Off the Lake: Isaac Paredes Isn’t Playing Very Well

First, our latest check-in on the Cubs’ minute playoff hopes. In numbers:

• 2.9% – The Cubs’ playoff odds, per FanGraphs earlier this morning.
• 21% – The share of those simulated playoff appearances which come via the division title, rather than the Wild Card.
• 6–6 – The Cubs’ likeliest record over these next 12 games, the last 12 of this particularly promising stretch of schedule.
• 6–6 – The Brewers’ likeliest record over the same period of time.
• 8–5 – The Braves’ likeliest record over the same period of time.
• 6.8% – The sample of our own simulations (using FanGraphs’s probabilities) in which the Cubs go 9–3 or better over these two weeks.
• 10.5 games – The Cubs’ current division deficit.
• 5.5 games – The Cubs’ current Wild Card deficit.

No, the Cubs aren’t only chasing the Braves in the Wild Card situation. They also need to pass the Mets, Giants, and Cardinals, and if they fail to pass one of those four teams, passing a different fourth—the Padres or Diamondbacks being the likeliest options—would yield the desired result. Part of why the division title chance is so noteworthy comes from the relative simplicity of that race. Yes, the Cubs need to pass the Cardinals in addition to catching Milwaukee. But if they do the 1-in-200 thing and catch Milwaukee, they’ll likely have the Cardinals already in the rearview.

Personally, I think the most accurate frame of mind entering this Marlins series is that 10–2 is the target over these upcoming twelve, which leaves us in the familiar position where a series win might not be enough. Yet again, a sweep might be necessary. That’s possible—it’s the Marlins, even if the Cubs could close as a narrow underdog tonight—but it’s not probable, and even a sweep will only meaningfully improve the situation if the Brewers and Braves don’t go and sweep their own opponents, the A’s and Nationals.

Still, why not hope?

If the Cubs are to get hot, one of the likeliest contributing factors would be for Isaac Paredes to hit the ball better. Since coming to the Cubs, the third baseman is batting only .141, with overall numbers 59% worse than the league average. Entering this series, he’s 1 for 24 over the last seven games, with nary a walk in the sample. It’s a small stretch of time—he’s only batted 80 times since the trade—but he’s struggling. That’s without mentioning the errors.

The bullish indicators on Paredes are many. He’s only 25. He was the 12^th-best hitter in baseball last year. He missed most of Sunday’s game with shoulder discomfort, which isn’t good in the short term but could be a good thing in the long run if it’s contributed to holding him back. He’s got a bad BABIP, and it’s been even unluckier since joining the Cubs.

The bearish indicators are fewer, but they’re troublingly compelling. Paredes has one of the softest average exit velocities in the league, something which should lead to poorer results on balls in play. He’s playing for the Cubs now, not the Rays, and one of those franchises is better at drawing the potential out of players than the other. This second piece shouldn’t have taken hold this fast—although questions about culture are again troublingly compelling—but it doesn’t bode well for development.

It’s far too early to call Paredes a bust, and nobody serious is doing that. Even the end of the season will be too early. When Jed Hoyer said “next year,” he might have harbored some hopes for this year, but next year is what made sense. Regardless of how Paredes works in Chicago, the decision itself was sound. The Cubs gave up a poorer hitter and poorer defender in exchange for a better one, throwing in a little bullpen lottery ticket and taking on virtually no financial weight in the exchange. If you’re going to quarrel with the deal, the only reasonable basis for dispute is that the trading partner was the Rays, who are known to outfox. Should nobody trade with the Rays ever, under any circumstances? I guess you could make that case, but that’s an awfully black-and-white take, and it’s an embargo which, with widespread adoption, would create a new inefficiency-exploiting approach: trading with the Rays.

Paredes has had a bad few weeks in Chicago. That’s true. It’s not just your perception. He’s an uncertain player looking forward as well. But these trades are not the problem with the Cubs. Trades and free agency are generally working out in the Cubs’ favor. The Cubs got a good asset. It’s on them to continue his development.

