even last April, his fast swing rate was all the way down at 17.5%. Last year, the young center fielder’s average swing speed of 70.6 mph placed him 169th of 214 qualified players. An average swing speed of 74.3 mph would have bumped him up to 28th, alongside players like Bobby Witt, Fernando Tatis, and William Contreras. Why is this important? The returns on exit velocity are well-known at this point. When you hit the ball harder, it goes farther and has a better chance of being a hit. This all starts with swing speed. Swing the bat harder, the ball comes off the bat at a faster speed. For reference, Statcast's definition of a fast swing is any swing that is over 75 mph. According to Mike Petriello in his writeup about this last season, swings over 75 mph produced a .306 batting average and a .603 slugging percentage. Swings slower than that, taken together, produced a .247 batting average and a .371 slugging percentage. This uptick is (potentially) a huge development for a guy the Cubs really need to break out. On the other side of the coin, Seiya Suzuki has an average swing speed of 71.2 mph, which is down from 73.0 mph last season. This, to me, is incredibly concerning, for someone who has suffered from injured obliques, a muscle that is very important to a hitter’s swing, at the beginning of the past two seasons. His average swing speed in March and April of last season (before his injury) was 72.1 mph, which was his lowest month of the season, but still a far cry from the 71.2 mph that it currently sits at. The gap is smaller here, though, and he's trending in the right direction over the last couple of games. Perhaps Suzuki is a guy who really needs some time to warm up. Maybe he isn’t seeing the ball well and isn’t getting off good swings yet. Or maybe PCA stole his powers, like the Monstars in Space Jam. Either way, keep a close eye on the swings that these two get off in the next couple of weeks. Will Crow-Armstrong keep the quicker swings up, and will his performance take off as a result? Will Suzuki’s swings get back up to a more normal pace for him, or will his performance suffer? View full article

The Cubs enter the season with more answers than questions at designated hitter for the first time since its permanent introduction to the National League in 2022. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images I am offering a virtual high five to anyone who can name the Cubs’ Opening Day starter at designated hitter in the first three seasons since the National League adopted the position full-time in 2022. Any takers? You might have gotten 2024 correct. It was Christopher Morel, with Nick Madrigal starting at third base. In 2023, it was Trey Mancini. Remember that disaster? 2022 was Rafael Ortega. This is to say that not only did the Cubs’ acquisition of Kyle Tucker improve the team in right field, but bumping Seiya Suzuki to the presumptive everyday designated hitter, it also improved the team there. The Cubs got a lot of production out of that lineup spot since Suzuki moved over there in the middle of last season, and now enter the season with one of the rosiest projections at that position that they have ever had. Cubs Designated Hitters At A Glance Starter: Seiya Suzuki Backup: Justin Turner Depth: any hitter that Craig Counsell wants to remain in the lineup but wants to give them a day off from playing in the field Cubs fWAR Ranking Last Year: 9th out of 30 Cubs fWAR Projection This Year: 7th out of 30 The Good The good boils down to one person: Suzuki. The Japanese standout has improved in his three seasons in MLB, going from 118 wRC+ in 2022 to 128 in 2023 to 138 this past season. He was always able to hit the ball hard. Baseball Savant said his 91.7 average exit velocity was in the 87th percentile. Last season, he could finally hit the ball in the air much more consistently. His ground ball rate went from 40 percent and 43.1 percent in 2022 and 2023, respectively, to 33.7 percent in 2024. His fly ball rate jumped from 34.4 percent in 2023 to 46.9 percent this past season. Given that he produced a 163 wRC+ and all 21 home runs on fly balls, this was a profitable change for Suzuki. A 138 wRC+ is asking a lot of anyone; however, if he can continue elevating the ball, there’s no reason he can’t be one of the most productive designated hitters in baseball, solidly in the group of guys slotted just behind Shohei Ohtani and Yordan Alvarez. Justin Turner figures to come second in the pecking order after Suzuki. He’ll see plenty of time at DH on days the Cubs want to give any one of Kyle Tucker, Pete Crow-Armstrong, or Ian Happ a day off and slot Suzuki into the outfield somewhere. He’s had an above-average batting line in every season since 2014 and has also taken plenty of plate appearances as a designated hitter lately, so he should be used to it. The Bad Will Suzuki accept the role full-time? His agent, Joel Wolfe, insinuated earlier this offseason that Suzuki was not thrilled with only being a designated hitter. Patrick Mooney of The Athletic has since reported that Craig Counsell and Suzuki have been working through some communication barriers and that Suzuki is ready to do whatever the team needs of him. “My job is to give it my all, so if it is to DH, if it is to play the field, I’ll give it my best.” Will Suzuki play the field enough to remain happy? Will it affect his performance at the plate if he is primarily a designated hitter? The Bottom Line The Cubs are as well positioned at designated hitter as ever. The team combined for -0.8 Fangraphs WAR and a below-league-average batting line from the position in 2022 and 2023. They finally turned it into a position of strength last season when Suzuki started playing there every day, and on top of that, they have another guy in Turner, who should be an above-average hitter to back him up. I am an optimist; I am not particularly worried about how Suzuki will adapt to being a DH daily. He only played 73 games in the outfield last season, and his offensive performance did not suffer. Injuries and days off will happen. There’s no reason he can’t be rotated into left or right field every week to keep Tucker or Happ off their feet. Suzuki even played center field in an exhibition game this week, which our own Matthew Trueblood is optimistic about. Suzuki can continue to do what he has done since coming to MLB: designated hitter figures to finally be a position of strength for the Cubs, rather than a position where they roll the dice on a particular matchup they feel good about on any given day. View full article

