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There's nothing wrong with the way the Cubs' third baseman celebrates his accomplishments on the field. But there's a lot wrong with the frequency of those accomplishments, and there might be something wrong with calling him the Cubs' third baseman. Image courtesy of Jeff Curry - USA Today Sports Allow me to get one thing clear before I really jump into this article: I love Christopher Morel. I firmly believe that having professional baseball players act in a manner that clearly shows that they are having fun is important for the growth of the game. Frankly, I wish I derived even 20 percent of the enjoyment from my daily activities than he does from playing baseball. Watching him is a breath of fresh air. On the other hand, as a fan who also enjoys watching his favorite team win baseball games, it’s been a maddening season for the Cubs’ third baseman. He’s been given a full-time defensive home at third base, and is one of the worst defensive players in baseball. His bat, despite showing some potential for major productivity, has regressed to the point where he is below-average overall. Combine all of that, and he’s been worth just 0.1 WAR, according to FanGraphs. Needless to say, this is not the season any of us had in mind after such a positive showing in his first two seasons in the bigs. Many would point to Morel’s expected stats and declare that he is actually having the best offensive season of his young career. By one metric, one would be correct! According to Baseball Savant, his .354 xwOBA is the highest of his career, up from .340 last season, and .321 the year before. That's because xwOBA is a stat that attempts to determine how a hitter should be performing based on exit velocity, launch angle, and in certain instances, sprint speed. Like wOBA (which measures actual performance), an xwOBA of about .320 is considered average. So a .354 xwOBA is quite high, and would put him in the 83rd percentile of hitters. With a wOBA of .303 this season, Morel’s xwOBA marks him as one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball. The -.051 gap between his wOBA and his xwOBA is the third-lowest in all of baseball, per Baseball Savant. So give it some time, and Morel should start putting up better numbers. Right? One potential gap in Baseball Savant’s version of xwOBA is that it doesn’t take spray angle into account. In other words, whether or not the ball was pulled, hit to center field, or hit to the opposite field doesn't factor in. This has been covered pretty extensively in previous writing of mine, but for the uninitiated, not all batted balls are created equal, even after accounting for exit velocity and launch angle. A 370-foot fly ball hit down the line to left field is a home run almost every time. A 370-foot fly ball hit to center field is a routine flyout almost every time. Fortunately for us, Pitcher List does take this into account. Morel’s xwOBA over there is .329, which would still suggest he’s an average-plus hitter and that he has been unlucky when compared to his wOBA. However, it’s a far cry from suggesting he is one of the 40 or so best hitters in baseball, as Baseball Savant’s figure does. This also puts him right on par with last season, when Pitcher List had him with a .328 xwOBA. Morel certainly has made some positive adjustments this season. He is swinging at fewer pitches outside of the zone and striking out a career-low 23.5 percent of the time. Logically, if we go off of Pitcher List’s xwOBA, it’s essentially being canceled out by the fact that he is now hitting 34.5 percent of his balls in play to center field, which is up from 28.3 percent last season. To make it even worse, that’s at the expense of balls being hit to the pull side, which is at 48.4 percent this year, down from 55 percent last year. With all of that out there, it makes me wonder if Morel’s positive adjustments this year really are positive, at all. Sure, he is chasing less outside the zone. He’s also swinging at fewer offerings in the zone, and making contact with more of the pitches outside the zone that he does swing at. I’m wondering if this is what is causing him to pull the ball less, and it also could be the culprit behind his decline in average exit velocity and barrel rate from last year to this year. He just isn’t hitting the ball with the same authority that he did last season. After such a disappointing first half, the second half of this season is do-or-die time for Morel, as a Cub. He was given the third base job this year both out of necessity and out of respect for his potential. It’s not even a decision that I disagreed with. But to this point, it hasn’t worked out. He has responded by being one of the worst defenders in all of baseball, and regressing with the bat as well. According to FanGraphs, the Cubs have gotten -0.1 WAR out of their third basemen this season, which is only better than the lowly Miami Marlins and Chicago White Sox. As that implies, having a black hole like that in the lineup is often disqualifying for playoff hopefuls. To officially conclude this, allow me to give you a blind player comparison to a mystery player, combining stats from the 2021 season through where we are in the 2024 season, and see if you can guess who the mystery player is: Player PA HR wOBA fWAR Christopher Morel 1,250 60 .325 3.1 Mystery Player 1,316 80 .327 3.9 The mystery player is someone we’re all very familiar with: Patrick Wisdom. I don’t think anybody is claiming Wisdom is anything more than a bench bat at this point in his career. Sure, Morel is younger and theoretically has much more room to grow. But given his first half of this season, he just is not a guy that a serious baseball team can deploy at third base full-time, especially in the heart of their batting order. Unless he has a much better showing with the bat, I personally don’t have the appetite to see him try out elsewhere on the diamond, either. I don’t see how he is anything more than a useful bench bat, in the realm of Patrick Wisdom. He has one more half to prove himself. Otherwise, replacing him at the hot corner and in the meat of the lineup needs to be at the top of the Cubs’ to-do list this offseason. View full article