News/moves/injuries/speculation:

• Héctor Neris is reportedly rejoining Houston, where he thrived in 2022 and 2023 and will now hold a smaller role thanks to the addition of Josh Hader to the Astros bullpen. The vesting option is dead, evidently killed in the DFA. Will Neris be good for the Astros? Probably. He wasn’t terrible for the Cubs, and reliever samples are small. Unless aging has caught him with dramatic pace, he’s probably still the solid relief pitcher he’s been for most of his career. Anyway, he can be good for the Astros and cutting him can still work out for the Cubs. And for as detestable as certain elements of the Astros ecosystem can be, it’s not like they’re standing in the Cubs’ way in October.

Games:

• Friday, 6:10 PM CDT: Cubs at Miami (Marquee)
• Saturday, 3:10 PM CDT: Cubs at Miami (Marquee)
• Sunday, 12:40 PM CDT: Cubs at Miami (Marquee)

It’s a pivotal road trip. The leverage is high. The Cubs begin with…Kyle Hendricks.

Hendricks is not as bad as his topline numbers (3–10, 6.35 ERA) indicate. He is, though, replacement-level on the year. Since returning to the rotation in June, things have been better, with a 4.61 FIP over ten starts. That’s encouraging. Also, while Hendricks has been replacement-level, Max Meyer has been worse. That theory above about the Cubs being a possible underdog tonight has more to do with home field advantage and Meyer’s higher potential for a breakout, being a recently-debuted top-100 prospect.

In Games 2 and 3, the Cubs turn to Shōta Imanaga and Javier Assad. We’ve been loud Assad doubters, but he’s coming off his best start since May, and he gets to face one of the worst offenses in the game. (The Marlins are 29^th in runs scored, wRC+, and projected runs scored over the rest of the year. The only team worse than them is a familiar friend we’ll talk about in a few paragraphs.)

The Marlins haven’t announced their starters, but Valente Bellozo and Adam Oller are the guys in line.

Bellozo’s a rookie who came over in what I’m now realizing was an interesting April trade* with the Astros. His longterm projections are questionable, but he’s had a dazzling start to his MLB career. In six starts, he’s averaging five and a half innings of work, four and a half strikeouts, one and a half earned runs, and a little more than one walk. The strikeout numbers are nice for hitters—that’s not very many strikeouts—and if there’s one potential vulnerability in the numbers, it’s that Bellozo allows a lot of fly balls and not many home runs. Play the ominous music as loudly as you can. Let’s see if it sticks.

Oller’s an even more recent acquisition, picked up in early July after a release from the Guardians’ system. 29 years old, Oller will most likely hit 100 career innings on Sunday. Out of the 471 pitchers with more than 90 MLB innings since ’22, he has the worst FIP of all of them, and his ERA’s even worse than his FIP.

Short version:

• Tonight: Hendricks should be better, but there’s reason to doubt him and fear Meyer.
• Tomorrow: Imanaga should be better, but Bellozo’s been freakily good.
• Sunday: Assad should be better, but there’s reason to doubt him, but that reason still shouldn’t be enough to fear Adam Oller, if that’s who gets the start.

Baseball will baseball, of course. But that’s the outlook.

*The Marlins sent Jacob Amaya, a middle infield prospect, and received only cash and Bellozo. Bellozo was a non-prospect at the time. Were the Marlins high on Xavier Edwards? Did they believe in Otto Lopez, a comparable prospect acquired from the Giants days earlier? Whatever the case, this all looks like masterful work so far. Edwards and Lopez have been two of their three best players, and Bellozo’s turning in competitive start after competitive start. The Marlins might have figured out baseball again.

How Other Preseason Champions’ Regular Seasons Went

The Bears finished their preseason last night, and they finished it 4–0. Having played in the Hall of Fame Game, the Bears had an extra preseason contest this year, which ensures that nobody else will reach them in the standings. The Chicago Bears are the 2024 NFL Preseason Champions, and yes, they should avoid making any graphics with that phrase on them. To drum that point home:

Over the last three preseasons, 17 teams have gone unbeaten. Of those 17…

• Eight went on to post a winning regular season record.
• Five went on to make the playoffs.
• Two went on to make a playoff game.
• One (the 2021 Chiefs) reached their conference championship game.

The worst season by a team who finished the preseason with zero losses was a 3–14 mark by an NFC North team in 2022. The only other team to go 4–0 over the preseason since 2021 was the 2022 Raiders, who finished the regular season 6–11.

So that’s what to know about that.

