Unfinished Business

In Commentary And Analysis by Rice Cube34 Comments

The Cubs had just announced their spring training roster, which includes the non-roster invitees. So that’s 72 total players officially in the dugout, not including the random minor leaguer they pluck from the other camps to complete the game once the roster guys are done for the day, and not including the extra lefty or split-neutral reliever they should probably still sign. Many players have already arrived in Arizona, and the equipment truck apparently has made it as well, so they’re on track to start well before their scheduled report dates.

With the arrival of spring training also comes the continuing sniping between the various characters in the Cubs blogosphere. You have the sunshine and rainbows crowd which believes in the gradual ramp-up plan that is using 2023 as a set-up/surprise year that they build on for 2024 and are bullish on what the farm has to offer, although unless, for example, Eric Hosmer falls into the Mystery Spot with Ozzie Smith, we are unlikely to see any of the top prospects debut at Wrigley on Opening Day. Then you have the other faction, which I will call the Grumpy Old Men, who think the Cubs are idiots and cheap and this team is going to be straight trash for 2023 and beyond. It does make for some very fun #popcorn moments on the debris field that is Twitter nowadays, and I’m guessing similar bickerings on other platforms that I don’t frequent as much. It is the nature of sports fandom.

The truth, whatever that turns out to be, probably lies somewhere in the middle. We know from the many preseason articles that the Cubs system has improved since the Great Sell-Off but is still middle-of-the-pack, either just outside the top ten or just barely 10th. Having been burned by prospect hype in the past, and a firm believer in the inherent chaos of baseball despite the best projections, I have a bit of a wishy-washy take on prospects. I’d love for all of them to pan out, but even with the ideal, personalized coaching and developmental infrastructure, some of the most talented players just never click or take it to the next level that we hope for, and there is going to be attrition and turnover as new hopefuls take their place. It makes sense to move some of the prospects to go for broke and try to win the World Series perennially, yet my feeling is that the Cubs are happy to keep their depth at this time. There aren’t too many top 100 types right now, but there are plenty who can sneak into the top 250, and that’s a pretty good count in a pool totally in the thousands.

The idea back in the day of Bryzzo and Javy was to build superstars from within and fill in the blanks. I don’t quite know if the three top-100 guys the Cubs landed in the lists will become that level of superstar, but they certainly appear to have the talent to give us hope. It would be great to have more of them and for the Cubs to then use some of their financial muscle (at least, we assume they have money lying around) to bully the rest of the division and the league. I wish I had more confidence in scouting and analytics to say PCA will definitely become the next great Cub™ and that all the pitchers being hyped up by the prospect nerds will become aces reminiscent of those early 2000s Cubs rotations, but again the baseball chaos gods give me pause.

All this is to say that while the Cubs are probably not doomed to being in the cellar as the Grumpy Old Men are grumbling about, the future is not as sunshine and roses as the other extreme would argue because there is so much more work left to do. The latter group has conceded that the system must continue to be built along with the appropriate infrastructure to cultivate all that talent, even as the Grumpy Old Men have embraced the worst case scenario.

For me, I will take the passive wait-and-see approach, because there is the hope for that 90th percentile outcome, where Seiya Suzuki belts 30-plus homers and Eric Hosmer ends up not completely sucking, that I am holding on to as is customary for this time of year. This hope will probably die in early May, or else the Cubs are hanging around and maybe even take a step forward to battle for the division. It’s just too early to stake claim to one extreme or the other, but since the games that count need to be played, why not hope for the best type of chaos that proves the projections wrong? Meanwhile, another avenue of hope is that Jed Hoyer and the rest of the front office is making sure that the system continues to be improved and supplemented, so that someday, our hope is for 100-plus wins rather than the projected 95, and not so much hoping for bouncebacks like where Cody Bellinger remembers how to hit.

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  3. Perkins

    Rice Cube,

    I’ll be honest, I’d have preferred a lower stress ending, whoever was on the mound for it. I was at NLCS 6 that year and that felt about perfect for a clincher. Pretty sure the period of time between the Rajai Davis HR and the final out in WS 7 took a couple years off my life.

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  4. Author
    Rice Cube

    Perkins,

    I was relatively quiet because I was just stunned but my wife unleashed a stream of obscenities that shook the world. Thankful for the ultimate ending but would have preferred a tidier win. I still would’ve been in favor of not getting that pitcher but I guess he served his purpose (dying laughing)

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  5. Perkins

    Rice Cube,

    I was at a bar where people were counting outs and allowing ourselves to get excited, and that HR took all the air out of the room. It felt like watching 2003 all over again until Zobrist and Montero came through in the 10th.

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  6. berselius

    Perkins,

    I was at a bar in San Jose that was about half and half Cubs and Indians fans. There was one Cubs fan who totally lost his shit and stormed out after the Davis HR. The CLE fan next to me was pretty gracious throughout the night, even bought me a bourbon to celebrate after.

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  7. Author
    Rice Cube

    I was at home watching but I suppose I should have made the trek to Wrigley to celebrate with everyone else. I probably also should have gone to the parade but most of the other teachers got first dibs on the personal day so I spent the entire school day showing Game 7 highlights to my students.

    At least the wife and child got to go!

