Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: WITNESS ME

By Sam Fels 1056 0

I’m one of the few who take Kyle Schwarber as a given. And even I think that feeling is fragile. Schwarber gave us a half-season of a dominant hitter. But it’s only a half-season. And it took us a while to get here. Which means it feels like it could easily slip back into the whiff-happy, Dave Kingman routine again. But this is what our large adult son has always been billed as, and the organization was so patient with him to get this, it feels like this has to be the time. Will it be?

Kyle Schwarber 2019

155 games, 610 PA

.250/.339/.531

.357 wOBA  120 wRC+

11.5 BB%  25.6 K%

-7.1 Defensive Runs

2.6 WAR

Overall, the numbers don’t look gargantuan. It’s the second half that has people staining their shorts, where The War Bear went .280/.366/.631 for a 151 wRC+. And that came about without a huge spike in BABIP, or an abnormal amount of fly-balls leaving the park, and what it did involve was making more contact. Schwarber’s walk-rate dropped in the second half by a couple percentage points, but his strikeouts went from 28.3% to 21.0%. And considering how hard Schwarber hits the ball, hardest on the team, the more balls he gets in play the better it’s going to be for everyone. So can he keep it up?

YES! YES! YES!: So in order to figure out if Schwarber figured something out and that 151 wRC+ is something he can do something like that over a full season (which is obviously patently ridiculous because that would make him a top-10 hitter in the league)?

One adjustment for 2019 was Schwarber being able to take fastballs up in the zone the other way and with authority. And he was able to make more contact on them:

And in the second half, Schwarber was able to make more contact on pitches just high in the zone and a little above, and as we said, more contact means more good things for Schwarber. And you. And me. And the world. So that feels like a permanent swing change.

Which means Schwarber is going to have to be on the lookout for breaking pitches now, Considering he slugged .561 on sliders in the second half last year, and hit .267 against curves, he might have already made that adjustment. Things will always change in baseball, and eventually Schwarber will be attacked in a different way, but he seems more equipped than he was before.

The final hurdle for Schwarber is to succeed in high-leverage situations, which has been something of a bugaboo. If you believe in that sort of things, which a lot of people don’t. Overall, Schwarber was average last year in them at a 96 wRC+, after putting up…deep breath…-64 in them in 2018. So you’d have to say that was an improvement, Captain Obvious. Likely to be batting fourth behind Bryant, Rizzo, and Baez, you’d have to guess he’s going to have a chance to take a run at 120 RBI here. Even being average as he was gets him near that.

Given the thinness of the lineup, Schwarber might have to hit against lefties a fair amount of the time. Which he did well in the second half, though he did strike out nearly a third of the time as well. The Cubs could go Happ-Almora-Souza on those days…but those aren’t days you’re going to want to watch much. If he does play against lefties, it’s sliders breaking away from him that he’s going to have to watch out for. He whiffed on over half of the ones he saw.

You’re a B+ Player: The amount of ABs Schwarber has with men on base and medium to high leverage gets to his head again, and suddenly those high fastballs aren’t something he does anything with but goes back to whiffing on. Or popping out softly. He begins to lean that way, and then suddenly the curves and sliders he was waiting for are being jumped at. Which means more grounders, as his success was partly based on getting more balls in the air. He gets worse in the field, and now that he doesn’t have many chances to throw guys out with his arm, he provides even more negative value. And then it will feel the Cubs have missed on the window to cash in on him at his highest value. That sound like a lot, doesn’t it?

Dragon Or Fickle?: I’m all in on Schwarber, making the top of the Cubs’ lineup as dangerous as you’d find in the National League (though a tad K-heavy). Something definitely clicked for Schwarbs, and at 27 now this is his time. Andrew Cieslak’s favorite Cub is going to be tearing down padding on. the outfield wall all season.

 

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: He’s Still Galactus

By Sam Fels 1134 0

Other than Mookie Betts, it wasn’t just the Cubs’ winter that hinged on Kris Bryant. It felt like half of baseball or more was waiting to see where he’d go and what they’d do in response. Or every move that was made viewed through the prism of whether or not that would enlarge or shrink the market for him. And then nothing happened. I’d like to believe that Theo Epstein has been slow-playing his ownership the whole time, never intending to make a deal while guising it as just not finding one that’s appropriate. Because there isn’t one that’s appropriate. You can’t get equal value for a player like Bryant, and the Betts trade proves it. Unless your real goal is to just lower payroll, which was the Red Sox’s. And was pretty much the Cubs’. But thankfully, they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, at least for a few months and probably a year. And maybe not at all.

