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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

He's stuck doing stunt work on helpless Triple-A pitchers right now, but very soon, the Cubs' top prospect almost has to come back and show off the value of the adjustments he's made this spring. Er, right? Image courtesy of © Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports After Pete Crow-Armstrong's hitless 19-plate appearance debut for the Chicago Cubs last season, it was evident to everyone that he had some work to do. Specifically, the top prospect looked overmatched against fastballs: he made contact just 47.4 percent of the time when he swung at four-seam fastballs in the strike zone, according to FanGraphs. I don’t think I need to add context to that figure. To put it simply, it's really bad. So bad was it, in fact, that it was absolutely no secret what Crow-Armstrong was working on this offseason. “He’s been with DK, [hitting coach] Dustin Kelly, in Arizona, working on getting his swing a little bit more simple, being able to handle the high fastball a little bit more effectively and just changing some of his mechanics and approach from that standpoint,” general manager Carter Hawkins said at Cubs Convention in January. Suffice to say, expectations were low for Crow-Armstrong when he was forced onto the big-league roster after an injury to Cody Bellinger in April. He wasn’t exactly lighting Triple-A Iowa on fire to that point. But to the surprise of many, the young center fielder more than held his own both in center field and at the plate for the Cubs. Looking at some of the under-the-hood numbers, it’s hard not to be excited about just how valuable a player he can develop into. The easiest place to see if Crow-Armstrong is making adjustments is his performance against those high fastballs that Hawkins mentioned in his quote above. In 2023, 75 percent of his swings on four and two-seam fastballs in the top third of the strike zone, or above the strike zone, resulted in a miss, per Baseball Savant. In 2024, that number fell to 26.7 percent. In turn, that helped his overall performance against fastballs improve tremendously. After posting a .139 wOBA against all fastballs last year, he's put up a .287 wOBA against them in 2024. To be clear, that is still well below-average, but given Crow-Armstrong’s elite defense in center field, it’s important to remember that he doesn’t have to be Juan Soto at the plate to be a good player. With just an 89 wRC+, the youngster is currently the Cubs’ sixth-most valuable position player, according to FanGraphs WAR--higher than Ian Happ, Christopher Morel and Seiya Suzuki. According to Baseball Reference WAR, he is their second-most valuable position player, with only Mike Tauchman being more productive. Keep in mind, this is in just 23 games and 63 plate appearances for Crow-Armstrong, significantly less time than any other regular. Of course, looking at WAR in such a small sample size can be a misleading practice. If we want to look at this from a big-picture point of view, this illustrates, to me, just how high Crow-Armstrong’s floor is. He doesn’t have to be a great hitter. He doesn’t even have to be above-average. His defense in center field is so good that he can still be one of the 50 or so best players in baseball with just a mediocre bat. It might not seem an exciting outcome for such a highly-rated prospect, but I can’t stop thinking about Kevin Kiermaier when I watch Crow-Armstrong play. From Kiermaier’s rookie season in 2014 through 2017, he was the 36th-most valuable player in baseball, according to FanGraphs WAR. That was despite a 107 wRC+ and 1,734 plate appearances, both of which are lower than anyone ahead of him on that list. Extend the time frame from 2014 to the present day and Kiermaier is still 36th. That is how valuable really good defense at a premium position like center field can be, and I think if you told any Cubs fan they could lock production like that in from Crow-Armstrong for the next decade, they would probably take it. What makes it all more exciting, however, is that that feels like a worst-case scenario. If Crow-Armstrong can keep making adjustments like he has and ends up being an above-average hitter, we might be looking at one of the best players in baseball. I find myself eagerly awaiting his return to the big-league team. It’s still a small sample, but we should all be thrilled with the adjustments and improvements that we’ve already seen from the Cubs’ top prospect. View full article

