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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

Christopher Morel led off the bottom of the second inning for the Chicago Cubs in their game last Wednesday against the Colorado Rockies with an infield single. This was the spark plug in a big inning for the Cubs. Morel came around to score on a Michael Busch sacrifice fly, and the Cubs would score three more times later in the inning. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports Four innings later, in the top of the sixth, Morel fielded a routine ground ball with two outs and runners on first and second and, of course, airmailed the ball over Michael Busch’s head at first base, allowing the Rockies to score a run and prolonging the inning. This has been the Christopher Morel at third base experience in a nutshell: he gives, and he takes away. Last week, I was watching the Dodgers game as I drifted off to sleep, and they were talking about Mookie Betts’ shift to playing shortstop this season. Betts had mentioned to the broadcast crew that he thinks his new challenge on the defensive side of the ball has helped him be more successful at the plate. It’s easier not to be laid back on offense when so much of your attention is on the defensive end. Even if this is only anecdotal, it does make sense to me. After all, the phrase “a watched pot never boils” was coined for a reason. One week and change into the season, I wonder if Morel is experiencing something similar. Through Friday’s games, he has a 157 wRC+. We’re still dealing with a small sample size, but there are reasons to think it might be sustainable. His strikeout rate is way down, and he is making much better swing decisions: fewer pitches out of the zone and more pitches in the zone. The issue? As alluded to earlier, the Cubs’ young slugger has struggled defensively. He has struggled so much that he rates as the worst defensive player in baseball by almost any publicly available metric. Fangraphs uses its Defensive Runs Above Average metric to measure defense across positions. They estimate that Morel has cost the Cubs 2.7 runs in the field this season. The next closest player in baseball is Nick Castellanos, a notably poor defensive player at -2.4. Baseball Savant uses Fielding Run Value to measure defense. Morel is the only player to be worth -3 runs of Fielding Run Value. If Outs Above Average is more your preference to measure defense, he is one of seven players worth -3 Outs Above Average, according to Fangraphs. The impressive, or perhaps very unfortunate, thing about this is that Morel has accrued that much negative defensive value in just 28 innings in the field. The six other players who have been worth -3 Outs Above Average have all played at least 37 innings in the field, and five of them have played at least 50 innings in the field. Of course, as with everything this early in the season, sample size deserves to be mentioned. Dansby Swanson is currently rated as a poor defensive shortstop at this point in the season, and I don’t think anyone is concerned about him. However, while one week of defensive data shouldn’t be enough to conclude someone, it can be enough to start tracking a potential trend. Swanson has an entire career of being a superb defender to point to. While Morel wasn’t quite this bad in his 2022 sample size at third, he has no record of defensive success to rely on, and he isn’t exactly passing the eye test, either. So much has been made about the decision to play Morel at third base this season, and it appears that Craig Counsell is sticking by that decision, at least based on any postgame quotes he has given. The Cubs’ manager keeps saying that getting Morel out there every day will be the key to him improving. For the record, I agree. I believe Nick Madrigal is best deployed as a part-time player, so the Cubs don’t have a better option at the hot corner right now. Not to mention, with the way Morel is swinging the bat, he has to be in the lineup daily. My concern is whether the bat regresses from elite to above league average. How long can the Cubs, who will likely be fighting for a playoff spot all year, trot out one of the worst defensive players in baseball at third base? If it doesn’t start to improve, that noise will continue to get louder, and it will put Craig Counsell’s decision-making to the test early on in his tenure with the Cubs. View full article

Nice to know someone else has been watching Morel’s strikeout and chase rates as closely as I have to start the year! Would be a great sign if it continues.