So we have to endure the torture of having the third-best player in MLB since making his debut stuck on the team. The horror, the horror…

Kris Bryant 2019

147 games, 634 PA

.282/.382/.521

.379 wOBA  135 wRC+

11.7 BB%  22.9 K%

-4.1 Defensive Runs

4.8 fWAR

It’s funny, and don’t take this as me being anti-Javy because I’m the farthest thing from it. But all those people who had either reconciled a Bryant trade or were actively pushing for it–and they’re the same people who will tell you they’ve definitely heard of and seen the band you simply made up to mock them without them knowing it–will tell you last year clinched it because Bryant was hurt and not very good and Baez is the one the Cubs have to extend. And that 4.8 WAR mark is one Baez has surpassed…once. And it was Bryant’s second-worst season out of five. I don’t think people pay enough attention.

Bryant definitely was carrying something for the second half of the season, and still put up numbers that most players would cut off their mom’s pinky for. It’s not even a baseline for him. IT COULD NOT BE ANY SIMPLER, LUANNE.

August was the rough one, where clearly something went off physically, as Bryant’s hard-contact rate was only 25% and his line-drive rate just 12%. But on the spotted times he could actually get out there in September, be bashed the ever-loving shit out of the ball to the tune of a 52% hard-contact rate, 34% line-drive rate, and a 145 wRC+. So the idea that he was somehow part of the Cubs collapse when he was healthy is fucking laughable.

YES! YES! YES!: Bryant just needs to stay healthy, or at least have his medical staff properly diagnose when something is wrong and in a timely fashion. It felt like the past two years Bryant has just soldiered on through things they couldn’t identify, and it didn’t help matters much. When healthy, you don’t need to look much farther than last season’s first four months, when he had 21 homers, and was slashing .291/.394/.541, and that’s with carrying a rough first five weeks of the season due to a .263 BABIP, 80 points below his career average.

So for the optimum outcome, Kris Bryant just needs to be Kris Bryant. There isn’t some combination of events that have to come together for him to succeed. There isn’t something he needs to work on or adjust to. He just needs to be healthy and breathing. The only quibble, if you have to have one, is his defensive metrics have slipped since 2016. Now maybe you attribute this to him being 6-5 and simply not as mobile as he ages, and that could very well be true. Having knee problems wasn’t ideal, either. It’s worth keeping an eye on, but he seems too good of an athlete to just be a bad defender now. It’s been two years under water when it comes to Defensive Runs, so it’s not quite a trend yet but another year of it would make it so.

YOU’RE A B+ PLAYER: The opposite of above, where health is again an issue and he’s merely really good instead of a team-carrier, and all that will do to those who really liked that band where the dude plays a theremin with a cat (hat tip Kyle Kinane) is lower his value in a trade with only one year of control left and you can have the bucket of sink scum and pigeon shit the BoSox got for Betts. Yippee.

If we need to go deeper than that, Bryant struggled a bit on fastballs high in the zone last year. And if that continues he does become an easier out, though it was clearly something he had adjusted his stance and swing this spring to deal with:

It wasn’t that much better before August 1st either, so it’s tricky to blame it on his knee problem. You don’t want Bryant having to cheat to get up to high fastballs, because of what that leads to. One would expect this is the first area opposing pitchers go to this season.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I would like to tell you that after a winter of trade rumors and the grievance and listening to some experts try and disparage what he’s meant to this team and city, Bryant would be leading the Fuck You World Tour. But he’s just not that guy. When he says he’s over it and it generally doesn’t bother him, you tend to believe it. That doesn’t mean this isn’t an ultra-competitive guy, you’d have to be to get to where he’s gotten, but he’s different.