So much has been made about the Chicago Cubs’ bullpen in the 2024 season. As a matter of fact, this is the third straight week that I have written about them. And can you blame me? The group, as a whole, is now 21st in baseball with a 4.33 ERA, according to FanGraphs. Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports We’ve suffered through five early-season blown saves from Adbert Alzolay. He hasn’t been the closer since April 20, and that number is still tied for the MLB lead (though he did register a blown save in the eighth inning on May 3). Since that April 20 blown save, the back end of the Cubs’ bullpen has found stability from Mark Leiter Jr., who I wrote about a couple of weeks back, and Hector Neris. Wait, have they found stability in Neris? My blood pressure says no. Remember the leadoff walks to Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker when he was protecting a 3-1 lead in the ninth? Or when three of the first four Brewers reached against him when he was protecting a 6-4 lead? How about the improbable replay reviewed out at home plate against the Mets? Somehow, some way, Neris always manages to wiggle out of these jams. Thus, his 3.00 ERA and six saves in seven chances say that the Cubs have found stability there. If the current year were, say, 2007, I’d throw my hands up, use some cliche about him knowing how to pitch to the score of the game, and go on my way. But this is 2024, and we have stats to quantify this now! I’d also argue that walking the leadoff man in the ninth inning of a two-run game is the opposite of pitching to the score. That is the exact situation where you should be challenging a hitter and forcing him to beat you if you fall behind in the count. Baseball Savant tracks the expected ERA for pitchers. This takes into account the strikeouts, walks, and hit by pitches a pitcher records, as well as the quality of contact on the balls that are put in play. The gap between Neris’ ERA (3.00) and xERA (6.36) is 3.36, which is the largest gap in baseball. According to xERA, Neris has been the luckiest pitcher in MLB so far this season. I’d caution anyone against looking at a pitcher’s expected ERA and immediately declaring that they’ve been lucky or unlucky. There is a lot that can go into a figure like that. If you see the largest gap in baseball, though, I’d say it warrants a look into why the expected ERA is so high. Unfortunately for the Cubs and Neris, the under-the-hood metrics on the veteran right-hander are rough. His 17.6 percent strikeout rate is a career low. His 18.9 percent walk rate is a career-high. That gives him a -1.4% K-BB%, the fifth worst among qualified relievers. Neris has succeeded to this point in his career on the back of mostly three pitches. He gets ahead of the hitter with a four-seam fastball or a sinker and puts them away with a splitter. All three of those pitches have performed considerably worse this season, but let’s focus on the splitter since that is his out-getter. According to FanGraphs, Neris has had a swinging strike percentage in the 20s on the splitter every year of his career (save for a one-inning debut in 2014). This season? It’s all the way down to 17.1 percent, a career low. He’s inducing swings on the splitter just 46.3 percent of the time, which is also a career low. The issue? He is in the zone with the splitter just 28.5 percent of the time, which is, you guessed it, also a career low. Looking at his heat map for the pitch in 2024 vs. 2023, it’s clear to see he is not executing the pitch to a location that he typically likes to: If the splitter isn’t even close to the strike zone, it won’t get chases, and it will not get swings and misses, which is partially responsible for the depressed strikeout rate. If it’s that far out of the zone, it will just get taken for a ball, which is also partially responsible for the elevated walk rate. Where does that leave the Cubs? I would personally prefer not to see Neris closing games. While it hasn’t bitten them yet, it feels like it’s dangerously close to blowing up on them. However, Craig Counsell seems to disagree and keeps calling on the veteran to close games. Maybe Counsell knows that Neris found a four-leaf clover at some point recently. As fans, all we can do is enjoy the wild ride that is Hector Neris continuing to walk the tightrope. View full article

