The Cubs win the game, the series, and the road trip with 5-3 victory.
I like to start with a disclaimer. You are welcome to your own fandom and to experiencing it however you like. It is not my intent to tell you how you should think. How am I feeling about this team through 18 games? This team has gotten one abbreviated start from its best starter, Justin Steele. It’s gotten no appearances from Jameson Taillon. Jameson had a rough first year as a Cub, but he flashed enough down the stretch and has enough track record to think that he’ll contribute positive value to this team. Arguably its best reliever, Julian Merryweather, has been out for a week. Seiya Suzuki, one of their best hitters, missed this series in Arizona. This team is 11-7. 11-7 doesn’t sound like a world beater. 11-7 would be a 99-win pace.
But what do I really think? First, this team has dealt with a fairly large number of significant early season injuries. Without doing research, I’m going to guess there are some teams worse off than they are health-wise. But I’m also going to guess they’ve had it worse than most. Without doing research, I’m going to guess that there are some teams that have faced a more difficult early schedule. But I’m also going to guess that they’ve faced a harder schedule than most.
So what do I really think? I think this team has faced a lot of adversity. I think they’ve overcome most of it. I think they’ve shown us flashes of a team that can possibly be really special. It’s early. There’s so much baseball to be played. But when I see them battering Yu Darvish around, when I see them coming off of the mat twice, even in a loss in Arizona, when I see them methodically dismantling the Dodgers, of all teams, in one game, I see what this team can be.
I’ve also seen a team that has gotten less innings out of its starting pitchers than any other team. I’ve seen their bullpen struggles. I’ve written several times about the lack of success out of the starting rotation. It’s hard to imagine that it can be sustainable to sustain any kind of winning without getting more out of their starters.
So what I really think is that it is possible to recognize just how good this team has been over these first 18 games. There are going to be a lot of games against teams that aren’t contenders. 12 of these first 18 games were on the road, so an equally disproportionate number of their games will be at home going forward. There’s a lot of reason to believe this team can be even better than it has been.
At the same time, I think it is possible to recognize that there are plenty of reasons to recognize that this might not be sustainable. They are going to have to grow and develop if they are going to progress and sustain this early winning. I also know that just about every team that ends up being good grows and develops over the course of the season. There are always guys who end up being more than you expected and guys who end up being less. That’s part of the process. And given that some of these early issues can directly be tied to lost time for injured players, there is a reason to believe they can recover from this. So far, every one of the injured players is expected to return to full health. They’ll have to grow and develop. But they should grow and develop.
There are so many reasons to be optimistic about this team. They just finished a nine game road trip. Eight different players were Superheroes across the nine game (Mark Leiter Jr. won on back-to-back games Saturday and Sunday in Seattle). For reference, in 18 games overall, four different players have won twice. No one has three Superheroes yet in the early season. So across 18 games, 14 different players have finished in the top spot. That’s a lot of people contributing to their success day in and day out.
Looking at Wednesday afternoon’s game, that was something that continued. It didn’t take a savvy veteran to look at the games on Monday and Tuesday and really dating all of the way back to the Los Angeles game that closed out the last homestand, to see the Cubs were in need of some fresh arms.
I’ll pause there and say that perhaps my single biggest concern with this team is the lack of significant roster flexibility. The ability to swap out players with your Triple-A team gives a team the ability to lengthen your pitching staff from 13 to 15, 16 or more. You can balance the workload of the whole staff by rotating them back and forth, either to get bulk innings in the minors when relievers aren’t getting enough work or to shuttle in fresh arms.
Luke Little is an extremely talented pitcher. I suspect he’s going to spend more time in Iowa than he probably should this year, in large part because he is one of the few arms that can be demoted. Ben Brown could run into that same issue. He also is in that category of certainly talented enough to be a mainstay at this team, but inexperienced enough to justify some seasoning in the minors. In each instance, the best they can really hope to do is really shove and make it hard for them to send then down. For Brown, in what is still a fairly small sample, that’s exactly what he’s done.
Little struggled with the highest leverage outing I’ve seen him have yet and so it made him an easy choice to go down. And so there was Hayden Wesneski, available to take that roster spot. And to take the ball in the fifth inning and to exploit one of the few weaknesses this Arizona offense has. They are very righthanded and can struggle against a pitcher who is really good against righthanded hitters. Hayden Wesneski was that guy on Wednesday afternoon. Starter Jordan Wicks was pretty good against a talented lineup in his four plus innings of work. But then Wesneski really dominated over four more and it won a game for the Cubs.
