It’s still rather difficult to craft an argument against the Chicago Cubs as the best team in baseball, at least in my opinion. I mean, shoot, they’ve outscored their opponents by 139 runs for the season, and that’s 34 more than the next-best team, and 50 more than the next-next best team. They’ve got an MVP candidate (favorite?) in Kris Bryant, and they’ve got perhaps the second-best pitcher in the world in Jake Arrieta. The lineup’s still deep, the rotation’s still deep. They still play defense, and they still run the bases. It’s the same roster that was undoubtedly the best roster just a month ago, and the same roster that the projections, whether it be ZiPS, Steamer, or PECOTA, think is clearly the best in the sport.

But, here’s the thing. The Cubs no longer have the best record — they’ve barely got the second-best record — and that’s kinda crazy, considering it was barely a month ago that they had the best record in the sport by 6.5 games, with an even better BaseRuns record at the time.

Except, lately — and pretty much since that moment — things haven’t been going so hot. I created a little infographic to help put things into perspective. Hope this does the trick:

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Ah, this part. I always enjoy this part. Not because I enjoy when superstars struggle, but because I enjoy seeing the standards to which we hold those same superstars. The standards are revealed when people start to worry. Over his last…I don’t know, eight starts, Jake Arrieta has a 3.77 ERA. He’s allowed a slugging percentage of .331. This is Jake Arrieta in a rut. I mean, this really is Jake Arrieta in a rut — people aren’t making up the rut — but you can see how silly reality is. That all-time amazing version of Arrieta became the version we allowed ourselves to take for granted.

But, heck, where’d he go? Arrieta himself would admit he hasn’t been firing on all cylinders. He’d like to pitch better than he has. The Cubs would like him to pitch better than he has. While Arrieta hasn’t been bad, lately he’s fallen short of expectations. And if you examine the record now, you see signs that Arrieta has been off to some degree for several weeks. This isn’t all that recent of a thing.

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Ever since Eric Byrnes used a computer to help umpire an independent-league baseball game last year, and then Brian Kenny took up the mantle of #RobotUmpsNow on the MLB Network, I’ve been fascinated with the idea that robot umpires will soon call strike zones in baseball. The more I talk to players about it, though, the more I doubt that it’s an eventuality. Because the players, well, the players are going to hate it.

I can’t speak for all players, obviously. I haven’t talked to all of them. But I’ve talked to plenty on both sides, even ones I can’t quote here, and the biggest endorsement I could get was a tepid version of “It’s going to happen.”

So instead of asking each player what they thought about robot umpires, I changed the question a bit. Instead, I asked pitchers, catchers, and hitters, “Who will hate robot umps the most?”

The short answer? Everyone. The long answer? Much more interesting.

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Who is the best hitter in the National League? The easy and “right” answer, insomuch as one exists, is Bryce Harper, as we’re mere months removed from watching him put up the best season at the plate by a 22-year-old since Ted Williams. But with Harper currently producing at the plate at a rate more comparable to guys like Odubel Herrera and Stephen Piscotty, it’s natural to ponder the question: “If not Harper, then whom?”

There are a few viable candidates but two who stick out are the only two National League players other than Harper to post a wRC+ above 150 since 2014: Paul Goldschmidt, who has been consistently elite with the bat for four seasons now and, the subject at hand, 26-year-old superstar, Anthony Rizzo.

In the previous sentence, you could argue I threw around the word “superstar” a bit cavalierly. It’s a word from which I tend to shy away because it’s so incredibly subjective as to be functionally meaningless. I don’t know that there are more than two players in the game right now – Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw – who are labeled “superstars” with anything resembling universal agreement. Anthony Rizzo certainly wouldn’t receive universal billing as a “superstar.” I don’t know if he’s a superstar by your definition – shoot, I just paired him with that term and I’m not completely convinced he’s a superstar by my own subjective definition – but I do know this: Anthony Rizzo is an extraordinarily talented baseball player and, so far this year, he’s putting up what looks like the best season of his major-league career.

He has set or matched his career high in most key offensive rate stats from on-base percentage to wOBA to strikeout and walk rates. But not only is he putting together a strong season by his own standards, his stats stand out in comparison to his competition in the National League:

There are a variety of different ways to go about building a prototype for an ideal hitter, but a great starting point would be a guy doing exactly what Rizzo is doing right now: exhibiting plate discipline, getting on base, and hitting for power. That’s an impressive trifecta — and, at the core of that offensive profile, lies the key improvements Rizzo has made.

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A few days ago, I shared KATOH’s thoughts on the college players who were drafted (and not drafted) in this year’s amateur draft. There were hundreds of them. Many of the players with very good projections went in the first round, including Nick Senzel, A.J. Puk and Cody Sedlock. But the player with the very best KATOH projection fell all the way to the 10th round. The end of the 10th round. That player is Dakota Mekkes, whom the Cubs drafted with the 314th-overall pick out of Michigan State.