The 2025 Chicago Cubs have a lot of candidates to break camp as the team’s fifth starter. Who’s the current favorite? Who can seize the spot with a strong spring? The fifth spot in the Cubs’ rotation was a huge weak spot in the 2024 season. Despite an encouraging 2023 season, a second decline came fast for Kyle Hendricks just one season later. In 24 starts, he posted a 6.27 ERA. Those 24 starts (and the fistful that went to other hurlers as the team scrambled to solve the problem) were low-hanging fruit for Jed Hoyer to pluck and improve the team in 2025. He’s certainly given himself options. Shota Imanaga, Justin Steele, and Jameson Taillon all return to provide stability at the front of the rotation. All signs point to Matthew Boyd being the fourth starter, with Craig Counsell recently saying that they are “preparing for 32 starts” from him, according to The Athletic—even if that number is obviously a bit optimistic. This leaves an abundance of candidates (some of whom successfully started games for the Cubs last season) to take that fifth spot. Of course, it might take all of these dudes to get through 162 starts, but we cannot project that. For now, let’s take a look at each one and what they can do to start the season in the rotation. The Favorites Javier Assad He will be the team’s fifth starter because… he has been there and done that with the Cubs. Assad made 29 starts with the Cubs last season and posted a 3.73 ERA. He made 10 starts in 2023 and posted a 3.02 ERA. What’s the catch? He also posted a 4.64 FIP in 2024 and 4.29 mark in 2023, suggesting that some regression is coming. Personally, I still have no idea what to make of Assad. Is he the type of guy who can consistently beat his FIP by over a run? Or is he a ticking time bomb waiting to explode? Regardless, I think he’s earned the right to keep showing what he can do. He won’t be the team’s fifth starter because… he’s injured. He came down with an oblique strain early in camp. According to Maddie Lee of the Chicago Sun-Times, he has resumed throwing. The delay is still enough to put his status for Opening Day in doubt. What to watch for this spring… will he see game action? Is he healthy? Colin Rea He will be the team’s fifth starter because… he has to start the season on the big-league roster. Unlike Assad and many of the other pitchers we will be naming later, Rea cannot be optioned to Triple-A Iowa. Unless he’s hurt, Rea will be on the big-league roster, either as a long man in the bullpen or in the rotation. He won’t be the team’s fifth starter because… he has the lowest ceiling of any of their options. We know what Rea is. He’ll reliably give you five innings (while allowing two or three runs) just about every time he toes the rubber. There’s value in that. The Cubs certainly would have taken that from Hendricks last season. He’s also 34 and, unlike other options, probably doesn’t have a future with the Cubs past this year. He was signed, specifically, to be a depth piece, while a lot of these other options continue to develop. What to watch for this spring… will he start or come out of the bullpen? I am not sure I’d put too much stock into either, but it might give us a clue into what role the team envisions for him off the bat. The Prospects Jordan Wicks He will be the team’s fifth starter because… he gets back to what he does well. Marquee Sports Network’s Andy Martinez reports that Wicks spent the offseason working on his conditioning, rather than his strength. This comes after a season when his velocity was up, but he struggled to remain healthy. He won’t be the team’s fifth starter because… he still has work to do. Wicks still needs to figure out who he is as a pitcher. Is he going to chase more velocity and strikeouts, like he did last season, or is he going to be a guy who pitches to contact, but limits hard contact? What to watch for this spring… pitch development beyond the changeup. For more on Wicks, read Brandon Glick’s piece on him from last week. Ben Brown He will be the team’s fifth starter because… he has the highest ceiling. Brown dazzled in eight starts last season, putting up a 3.23 ERA and a 28.3% strikeout rate. He might have the best raw stuff in the organization, among those with an iota of a chance to start. He won’t be the team’s fifth starter because… he needs a third pitch. Brown features a fastball that he throws at 96 mph and beyond, and a curveball (or death ball, if you will) that is as devastating as any. Few pitchers can succeed as starters with only two pitches. Can Brown? Can he find a third pitch to mix in? Or is he a shutdown reliever, rather than a starter? What to watch for this spring… did he spend the offseason developing a third pitch? The Longshots Caleb Kilian Kilian, the only remaining piece from the Kris Bryant trade, has struggled to combine the ability to miss bats with the ability to consistently find the strike zone. If he makes any starts for the Cubs this year, it’s either a bad sign for the team, or a sign that he has made a huge, unexpected stride in his development, both physically and mentally. Cody Poteet Poteet, the return for Cody Bellinger, saw his strikeout rate jump in the minor leagues for the Yankees last season. Can that continue, or is he a guy who will have to pitch to contact? He has two option years remaining, so he likely starts the season in Iowa. His first spring outing did, at least, show an intriguing uptick in velocity. Cade Horton Horton, the team’s top pitching prospect, is not starting the season with the big-league team, so stop dreaming. He has one objective this season: stay healthy. If he does so, he'll eventually turn up in Chicago. Brad Keller and Chris Flexen There is a non-zero chance one of these guys gets named the fifth starter, even if it be extremely remote. If either particularly impresses in spring training and the Cubs don’t want to risk losing them to another team, they might have to be assigned to the 40-man roster and make the team for Opening Day. Otherwise, they’ll have the right to opt out (at some point; minor-league deals vary in when and how many times a player has that chance) and test free agency. Both have previously found success in their big-league careers, but both are several years removed from it. That's nine names for one job—or two, if the team uses a six-man rotation. It's wonderful to have that degree of depth, even if in a perfect world, they would have more strength above this group. If the spring doesn't involve significantly more attrition (already, they've seen Assad delayed and Brandon Birdsell sidelined, so don't get too hopeful just yet), they should enter the regular season with ample options to manage the long grind of the 162-game campaign. View full article

The Cubs' run prevention has been strange and uneven over the last four years. But there might be signs of a corner being turned. Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images While browsing through some stats the other day, I came across something I found interesting. Allow me to rattle off six teams, and I’ll let you decide what they all have in common: Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Guardians, New York Yankees, and Seattle Mariners. You maybe haven’t thought of the one specific thing that they have in common, but I’d bet you thought something about how all of those teams have typically had pretty good pitching staffs lately—and you’d be correct. While those aren’t necessarily the six best pitching staffs in MLB, you have five teams who have routinely shown they can cobble a bullpen together, plus the Mariners, who have a tree of young starting pitchers that they somehow continue to pluck and eat richly from. Those are also the six teams that have most outperformed their FIP from the 2021 season through the 2024 season, according to FanGraphs. I bring this up because right after the Mariners on that list are the Chicago Cubs: Team FIP ERA FIP-ERA LAD 3.85 3.45 0.40 HOU 3.94 3.60 0.34 MIL 4.01 3.68 0.33 CLE 4.09 3.84 0.25 NYY 3.94 3.70 0.24 SEA 3.94 3.78 0.16 CHC 4.35 4.19 0.16 TOR 4.13 3.97 0.16 TBR 3.83 3.69 0.14 SDP 3.98 3.87 0.11 There are a few other things to note when reviewing the full chart above. One is that, while the Cubs do make this top 10, there is a significant drop off following