It was only one outing, but we need to talk about Ben Brown’s performance on Friday night in the Cubs’ win over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Image courtesy of © Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports The rookie right-hander earned the win after entering a tied ball game in the bottom of the fifth inning. He finished with a box score line of 3 ⅔ innings pitched, no runs allowed on two hits and one walk, to go along with six strikeouts. It’s not just Ben Brown's final pitching line that was impressive, but how he got to those results. For the night, Brown threw 22 four-seam fastballs and 16 knuckle curveballs. According to Baseball Savant, he induced 13 swings on those 16 curveballs, and 11 (!) of those swings were swings and misses. That’s an 85 percent whiff rate and a 68.75 percent swinging strike rate, for those that are curious. For context, Fernando Cruz’s split-finger fastball currently has the highest whiff rate in baseball at 64.4 percent. When Brown is at his best, he uses his fastball to fill up the zone and breaks his curveball down and away from a right-handed hitter or down and into a left-handed hitter. He was in the zone with his fastball 64 percent of the time on Friday night, his second-highest figure this season, behind only a brief seven-pitch outing against the Houston Astros last month. This, in turn, led to a 73 percent chase rate on his knuckle curve, his highest figure of the season, and also contributed to the super high number of swings and misses that he generated. Even the balls that were hit in play were mostly hit softly. After immediately giving up a 100mph single to Jared Triolo upon entering the game, Brown induced a pop-out, a lineout, and two groundouts sandwiched between his six strikeouts. Sure, it was one outing, and the Pirates aren’t a great offensive team. Per Fangraphs, their 81 wRC+ is just 27th in baseball, and their 24.6 percent strikeout rate is sixth-worst. However, their 29.1 percent chase rate is fifth best in baseball, and their 11.3 percent swinging strike rate is a little below average at 19th. Despite that, Brown still managed to induce a lot of chases and many swings and misses. It’s just really hard to look at what Ben Brown did on Friday night and not daydream about what he would look like in the bullpen full-time. With Justin Steele back, and hopefully Jordan Wicks not far behind, there will hopefully be no further need for him to start games. With the two-pitch mix that he currently possesses, it feels like he is tailor-made for the bullpen. According to Fangraphs, he has a 130 Stuff+ rating on his knuckle curve, where 100 is considered average. He threw the knuckle curve roughly 33 percent of the time as a starter. So far out of the bullpen this year, his knuckle curve usage is 39.3 percent. So not only is the bullpen where the Cubs currently need him the most, but it’s also where he can be the most effective. He can throw his best pitch more often and doesn’t have to worry about hitters getting too many looks at his two-pitch mix. It will also allow the Cubs to continue to monitor his innings. Notably, he has never thrown more than 94 innings in a professional season. So, here’s to seeing more of what we saw on Friday night: Ben Brown, bullpen ace. View full article

After Friday afternoon’s loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, I thought this season’s iteration of the Chicago Cubs could only seem to lose incredibly frustratingly. Sure enough, heading into Sunday afternoon’s contest, the Cubs had lost 14 games. Half those losses were games in which the Cubs either lost via a walk-off, a blown save, or had the lead in the eighth inning or later. Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports Frankly, I am starved for a normal 7-3 loss in which the Cubs went down early; I could simply chalk it up as a loss early on and then enjoy a game without a constantly elevated heart rate. Talk to a fan of any professional baseball team, and they’ll likely think their team’s bullpen is bad. It’s doubly frustrating to see your favorite team be so close to winning a game only to have it snatched away after a poor performance from one pitcher. If you’re a good enough relief pitcher, you almost exclusively pitch in high-leverage situations, and you’re going to blow some saves. Pitching is really hard! Unfortunately, we’re all inclined to recall those losses more than most. I specifically remember arguing with someone who thought that Pedro Strop was bad, and he had one of the better five-year runs for a relief pitcher in recent Cubs memory. To be clear, this is not a defense of the bullpen, which has, in fact, been bad. According to FanGraphs, they have a 4.67 ERA as a unit, which is 22nd in baseball. That is far too high for a team with playoff aspirations, and with a 4.24 FIP that ranks 22nd, there doesn’t seem to be positive regression coming. However, I don’t think this is all on them: the bullpen has had the most high-leverage plate appearances in baseball. That is on the offense. Everything will be high leverage when the offense is only putting a few runs on the board. There’s no room for error. The impending return of both Seiya Suzuki and Cody Bellinger will hopefully help that situation. Justin Steele will also return shortly, pushing Ben Brown into the bullpen. I have very high expectations for his performance there