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BN Chicago Cubs Steele Back, Luck Not a....

Steele Back, Luck Not a Lovelady, Cody and Seiya and PCA and Alexander, and Other Cubs Bullets

Brett Taylor Brett Taylor
May 07, 2024
Chicago Cubs

Anyone watch ‘Baby Reindeer’? That did not go where I thought it was going, and it wound up being far more impactful for it. Hard, hard watch, but I’ll definitely recommend if you are able to handle the mature themes that emerge.

  • It was really good to see Justin Steele out there last night, looking like Justin Steele. Obviously the Cubs’ rotation has been nails even without him, but having him back is going to be so important in the months ahead (for both the rotation and the bullpen). Although you’d never WANT to see your ace miss a month with a hamstring injury, it probably did save his arm just a tiny bit for the rest of the season – that’s a month’s worth of toll that his arm didn’t take.

  • Steele felt good, too (Sun-Times): “Felt really good, especially pitching at Wrigley again in front of the fans. Really awesome just to be back with the team again, in the locker room hanging out with the guys and stuff …. I’m just excited. And you want to show up to the ballpark and play each day because you feel like we have a good chance to win each day, especially the way everybody’s throwing the ball.”

  • Craig Counsell on the loss, with the positives and the negatives:

  • Richard Lovelady indeed got SUPER unlucky last night, but Daniel Palencia was not the victim of bad luck when he followed Lovelady. That’s quite disappointing to see, given how good Palencia looked on Sunday, and how this was his first shot at a back-to-back appearance this season. If he’s going to become a late-inning arm, he has to be able to succeed on back-to-back days. It’s harder that second day. Everyone knows that. But he’ll need to do a lot better the next chance he gets.

  • Counsell’s comment on the Padres’ bullpen stood out, because I was thinking that last night, too. When you go down 6-0 in the first game of a series, it can stink both because you’re likely to lose that game, but also because the other team is likely to be able to use its weakest relievers and keep its top guys fresh. But, like Counsell said, at least the Cubs battled back enough to force the Padres to use their top relievers, including a long outing for closer Robert Suarez. It’s *POSSIBLE* that could pay dividends tonight and tomorrow.

  • … of course, I hope the Cubs score 15 each game and thus it doesn’t wind up mattering at all.

  • More great news on the Seiya/Cody rehabs:

  • So we could see Seiya Suzuki headed out on a minor league rehab stint any day now, and could see Cody Bellinger just straight up activated from the IL any day now. The Cubs really need those bats.

  • I love Pete Crow-Armstrong and am very much still a believer long-term. But I don’t quite get the folks who are talking like he HAS TO stay up when Bellinger is activated. Currently, PCA is hitting .216/.231/.351/62 wRC+. I don’t think more time at Triple-A would be a crazy suggestion. He’s definitely improved his contact rate in the bigs, but it’s come at the expense of even the tiniest bit of hard contact. He had a rocket last night, but overall, he’s making almost no hard contact, and he’s also not walking at all. That leads to pretty ugly production, like his slash line, and expected stats that say he’s pretty much earning his line.

  • That said, it’s possible PCA stays up after Bellinger returns (until Suzuki returns), since Alexander Canario is not being used AT ALL. He has not taken a plate appearance in over a week, and that’s just terrible for his development at this point. I get it from a roster usage standpoint – you’ve gotta start Mike Tauchman every day, you want PCA in center field for defense, and Patrick Wisdom has been raking. So, even with Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki out, there just aren’t obvious starting opportunities for Canario. No point in keeping him up once the other outfielders are healthy.

  • Canario mentions got someone asking me about Nelson Velazquez, and although he started out hot for the Royals, he’s down to .213/.288/.340/80 wRC+ on the year, with a 30.8% K and a wOBA that matches xwOBA. He’s close to a bat-only guy, so that’s quite bad. Jose Cuas, meanwhile, was so quickly unreliable this year that he was optioned to Iowa early on and can’t crack the Cubs’ struggling bullpen. So it’s not like the Cubs made out like bandits in the deal. It’s just what we thought it was on day one: sending Velazquez to a place where he might have a chance to start, and getting a possibly useful reliever who was optionable.

  • Still beloved:

  • The variance is actually quite extreme when you have a chance to see it super up close (and these balls came out of the same box!):

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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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