the first team, the third team, and then the fifth team. The Cubs come in seventh, but the Dodgers have still outperformed their FIP by more than double what the Cubs have done. Second is that the Cubs have the highest ERA and FIP of this group, by quite a bit. They have the lowest strikeout rate, too, which surely hasn’t helped. This relates to the third thing, which is that all of these teams have made the playoffs (in most cases, more than once) in our timeframe—except for the Cubs. Defense is likely partly the cause for this, but not all of it. FIP assumes batted balls turn into outs at an average rate. A good defense will turn them into outs at an above-average rate, naturally. The Mariners have not necessarily rated as a particularly good defensive team during the period of this study, though. The Texas Rangers have been rated as one of the best defensive teams and have actually underperformed their FIP. While good defense can help, I don’t think it’s our only variable here. The other thought that popped into my head was whether or not this was just the Javier Assad effect. Here’s a list of the eight Cubs pitchers who have surpassed 200 total innings in the last four seasons, and you’ll notice that though Assad is doing lots of heavy lifting, he’s certainly not the only suspect: Player FIP ERA FIP-ERA Kyle Hendricks 4.62 4.80 -0.18 Justin Steele 3.42 3.24 0.18 Jameson Taillon 4.25 4.03 0.23 Drew Smyly 4.70 4.25 0.45 Javier Assad 4.49 3.40 1.19 Marcus Stroman 3.67 3.73 -0.06 Keegan Thompson 4.51 3.64 0.87 Adbert Alzolay 4.23 3.96 0.27 I subscribe to the belief that data should mostly tell you what you already think it will. If I look at a random hitting metric and it tells me that Ian Happ, a good hitter but certainly not best in baseball territory, is number one, I’ll know it might not correlate perfectly with overall offensive production. If it tells me that Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Juan Soto are the best at a certain thing, then I’ll know it’s probably pretty important to being a good hitter. When the Dodgers, Brewers, and Astros flow to the top of a list, this tells me that there might be something to being able to consistently outperform your FIP as a team. This is mostly a list of teams that maximize the pitchers they have in-house. This isn’t to say that there can’t be surprises. The Cubs would qualify as a surprise here, at least to me. I am not nearly qualified enough to dig super deep into the data and figure out why, specifically, each of these teams is listed here, though I may try at a later date with more time. All of that said, given the teams that the Cubs are listed with here, I believe it shows that they are doing something right with their pitching development. It frustrates me that they haven’t turned it into more team success, like every other team listed there has. It frustrates me that they can’t marry the ability to turn batted balls into outs with the ability to run a high strikeout rate. That would certainly lower that team ERA into the same range as the rest of the group. It also encourages me. These four seasons encompass the Jed Hoyer era, and they come just a couple of years after the pitch lab officially opened, marking an increased emphasis on internal development. Or, maybe they have just been getting very lucky. Either way, this will be something to watch during the 2025 season. View full article

In lots of cases, a free agent might eschew slightly more money to sign with one team instead of another. Usually, they do it because they love to win. But to prove they're a place where players can come to win, the Cubs also need to spend more money. Image courtesy of © Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images In case you missed it, Roki Sasaki is headed to the Los Angeles Dodgers. This news came out just a few days after it was reported that the Cubs were not on the final list of contenders for the Japanese ace. As a Cubs fan, or even just as a baseball fan, this stings. And it should. The rich get richer, and this time, the Dodgers didn’t even have to hand out a historic contract in order to get there. Consider that an insult, added to our injury. For those unfamiliar, because Sasaki was posted to MLB prior to his 25th birthday, he was considered an international amateur free agent, meaning he will make the rookie salary for 2025 and be under team control for six seasons. He will receive a $6.5 million signing bonus. However, just about any other team could have, and probably would have, matched that signing bonus. Basically, his decision had nothing to do with money, and everything to do with, well, everything else. Sasaki going to the Dodgers felt like a fait accompli as soon as it was reported that he would be posted. Episode 2272 of the fantastic podcast Effectively Wild did a good job stating some of the reasons why. In the episode, hosts Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley were discussing Sasaki going to the Dodgers, and Rowley articulated something that I had been pondering, so I’ll quote her here: “It goes to show that money can help to secure talent, but it doesn’t just end with the individual player that it helps you sign. It creates an understanding of your want as an organization. What do [the Dodgers] want? They want to go win a World Series. Again. They are not satisfied with one.” In addition to the fantastic players (like Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Shohei Ohtani) whom you typically get to roster by spending big in free agency, you also signal to everyone else that you’re serious about contending for the World Series every single season. The fact of the matter is that the Cubs have not been signaling this of late. Following a 2020 season in which they won the NL Central, the Cubs trimmed payroll by non-tendering fan favorite Kyle Schwarber and trading Yu Darvish. They went from third in payroll, to 14th, according to Spotrac. Team performance, unsurprisingly, also suffered. The team has not been back in the playoffs since. The payroll didn’t bounce back up into the top 10 until this past season, but currently, the Cubs sit 12th in projected 2025 payroll. The Dodgers, on the other hand, have consistently invested resources to maintain a very good baseball team. Following a World Series in 2020, they signed Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer to try and fortify their rotation. That, of course, didn’t work out, but that was no sweat for them (at least from a baseball perspective). They traded for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner at the 2021 trade deadline, then (following a disappointing showing in the playoffs) signed Freeman that offseason. Last offseason, of course, they brought in Ohtani, Yamamoto, Tyle Glasnow, and others, and they have maintained a similar level of aggressiveness this offseason, despite now coming off of two World Series championships in the past five seasons. They signed Blake Snell and Michael Conforto. They brought back Teoscar Hernández. They were serious players for Juan Soto. The Cubs, meanwhile, did not even engage the superstar right fielder, and seem continually content to play in the middle tier of free agents. They’ve opted for guys like Marcus Stroman instead of Kevin Gausman. Dansby Swanson instead of Trea Turner. Jameson Taillon instead of Kodai Senga. Shota Imanaga instead of Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Some