Wait 'til next year

There's a decent chance it won't even be this good

Wait 'til next year

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As fans of real teams get ready for the playoffs, Cubs fans are left to lick their wounds, pack away their cup snakes and drool the drool of regret on the pillow of remorse. So over the next couple of weeks, I’ll put the 2023 season into true perspective with a series called simply, The Aftermath.

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Part One

Did they really accomplish anything?

On a basic level the 2023 Cubs were better than the season before. They won eight more games. They competed until the final weekend of the season for a playoff spot and they have what appear to be long term answers for some key roles.

Justin Steele took a huge leap and not only became a bona fide top of the rotation pitcher (16-5, 3.06 ERA, 176 strikeouts to only 36 walks in 173.1 innings) but a real Cy Young contender for a long while.

Adbert Alzolay took over the closer role on May 6, and from that point forward he converted 22 of 25 save chances with a 2.55 ERA and 49 strikeouts against just 10 walks in his final 49 innings.

Seiya Suzuki will be remembered (by dopes) mostly for losing a key fly ball in the lights in the final week of the season, but what he should be remembered for was that from the All-Star Game on, he was the Cubs best hitter and that includes Cody Bellinger.

In the second half, Seiya slashed .313/.372/.566/.938 with 13 homers and 46 RBI. Bellinger was also excellent at .313/.357/.552/.909.

It would have made sense to have hit those guys three and four down the stretch, but the Cubs aren’t really into sense.

I mean, David Ross would have changed things, but he needed to get Ian Happ’s permission first, or some such shit.

Nico Hoerner stole 43 bases at an 86% success rate, increased his on base average to a respectable .346 and played Gold Glove defense at second base. This should not have been a surprise, given he was a Gold Glove finalist at that position in 2020.

Dansby Swanson was advertised as an excellent defensive shortstop and he was somehow even better than we expected. He hurt his heel on July 5, returned from the IL on July 22 and didn’t hit (.225/.306/.425), and David Ross refused to give him any days off. Until the final day of the season, Dansby played all but SIX INNINGS at shortstop from July 22 on.

Miguel Amaya was healthy for an entire season for the first time since 2019 and was impressive in his backup catcher role. Given that Yan Gomes is 36 years old you’d like to see Amaya get the majority of starts next year. Gomes caught 103 this year. 75-80 next year seems about right.

Jordan Wicks was impressive in his late season call up. He got lit up in his final start of the season (six runs in 1.2 innings) which blew up his overall numbers, but he looks like a solid back end of the rotation option for next season.

Javier Assad bailed the Cubs out for a while when their rotation fell apart over the last couple of months. He was equally good as a starter (3.02 ERA in 10 starts) and a reliever (3.07 ERA in 22 relief appearances) and yet the Cubs managed to avoid using him for high leverage starts or relief appearances down the stretch.

Jed Hoyer’s vaunted free agent shopping spree of mediocre mostly white guys returned one great season (Bellinger) a good long term solution at shortstop (Dansby), a reliever who eventually became valuable (Michael Fulmer) and…a lot of bad. Eric Hosmer, Trey Mancini the third, Luis Torrens and Edwin Rios were all DFA’d after doing nothing. Actually, that’s not true. Trey did do something. He fell down a lot. Including once, famously in England. But hey, what would one game have mattered this year? Brad Boxberger was awful before and after a long sting on the injured list, and Jameson Taillon was a disaster in the first year of what’s already an onerous four year deal. Taillon didn’t get a win until his ninth start. Until the second to last day of the season he had only beaten one team with a winning record (the Reds on August 3), but then a late season run to mediocrity by the Padres made it two.

Ian Happ signed a three year extension at $20 million per year, which wouldn’t have been so bad but the Cubs felt the need to give him a full no-trade clause. So now, no matter what, the Cubs are stuck with a slightly above league average bat and a horribly overrated glove, who no longer hits for power despite occupying a prime power position (left field). If you could eat some of that contract you could certainly trade him for something useful in the next year or two, but not now. And his aggressive mediocrity is exacerbated by the manager insisting on hitting him in the third spot in the order despite his production not justifying it.

Kyle Hendricks was a feel good story. The World Series hero came back from what looked an awful lot like a career threatening shoulder injury and became the Cubs’ second best starting pitcher1. He has a team option for next year at just $16 million. It’s a bargain considering there’s no long term commitment and given that the qualifying offer this season is $20 million, even a short term replacement would cost significantly more.

