(note: I have one usable arm at the moment so this is short and sweet)
We have pitchers going against their pitchers. Ours are better
We have hitters, as do the White Sox. Ours are pretty good and theirs suck
I want to see how Yoan Moncada does and thats about it for them
We have won a lot lately and they havent won in like 4 months
this is a rivalry the same way men with guns and deer is a rivalry
In a blockbuster opening salvo to the 2017 trading season, the Cubs landed one of the best gettable arms for this cycle.
First, let's talk about what we've lost. Eloy Jimenez is a hell of a prospect (No. 5 in BA's midseason ranking). He has light-tower power, though it hasn't translated onto the field at quite the same rate. He's still very young with a few years of seasoning left in the minors, and he has as good a shot as anyone currently in the minors to be a .300/.400/.500 guy. He's a nice fit in the AL, as well, as he could easily be a DH when it's all said and done.
Dylan Cease was sort of my pet prospect, with a 98 MPH fastball that he can throw for strikes and a curveball that wipes hitters out. He has the same injury problems that most hard throwers have, but he could quickly become a frontline starter for the White Sox.
That said, Jose Quintana is already one of those. After a rough start to the year, Quintana has been what he's always been, and that's an extremely efficient and good starter. Over the past 3.5 years, Lester and Quintana have identical fWAR (16.6, good for 7th in MLB). Quintana isn't an overpowering pitcher, but he locates the ball extremely well and is very consistent. The only worry is that he isn't as grounder-dominant as a traditional frontline guy is (so a juiced ball might adversely affect him).
Quintana is under team control until 2021, so this is as much a play for 2018 as it is for 2017. It swings the pendulum away from "sell" to "hold," mostly because the Cubs simply don't have tradeable assets in the minors anymore. Still, I really like this trade (more for next year than this one), and I imagine that White Sox fans should like it too.
At this point, everyone knows that Montero is out.
Miguel Montero designated for assignment by #Cubs. Caratini to be called up
— Carrie Muskat (@CarrieMuskat) June 28, 2017
We'd be remiss without mentioning the fact that Montero hit a grandslam in Game 6 on the NLCS, and that he hit the go-ahead-by-2 RBI in Game 7 of the World Series (which the Cubs won. the Cubs won the World Series). He's also been a very solid hitter for the Cubs in part-time duty this year. It's obvious to everyone that he wants to start somewhere, doesn't get along with Joe Maddon, and now didn't get along with pitchers or Rizzo. He also threw out 0 of 31 basestealers this year, which is Myles-esque.
Victor Caratini is very worthy of the shot. He's hit at every level, carrying a .343/.384/.539 line into today's games with Iowa. I'd expect him to walk a little (though below average), strike out at an average clip, and have a little bit of power. A solid option for a backup catcher (and he's a switch-hitter, which is a nice bonus).
The James Russell/Emilio Bonifacio trade just continues to pay dividends.
Let's get one thing out of the way first: the Cubs won the 2016 World Series. I bring that up for 2 reasons. First, that's awesome and I want to bring it up at every opportunity. The other reason is that it buys you a significant amount of runway to do whatever you want for the near future.
I'm not exactly sure why, but the Cubs are not good this year. At their current pace, they are an 83-win team, and they haven't given any indication that they are going to hit above their weight from July forward. There are some injuries, some demotions, and the return of the suck for the pitching staff. Compounding these woes, the farm team isn't what it used to be, and it's going to need to produce pitching at a pretty high clip going forward (or else the Cubs are going to have to pull some FA/trade magic). Next year, John Lackey and Jake Arrieta are both free agents; the former is cooked and the latter is one of the biggest FA question marks of the past decade.
Those aren't the only 2018 FAs, either. We'll lose our 4th OF (John Jay), our backup C/starting malcontent (M. Montero), and our best and 3rd best relievers (Davis and Uehara). All told, the Cubs are shedding $55 million in payroll next year, but go into next season with Kyle Hendricks as the ace, an aging/deteriorating Jon Lester as the #2, and Mike Montgomery as the #3. Anyone's guess after that.