of those have worked out for the Cubs, but I’d argue the other options still offer a higher ceiling. Also consider for one second what the consistent, year-in and year-out yearning for value contracts from a big-market team communicates to players and agents: that you’re willing to win, but not at the expense of giving a player what you deem to be too expensive of a contract. This doesn’t even touch on the developmental gap between the Dodgers and the Cubs. Our own Matthew Trueblood recently touched on the necessity for the Cubs to get everything possible out of their players at the major league level. Recall Ryan Brasier, Anthony Banda, and Evan Phillips. None were drafted by the Dodgers, and all were acquired for basically nothing. They combined to pitch 23 ⅔ innings in the playoffs this past season (over 16 percent of the total innings that the Dodgers played in), and did so to the tune of a 2.28 ERA. Last offseason, the Cubs landed Michael Busch from the Dodgers in exchange for Jackson Ferris and Zyhir Hope. Both Ferris and Hope have seen their prospect status explode since entering the Dodgers organization. I am not here to relitigate that trade. The Cubs acquired someone to fill a position of need, and Busch had a very good rookie season for them. With that said, Ferris had some terrifying quotes about the difference in coaching between the two organizations. “I just feel like coaching is a big thing. You wouldn’t expect coaching to be too different in the minor leagues or big leagues with teams, but it is a big difference," Ferris said. "When I first got traded over to the Dodgers, just kind of critique and fine-tuning little things with my mechanics even when I was younger. Which the Cubs didn’t want to mess with, since I was young. Now that we got to fine-tune some of those things, it really let me take off throughout the year.” While he stops short of completely calling out the Cubs, I don’t think it takes much to read between the lines there: a former Cubs prospect feels he is getting much better coaching in his new organization. That is concerning. On paper, it feels like the Cubs were a decent fit for Sasaki. They play in a big market. They currently employ Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, two notable Japanese players. They would have employed him for very cheap, which is right up their alley. You know they were all-in. Unfortunately, with contract offers all being equal, why wouldn’t a player want to play for an organization that has shown that it takes winning seriously, and is willing to continually invest resources to ensure a winning product is on the field? An organization that always seems to get the most out of all of their players? I’d certainly pick the Dodgers. Wouldn’t you? View full article

Pete Crow-Armstrong’s ability on the basepaths is incredibly valuable. Now, thanks to Baseball Savant, we have an easier way to quantify exactly how valuable it is, and precisely where that value is coming from. Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-Imagn Images Released just last month, Baseball Savant now has what they are calling the Baserunning Run Value Leaderboard. The headliner within this leaderboard is the Baserunning Runs metric, which combines both runs added via stolen bases and those added via extra bases taken, to give us one all-encompassing metric for how many runs a player’s baserunning was worth. There are several Cubs-related nuggets within this leaderboard, and I don’t think any should be all that surprising. Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson are both very good baserunners. They fall among the top 30 in baseball in Baserunning Runs. The North Siders don’t really employ any poor baserunners, outside the catcher's spot, with Michael Busch and Seiya Suzuki being the only two Cubs to have a negative number (and just barely so): the two of them were each worth -1 baserunning runs in 2024. Then, there’s Pete Crow-Armstrong. He ranked as the ninth-most valuable baserunner in baseball, adding 6 Baserunning Runs. Six of the eight players in front of him had significantly more plate appearances than did Crow-Armstrong, thus giving them more of opportunities to accumulate that value. Any way you slice it, he is already one of the best baserunners in baseball. There are a couple more interesting and fun nuggets regarding the rookie’s baserunning within this leaderboard. The shocking headline here is: Crow-Armstrong might still have room to improve. As previously mentioned, the Baserunning Runs framework adds your runs via extra bases taken on balls in play to your runs via stolen bases and advancements on balks. Baseball Savant allows you to see the split. Crow-Armstrong was worth four runs via stolen bases, which was eighth-best in baseball; and one run via extra bases taken, which put him 59th, pretty low for a speedster. Corbin Carroll led MLB in runs via extra bases taken, with nine. That put him three runs ahead of the next-best player, which was Jarren Duran. According to sprint speed, Crow-Armstrong is just as fast as (if not faster than) Carroll. We can see that the Diamondbacks’ star tried to advance on 53 percent of his opportunities, when the average runner would have tried to advance 34 percent of the time. Crow-Armstrong tried to advance 44 percent of the time, when the average runner would have tried to advance 32 percent of the time. He only made one out on those attempts, and it was a situation where his third base coach sent him, and it still took a pretty perfect throw to get him out: WmVCYkdfVjBZQUhRPT1fQkFoV0FnWUZVZ1lBRFZzQVVBQUFWQWRVQUFBQ1ZRQUFCbElNQVFNQlVGVURCbEZm.mp4 Arguably, there is room for the young speedster to be more aggressive when it comes to advancing an extra base on hits and other batted balls. With that being said: He is incredibly aggressive when it comes to stealing bases. We all know Crow-Armstrong was incredibly effective at stealing bases in 2024, going 27 for 30. It’s fascinating that we now can see why he was so effective. One additional inclusion on these leaderboards tells us how large (or small) a runner’s lead was. Pete Crow-Armstrong led all of baseball in his average distance from a base on any plausible stolen base attempt, at a pitcher’s first move. He was, on average, 14 feet away from the base. At a pitcher’s release, he was (on average) 18.7 feet from the base, which was second in baseball behind only Mookie Betts. Look at how he dances away from the base on this steal from May, getting such a bold jump that the catcher had no chance to get him. RFhQa3FfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlZRRlZWUlZYZ01BQVZWUlV3QUFBUUJXQUZsUVZGVUFCRkVNQ1FNTkJsZGNWVkVF.mp4 Basically, he gets the largest leads in baseball. When you combine Crow-Armstrong’s speed with the ability to get such a great head start on his way to the next base, you get a fantastic base stealer. For much of the season, he looked essentially unstoppable on the bases, and with the Cubs' reshuffled baserunning instruction group teaching him the art of the "momentum lead," he could become even more lethal in 2025. Not for nothing did they hire the man who created the website stealbases.com. Feel free to dig into the leaderboards yourself. What sticks out? View full article