Michael Busch started 2024 red-hot before cooling off. Now we're seeing important adjustments from the Cubs rookie. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Having missed the start of last Saturday’s win over the Brewers, I was overjoyed when I pulled out my phone to catch myself up on the action. The Cubs were up 2-0! Even better, it was thanks to a Michael Busch home run. Something, in particular, caught my eye about that home run on the Gameday app. Busch got a fastball from Milwaukee starter Tobias Myers, which wasn’t a particularly good one. It’s not covered in the chart below, but it came in at 90.7 mph, according to Baseball Savant. A lot of good hitters would do damage with that pitch up above the belt. What made this particular one so special? Back in May, our own Matthew Trueblood covered the hole in Busch’s swing in relation to his walk-off home run against the Padres. To summarize his fantastic work, after the rookie’s torrid start to the season, pitchers started to adjust their approach. They started hammering the high and outside portion of the strike zone. This is one of the few things responsible for his .170/.259/.277 stretch from April 21 to May 26. Of course, by now, you’ll likely see where I am going with this. That pitch stood out because the Cubs’ rookie homered again on a high and outside pitch. As a matter of fact, this pitch was even higher and further outside than the one against the Padres. What’s even better about this particular home run is that it wasn’t pulled; it was hit to center field. His past three home runs have all been hit to center field. Prior to that, every single one of his home runs had been pulled to right field. Busch’s season can essentially be split into three parts: from the start of the season to April 20 (we’ll call it Part One), from April 20 to May 26 (Part Two), and from May 26 until now (Part Three). After coming out of the gate with a 179 wRC+ through April 20, pitchers adjusted and started throwing to the up and outside portion of the strike zone. Why there? Well, Busch had a 590 wRC+ on anything pulled vs. an 86 wRC+ on balls hit to the center or opposite fields, according to Fangraphs. A glance at Busch’s heat map from this period would support this theory. Stay away from the low and inside portion of the strike zone, where he can get in front of the ball and lift it in the air with an uppercut swing: As Busch tried to adjust to the pitches up and away, he also stopped doing damage on those inside pitches. Instead of launching them into the seats, he started pounding them into the ground. His ground ball rate jumped from 23.9 percent during part one of his season to 44 percent during part two. He continued to do damage when he pulled the ball with a 221 wRC+, but 63.2 percent of those pulled baseballs were on the ground, which is the number of a contact hitter, not a high strikeout, power guy. Besides, he still wasn’t doing much damage on balls hit to the center or opposite field, with just an 82 wRC+ on the two of them combined. During part three of this season, Busch appears to have struck the perfect balance. He seems to be sitting on those outside pitches and looking to do damage on them by driving them to center field, which is the next best thing to pulling them for most hitters. All stats courtesy of FanGraphs: Season Segment Overall wRC+ Pulled wRC+ Center wRC+ Oppo wRC+ Part One 179 590 118 41 Part Two 62 221 41 126 Part Three 159 211 381 91 To combat the increased ground ball rate in part two, Busch has simply stopped swinging as often at those inside pitches that were tying him up, dropping his ground ball rate to a much more manageable 37.7 percent during part three of his season. Compare his swing rates from parts one and two to part three. Charts courtesy of FanGraphs: You see a clear shift in approach from the inside part of the plate to further over the plate. Lastly, if we look at Busch’s wOBA by zone from part three of this season, we see what appears to be a much more balanced approach and certainly much better coverage of the outside part of the plate when you compare it to the segment one chart above. The last chart, I promise: So that’s why seeing the pitch location of Busch’s home run from last Saturday excited me so much. It was thrown to a location where pitchers have been trying to exploit him, and he hit it somewhere where he wasn’t previously doing much damage. Based on the evidence, this seems to be a concerted effort from the young infielder. Michael Busch won’t be Anthony Rizzo. However, all of this leaves me incredibly impressed. Admittedly, I was getting close to writing Busch off after his rough month of May. After all, if the Dodgers are getting rid of someone, that isn’t usually a good sign. But he’s now adjusted to the adjustment and shown that he can succeed in two completely different ways. In what is looking more and more like a lost season for the Cubs, Michael Busch is looking more and more like a keeper. View full article

