One thing that concerns me a bit is he’s been playing in a pretty hitter friendly park compared to how Wrigley has been playing the last couple of summers. I suppose that can’t be ignored, as potentially getting into our hitters’ heads this July and August. Excited to see what happens I guess…and glad the Brewers are losing.
*** Official 2025 Chicago Cubs Thread***
- Thread starter Cyforce
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Wrigley the last two years is not the Wrigley that Schwarber knew.
I think he'll be fine but it has been extra unfriendly the last 2 years especially. But maybe that changes too.
There are definitely paths to being a better team without Happ. I just don't think its likely you are going to do better than a Happ/Tucker/Suzuki combo at LF/RF/DH for 2026.
Obviously Tucker is a ?, but replacing Happ and Tucker is A LOT. Not to mention, the FA LF are trash.
Well, that’s what I thought too initially, but I’ve been reading that the wind patterns have inexplicably changed the last two years to where they are blowing in most days rather than out in the summer months. You could hope/assume things will shift back…
Wonder if the FO has taken note of how well the Dodger's crazy theory of paying to get the best players is working out for them.
"Well they'll have a bunch of awful contracts on the books by 2032"-- who gives a ****. They'll have 5 World Series by then.
"Well they'll have a bunch of awful contracts on the books by 2032"-- who gives a ****. They'll have 5 World Series by then.
Sounds like the same old Jed talking points that we hear all the time. Until the offseason trends change just going to assume this is the usual lip service we get going into the offseason and in the end we'll see basically the same core roster back with some new cheap additions with Jed and company putting lipstick on a pig and say "see we went out and did something!"
Already fooled us last year by making the bold move to get Tucker to make us think last offseason was going to be different than others than in recent years then they basically stood pat and made some small cheap moves again to fill out the roster. I've said it over and over, what is the direction they want to go with the roster because it still doesn't seem to be very clear. We traded off the core in 2021 to load up the farm system yet we don't trade from the farm system prospects to make significant improvements and we don't seem to have a path for a lot of those prospects now that they are at the point of getting a chance in the big league. Something has to give soon else we're going to continue to be a fringe playoff team that when we do make the postseason don't have the elite guys needed to make deep postseason runs. We have a nice group of players but our rotation doesn't scare anyone and the offense went dormant the 2nd half of the season.
As long as the beer is flowing at Wrigley and fans are coming to the games not sure they have much motivation to make moves like a big market team with the resources they have should be.
Already fooled us last year by making the bold move to get Tucker to make us think last offseason was going to be different than others than in recent years then they basically stood pat and made some small cheap moves again to fill out the roster. I've said it over and over, what is the direction they want to go with the roster because it still doesn't seem to be very clear. We traded off the core in 2021 to load up the farm system yet we don't trade from the farm system prospects to make significant improvements and we don't seem to have a path for a lot of those prospects now that they are at the point of getting a chance in the big league. Something has to give soon else we're going to continue to be a fringe playoff team that when we do make the postseason don't have the elite guys needed to make deep postseason runs. We have a nice group of players but our rotation doesn't scare anyone and the offense went dormant the 2nd half of the season.
As long as the beer is flowing at Wrigley and fans are coming to the games not sure they have much motivation to make moves like a big market team with the resources they have should be.
as long as the beer is flowing at Wrigley and fans are coming to the games not sure if they have much motivation to make big moves sums it all up.
So there is an equally good chance the next couple years Wrigley will be a hitters park. Weather is cyclical and there is a reason Wrigley Field has been know as a hitters park over its 110+ years.
Schwarber hits bombs. But your point is valid that the Cubs hitters have to be able to adapt based on wind conditions. They can't rely on launch angle mantra we hear so much about in todays game, when the wind is blowing in.
After watching the playoffs the last couple years, I know one thing- pitcher velocity wins games. So the Cubs either need to sign FA pitchers with 95-100mph velo or/and that needs to be their focus in the early draft rounds. I understand the catch-22, so many ptichers today have arm issues before the age of 25.
It’s not the average so much although that is nice…it’s being able to make contact against good pitching in the playoffs, fight off pitches, hit behind in the count, situational hitting, and limiting strikeouts, and bat to ball skills.
Nico would the perfect example of someone that can do this, Swanson (this year) is the example of someone who struggled with those things.
It's crazy how we used to see a lot more .300+ hitters in a season than we do now. I'm sure some of that is a combo of better pitching and scouting along with over-emphasis of analytics so batter's plate approaches have changed over the years too. Now if you hit over .250 seem like you are better than league average anymore Go back to the 90's and early 2000's and around .275+ was more the bar. Steroid era probably factored into that too but you can go back in history and find eras in baseball where steroids weren't a big issue and batting averages were still higher than today.
MLB Batting Average League Totals | Baseball Almanac
I would love to have a handful of guys on this team with Nico's plate approach. Dude is just consistent and knows the situation.
A guy from the past whose stats were always interesting to me to dissect was Adam Dunn. Career .237 hitter but dude hit for power and still got on base. Career OBP was .364 and .854 OPS. Always joked that he was going to do 1 of 3 things most of his AB: hit a HR, walk, or strike out. If you dig back through his prime seasons with the Reds, Arizona, and Washington he has seasons of OBP near .400 and OPS over .900 while still not having a very good batting average. Despite the lower BA pitchers feared pitching to him because he usually hit mistakes out of the park and he wouldn't go chasing bad pitches often.
I won't argue with a lot of this.
But this is why we have better stats than BA. Yes, that is a part of it but BA doesn't tell close to the story you are describing.
We should, at a minimum, be using OBP and OPS to start our discussion about players. Similar to what @CYdTracked said about Adam Dunn. Side note, but he was one of my favorite guys to watch. When he got one it was a thing of beauty. Effortless.