with the two-pitch mix that he possesses. So help is on the way. But with all that said, let’s look at the one guy who has been reliable every day so far this season and who I would even go so far as to say is the Cubs’ unsung hero through the first month of the season: Mark Leiter Jr. Leiter is a nice reminder that evaluating bullpen arms is really, really hard. Any team could have signed him after the Cubs designated him for assignment in January of 2023, yet nobody did, and all he has done since is lead the Cubs in FanGraphs WAR out of the bullpen. Could you imagine the panic if he did this for another team while the Cubs’ bullpen struggled this badly? Alas, he is still a Cub, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Leiter had a career year last season when he was used heavily against left-handed bats, where he could best deploy his splitter. Lefties posted a .254 wOBA against him in 2023, per FanGraphs. His inability to get righties out prevented him from being used more liberally. Not so far this year. After allowing a .373 wOBA against right-handed hitters last year, Leiter is allowing a .295 wOBA against them this season. His strikeout rate against them has almost doubled, from 21.8 percent last year to 39.1 percent this season. That increase has done a lot of the heavy lifting on his overall strikeout rate for the season since lefties are striking out just 18.6 percent of the time, down from 31.9 percent last year. But I am not worried about his ability to get lefties out. The splitter works, and lefties have not recorded a single hit against it this season. What is different about his approach to righties? For one, Leiter throws a sweeper now! After attacking righties last year with his full mix of a four-seam fastball, curveball, cutter, sinker, and, of course, the splitter, Leiter has cut out the four-seamer and replaced it with the sweeper that he has used exclusively against righties. Early returns aren’t, actually, super great, at least regarding how hitters are doing against the sweeper. Hitters have a .538 wOBA against it, but it’s still such a small sample size that we should give it much more time before we judge the pitch's effectiveness. His sinker has performed significantly better against righties: after allowing a .490 wOBA on sinkers to righties last year, Leiter is allowing just a .319 wOBA this year. Has the sweeper's presence allowed the sinker to play up a bit more against righties? Leiter likes to pound hitters inside with the sinker, and a pitch that will break away from a right-hander like a sweeper usually tunnels well with a pitch that will break in on his hands. Combine that with the splitter, which is just as effective against righties as lefties, and the Cubs might have a legitimate bullpen arm on their hands here to be deployed whenever they’d like. With Hector Neris walking as many guys as he is striking out and walking a very thin tightrope every time he is called upon to close a game, I have to wonder if the Cubs make Leiter their closer before it is too late. He is probably best deployed against lefties, and unfortunately, the Cubs don’t have a decent lefty in the bullpen otherwise. But with the addition of his sweeper, he has performed almost as well against righties than lefties this season, and I fear that it is inevitable for Neris to blow a frustrating save soon. View full article

Despite a recent stretch where Chicago Cubs’ starting pitchers have worked into the sixth inning in four straight games, their starting rotation still ranks towards the bottom of baseball in overall innings thrown. Image courtesy of © David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports Heading into Saturday afternoon’s game, Cubs’ starters had thrown 125⅔ innings, which is 26th in baseball, according to FanGraphs. Their 2,075 total pitches thrown is ninth. It’s been a consistent theme and concern for the Cubs early this season. The starting pitchers aren’t working deep into games, which will fatigue a bullpen that already looks like it’s running on fumes. From a results standpoint, the starting rotation has actually been quite good. At 3.64, their FIP is fifth in baseball. They’ve contributed 2.2 WAR as a group, which is eighth. This is despite the fact that they have gotten just one abbreviated start from Justin Steele and that they have gotten five starts from Kyle Hendricks, who has been the fourth-worst pitcher in baseball by FanGraphs WAR (fun fact: Adbert Alzolay is last on that list!). He also has the worst FIP of any pitcher who has thrown at least 20 innings. The more I have watched this team play, the more I feel like Craig Counsell is leaving quite a bit of meat on the bone here. Take Friday night as an example. In the middle of a stretch of 16 games