News/moves/injuries/speculation:

• The 53-man roster deadline is Monday, and to repeat our refrain, keep your eye on the offensive line. Ryan Bates’s injury might not keep him out Week 1, but it’s a significant question mark, especially with Kiran Amegadjie still in a bit of injury limbo himself. We know the core seven—the starters, Coleman Shelton if you don’t count him as a starter, and Amegadjie—but the next two or three are also likely to get a good number of snaps this year, and Larry Borom’s injury last night is a problem in that light.
• Douglas Coleman III left last night’s game on a stretcher, but it sounds like he’s going to be ok. The safety’s had a good career in the CFL, but it’s still a sad development for a guy who was looking for a practice squad spot.
• Freddie Swain went on the IR before last night’s game, with Peter LeBlanc signed to take his place. Probably just a one-night deal.

Update: The Bears just traded for linebacker/defensive end Darrell Taylor. They’re sending the Seahawks a sixth-round pick. Taylor adds to the pass-rushing group behind Montez Sweat, taking some of the pressure off of DeMarcus Walker and keeping the Bears (maybe) from asking way too much of Austin Booker. Solid player, solid price. Much better for the Bears long-term than a Matthew Judon trade would have been.

Hey! Davis Martin!

Davis Martin’s been back for about a month now, and the results have been positive. Five outings, four starts, a 4.11 FIP, and something pitching academic* Eno Sarris calls a “kick-change,” a changeup gripped a little like a knuckle curve.

After Martin’s debut season, 2022, reasonable hopes weren’t all that high. Already 25, the 14^th-round pick had posted a 6.11 ERA in Triple-A that year. He wasn’t good enough to crack the Sox rotation out of camp in 2023, and three starts into the minor league year, he went down, soon undergoing Tommy John. Now, he’s back, and he might be the White Sox’ second-best starter?

He’s not going to be an ace. At least, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now. But if Martin can pitch within a standard deviation or so of how he’s been pitching, he could be a solid mid-rotation starter for the next few years. The White Sox could use one of those.

*Sorry, I can’t think of a better title for what Sarris does.

News/moves/injuries/speculation:

• There hasn’t been much buzz on the managerial front, but here’s a dumb hire Chris Getz and Jerry Reinsdorf might both love: Ned Yost. 70 years old, Yost has been out of the game for five years, which seems to align with Reinsdorf’s demonstrated preference for managers who belong to a bygone era. A leading figure on the 2015 Royals, Yost aligns with Getz’s demonstrated preference for figures from the 2015 Royals. I am very sorry for putting this into the universe and will now move on.

Games:

• Friday, 7:10 PM CDT: White Sox vs. Detroit (NBC Sports Chicago)
• Saturday, 6:10 PM CDT: White Sox vs. Detroit (NBC Sports Chicago)
• Sunday, 1:10 PM CDT: White Sox vs. Detroit (NBC Sports Chicago)

Tonight’s game is Elvis Night. Fans get to see Tarik Skubal on Saturday. Jonathan Cannon goes for the Sox on Sunday.

Telling You the Odds

One WNBA team has clinched a playoff spot. Four more are on their way. A sixth is likely enough that you can probably consider them safely into the first round. That leaves six more teams and two more spots.

As of right now, the Sky lead Atlanta by one game for that eighth place in the standings. They lead the series 2–1 with one head-to-head matchup left, which makes the lead effectively a little more than a game. With 13 regular season games left, though, it’s far from an insurmountable gap.

We found some purported Vegas odds on the playoff field, but we don’t buy that they’re current, and we can’t find them on our usual real online books. So, turning to ESPN’s probability model…

56%.

That’s the number ESPN places on it, with the Dream close behind at 53%. That implies an overlap, a potential scenario in which the Sky and the Dream both make the field. The reason for that: The Sky are only a game and a half back of Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever™.

Against that backdrop, the games this weekend:

• Friday, 6:30 PM CDT: Sky at Connecticut (ION)
• Sunday, 11:00 AM CDT: Sky vs. Las Vegas (CBS)

Tough pair of games. The Sky will be especially big underdogs against the Sun. If you’re scoreboard-watching, the Dream host the Mercury tonight while the Fever go to Minnesota tomorrow. There’s a decent chance the Sky head into Monday out of playoff position.

The Holdovers

The sporting calendar is beginning to turn, and the equinox is closer than it seems. The Bulls will begin training camp sometime around October 1^st.