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  8. Perkins

    I skipped the parade because I didn’t want to deal with a massive crowd and likely few to no bathrooms. I went to NLDS 2, NLCS 1 and 6, and WS 3 and 4, so I felt like that was plenty. That was a really good month before the world broke.

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  10. Author
    Rice Cube

    Re: the new rules from Castrovince:

    https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-new-rules-for-2023-faq?partnerId=zh-20230207-822603-mlb-1-A&qid=1026&utm_id=zh-20230207-822603-mlb-1-A&bt_ee=P1Rat8r5b3%2BS6gSKvZimGe7pMUxaVa4K%2B0dUrci1pHEaP5AWnEcVGmtuUiY9GuQo&bt_ts=1675777039466

    I never actually realized that second base was slightly outside the perimeter of the rhombus that is the baseball diamond until Jayson Stark or somebody else pointed it out, if they were to move it in total line with the other bases that might marginally improve stolen base percentage.

    Re: the limited disengagements, I wonder if the runner just takes a lead a third of the way to the next bag to dare the pitcher to get them in a pickle, because if he isn’t out (even if he gets back to the previous base) it appears to be a balk by default and he gets the next base anyway.

    This though

    Basically, umpires can use their best judgment to determine if the timer needs to be paused.

    gives way too much leeway in my opinion and I believe offers a situation where MLB might have to put in more stringent guidelines or else it becomes like arbitrary stoppage time in soccer.

    This is probably going to be codified into the official rule so would have to read it once MLB releases the updated rulebook, but it seems like there will be actual “illegal defense” calls if an infielder were to go across their DMZ:

    Can’t an infielder circumvent the rule by running across second base or into the outfield when the pitch is released?
    No. In addition to being physically difficult, such circumvention will be monitored by the umpires as a violation resulting in an automatic ball.

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  11. andcounting

    Rice Cube: This though

    Basically, umpires can use their best judgment to determine if the timer needs to be paused.

    gives way too much leeway in my opinion and I believe offers a situation where MLB might have to put in more stringent guidelines or else it becomes like arbitrary stoppage time in soccer.

    Strong disagree here. Baseball’s best legislative trait is that they typically know where to draw the line between having every specific possibility spelled out in a rule vs. leaving it up to the umpire’s judgment to decide whether an infraction of the spirit of the law has occurred. The NFL is constantly trying to nail down every last technicality of what constitutes a completed pass or targeting or taunting or whatever, which usually makes sense. But having a clause leaving a decision to the official’s judgment allows you to avoid the otherwise inevitable situation where anyone watching can clearly see what the outcome should be while the rules leave some loophole or contradiction forcing the obvious call to be the (technically) wrong call.

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  15. andcounting

    Rice Cube,

    They lost me at Jim Bowden. But just that sneak peek shows four-team divisions, which is really just creating divisions for the sake of creating divisions if you’re going to shake up the entire league.

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  16. Author
    Rice Cube

    andcounting,

    I didn’t read every word but I assume part of it is to just reduce travel, although if the division only plays 54 games against each other then that’s still 81-27=54 road games and like 18 travels out of your “comfort zone” so they might as well do it in 16-team leagues where the best finisher gets the bye and the rest battle for six wild cards or whatever.

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  18. Author
    Rice Cube

    If you ever found a random blueberry in your beer, it was probably the Barves

    Brandon Beachy
    11:28 Off field but in stadium. Tommy Hanson showed Mike Minor and I a little Wrigley Field nuance. The visiting clubhouse is actually above the concourse (long walk). The stairs is (was now maybe) exposed to the concourse with tarps hanging down the sides. He took us into kitchen and got cups full of blueberries and raspberries. Took us out the stairways and pulled back the edge of the tarp. We played a game of trying to drop berries into peoples beers below. It was the most juvenile thing but also the most fun ever. No one ever expected it to come from above. The would alwasy spin around and look behind them. Nothing more gratifying that splashing one down!

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  20. andcounting

    Just flipped over to twitter to see it melting down with the advent of a tweet limit (for non-paying accounts, I assume) and I’m (dying laughing).

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  23. BVS

    andcounting: They lost me at Jim Bowden.

    Yup. I only read his stuff when in the depths of insomnia.

    Any realignment that starts with 8 divisions is also dead to me because there are too many chances that teams without winning records make the playoffs, while vastly better teams don’t.

    I don’t think a team with a losing record should EVER be in the playoffs. In the NBA or NHL, I’d give the best team a bye over letting a team with a losing record in. But both leagues have too many playoff teams anyway.

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  24. BVS

    I see Keith Law has a top 20 rankings of Cub MiLBers at the Athletic. He still doesn’t like Mervis as much as everyone else.

    One thing that gets me about people who pooh pooh Mervis is they talk about him as an undrafted FA from 2020. But the draft was only 5 rounds. It’s not like he was undrafted after 20 or 40. There are 3 other guys in the Cubs top 20 that were drafted after the 5th round. Ben Brown was drafted #980something.

    But at least Law cites reason aside from draft position “mediocre bat speed and poor spin recognition.”

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  30. Author
    Rice Cube

    Apparently this prospect list has 9 Cubs in the top 150, so if each of the 30 clubs gets 5 on average, that means the Cubs system is above average or something because #math

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