PVG

I wonderif Happ's LH/RH splits have something to do with his season splits. Anyways looking at his OPS(career & 2025) splits .791/.687 & .818/.708, shouldn't he sit against LHs in favor of Matt Shaw, .649/.808 last year ? Can Shaw play LF? And I sure hope the guy from Japan can hit in the US and play CF, PCA was brutal last year, .838/.594. It would also be great if Happ could still play some 2nd base, Hoerner is .702/.788 & .699/.935. They also need a RH 1b and DH - there is somebody out there who looks very good. Enough with the pitching already.

This article once again highlights the common desire for the Cubs to acquire "top-line" pitching, but I would argue the data points to a much different priority. The Cubs already have 7 or 8 viable starters and anyhow, pitching was not the primary reason for the Cubs' struggles in 2025. A surface-level look at Cubs' full-season averages (4.90 R/G scored vs. 4.01 R/G allowed, league avg=4.45) suggests a perfectly balanced team. However, the season was really a tale of two distinct halves: Pre-All-Star (96 Games): The offense was dominant, scoring 5.33 R/G against a league average of 4.38. Post-All-Star (66 Games): The offense collapsed to 4.26 R/G (below the 4.56 league average), while the pitching actually improved to a stellar 3.88 R/G allowed. The second-half offensive drought can be traced to key injuries and specific regressions, e.g. Kyle Tucker, the catching duo, and Pete Crow-Armstrong. PCA saw his OPS drop from .846 in the first half to a nearly unplayable .634 in the second. His season-long struggle against left-handed pitching (.593 OPS) highlights a dire need for a right-handed centerfield platoon partner. While Alex Bregman’s arrival is a significant boost over Matt Shaw, one player alone may not bridge the gap back to a 5-run-per-game average. If the front office focuses on offensive consistency rather than redundant pitching, the math is in our favor: pairing 5.0 R/G with our current pitching staff yields a 98-win Pythagorean expectation. The pitching is fine; it's time to ensure the bats show up for all 162 games. (All metrics ared based on Retrosheet data; all errors are mine.)

Here's a list of CHC starting pitchers from this past year. Everyone was on the IL this past year(except I think Colin Rea). Some for months at at time. Mathew Boyd Colin Rea Shota Imanaga Jamesom Taillon Cade Horton Javier Assad Justin Steele They all have injury history and many are 30+. We know most of them will end up on the IL this year. That's the nature of MLB. The Cubs should stockpile and stash. A 6.5M pitcher, possible 1 or 2 - the Cubs need to sign him. With apologies to REM - Don't let your (pitchers) go 'Cause everybody cries Everybody hurts sometimes

I can’t argue with MT’s stats re Kyle Tucker- .747 (home) vs .923 (away) – why would he want to come back? on top of that, he seems fragile. And I know correlation isn’t causation – but didn’t it seem, didn’t it feel like that when he was hitting the entire team was hitting – and when he stopped they did too. How do you measure that? Is it leadership, did he take the pressure off of his teammates? – that first half was magical. How do we recapture that?

MT, Is there a way to measure this - a player's susceptibity to injury? And so I guess Kyle Tucker a bigger gamble than we thought - and so Is particpating the whole free-agent market - after all, most of those guys are 30+. And finally is Miguel Amaya now on the injury-prone list? What about Owen Caissie?

What do you do with him? In August in 112 PA, he hit .446 (OPS)! (To put that in perspective for us old-timers, Fergie Jenkin in 1010 PA for his career, hit .452!) How good does he have to be in CF to justify this bat? He's an incredible athlete. For the rest of the year, can you make him a contact hitter? You know, have him bunt at least once a game (sorry, JR), pull the infielders in and let him shoot some grounders thru an out of position infield. Foucs on OBP and do your thing? (and by the way, why can't Suzuki hit anymore - .608 since the break?)

KC, that's fair. I'm making a claim that the Cubs organization is/has been underperforming the Brewers organization. So let me go back to 2015. That's now 10+ years and the height of the Cubs success. So from 2015 thru today the Cubs have won about 8 more games than the Brewers. Call it even. In the same time period, per the numbers I saw, the Cubs had an avg salary of about 150M and the Brewers about 92M - better than a 1.5::1 ratio. I don't think that the advantage that small market teams get with the competitive advantage pick (the Brewers have had 10 since 2015) nearly makes up for the extra 50% the Cubs have spent. I don't know what you mean by - the benefits of being a small market club which allows them to have adequate talent throughout their roster/farm. But when you say -do a great job of trading away guys before they hit FA -a smart org overall with evaluations and mechanical tweaks you're making my case. You're saying that as an organization, they understand baseball better - dollar for dollar, they're better at baseball. And all the Cubs can do is hope to outspend them That's sad for us Cub fans. And - doesn't it seem remarkable that today, with widespread analytics, that one team could have this advantage over another? What is it that they see that others don't?

