Tag: Analytics

Probably Too Early Pre-Convention Cubs Lineup Construction

One reason this is probably too early is because of the overall feeling that the Cubs are done tinkering with the position players after they reportedly agreed to a deal with Eric Hosmer (yay) and won’t be in the running for Carlos Correa anymore since he signed with the Twins (dying laughing) and will likely just look for ways to round out the bullpen, which I think they can probably just do in-house since that seems to be the strength of the organization at the moment. I did a roster check before the holidays and I think that’s pretty much still intact, so we should be able to bounce off that for this post.

The other reason, and I am hoping that they will try something outside the box to make this happen, is that the Cubs could potentially trade for help with the bat by dealing from that pitching strength, but since I haven’t followed too many other systems (I barely have time to follow this team), I don’t feel confident to know whom they might target from another team or which team might be willing to part with intriguing prospects for some Cubs pitching redundancies, so let’s do that another time (probably when they actually make a deal and we just try to do a post-mortem).

Anyway, having a roster is great, but of course you need a starting nine to set up a batting order, and maybe even bat around every now and then if they’re lucky. Since again, the roster is pretty much what you see now, we can use this group of 13 plus two potential taxi squad dudes from the position player side (parenthetical = handedness in the box):

  • Catcher – Tucker Barnhart (L), Yan Gomes (R)
  • First Base – Matt Mervis (L), Eric Hosmer (L), Patrick Wisdom (R)
  • Second Base – Nico Hoerner (R)
  • Shortstop – Dansby Swanson (R)
  • Third Base – Zach McKinstry (L), Miles Mastrobuoni (L), Christopher Morel (R)
  • Left Field – Ian Happ (S)
  • Center Field – Cody Bellinger (L)
  • Right Field – Seiya Suzuki (R)
  • Bench/Designated Hitter – Nick Madrigal (R), Nelson Velázquez (R)

I’m going to assume that McKinstry, Mastrobuoni, and Velázquez duke it out for the final spot, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cubs decide Hosmer isn’t worth it and dump him before Opening Day (he’s league minimum anyway) but it would be nice if he didn’t completely suck. Madrigal is probably sell-low trade bait but since he’s got options remaining, I don’t think they’ll cut bait just yet and a contact bat would be nice to have.

The dudes over at Marquee (for those of you with the channel, I certainly don’t, thanks a lot Crane) had some thoughts on the Opening Day lineup as you can see via this tweet. I’ll type it up for those of you who refuse to go back to the Musk Melon hellsite.

Andy Martínez had the following:

  1. DH Nick Madrigal (dying laughing)
  2. SS Dansby Swanson
  3. LF Ian Happ
  4. RF Seiya Suzuki
  5. CF Cody Bellinger
  6. 2B Nico Hoerner
  7. 1B Eric Hosmer
  8. 3B Patrick Wisdom
  9. C Tucker Barnhart

If Madrigal is healthy and does what we think he’s supposed to do, he makes sense as a leadoff guy. The fact that even a resurgent Bellinger is batting fifth is probably not too inspiring for this lineup, and the other fact that Eric Hosmer is the number seven hitter is even worse and speaks to the Cubs failing to address the offense as we’ve discussed ad nauseum.

Tony Andracki has the following:

  1. 1B Eric Hosmer (dying laughing) again
  2. SS Dansby Swanson
  3. LF Ian Happ
  4. RF Seiya Suzuki
  5. CF Cody Bellinger
  6. 2B Nico Hoerner
  7. DH Patrick Wisdom
  8. C Tucker Barnhart
  9. 3B Christopher Morel

I find it intriguing that both gentlemen have the same 2-6 in their hypothetical lineups, and the 2-6 actually makes sense regardless of the handedness of the opposing pitcher because I believe Swanson has hit just about everywhere in the lineup but was mostly the two-hole guy with Atlanta last year, Happ and Suzuki pretty much batted back to back with each other although I think they were swapped in the order for a good chunk of it, and you can’t bat Nico any lower than sixth because *waves hands* the rest of the lineup, and also I think both Marquee guys wanted to alternate handedness if possible. I think neither guy is expecting Mervis to crack the opening day roster, but I feel like a good spring and again *waves hands* the rest of the roster will perhaps force the Cubs’ hands here.

I guess I can set up a lineup against most starters and one against tougher lefties. Let’s do the standard one first:

  1. DH Nick Madrigal (sigh I guess there aren’t many alternatives)
  2. SS Dansby Swanson
  3. LF Ian Happ
  4. RF Seiya Suzuki
  5. CF Cody Bellinger
  6. 2B Nico Hoerner
  7. 1B Eric Hosmer (but I think we’d prefer Mervis, right?)
  8. 3B Christopher Morel or McKinstry/Mastrobuoni
  9. C Tucker Barnhart

Then against the tough lefties:

  1. DH Nick Madrigal
  2. SS Dansby Swanson
  3. LF Ian Happ
  4. RF Seiya Suzuki
  5. 2B Nico Hoerner
  6. 3B Christopher Morel
  7. DH Patrick Wisdom
  8. CF Cody Bellinger or Nelson Velázquez (if he makes the roster)
  9. C Yan Gomes

I know folks like the nine-hole as the “second leadoff guy” but I’d just rather the offensive black holes at catcher don’t get any more plate appearances than are necessary.