I would simply expect a Kris Bryant season, but a healthy one. Which means there will be a month or two where he simply carries this team and keeps them in the race by himself if not on top. I would expect him to beat the projections and top a 5-WAR season, and maybe with a little luck get himself into the MVP discussion again. It’s his standard, and not enough appreciate that.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Javy Danger

By Sam Fels 923 0

For a team that seems to want to destroy itself for reasons it or no one else can really understand, there sure are a lot of certainties. You know what you’ll get from Bryant and Rizzo. You’ll know what you get from Hendricks. Contreras is a pretty safe bet. Seems like Schwarber will be, too. Darvish a little less so but still good. Most would throw Javy Baez on that list. And I would 99% of the time. The thing with Javy is that so much of his game seems impossible that it’s hard to convince yourself fully that it can be repeated year after year. The whole thing is on a wire. Except that Javy is a Wallenda, so that’s ok. You and I aren’t Wallendas. Most major leaguers aren’t. But he is. More of the same this time around?

Javier Baez 2019

138 games, 561 PA

.281/.316/.531

.347 wOBA  114 wRC+

5.0 BB%  27.8 K%

15.7 Defensive Runs

4.4 fWAR

Some of Javy’s numbers are colored by the fact that he was a puddle come the middle of August, and then was hurt throughout all of September. The Cubs didn’t really have a backup shorstop on the roster, and Addison Russell’s strange attempts to play baseball, or something resembling it, didn’t really qualify. Javy was crackers during the season’s first two months, had some fiendish BABIP treachery in June, and then July and August were merely average as the amount of games started to pile up. July and especially August had some pretty worrying contact-type numbers, which we can only hope can be attributed to a slower bat due to fatigue. Otherwise…

YES! YES! YES!: Some combination of Hoerner and Bote gives Baez just enough days off to keep him fresh throughout the season, and maybe the Cubs medical staff will take less than a week and a half to diagnose anything that might be wrong this time around. Baez can get back to his 2018 offensive numbers, which means just a touch more pop (he needs to slug over .520 to be really effective thanks to his low OBP style) and less grounders (50% last year). Baez had one of the highest average exit velocities on the team last year (91.6 MPH) but saw his angle drop nearly a third from the previous season. The difference seemed to be pitchers getting more grounders from getting in on his hands last year, and again, some of that can be bat-speed from tiredness. Javy doesn’t need to raise his power much to be back to premier player status, but he does need to get the ball in the air more this season. Which shouldn’t be too much of an ask. And hey, there’s always a chance his approach improves. I mean, nothing is impossible, right?

YOU’RE A B+ PLAYER: Pitchers went to busting Javy inside last year with fastballs more often, and Javy gave them a greater margin for error as you can see here:

The fear is that will be a permanent solution, and even at 27 one could wonder if Javy can keep what is a ridiculous level of bat-speed going. One need look no further than Bryce Harper for a player that depended on other worldly bat-speed and suddenly at just 27 you could go up and in on him if you wanted. There are just some skills, as unique as they may be, that can only be maintained at mutant-level for so long. Unlike Baez though, Bryce still has a pretty solid approach to make up for it.

If that ends up being the case and Javy has to cheat, even the slightest bit, on heaters inside and high, then he becomes even more vulnerable to breaking balls away than he already is. And we know that he already is highly so. Which means that K% could start creeping up to 30%, as it slanted that way last year.

And if Hoerner doesn’t make it up for a while, and Bote looks like Duck Amuck at short in spot starts, Javy might have to carry to big of an innings-load there again, leaving him a doormat come the season’s final throes. And this Cubs team is likely to need to play well in the season’s final month to do anything of note. It’s likely not to run away from anyone. Baez looks slotted as the #3 hitter behind Rizzo, which should mean a ton of RBI opportunities. But if he slides back, and those have to go to Schwarber or Contreras, hitters who have struggled in that spot in the past, then the offense might not be the given we think it is right now.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I’m not going to be the asshole to forecast doom for Javy Baez. At worst, he’s still a defensive wizard who will provide a ton of value that way. But I have to admit at a slight worry, a slight tickle, about an offensive game that was based on stellar skill and not really any kind of solid approach. Baez’s approach has improved as his career has gone along, but you still wouldn’t call it good. And it’s not going to be. Javy has the extraordinary gifts, reflexes, skill, whatever you want to call it to overcome that and do more with a bad approach than anyone else could. But how long is that going to last? The margins of error are so thin, and it’s dazzling he’s been on the right side of it for three or four seasons now.