There isn't much to be excited about right now, but one old friend's revival should bring some joy. Image courtesy of © John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports Amid a stretch where the Cubs have been entirely devoid of joy or positivity, it’s been hard to find something optimistic to write about. Not that everything I write has to be optimistic, but that also makes me, and hopefully you, feel good and helps give me something to look forward to when I turn the game on every day. One small thing that I have found myself clinging to, one because the team sorely needs it, and two because it reminds me of the days when it was a lot more fun to follow the Cubs: Kyle Hendricks is maybe, possibly, back. After putting up a 10.57 ERA in seven starts to begin the season, Hendricks was moved to the bullpen after a May 17 start against Pittsburgh. His first two outings in relief didn’t go a whole lot better: he allowed two runs in two innings in a loss to Atlanta on May 23, and he allowed three runs in 3 ⅔ innings in a loss to Milwaukee six days later. It was clear that Craig Counsell didn’t want to use him in leverage situations, effectively making him a waste of a roster spot. Most fans were ready for him to call it a career in what would have been an uneventful ending for a Cubs legend. Not so fast! Of course, The Professor will not go down without a fight. In three relief outings and two starts since the start of June, Hendricks has a 1.27 ERA, an almost equally as good 2.21 FIP, and has struck out 16 hitters in 21 ⅓ innings pitched. His .242 xwOBA allowed was the lowest in a calendar month since May 2016. Where is this new success coming from? Hendricks has started throwing his curveballs significantly more often. After throwing it just 6.5 percent of the time in April and 8.4 percent in May, his pitch usage in June has jumped to 20.7 percent, the highest in any month of his career, according to Baseball Savant. If it felt like his curveball was slowly being phased out of his repertoire, that’s because it was. After throwing it a career-high 16.7 percent of the time in 2020, when he received votes for the Cy Young Award, it slowly declined to be used only 3.5 percent last season. His curveball usage over the past month is particularly impressive: he’s used it consistently in almost any count. Compare his pitch selection in June of this year to 2020. In 2020, his curveball usage was pretty confined to when he was ahead in the count. However, This month, he has used it consistently across all counts save for 3-0 and 3-1. Of course, as evidenced by his overall results this month, this has worked wonderfully! Hitters have a -47 wRC+ against his curveball, according to FanGraphs. They hit it into the ground 66.7 percent of the time, chased it 28.3 percent, and swung and missed it 12.1 percent. Those are all career-highs for Hendricks with his curveball. Hitters will surely adjust. Once they become more aware of needing to account for a fourth pitch from Hendricks, I am sure they will start to hit it better than they have. As we’re all aware, the veteran right-hander isn’t exactly someone who relies on nasty stuff. It’s not exactly an unhittable curveball. With all that said, we can still take a step back and appreciate the wonder of Kyle Hendricks. Eventually, he will retire. But today is not that day. He’s innovated and found another way to keep succeeding. Despite existing in the era of velocity and nasty, bat-missing breaking balls, Kyle Hendricks, against all odds, persists with the 87-mph fastball and a 14th percentile strikeout rate. View full article

With the Chicago Cubs continuing to lose games, and mostly in completely gut-wrenching fashion, it’s hard to consider the idea of them buying at the trade deadline. But according to most reports, that’s still the plan, and Jed Hoyer’s job status might not be able to afford to do anything other than buying and attempting to make the playoffs, anyway. Still, context does matter. The Cubs, ideally, are a team on the upswing. No matter how you feel about the current major league roster, they have what FanGraphs rates as the best farm system in baseball. In a perfect world, the future is brighter, perhaps as soon as next season. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Maybe it’s reality. This all got me thinking: Is there anyone out there that the Cubs could trade for, which might help them this season but also for next year or years beyond? Miguel Amaya and Yan Gomes have combined to be worth -1.4 Fangraphs WAR so far this year, and there aren’t many internal options for improvement, depending on your opinion of Moises Ballesteros and how close to the majors he really is. Let’s look at two guys who could fortify this year’s team, but also for future seasons, at the Cubs’ biggest position of need. Danny Jansen Let’s address the obvious up front: Jansen is a free agent at the end of this season. Acquiring him won’t necessarily be a move for future seasons unless you fully plan on paying him this offseason. All that said, I absolutely believe that Jansen will be available, and with the current state of the Cubs’ depth chart at catcher, they have to show interest. Jansen, who turned 29 earlier this season, has been one of the better catchers in baseball since the 2021 season. Much of that value comes from the offensive side of the ball, where he elevates the ball a lot. He has had over a 50 percent fly-ball rate in the past three seasons, while the major league average has come in at about 37 percent: this, plus his low strikeout rate, results in many long balls. While he isn’t exactly Yadier Molina behind the plate, Jansen isn’t a slouch, either. According to Baseball Savant, he has been a little below average in throwing runners out over the past four seasons, and he is about average as a pitch framer. He really excels in blocking pitches, as Baseball Savant estimates he has saved seven runs since 2021, which is tied for fifth in