I believe the Cubs should be selling off parts this year. The path to the NL Central is achievable, of course, and once you get there anything is possible. The problem there is that you'd probably have to BUY to get there, and that would be very irresponsible unless you're buying long-term assets at the deadline (and those are expensive). A team will pay something from Jake Arrieta, maybe even something good. A team will take on the rest of John Lackey's $16 MM payroll (prorated at the deadline, approx. $7 MM in cash savings). Don't laugh, it's true – someone would trade for John Lackey at the deadline. You'd get absolutely nothing but salary relief in return, but $7 million is not nothing when you need every dollar you can muster to sign Bryce Harper. Asshole antics aside, Miguel Montero could start at catcher for some team looking to improve at the deadline (probably an AL team that can stash him at DH a not-insignificant part of the time). Wade Davis would command a HUGE prospect haul – you could probably get more for him than you paid to acquire him. Koji Uehara would bring back something fairly interesting (a back of the top-10 in the org type). There's even a small (really small) chance that you could unload Zobrist, though that would be a salary dump in the same vein as Lackey.
If you could successfully unload all of these assets, you'd save $30 million dollars and you'd probably get a top-20 in the minors prospect and a pair of top-200 guys. That's 1/3 to 2/5 of an Alex Cobb contract, and perhaps a starting pitching prospect that you can slot into the back end of your rotation. When the price of that is the 5% or so of a WS you forgo by selling, it seems to be a no-brainer.
The counter-argument takes two forms. The first is that you might want to re-sign some of these players in free agency. If that's the case, go ahead and keep them (except Wade Davis – the Cubs should definitely sell Wade Davis is they sell anything at the deadline). The other argument is that the Cubs are a 13-3 run away from being 5 games up and looking like buyers at the deadline. My response to that is which 16-game stretch in the first 70 games of the season led you to believe that this team is at all likely to do that? The Cubs are a beast with 6 gaping bullet wounds (LF, RF, SP1, SP2, SS, RP). Why would sell a piece of 2018 or 2019 to buy a single band-aid?
As the 108th most influential Cubs blog, we have a sworn duty to stay in our lane and only give you the highest quality of Cubs analysis. However, I just can't get over Kyle Freeland for some reason. Yes, he's not on the Cubs, and yes, he only played the Cubs once (game score of exactly 50). What's interesting to Kyle Freeland is that he is seemingly the best case scenario of every Cubs pitcher of the last generation: that is, he doesn't ever strike anyone out.
The league is striking out more and more frequently. The league is walking more and more frequently. The league is homering more and more frequently. Kyle Freeland, however, stands out in stark contrast to this trend.
| Name | Team | TTO% |
| Ty Blach | Giants | 17.99% |
| Ivan Nova | Pirates | 19.79% |
| Jeremy Hellickson | Phillies | 22.60% |
| Miguel Gonzalez | White Sox | 24.01% |
| Josh Tomlin | Indians | 24.15% |
| Mike Leake | Cardinals | 24.58% |
| Kyle Freeland | Rockies | 25.24% |
| Matt Cain | Giants | 25.34% |
| Zach Davies | Brewers | 25.59% |
| Clayton Richard | Padres | 25.61% |
Freeland doesn't lead the league in No True Outcomes percentage (though he's pretty close). He walks too many people for that to be the case (9.1% of PAs end in a walk). The interesting thing about Freeland in this regard is that he plays half of his games in Coors Field, which is a notorious launching pad for hitters. Freeland gets around this by inducing an obscene amount of groundballs:
| Name | Team | BABIP | GB/FB | LD% | GB% | FB% |
| Lance McCullers | Astros | 0.281 | 3.23 | 17.50% | 63.00% | 19.50% |
| Marcus Stroman | Blue Jays | 0.316 | 2.61 | 16.60% | 60.30% | 23.10% |
| Clayton Richard | Padres | 0.341 | 2.95 | 21.70% | 58.50% | 19.80% |
| Kyle Freeland | Rockies | 0.299 | 2.39 | 17.00% | 58.50% | 24.50% |
| Tyler Chatwood | Rockies | 0.259 | 2.44 | 20.10% | 56.70% | 23.20% |
| Luis Severino | Yankees | 0.275 | 2 | 15.80% | 56.10% | 28.10% |
| Jaime Garcia | Braves | 0.272 | 2.09 | 17.60% | 55.70% | 26.70% |
| Mike Leake | Cardinals | 0.264 | 2.29 | 21.00% | 55.00% | 24.00% |
| Jhoulys Chacin | Padres | 0.293 | 1.8 | 16.90% | 53.40% | 29.70% |
| Wade Miley | Orioles | 0.324 | 2.07 | 21.40% | 53.00% | 25.60% |
That's generally good company to be in. The easiest way to get by without striking people out is to prevent balls from going in the air; that's doubly important when playing in Coors Field. Put together, he actually pitches better at Coors than on the road (.712 opposing OPS home, .817 away). While groundballs result in hits more often than flyballs, flyballs go for home runs at an ever increasing rate (a combination of a juiced ball and more athletic hitters). Freeland, to this point, is showing the way to be successful despite the obvious deficiencies in a put-away pitch (which he'll likely never have).
