Cashews are awesome, man. I just feel like more people need to appreciate cashews. By far the best nut. 80-grade.
This is just a wonderful bit from Craig Counsell on shortstop Dansby Swanson, via Marquee:
‘Swanson led all MLB shortstops with 18 Defensive Runs Saved and has been as advertised during his first season-plus in Chicago.
“Just seeing him now for a couple weeks, it’s impressive watching him pick up a ground ball,” Craig Counsell said. “I know he won the Gold Glove and everything so I knew he was good and now I’m watching it and I’m like, ‘oh my God, could you make it look any easier?’ It’s really impressive. It’s fun to watch.”’
That’s exactly how it struck a lot of us last year watching Dansby Swanson day in, day out: he just makes it looks so easy. We all knew he was “good” defensively. But when you actually watch him every day, it’s just crazy how routine he makes everything – every play, every aspect of the play – look. It’s more or less what Jed Hoyer said was his takeaway from his project watching all of Swanson’s defensive plays in 2022 before the Cubs signed him, and it really proved to be true for us and now for Counsell.
And Dansby Swanson with his thoughts on Craig Counsell, among other things:
When the Cubs signed Garrett Cooper late last month, the news came out on the heels of the Cody Bellinger re-signing, so it didn’t get a ton of attention. There were two main reactions, though: (1) how is this going to work, exactly, and (2) how did the Cubs get him on a minor league deal? Cooper, who has at times been a very good big league regular and is now, at a minimum, an outstanding lefty-crushing option on any bench, surely figured to get a big league deal coming into the offseason. And if he couldn’t, why choose to sign a minor league deal with the Cubs, where the path to making the team had at least one large Patrick-Wisdom-shaped roadblock?
Well, Maddie Lee spoke to Cooper about those things here at the Sun-Times, and you kinda get the picture. Cooper did expect to get a big league deal coming into the offseason, and may even have passed on some lower-dollar ones early on. But when things slowed and it was just time to get into camp, he wound up choosing between the Cubs and Red Sox on a minor league deal, and felt his path to playing time was better on the Cubs. He might be right about that, not because it’s wide open on the Cubs and super closed on the Red Sox, but instead because the Red Sox are probably going to default to giving ABs to younger players this year.
As we’ve discussed, although it’s not necessarily a direct one-to-one competition between Cooper and Wisdom for a bench spot, they inarguably overlap in the role they would play. And with just four non-catcher spots available on the bench, it’s pretty hard to imagine the Cubs carrying both guys, if healthy. I don’t necessarily have a strong preference between the two, though if I had to give an edge, it’d probably go slightly to Wisdom because he can be controlled past 2024 if he breaks out, because he’s a year younger, and because he can play third base in a pinch.
Fascinating read on one of the biggest parts of the Rays pitcher development philosophy:
I remember vaguely hearing about this back when Tyler Glasnow came over from the Pirates to the Rays – something about just having him not worry about locating anything, and instead just trying to throw everything down the middle. The theory was he might miss his spots anyway, so aim for the middle, miss by a bit in whatever direction, and let the stuff/velo do the work. A lot of what this Athletic piece is talking about, though, is the importance of strike one:
‘Every Rays pitcher seems to cite the same 95-percent statistic: A first-pitch quality strike, they say, yields a positive result 95 times out of 100. Ideally, it’s a quick out, but every take, swing and miss, or foul ball puts the pitcher in control of that at-bat. Yes, five percent of the time, that first pitch gets hammered, but the Rays love those odds and will live with the outliers. Pitchers who give up first-pitch homers are treated almost as sacrificial lambs because it shouldn’t happen more than once or twice a series.
“Guys, I’m wearing that one for everyone else for the day!” Springs said.
Snyder talks about the “cost” of the ball. Not the cost of the actual ball — the Rays aren’t that cheap — but the cost of ball one. The average major-league hitter had a .266 on-base percentage after falling behind 0-1 last year. That’s Martín Maldonado territory. After getting ahead 1-0, that same average major-league hitter had a .380 on-base percentage. That’s Mookie Betts.’
Kind of wild to think about, right? In theory, every single batter knows that every single Rays pitcher is going to try to throw his first pitch in the strike zone no matter what. I get the philosophy, though I would think, over time, that 5% figure would go slightly up as more and more batters choose a specific pitch and specific zone to target on the first pitch (i.e., I am looking fastball down and in, and swinging out of my shoes if that’s the pitch, otherwise taking).
In any case, you know, just throw strike one, Cubs pitchers.
This is kinda funny:
This tweet sings:
Introducing “The Stubby,” eh:
For those of you in North Carolina, jump on this free survey contest to win some stuff:
NEWSLETTER