all of baseball. I know most probably won’t jump at the proposition of trading for a catcher who will soon be 30 in what is starting to feel like a lost season, especially when you have to pay him this offseason to keep him. But the fact is that the catching situation has to be rectified, and Jansen is the closest thing to an easy solution. Getting him in-house this season could build that relationship while getting a feel for how he fits with the team and the pitching staff. Alejandro Kirk Another Toronto Blue Jay! Except this time, he’s younger, at 25 years old, and won’t be a free agent until after the 2026 season. Naturally, this also means he would cost significantly more to acquire. Your own personal taste for acquiring Kirk probably depends on what you think of him as a hitter. He was an above-average hitter in both 2021 and 2022 because he hit the ball hard, though a high ground ball rate kept his slug down. Last year, his hard-hit rate dropped, which resulted in a decrease in production, and now, this year, he is suddenly hitting the ball in the air much more than usual. wRC+ Hard Hit % FB% GB% 2022 129 45.0% 30.8% 50.0% 2023 96 38.3% 30.1% 50.2% 2024 70 38.4% 36.4% 41.4% You’d think an elevated fly ball rate would be a good thing, particularly at the expense of his ground ball rate. Unfortunately, per FanGraphs, he has a -14 wRC+ on fly balls, thanks to a lousy 8.3 percent pull rate. Still, Kirk’s ability to put the ball in play (11.2 percent strikeout rate for his career) coupled with a good eye at the plate (10.6 percent walk rate) suggest that the backbone of a solid hitter is here. Regardless, this all ignores where his real value lies, which is his defense. According to Baseball Savant, he has been worth four catcher framing runs above average, which is top five in all of baseball. He has also caught 29 percent of would-be base stealers, which would certainly be a major upgrade from Miguel Amaya’s three percent caught stealing rate. Assuming the Blue Jay looks to sell, I’d have to believe both of these guys would be available. Given the state of the rest of their roster, they’d likely look for major league-ready players or something close to it. What would you all be willing to give up? View full article

I won’t mince words with you: the Chicago Cubs are really hard to watch right now. With a starting rotation that has the seventh-best ERA in the major leagues, they are in every game. But with a bullpen ERA that is 25th and an offense that is 28th in runs scored since April 27, every game is an unwatchable, torturous slog. The Cubs haven’t been blowing anybody out, but they haven’t exactly been getting blown out, either. Every game seems winnable, only for us all to watch the bullpen blow something like a 2-1 lead late or for the offense to continually fail to come up with any kind of big hit on the rare occasion that they get runners on base to begin with. Literally, as I typed that paragraph, Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ led off the bottom of the second inning against the Cardinals with singles, only for the next three hitters to go strikeout, fly out, strikeout. That’s just the way it’s been going lately for the Cubs. However, this is mostly the same group of guys that put together an above-average offense for the Cubs just last season. What gives? Well, according to FanGraphs, there is one obvious thing: the Cubs are 29th in baseball in line drive rate. The only team below them, the Miami Marlins, are 28th in baseball in total runs scored. I could point to that, declare that is the issue, and move on, but there’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to hitting in baseball. After all, the team that is 28th in line drive rate, the Kansas City Royals, is fifth in baseball in runs scored. So clearly, it isn’t much of an issue for them. Before I get much further, let me explain something about batted balls. As evidenced by the Royals, not hitting line drives isn’t, by itself, a bad thing. You probably already know this, but just in case, typically, line drives get guys on base from a batted ball standpoint. Fly balls result in home runs the most often but are also converted to outs most often. Ground balls are somewhere in between, but generally, the worst of the three unless you’re prime Billy Hamilton. You hope they find a hole, but typically, it’ll just be a single or, if you’re lucky, a double or triple down the line. Here are the league-wide stats on each type of batted ball so far this season: Batting Average Slugging Percentage Homeruns Groundballs .242 .266 0 Fly balls .207 .608 2,115 Line Drives .695 .890 46 Back to the Cubs, who, as a reminder, are 28th in line drive rate. You’d think this would lead to a low batting average, and it has. They are 27th in baseball in batting average. The good news? They’re fifth in fly ball rate! So, while they might not be hitting for a high average, they surely hit a ton of home runs. Right? Wrong! As you most likely know since you’re reading a Cubs article on a Cubs website, the Cubs are 20th in MLB in home runs, and with 67 of them, they are a far cry from the Yankees and Orioles at the top of the list, who both have over 100. Even worse, since that extremely arbitrary date of April 27, the Cubs are 24th in baseball in home runs. They are 25th in baseball in wRC+ on fly balls this season. Hitting so many balls in the air has not been a profitable venture for the Cubs. Let me explain another thing about batted balls that you likely already know: not all fly balls are created equal! Ideally, you want to hit a fly ball to the pull side for two main reasons. The most obvious is that the fence is shorter over there than it is to center field. Second, because the bat has more time to pick up speed when you pull the ball, balls hit to the pull side are usually hit harder than those hit to the opposite field. Here are the baseball-wide stats on fly ball location so far this season: Batting Average Slugging Percentage Home runs Pulled .402 1.371 1,413 Center .167 .442 466 Opposite .119 .274 236 So, back to the Cubs this year. They’re hitting a lot of fly balls. But they aren’t hitting a lot of home runs, nor are they particularly productive on those fly balls. If you’ve been following to this point, you’ve probably come to the correct conclusion: a whole lot of those fly balls that the Cubs are hitting aren’t pulled or even to center field. 