Somehow, the second Cubs pitching start of the season almost brought more discouraging returns than the first. Let's mine it a bit, anyway, though, because the news isn't all bad. Image courtesy of © Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports Desperately looking for something to feel good about after a frustrating loss on Thursday, compounded with the news of Justin Steele’s placement on the injured list, I'm sure the Chicago Cubs were looking for a vintage Kyle Hendricks performance on Saturday night. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way they had hoped: Hendricks was pulled in the fourth inning after giving up five runs (all earned) on nine hits and two home runs. The Cubs eventually lost the game, 11-2. Plainly, Hendricks was not good enough. He walked 9.5 percent of the hitters he faced, and struck out the same number. This after a 2023 season in which he struck out 16.1 percent of the hitters he faced and walked just 4.7 percent. The .467 BABIP that he allowed will come down, but it was justified: he allowed a 41.2 percent hard-hit rate. Again, for context, that figure was 24.9 percent for the veteran righthander just last season. But, since we are all desperate for something to feel good about, I am going to attempt to provide it. According to Pitch Info data at FanGraphs, the soft-tossing Hendricks averaged 88.2 mph on his four-seam fastball, and 88.6 mph on his sinker. He’s never averaged 88 mph for a season with both pitches since 2016, when he led all of baseball in ERA and finished third in the National League Cy Young voting. Hendricks’s velocity actually ticked up a bit to end last season. He averaged 88 mph with his sinker and his four-seamer in seven of his final 10 starts. His ERA in those seven starts was 3.29. Sure, the control was not there in his season debut, but it is a really good sign for the rest of the season that the velocity was there. Now 34, Hendricks is at an age when a lot of pitchers start to lose velocity quickly. For someone who has always been one of the slowest-throwing pitchers in baseball, a decline in velocity is a much greater concern than it would be for, say, Max Scherzer, who has very slowly been losing velocity for about five years now, but maintains effectiveness since he can still sit at about 94 mph. (And because he is Max Scherzer, but the point remains.) Control, on the other hand, tends to age much more gracefully. Using Location+, which measures a pitcher’s ability to put a pitch in the right place, we can see that Hendricks has been hovering in the 102 to 110 range for the past four seasons. In this case, 100 is average, so I have full faith that Hendricks can right the ship and return to form in this department. One other small note on Hendricks from Saturday night. Sahadev Sharma reported in the preseason that Hendricks had been playing around with a new grip on his curveball. According to Sharma, Hendricks had very good reactions to his curveball this spring, and was considering using it more often this year. His curveball usage had fallen from a career-high 16.6 percent in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, all the way to a career-low 3.5 percent last season. He didn’t throw any curveballs the first time through the order, and I got really excited when his first pitch to Marcus Semien to begin his second time through the order was a curveball, but he only ended up throwing one more, and both ended up breaking outside for balls. A two-pitch sample size is not nearly enough to go on, so I won’t bother getting into the pitch shape of the curveball and if it was really different. This is just something else to watch for, in addition to the velocity, going forward. Yes, Hendricks was bad on Saturday night. But there were still some good signs that he can right the ship and be an effective pitcher. Hopefully that happens very soon, because with the pitching staff starting the season as banged up as it is, the Cubs really need Hendricks to be good right now. View full article