Though the team's latest free-agent move was low-profile, it could be high-impact. Caleb Thielbar addresses an area of somewhat urgent need for the Cubs. Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images You might not have noticed it as you celebrated the holidays, but last week, the Cubs signed Caleb Thielbar to a one-year deal worth $2.75 million. This didn’t generate many headlines, but it addresses something that the team struggled with after the trade deadline. On Jul. 30, 2024, the Cubs traded Mark Leiter Jr. to the New York Yankees. Just three weeks later, they officially cut ties with Héctor Neris. Though getting rid of both pitchers made sense, the two veteran relievers were first and second on the team in left-handed batters faced out of the bullpen. They were both effective when they faced lefties, too. Left-handed hitters posted a .241 wOBA against Leiter, and a .307 wOBA against Neris. As a reminder, a wOBA of about .320 is considered average. Sure enough, the bullpen’s performance against lefties struggled without the presence of Leiter and Neris. From the beginning of the season through Jul. 31, lefties posted a .290 wOBA against Cubs relievers, good for eighth in baseball. After that, they had a .333 wOBA, 22nd-best. Looking at a list of Cubs relievers who faced more than 15 lefties from August onward is not promising, either. Player Lefties Faced wOBA allowed Nate Pearson 49 .223 Drew Smyly 43 .336 Ethan Roberts 38 .373 Porter Hodge 37 .259 Tyson Miller 34 .270 Keegan Thompson 29 .337 Jorge López 24 .310 Julian Merryweather 22 .417 Héctor Neris 15 .386 Shawn Armstrong 15 .306 Pearson, Hodge, and Miller were good, but those guys were good against almost everyone and are probably bookmarked for higher-leverage usage, rather than exclusively against pockets of lefties. Everyone else was either bad against lefties or (in the cases of Jorge López and Shawn Armstrong) is no longer with the team. The Cubs have tried hard to make Luke Little happen, but he needs to show he can find the strike zone often enough before anyone counts on him for much of anything. Even more than that, perhaps, he has to prove he can stay healthy enough to contribute; he missed the entire second half with a shoulder strain. There just isn’t a reliable left-handed pitcher out of the bullpen on this team. That’s where Thielbar comes in, and I am convinced that is why they took a flier on Rob Zastryzny as well. Both of them are, of course, southpaws. Here are both of their career numbers against lefties: Player Lefties Faced wOBA allowed Rob Zastryzny 113 .264 Caleb Thielbar 554 .261 Thielbar is the much more reliable of the two, which is why he got a modest but significant guarantee in free agency. He has held his own against righties for his career, as they have a .307 wOBA against him. Zastryzny has allowed a .353 wOBA to righties, and Thielbar’s presence on the roster probably makes Zastryzny's moot. I imagine the Cubs will try to sneak him through waivers as soon as they require a spot on the 40-man roster. In short, Caleb Thielbar is not the bullpen ace we were all hoping for. Even so, he fortifies a major weakness in the relief corps. He’s a lefty who can reliably get left-handed hitters out. Assuming Jed Hoyer isn’t done adding to this group, this was a really good get. View full article

After 20 years of weirdly pretending that one of the best players in franchise history doesn’t exist, it’s about time the Chicago Cubs, and Sammy Sosa, begin to right this wrong. Image courtesy of © RVR Photos-Imagn Images In case you missed it, Sammy Sosa issued a public apology for his steroid use last week. In response, team Chairman Tom Ricketts released a statement stating that he planned on inviting Sosa to this offseason’s Cubs Convention. As someone who was born in the 1990s, I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of a time where we can celebrate the memories that Sosa gave to all of us. In so many ways, Sosa is the reason that I became a Cubs fan and, therefore, a baseball fan. I don’t think I recall any of the magical 1998 home run chase between him and Mark McGwire. Nor do I recall any of the team’s run to the playoffs that season. What I do recall is that I owned this CD, and that I listened to that thing front to back during summer days, probably until something like 2007. Chock-full of Sosa home run calls by the great Pat Hughes, that CD was to me what the latest Beatles album would have been to most children growing up in the 1960s. Almost all of my pre-2003 Cubs memories are exclusively of Sosa. I don’t specifically recall the first baseball game I ever attended. I can’t say that I ever had the poetic experience of smelling the freshly cut grass or anything. I do specifically recall attending one game when Sosa was on the team, though. My uncle took me. They were playing the Cardinals. I don’t recall whether the Cubs won or lost, or how Sammy even did that day. But I made a sign for him. “Go Sammy” was all that it said. I think just being able to see him in person was all I really cared about. I’m sure the home runs helped, but he also had such an aura about him. He sprinted out to right field before every inning. Growing up playing baseball, I sprinted out to my position in the field every inning. Because Sammy did it. In the era before bat flips, the way he hopped out of the batter’s box when he knew he hit a home run was loaded with charisma. I wouldn’t have dared try that one growing up, for risk of hearing about it from my dad. I didn’t hit home runs anyway, so it didn’t matter much. But you best bet I dreamed about doing it. At some point along the way, I acquired his autobiography, and devoured it almost nightly. As something like a six-year-old at the time, I don’t think I comprehended a single word in there. It didn’t matter. It had Sammy Sosa on the cover. Sammy was so intertwined with my identity at such a young age that I even remember grown adults asking me about him. “Hey Matt, how did Sammy Sosa do today?” Of course, I always knew the answer. I can recall the 2003 playoff run with, I think, pretty good detail. One hallmark memory I will always have is of Sammy’s game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the NLCS. I was jumping around the living room with my brothers. The game was now tied, but this was undoubtedly different because Sammy hit it. The anticipation of the plate appearance culminating in the exact thing my eight-year-old brain was dreaming he would do made it all the more exciting. What’s funny is that I constantly have to remind myself that the Cubs went on to lose that game. I can recall this home run with clear detail, but not even the result of the game: Sosa was and is an imperfect human being, and that is a part of the legacy, too. He played during an imperfect period in baseball history—ne that I hope won’t be entirely forgotten or distorted, but that’s another conversation. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire both coached in MLB after their careers. Álex Rodríguez is part of baseball media. It’s not unprecedented for the water to flow under the bridge. Fandom is irrational. We all remember the way every one of his home runs made us feel. All 545 of them. They did happen, whether Tom Ricketts likes it or not. They were, for better or worse, my childhood, and my birth as a Cubs fan. Not acknowledging them in any form or fashion is, to put it mildly, insulting to those of us who were there for them. The Cubs welcoming him back is, I hope, the first step in all of us being able to reminisce about those days more freely, and to eventually lose the need for our preambles and caveats—not because they'll cease to matter, but because we'll all know them well enough to understand that they aren't the point of every Sosa conversation. Today, my wife is pregnant with our first child. If I’m lucky, the kid will like baseball. Without a doubt, the first stories I’ll share with them will be of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester, and the rest of the 2016 team. Immediately after that, though, will be Slammin’ Sammy. View full article

