Shaw officially to Japan and likely will be the starter at third next week. That’s terrific to hear. Curious to see who the other back half players who are on the plane tonight
I’m okay with that. They have a lot of tough choices to make here but they have to be realistic where he’ll get the most at bats and playing time. I hope he understands that he’s the first guy up but it helps him out more if he gets to play in spring training camp the next week and then Iowa to start the season. Same deal with wicks and Assad and maybe even Ben brown (I know he might be going to Japan but they get the extra 5 players for Japan)
Either Brujan is going to waivers or Workman is going back to Detroit at some point. I’d rather hold on to Workman
Agreed but no reason for them to make that decision before Nico is healthy. It does seem like he’ll be available for the stateside start of the season but it at least gives them an extra week. I think workman’s ability to backup Dansby at short is going to go a long way in keeping him because they’re going to want to give him semi-regular rest and I’m sure they don’t want Nico playing short when he continues to recover from has flexor injury
Not sure why they didn’t make this more readily available but here’s the list of the 31 guys going to Japan: Keegan is definitely getting dfa’d either before this Japan series or the stateside opening day. Good riddance. They’ll need to make a 40 man move to at least get Shaw onto, but they may want to put Keller on the active 26. Gavin Hollowell is an incredibly obvious dfa (not sure how he has survived this long) but I’m not sure if they’ll move Keegan off right now too. Neither Ethan Roberts nor kilian are mlb pitchers so those are options too, but they probably don’t want to give up on either. Brujan is the only hitter they’d take off but as I said above, they’ll probably wait til Nico is back to do that.
I'm confused at the hatred for Keegan Thompson. Kilian is a 4a pitcher...Roberts the same...Brujan gives great positional versatility, but he can't seem to hit. It is surprising to see Thompson go now with some other guys having options. Alcantara was an obvious guy to send down. Still has options and no path to regular at bats at the big league level. It obviously won't happen, but I don't know why we signed Turner, and is like for him to be gone.
I don’t hate Keegan. But he’s not better than any of the pitchers who made the Japan roster. And them dfa’ing him makes it clear they’re serious about keeping the best bullpen to start the year. The cubs of the past few years probably cling to him to give him a chance the first month or two. They can’t have that mentality this year.
Thompson walk rate seems pretty problematic. He got away with it last year. Idk. It’s nice to having actually tough and legit convos about the bottom of the roster
Shaw officially added to the 40 man, so he’ll start. Maybe they just don’t want to cut Gavin hollowell yet (why?), but kinda interesting Brad Keller wasn’t added to the 40 man. I expected to see him on the active roster for this series
Shaw's batting stance is wild... LA's pen is just stacked. Probably not going to watch game 2 live... be nice to split
I was thinking of how crazy the precipitous fall of the ‘16 roster was, and one guy I forgot about was Albert Almora, was happily surprised to see he had a very successful year in AAA last year
I'm sure it was cool for the players but I'm going to pretend as if our regular season hasn't started yet. I'll be the old man yelling at clouds and say starting the regular season in Japan so we need to wake up at 6am to watch baseball is stupid.
Really hate seeing Eli Morgan get optioned. They can’t fuck around with the pen early in the season. I don’t have a ton of patience letting Ben brown work out his kinks at the mlb level even if he has a higher upside.
Brown will also probably be optioned to AAA because he has options. That’s why Morgan is getting sent down. Keller likely gets the last roster spot.
It’s not just here, go to the Cubs subreddit. They’re losing their mind over this. Who knows how Smith turns out but the people acting like it’s a foregone conclusion he’s a star is wild. Brett Baty was a top 25 prospect who was absolutely raking at AAA before he got called up by the Mets. He’s been worth -.7 over two seasons now. Everybody was convinced Jordan Walker was the next superstar of the sport, and he’s been worth -1 WAR through two seasons. Smith has as good of chance of being in AAA by May as he does being an average contributor.
Im not worried about us losing cam smith and am actually loving brown winning the job. We needed to extend tucker or it was all for nothing
I don’t think Tucker was extending for any team in the league after being traded. Why would he do that? He’s likely going to ensure he gets the most money by hitting the free market, and it allows him to see if he likes playing in chicago before signing a massive extension. We need to stop holding it against them for not signing him yet. Should we blame them if they don’t make an actual good faith effort to sign him once he hits free agency? Absolutely. But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. They haven’t done anything wrong there *yet*
Only having a two pitch mix makes him susceptible to the long ball. If he’s not missing bats, he’s likely going to get rocked. Steele has been able to produce as only a two pitch pitcher but he’s the exception and not the rule. Brown is working on a change up and it would’ve been nice to see him try to hone that in AAA to start the season before coming up.
I think he’s beyond going to AAA, I also think he’s got the stuff to be an elite closer. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea to give him a shot as the 5th starter. Realistically we’re looking at more than 5 starters this year. And the cubs have the depth to accommodate that this year.
Yeah I’d like him to be that fifth starter later in the year, but he really been sharp in spring after coming off the neck injury. I’d way rather him work out some of his rust in AAA for the first month, and then slide him into that role. You’ll be able to get him fully stressed out and he get his command of his pitches where it needs to be before sliding him in. I also just think it’s incredibly useless to put Rea in the bullpen. If he’s not on the rotation he probably shouldn’t be on the team. Unless they’re expecting the possibility of brown struggling?
Catcher not being an absolute black hole in the lineup after the last couple years would be nice. Shaw is way faster than I expected. On the flip side his bat speed so far has been abysmal. Not sure if we are going to need him to bulk up in the long term or if he’s just hesitant right now due to being brand new.
Some obvious good and bad from last nights game. I really appreciated most everyone’s plate approach though. This offense should be much better than it was last year. Even without consistent slug, I think they’re going to manufacture multiple run innings quite a bit
If Mig and PCA can hit like they closed last season as the floor for this season it will do amazing things for the depth of the line-up. No easy outs 7-9. The broadcast team last night dove into Shaw's stance and how he's probably going to need to change it some. They also mentioned that the velocity jump from the minors to majors is huge. I think he's going to have some growing pains this year... hopefully he can play enough defense to stick all year and come around in the 2nd half with the bat like Miggy and PCA did last year.