I think last season is probably more the norm for him than his near MVP-run of 2018. That’s hardly a bad player. Combined with his defense it’s a really good one. And there’s probably an offensive spike season still in his future with some bounces that makes him dominant for that campaign. But it’s the spike, not the baseline. At least until there’s some change in approach.

But you can do a fuckton worse than having a 4-5 WAR player at short who might end up your third-best player, maybe even fourth of Contreras goes a touch nutty.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Descalso & Kipnis, Two Corpses

By Sam Fels 1061 0

It is likely that the Cubs may trot out a three-headed monster at second, either until Nico Hoerner is ready or all year if he isn’t. As neither Daniel Descalso nor Jason Kipnis deserve their own entries, given the struggle to maintain oxygen intake both of them have, we’ll smash them together.

Daniel Descalso 2019

82 games, 194 PA

.173/.271/.250 

.238 wOBA, 42 wRC+

11.9 BB%  29.4 K%

0.9 Defensive Runs

-0.8 fWAR

(If you’re a woman and read that you’ll now never be able to become pregnant. If you’re a man…you might be able to become pregnant)

Jason Kipnis 2019

121 games, 511 PA

.245/.304/.410

.301 wOBA, 82 wRC+

7.8 BB%  17.2 K%

4.8 Defensive Runs

1.1 fWAR

What I’m supposed to say is that Descalso’s 2019 was ruined by an ankle injury he tried to play through–a continuing theme for the ’19 Cubs–and made everything worse. Which I guess works if you consider the 101 wRC+, meaning exactly average, Descalso put up in the season’s first month as something worth celebrating. He was woeful throughout the rest of the season when he could even take the field, which wasn’t all that much. Seeing as how Descalso has only had one plus-season offensively, he’s probably closer to this disaster overall than he is a promising bench bat.

Unlike Descalso, there was a time when Kipnis was really good. He has three 4.0+ WAR seasons to his name. They’re just not recently. His offense fell off a cliff three seasons ago when he only played 90 games, and he’s never regained any power since. But he can still play the field well and he makes contact, and the Cubs are seemingly enamored with anyone who can do that at the moment if only to get people to shut up about how they don’t have anyone who makes consistent contact. Maybe the Cubs saw something in his last August when he slugged .525, though he appears to sold out his approach to do that as his walks dipped and his Ks spiked to 22%. On that pace, he’ll fit right in.

YES! YES! YES!: Probably the best case scenario is that neither of them play much. As far as bench players, Descalso is more accustomed to that role, and performed admirably in Arizona as something of a bench player. Kipnis must know that his regular starting days are over, and he does provide the far superior glove to either Descalso or Bote. But it’s hard to imagine, especially when Hoerner is around, that you’d keep a guy around just for his glove and only at second. Descalso can at least claim to be able to stand at first or third, whereas Kipnis has never played anywhere else except for a brief stint in the outfield in Cleveland that they don’t let you talk about within 50 miles of Jacobs Field.

They’re also in the strange position of both hitting left-handed, but a platoon with David Bote is a strange proposition at the moment as it was left-handers that Bote couldn’t hit last year. Maybe that’s a one year blip, but still throws a wrench into any plans.

YOU’RE A B+ PLAYER: Basically if either of them have to play regularly. And that could happen with an injury to any outfielder, forcing Bryant out there more often and Bote to third and these two into the lineup before Hoerner’s time. Or Hoerner falls on his face that already kind of looks like he fell on it. At 33, it’s unlikely Kipnis is going to learn a new trick with is bat slowing down, and basically has to rely on taking a lot of walks to be effective. Descalso is forced into a more regular role than spot-hitter and his high-strikeout ways only add to a lineup that has too many of those anyway. Basically, the Cubs can’t have anyone get hurt at all.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I would imagine it’s neither. Hoerner doesn’t feel or sound like he’ll be in Iowa that long, and unless he starts ingesting whatever Carl Edwards Jr. did he’ll be back quickly. Which means that the Cubs are only trying to get through a month or six weeks without him, which is probably gobbled up mostly by Bote. It’s hard to see where both of these guys are on the team, but at least Descalso has seen success as a pinch-hitter. Kipnis might take to it given the right spots, but you’d lose any value he has by not playing him in the field. Again, if the rest of the lineup clicks you can carry a glove-only guy for a while, but that might end up being what Hoerner is.

The less you see them, it’s the former. The more, the latter.