42.3 percent of them, to be precise, are hit to the opposite field, which is third in baseball and just 0.4 percentage points behind the Washington Nationals, who lead the way. If you’re curious who the biggest offenders of this are, I am glad you asked. I’ll limit this table to the active roster, minus David Bote, since he has such a small sample size: Player Fly Ball Rate Fly Ball wRC+ Pulled % Center % Oppo % Mike Tauchman 44.2% 52 8.3% 36.1% 55.6% Miguel Amaya 32.4% 38 25.7% 22.9% 51.4% Nico Hoerner 32.5% -21 14.1% 39.1% 46.9% Yan Gomes 45.3% 45 8.3% 45.8% 45.8% Patrick Wisdom 70.2% 124 30.3% 24.2% 45.5% Ian Happ 39.2% 103 24.2% 30.6% 45.2% Michael Busch 43.7% 154 23.1% 34.6% 42.3% Dansby Swanson 29.9% 202 20.5% 38.6% 40.9% Cody Bellinger 51.6% 85 40.6% 24.0% 35.4% Christopher Morel 39.6% 174 33.3% 33.3% 33.3% Seiya Suzuki 49.6% 153 21.0% 48.6% 32.3% Pete Crow-Armstrong 36.5% -21 43.5% 26.1% 30.4% Mike Tauchman and the catching situation stick out like a sore thumb here, and while most people wouldn’t say Tauchman has been the issue with the offense, he does have just a 76 wRC+ since the start of May. It’s also not a coincidence that the consensus three best hitters on the team, Bellinger, Morel, and Suzuki, are towards the bottom of this list. One other thing that isn’t captured on that chart but stuck out to me is that from the start of the season to April 26, Michael Busch was hitting just 29.9 percent of his fly balls to the opposite field. Since then? Fifty-six percent of them have been hit to the opposite field, and just 12 percent have been hit to the pull side, which might help explain some of his struggles. To recap, the Cubs aren’t hitting for average because they aren’t hitting many line drives. Thus, they have struggled to string hits together and score runs. They’re instead hitting a lot of fly balls, but they aren’t getting the home run output that a team typically would since they are not hitting them to the pull side. It’s been a lot of lazy fly balls to the opposite field. All of this results in a team struggling to score runs and nothing but a miserable watching experience for us fans. View full article

The Chicago Cubs need help. They need multiple pieces of help. As they teeter on the verge of becoming sellers themselves, though, there remain a couple of surefire sellers who have pieces that might help the North Siders turn things around. One such team is one of the most familiar cellar-dwellers in baseball. Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Believe it or not, we are significantly closer to the 2024 MLB Trade Deadline than we are removed from Opening Day. While the Cubs aren’t quite where they’d like to be, they find themselves just a half-game out of the last playoff spot going into Wednesday’s action, thanks to a whole lot of mediocrity in the National League. I sure don’t have a lot of faith in this current iteration of the Cubs to make a run in the postseason, but as we all saw with the Diamondbacks last year, if you can get into the playoffs, you can certainly get hot and make a run. With the trade deadline just seven short weeks away, the Colorado Rockies are one of a few teams who will definitely be sellers, though they have surprised us all before. What players do they have that might interest the Cubs? The most obvious, hand-in-glove fit, would be Elías Díaz. The Rockies’ catcher was named an All-Star last season for the first time in his career, and was even named the Most Valuable Player in the Midsummer Classic, though I would caution anyone against getting too excited about that. Díaz made it into the All-Star Game purely because every team has to have one representative, which is still a silly rule. He finished the 2023 season with a negative WAR of -0.2, and an 81 wRC+, according to FanGraphs. As a reminder, 100 is considered an average wRC+. To give Díaz credit, he is off to a much better start this season, with a 109 wRC+ and 1.4 WAR. However, those numbers seem to me to be heavily supported by some good fortune. His Barrel% and hard-hit rate are both down from last year, and his .350 BABIP would be a career-best mark. Thus, his .344 wOBA far outpaces his .285 xwOBA, where about .320 is considered average, suggesting that he is still a below-average hitter. He has thrown out 11 of 37 potential base stealers, though, which is something the Cubs have come under fire for recently. Miguel Amaya has thrown out just five of 43 base stealers. Yan Gomez has thrown out three of 21, and as our own Matthew Trueblood has recently pointed out, it’s even worse than that: five of those instances of caught stealing were pickoffs, and not actual throws by the catcher. According to Baseball Savant, Díaz has been worth two runs above average when it comes to throwing runners out. Gomes has been worth zero, and Amaya has been worth -4. With all of that said, I am not actually sure Díaz would be a great fit. Like Gomes, he is a free agent this offseason, so it doesn’t solve for anything in the medium term. I am not convinced he’ll be sufficiently better than either