Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Chicago Cubs
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
We are on to the 74-win Cubs. I would describe the 2022 Cubs season as mediocre on both sides of the ball. Their 4.03 ERA ranked 20th in the league, and their team .698 OPS ranked 16th. You could see them stumbling into a competitive season in 2023 given they weren’t completely awful at anything in 2022, but there doesn’t seem to be a ton of upside either as the roster is currently constructed.
Free Agents Possibly Departing
Willson Contreras
Wade Miley
Drew Smyly
Pitchers
Marcus Stroman
The Cubs didn’t have many pitchers in 2022 that regularly got blown up, but they didn’t have anybody that inspired much confidence either - as evidenced by Stroman being our first guy here.
The 31-year-old pitched to a 3.50 ERA with a 1.14 WHIP on a 21% K% and a 6.3% BB%. It was the same old, same old or Stroman. He once again put up a ground-ball rate above 50%, and therefore kept homers down below the league average rate (35.6 PA/HR). He was fine, and was useful in deep leagues.
The problem is just that there’s no reason to be excited to draft Stroman. He does make sense for rosters as a late-round innings eater in those 50-round drafts where a lot of times there’s a great edge in just having SPs to consistently make starts for you, but I don’t think there’s any reason to bother with Stroman in smaller leagues.
Comps/RankArounds: Jose Suarez, Cole Irvin
Justin Steele
I’ll give you free-riders an extra free player today because Marcus Stroman just isn’t worthy of that kind of treatment.
Steele had a surprisingly strong season in 2022. He threw 119 innings with a 3.18 ERA, a 1.35 WHIP, a 24.6% K%, and a 9.8% BB%. He had a mediocre 11.4% SwStr% and a 27.3% CSW% - so not a great sign there. It was a season of “runs” for Steele, who was amazing for a while there around August.
In the first half:
14 GS, 22.4% K%, 10.1% BB%
In the second half:
7 GS, 30.9% K%, 8.6% BB%
It went almost the opposite of us fantasy baseball bro’s like to see - Steele seemed to NARROW his arsenal in the second half rather than expanding it, and the numbers got better potentially because of it.
His four-seamer is slow but still had an “okay” 9.7% SwStr%, and it set up the great slider very well - that pitch went for a nice 16.1% SwStr% and a solid 5.6% Brl%.
He gets a bunch of spin despite the lack of velocity (or because of it? I don’t know physics very well…):
Lots of horizontal movement on the slider but a pretty straight four-seamer. The slider is good, but nothing else in the arsenal seems to have much upside.
We have a pretty limited sample here with Steele, so let’s go back to 2021
AAA: 27.1 IP (5 GS), 1.32 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 26.4% K%, 11.8% BB%
MLB: 57 IP (9 GS), 4.26 ERA, 1.35 WHIP, 23.8% K%, 10.9% BB%
So it was good to see him slightly improve the BB% as that was a big problem for him last year, but overall we have a guy that had a K-BB% under 15% which is not what we want to see - and the underlying stuff and the arsenal don’t give me warm fuzzy feelings to say the last.
I am pretty sure I will be completely off Steele, because he will probably get drafted in a good amount of leagues given his strong finish to the year - and I just don’t buy it.
Comps/RankArounds: JT Brubaker
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