And finally, they made a nice trade at the deadline to get former Cubs prospect Jeimer Candelario from the Nationals. Jeimer got off to a goodstart with his new old team, cooled off and then rebounded, but then really struggled and went on the injured list with a bad back, then came back to limp around (like everybody else) for the final week. In the end, his Cubs’ numbers were just .233/.320/.451 (though a .771 OPS on that team was good enough to be the fifth most productive hitter.) Jeimer is a very good third baseman, and the Cubs..for reasons..made him play a lot of first. Given that they could have signed him last offseason for far less than Mancini, you’d think they’d be interested in a three year deal at probably $24 million (total) or so. But we’ll see.

OK, so the Cubs have that.

Well, not Bellinger. He’s a free agent, and because he was actually good, he’ll be expensive, because good players cost money, and that gives the Cubs the vapors.

So if you don’t bring back Cody and Jeimer, you’re left with a really big number of holes.

You won’t have a center fielder or a first baseman or a third baseman. Christopher Morel gave you good overall, but extremely erratic production at DH, and if you can’t figure out a position for him (which you should) you’re probably better off trading him to a team that will. Either way, you probably will need to find a DH, too.

You have one old catcher coming off an offensive season he’s unlikely to ever duplicate and another who will basically still be a rookie. Your bullpen cost you early and late in the season and is full of question marks.

Prospect perverts will tell you that it would be foolish to re-sign Bellinger for the “huge deal that Scott Bora$ will demand” when he would just block Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Jeimer would block Nick Madrigal and/or 2023 first round pick Matt Shaw at third base.

OK, where to begin?

First off, it is unlikely Bellinger will actually command the 10 or 12 year deal that people are fearing. Yes, he had a very good season for the Cubs, but it wasn’t the MVP season that Boog was touting it as down the stretch. Bellinger is a really good, really versatile player. But he also was terrible from 2020 through 2022 and other teams can find baseballreference.com. His good 2023 season helped him restore a fair amount of his value, but he’s not likely to be in line for a 10 year, $300 million offer from anybody. A seven year deal in the $25 million range seems more likely, and should be an easy “yes” for a team with the Cubs’ resources. You might see some offers that go longer, but those offers will be attempts to spread out the annual value over more years. That should also not scare the Cubs. At some point, you fucking have to pay somebody, right? Even if it goes higher than that, who the hell are you going to get to replace him?

Cubs Chairman and de facto head of the Illinois-based chapter of The Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™, Tom Ricketts, came up to poke at the corpse of the 2023 team on Sunday in Milwaukee. He did what he usually does and act folksy and say nothing, but when asked directly about the payroll he said, “I think we’ll stay at those levels.” Those levels are the current levels, which are not enough. And frankly, if you stay at those levels you have let Cody go and you are doomed to be worse next year than you were this year. But when asked if they would go over the competitive balance tax first level, Tommy Boy said that was up to Jed. Nobody believes that.

Secondly, the beauty of re-signing Cody and Jeimer is they don’t really have to block anybody. Cody can play all three outfield spots and first, Jeimer can play first, third or DH. If you really thought PCA and Shaw would be ready during the 2024 season, you can call them up and easily create spots for them to play without displacing anybody of consequence.

Third, are we sure Pete is going to ready any time soon? He had a very good minor league season, but his late season call up was eye opening in the worst possible way. He showed the incredible outfield range that we were promised, but he was laughably overmatched at the plate. He ended the season 0-for-14 with seven strikeouts. And more troubling was that he really never came close to getting a hit. After he made his debut in Colorado, the Cubs went to Arizona, and the D’bags clearly had a plan to just throw Pete high fastballs until he hit one, and he never did. The Brewers did the same thing to him. On Sunday, Adrian Houser was pumping 91 and 92 MPH “fast”balls past him.

And he’s not the only Cubs prospect to struggle with velocity. It’s what doomed Matt Mervis to AAA. These are supposedly two of the Cubs tippity top prospects and so far, the results are far from promising. It’s also a real thing for this club. The demise of the offense from late in the 2018 season was due largely to their inability to hit velocity.

That does not mean PCA will be a bust. Of course he could show up next year and make that adjustment and do well. He clearly is talented. But it has to at least make you feel like the Cubs need to take their foot off of his accelerated timetable for a while.

As for Madrigal. I mean. What the fuck? Are we still doing this? Are we still pretending he’s anything more than a vastly overrated novelty act?

For those who think his defense at third is anything more than merely adequate, you can quote the defensive runs saved ranking that Marquee put on the screen seemingly every time they showed him and I’ll just counter it with the fact that defensive metrics are wildly inconsistent from year to year and metric to metric. And, even if it were true and he were a good defensive player, he doesn’t hit well enough to make it worth it.

Madrigal’s season numbers don’t warrant regular playing time at any position, much less third base. He slashed .263/.311/.352, that’s an OPS plus of 79, when 100 is league average.

