Here’s the latest episode where we talk about a bunch of random stuff:
The Cubs’ recent hot streak
Performances of various players including Seiya Suzuki and Mike Tauchman
The bullpen maybe finally getting it together
New rules stuff
Respect to Joey Votto and the Reds
Cubs potential All-Stars
You can check out the podcast page or just click on the embedded players below. You can also use the sidebar to get to our Apple Podcast pages and leave a nice review and rating if it pleases you.
I think I’m still not necessarily keen on Cody Bellinger playing first base (at least until he’s back to full strength) but given the alternatives, I’ll live for now, especially if the Cubs keep doing what they’re doing after a sweep of the division-leading Pirates. Of course, the Orioles come to town and they’re legitimately a good team (if not for the Rays in the same division), so we might be cranky once the weekend is done, but for now maybe it’s okay to be happy.
As we discussed in the latest Dreamcast, the division is trash and so is the rest of the league, and with plenty of time to catch up to the Pirates as they go up to Milwaukee to hopefully ensure mutual destruction with the Brewers, the Cubs have some time to make a move before Jed Hoyer and friends are “forced” to make moves. At 31-37, the Cubs are 3.5 games back of first and five games back of a wild card spot. The series opener against the Orioles is game 69, so it would be nice if they won that and then some. Along with game 69, there are 94 games remaining. The balanced schedule that irks berselius so means that it’s kind of a crapshoot how well the Cubs do, but if they can figure out the bullpen roles, get the bats as hot as they were against the Pirates (or at least drop in a hit or two here and there), let’s see what happens in the following scenarios…
If the Cubs can win 3 of every 5 games going forward (2 of 3 is a bit too ambitious), that is a .600 mark for rest of season and that’ll get them to 87-75 which may be on pace to snag a wild card spot, similar to what the Phillies did last season.
If the Cubs instead win 4 of every 7 games for the rest of the season, that is about a .571 (and change) mark and that gets them to only 84 wins.
If the Cubs win 5 of every 9 (.556) that’s 83 wins and is probably much more realistic.
That’s the rub of it, but the NL Central has been bad and it is entirely possible 83 wins snags the division crown, so just keep playing well, I guess.
I recall, nearly six months ago when the Cubs basically passed over every impact free agent save for Dansby Swanson (who was a consensus Plan B), we tried to figure out what the plan was even as the sound bytes were flying:
There was a plan in place by Jed Hoyer and the front office with the blessing of ownership, but the marquee (pun intended) free agents decided that the Cubs were not in competition shape. This is probably bullshit because the Rangers threw a ton of money at Marcus Simien and Corey Seager and now Jacob deGrom and that team was trash for the past few seasons. Then the Giants, who aren’t in much better shape, threw all the money and years at Carlos Correa, so if they had the money, the free agents would come. Which brings us to…
Jed had a plan, but it did not involve setting or matching the developing market. This is what I would call stubbornly stupid because the pieces available out there filled a need and the club (either for real or through smoke and mirrors) had the financial resources to make it so. And that suggests…
Jed had a plan, and thought the money was there, but it was really smoke and mirrors after all.
The fear then was that this team would be hard pressed to go .500, but I guess most of us still had the rose-colored glasses on and wanted to believe that a team with a suspect offense could still get by with pitching and defense. And for a while it seemed to work through April, and then May happened and as of this writing, the Cubs have to win out to salvage their West Coast road trip. The thing is that despite being (by percentage points) the fourth-worst team in the NL, the Cubs are still somehow within 7.5 games of first place and 6.5 games back of that final wild card spot, with caveats that they still have to leapfrog all the teams in front of them, but this shouldn’t precipitate a hard sell off and we’ve argued that they should definitely not go full fire sale on the last Dreamcast.
I am unsure who to blame at this point. If this is a purely personnel problem, that’s on Jed Hoyer and/or Tom Ricketts (and various Ricketts siblings) for not ponying up the cash to really take advantage of what has turned out to be a terrible division in a so-so league. If it’s a performance problem where the players aren’t playing up to their potential (I still refuse to believe this is the true talent level, but I guess the projection systems have to be right sometimes), then that’s a David Ross problem and even with another year left on his contract, he probably needs to be replaced, particularly if he keeps putting out those weird lineups (but with Bellinger out and everyone scuffling and the bullpen being bad, what else can he do?).