As we approach that, we’re going to be using this space to look at the roster and then the schedule. With the roster, we’ve grouped players into four categories: The Holdovers, the Young Core, the Role Players, and the Hopefuls.

The Holdovers are a disappointing group. This is natural. They’re the guys the Bulls committed to in their last buildup who are now too undesirable for anyone to take. With Lonzo Ball, this isn’t his fault. Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević are also in this mix.

The question with both LaVine and Vučević is whether and when the Bulls will convince any other teams to take them. The chances are higher for Vučević, who costs less money and enjoys a less controversial reputation. Still, he’s an offense-first center past his prime, and his offense isn’t what it used to be. A 40% three-point shooter in the 2020–21 season, Vučević has shot 32% across the three seasons since. Below-average three-point shooting wouldn’t be a problem for a center if that center’s primary asset wasn’t three-point shooting.

For LaVine, the red flags are partly intangible. Tangibly, he’s an experienced high-possession weapon who should still be in his athletic prime. He’s coming off a bad season, but he only appeared in 25 games and those were sporadic. Despite occasional defensive praise, he’s statistically always been poor on that end of the court, but that didn’t get worse this year. The tangible red flags? He’s paid like a superstar and produces like a second or third option. If a team had the cap space (no one does), this could be fine, except that he also commands the touches of a first option. Zach LaVine is like an aging ace on a baseball team in the 90’s—not good enough to be the Game 1 starter but weird to see in the middle of the rotation. The key difference, of course, is that LaVine is not aging and was never an effective ace. He was a 2013 Jeff Samardzija—an ace by default.

Intangibly, LaVine clashes with Billy Donovan (the default assumption’s that this is 50% Donovan’s fault) while his agent (Rich Paul) clashes with anonymous sources from the Bulls’ side of the rift. LaVine probably isn’t an abnormally large serious injury risk, but it’s hard to trust his health, and now there’s at least a waft of a chance he might not play to start the year, possibly by mutual decision. Zach LaVine was never good enough to be this big of a disaster, but here we are.

Lonzo Ball, the third member of this category? What might have been. Hopefully, he can stay healthy and shift to that Role Player category. That would be great for him and good for this year’s Bulls.

Vučević is signed through the 2025–26 season. LaVine’s contract runs that long as well, but he also has a lucrative player option for 2026–27, so he should be considered a three-year liability. Ball will be a free agent in the spring.

Blackhawks: October

The Blackhawks open camp even sooner, with rookies heading to St. Louis in less than three weeks for the annual prospect showcase. We’ll save the roster talk for that occasion. Today, we’re looking at October.

• Tuesday, October 8^th: Blackhawks at Utah
• Friday, October 11^th: Blackhawks at Winnipeg
• Saturday, October 12^th: Blackhawks at Edmonton
• Tuesday, October 15^th: Blackhawks at Calgary
• Thursday, October 17^th: Blackhawks vs. San Jose
• Saturday, October 19^th: Blackhawks vs. Buffalo
• Tuesday, October 22^nd: Blackhawks vs. Vancouver
• Friday, October 25^th: Blackhawks vs. Nashville
• Saturday, October 26^th: Blackhawks at Dallas
• Monday, October 28^th: Blackhawks at Colorado
• Thursday, October 31^st: Blackhawks at San Jose

October is a full month, and it opens with what might be the longest season-opening road trip in the league. By the time the Hawks get back to the United Center, they’ll have spent nearly two full weeks on the road, with much of that time spent north of the border. Their reward? A nice little homestand which opens against the expected worst team in the league.

If you group teams four ways—great, good, mediocre, and bad—the Hawks will still probably be in the “bad” category. Within this stretch, they only get three games against fellow “bad” teams, but that’s only if you count Utah as “mediocre,” reflecting what might be some expansion-style excitement in futures markets right now. Overall, the eleven games break out like this:

• Away: Three great opponents, one good, one mediocre, two bad
• Home: Two good opponents, one mediocre, one bad

The road games against Edmonton, Dallas, and Colorado aren’t ideal for a team looking for an invigorating start to the year. But the homestand is decently long, and it offers a nice chance at a big win for momentum’s sake when the retooled Predators come to town. Win that, beat the Sabres, and take care of business against the Sharks and the Flames, and the Hawks could get out of October above a point-per-game pace. That’s easier said than done, and a point per game isn’t a very good season, but the opportunities are on the table for a nice step forward.