As we all wait for the Cubs to make a move to acquire some more pitching depth, the doldrums of the offseason approach. We’re going to try a new series to get us through some of the slower baseball news periods of the year. Image courtesy of © Daniel Shirey-Imagn Images Exploring different "what-if" scenarios is not a unique idea, but this was somewhat inspired by the Disney+ series that explores the ripple effects of small decisions or actions within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, in this series, we’ll be looking at small decisions or actions in Chicago Cubs history, and how it might have drastically changed a future outcome for the team. I don’t have as good of a voice as Jeffrey Wright, who narrates the Marvel series for Disney, so you’ll just have to deal with my writing instead. My approach with each counterfactual will be to explore the few years right afterward, to get us all into the right frame of mind, then pose some questions about the continued ramifications of a decision. For some of these (today's included), I could write 50,000 words on the continuing effects of something, so I’ll have to cut it off somewhere. Feel free to let me know if you have any future ideas for the series, what you think of the format, or if you loved or hated it, in the comments. The date is Jul. 23, 2012. Ryan Dempster, having pitched to a 2.25 ERA in 104 innings to that point in that first year, is one of the hottest starting pitchers available on the trade market. Keith Law reported that Dempster was headed to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for Randall Delgado, who was a top-100 prospect in baseball before that season. Dempster blocked the trade with his 10-and-five rights, which allow any player with at least 10 years of service time and five uninterrupted years of tenure with their current club to block any trade. Check out an entire recounting of that day, and everything that was reported, at Bleacher Nation. Dempster, for his part, later denied that was the case. Regardless, though, the damage was done. Dempster was dealt to the Texas Rangers later that month. In return, the Cubs received fringe top-100 prospect Christian Villanueva and a little-known minor-league pitcher by the name of Kyle Hendricks. We all know what happened after that. But what if Dempster never vetoed the trade to the Braves? Let’s explore that world for a bit. The Cubs gave Randall Delgado a long runway to succeed as a starting pitcher through the rest of 2012 and for the entirety of the 2013 season. It just wasn’t working out. After posting a 4.99 FIP and -0.1 fWAR in 116 ⅓ innings in 2013, the team slotted him into the bullpen for the 2014 season, where he finally found a decent home for himself. His fastball velocity ticked up, and so did his ability to miss bats. Still, this wasn’t the value that the team hoped they’d get for Dempster. Heading into the 2015 season, the Cubs were desperate for starting pitching help. Jake Arrieta slotted in as the ace after an impressive 2014 season. The team signed Jon Lester and Jason Hammel to fortify the rotation, but beyond those three, the North Siders were banking on Travis Wood bouncing back and Tsuyoshi Wada continuing a strong showing, after he pitched to the tune of a 3.25 ERA in 13 starts to close the 2014 season. Wada and Wood both pitched admirably, but failed to give the team much length. The Cubs made the playoffs with 93 wins, but were dispatched by the New York Mets in the NLCS when the pitching staff ran out of gas. Heading into that offseason, Theo Epstein was clear about where he needed to fortify the team: the starting rotation. Lester, Arrieta, and Hammel were a decent front three, and Wada and Wood performed admirably behind them. However, there wasn’t a ton of depth there. He signed John Lackey to a short-term deal, two years and $32 million. He knew he could rely on him, and had a good relationship with him dating back to their days together in Boston. Epstein also knew he couldn’t let Dexter Fowler go. He was unsure of Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler in left and right field, respectively, so he needed someone he could rely on, and he needed to lock them up ASAP. The Cubs agreed to a 3-year, $55-million deal with Fowler early in free agency, as well as a 4-year, $56-million deal with Ben Zobrist to provide veteran leadership. There was still some room in the budget for an ace, and while David Price and Zack Greinke were out of the team’s price range, there was common ground to be found with Johnny Cueto, with whom Zobrist had just won a World Series with in Kansas City. The Cubs and Cueto agreed to a six-year, $145-million deal. The Cubs' outfield depth was tested early on with an injury to Schwarber, but plate appearances from the likes of Javier Báez, Matt Sczcur, and Chris Coghlan were good enough, given the excellence of the rest of the lineup. Cueto was rock solid for the Cubs in Year One, earning down-ballot Cy Young votes with a 2.79 ERA and 4.9 fWAR. Behind him, a great season from Lester, and a worse but still effective Arrieta, the Cubs cruised to the NL Central crown and an MLB-best 101 regular-season wins. To the playoffs they went… From here, it’s really hard to continue to estimate the ramifications of this decision. Cueto accumulated 4.9 fWAR in 2016, which, believe it or not, was better than Hendricks’s mark of 4.2. By this logic, the Cubs would have been slightly better on that side of things. I would argue that not having Jason Heyward would have hurt more than his 1 fWAR would suggest, given the early-season injury to Schwarber and the frequent unavailability of Soler. As ineffective as he was that season, an available, major-league-caliber body helped tremendously. Obviously, too, Heyward would not have been available to give his legendary speech during Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. Would the Cubs still have won it all? Without a doubt, beyond 2016, the Cubs would have been worse. Cueto accumulated 3.5 fWAR through the remainder of his contract with the Giants, which ended in 2021. For the purposes of this exercise, I assumed the Cubs also would have given him six years. It would have been just as much of an albatross as Heyward’s contract, who was worth 6.8 fWAR from 2017-2021, though the Cubs gave him an eight-year deal, two years more than the term for Cueto. Hendricks was worth 13 fWAR during that same time frame. As bad as we all thought the state of the Cubs’ starting rotation was during the 2018 and 2019 seasons, it would have been considerably worse. The team’s run of success, which really only lasted through one more season, probably comes to an end even sooner. This all dates back to Ryan Dempster’s decision to veto a trade to Atlanta that, at the time, seemed like a better return than the trade with Texas. While the Cubs may have still won that World Series in 2016, we already know that they did win the World Series 2016 in this timeline. I’m comfortable with that. As they say, sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. View full article