What I will come back to is that they cannot sell. Marcus Stroman has that opt-out, and while he has been splendid and turned out being the undisputed number one on this staff, he shouldn’t be number one going forward. By trading Stroman, they’re going to have to replace number one AND number two, depending on if Jameson Taillon ever gets going or if Kyle Hendricks does enough to trigger that club option. There’s so much talent in the minors right now, even if it’s not on an Elly de la Cruz level, that they need to have a baseline for them to come up and thrive with a solid veteran presence.
As we’ve said for a while now, there’s still time for a turnaround, but time runs out at some point.
Rice, berselius, & BVS ponder the direction of these Cubs as they decide whether or not this year is a punt year or a go year. We probably talked about some of the stuff you were thinking, including:
Unfortunate injury to Jacob deGrom
Recruiting Shohei Ohtani
Why trading Marcus Stroman would be bad
Getting the kids like Matt Mervis more playing time
Oh god that bullpen
You can check out the podcast page or just click on the embedded players below. You can also use the sidebar to get to our Apple Podcast pages and leave a nice review and rating if it pleases you.
Rice and Berselius hang out to talk about the disappointing Cubs after an encouraging start to the season, when they went 14-13 by the end of April but finish May with a 24-31 record, vastly underperforming their Pythagorean record. We did talk about some of the new rules and the ABS system on the horizon, and just generally shrugged because they’ll either figure it out on this next West Coast trip or they won’t, it could go either way.
If you were wondering, this was the play we were remarking on:
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) May 31, 2023
The Cubs will play the Padres, Angels, and Giants this coming trip, and I’ll check out the series finale in San Francisco with some friends passing through town, so I hope they win at least that one.
You can check out the podcast page or just click on the embedded players below. You can also use the sidebar to get to our Apple Podcast pages and leave a nice review and rating if it pleases you.
Why is it so hard these days for the Cubs to score runs, let alone win a baseball game? We did this yesterday on AC’s birthday where he got to tell us a little bit about his undying love for Nick Madrigal, and then we went ahead and discussed the rookies (well, Mervis is still here, Morel is back, and Amaya is off to Iowa for a bit), missed opportunities, and the Cardinals’ silliness with Willson Contreras, which sadly has not affected his bat, grumble grumble. We also touch on the future of this team as we slog through May.
You can check out the podcast page or just click on the embedded players below. You can also use the sidebar to get to our Apple Podcast pages and leave a nice review and rating if it pleases you.
I was able to talk to the Gregs about prospects and the Cubs future on the last Dreamcast, and everything from the various projections (including FanGraphs playoff odds and ZiPS), to the way the Cubs themselves are speaking to the press and whatever this damn slogan is, confirms what we discussed, which is that the Cubs are likely nowhere close to ready to sell out for contention just yet. This post is going to read like a cavalcade of BCB memes, but seriously, most of this is “prove me wrong” and “let’s see what happens”:
“I think there’s definitely years that the projections haven’t liked us or haven’t liked us as much as we might,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said. “But ultimately our job is to prove those wrong.”
It may be a long road until “I can’t argue with you today,” but the various projections taken together suggest the Cubs fall somewhere between 75 and 85 wins, with a good shot of overtaking Milwaukee for second place but likely still behind the Cardinals for the division crown. Since the wild card likely won’t come from the Central, it’s division or bust for this year’s Cubs, and the bust is again more probable. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Cubs are significantly better than the Reds or Pirates as currently constructed, and I think they can definitely make the two teams above them sweat a bit, but while we are grounding ourselves in realism, there is the whole chaos and hope thing we can still hold on to.
