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Avoiding Bad Decisions in the Spring, Leiter and the Bullpen, Cease Talks, and Other Cubs Bullets

Brett Taylor Brett Taylor
Mar 13, 2024
Chicago Cubs

Trying to get back into meditation. It really, really works for me. But I have so much trouble finding the exact right time of day to do it, and then sticking to it consistently.

  • Something I have to remind myself every year: Spring Training performances are rarely useful for evaluation purposes. As a true tiebreaker? As something at the very edge of edge cases? As a proxy for health? Sure, OK, all fine. But you get yourself into serious trouble if you look at a set of very small-sample stats, from games that don’t matter, against players who may or may not be big leaguers, and players who may or may not be working on things where they do not care at all what their or their opponents outcomes are.

  • A reminder to that end from Cubs President Jed Hoyer, via The Athletic: “This is the worst place to try and evaluate. No one’s trying to get anyone out with any kind of scouting report. If a guy has a huge weakness, no one’s actually hitting it in spring training. Hitters are working on stuff, pitchers are working on stuff, playing every other day, getting three at-bats. More and more, I have this laundry list of awful decision-making in spring training based on who looked really good and who looked awful.”

  • If Mark Leiter Jr. hadn’t lost his splitter late last year, I would be so freaking excited about having him back in the bullpen this year for the Cubs. He was a STUD until that happened. And wouldn’t you know it, the splitter has shown up again this spring, and he’s been outstanding (not that I’m judging him on the numbers of course …). But because we saw that he COULD lose it, and we saw how ineffective he was without that in the bag, I get nervous. If it’s back and stays back, though, he’s going to be really, really good once again this year.

  • It’s more or less ALWAYS true with relievers, but the group the Cubs have right now could be truly outstanding … if this and if that. With Leiter it’s the splitter. With Merryweather it’s the health. With Alzolay it’s the success against lefties. With Neris it’s hoping there’s no fall-off yet. With Almonte it’s the bounce back. With Cuas it’s the sweeper. With Little and Palencia it’s the readiness. Several interesting NRIs. So on and so forth. Tons of guys who could be very good, tons of flexibility to move guys around, and a relatively large amount of redundancy. It’s not at all hard for me to imagine this turning into another top-ten bullpen. But the variance inherent in the role leaves you without certainty. Most likely some of the guys are great, some of the guys struggle, and some of the guys get hurt. That’d be the fat part of the bell curve of outcomes.

  • Oh, speaking of splitters, I want to dig into this more (I said the splitter was going to be this year’s sweeper!), but for now I’ll just share because it’s such a great read:

  • When you find out someone in the epic 1998 Home Run Race is decked out in Cubs gear at Cubs Spring Training and is not that one guy, but is instead that other guy:

  • (If you’re wondering, McGwire has been around Cubs minor league camp because his son, Mason, is a Cubs pitching prospect. Good to have his presence and feedback available, regardless of the feelings it conjures about Sammy Sosa’s continued absence.)

  • Only way to reverse this trend (if you even wanted to) is to somehow incentivize keeping starting pitchers in longer – some kind of value that is worth as much as the third time through the order penalty (like, say, the DOUBLE HOOK RULE):

  • Stay tuned on those renewed Dylan Cease trade talks. With the report of the Yankees making a new offer, and now also a report that the Rangers might be trying to land him (and also maybe the Padres), it could be that the White Sox have decided they don’t want to risk waiting until the trade deadline to move Cease. If that’s the case, it may happen quickly, and the potential impact for the remaining free agent starting pitchers could be significant.

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    written by

    Brett Taylor

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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