Have at it, agree or disagree, I can’t tell you what to do.

The Catch(er) of the Day

Now that Dusty Baker has won the World Series since most of the world outside of Houston, Texas, refuses to acknowledge the team he managed, trades can be made with impunity and we’re less than a week from full blown free agency (though teams can sign their own outgoing free agents, like the Mets just did with Edwin Diaz). Before we dive into the free agency wish list again (you can read back if you’d like for some of the suggested names to target), here’s something else from Passan that might be intriguing, assuming you can read through the entire thing:

Aside from the usual narrative of a successful campaign and team building and us-versus-the-universe, there was one bit that would be relevant to us Cubs fans:

The Astros and Chicago Cubs were in agreement on a trade to send star catcher Willson Contreras to the Astros for starter Jose Urquidy, four sources familiar with the deal told ESPN. The straight-up trade was agreed upon, pending owner approval. That approval never came.

… And when Click tried to execute the trade for Contreras — a pending free agent who is not regarded as a good defensive catcher but would’ve ably filled the hole at designated hitter that plagued the Astros during the postseason — another prominent name let his opposition be known: Dusty Baker.

“Much as I like Willson Contreras, Urquidy was one of our best pitchers then,” Baker said. “I needed a guy that wasn’t going to complain about not playing every day. And this is his [free agent] year. See, that’s tough. When you trade for a player in his [free agent] year. Everybody’s about numbers and stuff, and I can’t blame them, no doubt. But that’s not what we needed.”

Via Passan & ESPN

This harkens back to the discourse around the trade deadline that surrounded the narrative that Willson Contreras, despite his energy and his plus throwing arm, was not a good catcher. I will admit that I was happy when Contreras stuck with the Cubs past the trade deadline, and he can yet net the Cubs some compensation via the draft pick from him refusing the qualifying offer and then signing with *shudder* the Cardinals or something, or he can just be paid to be a DH and sometime catcher for a year if he accepts, or the Cubs might decide to throw him some cash and keep him around as a veteran clubhouse guy (would not object). But chances are he is gone, and a lot of it may be due to his devaluation as a primary catcher, considering how much time he spent as a DH this past season and also that narrative.

If the primary issue is pitch framing, then that is just a matter of poor timing since the automated strike zone is not among the rules coming for 2023 despite its effectiveness in minor league play so far. As seen on Baseball Savant’s catching leaderboards, Willson Contreras is dead even on framing runs in his time behind the dish (his brother William is a few runs worse, which was interesting). The two primary catchers during the Astros World Series, former Cubs legend Martin Maldonado and trade acquisition Christian Vázquez, were marginally better, so it’s not just the pitch framing that scuttled the would-be trade (we’ll get into that a bit later).

The thing with Willson is that his teammates love him, but the obstacle is that even with the obvious leadership and clubhouse chemistry, he has to also be good with the pitchers. For the most part, at least in public, the pitchers speak well of how Willson handles himself behind the plate, but I guess there’s more to catching than most of us realize (myself included, I’m not an expert) that he can’t provide as well as others. I think the consensus was that attempting to shoehorn in a catcher (who wasn’t actually that good at catching despite his best efforts) into an existing pitching staff during a pennant race would be disruptive, and that also reduced the chances that Willson would be traded.

When I took a look at the FanGraphs leaderboards (someone will have to help me out here because I don’t think it necessarily differentiates between PAs as a catcher vs other positions), the catcher with the highest wOBA was Willson Contreras when you consider those with at least Willson’s number of plate appearances. The guy I think the Cubs should target if they let Willson go is Omar Narváez, who his a plus framer per Baseball Savant, but hit worse than Yan Gomes this past season. While I think catchers should primarily handle the pitching staff to maintain their health and effectiveness, I would prefer that the spot not be a black hole in the lineup, but I guess you can’t have it all! And it’s not like you can count on Gomes or PJ Higgins to suddenly become offensive dynamos (and in Higgins’ case, to be a better defensive catcher).

As stated above, it really is too bad that the automated strike zone won’t come to MLB until at least 2024, because Willson’s arm and control of the running game could be an incredible weapon without having to worry about the umpire behind him calling pitches correctly. The bat is probably not elite enough to just hide him at first base, and I don’t know how he would be at other positions since those are pretty much spoken for (whether assuming new additions or the existing personnel).

So I think if the Cubs do retain Willson, they have to at least take advantage of what he is good at behind the plate even if he costs a number of strikes. The hope at that point is that the bat will continue to be All-Star level and compensate for the strikes/runs given up. Alternatively, as it seems a lot of teams are willing to do now, they should probably just sign Omar Narváez and do a timeshare with Yan Gomes, which will likely boost the pitching staff overall and make up for the runs that are lost when they come up to bat. For me personally, it does suck to potentially lose a long-time Cub who was loads of fun to watch play, but since I have no choice in the matter, this is the eventuality we have to prepare for. We’ll find out in less than two weeks what Willson does with the qualifying offer, and probably sooner whether the Cubs snag a new catcher (possibly through trade too, since the A’s are purposefully tanking anyway and Sean Murphy could use a new home) while juggling their roster in advance of the tender and Rule 5 protection deadlines.