In an attempt to bring this into at least quasi-relevance for the Cubs, I think this underscores the importance to limiting flyballs in particular. While it's true that pitchers only have limited control over their batted-ball profiles, it's self-evident that they can influence it somewhat – if they couldn't, there would be no variation from pitcher to pitcher. Pitchers like John Lackey are almost entirely useless simply on the basis of the fact they allow too many flyballs – even yesterday, it was clear to see that Montgomery allowed a home run to Stanton that was a double any year before 2015 or to any other hitter besides Stanton. The rules of the game are changing, and changing quickly. The pitching staff needs to be aware of that, and they need to make changes in approach if at all possible. There's at least some viable path forward if you can induce groundballs and reduce flyballs – at least there is until Freeland regresses to the mean.
The red-hot Cubs come rambling into Pittsburgh for a 3-game skirmish this weekend (note: Cubs not actually red-hot). The Pirates are a really, really interesting team considering that they don't have an offensive standout this year, but they don't have any offensive black holes. From top to bottom, the OPS+ of the 8 position players is 122, 114, 106, 103, 103, 100, 98, 96. The Pirates are also good at shortening the game with their bullpen; getting there is another story.
Cubs
Pirates
Friday: Eddie "What? Me Strikeout?" Butler (4.13 FIP) vs "Tennessee" Trevor Williams (4.82) (6:05 PM CST, WGN TV, 670 Radio)
Over/under on strikeouts recorded by these two starters in this game: 6.5
Over/under on earned runs allowed by these two starters in this game: 6.5
Eddie Butler is just not a very good pitcher. He's had incredible HR-luck this year and parlayed that into a league-average FIP. Nothing either in the hitting environment or Butler's own past indicate he can escape the longball in a meaningful way all season, so when those troubles come back (they will) it's going to get ugly.
Trevor Williams' upside is approximately Eddie Butler.
Saturday: Jake "The Snake" Arrieta (4.04) vs Ivan "Super" Nova (3.53) (7:15 PM CST, FOX TV, 670 Radio)
Ivan Nova is running an experiment where he is trying to figure out the highest ratio of balls in play you can get. Right now, it's working out for him (.262 BABIP), but having a 13.7% strikeout percentage would make Eddie Butler blush. He's had an increase in line drives and ground balls, so expect that the Cubs line out a lot and ground into 4 double plays.
I think Jake Arrieta has been pretty underrated this year, though he's dealing with a thumb issue. He's had a few too many fastballs this year (and they've been pulling them), but other than that his numbers are really similar to 2014 otherwise. This is Arrieta's last year as a Cub, so if the season goes really south, he can probably net something on the trade market. If not, I think he'll be suitable enough to be a starter for the NLDS we get swept in.
