Stratos

Marquee showed a shot of the Walter Johnson statue outside of Nationals Park. Can anyone tell me what's going on here? Is this the worst baseball statue? Note that the Rogers Center where the Blue Jays play has a statue of the founder of Canada's largest and terribly unpopular/greedy tv cable corporation who own the team LOL https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/walter-johnson-statue

Cubs didn't have many good choices. But yeah Smyly and Thompson in a save situation is a letdown in itself. I assume Hodge was unavailable.

MLB.com and Fangraphs both gave him a 60 for speed tool He's at least a 70 and maybe a 75. That's a big whiff. Shows how much these outlets actually know. I mean how could they be so off?

Just saw that he has thrown 81 curveballs this year and generated zero whiffs on them.

Throws strikes? And out-pitches start in the strikezone too?

Time of year i wish i had bought the MLB.TV package where you can watch all the teams instead of just the Cubs. Would be nice to catch the Braves/Phillies.

We have Wicks, Brown, Assad for the #4 and 5 spots next year and i assume they'll probably add another SP this winter. Assad would be nice as a swing guy and beef out out the middle innings in the pen. I like Brown in the rotation but I thought he looked promising in the pen too if we're healthy in the rotation. I'm pretty concerned about Cade Horton. Around the day the Cubs drafted him I said on the PSD boards that I really didn't like his mechanics and he seemed to use a lot of his arm in his delivery and sort of short-arms it a bit to try to protect the elbow wothout getting the full extension. Didn't have much of a stride either. No idea if he's fixed any of this yet with the Cubs. In high school I popped my UCL while arm-wrestling some dude during class and did the exact same thing when i threw a baseball for years afterwards. I still need Tommy John and i'll never get it (true story, Canadian healthcare isn't as good as you hear haha). I said at the time that the Cubs should trade Horton when he gets healthy and is dealing. Might be too late now. Huge risk/reward with him for sure.

Maybe they don't want Wicks in that weather?

Let's hope you're right!

We need to leave room for Matt Mervis. jk

Thoughts on Wednesday's game: - Having Hendricks throw 70 pitches over 2 innings on a hot day is a wild managerial decision. I was yelling at the TV. Counsell's hook is consistently slow. Maybe that's a comment on our bullpen for much of the year. - Happ whiffed on an easy roller in the OF, was a bit slow on the pop-up that dropped between him, Paredes, and Swanson, and got horribly picked off on a play at 1B due to absent-mindedness. He plays every day and I know its not an effort thing with that guy so it looks like he could use a day off and some games at DH. Hopefully Thurs off helps a bit. - Those are some of the toughest plays to make in the field but that was Swanson's ball. He's making 25m more than PCA a year and needs to hustle a little more sometimes. I'm ok that he wants to preserve energy for the 162 but c'mon. - This was one of the best worst games i've ever seen. Down 10-3 and scoring 11 unanswered runs is insane. - We've won these games we've needed to, let's keep going vs Nats (We see DJ Herz on Sat)

I think the Cubs have their INF in the org for next year. With Busch and Bellinger on the the team they can both play 1B, with Bellesteros possible as well at 1B/DH if not C. Paredes and Shaw are solid options for 3B and far cheaper than Chapman, who will be 32 next year. I think they have more of a chance to sign Soto than the large majority of big FA's the last several years. That might make one of Happ/Seiya/Bellinger expendable and I think they'd trade Bellinger to make more payroll room and the other 2 have no-trade clauses which I don't think Belli has. If not Soto then look for a top SP or maybe a bat elsewhere. Guerrero sure would be nice. I don't know a ton about Skubal other than the basics. Skubal has thrown twice the innings as last season after a year off from injury which seems pretty stupid by the Tigers. If its me I consider shutting him down for Sept or drastically reducing his pitch count.

He's also been hitting 8th. If he were hitting 1st or 2nd he'd be getting more PA's to add to the WAR.

Not to be a buzz-kill but I'm trying to remind myself that we've been playing the post-deadline Pirates, Marlins, Tigers, Jays, and White Sox the last few weeks...and got swept by Cleveland. I think PCA has been looking better obviously but i'm staying cautiously optimistic and prepared in case this is mostly just a hot streak. Same with Amaya and obviously Betancourt. These guys and this team weren't hitting the bad pitchers earlier in the year so i'll give them some credit now.