Gomes or Amaya to justify either designating Gomes for assignment and eating the money that the Cubs owe him, getting playing time over Amaya (who probably does have a future with the Cubs and needs to continue getting reps for development), or rostering three catchers. But I could probably be convinced. Elsewhere on the Rockies’ roster is Ryan McMahon, who is an interesting fit if the Cubs decide that they have seen enough of Christopher Morel at third base. The Rockies’ third baseman has hit 20 or more home runs in every full big-league season since he debuted, though park-neutral stats rate him as roughly an average hitter. He would certainly be an upgrade defensively, as he is fourth among third basemen in Outs Above Average and Defensive Runs Saved since 2019, per FanGraphs. The pop from the left side of the plate would be nice, as would a third baseman whose presence wouldn’t elevate my heart rate every time the ball was hit that way. With all of that said, he is probably a utility guy on a good team. He does have some experience playing both second and first base. I feel like the Cubs have the type of roster where they could utilize him well as a late-inning defensive replacement or platoon player. He is much closer to average as a hitter against righties (95 wRC+) than against lefties (78 wRC+). Alas, he is paid like a starter, and would be a longer-term investment: he is under contract for three more seasons (and $44 million) after this one. Unfortunately, the Rockies are pretty thin in the bullpen, but they do have a couple of pieces that could be interesting to the Cubs. Victor Vodnik has pitched to a 2.68 ERA so far this year, mostly thanks to a high ground-ball rate and low home run rate. Nick Mears strikes out 26.7 percent of hitters he faces, but also walks 12.2 percent of them, so you’d have to take the good with the bad. They also have Kris Bryant, who is an interesting buy-low/change-of-scenery guy who is on a bad contract and could probably be had for very little. Kidding! I am kidding. I promise. View full article

I think this is really interesting. Personally, I think that everyone wants every starting pitcher to be an “ace,” when in reality, there are maybe 10-15 of those in MLB at any given time. The fact is that a starting pitcher that can consistently post 3ish WAR seasons, a guy one would traditionally call a mid-rotation starter, is still one of the 30 or so best pitchers in baseball. Case in point - Marcus Stroman is 31st in fWAR for pitchers over the past five years.

Today, we complete our May 2024 awards series by touting the Cubs minor league bullpen arms that performed well in May. Image courtesy of Tennessee Smokies We believe that it is appropriate to let people know when relief pitchers do their job well. Seemingly, relief pitchers only get talked about when they blow a save or have a rough outing. Honorable Mention RHP Ethan Roberts - ACL Cubs/Tennessee Smokies/Iowa Cubs - 7 G, 0.00 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 7 2/3 IP, 3 H, 4 BB, 9 K Only having 7 2/3 IP is keeping Roberts in the honorable mention section, but it certainly is worth mentioning: Ethan Roberts is back. In case you have forgotten, after making the Cubs’ Opening Day roster in 2022, Roberts got into nine games for the team that year before succumbing to Tommy John Surgery. After one scoreless appearance for the ACL Cubs, and then one scoreless appearance for the Tennessee Smokies, Roberts is now at AAA with the Iowa Cubs, where he has struck out nine batters in six innings pitched. Top Three Relief Pitchers for May 2024 3. RHP Nico Zeglin - Myrtle Beach Pelicans - 6 G, 2.84 ERA, 0.947 WHIP, 12 ⅔ IP, 10 H, 2 BB, 18 K Zeglin pitched the past two seasons in the Independent Leagues before the Cubs signed him to a minor league contract in April. So far, the early returns have been fantastic. At age 24, Zeglin is old for Class A ball, but we’ll have to see how long he sticks around. His strikeout to walk ratio is 12th among 196 Carolina League pitchers with at least 10 innings pitched, and his 63.9% ground ball ratio is fourth. Striking a lot of guys out, walking few, and keeping the ball on the ground is a great recipe for success in a reliever. 2. RHP Fraimin Marte - ACL Cubs - 6 G, 0.96 ERA, 0.75 WHIP, 9 1/3 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 12 K Marte is a 22-year-old in Rookie ball for the Cubs, but I try not to exclude people based on prospect status, and his performance is certainly worthy of an inclusion here, in my opinion. Anyone that is striking out a good number of guys while walking so few out of the bullpen is going to get attention. We’ll see if it sticks for Marte, or what his future is with the Cubs, but he absolutely deserves his flowers for the numbers that he posted this past May. 1. RHP Frankie Scalzo, Jr. - Tennessee Smokies - 9 G, 0.00 ERA, 0.48 WHIP, 10 1/3 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 6 K Congrats to Scalzo for winning both the April and the May award for Minor League Relief Pitcher of the Month. The guy just refuses to allow a run, as he is now up to 20 ⅔ IP on the season without an earned run allowed. Scalzo was a 14th round pick out of Grand Canyon in 2021, and made his way to Class AA after pitching to a 2.31 ERA in Class High A last season. The thing that absolutely fascinates me about Scalzo is that he has had this rung of success without striking a ton of guys out. His 18.4 percent strikeout rate is one of the lowest in the Southern League, but he allowed just a .114 batting average against him in May and he walked only one opposing hitter. Independent of his pitching, his mustache is an 80 on the 20-80 scouting scale. View full article