 

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Nico

By Sam Fels 1098 0

Nico Hoerner wouldn’t be the first kid to be tossed into an emergency situation and end up a team fixture for a long while. It’s just that I can’t really think of another one. K-Rod? Willson Contreras wasn’t thrown into an emergency, he just played his way into a three-catcher rotation in ’16. It does happen on occasion, and considering what the other options are at second base, the Cubs might have to hope it does again.

Nico Hoerner 2019

20 games, 82 PA

.282/.305/.436

.305 wOBA  86 wRC+

3.7 BB%  13.4 K%

0.7 Defensive Runs

0.2 WAR

The excitement over Hoerner basically had to do with the Cubs having a prospect worth a shit for the first time in a couple seasons, the unique circumstances, and some initial success. It also had to do with Hoerner making a lot of contact when the Cubs whiff paranoia was at its highest. That doesn’t mean that Hoerner had any business being in MLB at that point, and was only there due to a lack of depth thanks to the front office, Addison Russell’s inability to do anything right on and off the field, and Joe Maddon’s aversion to even trying Bote there in an emergency.

Overall, Hoerner was a touch overmatched, which isn’t much of a surprise for a player how barely had half of a season at Double-A. He showed a little more pop than you might expect, but that doesn’t mean he had a lot of it, and with his no-walks policy it meant he just didn’t get on base enough. You can do that if you’re Javy Baez. If you’re not…well, you’re going to have to hit an awful lot of doubles for anyone to care.

YES! YES! YES!: The Cubs seem pretty determined to start Hoerner off in Iowa, which makes sense as he’s never been there. They might rotate a couple of burnt steaks in Kipnis and Descalso along with whatever it is David Bote is in the meantime, it’s just figuring out how long that meantime is going to be.

If Hoerner can put up numbers in Des Moines that he did in Tennessee (7.1 BB%, .344 OBP) you wouldn’t think it’s going to take more than six weeks or two months for him to be installed as the everyday second baseman at 1060 West. From there he could be the one hitter other than Rizzo who doesn’t strike out much, and give the Cubs some contact-driven on-base habits at the bottom of the lineup. He’d be another candidate to bat 9th with Bryant leading off to maximize what Bryant is doing in the #1 spot.

Hoerner even boosts all of that by driving up his hard-contact rate (26.5%) from last year, and some of those singles turn into doubles and triples while he sprays line-drives all over the field. That was the big thing for Hoerner’s approach last year. He was happy to use right field in AA but that went away with the Cubs, with just 17% of his contact going that way. Hoerner isn’t a weakling when aiming for right field, and that’s probably Priority #1 the Cubs have told him to work on amongst the corn. If he gets that down, the Cubs might end up with the Marco Scutaro-plus they’re envisioning.

You’re A B+ Player: Hoerner never hits the ball harder, nor uses the opposite field, which means he’s just grounding out to short and third a lot because he almost certainly won’t strike out much. His high-contact ways don’t really matter if all that contact sucks. Hoerner was easily busted up an in last year in his brief cameo, and that’s almost certainly where AAA pitchers are going first when the season starts. If he can’t prove he can turn on those, then his future looks more “Theriot” than “Scutaro.” And that’s a word that should have every Cubs fan’s indigestion level on the rise.

Dragon Or Fickle?: Some of what Hoerner’s future this year is hinging on what the rest of the lineup does. Say the Cubs do hit 1-7, which involves Ian Happ finally blossoming full-time and Jason Heyward hitting righties at merely a decent clip…well then the Cubs can afford to basically go glove-first at second base. And Hoerner is still the best defensive option amongst the four who could line up there (though Kipnis is still pretty good there). And Hoerner has just as much offensive upside as Bote. The Cubs could do what they did with Russell (sadly) in ’15, which is tell him you’re up here to catch the ball and we’ll worry about the offense later.

But there are a lot of ways this could go wrong. The three-headed monster of confusion currently slated for second could all fall flat on their face offensively. Happ could do Happ things and be all over the map. And then the Cubs might need Hoerner to hit straight from Iowa, and quickly.