In the spring, everyone believes they have pitching depth. The Chicago Cubs, though, can point to an objective framework that keeps the whole league in view, which says that they have better depth than most. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports We’ve all likely heard this news by now: Jameson Taillon’s back acted up on him just prior to his first scheduled spring training appearance, and as of this writing, he has still yet to throw a Cactus League inning. According to Bruce Levine, the veteran righthander’s back has responded well to his rest and treatment, and he is planning on throwing off of a mound later this week. Given that we’re a little more than a week away from Opening Day, though, it is unlikely he will be ready to go for the start of the season. Caleb Kilian, who looked good in his three preseason appearances, will also be out (in his case, for several months) after an MRI revealed a strain of the teres major in his right shoulder. This all sounds really bad for the Chicago Cubs, and it is, but frankly, they should be glad that these are the only injuries that have struck their pitching staff to this point in spring training. Kyle Bradish was diagnosed with a sprained UCL and will miss the start of the season. Lucas Giolito is out for the year after undergoing elbow surgery. Justin Verlander will miss the start of the season with a shoulder injury. Most importantly, the once invulnerable Gerrit Cole has been shut down after experiencing elbow pain and likely won’t resume throwing again for several weeks. This all underscores a larger point: Throughout the history of baseball, pitchers have never been as fragile as they are right now. According to The Athletic, injured list placement for pitchers rose from 241 in 2010 to 552 in 2021. Use of the IL has dropped slightly in the years since then, but according to CBS Sports, the number of days lost to the injured list this past season rose 6.1 percent. That implies that, while the number of injuries might be tailing off, the severity of those injuries continues to worsen. Some blame the pitch clock for this. Pitchers now have less time to recuperate between pitches, and some think this is an issue that compounds over the course of the season. Others blame the increased focus on velocity and spin rate. With pitchers throwing at maximum effort every single pitch, more arm injuries are bound to happen. I’d tend to lean toward the latter being the reason, but I am not a doctor, nor am I remotely smart enough to be one. But enough self-deprecation! Since the Cole injury, specifically, I have been thinking a lot about pitching depth in baseball. I assume everyone reading this has had the importance of pitching depth drilled into them by Jed Hoyer by now. It is unfathomable to me that the 2016 Chicago Cubs had five pitchers combine for 152 starts. It’s even more unfathomable to me that that was only eight years ago. Hoyer is likely correct when he says that that is not something that will repeat itself any time soon. The Cubs don’t have a bona fide ace. Justin Steele is very good, but most projection systems are bearish on him and consider him a good, but not elite, starting pitcher. ZiPS projects him to be the 35th best pitcher in baseball in 2024. Shota Imanaga might be really good, but he is way too much of a question mark at this point for anyone to consider him an ace. So, sure, the Cubs lack an elite ace. But are we sure that is all that much of an issue? I co-own a fantasy baseball team with my brother, and we have a philosophy on pitching. I know, nobody cares about my fantasy baseball team, but bear with me. It’s an auction league, and our strategy is to (almost) never bid on a pitcher that will cost us more than $10 or $15. Pitchers are way too fragile, and we’d much rather bank on six out of 10 decent pitchers staying healthy and giving us bulk counting stats while reinvesting that money on hitters, where performance and health are just a bit more reliable. If you drop $35 on Spencer Strider and he gets hurt, or has an unlucky year and posts a 3.86 ERA like he did last year, you end up with a lot of money that could have been better spent elsewhere. What the Cubs do have is depth. Take the Cole injury as an example. Last season, the Yankees (as a team) posted 13.4 pitching WAR, according to FanGraphs. Cole himself was responsible for 38.8 percent of that total. The Cubs posted 16.9 WAR, and their best pitcher, Justin Steele, was responsible for 29 percent of it. The Cubs have less of their value tied up in any one specific player, which in theory, would make it easier for them to withstand any sort of injury. In the era of injuries to pitchers being so frequent, this feels important to me. Ben Clemens wrote brilliantly about this at FanGraphs recently. The Cliffs Notes version is that they reran season simulations after removing the best player from a team. Then, they did it with the top two players removed, then the top three, and so on. You should check out his articles on it, but what struck me as interesting is where the Cubs fell on these lists. As it currently stands, the Cubs project to be an exactly average team: 15th in all of baseball with a .501 winning percentage. If you remove their best player (Dansby Swanson), they project to have a .500 winning percentage. I won’t walk you through the entire table, but notice that once you get down to removing the top eight, nine, or 10 best players, the Cubs vault into having one of the three best winning percentages in that scenario. This is for all players, not just pitchers, but it still goes to show that the Cubs are one of the deepest teams in baseball. Does this mean that the Cubs shouldn’t invest in superstar-level players? Of course not. Those types of players raise a team’s ceiling immensely. But in an era where players (and, more specifically, pitchers) seem to be dropping like flies, I have found myself wondering if building your team this way can be a legitimate strategy. With Taillon missing the start of the season, the Cubs have Javier Assad available to fill in and hold his own. If that doesn’t work out, they can give Drew Smyly a try. If that doesn’t work out, maybe Ben Brown or Cade Horton can get a shot. The old saying goes “you can never have too much depth,” and that has never applied more than right here and right now. I can’t wait to see how it works out for this iteration of the Cubs. View full article

I just don’t see it with Cooper. Wisdom has been better at the plate over the past two seasons, projection systems see him as better in 2024, and he has positional versatility. I also think Wisdom’s ability to flip a game with one swing of the bat is slightly more valuable to a team that was average in the power department last season, and likely will be again this year.

Not 100% certain the sample size is there, but this is definitely still worth a mention and something that I completely missed. Wisdom has a 141 wRC+ in 52 PAs as a pinch hitter for his career. Had no idea it was that good!