We continue to look back at the top performers throughout the Cubs organization by reviewing the top minor league pitchers during the month. The Cubs had a few minor league pitchers who had strong months in May. In fact, we have an Honorable Mention who had a 0.00 ERA! In addition, the minor leagues are filled with intriguing stories and varying level of "prospect." This list contains four names. There are players who have been a professional for less than a year and there are 30-somethings. Get to know more about four Cubs minor league pitchers who pitched well in May. Honorable Mention RHP Nick Dean - Myrtle Beach Pelicans/South Bend Cubs - 3 GS, 0.00 ERA, 0.46 WHIP, 15 2/3 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 10 K Dean, a 19th round draft pick out of the University of Maryland in last summer’s amateur draft, did well enough in his first seven appearances (4 GS, 27 IP, 9 BB, 36 K, 2.33 ERA) for the Class A Myrtle Beach Pelicans that he earned a mid-May call up to Class A+ ball to pitch for the South Bend Cubs. He continued his run of solid performances with two starts of five innings each, only giving up three hits in total, to go along with one walk, six strikeouts, and no runs allowed, but sample size is keeping him in the honorable mention section here. His 18.3 percent swinging strike rate was one of the better figures in the league in Class A ball. However, it has fallen to a good but not quite elite 12.3 percent in South Bend, according to Fangraphs, which rates his changeup as a 60 on the 40-80 scouting scale. May’s Top 3 Cubs MiLB Starting Pitchers of the Month 3. RHP Connor Noland - Tennessee Smokies - 5 GS, 2.00 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, 27 IP, 17 H, 7 BB, 24 K Fun fact about Noland: he started four games at quarterback for the Arkansas Razorbacks in the 2018 football season. Back to his baseball ability, the former Razorback followed up a rocky start to the season with a great month of May. The Southern League, which the Smokies play in, is a pitchers league, but Noland’s 2.00 ERA was still good for seventh among qualified Southern League pitchers, his 0.89 WHIP was good for fourth, and his .179 batting average against was good for fifth. The ninth round draft pick in the 2022 amateur draft succeeds by keeping the ball on the ground, as his 52.8 percent ground ball rate (51 percent in May) so far this season is fifth best in the Southern League, per Fangraphs. 2. RHP Will Sanders - South Bend Cubs - 5 GS, 1.74 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 20 2/3 IP, 11 H, 9 BB, 19 K At age 22, the former fourth round draft pick in last year’s draft is likely a bit old for the Class A+ Midwest League, but if his May results are any indication, he might not be around much longer. After a brutal start to the season, Sanders cut his walk rate about in half and held opposing hitters to just a .541 OPS in the month of May. He’ll have to work on continuing to trim the high walk rate, but it’s a good sign that he still managed to strike out 26 hitters in 24 ⅔ innings (this is if you include a long relief stint out of the bullpen on May 31, which wasn’t included above because it wasn’t a start) in May while clearly working on improving his control. 1. RHP Kyle McGowin - Tennessee Smokies - 4 GS, 1.93 ERA, 0.73 WHIP, 23 1/3 IP, 13 H, 4 BB, 26 K If McGowin’s name sounds particularly familiar, well, that is because he does have major league experience! But not for the Cubs. McGowin made 48 appearances for the Washington Nationals from 2018 to 2021, including two appearances against the Cubs. All of that is to say that the veteran right-hander is not a prospect. The Cubs signed him out of an independent league earlier this month. With that said, his performance has been too good not to award him with the Minor League Starting Pitcher of the Month here. Besides: pitching depth is pitching depth. Of the 69 Southern League pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched, McGowin’s 1.93 ERA is ninth. His 29.9 percent strikeout rate is 11th. His 4.6 percent walk rate is eighth. And his 1.72 FIP leads the league. He isn’t walking guys, he’s striking guys out, and he is preventing runs at an elite level. We can’t be sure if it will continue, but for the month of May, he certainly looked like a guy that was way too good for AA. View full article

Fair! Perhaps not articulated super well by me, or lost in the inclusion of Hudson/Megill, but the Brewers do all of the above better than the Cubs. Which is frustrating. The Cubs do seem to be getting better, but even with the acquisition of Counsell, the gap between the organizations still feels so frustratingly far. It can go beyond the pitching, too. Imagine how much better the Cubs would look if it was them that had traded a fringe top 100 prospect for William Contreras? The Brewers just seem to get value everywhere.

Why are we discounting them because two guys have a bulk of the WAR? They still had to acquire those guys. The Brewers still traded for Hader before he had much hype as a prospect. The Cubs picked Rob Zastryzny before the Brewers selected Williams. Third on that list is Hoby Milner, who’s been reliable for them for three years now and they got for nothing. Besides, they have neither Hader nor Williams this year and the bullpen is still well above average. I get what you’re saying, and I agree to a point. Obviously, you need to get the big swings correct, too. However, getting fringe roster decisions correct is how you avoid still paying guys like Trey Mancini and Tucker Barnhart when they haven’t been on your team in almost a year. Or how you avoid feeling like you have to pay a guy like Hector Neris $9m. This stuff compounds, and makes the big decisions either easier or harder.