None of that has anything to do with him though. Hoerner’s contact rate kind of institute a floor, but it also makes him a little BABIP dependents. And he doesn’t have a lot of speed to help with that. Like, he can’t be Tim Anderson (and man, do I wish he could be Tim Anderson). He’s only 22, so there’s plenty of time to add muscle and bat speed with it. Most likely, Hoerner is called up in June after a good to pretty good, but probably not dominant, stretch in Iowa. But I also think the Cubs will hit outside of him, and he won’t be required to carry anything.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Bote Bote Bote…Bote!

By Sam Fels 1411 0

When you absolutely have to have a Cub do a kind of adorable yet still annoying gender reveal, David Bote is your man. And he might be the man for the Cubs at second and occasionally third and short, because there’s always a chance that Nico Hoerner stalls out in Iowa and there’s a much bigger chance that Jason Kipnis and Daniel Descalso are still dead. And while he causes more teeth-gnashing amongst Cubs fans for someone who came from basically nowhere and has been fine, if the Cubs had to turn to him it really wouldn’t be the end of the world. And then there are too many who mistake one ultra-dramatic home run for career-long success. There’s so much noise around a bit-part player. Let’s study the star man.

David Bote 2019

127 games, 356 PA

.257/.362/.422

.336 wOBA, 106 wRC+

12.4 BB%  26.1 K%

-1.4 Defensive Runs

1.5 fWAR

Bote had a pretty weird year last term. For one, he was a righty who couldn’t hit lefties, which doesn’t make any goddamn sense but it’s what we’re dealing with. Against right-handed pitchers he had a 115 wRC+, and against southpaws it was 80. Which was the complete opposite of what he did in 2018. So hey, if he could split the difference!. Also, he really started to hit after Joe Maddon had moved him out of the everyday lineup in the second half. And Maddon stopped playing him against lefties in the second half, giving him only 30 ABs against them. Which he did crush, but it’s only 30 ABs so who knows?

It wasn’t hard to figure out where to attack Bote though, as he couldn’t get to high fastballs nor lay off curves in the dirt, which doesn’t make for a very good combination.

Bote graded out as fine at second, though hardly superlative. But as the Brewers proved with the old-dog mobility of Mike Moustakas, you can kind of cover that up with shifts if you’re so inclined. The Cubs didn’t shift as much because Baez covered half the Earth anyway, but it might be something they try. Bote also graded out higher than you’d expect at short when Maddon finally figured out that Baez was dying of exhaustion, which might be something to consider if Hoerner isn’t up for a while.

YES! YES! YES!: For Bote to be more than just scenery, or slightly above scenery, he’s going to have to figure out how to hit a pitch above his waist. We know he has serious power low in the strike zone, and it’s something of a mystery why pitchers keep throwing him pitches there. But even just up in the zone, not above it, and Bote has been pretty much helpless. His desire to catch up to pitches there has made him susceptible to curves that tease being there and then gleefully dive for the sanctuary of his toes and his whiffs. If that continues to be a gaping hole, then this is his limit. If he shortens his swing a bit and can get there, than his plus-on base skills play even better.

And fuck, if you take simply his .362 OBP last year, put it in the nine-spot ahead of Bryant in the leadoff spot, he’ll score a fair amount of runs you’d have to believe. Really, you could do a whole lot worse as a placeholder for Hoerner, however long that might be.

You’re A B+ Player: Bote can’t close up that hole at the top of the zone, pitchers actually read a scouting report every time and his already too-high K-rate for a supporting cast member goes up. And he loses walks, which is what’s keeping him above water overall. Hoerner never claims the second base spot, and we’re left watching two corpses try and ooze their way toward competence between Kipnis and Descalso and Ross has to euthanize them in the 6th inning of some game in July behind a big blue curtain (assuredly sponsored by Sloan). At 27 when the season starts, it’s hard to picture how Bote improves that much but there is some room. He also watches his glove deteriorate and can’t even claim breaking even in the field.

But no matter what, he’ll be part of the Cubs pregame highlight reel for the next five years.

