A look at the complete standings and top WPA games.
The photo at the top of this post is an unusual image to see. Not just because of a rare appearance of the red billed Cubs hat. Kyle Tucker is coming from left field and not his familiar right field and catching the ball in front of Pete Crow-Armstrong. This was, of course, from the All-Star Game where Tucker started in left field. It was fitting to see the two offensive stars of the Cubs starting on the big stage. Hopefully, they’ll get a further opportunity in the postseason to showcase their considerable talents.
The 96-game first “half” of the season saw the Cubs pile up 57 wins. That would give them just a shade over a 96-win pace. At the start of the season, some thought I was either a little crazy or a lot homer when I said they’d win 91 games in the preseason. Now that number would be fully in the pessimistic territory. I’m not one to bet on sports, but if I were to bet now, I’d take the over on 96 wins.
Not all of that is unbridled optimism. I looked at this not long ago and most of the time the Cubs have been better after the break than before it. Of course, you can’t get a decent sample size looking at season over season. There are too many variables year to year. But there are a lot of reasons a team can stack more wins in the second half. One of those is weaker opposition as more and more teams eventually pack it in and look for next year. To be fair, the extra wild cards do cut down on that. More teams are definitely alive longer.
Add to that the easiest schedule remaining in Major League Baseball. It won’t be easy, but I’m thinking this team makes a run at 100 wins. It’s a good team now and I have faith in this team’s front office heading into the trade deadline. They’ve done well in trades year after year and I don’t think this year will be any different. I think the team that reaches the finish line will be a fair bit better than the already gone one we have now.
In any scenario, this team has been a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to watching them down the stretch.
In this space, WPA is the name of the game and so we’ll start our first half recap with the worst scores of the year by WPA.
Bottom 10 WPA Game Scores:
- Eli Morgan -.841 March 30
- Brad Keller -.794 July 5
- Daniel Palencia -.793 May 19
- Porter Hodge -.707 April 18
- Jameson Taillon -.698 June 24
- Brad Keller -.663 April 22
- Ryan Pressly -.499 May 6
- Matthew Boyd -.475 April 23
- Ian Happ -.464 April 20
- Ben Brown -464 May 19
These are spread around pretty good. Brad Keller is the only player that appears twice. Keller was one of the Cubs most effective pitchers before tailing off at the end. I’m not sure if the workload is an issue at this point. Keller has made over half of his appearances as a starter. From 2019 through 2021 he was exclusively a starter. More than 40 percent of his career relief appearances are with the Cubs this year. So there is probably some amount of learning how to handle the rigors of relieving.
The other thing is that there are six games at -.663 or worse. From a very high level, at the start of a game, each team is at .500. The winning team reaches 1.000 and the losing team .000. That should be pretty intuitive. WPA doesn’t have bias for strength of team or home/away. Each team theoretically has a 50/50 chance to win. So six times this year a Cub (pitcher) has more than single-handedly amassed enough negative WPA to lose a game.
One could read this that six times the Cubs snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. That’s not actually true, though. Both of those April games actually ended up as wins. Both were roller-coaster games that saw the Cubs blow leads, then come back and win again. So these things are microcosms inside of microcosms. Even when a game has gone bad, this team sometimes comes back and wins anyway. If we add Ryan Pressly’s historic meltdown on May 6, the Cubs have flat-out blown five games late that really could have been wins. And they still won 57. This team wouldn’t have needed a ton of help to win 60 plus games at the break.
On the positive side:
Top 10 WPA Game Scores:
- Kyle Tucker .575 April 18
- Justin Turner .570 May 13
- Pete Crow-Armstrong .543 May 23
- Miguel Amaya .524 April 22
- Pete Crow-Armstrong .452 April 23
- Ian Happ .447 June 10
- Cade Horton .433 July 3
- Kyle Tucker .428 May 6
- Miguel Amaya .416 May 19
- Michael Busch .413 July 5
Here, we see three different hitters twice. Kyle Tucker and PCA, the All-Stars and Miguel Amaya, who hasn’t played in almost two months. Nine of these 10 are hitters and a little surprising that Cade Horton is the one pitcher. Being fair and balanced, the Cubs lost three of these games. So these high WPA games can cut both ways.
At the end of the day, the pinnacle of Heroes and Goats is the Rizzo Award. It is given to the player who accumulates the most Heroes and Goats points over the course of the full season. With a little less than two-thirds of the season behind us, let’s see where things stand for everyone. The full Rizzo Award standings:
- Kyle Tucker 32
- Matthew Boyd 20
- Shōta Imanaga 16
- Jameson Taillon 11
- Miguel Amaya 11
- Drew Pomeranz 10
- PCA 9.5
- Ryan Brasier 7
- Colin Rea 6
- Chris Flexen 4.5
- Michael Busch 4.17
- Brad Keller 3
- Daniel Palencia 3
- Carson Kelly 2
- Nicky Lopez 1
- Ryan Pressly 1
- Gavin Hollowell .5
- Eli Morgan 0
- Ethan Roberts 0
- Caleb Thielbar 0
- Porter Hodge -1
- Justin Turner -1
- Génesis Cabrera -2
- Justin Steele -2
- Reese McGuire -2.5
- Vidal Brujan -3
- Moises Ballesteros -3
- Gage Workman -3
- Nico Hoerner -5
- Ian Happ -5
- Nate Pearson -6
- Jon Berti -7
- Cade Horton -7.5
- Matt Shaw -12.33
- Julian Merryweather -15
- Ben Brown -17
- Dansby Swanson -23.33
- Seiya Suzuki -26
Jordan Wicks, Tom Cosgrove, Michael Fulmer, Brooks Kriske, and Luke Little have all appeared in games but never reached a podium, positive or negative. 43 Cubs have appeared in at least one game and 38 have reached H&G. 17 of those 38 players are between +3 and -3. Or the equivalent of one game score. It’s a reminder that there is a lot of inertia at 0 and that it is hard to reach the top or bottom of this.
The bottom 10 starts with Nico Hoerner. The majority of the names in that bottom 10 have had some struggles. Dansby Swanson actually had a decent first half but had notable issues with runners in scoring position. Seiya Suzuki feels way out of place. I’m going to do a full piece on just that issue.
The top 10 gets down to Chris Flexen. The top 10 features an awful lot of pitching. Just four hitters and none of those are Michael Busch (11). Four of the five guys who have started the most games for the Cubs appear in the top 10. That’s no doubt one of the reasons the Cubs have been as successful as they have. It’s hard for a reliever to accumulate much WPA, but we do see a couple of relievers there. Ryan Brasier has been sneaky good, overshadowed by a number of other guys.
We’ll get back at it Friday and see who wins this year’s Rizzo award. It looks like there’s a very good chance that Tucker wins the award. Imanaga lurks in third as the defending champion. A strange race to the bottom for Swanson and Suzuki. Something tells me neither of those guys end in the cellar. Time will tell.