The Chicago Cubs have one great defensive third baseman, one great offensive third baseman, and one very handsome, very nice Irish fella who doesn't deserve this level of marginalization. Let's find a better way to use him. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports It might be hard to believe, but Patrick Wisdom is one of the longest-tenured Chicago Cubs. The only current players who had appeared in a game for the Cubs before Wisdom’s two-plate-appearance cup of coffee in the shortened 2020 season were Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner, Adbert Alzolay, and, of course, Kyle Hendricks. If we want to get technical, David Bote, Brad Wieck, and (somehow) Carl Edwards Jr. are still around (or have come back around), but none of them have been big-league mainstays like Wisdom has, and I wouldn’t bank on any of them breaking camp with the big-league roster this year. My thoughts on this are twofold: it’s crazy how quickly big-league rosters turn over, and that Wisdom is becoming something of a forgotten man on the 2024 iteration of the Chicago Cubs. This is a guy who posted 2.3 FanGraphs WAR in 106 games in what was his first full big-league season just three years ago. In so many ways, it’s easy to see why he’s forgotten. Since that 2021 season, Wisdom has struck out 36.9 percent of the time. That is second-worst in all of baseball in that timeframe, with only Joey Gallo posting a higher strikeout rate. Wisdom is absolutely a flawed player. On the other hand, his strengths are just as clear: When he does hit the ball, he hits the absolute snot out of it. In that same timeframe, his 16.1 percent Barrel rate is eighth in baseball, and his hard-hit rate of 40.1 percent is 11th. His isolated power is eighth-best in MLB. Wisdom has a special ability to hit the ball hard and out of the ballpark. All of this brings us to the 2024 season, which is the furthest down the depth chart Wisdom has found himself since he’s been a Cub. Michael Busch is here to cover first base. The noise around Christopher Morel playing third base every day seems to be real. Nick Madrigal is still here, and I am sure Cody Bellinger will be seeing some playing time at first, as well. It’s possible that Wisdom is now the team’s third-best option at first and third base, his two primary positions. With so many other options, is there a way that the Cubs can deploy him to best suit his skills? The obvious solution for a right-handed hitter would be to only put him into the lineup against left-handed pitchers. The issue with that would be that, last year, he actually hit righties better than lefties: he posted a 104 wRC+ against southpaws, and a 114 wRC+ against right-handed pitching. For his career, he has hit lefties better (a 119 wRC+ vs. a 102), but that still isn’t a massive gap, and he has actually struck out more against lefties than righties for his career. That doesn’t really give me confidence that he can be a guy who would crush left-handed pitching this season. Interestingly, Wisdom saw more fastballs in the 2023 season than in any other season with the Cubs. According to Baseball Savant, 39 percent of the pitches he saw were four-seam fastballs, which was up from 32.2 percent in 2022. He slugged just .269 on the pitch, and was worth -13 runs when facing four-seamers--by far his worst figure against any individual offering. Looking at his wOBA on fastballs by zone from 2021-2023, it’s clear to see the hole in his swing: If a pitcher can spot his fastball on the upper part of the zone, Wisdom basically becomes Jon Lester. Based on the number of four-seamers he saw last year, it would seem pitchers have caught on to this. Could Wisdom be deployed exclusively against pitchers who either don’t live up in the zone with their fastballs, or don’t throw their fastballs often? Looking at a list of pitchers against whom Wisdom has hit well in the past, I’d say the answer is yes! Let’s look at three pitchers whom he’s hit well in his career, and whom the Cubs are likely to see this season. Wade Miley throws his four-seamer just 21 percent of the time against righties. Wisdom has hit .250/.357/.583 off of him in 14 plate appearances. Miles Mikolas throws his four-seamer 24.6 percent of the time against righties. Wisdom has hit .273/.357/.545 in 14 plate appearances off of the veteran. Graham Ashcraft doesn’t even throw anything that classifies as a four-seam fastball on Baseball Savant. Of course, Wisdom also hit him well, to the tune of a .273/.333/.818 line in 12 plate appearances. Are these cherry-picked numbers? Maybe! Wisdom has faced Corbin Burnes 15 times, who famously throws a lot of cutters and not a lot of four-seam fastballs, and only has one hit to show for it. To that, I would say, nobody hits Corbin Burnes well, and hey, that one hit was a home run! Also, this is not a perfect science. We are still dealing with very small sample sizes if we’re looking at his numbers vs. individual pitchers. Regardless, the hole in his swing against four-seamers up in the zone is clear to see. There was some talk of the Cubs doing this with Wisdom last season, but I don’t think they executed it very well, and with Nick Madrigal in and out of the lineup with hamstring issues, Wisdom was probably pressed into more playing time than the team had initially anticipated. This season, though, with Busch in the fold, Morel playing third, Madrigal returning, and even Matt Shaw looking ready, I think the Cubs might finally have the depth to pull this off. If they can deploy Patrick Wisdom against pitchers who either aren’t comfortable working up in the zone with their fastball or don’t throw a four-seamer very often, I think he can become a very valuable part-time player. View full article