This deal did not fall out of a coconut tree. It exists in the context of all in which it lives, and what came before it. Image courtesy of © Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images Jed Hoyer and the Chicago Cubs have finally done it. After several years of accumulating prospects and patiently sitting out free-agent bidding for certain sluggers, some chips have finally been placed into the middle of the table with the trade acquisition of Kyle Tucker. Let’s give credit where it’s due. While the move for Tucker was a no-brainer, getting to that point involved a series of shrewd moves from Hoyer’s front office. I am sure you’re familiar with the terms of the deal by now, but just in case: the Cubs received their new right fielder from the Houston Astros in exchange for Isaac Paredes, Hayden Wesneski, and Cam Smith. Paredes, it should be noted, wasn’t even a Cub five months back, and frankly, I really don’t think this deal gets done without his presence in it. Rewinding a bit, I am sure you’re familiar with the Paredes trade, too. On Jul. 24, the Cubs traded Christoper Morel, Ty Johnson, and Hunter Bigge to the Tampa Bay Rays for Paredes. At the time, this was a controversial trade, and it might still be to some. Morel is oozing with potential, with a lightning-quick bat and high exit velocities. Beyond that, he was a fan favorite. Every one of his plate appearances begged for your attention. He excited Cubs fans in ways they hadn’t been excited since the 2021 trade of Javier Báez. The sad reality, though, is that Morel just wasn’t all that productive a player. According to FanGraphs, he finished his career on the North Side with a 108 wRC+ and 3.1 WAR in 1,275 plate appearances. That comes out to about 1.5 WAR per 162 games. He had no defensive position and was an absolute disaster at third base when the Cubs tried him there full-time. While he was able to notch the high exit velocities mentioned above, it typically came with a high strikeout rate. Though he did cut back on the strikeouts a bit in 2024, a drop in those noted exit velocities came along with it. All of that said, Morel has potential, but it was clear he was never going to reach it with the Cubs. If they were serious about contending this year, they couldn’t afford to keep letting him work through his mistakes at third base while also posting a below-average batting line. Hoyer did the sensible thing and traded him for a better player, in Paredes. It has since been reported that the Astros were pushing hard to trade for Paredes at the deadline, as well. Whether Hoyer knew it or not, not only would Paredes give the Cubs more security at third base in 2025, but he would also have more value to other teams in an attempt to trade for a star player. This trade does not happen if the Cubs are offering Morel instead of Paredes, who is an absolutely perfect fit to pull a million (rough estimate) fly-ball home runs into the Crawford Boxes in Houston. The inclusion of Bigge and Johnson is not nothing. It should be noted that Bigge was effective in 14 innings of work with Tampa Bay after the trade, and Johnson is a legitimate (though not a top) prospect. But if that is the cost of upgrading from Morel to Paredes, I am doing that every time. This brings me to Wesneski. The Cubs got the Texas native from the Yankees in exchange for Scott Effross at the trade deadline in 2022. While Wesneski hasn’t quite developed into the pitcher many had hoped after his brief debut with the Cubs in 2022, he can still be a decent innings eater for a lot of teams. The thing with the Cubs is that they have a team full of guys who can be decent innings eaters, and a lot of them have shown more ability than Wesneski already. I still have no clue if Javier Assad is good, but he now has almost 300 innings of outperforming his FIP under his belt. Jordan Wicks and Ben Brown both have more prospect pedigree. Clearly, the Cubs see something in Matthew Boyd and Nate Pearson. This is all before factoring in other moves to be made this offseason, where the Cubs are apparently still trying to acquire another starting pitcher. Much ss Morel could yet blossom into a solid regular, Wesneski could turn into a decent pitcher. If he can figure out a way to get lefties out, his slider is good enough to keep taking care of righties. But the innings just weren’t going to be there for him on the Cubs. Effross, it should be noted, has thrown 16 innings in three injury-riddled seasons with the Yankees. As with Morel and Paredes, I don’t think the Astros are doing this deal if it’s Effross and not Wesneski. To wrap this up, if you trace back far enough, the Cubs essentially traded Christopher Morel, Ty Johnson, Hunter Bigge, Scott Effross, and Cam Smith for Kyle Tucker. They were able to do that because Hoyer pulled the trigger on preceding deals at the correct moments. Many people, myself included, have been critical of Hoyer for a lot of reasons. For this, he deserves props. View full article

What four starting pitchers each started at least 30 games for the Cubs in both 2015 and 2016? Of course, most will probably get Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and Kyle Hendricks right off the bat. While I did manage to get the fourth pitcher, it took me a beat or two longer than the other three. Jason Hammel started 31 games for the Cubs in 2015 and followed that up by starting 30 games in 2016. That trivia question spurred a few thoughts. First, those mid-2010s Cubs teams were incredibly fortunate to have as few injuries as they did, particularly on the pitching side. While we are in a slightly different era of pitching usage, Justin Steele is the only Cub to start 30 games for the team in any of the past three seasons, and that was in 2023 when he started exactly 30 games. The second thought is that Jason Hammel quickly became a forgettable member of the 2016 Cubs. This is likely because he did not appear in a single game during the team's 2016 World Series run. Despite that, I thought it was a good opportunity to pay respect to what he brought to the Cubs during his time with the club. Before signing with the Cubs before the 2014 season, Hammel had a 4.80 ERA from his debut season in 2006 until his 2013 season with the Orioles, with a stop in Colorado between. He was brought in on a one-year, $6 million contract to eat innings on a team desperately in need of a reliable veteran. Hammel was more than reliable for the Cubs in 2014. After pitching to the tune of a 2.98 ERA and 3.19 FIP in 108 ⅔ innings, he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, along with Jeff Samardzija, on July 5 of that season. In return, the Cubs netted Billy McKinney, Dan Straily, and Addison Russell. Both the Cubs and Hammel enjoyed their time together so much that they decided to run it back. The two sides agreed to a two-year, $20 million contract before the 2015 season. The right-hander continued to provide stability behind the incredibly solid front three of Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks. In the 2015 season, he posted a 3.74 ERA, 3.68 FIP, and 2.3 FanGraphs WAR. For his career, Hammel was not a strikeout artist, but for this one season, he