Sunday: John Lackey "Eats Live Mice" (5.55) vs Jameson Taillon (3.95) (12:35 PM CST, CSN-C TV, 670 Radio)
When 5 flyballs come off the bat after a Lackey pitch this year, one on average leaves the park. That's…not good. John Lackey seems like he's kind of a dick, and he's pitched horribly all year. Hard contact rates get higher and higher, almost to the point where you expect an integer overflow. I really don't want to watch another John Lackey start. I think that's exactly what I'll do.
Jameson Taillon has beaten cancer this year, so who gives a flying fuck how good of a pitcher he is. Glad he's doing well. It reminds me of John Arguello from Cubs Den. His cancer just came back. His twitter is right here. Please let him know that he's got some support, and if you can do more, please do so. Fuck cancer.
The Cubs don't face Gerrit Cole, which is a shame.
1. Miguel Montero had a very nice day, with a basket homer and two other singles. Nice to see him heat up after a relatively cold start to the season. I'm not opposed to him getting 55 starts or so this year, just to help preserve Contreras.
2. Jason Heyward is still routinely crushing the ball. Last year, there were times where you'd say that but follow it up with (0-4, strikeout). This time, he still went 2-4; it's not "consolation power." Heyward looks very good this year, though…
3… Kyle Schwarber is the best hitter on the team. It's sort of incredible how good Schwarber is already. He sees SO MANY PITCHES that everyone after him gets almost the whole book on the opposing pitcher. I don't think he'll keep up the 36.1% K rate, either – he's very choosy with his swing selection, and as he swings earlier in counts, he'll put more balls in play. Even if he has a 30% strikeout rate, that's livable if Schwarber gets on base 35% of the time and slugs .500 or better – the former is almost certain and I'd bet on the latter as well. Today, Schwarber eviscerated a ball and had another single and walk. He also saw 22 pitches in his 5 plate appearances.
4. Jon Jay had the high WPA play of the day, ripping a triple to tie the game. Jay is faster than he seems, and he flew down the basepaths.
Three Down
1. Brian Duensing is a horrible pitcher. Who woul d have thought that a league average reliever who was injured in 2016 and struck out 4.44 per 9 the year before that wouldn't have worked out? I'd just as soon see what Rob Zastryzny can do than trot this guy out. Cut the bait, already.
2. Looks like Brett Anderson is cooked again. Again, not a huge surprised. He was getting smoked early and often, and Almora wasn't precisely located to save him this time. If anything keeps this team from the playoffs, it's going to be the pitching, which is much, much shakier than it was last year. If Anderson isn't injured, he'd better rebound quickly. The cavalry at the moment is Mike Montgomery (who I'm high on, but has a great chance of being a AAAA starter), Eddie Butler (who isn't going to strike anyone out and will be something akin to Chris Rusin, and Alec Mills (an actual intriguing option at the back of the rotation, but a huge open question mark who is himself nursing a sore ankle).
3. Ben Zobrist had a rough day, going 0-5 for 2 strikeouts. I'm also extremely sick of his walkup music and am not looking forward to hearing it 6 times tomorrow (the Cubs are scoring 11 runs).
This game in LOL
The Brewers struck out 12 times and walked once.
Wednesday, 1:20 PM CST start
Tommy "Organizational Filler" Milone (4.36 career FIP, 699.1 innings) vs. Cyle Hendricks (3.31 career FIP, 461.1 career innings)
If you want to be technically correct (the best kind of correct), the Cubs went 103-58-1 last year in the regular season. That said, I was curious what their record was in each 7 game tranche (as that's the number of games in the World Series. The Cubs won the World Series in 7 games last year.), and since it's easy to build that architecture to expand to 5 game series, I did that as well.
The Cubs crossed the 3 wins (or losses) threshold on game 3 of the season, and after that, I went through the entire season and calculated each time the Cubs had won at least 3 of the last 5 games played (and 4 of the last 7 games played). The game the Cubs tied, I just disregarded altogether.
Rolling 7-game series record: 124-33
Rolling 5-game series record: 125-34
Something interesting to note: the Cubs didn't lose a 7-game series until game #37, where they lost both games of a double header (#32 and #33) and then lost two in a row to Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. Game #36 was where the Cubs lost their first 5-game series (same series of games: #32-#36, obviously).
