Stratos

At the beginning of the broadcast Taylor said it's a flexor in his throwing arm, had imaging done, his repaired elbow/UCL is fine, but CC said Steele won't be back until after the ASB. Was previously on pace for about early June return.

All the Cubs pitchers who have thrown for so far this year omg lol:

Horton also had a flexor repaired in his recent surgery. Numerous flexors are in the forearm, even around the wrist which i imagine is why Horton felt discomfort there when he walked off the mound. This isn't disastrous yet for Steele but it isn't good.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course. But post-Steele setback and more pen injuries i think Hoyer would probably have upped his offer for Giolito even if he's not that good. The deal he signed for was quite small. If we're in the market for a SP again this trade deadline that would be maddening. But if the offense is still looking good by then they may have to bite the bullet and try to acquire someone better than a Soroka type.

Yeah good call on the foot. We're not sure why he moved Mo up and Busch down, could be a matchup CC doesn't like for Busch tonight, so lineup could revert to old when Bregman is back, or not, impossible to say now. I certainly dont think Mo is intimidated by the MLB, he even looked really confident catching last night. Guy has major swag. So doesn't seem like a guy who would be bothered as a rookie by the pressure of hitting 2nd.

Switching Seiya and Mo with Busch and Bregman in the lineup or whatever isn't going to hurt anything. Nobody is suggesting having PCA lead off or something ridiculous. Just changing up the dynamic a bit. Maybe it clicks maybe it doesn't, we don't know. Either way it probably doesn't even matter.

Why not try it? The risk is zero.

Honestly maybe some of these LOB issues could be improved with some batting order tweaks.

Yeah he's had some good ABs lately for sure, a great sign. I'm sure the power will come.

With so many of our good pitchers hurt, credit goes to the rotation and pen for holding down the fort.

Did we get any clarification about Taylor's report vs CC?

Is there a point anymore in using top draft picks on pitchers?. They can barely stay on the field and when they do it's only for 5-6 IP per start. The Theo formula worked pretty well.

Maybe the bats just needed to get out of the March/early April cold Wrigley nightmare. They hit well in Tampa and Philly. PCA/Nico are from California, Bregman from New Mexico and played in Houston, Mo/Amaya from Latin America, Swanson from Atlanta. Would make sense.

Hindsight is 20/20. Didn't hear anyone wanting to turn Nico into a HR hitter before Opening Day, because he's never been able to drive the ball out of the ballpark much but has been able to slash liners all over the field. It's not exactly a hot take. And sample size still applies here Like I said above, if Nico can add more HR to his game to the point that its worth him hitting more FB I'll be very glad to wrong.

My argument was that he's tried hunting for HR in years past and it didn't work. But if Nico can completely change his hitting profile on flyballs and keep hitting HR I'd love to be wrong.

Weird. On the broadcast today Taylor said the same as. Her tweet, that Horton had surgery yesterday and when they went inside the elbow they decided to do the full TJS in his UCL. Out 15-16 months.

I'm arguing that if he changed his launch angle when he tries to hit a FB (which he doesn't always try to do based on his differing swing path depending on the pitch) and sacrificed flyballs for more line-drives then his BA would go up. The highest BA/xBA among FB, LD, and GB is line-drives, so the data supports my hypothesis. His LD% has gone up this year too along with his BA and xBA. Yes it's a funny coincidence but it doesn't prove any point against my argument, which is what you also seemed to be trying to use it for. I agree that when he hits FB he should be trying to pull them as much as possible, as I already mentioned when I said if he wants to hit more HR he should try to pull them down the line like Isaac Paredes, who like Nico also lacks bat speed/EV/power. As you know, i'm not specifically concerned about him avoiding all "balls in the air" (i didn't mean that in the statcast definition of the word, which includes line-drives), i'm concerned about flyballs specifically, especially ones not pulled down the down. Line-drives are good. Flyballs in the direction of the leftfielder (where he seems to hit them a lot) or maybe even the LF-CF gap I don't think will produce optimal results because he doesn't hit the ball hard enough. He's not going to turn into Alex Bregman. Nico's HR/FB this year is more than twice as high as last year and significantly higher than his career rate. It's unlikely he maintains that though I hope he does. Might depend on the Wrigley winds and how much he can improve pulling the ball. It just sucks when less than 5% of his career flyballs haven't resulted in a HR and most seem to die in the glove of an OF. We've seen him try to hit more HR before and it hasn't worked.

You're playing semantic games. I also said this: For Nico IMO flyballs bad, groundballs bad, line-drives good. I assume he never or rarely tries to hit grounders, but he seems to be trying to hit flyballs. In his career his flyballs turn into HR less than 5% of the time, which is a terrible rate for an MLB hitter, and gap doubles or doubles over the OF's head are rare for him according to his statcast charts.

I literally went through stats of Nico's very low HR/FB% right before I made the point about anecdotes, so you're wrong. There's a difference between a line-drive over the INF head and a flyball, both which i assume count as "balls in the air". Trying to hit groundballs or flyballs is IMO a bad idea for Nico, he seems to excel when he hits liners all over the field, especially down the 3b line. The angle of certain swings of Nico looks like he's trying to drive the ball out of the park, but it just fails so often. This is a discussion forum. We're having a debate. You've shown countless times that you're not capable of having one without using insults and becoming angry and toxic, and I call you out on it when it's directed at me because I'm not going to take anyone's horsefeathers. You obviously don't like this so now you have this new habit of also butting into discussions I'm having with other posters and pulling the same BS. Clearly I'm not the one getting desperate to pick a fight.

I said he should stop trying to hit HR because he's bad at it and would have a higher avg with a lower launch angle. Your reply was to show his BA and xBA. I'm not sure what your point was with those stats. It's a statistical fact that hitting more flyballs leads to a lower BA, but more HR. But Nico's flyballs leave the ballpark at a very low rate. He was 2nd worst in MLB last year in HR per FB%. The last 3 years he's been 4th worst, just 0.3% better than Luis Arraez. Using anecdotal evidence and a sample size of 1 game or 2 weeks worth of games isn't good evidence. 4.3% of Nico's flyballs have been HR over the last 3 years, which is horrible, and his career rate is similar. If he keeps hitting more FB and hitting leadoff yeah he'll likely reach a career high in HR just out of sheer volume, but at what cost? He's been on fire this year so yeah it's a good argument that he shouldn't change a thing. But he was also on fire the last month of last season and hit significantly lower rate of FB.

I love Nico and he's been doing great but it drives me nuts seeing him swing for the fences and watching the ball die in the OFs glove.

I forgot Porter Hodge existed

I don't really look at standings until June but the Pirates pitching looked really good when we saw them. They're already a bit of a concern but if they start hitting yikes.

He's giving up hits because he's putting the ball in the air and it's usually getting caught by an OF. That has nothing to do with xBA. The launch angle and direction is the problem