Dragon Or Fickle?: I’m higher on Bote than most, mostly because of the walks and the passable glove and occasional power. I don’t think he’ll completely split his ’18 and ’19 and be useful against both handed pitchers, but I also think there’s a decent chance he’s not an abortion against either as well. If he can just take high pitches the other way for singles enough to not have to see curveballs or get fastballs lower, he could end up being a real weapon. He’s clearly a player you don’t want to be in the lineup every day, but you’d rather see him than Descalso or Kipnis. If Hoerner can claim what’s rightfully his relatively quickly, then having Bote cycle in at a couple spots two or three times a week is ideal. And that’s probably what you’ll get.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Preview: The Rizz-inator

By Sam Fels 1158 0

You know the Cubs offseason was even more off-kilter when Anthony Rizzo, perhaps the happiest and jolliest man on the planet, shows up at The Convention spitting fire. He was pissed about the attempts to trade Kris Bryant, he was pissed about the Cubs refusal to even discuss an extension with him, he was pissed that his owner is a billionaire who can’t seem to find the extra millions to keep the team together. And he was right. And seeing as how Rizzo is the unquestioned heart of this team, it will be he is the indicator of whether this team is going on a Fuck You Ricketts World Tour or is simply going to quit on the front office. I’m willing to bet it’s the former, especially with his Splinter David Ross as manager.

Anthony Rizzo 2019

146 games, 613 PA

.293/.405/.520

.390 wOBA, 141 wRC+

11.8 BB%, 14.0 K%

-6.9 Defensive Runs

4.0 fWAR

Amongst the trash of the 2019 Cubs season, it would be easy for most fans to forget that Rizzo had something close to a career year last year. Highest batting-average, highest on-base, third-highest slugging, second-highest wOBA Of course, some of this can be attributed to the baseball made of aliens. It was the slide in homers that cost him some other career-high numbers, but clearly this was another offensively dominant season from the double-cuatro.

YES! YES! YES!: There probably isn’t a bigger given than Rizzo. He’s been metronomic in his production, with only 2018 as anything resembling an outlier and even that was a 126 wRC+ campaign where he was basically undone by an unusual number of fly balls not leaving the yard. Every other year, Rizzo’s wRC+ is between 135-155, a wOBA of .380-.390, and so on. He hits 27-33 homers, and hits somewhere within 10 points either side of .280. You can just write it in.

There really isn’t anything to suggest that Rizzo won’t put that up again, unless you take his greater tendency to go the opposite way last year as a sign he can’t get around on the fastball anymore. But considering he slugged .679 when going the other way, it would make you think it was on purpose and he wasn’t just trying to jerk everything. Rizzo has always had power the other way, and is a supremely smart hitter, so this just seems part of the blueprint. This kind of suggests it was by plan too…

You’re A B+ Player: Rizzo has turned 30, so there is something of a fear that his decline, if not upon us, is right around the corner. Which is probably why the Cubs were a little hesitant to discuss an extension with him, as they might want to see what the next couple years hold for him. Rizzo’s contact numbers slipped just a touch last year, though they were still above league-average. But this is seemingly very nit-picky.

The main problem with Rizzo is health. The past couple of years, Rizzo has missed a handful of games due to back problems. And back problems don’t tend to get better as you get older. That was capped off by injuring his ankle at the end of the season, which he didn’t really have any business playing on in that Cardinals series last year, but he did it because his team needed him. We’re still talking about a player that appeared in 146 games last year, and even 140 games of Rizzo is enough. The Cubs would probably like more flexibility to get him more days off than they have, and maybe between Baez, Bryant, and Contreras they can find a way to do that. The worry is that the back starts to get worse in a hurry.

But when it comes to Rizz, that’s about it.

Dragon Or Fickle?: As stated above, Rizz is basically the surest bet on the Cubs. Bryant has his health issues, and whether he’ll even be allowed to stay, and how he’ll deal with the rumors flying all year. Javy’s wild ways can always swing cold for a month. Contreras and Schwarber have their contact issues. Rizzo doesn’t really have any of these, other than minor health questions. This year, he probably won’t even have to worry about where in the lineup he’ll be, as it looks like Ross is going to put him #2 and leave him there. So a 135-140 wRC+ season with the usual pretty good defense at first, and the unquestioned leadership.

That’s the one thing about Rizz, is that if he is the leader of this team, and everyone would tell you that he is, then the things that slid under Joe Maddon as far as focus and preparation are partly on him. He has to swing the hammer in the clubhouse, along with Lester and one or two others. Ross can only do so much. While Rizz is out there for the media and take the bullets that way, it’s been said he can be a little quiet in the clubhouse. That won’t fly now, if the Cubs are making their prep and focus a focal point of any turnaround. It’s on Rizz to make sure everyone’s on message. Because if he speaks, everyone will listen.