in 16 days, the Cubs’ manager pulled Shota Imanaga at 88 pitches in the seventh inning of a six-run game. Sure, there was one runner on base, and maybe Counsell liked the upcoming matchups better with the right-handed Keegan Thompson in the game. On the other hand, you had a six-run lead. That seems like a decent opportunity to push one of your best pitchers to cover a few more outs. It turns out Counsell might know exactly what he is doing. Per FanGraphs, Cubs’ starters have faced 83 hitters the third or fourth time through the order, which is last in baseball. They’ve also allowed a .537 wOBA the third or fourth time through the order, which is the worst in baseball. The next closest team, the White Sox, is allowing a .448 wOBA, so it isn’t really particularly close. Remember that .320 is generally considered an average wOBA. It’s totally normal for pitchers to get a little bit worse each time through the batting order. The logic is that the more looks a hitter gets at a pitcher, the better he will start to see his pitches. However, the split that the Cubs are seeing here is incredibly out of the ordinary: MLB Cubs wOBA allowed first time .315 .224 wOBA allowed second time .311 .296 wOBA allowed third time .332 .537 wOBA allowed fourth time .330 N/A Is this a weird bit of small sample size theater or a worrying trend? I’d tend to say the former. Last season, Javier Assad gave up a .226 wOBA the third or fourth time through the order. This year, he’s at .612. Eighty-three batters faced for an entire team is not a huge sample size, and this stuff can take a while to average out. To be fair, this might not even be the reason for Counsell’s consistently quick pulls. It’s a long season, and elbow injuries are popping up everywhere. Perhaps the Cubs are being strict about pitch counts. Maybe they think keeping the pitch counts low in the rotation can keep that group fresh for 162 games. At the least, they should have the arms to rotate in and out of the bullpen to keep them fresh. On the flip side, sample size aside, this is worth monitoring. We are about 1/6th of the way into the season, and given how bad this has been, I’d have to think it is something of a factor in Craig Counsell’s decision-making by now, even if only a little bit. I also think we’re getting close to the time when those numbers will start to average out, and maybe Counsell will start to give his starters a longer leash at that point. So pay close attention next time the Cubs have a starter coming up on the third time through the order with a low pitch count. How do they fare? Does Craig Counsell pull them at the first sign of trouble? The Cubs might have a third time through the order issue. View full article

No single development so far this season should make Chicago Cubs fans more excited than the fact that they might have found their long-term first baseman. In fact, they might even have found a star. Image courtesy of © Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports I’m still waiting for Michael Busch to come back to Earth. I don’t think that even the biggest Busch optimist, coming into the 2024 season, could claim to have predicted the level of production that he has given the Chicago Cubs to this point. He has a glowing .309/.385/.618 batting line, good for a 172 wRC+. Admittedly, I am not sure what coming back to Earth would mean for Busch, at this point. According to Baseball Savant, his results are right where they should be. His batting average is a little above his expected one, but his slugging percentage is below his expected slugging of .702. He has a .431 wOBA and a .450 xwOBA, where an average hitter has a wOBA of about .320. What has he been doing so well, and can we really expect it to continue at this level? We can get the potentially obvious statistic out of the way early: Busch is performing well because he is hitting the ball hard consistently. His average exit velocity of 93.7 mph was 12th in all of baseball, through Saturday’s games. He is ahead of exit velocity kings Kyle Schwarber, Yordan Alvarez, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That’s great! But it also isn’t everything. Ahead of him on the average exit velocity leaderboard are the likes of Jesús Sánchez and Lawrence Butler, and nobody is writing articles about those guys. Admittedly, I didn’t even know who Butler was until looking at that leaderboard. The first thing that strikes me about Busch on this list is his maximum exit velocity. His hardest-hit ball so far was hit 109 miles per hour. That is fine, but not great. As a matter of fact, that puts him outside of the top 100 in MLB, and everyone ahead of him on the average exit velocity leaderboard has a much higher maximum exit velocity. This would suggest to me that, while Busch