AC asked a bunch of questions a while back that alluded to the amount of variance inherent in this team, which does mess with all the projection systems a bunch because due to the turnover rate over the past few seasons and the rawness of some of the personnel, there isn’t a track record to work with to train the projections. With this variance comes ways to do as Hoyer said and exceed those projections, and I think we’ve all been consistent with the 75-85 range (me at the higher end, and others like Mick probably a little more pessimistic on the lower end). If we compromise and say this is a .500 club right now, with balanced schedule already accounted for, then let’s say we need to squeeze 10-12 more wins out of this club to win the division. In the initial spell to resurrect the Hope Monster, let’s take a look at how the Cubs might be able to add wins at the margins.
Defense
The signings this offseason and the way this club is being built up suggests they are going to raise the floor through solid-to-elite defense. There are Gold Glove-winning or at least Gold Glove-caliber defenders at a minimum of five positions, six if Marcus Stroman is starting, and not counting multiple Gold Glove-winning first baseman Eric Hosmer (your mileage may vary with his defense). The other positions (again not counting Hosmer) can be manned by players who at least won’t trip all over themselves. This, coupled with contact management from the pitching staff (because they sure aren’t striking many batters out), could lead to better-than-average run prevention:
“I do think our game-planning infrastructure has been good for a long time,” Hoyer said. “That’s something that’s been a competitive advantage. But ultimately a ball in play has a certain percentage of being a hit. So the better our defense is, the more that will help that process. We think we have a lot of quality pitchers. But because we’re not going to strike out 30 percent of the guys, we’ll have to rely on good defense, good pitch mix and that’s something our infrastructure is good at. But it’s something that’s a challenge.”
The Cubs attacked this offseason with that in mind. They significantly upgraded their defense and know that they’ve often been ahead of the curve when it comes to finding ways to miss barrels. Despite falling behind in certain areas of player development, the Cubs were one of the first teams to take advantage of pitches that showed seam-shifted wake characteristics. While other organizations focused solely on up-in-the-zone four-seamers, the Cubs continued to value certain types of sinkers.
The plan on this end is simple: if they’re not going to miss too many bats, at least miss the sweet spot and have the superb defense gobble up the balls in play and turn them into outs. Because this offense probably won’t score too many runs, giving up fewer runs would at least help the team out in the chaos department. And even with the shift restrictions, the elite defenders up the middle should be able to get to most of the balls in play, which will be good for the team in terms of results, and fun for us fans because of the action and athleticism.
Bending the Rules – Pitcher
I’m too lazy to hunt down where AC asked some of his questions or made me think, but there was a bit about how the pitcher and hitter might attempt to game the pitch clock given the wording of the rules, and also given the whole balk enforcement thing:
We know the pitcher must begin his motion before the timer expires. But the most interesting detail to emerge from Tuesday’s event was that MLB will be more strictly enforcing balks in conjunction with the arrival of the pitch timer.
The reason is that, in order to enforce the timer, the umpire on the field and the timer operator need a clear indication of when the pitch has begun.
“When the pitcher is bouncing on his foot,” Sword explained, “it’s not clear when you have begun your pitch delivery.”
In the windup, pitchers are allowed to take one step back and one step forward at the start of their delivery and no more. The clock stops when the pitcher steps back or laterally.
From the stretch, pitchers can still tap their feet prior to the delivery of the pitch, but they must come to a complete stop with their feet set at some point. The clock stops when the pitcher lifts his free leg after assuming and holding the set position.
MLB studied the deliveries of every pitcher in the league via video and reached out to those who will be affected by this more strict enforcement. Astros pitcher Luis Garcia, who has been known to take little “cha-cha” steps prior to his delivery, is one such pitcher.
“There’s a whole host of funky deliveries that are within the rules,” Sword said. “We encourage funky pitchers to be funky within the rules.”
I doubt many pitchers use the windup position with guys on base (unless the only runner is on third) but that was in the past. Now they cannot do any weird leg things to disrupt timing or else it might be called an automatic ball with nobody on, and a balk with guys on. I’d like to know what this does to the windups of guys with funky hitches in their step like Clayton Kershaw or Nestor Cortes (when he’s healthy again), as the way MLB describes it suggests they can’t do the stutter step, but that might just be a set position thing. Then again, if they try a pick off move, that counts as a disengagement so there’s another aspect we have to get into:
They’re a sure bet to forget they can’t just step off the rubber every time they get flustered.
