2024 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 130

Finally! After an endlessly long road, this team has made it back to .500. Unfortunately, the journey back has taken so long that it’s unlikely this team can keep going and get into serious contention. Fangraphs projects the Cubs to have 82 wins and a 3.3 percent chance of making the postseason. I’m not willing to quibble with those numbers. We’re not going to watch this breathlessly. All this team can do is keep their heads down, keep winning, and hope for help.

I’m reminded a little of the Cubs in late 2022. They were slowly emerging and I became a bit of a broken record. I kept repeating that the path to the top wasn’t necessarily straight and that there were no guarantees. In the meantime, this team clearly lost its way in its quest for the top. You could argue that this team isn’t significantly further along than it was this year. In a pure sense, the team isn’t much closer to playing in its next National League Championship Series. I always think that’s what you’re trying to build. I think if your team is strong enough, you have a pretty good shot at getting to the NLCS. Certainly not as “easy” as it was when I was younger. It’s not as easy as winning your division. But you can get to a level of talent that puts it in the realm of a decent upset if you don’t make it there. Never mind that most years at least one of those upsets happens.

What makes me think back to 2022? Much like this year (and the same goes for 2023), this team is showing its growth with players under team control. Every now and then, a team can have some success based largely on so-called Quad-A players, aging veterans, and players on their way out. I’m thinking a little bit about the end of 2021. Nothing against Patrick Wisdom, who did a lot to hold down the fort during the rebuild, but he and Rafael Ortega and Frank Schwindel weren’t going to anchor anyone’s playoff resurgence.

Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Amaya, Justin Steele, Shōta Imanaga, Javier Assad and Porter Hodge are some of the names leading this attack. They are all under the team’s control for next season. They are all at least in this team’s medium-term plans and several of them are in the long-term plans.

I brought it up the other day and there was a good question about my comment. I talked about how this team is still a work in progress. And the question was where this team will get reinforcements. I think Kyle Hendricks is the only player I look at on the entire roster and I’m pretty sure he won’t be around next year. The Cubs will have plenty of internal options for that spot on the team. Also, any serious team should always try to sign at least one good starter in the offseason.

The question is right. Aside from the catcher, there is no obvious way to improve this team. That’s the crux of the matter. That’s the real challenge of building a championship team. What do you do when all the obvious moves are made? You know you have to pair Miguel Amaya with someone. The only question that arises with this impressive surge is whether you’re looking for someone to share the load roughly 50/50 with him, or whether you’re looking for someone to play around 100 games while Amaya plays around 60 games.

Miguel will get every opportunity to make his case for a 50/50 deal over the final 32 games. Still, the answer probably depends on what the Cubs can get in that regard. Good catchers are a rare commodity and teams just won’t let them go. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it and I don’t know him well enough. Is there a chance the Cubs might opt ​​to play with Amaya and Bethancourt next season? I know ideally they would significantly upgrade that roster spot. But he’s performed well here. If you lose elite players for someone in Musical Chairs, would you consider him as a stopgap for another year? I know Moises Ballesteros is knocking on the door and may be able to contribute at that position.

That being said, the Cubs’ next move could be pushing out someone like Nico Hoerner or the newly acquired Isaac Paredes. I think Cody Bellinger sticks around for another season after an average season, and I think you have a group of four outfielders you can play with for another season. I think that pushes Mike Tauchman off this team.

I would like to see this organization find one of those players that were popular as a first hitter in the 80’s as a fourth outfielder. Someone who doesn’t necessarily need 300-400 at-bats but can just add a little power off the bench. With Happ, Suzuki, Bellinger, and PCA, the normal at-bats in the outfield should be covered and one of them will be the DH most of the time. This team isn’t good enough offensively to have a guy like Tauchman, who is a solid all-around player overall but doesn’t bring any standout skills. But it would be nice to have a guy who could just add a little more offensive ability to the lineup even if he doesn’t have an obvious defensive position.