might lack the upper-level power of sluggers like Aaron Judge, he is hitting the ball so hard so consistently that he still manages to have an elite average exit velocity. After all, someone can hit the ball 100 mph twice, or hit it 115 mph once and 85 mph after that. They both come away with an average exit velocity of 100 mph, however, the player who hit the ball 100 mph twice gave himself a better chance at two hits. That's what Busch is doing, and there are other numbers to back this up. According to FanGraphs, he has recorded soft contact just 6.8 percent of the time, which is the sixth-lowest number in baseball. The other thing that strikes me about Busch is where he is hitting the ball. This is most likely Baseball 101 to anyone who reads this site at this point, but just in case: not all hard contact is created equal. If you hit the ball hard, but on the ground, the best-case scenario for someone with Busch’s speed is likely a double, if you manage to place it down the line. You want to hit your hard contact in the air, so it can find its way into the bleachers. According to FanGraphs, MLB as a whole is batting .465 with a 184 wRC+ on hard-hit ground balls this year. Hitters are batting an equally good .472 on hard-hit fly balls this year, but with a 455 wRC+. The difference? Some 31.5 percent of hard-hit fly balls have resulted in home runs, and of course, zero hard-hit ground balls have. Returning to the Cubs’ rookie first baseman, his average launch angle this year of 22.5 degrees is 18th in all of baseball, per Baseball Savant. His ground ball rate of 23.3 percent is eighth-lowest in baseball, according to FanGraphs. Thus far, Busch has been the perfect balance of consistently hitting the ball hard and hitting it in the air. Both he and the Cubs are profiting from it. Our own Matthew Trueblood just did a bit of work in this vein with regard to Rhys Hoskins, at our sister site, Brewer Fanatic. He created three stats that help us capture the idea of clustering hard-hit balls in launch angle bands where they have the greatest value, and of hitting it hard when you do lift the ball. Here's how Busch rates: Sweet Spot Exit Velocity (SSEV): 98.1 MPH, 91st percentile Hard-Hit Launch Angle (HHLA): 22.6 degrees, 94th percentile Weighted SSEV: 95.3, 97th percentile The last of those is the one that best correlates with overall production, as it blends the ability to hit line drives and non-pop-up fly balls with the ability to hit them hard. Busch excels most in it, which is a great sign. The next logical question, of course, is can this continue? For one, this is a new trend from Busch. His average launch angle in his 81-plate appearance debut with the Dodgers last year was 4.7 degrees. His ground-ball rate in Triple-A last year was low, at 37.6 percent, but still not nearly as low as the 23.3 percent he has in the big leagues this year. Busch either has a new approach, or is executing his old one better than he ever has before. While Busch has had success so far, both in his raw numbers and his peripherals, pitchers will surely adjust their approach to him as they get more data points on what exactly he is trying to accomplish at the plate. The good news on that end is that he has been able to elevate the ball almost anywhere it has been thrown, and has covered the whole strike zone pretty well, save for the corners: To put a bow on this, it’s time to get excited about Michael Busch. We knew about his eye at the plate and good swing decisions coming into the year. The concern was the strikeout rate, and given that it is currently near 30 percent, that is still going to be an issue. Let that serve as a reminder that it’s not reasonable, yet, to expect him to be one of the best hitters in baseball for the full season. However, given the quality of contact and new approach, it’s safe to say that this stretch to start the season hasn’t been lucky. We’re seeing what this guy can do when everything clicks. Before the year, ZiPS pegged Busch at a good but only slightly above-average wOBA of .337. Now, ZiPS has seen enough to project a .347 wOBA for him for the rest of the year. Last season, that would have been a top-50 hitter in baseball, in line with the likes of Julio Rodriguez, Randy Arozarena, José Ramírez, Gunnar Henderson, and Pete Alonso. If he can continue elevating the ball like he has been, the Cubs just might have stumbled upon a hitter who can be listed with some of the elites of the game. View full article

Yesterday was the least he has thrown his fastball all year. He mostly opted for the sinker instead, which I am guessing correlated with the higher ground ball rate. To me, he has been a fascinating case of “I think it’s been good but the results aren’t quite there yet” through four starts.

