Cubs 2023 Season

champaignchris · May 31, 2023

I know it’s not exactly news to anyone that Madrigal and Mastrobuoni have been bad this season. But how bad:

Wisdom has started 34 of 54 games at 3B and posted a respectable 0.6 bWAR for the season, which includes 13 more appearances in the OF, at DH or 1B. The balance of the games at 3B have been started by Madrigal or Mastrobuoni. The Cubs as a team have an aggregate -0.2 bWAR at 3B.

Defrost · May 31, 2023

champaignchris said:
I know it’s not exactly news to anyone that Madrigal and Mastrobuoni have been bad this season. But how bad:

Wisdom has started 34 of 54 games at 3B and posted a respectable 0.6 bWAR for the season, which includes 13 more appearances in the OF, at DH or 1B. The balance of the games at 3B have been started by Madrigal or Mastrobuoni. The Cubs as a team have an aggregate -0.2 bWAR at 3B.

champaignchris · May 31, 2023

Cubs MLB bWAR rankings by position:

Starting pitching: 6th. Despite Taillon’s complete disaster of a season, it’s been quite good.

Relief pitching: 20th. If anything, I suspect people are surprised it’s not worse.

Catcher: 20th. Testament the how bad Barnhart has been considering Gomes’ fine season.

1B: 27th. Nothing we didn’t know.

2B. 6th. Hoerner has been great.

3B. 21st. See my prior post. This is less about Wisdom than it is about his backups.

SS: 3rd. Dansby had been great.

LF: 11th. Happ has been solid. Lack of power keeping him down.

CF: 3rd. Bellinger was mostly great when healthy. Tauchman has been a solid backup.

RF: 16th. Seiya was hurt then got off to a slow start. This will slowly keep creeping up.

DH: 26th. It’s almost like the team didn’t seem to have a plan at this position.

PH: 26th. Not as vital since the advent of the universal DH, but emblematic of how bad the bench has been.

Warren Carter Fanclub · May 31, 2023

champaignchris said:
Cubs MLB bWAR rankings by position:

Starting pitching: 6th. Despite Taillon’s complete disaster of a season, it’s been quite good.

Relief pitching: 20th. If anything, I suspect people are surprised it’s not worse.

Catcher: 20th. Testament the how bad Barnhart has been considering Gomes’ fine season.

1B: 27th. Nothing we didn’t know.

2B. 6th. Hoerner has been great.

3B. 21st. See my prior post. This is less about Wisdom than it is about his backups.

SS: 3rd. Dansby had been great.

LF: 11th. Happ has been solid. Lack of power keeping him down.

CF: 3rd. Bellinger was mostly great when healthy. Tauchman has been a solid backup.

RF: 16th. Seiya was hurt then got off to a slow start. This will slowly keep creeping up.

DH: 26th. It’s almost like the team didn’t seem to have a plan at this position.

PH: 26th. Not as vital since the advent of the universal DH, but emblematic of how bad the bench has been.

If you look at this it still seems like we should be better than 24-30.

Ramrod2010 · May 31, 2023

Warren Carter Fanclub said:
If you look at this it still seems like we should be better than 24-30.

I know it rudimentary, but if you take the average of those 12 and you get 15.4, a little worse than average.

If you drop PH you get 14.2.

Slightly lower than .500 seems right.

Warren Carter Fanclub · May 31, 2023

Ramrod2010 said:
I know it rudimentary, but if you take the average of those 12 and you get 15.4, a little worse than average.

If you drop PH you get 14.2.

Slightly lower than .500 seems right.

I wish we were slightly lower than .500.

Warren Carter Fanclub · May 31, 2023

WHY IS MASTROBUONI ON THIS TEAM???????

champaignchris · May 31, 2023

The strike zone today was preposterous.

Warren Carter Fanclub · May 31, 2023

champaignchris said:
The strike zone today was preposterous.

It certainly was but I have never seen a team who's 3 and 4 hitters are so unaggressive all season in situations that they should be thinking of driving the ball instead of taking a walk.

IanKEvans2 · Jun 2, 2023

[ W ] #25

Warren Carter Fanclub · Jun 3, 2023

Taillon wasn't able to get a quality start but his ERA dropped a full point. You don't see that happen too often in June.

IanKEvans2 · Jun 3, 2023

Miguel Amaya getting the call-up from AAA.

IanKEvans2 · Jun 4, 2023

[ W ] #26

Stroman is having a great year!

suburbanILLINI · Jun 5, 2023

IanKEvans2 said:
[ W ] #26

Stroman is having a great year!