So what do we mean by that? Under the new pitch-timer rules, pitchers have a newfound word to worry about: “disengagement,” which will no longer be something that applies just to various Kardashians every time they break up with their celebrity significant others. In this context, a “disengagement” is a potentially game-changing development that occurs every time a pitcher “disengages” from the rubber in a couple of different ways.
One would be a pickoff throw. That’s easy enough to grasp. What’s harder to remember is that every time a pitcher steps off the rubber, even if it’s merely to gather his thoughts, that is also considered a “disengagement.” And for those who haven’t followed this closely, here’s why that matters:
After two “disengagements,” a pitcher can no longer throw over to first base — or any base — unless he then picks off the runner. If the runner isn’t out, it’s a balk. And that is going to dramatically alter pitching, base-stealing and the art of controlling the running game.
If you haven’t had a chance to yet, check out Jayson Stark and Doug Glanville on Starkville on the Athletic’s MLB podcast, it was very fun and informative. But Stark has a point here, not only do pitchers have to deal with the clock now, they also have to remember that they can’t step off to clear their heads, which means they have to extra prepare a game plan before the game even starts because they don’t have time to mess around anymore with the time ticking down. As someone who can’t even remember all the signs (which probably isn’t a problem now with the PitchCom), having even more to think about is probably no fun, but perhaps we aren’t giving these literal professional baseball players enough credit to adjust quickly. But how can Cubs pitchers try to use the new rules to gain advantage?
Given that batters must be alert to the pitcher by eight seconds remaining on the timer, a pitcher who can reset and throw within seven seconds (bases empty) or 12 seconds (runners on) might have a quick pitch advantage, but that’s asking a lot to recover and be prepared to throw by then. The way the rule was explained is that the batter just needs both feet in the box and look at the pitcher and that’s enough for the pitcher to fire, so a batter knowing that this pitcher is prepared to fire at will is under additional stress. My theory is that pitchers who have conviction in their plan before the batter even steps into the box (particularly those who decide to just call their own pitches instead of waiting for Tucker Barnhart or Yan Gomes to press their button) might be able to sneak in this advantage and steal a strike or a bad contact swing. It does help that
Regarding the disengagement issue, I wonder if, even though he’s on the shelf for the moment, Kyle Hendricks can teach the guys his elite pickoff move. Many of the Cubs pitchers can shave a few seconds off their pace and incorporating an above average pickoff move (even if not as good as Hendricks) could help them hold runners better and take advantage of their limited disengagements. Since the Cubs catchers have at least average pop times, a pitcher working faster regardless of the pitch clock ticking down can help control the run game and continue to keep opposing batters off balance.
Taking Offense
On the other side of the pitch clock, a batter who studies the game plan well and understands better how the opposing pitcher will attack will be able to avoid the quick pitch because he’s already in the box ready to go rather than adjusting his batting gloves 700 times (seriously, Franklin or Mizuno or whatever company needs to figure out their velcro technology). And with the shift being restricted, maybe more hits come?
“Those are going to be hits again. Those should be hits. That’s a more appealing game than a guy smashing a ball and it looks like nothing because the guy in right field eats it up.”
It should be noted, as many others including the Gregs on the last Dreamcast did, that the shift rules don’t preclude a shortstop or second baseman from still positioning just to the side of the second base bag, as I illustrated in a previous post.
A legal shift per the new rules against a lefty batter
Perhaps the lefties are correct, that even if a guy can be just to the side of the bag (and umpires will be looking at this to make sure they don’t straddle that no-man’s land up the middle), if they know there’s an extra hole and no guy on the grass, all they have to do is try to hit the piss out of the ball and there’s a better chance than before that turns into a hit. The middle infielders not getting an extra few feet of reaction space, no matter if they’re elite like Dansby Swanson or Nico Hoerner, will make it that much harder for them to snag a 120 mph ball on the ground or a liner, but I guess we will take a wait and see approach as players and managers adjust their strategies on either side of the ball. Aside from this, the Cubs having some contact hitters in the lineup producing more balls in play could lead to a greater level of chaos which hopefully means more guys on base and opportunities to get some runs. Or they could try to get guys to go the other way or whatever, but that isn’t exactly easy and we all know nobody’s going to try to lay down a bunt all the time anyway.
