Archive for Cubs

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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CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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When you think of Clayton Kershaw, you probably think of some of the best pitchers in baseball history. He’s certainly earned the right to be talked about among guys like Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Sandy Koufax, even if he still has a long way to go before he matches them in career value. At the very least, you probably think of the game’s other aces, like Jake Arrieta, Noah Syndergaard, Chris Sale, and David Price. You should also think of Kyle Hendricks.

Kyle Hendricks?! I can hear you say through the internet’s system of tubes. Why would we think of Kyle Hendricks when we think of Clayton Kershaw? Well, they have something in common other than being major-league starting pitchers in the 2010s. Kershaw is having an amazing run due in large part to his otherworldly strikeout and walk numbers. Hendricks can’t compete with those marks, but he’s doing something else extremely Kershawian lately. He’s mixing a low fly-ball rate with a very high infield-fly rate.

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Better not throw a ball to Ben Zobrist right now. Better throw it in the zone.

He’s got the lowest swing rate in baseball this year, and a bottom-nine number since we started tracking that stat. He’s always swung less often than most, but this is extreme, even for him.

“I’m just seeing the ball really well,” he said before a game against the Giants, reducing the answer to a simplicity that can be common from a player in the middle of a hot streak. “I don’t want to analyze it too much,” he continued, laughing. “That’s your job.” Pretty much the motto for all players in the midst of a good run.

But this isn’t really just a streak. It’s the convergence of a few factors that have put the Cubs second baseman in the position to put up these numbers. Health, approach, competition, and mechanics are all coming together to set the scene.

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The early part of the Major League Baseball season presents an interesting paradox when it comes to interest and attendance. Fans have waited all winter for real live baseball, and Opening Day comes with big crowds and pageantry. After Opening Day, crowds tend to thin out a bit as people come to terms with the long season, and in many places, weather that is still less than hospitable to baseball. Comparing attendance this season to attendance at this time last season shows a still-healthy game with a few teams having made major jumps after successful seasons a year ago.

When looking at per-game attendance so far this season, it should come as no surprise that the usual names remain atop the board, per Baseball Reference.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, and New York Yankees were the top four in attendance last season — in that order — and those same four teams continue their grip on the attendance lead this year. The Chicago Cubs have swapped spots with the Los Angeles Angels while the Toronto Blue Jays have taken an edge over the Boston Red Sox. The bottom five teams are the same as the end-of-the-season numbers last year, although in a different order, as Tampa Bay Rays finished the end of the season last while Oakland A’s were ahead of the Chicago White Sox and the Miami Marlins.

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A few years back, I wrote a four–part series about the worst final seasons for good players. It was inspired by Willie Mays, who very prominently had a bad final season, but was far from the worst season. Now, David Ortiz has inspired the flip side of the coin – the best final season. The Large Father is off to quite a hot start, and so some people have asked, how good does he have to be to produce the best final season of all-time? As you’ll see, the answer is he’ll have to do quite a lot.

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The nice thing about being a baseball writer — specifically, one who analyzes the sport — in the year 2016 is that sometimes players just come right out and start talking about their launch angle. Free topic! A player coming out and talking about his launch angle is the same thing as a player calling my direct line and telling me to please write a post about him. Kris Bryant called my direct line the other day and told me to please write a post about him. Not really. But he did come out and start talking about his launch angle, and I took the hint.

Kris Bryant was fantastic last year. He was fantastic for any type of player, but he was especially fantastic for a rookie. For that, he won an award. He can’t win that same award anymore, on account of no longer being a rookie, but he presumably wants to win more awards and so he’d like to get even better. Bryant was great, but he was great in this weird way, in that he succeeded while making contact on barely two-thirds of his swings. He wasn’t the first to do it, but the company he kept wasn’t particularly inspiring. Look for qualified seasons and sort by contact rate and you’ll find Bryant’s name around the likes of Jack Cust, Pedro Alvarez, Russell Branyan, Dan Uggla, and Ryan Howard. Bryant figured he could succeed and keep better company, so he entered this season with a new plan in mind.

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Buckle up, because this is going to be exhausting. Bryce Harper just batted 19 times during a four-game series between the Nationals and Cubs in Chicago. Harper batted a meager .250, and he slugged a meager .250, but he came away with an OBP of .789, thanks in large part to literally 13 walks. Joe Maddon acknowledged that the Cubs were pitching around him, but he didn’t really need to do so for us to get the message, given what was taking place. How did Harper get pitched? Here are all the final locations:

The expression of the day is “the Bonds treatment.” For one four-game series, Bryce Harper was getting pitched like the greatest hitter any of us have ever seen. What’s kind of funny is that Harper has recently been in a slump — he has five hits in 34 official at-bats over the past couple weeks. The Cubs didn’t care, seemingly preferring to go about their business with Ryan Zimmerman and one extra baserunner. At least, much of the time.

Just to what extent did Harper get pitched around? Below, you may behold all 19 plate appearances. For each, I’ll show the sequence, and I’ll assign a 1-to-10 grade indicating how little interest I think the Cubs had in attacking. The grade is entirely subjective and meaningless, but to give it the illusion of meaning, let’s say 1 is pure attack mode, and 10 is unabashed threat avoidance. Here come the Cubs, Bryce Harper, and the Pitching Terrified Index.

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On Thursday, the Nationals arrived on the north side of Chicago to begin a four game series that was billed as a potential NLCS preview. The 20-6 Cubs were squaring off with the 19-8 Nationals in a match-up of two of the best teams in baseball, and while it’s still early, the series was supposed to serve as something of a test for a Cubs team that spent April beating up on a lot of weak opponents.

Test passed. Javier Baez’s 13th inning homer yesterday gave the Cubs a four game sweep over Washington, which followed their three game sweep in Pittsburgh, so the boys from Chicago’s north side have now have a seven game winning streak, with all seven games coming against legitimate contenders. Questions about early season strength of schedule can now be put away, and with the way the Cubs are not only winning games but crushing their opponents, it’s pretty clear that this Cubs team is currently in a class of their own.

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