There is a purpose to this analysis, and that's an attempt to calculate how evenly distributed the wins are. Imagine a team that plays 100 games, and wins 70 of them. That seems like an extremely dominant team; on the whole, that's a great winning percentage (113 win pace). However, if that team won the first 70 games, and then lost the last 30, you can easily imagine catching this team in a "cold spell" and sweeping them. My eternal crusade in sports analysis is emphasizing just how important variance is, and how maximizing it/minimizing it is so incredibly important and underpins nearly everything a team does. Good teams want as little variance as possible, and the Cubs were a very even team last year. To put this into contrast, the Indians won 94 games last year, but in 5-game series they only improve to 99-58, and 102-53 in a 7 game series.
We can actually measure how evenly distributed a team's wins are by calculating how many n-game series victories you'd expect given a win percentage. For instance, the Cubs won 64% of their games last year (.639752, to be slightly more precise). That means that in a 5 game series, you'd expect them to exactly 3 games (.64)^3 * (.36)^2 * [(5!)/(3!)*(2!)] = 34% of the time. You can expand that to x out of n in a formula I'll spare you, and you can expect a 64% win rate team to win approximately 75% of it's 5 game trials. That's 119 wins in 159 trials, and the Cubs won 125. That means the Cubs distribution of wins was better than average, exactly what you want from a high performing team.
| 5 game delta | 7 game delta | |
| Cubs | 6 | 1 |
| Indians | -5 | -5 |
In a 5 game series, the Cubs were distributed slightly more evenly than expected, and the Indians were slightly less evenly distributed. Oddly enough, this was EXACTLY what both teams would have been trying to do in this instance. The Cubs were a better team (strictly based on winning percentages in the regular season), so they want those wins spread out as evenly as possible because they are favored in any given game. The Indians want to bunch their wins together, because their path to victory is to be on a hotter streak than the Cubs are, and the more spikes you have, the more likely you are to hit on one.
The playoffs are a collection of 1, 5, and 7 game playoffs. It's sort of unfair that 162 games can be superseded by these series. However, that's what happens, and the Cubs were well prepared for it.
Time: 7:05 PM CT
TV: ESPN
Series Preview
Gameday
LINEUPS
 (4-2)
Kyle Schwarber, LF
Lester ZiPS |
(DODGERS LOGO.png) (4-3)
Logan Forsythe, 2B
Wood ZiPS |
Will the Cubs win? Yeah, probably
538 Forecast: 62% chance of winning
What to Watch For
1. Rizzo has been in a slump this year. It's obviously early, but the perfect remedy for that is a soft tossing lefty. For some reason, Rizzo was incredible against lefties in 2015 and still carried a .261/.366/.466 slash. Even that doesn't tell the whole story, because against LH starters he had a .925 OPS and against RH starters he had a .930. I'm looking for Rizzo to have a good game.
2. Heyward crushed the ball every time he went to the plate yesterday, and he has looked so much better in the first 6 games than he did at any point last year. It's obviously way to early to draw any definitive conclusions, but it's hard not to hope the offseason makeover carried some real results forward.
3. Lester and Arrieta switched starts because the Brewers love to run, and the Dodgers were horrible at it last year. I'm looking to see if they try to run anyway, and if that happens, Contreras will have some opportunities to backpick and unleash the dragon. Try him, Los Angeles.
4. It's the ring ceremony today.
Time: 12:45 PM CST
TV: WGN, MLBN
Radio: 670 the Score
Cubs Lineup
Schwarber LF
Bryant 3B
Rizzo 1B
Zobrist 2B
Russell SS
Heyward RF
Montero C
Lackey P
Jay CF
Cards Lineup
Fowler CF
Diaz SS
Carpenter 1B
Molina C
Adams LF
Grichuk RF
Gyorko 3B
Wong 2B
Lynn P
Will the Cubs Win?
Will the Cubs Win The World Series?
dodgers_in_5