It's great that the Cubs can hang with the Brewers this year. But I've got to ask again- is it the system, or what? Since 2019 the Brewers have averaged about 8 more wins per year than the Cubs - while spending about $70M less per year. The Cubs payroll averages more than 150% of the Brewers! Any theories as to why that should be - what secret sauce do they have?

Isn't the real question : The Brewers payroll is about 100 Million and the Cubs' is double that - so how come the brewers are so good every year?

Happ has significant career splits - about .700(OPS) vs. LHP and .800 vs. RHP. There have always been questions about using Happ as a RH hitter - he's avg at best. Maybe it would make sense to just have him face RHP - focus on his LH side - - at least until he can get out of this funk.

It seems that everyone is trying to accomplish two things - get the best results for this year and not mortgage the future. I think we would be helpful if we could put some clearer definitions and some numbers on what we're hoping to achieve. 1) Best results for this year - that means raise the probability of winning the WS. Per Fangraphs various models the Cubs have between roughly a 5% and 13% of winning the WS. Call it 9%. (The Dodgers are at about 20%). 2) Mortgage the future - what's the future? - call it the next 5 years. So this would mean we'd like to keep the probability of winning the WS as high as possible over the next 5 years. So we'd need to come up with an estimate of those probabilities. I don't know how to do that. But let me put up some numbers just to get an idea of what this would like. Again suppose the Cubs now have a 9% chance of winning this year And suppose without making any moves this year they could maintain that same probability in the succeeding 4 years. Then their probability of winning the WS at least once in the next 5 years would be 1 - 0.91^5 =~ 37.6% So that's 5 years of having a very good team - and still very likely no WS victory. How about we go all in this year - completely empty out the minor leagues. How much could we raise the probability for this year - to 25%?, 30%? and what would that do to the future - with the rentals gone and the minor leauges decimated? - drop it to 3% per year? (about half the teams now have <3% of winning the WS this year) So what would the probabilities look like? let's be generous 1 - .70*0.97^4 = ~ 38.0% Just about the same. with a much greater chance for this year. I don't really know how to fill in the numbers or how far of a horizon we should look at - but does this approach seem reasonable in trying to make decisions?

Hey Matt, I think JeFF A. just stole my thunder - but here goes anyways - What's preventing Hoerner from taking that next step - and becoming an elite hitter - a la Tony Gwynn or Rod Carew? I guess you can ask that about anybody - but lets just talk about Hoerner. I see that he doesn't walk a lot - he has interesting LHP/RHP splits - .770 vs .700 (OPS). Good speed. Can you speculate on what separates him from them ? Is that kind of elite hitting not possible in this age? [ I asked JR a similar question about draft pick KK - JR thinks that KK has a low ceiling as a hitter. no response, yet :)]

How about keeping 3 catchers on the roster - and have McGuire catch about 1/2 the games and let Amaya and Kelly split the remainder. And meanwhile Kelly and Amaya can split the DH duties. And since Turner is such a good guy - make him a coach.

JR, With reference to your review of this draft pick - Is it no longer possible for a singles hitter to succeed in MLB? Are guys like Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew who I remember from my baseball youth, not the kind of player that could be developed and flourish? If not, why would that be?

Hi Matt, It looks like you're making comaparative evaluations based on offensive contribition of a half a season. So a couple of questions for you - 1) Why half a season - if you look at their career numbers - aren't they all about the same - a tad over .700? 2) you mentioned defense - but isn't Hoerner outstanding while one of these is avg and the other is below? 3) Baserunning - should that count for something? It seems that Hoerner is (much) better than these alternatives. So what's the total package? I know you don't want to use WAR - do you add up runs saved and runs created and come up with a number - and what would that number be? - or how do you do this? what's a good way to evaluate players? And what's the compelling cases for one of these alternatives?

Jason, You nailed it! 😊

Suzuki is 2/26 with 1 homer in the last 6 games - including a big ofer yesterday. Is he ok?