The other rules change that has been talked about because of the myriad pictures posted on the socials is the larger bases. All sports are ultimately a game of inches (or centimeters if you’re into metric), and having three to 4.5 inches shaved off between bases makes a lot of difference for speedy guys and savvy baserunners, and also challenges catchers who don’t have the best arms or pop times, as well as pitchers continuing to adjust to the pitch clock and disengagement rules. The team with the personnel who can best adapt to the new timings and incentives to run wild may be able to literally steal an extra base and/or run here or there, and the pressure could elicit more balks to get that free base anyway.
The exciting part is that the Cubs are already trying to do this anyway, as we saw last season with lots of steals and also TOOTBLANs. With added speed from this offseason’s signings, I do wonder whether the Cubs can put some dudes on and then put them in motion, although I’m not a huge fan of TOOTBLANs but they need to do something with inconsistent-at-best power in the lineup right now.
It’s Sort of a Plan?
I guess the plan of attack this year is pretty simple in theory:
Keep batters off balance within the pitch clock
Throw lots of strikes that induce poor contact
Let the defense convert lots of outs and reduce runs against
Get on base and steal a bunch
????
Profit!
There’s so much chaos baked into this team with uncertain projections, variance, and intangibles that you can almost see this working. Will it snag those 12 extra wins? I’ll take a wait and see approach.
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.
Projections are just projections, and as they say, it’s in the hands of the players to play well and buck the narrative. Although it hasn’t been officially published yet, as we all surmised, the Cardinals are likely to repeat as NL Central division champs again:
FanGraphs already has the projections for the other four teams in the division, including the Cubs. The Cardinals entry will probably be live in the next day or so, but for now we can just add up all the crude WAR and put these teams in their projected order in the Central.
St. Louis Cardinals (48.6)
Milwaukee Brewers (44.4)
Chicago Cubs (35.4)
Pittsburgh Pirates (27.4)
Cincinnati Reds (26.3)
Keep in mind that some of the more recent signings hadn’t been made yet for the other four teams before the Cardinals preview tweet. For example, the Reds just released Mike Moustakas while the Pirates reportedly brought back Andrew McCutchen and the Cubs are supposed to add Trey Mancini. Also keeping in mind that some of the players on the Cubs are either unproven per the ZiPS algorithm (so they’re understandable a bit more conservative on the projection) or are due for a step forward (we hope). But seeing that gap between the Cubs and the top two is somewhat discouraging.
This is about what we expected, though, and while the Cubs should be given plenty of credit for spending and winning the sneaky prize or whatever, it is difficult to stop wondering “what if” they had gotten some of the big names before settling on the players they did. I think there is a plan in place and I sincerely hope they’re right in using defense as their divisional market inefficiency. We’ll get a preview in about a month in snippets of spring training action, and we’ll see it for real come Opening Day.
This is our final NL Central Questions & Answers and this time Pat Lackey from Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke answers our questions.
Obstruced View: Neal Huntington – yea or nay?
WHYGAVS: I think Huntington's done a pretty good job thus far for the Pirates; far better than his two predecessors at the very least. The Pirates last three drafts look about as good as three drafts can without the benefit of time to properly evaluate the players and while he didn't hit a home run on his highest profile trade (the Jason Bay deal), he's swung some some nice lower profile moves to bring in guys like Evan Meek and Joel Hanrahan and James McDonald and a few minor leaguers (Bryan Morris and Jeff Locke, to name two) heading towards the Majors. The focus has been mostly on rebuilding from the bottom up and I think that that's where it should be, so it doesn't really bother me that much that his moves to strengthen the big league club in the interim have flopped a bit.
