The Cubs, like all teams, are looking for an edge, for many edges.

The current front office began by focusing on position-player talent with premium draft picks, believing such prospects were safer bets to become impact major-league players. So far, so good.

When the world shifted three infielders to the right or left of second base, the Cubs started to shift less — and continue to do so. The result: one of the game’s most efficient defenses in recent history.

The club is interested in soft power, too. The Cubs have facilitated communication and collaboration between different departments — as have many other clubs — and better ways to facilitate cooperation. One way might be through the game’s only round clubhouse.

The Cubs, in brief, have exhibited a number of ways to get ahead.

July 2 marks the beginning of the hard-cap era for international signings. It also marks another opportunity for the Cubs to get ahead. This year, teams will no longer be allowed to lavishly outspend bonus-pool limits. Teams like the Cubs will now face a penalty for exceeding pool limits, losing the ability to extend anything greater than a $300,000 bonus to an international player. The Cubs have exhibited some creativity in recent years, however, in their attempt to work around pool limits. They’re likely to continue to do so.

Now the Cubs have perhaps found another edge in their pursuit of talent: Mexico.

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In the earliest days of spring training, Jeff Sullivan was moved by a mammoth home run to pen (type?) a piece on how difficult it is to exaggerate Aaron Judge’s power. Here’s the video of his inspiration:

Well, as the solstice approaches, the season nears its halfway point and Aaron Judge has continued to distinguish himself in his first full year in the Bigs. He currently dominates the Statcast Leaderboard, leading the majors in maximum exit velocity, average fly-ball/line-drive exit velocity, and barrel percentage. He’s second in average exit velocity.

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Bud Black pitched twice in Denver.

The first occasion was as a minor leaguer for the Omaha Royals in 1983 when he faced the Denver Bears, the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. A decade later, Black returned to Mile High Stadium at the foot of the Rocky Mountains for his first and only major-league start at 5,200 feet above sea level — in this case, against the expansion Rockies on May 12, 1993. The next closest stadium in elevation at the time was Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium (1,050 feet) followed by Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City (886 feet). Perhaps in all of professional baseball only Mexico City’s Foro Sol (elevation: 7,350 feet) was an environment less conducive to pitching.

Even as a minor leaguer in the early 1980s, Black had heard all about the perils of pitching in the thin air of Denver, about what it means to have fewer molecules bouncing off batted balls and pitches. Most often Black heard about how ineffective breaking pitches were there, with the Magnus force exerting less influence over a ball due to an air density of just 82% compared to sea level.

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Kevin Gregg didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps. Eric Gregg — one of the first African-American umpires to work in the major leagues — called balls and strikes in the National League from 1975-1999. Kevin graduated from James Madison University with a degree in Sports Management, and is now the Senior Director of Media Relations for the Boston Red Sox.

While his late father plays a big role, he wasn’t the initial impetus when I approached Gregg for this story. Rather, I’d been thinking about how different people follow baseball in different ways. Not everyone has the same relationship with the game, nor the same perspectives on it.

When you’re in Gregg’s position, you watch a lot of baseball, and you do so studiously, through a unique lens.

“I’m at about 130 of the regular-season games, and I’m watching every single pitch,” explained Gregg. “I’m scoring the game, literally writing everything down. Being into every pitch is part of my job. I need to know what issues may come up for the players, or for the manager, who meets with the media on a daily basis. What were the strategies that worked and didn’t work? There’s also the baseball information side — getting game notes ready.” Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Diamondbacks’ baserunning, Rich Hill’s struggles, regrets about writing, reading the comments, and the prospect of an automated strike zone.

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Living in a world where Mike Trout doesn’t suit up nightly leads to some difficult questions about who might be the best player in his absence. Given their similar ages and trajectories, Bryce Harper is a decent choice. That said, we could consider a host of names, including Jose Altuve, Kris Bryant, Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, Clayton Kershaw, Manny Machado, Corey Seager… you get the idea. There are a lot of really good baseball players out there who aren’t Mike Trout and all have good cases for second-best player.

If we focus just on offense, the field changes a little bit. Bryant is probably still up there. Harper and Donaldson, too. Joey Votto has a pretty good case, Anthony Rizzo is still very good, and Aaron Judge is certainly a force this season. But if you combine track record, current performance, and expected future performance, Paul Goldschmidt might top them all.

In terms of hitting, patience, and power, Goldschmidt is the complete package. He’s got a career batting average over .300, on-base percentage over .400, and slugging percentage over .500. The only other active players to meet those standards are Mike Trout and Joey Votto. And while those numbers are subject to Goldschmidt’s inevitable decline, players who retire with .300/.400/.500 slash lines tend to end up in the Hall of Fame. Chipper Jones and Frank Thomas are two the most recent examples. And Goldschmidt might be having his best year with the bat. His .323/.448/.596 receives the benefit of his home park, but the 164 wRC+ plays anywhere.

Hitting isn’t the only aspect of Goldschmidt’s offensive profile, either. He’s an excellent runner, both stealing and taking the extra base on batted balls. The list of players with more steals than Paul Goldschmidt since the start of the 2015 season is a short one. They are (in order of total stolen bases): Billy Hamilton, Dee Gordon, Jonathan Villar, Jose Altuve, Starling Marte, Jarrod Dyson, and Rajai Davis. When you take into account runs generated from stolen bases and losses from caught stealing, the list of players better than Goldschmidt over the last two-plus seasons is even shorter: Hamilton, Gordon, and Dyson.

It’s not just on steals where he generates runs. He’s also in the top 10 since 2015 in Ultimate Base Runs (UBR), which measures extra bases taken. So far this season, his percentages of going first to third on a single (50%), first to home on a double (57%), and second to home on a single (63%) are all well above the respective league averages of 28%, 40%, and 60%. He’s done it without making an out.

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A couple of years ago, Jose Bautista had some advice for Marcus Stroman. “He said I should screw with my timing more,” the Jays’ right-handed pitcher told me a couple weeks back. Maybe you’ve seen him employ the strategy this year. It’s a fun and makes watching him more interesting. The effect it has on his ability to prevent runs is less obvious, though.

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