was. He posted a career-high 172 strikeouts in 2015, and his strikeout rate of 24.2 percent was 17 percent higher than the league average, according to FanGraphs, and far higher than his career rate of 18.2 percent. Not only was it incredibly satisfying to make John Lackey lose his mind like that (although that was not hard to do), but many will probably also recall the plate appearance that Hammel’s single led to: a Javier Baez thee-run home run. Of course, the Cubs would go on to win that game, clinching a spot in the NLCS. Good times. If you watched that clip above and recall Hammel being surprisingly competent at the plate, that’s because he was. Relative to other pitchers, at least. From 2015 to 2016, his 19 wRC+ was 23rd among 111 pitchers that took at least 30 plate appearances. Let this be a reminder that while it was fun and memorable when a pitcher notched a big hit like the one above, they were also really bad at hitting. The designated hitter being added to the National League is absolutely a plus for the sport as a whole. After the 2015 season, the Cubs signed John Lackey, which effectively bumped Hammel to the fifth spot in the pitching rotation for the 2016 season. Despite putting up an almost identical 3.83 ERA that season, his 4.48 FIP was much higher, and the strikeout rate dropped back down closer to his career average. Because of this, and as previously mentioned, he did not make an appearance in the 2016 playoffs en route to the Cubs’ first World Series win in 108 years. After the Cubs declined Hammel’s team option for the 2017 season, he signed a two-year, $16 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, where he pitched two, mostly ineffective seasons before retiring just before the start of the 2019 season. It’s been almost 10 years since that magical 2016 season for the Cubs, and while Jason Hammel didn’t play a huge role in the playoffs that year, he was still an integral part of the 2015 and 2016 regular seasons, where the Cubs won 200 games combined. He helped form an incredibly reliable pitching rotation in 2016, combining with Lester, Arrieta, Hendricks, and Lackey to make 152 starts. In the modern game, this is absolutely unheard of. So today, let’s remember Jason Hammel. Reliable, durable, and unsung. Yet still an important member of what is still, and probably forever will be, the most memorable sports season of my lifetime. View full player

As I flipped my Chicago Cubs calendar to a new day earlier this week, I was greeted with a trivia question. What four starting pitchers each started at least 30 games for the Cubs in both 2015 and 2016? Image courtesy of © Dennis Wierzbicki-Imagn Images Of course, most will probably get Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and Kyle Hendricks right off the bat. While I did manage to get the fourth pitcher, it took me a beat or two longer than the other three. Jason Hammel started 31 games for the Cubs in 2015 and followed that up by starting 30 games in 2016. That trivia question spurred a few thoughts. First, those mid-2010s Cubs teams were incredibly fortunate to have as few injuries as they did, particularly on the pitching side. While we are in a slightly different era of pitching usage, Justin Steele is the only Cub to start 30 games for the team in any of the past three seasons, and that was in 2023 when he started exactly 30 games. The second thought is that Jason Hammel quickly became a forgettable member of the 2016 Cubs. This is likely because he did not appear in a single game during the team's 2016 World Series run. Despite that, I thought it was a good opportunity to pay respect to what he brought to the Cubs during his time with the club. Before signing with the Cubs before the 2014 season, Hammel had a 4.80 ERA from his debut season in 2006 until his 2013 season with the Orioles, with a stop in Colorado between. He was brought in on a one-year, $6 million contract to eat innings on a team desperately in need of a reliable veteran. Hammel was more than reliable for the Cubs in 2014. After pitching to the tune of a 2.98 ERA and 3.19 FIP in 108 ⅔ innings, he was traded to the Oakland Athletics, along with Jeff Samardzija, on July 5 of that season. In return, the Cubs netted Billy McKinney, Dan Straily, and Addison Russell. Both the Cubs and Hammel enjoyed their time together so much that they decided to run it back. The two sides agreed to a two-year, $20 million contract before the 2015 season. The right-hander continued to provide stability behind the incredibly solid front three of Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks. In the 2015 season, he posted a 3.74 ERA, 3.68 FIP, and 2.3 FanGraphs WAR. For his career, Hammel was not a strikeout artist, but for this one season, he was. He posted a career-high 172 strikeouts in 2015, and his strikeout rate of 24.2 percent was 17 percent higher than the league average, according to FanGraphs, and far higher than his career rate of 18.2 percent. He did pitch two games for the Cubs that postseason, though one was much more memorable than the other. In game four of the 2015 NLDS, he allowed two earned runs across three innings of work, though it was his plate appearance in the bottom of the second that I will always remember: Not only was it incredibly satisfying to make John Lackey lose his mind like that (although that was not hard to do), but many will probably also recall the plate appearance that Hammel’s single led to: Of course, the Cubs would go on to win that game, clinching a spot in the NLCS. Good times. If you watched that clip above and recall Hammel being surprisingly competent at the plate, that’s because he was. Relative to other pitchers, at least. From 2015 to 2016, his 19 wRC+ was 23rd among 111 pitchers that took at least 30 plate appearances. Let this be a reminder that while it was fun and memorable when a pitcher notched a big hit like the one above, they were also really bad at hitting. The designated hitter being added to the National League is absolutely a plus for the sport as a whole. I digress. After the 2015 season, the Cubs signed John Lackey, which effectively bumped Hammel to the fifth spot in the pitching rotation for the 2016 season. Despite putting up an almost identical 3.83 ERA that season, his 4.48 FIP was much higher, and the strikeout rate dropped back down closer to his career average. Because of this, and as previously mentioned, he did not make an appearance in the 2016 playoffs en route to the Cubs’ first World Series win in 108 years. After the Cubs declined Hammel’s team option for the 2017 season, he signed a two-year, $16 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, where he pitched two, mostly ineffective seasons before retiring just before the start of the 2019 season. It’s been almost 10 years since that magical 2016 season for the Cubs, and while Jason Hammel didn’t play a huge role in the playoffs that year, he was still an integral part of the 2015 and 2016 regular seasons, where the Cubs won 200 games combined. He helped form an incredibly reliable pitching rotation in 2016, combining with Lester, Arrieta, Hendricks, and Lackey to make 152 starts. In the modern game, this is absolutely unheard of. So today, let’s remember Jason Hammel. Reliable, durable, and unsung. Yet still an important member of what is still, and probably forever will be, the most memorable sports season of my lifetime. View full article