Amaya looked really good at the plate

Emerson Bigguns · Jun 5, 2023

The Stroman situation is getting interesting. He's been the most valuable pitcher in the NL. While the team lavishes in mediocrity, he can seemingly do no wrong. He can, and almost certainly will, opt out of his contract after this season. Will the Cubs commit major money and years to a 32-year-old pitcher, or should they trade him for a haul of prospects at the deadline? The next few weeks probably tell the story.
This might be the biggest decision of the Hoyer era to date.
Of course, everything is contingent on what, who, how much, how many, but what do you guys think? I'm pretty torn. We definitely could use some high-level prospects, but I have really enjoyed his tenure with the Cubs. It would be sad to see it end so quickly.

bdutts · Jun 5, 2023

Emerson Bigguns said:
The Stroman situation is getting interesting. He's been the most valuable pitcher in the NL. While the team lavishes in mediocrity, he can seemingly do no wrong. He can, and almost certainly will, opt out of his contract after this season. Will the Cubs commit major money and years to a 32-year-old pitcher, or should they trade him for a haul of prospects at the deadline? The next few weeks probably tell the story.
This might be the biggest decision of the Hoyer era to date.
Of course, everything is contingent on what, who, how much, how many, but what do you guys think? I'm pretty torn. We definitely could use some high-level prospects, but I have really enjoyed his tenure with the Cubs. It would be sad to see it end so quickly.

I assume he has nothing in his contract to prevent him from being traded (and I assume no handshake agreement not to trade him) so I would trade him for a boatload of prospects. I wouldn't give him away.

I would not bring him back next year since they are at least 3 years from contending.

Warren Carter Fanclub · Jun 5, 2023

bdutts said:
I assume he has nothing in his contract to prevent him from being traded (and I assume no handshake agreement not to trade him) so I would trade him for a boatload of prospects. I wouldn't give him away.

I would not bring him back next year since they are at least 3 years from contending.

Maybe not 3 years but definitely not this year. Any team that trots out Mastrobuoni to platoon against righties on a regular basis is not taking contending this year seriously.

As an aside, Fangraphs has a stat titled "Clutch Hitting" that is very interesting.
As expected, the Cubs are last in MLB (#30) at -6.14. Baltimore is #1 at +3.95. The interesting part is that #29 is Minnesota at -2.99. We are so far in last place, it's not even funny.

Another interesting stat: Cubs DH batting average is .180.......... DH !

bdutts · Jun 5, 2023

Warren Carter Fanclub said:
Maybe not 3 years but definitely not this year. Any team that trots out Mastrobuoni to platoon against righties on a regular basis is not taking contending this year seriously.

I say three years but that could change if they spend money in the offseason. Otherwise, most of their good minor leaguers are at the lower levels of minor league ball.

KBLEE · Jun 6, 2023

I was happy to see Rossy get thrown out of the game yesterday. The ump was terrible. He was giving Snell pitches several inches off the plate (at least 2 were called strike 3) that he was not giving to Hendricks.

KBLEE · Jun 7, 2023

Terrible defense in the 5th inning cost the Cubs a winnable game last night. You can't give teams multiple extra outs.

Warren Carter Fanclub · Jun 7, 2023

KBLEE said:
Terrible defense in the 5th inning cost the Cubs a winnable game last night. You can't give teams multiple extra outs.

I'll take your word for it. I can't watch them anymore.

Warren Carter Fanclub · Jun 8, 2023

Just two observations from looking at the box score today:
-Taillon gives up 4 ER's in 5 1/3. His ERA drops to 7.02. Slow and steady wins the race Jameson.
-Ross once again platoons Mastro at 3rd for the matchup against a righty. Mastro responds gratefully with another 0 fer.

Seriously, there is no doubt the Cubs will be sellers next month without much to sell. (Belli, Gomes, Smyly, Stro.)

At this point there is a VERY real chance the Cubs will finish last this year. If they do, how can Ricketts justify keeping Ross and Hoyer ?

Illiniaaron · Jun 9, 2023

At a certain point, you just have to say they're a bad team.

champaignchris · Jun 9, 2023

This thing has gone so far off the rails. Jed spent a ton of money to try to raise the floor of the team, and that floor has dropped out. This was supposed to be a high-70s win total team with an outside chance to make the playoffs, and instead it looks like this team is going to struggle not to lose 100 games. Which is amazing considering they've basically gotten "as advertised" or better results from 7 of their 9 starting position players and 4 of their 5 starting pitching slots.

There aren't enough good players here and the players that are here aren't playing well enough. This team basically has no power and doesn't make contact anywhere near enough to make up for that. The thin bullpen has never allowed the few good pieces to take on solid roles and thrive. 1B/DH was a known problem heading into the year and the guys they brought in to fix it have been failures.

One real weird thing is how they haven't been able to translate great AAA play into solid MLB play from their youngsters and the incredibly short leash they've all been given. Morel - who has easily been the best of the young players called up - didn't even appear in the Angels series despite 2 of the three opposing starters being left-handed.

IanKEvans2 · Jun 10, 2023

[ W ] #27 & #28

Great performances by Stroman & Hendricks!