You know where you want to spend your Opening Day morning? The hospital! Suffice to say, this is not how I imagined getting HYPED for the Cubs’ opener. I guess I’ll just have to think about all the possible lineup permutations, and bullpen match-ups, and what-not while I sit in the MRI tube.
And in the meantime, while I wait to get my slot, I might as well bang out some Opening Day Bullets …
I wonder how deep the Cubs will let Justin Steele go in his first outing of the year. His final tuneup was artificially shortened by getting hit by that comebacker, and obviously the year is long. Everyone in the bullpen is fresh, and we know the Cubs have some optioned out guys who can be shuffled back in if necessary in the coming days. Still, with Jameson Taillon out and a preference for giving guys extra days when possible, I don’t know that we’ll see Craig Counsell eager to shorten Steele’s day TOO much. Maybe five-ish innings, couple times through? Call it a day at 80-90 pitches even if he’s cruising? I don’t think that would be unreasonable for the opener.
Appreciating the respect for Christopher Morel, whom Eno Sarris includes among his ten bold predictions for 2024:
“Christopher Morel is an All-Star
“I see the ball, I hit the ball hard,” said Benito Santiago after he hit a game-winner sometime when I was an impressionable lad. And though Christopher Morel doesn’t always make contact, he does follow suit in these terms.
Does he see the ball well? He chases on pitches outside the zone at about a league-average rate. What he does do really well is swing at strikes. Robert Orr at Baseball Prospectus made a statistic that quantifies the fact that discipline is not only about laying off the bad pitches, it’s also about swinging at the good ones. It’s named SEAGER because Corey Seager is the best at it, naturally. And Morel is a top-50 hitter in SEAGER, which might surprise people staring too big of a hole into his strikeout rate.”
Sarris goes on to note that Morel is among a small group of 25-and-under players who have barrel rates over 15% (Morel, Nolan Gorman, Nolan Jones, Jack Suwinski, Ronald Acuña Jr., Luis Robert). We know that Morel can hit the bajeezus out of the ball. It’s just going to be a slight uptick in contact that could take him to being an elite offensive player. Small difference, but a big ask. Still, a guy this young, who leapt to the bigs straight from Double-A, who more than held his own in his first two partial seasons, and who has all the physical tools? I think Morel can do it.
This is pretty much where the Cubs land in all the preseason power rankings, and I don’t know that it’s unfair:
In that big middle cluster with some of the other NL Central teams, plus the other fringy NL Wild Card teams? That sounds about right for now.
Don’t forget, by the way, that the Cubs’ schedule this year starts out really tough before lightening up. It’s likely going to be one of those years where, if they can hang around .500 through May, they might actually be sitting pretty.
We heard earlier about how Craig Counsell had the players each do a Q&A session with their teammates, but I was particularly struck by this anecdote in the Tribune:
“Multiple players mentioned how powerful David Peralta’s Q&A session was as he described his journey to the majors in which he overcame two shoulder surgeries, was released by St. Louis at 21 years old and worked at a McDonald’s to raise money to play independent ball for three years before catching on with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
After he talked, players and coaches went up to Peralta and told him they better understood why he came to the complex every day with a purpose and energy.
“The stuff Counsell does is really good because it keeps everyone together,” Peralta told the Tribune. “I really wanted to share my story because I use myself as motivation to all the guys that you can never give up on what you want. … Baseball is not forever and you never know when it’s going to be your last day so you make sure to do everything today.””
I’m sure the fans were annoying even if the team wasn’t:
I think it’s very impressive that a guy this young, and with this much pressure on his game, has invested the time to do this and is willing to put himself out there:
In case you need to catch up before Opening Day, here’s a mini-thread of some good overview articles:
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