It’s hard to improve a roster when you get to a point where you have a capable player at every position. And yet, when you compare the Cubs to the Dodgers or Braves (when healthy) or the other top teams in the league, they pale on paper. This is where the big money really comes in. The lack of depth at the major league level, especially on offense, derailed this team as injuries piled up. The pitchers had the more notable injuries, but all of the outfielders and both middle infielders were banged up at times and went through long stretches of unproductivity.

The pitchers have actually done a pretty good job of controlling things. All of the blown saves really stand out, and it would be way too generous to this organization to let them get away with not having a veteran player in the back of the bullpen who isn’t learning on the job or past his prime. But to answer the chicken-and-egg argument, I’d say the pitchers’ numbers that aren’t wins, losses, saves, and blown saves have been pretty decent. There have been way too many games where the offense was barely passable and the game ended with a blown save. I suspect even the best bullpens in baseball would have some issues if they had a one-run lead four or five days a week.

You’re certainly happy to win in those scenarios. But at some point you need a cushion. You’re always trying to improve your pitching depth because you go through so many pitchers over the course of a season. But in general, I want this organization to add that quality back-end pitcher and otherwise hold the line. Find that significant reinforcement on the offensive side. Maybe that reinforcement is an elite catcher. But maybe it’s a first baseman and Michael Busch slides to second base. And maybe Hoerner is part of the move that gets you that reinforcement. Maybe.

Let’s find three positives from a lopsided victory. We know there will be a lot of them.

Three stars:

1. Seiya Suzuki got things rolling with two home runs in his first two at-bats. He made it a historic night with a triple. You don’t see games like that very often. He also managed a walk, scored four runs and struck out three.
2. Shōta Imanaga, the other import from Japan, was also impressive. Seven innings, four hits, two walks, two runs. We’ve seen more dominant players, but he kept the Marlins out of this game while the offense continued to improve. 10 wins in his rookie season.
3. 17 hits, a whopping 10 of them for extra bases, and eight walks (two hit batsmen too). This team produced at a rare level. Almost anyone who played could have ended up here. But I’m giving the slight edge to Pete Crow-Armstrong. I was really torn between PCA, Amaya, and Busch. But a long home run, a walk, and three runs driven in tip the scales for me. He got on base four times in total and scored runs in two different at-bats. That’s tremendous productivity at the bottom of the lineup.

Game 130, August 24: Cubs 14, Marlins 2 (65-65)

Fangraphs

As a reminder, Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA ratings and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Seiya Suzuki (.255). 3-5, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 3 R, BB, DP
• Hero: Pete Crow Armstrong (.180).
• Buddy: Shōta Imanaga (.155). 7 IP, 27 batters, 4 H, 2 BB, 2 R, 3 K, WP (W 10-3)

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Ian Happ (-.115).
• Goat: Cody Bellinger (-.066).
• Child: Isaac Paredes (-.046).

WPA move of the game: When Seiya Suzuki hit his second home run of the game in the third inning, the score was 3-0 and the loss began. (.146)

*Marlins play of the game: Connor Norby hit the Marlins’ highlight of the day, a home run that cut the lead to 3-1 early in the fourth inning. (.095)

Cubs Player of the Game:

Yesterday’s winners: PCA received 121 out of 173 votes.

Overall Rizzo Award score: (Top 5/Bottom 5)

The award is named after Anthony Rizzo, who won the category three times out of the first four years it was introduced and four times overall. He also earned the highest season total of all time at +65.5. The points scale ranges from three points for a superhero to minus three points for a goat.

• Shōta Imanaga +18.5
• Seiya Suzuki +15.5
• Porter Hodge +13
• Ben Brown/Mark Leiter Jr. +11
• Pete Crow Armstrong -9.5
• Adbert Alzolay/Isaac Paredes -10
• Kyle Hendricks -11
• Christopher Morel -20.5

*Suzuki moves up to second place, PCA overtakes third place, Imanaga approaches the +20 mark. Happ drops to +3, Bellinger to +2.5, Paredes slips to third from last.

Next: A chance to win with Javier Assad (6-3, 3.11) on the mound. Let’s do it!