Cub of Coffee 4/10/24: Cubs 2, Padres 10

Sorry for the sporadic posts this week. The late night games are not conducive to writing after, and who wants to read more about the Cubs blowing an eight run lead? This game wasn’t much better, but it ended earlier and wasn’t quite as painful to watch.

Kyle Hendricks' pitch movement
Kyle Hendricks has had a rough start to his year, but the Cubs don’t have any choice but to keep him in the rotation to figure it out. The numbers are concerning, but:

• He was the 36th best starter in baseball by fWAR last year, despite missing part of the season rehabbing from a shoulder injury
• His sinker, changeup, and curveball velocities are all slightly up from last year (his four-seam fastball is down by 0.2MPH)

If Hendricks was good last year and his stuff hasn’t declined, why is he getting hit like crazy?

• He’s getting 3-4 more inches of run on his fastballs and changeup this year
• His release point has shifted by 1-2 inches to the right and dropped on all his pitches

I’m guessing these two things are related. I believe that there is an issue with Hendricks’ mechanics which is altering his release point and causing his pitches to run more than he’s used to, and the extra movement makes it harder to command those pitches.

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of Hendricks. I know time will come for him as it does for all of our favorite baseball players, but the Cubs are down two starters and two members of the rotation have a combined 12 MLB appearances. He has some runway to figure out what’s wrong, and it would be a great help to the Cubs if they’re able to get him back to his 2023 form. Luckily, it seems like there is a mechanical flaw that can hopefully be corrected so that Hendricks can regain the command that has made him one of the most underrated starters in the game.

Catching defense
It’s early, but I’ve been keeping an eye on Statcast’s defensive metrics for catchers. Last year, Yan Gomes was 14th out of 68 catchers in blocking, while Miguel Amaya was 47th. Gomes was the 70th best framer out of 91 catchers who caught at least 100 called pitches, while Amaya was 27th. Gomes was the 22nd best catcher at throwing out baserunners, while Amaya was 38th.

This year, both Gomes and Amaya have rated as roughly average pitch framers. However, Gomes is the fourth worst catcher by Statcast’s blocking metric, and Amaya is the fourth best. Amaya has caught one more runner stealing than expected, and Gomes hasn’t. Possibly related, Amaya’s arm strength is up around 1 MPH and Gomes’ is down by around the same amount.

The sample size for catching metrics at this point in the year is still tiny, so I don’t want to take too much away from them so far. They could be affected by which pitchers a catcher has caught, umpire misses, or rainy weather. Still, it is interesting that Amaya rates better than Gomes in all three areas of catcher defense that Statcast measures after trailing him in blocking and throwing runners out last year. Of course, this doesn’t include game calling, and it feels like Yan Gomes still gets rave reviews in that area. I’m curious to see how the time share between the Cubs catchers progresses as the season goes on.

Michael Busch hits
On a night when Craig Counsell moved him up a slot in the lineup, Busch knocked in the Cubs’ only runs with his home run off of Dylan Cease and walked twice without striking out. He’s up to a 131 wRC+ on the season, putting him right near Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, and Dansby Swanson on the team leaderboard. Busch has struck out a fair amount, but he hasn’t looked overmatched, and his patient approach has fit in well with the rest of the offense’s so far. It’s fun watching him hit, and it’s nice that he hasn’t gone through a protracted down period to start his Cubs career.

Stolen base gaps
Somewhat related to the note on catcher defensive metrics above, I do worry about how the Cubs will fare against teams that like to steal a lot, especially the Reds (who are second in the majors in stolen bases with 23 steals in 27 tries) and the Brewers (19 steals in 21 tries). In contrast, the Cubs are last in the majors in stolen bases so far after having the eighth most last year. Neither of the Cubs catchers was great at throwing out runners last season (though maybe Amaya will rate better another year removed from elbow surgery), and they could be at a big disadvantage when it comes to the running game against two Important opponents. One thing that can quiet those fears is that the Cubs are still the eighth best base running team so far this year according to FanGraphs’ base running metric, and the best in baseball according to Statcast. They’re good at the other parts of base running, but they haven’t been very aggressive in stealing bases yet.

Fun with sprint speed
Similar to the catcher metrics, while sprint speed tends to stabilize pretty quickly, it’s not necessarily a definitive measure of how fast players are, especially this early in the season (and with some players presumably taking it easy in slippery conditions). However, some fun Cubs notes from the sprint speed leaderboard this year that will likely change:

• Yan Gomes is faster than Miguel Amaya
• Nick Madrigal is slower than both Gomes and Amaya were last year
• Seiya Suzuki is the fastest Cub with regular playing time

A lot of the Cubs’ numbers are down from last year, and while part of that is natural due to aging, I would expect some of them to boost their sprint speed as the weather improves and their bodies get acclimated to the regular season.

The Cubs now get a much-needed off day before heading to Seattle to continue their road trip. The Mariners have struggled to start the year, but are coming off an extra-innings win against the Blue Jays. I’ll be focused on how the Cubs offense matches up against what should be (but hasn’t yet been) a tough pitching staff.