I certainly don’t think Counsell deserves all of the blame, either. As a matter of fact, I do think he is a better manager than Ross. Just not in any significant way. The team will hit again, but I think the first two months have revealed that Ross wasn’t the problem last year, and Counsell isn’t the fix this year. Guess we’ll see what the rest of the year brings!

Losing people like Megill, Hudson, and Estrada is less of the issue and more of a symptom of the overall issue. There’s no indication that losing relievers that break out has been the Cubs’ problem. However, finding those types of guys is something the Brewers, and other teams, have been far better at than the Cubs in the past eight years or so. Sorting by reliever WAR on Fangraphs from 2018, when the Brewers won their first division title during this stretch, to now, I think is pretty revealing. It goes Dodgers, Yankees, Rays, Padres, Astros, Brewers. Five of the top six are teams with a lot of resources, or some of the more respected front offices in baseball. There’s just no reason why the Cubs can’t be in that conversation, and seeing the Brewers do this so much better than them is frustrating. Even more so after the Cubs stole their manager.

I’d strongly disagree on the overperformance piece. Megill has a 2.57 ERA to go along with a 2.13 FIP, 2.33 xERA, and is striking out 31.6 percent of batters faced. Hudson has a 0.59 ERA to go along with a 2.08 FIP, a 1.99 xERA, and he is striking out 32,1 percent of batters faced. None of those numbers, to me, scream that a major regression is coming. We can quibble about stuff and ceilings, but the Cubs could have just had all six of those guys.

Maybe the genius of the Chicago Cubs' new $40-million skipper is only beginning to reveal itself. Maybe the glorious future of the franchise is close at hand, and it's just not yet visible to us. Then again, maybe we all owe David Ross an apology. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports With the Chicago Cubs making their first trip of the season to Milwaukee this week to face the Brewers, there has been much discussion about Craig Counsell and his decision to leave the Brewers to manage the Cubs last offseason. In firing David Ross and making Counsell the highest-paid manager in baseball, the Cubs surprised many, and announced emphatically that they were ready to make moves. Counsell, many thought, would come in and help the Cubs address a bullpen that blew a league-high 10 saves in September and October last season, during their freefall out of a playoff position. The Brewers consistently had a good bullpen under Counsell, and they usually posted a stellar record in one-run games. The Cubs went just 21-24 in one-run contests last season, compared to the Brewers’ 29-18. Well, so far... nothing is different for the Cubs. The offense is completely broken. The bullpen, while it has been better of late, is worse than it was last year. Heading into Monday’s disaster, they had a 4.25 ERA, which was 22nd in baseball, according to FanGraphs. Last year, it was 3.85. Also, the team is 11-10 in games decided by one run. To make matters worse, the Brewers continue to roll. At 31-23, they're 3.5 games better than the Northsiders, and their bullpen ERA of 3.57 and WAR of 1.7 both place them as a top-10 relief corps in baseball. Their top two relievers by FanGraphs WAR, Trevor Megill and Bryan Hudson, were both pitchers in the Cubs’ organization as recently as three seasons ago. They’ve combined for 1.4 WAR. The Cubs’ entire bullpen is at 0.8. Unreliable relief work was a constant issue last season. Yet, the only deadline addition to help that group was José Cuas. The only fresh faces in the bullpen to open this season were Héctor Neris and Yency Almonte. It should have been obvious that the bullpen was going to be a problem this year, too. Counsell isn’t the one who has to go out there and get outs. Despite the fact that he is now in the Cubs’ dugout and not the Brewers’, the bullpen special sauce--and the better-run organization--remains in Milwaukee. This is even with a payroll that hovers around half that of the big-market Cubs. To be fair, the Cubs have had much more success developing pitchers of late. It’s just impossible not to be frustrated at seeing guys who were so recently in the Cubs’ employ excelling like this for the Brewers, even after poaching their manager. Let this all be a reminder that failure (and success, too) is organization-wide, and let it also serve as an apology to Ross. I am sure there were some things he could have done differently last season to prevent the team's September swoon, but he also could have simply been given better players. Jed Hoyer went out this offseason and brought back Cody Bellinger, replaced Marcus Stroman with Shota Imanaga, installed Michael Busch at first base, and added Almonte and Neris to the bullpen. Somehow, a lot of us believed that a new face in the dugout was going to be enough to propel this team to the playoffs. That could still happen, but thus far, the identity of this team is very much akin to that of last year's. The bats won’t always be as bad as they have been of late. I’ll even venture to say that the bullpen will get better, once the Cubs get healthier. On the flip side, though, I’d guess that Javier Assad and Imanaga will eventually start allowing some runs, so it all might cancel out anyway. To be clear, I don’t believe that much of this is Counsell’s fault, but in the same way, I didn’t believe that much of last season’s collapse was on Ross. So far, the early returns of the Counsell Era just aren’t much different from the Ross Era: a very average baseball team. View full article