Hendricks has the lowest K% since his rookie year and the highest walk rate of his career. Gotta think he's close to done. His margin for error is just so low now, the stuff is so hittable. When he's not on he gets creamed.

Yeah I gotta agree. I wonder if he plays next year. I'm sure a team would give him a flier, would depend on how much he likes to pitch, i'm sure a huge paycut is coming. I kinda wonder how much the sticky stuff crackdown has affected him. Could have affected his feel and command. The velo is still there. Just from seeing on TV the sinker just doesn't seem to be there anymore too the last few years, or the movement on the change.

Shaw has played 54 games at 3B this season which is over twice as many as any other position. He's played the overwhelming majority of his games in Iowa at 3B also. You're right about Triantos, he hasn't played there at all this year and barely at all last year, probably just in a punch, they don't seem to like him at 3B from the prospect writeups. But yeah I'm not sure they'd go with Shaw over Paredes, but it says Paredes is hitting .140 since the ASB so if he continues to slump they wouldn't have much to lose I guess. It would be a pretty big desperation move unless there's the injury thing with Paredes that gets worse. Cubs are 29th in the MLB this year in total WAR from the 3B position at -0.7 WAR, yikes. Gotta think they probably give Paredes at least a couple of months to start the season next year before Shaw becomes a replacement option. It would be fantastic if Paredes does well for us and they could afford to trade Nico eventually (or possibly Swanson...less likely) and put Shaw or Triantos at 2B.

My argument is that Bellinger's actual tools (physical athletic abilities) aren't any worse even if some of the statistical results have been worse. Launch angle is not something largely determined by his raw physical tools, it's about mechanics, timing, intent etc. This can change year to year and the stats can go up and down while his physical tools remain the same, which suggests he can possibly improve on this next year, and probably overperformed last year compared to what we should expect in an average year from him. Similarly, baserunning value can go up and and down year to year for various reasons, but his sprint speed is the same as last year (actually ranks better this year) so is there any physical reason for this decline, or it is just some random variation, or changes in another variable outside his control like base-coaching (more or less aggressive sends etc)? I don't see how his defensive abilities have necessarily changed either even if the stats aren't as good as last year. He still has the same sprint speed and the arm strength is similar. Defensive metric outcomes will vary year to year based on numerous factors including natural variation (luck) due to limits in sample sizes so a decline this year isn't necessarily an accurate reflection of a player's abilities declining, especially considering Bellinger only played 80 games in the OF last year and at different positions and will likely have about the same # of starts in the OF this season too. I'm a big believer that teams should largely pay for tools (and skills that take many years to teach) and focus on evaluating those properly rather than getting overly reliant on the results on the field in a single season since those are far more variable. I think the best front offices are able to best separate those and evaluate players most accurately.

I think Bellinger is literally the exact same player he was last year. His abilities haven't changed. His exit velo and hard hit rate and running speed haven't changed. The tools are still all there, he's a really good athlete. He started a quarter of his games this year at DH including when he didn't need to earlier in the year, and started almost a third of his games last year at 1B (a position which has a negative positional adjustment when WAR is calculates) so his WAR is a little deceiving of his true value. There's also value in being able to play multiple positions which isn't calculated into WAR. He hasn't had the launch angle or HR groove like he did last year and I don't think anyone expected him to repeat the year he had last year. He's still a good player. They didn't really overpay because luckily they got him for 3 years max from Boras. On a longer term deal he'd probably make around 24m AAV I think ideally you 'd love to have most players you sign to substantial AAV contracts at FA market prices to only stick around for a year but i think 1 or 2 more seasons of Cody is totally fine.

Yeah Suzuki is 5th and Happ is 12th. Happ is 13th in OF WAR and Suzuki is 17th. Suzuki would be even higher if he didn't DH. There's 90 OF spots in the MLB so that's very good.

Dansby projected to finish with a 3.5 fWAR. Pretty good considering how bad most of his season was at the plate. Seiya's numbers look very similar to last year.

Let's put Amaya and Paredes in a race.

Neely's fastball looks very hittable so far. Guys hitting .375 and .750 SLG on it so far, very high exit velo. Early yet though.

Before the deadline our 5-9 hitters in the lineup all had wRC+ under 100. Yuck. Glad things have improved.

Yeah he'd be fine in a piggy-back or swing guy role. Hopefully we have enough healthy SP to make that happen. He might just have had some control issues since coming back from injury. He did a bit better last year getting deeper in games.