Baseball

Yes Movement – 2020 Chicago Cubs Player Previews: Caratini, Shaken Not Stirred

By Sam Fels 993 0

We move along…well, we’re not really moving along because we’re staying behind the plate. For a large swath of the offseason, it was thought that Victor Caratini would move into the starter’s role as the Cubs cashed in on Willson Contereras. But that didn’t happen, or hasn’t happened yet, and Caratini will remain in a role we’re fairly sure he’s pretty good at. Let’s dive in.

Baseball

Never Should Have Been That Hard

By Sam Fels 1654 0

The leadoff spot for the Cubs has been an overhyped black hole for a few years now. It was never that hard, but the Cubs kept making it so. And they made it so by sticking hitters that are either bad altogether (Almora, Descalso, whatever other idiot you can think of) or were struggling at the time that only made it worse thanks to the attention it got (Schwarber, Heyward, Happ). It also didn’t help that Dexter Fowler is a distinctively cool and handsome man whom we all loved and quite frankly no one was going to compare. You can’t really have Dex’s swag in the leadoff spot if you never get on base.

Still, the recent trends in baseball have been to move your best hitter in the #2 spot, because they get more ABs over a season that way. So it stands to reason that if you put your best hitter in the leadoff spot, he’ll get just many ABs and perhaps even more. The Red Sox won 108 games with their best hitter in the #1 spot in 2018. The Dodgers are going to bat that same guy in their leadoff spot this year. It’s not that revolutionary of a move.

Now you may say, “Hey there Fels, you stupid weak baby, Kris Bryant isn’t Mookie Betts!” And I would say, check this out, chumley:

.284/.385/.516  139 wRC+

.301/.374/..519  135 wRC+

I’m not going to tell you which is which, because as you can see, it doesn’t really matter. You might say that Betts has four seasons of 20 steals or more where Bryant only has one with more than 10, but are we really going to worry about stolen bases at this point in our lives? We are not, dear reader. Especially given that Bryant is a great baserunner without the steals.

Sure, if you only have a couple big time hitters, you probably don’t want to waste one at the top of the lineup and hope he can just hit a bunch of solo home runs before the next three guys make outs. That’s not the case for the Cubs. If we take Kris Bryant out of the equation because he’s leading off now, there’s still Rizzo, Baez, Schwarber, Contreras behind him, and all of them have been run producers at various times in their careers. And again, if Happ can come good and Heyward is restricted to the #6 or #7 spot and never see a left-handed pitcher, the lineup extends.

The case for Bryant at leadoff is easy. One, he gets on base (cue gif of Moneyball scouting table and pointing at Pete). He had the second-highest OBP last year even with the injury problems at .382. His career-mark is .385. That’s better than Rizzo’s .373, in case you wanted to see Rizzo up there (which would have been fine with me as well). Second, he’s fast. Probably the second-fastest player on the team behind Baez. That doesn’t mean he’s stealing 30 bases or something, but you can see a lot of innings starting with no one out and 1st and 3rd after Rizzo singles. Or scoring from second for Baez or Schwarber. Third, it plunges the pitcher right into it. Not time to “find it.” You have to be ready from the off. There’s going to be a fair amount of leadoff walks here.

Mostly, it gets someone else out of the spotlight. I think Schwarber is a decent solution up there too, given his OBP skills, but we’ve seen that movie and it’s the question he has to answer all the time. Let him be in the middle, and his only concern is to smash the shit out of the ball. That’s all he should worry about. It’s all he should have worried about batting leadoff, but here we are. It doesn’t add something to Ian Happ’s burden of trying to cement himself in the majors for good. Same goes for Hoerner if he’s actually here.

Bryant won’t care about that. One, he just doesn’t care about any of it, probably because not much sticks in that beautiful head of his (and he will match Fowler for handsomeness in the leadoff spot, which apparently is important). And also he’s got a track record. And it’s something the rest of the team doesn’t have to worry about.

This was an easy decision, but it was at least a departure from Joe Maddon for David Ross, as the former kept trying to crowbar anyone else but the guy it made the most sense to put up there. Ross will face bigger hurdles than this, but at least he’s getting this one right by quite simply, not getting too cute about it. And too cute was Maddon’s mantra basically.