That’s a perfect segue to Wednesday’s three key performances.
- Hayden Wesneski faced 13 batters and retired 12 of them. When he was summoned, it was a tie game in the fifth inning, runners on first and second and one out. He got two harmless fly outs and then locked the game down long enough for the Cubs offense to score enough to win this one.
- Cody Bellinger had a pretty big triple in the loss Tuesday. He’s been struggling a bit, but perhaps there are signs of him emerging. He homered in the sixth to give the Cubs a lead that they would never relinquish and he added an RBI-single in the eighth inning to increase the lead to two. He’d then come around to score the fifth and final run.
- Michael Busch had two singles, one drove in a run, and one was a gorgeous bunt single. What a first 18-game stretch for Busch: 70 plate appearances with a line of .317/.400/.667 (wRC+ 183). Just for the record, glancing at Michael’s minor league numbers, we see two portions of seasons where he had elite production. They were the first half of the 2022 season in Double-A and the first part of the season in Triple-A in 2023. In both instance, he’d played in that league the year before. So there appears to be a bit of settling in and then providing elite production. This is his second go round in MLB. I’ll say that this level of production doesn’t look precedented. But, it’s not crazy to think that he can be a very productive hitter in this league.
Honorable mention: Dansby Swanson appears to be emerging from his own slow start. He contributed two hits, a stolen base and a run scored.
Game 18, April 17: Cubs 5, Diamondbacks 3 (11-7)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Hayden Wesneski (.394). 4 IP, 13 batters, H, 2 K (W 1-0)
- Hero: Cody Bellinger (.239). 2-4, HR, RBI, 2 R
- Sidekick: Mike Tauchman (.147). 2-4, 2B, RBI, R
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Miles Mastrobuoni (-.150). 0-4, DP
- Goat: Jordan Wicks (-.109). 4⅓ IP, 20 batters, 5 H, BB, 2 R, 5 K, HBP, WP
- Kid: Ian Happ (-.076). 0-4, BB
WPA Play of the Game: Cody Bellinger’s solo homer with one out in the sixth put the Cubs ahead and they would never lose the lead. (.166)
*Diamondbacks Play of the Game: Ketel Marte homered leading off the bottom of the first. (,096)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Yesterday’s Player of the Game: Ian Happ was the overwhelming choice (83 percent) in a game where the Cubs got contribution up and down the lineup.
Rizzo Award Cumulative Standings: (Top 3/Bottom 3)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
- Michael Busch +13
- Mark Leiter Jr. +9
- Seiya Suzuki +5.5
- Miles Mastrobuoni/Jordan Wicks -5
- Cody Bellinger -6
- Kyle Hendricks -12
Up Next: Fresh off of a 3-1 loss to the Giants on Wednesday, the Marlins are 4-15. Just the opposite of the Cubs, the Marlins have already played 13 at home (2-11) and only four on the road (2-4). They are already nine games behind the Braves.
Jameson Taillon is set to get his first major league start of the year on Thursday afternoon. Regardless of what the Cubs ultimately do with their rotation, this pushes everybody back a day and getting them extra rest. Jameson is 59-45 in his career with a 4.00 ERA over 173 games, 172 starts. Kudos to Jameson, the one non-start earned him a save. The longer he’s exclusively a starter, the neater that one save becomes. Last year he was 8-10 with a 4.84 ERA in 30 games (29 starts). That one relief appearance was back on September 30, a day where he threw four scoreless innings of relief against the Brewers on just three days of rest as the Cubs tried to get into the playoffs. He did not face the Marlins in 2023.
28-year-old A.J. Puk starts for the Marlins. The first-round (sixth overall) pick by the A’s in the 2016 draft is 0-3 with a 5.91 ERA over his first three starts. He’s only thrown 10⅔ innings, so he’s not getting too deep into these games. His last time out, he did better though, throwing 4⅔ innings and allowing four hits and one run. But even then, he struck out two and walked five. That start was in New York against the Yankees. For his career A.J. is 13-14 with a 3.87 ERA. He’s made 145 career appearances, all but this year’s three starts were out of the bullpen. He has 19 career saves. How often do you get a pitching matchup that features two pitchers who posted saves for their current team the previous year?
The Marlins are a perfect opportunity for Jameson Taillon to ease into the 2024 season. Hopefully, it’ll be a successful debut to his season and he get the weekend off to a good start.