Matt, this post is very much over the top. There have been days as hot as yesterday (or today) 20, 40 and 60 years ago. Some solutions for umpires would be to have two home plate umpires one for the first half of a game and one for the second half. There could also be 4 base umpires - with one rotating out each inning. I don't think that anyone is predicting that baseball will be unplayable outside in the 20 years - or even 50 years in Chicago - where did you get that from? More night games and more shade would help the fan experience. A lot of people love indoor baseball. I believe the Astros attendance is something like 32,000 per game - some years even better - when the team is more competitive. It's not clear at all what the solution to global warming might be. Estimates are that if the US (13% of global emissions) would cease all emissions tomorrow it would affect the change in global temps by 0.2 degrees C by 2100. Probably tech solutions will be necessary - large increase in cheap energy (nuclear) which might make carbon capture economical and solar engineering (the star wars - outer space kind) as a temporary measure.. Back to baseball - I think the real problem facing baseball is the increase in injuries, esp to pitchers - see https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25460405-mlb-pitching-injuries/ Stays on the IL have doubled since 2012. Growing up a few years ago - I would watch Fergie Jenkins, Kenny Holtzman, Bill Hands, Milt Pappas take the mound every 4 days -they overlapped with Rick Reuschel - and complete games were a regular feature. And those pitchers pitched for years. Now we have an epidemic of injuries and it seems that your favorite pitcher is always on the IL. I hope the baseball minds can come up with some solutions. Also will Matt Shaw ever be a hitter?

Let me tell you where I'm coming from. In my very large organization, we have a DEI office which promotes a DEI admissions policy This policy gives extra weight to students from certain races, either directly or through proxy. In general these students do not meet the same academic entry standards as the students who were not granted this extra admissions "bonus". And in general, these students end up performing less well across all student outcome metrics.. And the differences are not minor - there's a really major gap. And there is definitely a cohort of students who were not granted admission and who in general, would have performed better than these students.. So I see DEI as a process to not only open doors but an attempt to advantage individuals and groups who had been disadvantaged/discriminated against in the past. And that's why I don't consider JR a DEI hire. He was clearly more talented and capable than many of the players already on the Dodgers. He had been directly denied this opportunity - he didn't need the bonus points, just someone to open the doors - I think that's different from the situation I described. If you want to continue the discussion I'm happy to do so - it's really not necessary to throw brickbats my way.

Dear Matt, I don't know that this is a good space for you to promote your political views. Furthermore, I think it would be easy to push back on many of your points. And why abandon statistics when trying to make your argument? On top of that, the essay gives off the vibe (that I think that I hear from some liberals) that not only are you wrong if you disagree with me, but you are also morally corrupt. So I guess in this case - you said would you meant. That being said, I think it's clearly incorrect and even misleading to describe Jackie Robinson as a DEI hire. In the DEI movement there are a lot of beautiful words, and a lot of frankly, incomprehensible words. However, I think the general understanding of a DEI hire or a person that matriculates thru a DEI process, is someone who has inferior credentials and is promoted over someone more qualified due to some characteristic such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. But as you said, and was self-evident, JR had superior credentials and was being excluded due to his race. He does not fit the definition of a DEI hire. Just the opposite really, Those who promote a "color-blind" protocol would insist that he be hired.

So how does a guy like Nico improve? Can he do it without adding power - a la Tony Gwynn, and all those famous singles hitters of yesteryear?

Sept. 1 ... the kind of bullpen catalyst Counsell specializes in developing and empowering. ... he's a walking affirmation of the staying power of Counsell's capacity for turning rookies into relief aces. ...Hodge's breakout season is a testament to the value of their manager, Hi Matt, I've been reading your articles for several months now - and I'd like to get your overall evaluation. Besides the two pitchers you mentioned in this article - Hader and Williams, what are the other rookies that Counsell turned "into relief aces"? I'm not being sarcastic , I just don't follow baseball nearly as closely as most on this site - so I truly don't know. Thanks. If a coach or manager has this kind of ability - wouldn't he be worth even more than the $40M that the Cubs are paying him? Hader has been paid $44M over the last 3 years and Williams $7M this year. So, one might say that Counsell has developed more than $50M of pitching value via these two pitchers alone. Are there other managers/coaches who can do this? Are there others who can do similar things for starting pitchers, hitters? Who are they? Assuming all this is true, it seems inconsistent with some of your previous articles - 1) perhaps Counsell is past his prime 2) Counsell is not responsible for the future performance of the bullpen 3) Counsell is responsible for the "failed" Morel experiment 4) Counsell's challenge process is inferior How do we square all this? Is Counsell invaluable - or when considering his deficiencies is he merely human :) ?