But, if you want to argue that he was so much better after he returned from the minors, well, he was, for three weeks.

From June 9 to June 30, he hit .340/.426/.472 (17 games) with an actual homer!

Prior to that stretch he hit .247/.286/.301. (34 games)
After that stretch he hit .242/.277/.339 (41 games)

He injured his hamstring (again)2 during a loss to the D’bags on September 16 and didn’t play the rest of the year. That should be his final Cubs’ game ever. They need to trade him to a team where he can compete for a second base spot. It’s the only place he’s remotely useful, and even then, I don’t know who might want him, other than maybe the A’s. And only because he’s so small he’ll be very inexpensive to ship to Vegas.

Pitching will be an even bigger issue for the Cubs next year. Marcus Stroman’s terrible second half (8.63 ERA, 1.958 WHIP and .916 OPS allowed) means he will almost certainly opt back in for the third and final year of his contract, which will be $21 million that the Cubs thought they’d have to spend.

Sure, when healthy, Stroman figures to still be useful, but his injury history is long and checkered and part of the appeal for the Cubs to only have him for two years was that it not only mitigated the injury risk, but it’s not a secret that his personality starts to grate on teammates. While the weird shit he does like throw bullpens barefoot and tell everybody about how he pitches simulated games without a ball in front of a mirror in his hotel room, might wow Boog as real gems for the broadcast, after a while, the other players are ready for it to just all go away.

The other concern is that if the Cubs are hell bent on staying under the lowest competitive balance tax threshold again (which they absolutely should not be because as the best teams in baseball prove every year, those penalties are not all that costly) the Cubs could decide if they’re stuck with Stroman that they should just let Hendricks go. That would be dumb. But hey, when have the Cubs ever done anything dumb?

And, even if his teammates are starting to tire of Marcus, isn’t managing personalities in the clubhouse supposed to be Ross’ one strength? Well, get to work, Dave.

They need all the starters they can get. Adding Stroman and Hendricks to Steele and Wicks and Assad and Taillon (ugh) still looks like you’d need to find another starter. If you let Hendricks go, then you need to find two. Good luck with that.

Oh, and you basically need an entire bullpen other than Adbert (assuming he’s actually healthy). Other than that, it’s all good.

And then (yes, there’s more) there’s the fact that the Cubs failed to make the playoffs in a season in which three teams that everyone thought were shoo-ins all fell on their faces. Before the season, everyone thought the Barves, Dodgers, Cardinals, Padres and Mets would all walk into the playoffs. That left everybody else, including the defending NL champion Phillies, fighting for one playoff spot.

The Cardinals, Padres and Mets were never a serious factor and the Cubs still didn’t get in. Good luck with the idea that all three of those teams will stay out of contention next season.

The all-important run differential section

And finally, for those of you who want to brag about how the Cubs had the fourth best run differential in the National League, and act like that measure shows the true talent of a team…

First, shut up.

Second, the Cubs +96 was a long way from the two really good teams in the league. The Barves and Dodgers finished first and second in all of baseball. Atlanta was +232 and the Dodgers +207. The Padres, who had to go 8-2 down the stretch to finish over .500 were +104.

Boog tried to argue as the Cubs were sliding into the abyss at the end of the year, that run differential should be the tiebreaker, not win/loss record against the team you are tied with.

Whatever. The Cubs were one of nine teams in the NL to finish over .500. They were 25-40 against those other eight teams with a run differential of -9.

And, how’s this for a McNugget of the Game, Boog?

The Cubs had the fourth best run differential in the National League at +96 Their run differential was +105 against the A’s, Pirates and Cardinals and -9 against every other team.

The Cubs didn’t have a winning record against any National League team that finished .500 or better on the season.

The Cubs second half record was 41-32, and that proves that they are on the precipice of something really great. Right? I mean it has to be because it’s so much better than last year when they were…(let me look this up)…39-31 in the second half.

Oh boy.

The cool thing about that “fifth best record in the National League in the second half of the season” banner that they hung on opening day last year is that they can hang it again next year. Thanks to their 7-15 finish to the season which not only knocked them from a 92% chance of making the playoffs to missing them, it also allowed them to fall one game behind Philly in the all-important second half standings.

And so yes, for the second straight season, the Cubs finished with the fifth best record in the National League in the second half. Congrats!

Flags fly forever!

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More of The Aftermath

Podcast: Cubs postmortem and playoff preview
(Here’s an obligatory shot of guys painting the playoff logo on the “grass”)

  1. Admittedly, a low bar. But Kyle was genuinely good.

  2. That’s now five times he’s injured the same hamstring, including injuring it so severely in 2021 that he was on the injured list when the Cubs traded for him after having surgery on it.