Fastball usage is down only slightly across Major League Baseball so far this year compared to last. According to Statcast’s pitch type data, through Saturday’s games, 31.6 percent of pitches so far this year have been fastballs. Last year, that number was 32.3 percent. Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports For the Chicago Cubs, however, fastball usage is way up. After throwing 29.3 percent fastballs last season, the Cubs’ pitching staff is now throwing 37.5 percent of their pitches as fastballs, good for sixth in all of baseball. Shota Imanaga is one of the main culprits for this rise in fastball usage. As a matter of fact, per Baseball Savant’s Run Value, Imanaga’s fastball has been the most valuable pitch in all of baseball, having accumulated eight runs worth of value to this point in the season. Nobody else even has a pitch that has been worth more than six runs. Much was made of Imanaga’s fastball in the preseason, and the former NPB star has cashed in on that hype. He gets an elite amount of ride on the pitch, meaning that the pitch drops less than the hitter expects when they see it coming out of his hand. His 2.8 inches of vertical movement above average is fifth in baseball, and so far he has executed that pitch at the top of the strike zone perfectly. Hitters are hitting just .075 against the pitch: Ben Brown’s unexpected early season debut is also partly the reason for the team-wide increase. The rookie fire-baller has thrown 63 percent fastballs so far in his young career. But I will save a breakdown on him for another day. The guy that I really want to talk about here is Jordan Wicks. After throwing 28.3 percent fastballs in his cup of coffee last year, the former first-round pick is throwing 48.8 percent fastballs so far this season. Underneath the hood, Wicks looks like a completely different pitcher this season. Last year, he struck out 16.3 percent of hitters, walked 7.5 percent, and induced ground balls 46.8 percent of the time. Now? He is striking out 29.2 percent of hitters faced, walking 12.3 percent of them, and his ground ball rate is all the way down to 29.7 percent. So what gives? The former Kansas State Wildcat has made a concerted effort to change where he attacks hitters with his fastball. Let’s take a look at his fastball locations in 2023 vs. 2024: Clearly, Wicks has gone from attacking hitters mostly down and in with his fastball to almost exclusively throwing it up in the zone. To make this even better, he went from -0.4 inches of vertical movement vs. average on his fastball last year to 1.4 inches this year. He still has a below average fastball from a velocity standpoint, but the extra ride will help him if he intends on working up in the zone with it. All of this helps explain the complete 180 that we have seen from Wicks in his strikeout numbers, and in his batted ball profile. Because of the emphasis on throwing his fastball up in the zone, he has unfortunately missed with it more often, throwing it in the zone just 52.9 percent of the time, down from 60.2 percent last year, according to Pitch Info stats at Fangraphs. The flipside of that is throwing up in the zone typically results in more swing and miss. Last year, Wicks ran a 5.6 percent swinging strike rate on his fastball. He more than doubled that this year, up to 13.2 percent. The increased emphasis on the fastball has helped his swinging strike rate on his changeup jump from 15 percent to 30.2 percent. Lastly, this helps explain the drop in ground ball rate. Obviously, when you consistently throw a pitch up in the zone, it’s going to get hit in the air often. Wicks has just an 11 percent ground ball rate and a 29 degree average launch angle on his fastball. All of his other pitches are still getting ground balls, but with the increased usage of the fastball up in the zone, his ground ball rate as a whole has plummeted. I know I just threw a lot of numbers at you all, so let’s see if I can tie this all up with a nice bow. Jordan Wicks has almost doubled his fastball usage, and he is throwing it consistently up in the zone, instead of down and in. This all has resulted in a much better strikeout rate, but also a much worse walk rate. It’s also turned him into a fly ball pitcher. Maybe Wicks is taking a page out of Imanaga’s book, who has had fantastic results so far this year as he has yet to allow an earned run. Wicks, on the other hand, has a 5.68 ERA. Almost any advanced statistical measure would suggest that he has been the victim of some unfortunate luck thus far and expect that his ERA will be coming down. Regardless, Jordan Wicks is experimenting, and if he can start to better manage his walks with his new approach, I believe that the increased strikeout rate will benefit him and the Cubs in the long run. View full article