Mekkes was straight up filthy this past season. Pitching in the Big 10, Mekkes struck out a remarkable 96 batters in just 57 innings without surrendering a single home run. The catch is that he pitched exclusively in relief — though he wasn’t used like a typical reliever, and actually pitched more like a starter in some cases. Mekkes averaged over two innings per appearance in relief, and frequently threw many more than that. Most notably, he tossed six shutout innings in an extra-inning game against Maryland. Unlike most college relievers, he wasn’t a one-inning guy, which helps explain why KATOH likes him more than most relievers.

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Just last week, the Cubs added another productive asset to their already stacked lineup when they called up outfielder Albert Almora. Today, they fortified their juggernaut offense even further by summoning slugging catcher Willson Contreras. Contreras has absolutely destroyed the Pacific Coast League this year. In 55 Triple-A games, he was slashing .353/.442/.593.

Contreras has demonstrated an exceptional combination of contact and power in Triple-A this year. He’s struck out just 13% of the time, yet has also managed to put up a .240 ISO. Some of that has to do with his playing in the PCL, where homers are very common. But a lot of it doesn’t: On a per plate appearance basis, he hit significantly more singles, doubles, triples and home runs than the typical PCL hitter. As if that weren’t enough, he also drew walks and even stole four bases. From a hitting perspective, he did it all. Read the rest of this entry »

Cubs catcher Willson Contreras was already creating a good deal of discussion within the industry before the trade deadline last year and, indeed, teams were asking about Contreras as that day came and went. The Cubs rebuffed and Contreras continued what was arguably the biggest breakout among positional prospects in 2015 on through Arizona Fall League, where every team saw him succeed against a superlative class of AFL arms before he tweaked his hamstring hauling ass down to first base on a groundout the first week of November and was shut down. He picked up where he left off in 2016 and owns a .350/.439/.591 line at Triple-A Iowa with 28 extra-base hits in just 239 PAs.

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Like any baseball stat, Wins Above Replacement provides the answer to a question. The question, in this case? Something like this: accounting for all the main ways (hitting, running, defense, etc.) in which a player can produce value for his team, how many wins has this particular player been worth?

There are, of course, criticisms of WAR. Some valid, others less so. One prominent criticism is how defensive value is handled in WAR. Some don’t understand how it’s calculated. Others understand but also question how well it represents a player’s defensive contributions. These criticisms shouldn’t be dismissed. As with all baseball statistics, though, it’s necessary to consider WAR in the context in which it’s presented — that is, to remember the question a metric is intended to answer and the method by which it attempts to answer that question.

On Monday, I completed one such reminder in a discussion of players whose WAR totals this year are probably low based on what we know about their defense. Today, I’ll make another attempt — this time, by examining players whose WAR totals are probably inflated by defensive numbers unlikely to be sustained over the course of a season.

In the comments of Monday’s post, one reader, Ernie Camacho, noted:

[T]here is a weird tension in this article between quantifying and estimating what has already happened, on the one hand, and evaluating player talent, on the other. I’m not sure we should be blending the two.

This is a good point. That tension most definitely exists, and it’s possible that some of that tension is what causes people to discount defensive metrics — and WAR as a whole. I agree that, in terms of calculating WAR, we should not be blending what has already happened with what we think will probably happen. Over time, in an ideal world, WAR captures both. In smaller samples, however, this is more difficult to do. In fact, there’s actually something that does capture the blending when we have smaller samples: projections. If we want to capture a player’s talent level at any given moment, projections do that very well.

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Just as a recap, here’s some things at which the Cubs have proven to be among the best this year. They’ve been among the best at getting fans to the stadium. They’ve been the best at not pitching to Bryce Harper. They’ve been the best at drawing walks (perhaps that we’ve ever seen), and they’ve been the best base-running team. Basically, they’ve looked like the perfect baseball team. Maybe this seems like overkill, all the Cubs posts already and another one here right now. Or maybe they’re just deserving of all these posts, on account of how dominant and unique they’ve been thus far. I’d argue the latter, but I know that’s not a unanimous opinion.

Either way, here comes another Cubs post! There’s another record they’re pursuing, but it’s not a particularly sexy record, nor is it one that necessarily indicates skill and skill only. Definitely some skill involved, but it’s the kind of record where you’re not too sure how to feel about it, or what, exactly, it means. Even right now, the Cubs are doing this thing, and I’m not totally sure what to make of it. That’s what this post is for!

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It’s been a long, strange trip to the major leagues for Jameson Taillon. Sandwiched at second overall between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in the 2010 draft, Taillon missed all of 2014 and 2015 while recovering from Tommy John and inguinal hernia surgeries, respectively. His stuff flashed last fall during instructional league and there was hope coming into the season that he would be able to pick up somewhere close to where he left off in 2013 when he had a brief and wild but effective stint in Triple-A.

This year, Taillon has exceeded all hopes and expectations and laid waste to the International League. In ten starts (61.2 innings), Taillon has struck out 61 and walked just six, while generating a ton of ground balls. Per MLBfarm.com, 83 of the 168 balls put in play versus Taillon this year have been on the ground. He debuts for the Pirates tonight against Noah Syndergaard and the Mets.

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