Hey, everyone, Welcome back to another Cubs on Tuesday episode.

Cubs are five and a half games back of the Milwaukee Brewers.

They sit nine games up on the Cincinnati Reds.

However, for the wildcard spot, the Cubs stand right now at a ninety nine point eight percent chance at making the playoffs and roughly a twenty percent chance at catching Milwaukee.

A mixture of good news, bad news, good feelings bad feelings over the last week.

The good feelings are that they swept the Angels.

The bad feeling is, well, they got swept by the Giants.

They going to Colorado, they win two out of three, and now, after winning the first game against the Atlanta Braves and comeback fashion down six to one, they are five and a half games out.

So there's a lot to talk that's encouraging, but some lingering concerns that fans are wondering how significant they are.

The next two minutes of this podcast will just break down what the hitters have done over the last two weeks.

The majority of this podcast will be answering questions about Daniel Plancia, answering questions about Saye Suzuki, the remaining bullpen, the decisions to call up Kevin OLCNTRA and send down Owen Casey and what that means just for overall playing time.

Throughout the majority of July August, the conversation was centered on Kyle Tucker.

Kyle Tucker has turned things around over the last two weeks.

In his last fifty plate appearances, he's batting three point fifty with three home runs.

He's walking in fifteen percent of those player appearances and not striking out, so he's looking like every bit of the guy we saw in April, May, June, and the first few weeks in July.

Desbe Swanson is also showing more pops so in his last fifty plate appearances as well, he's betting two fifty with three home runs, several doubles, and he is also with Tucker, helping the Cubs produced runs.

Ian app has been the topic of a lot of inks over the past few weeks.

However, in the last two weeks he's betting two ninety three.

He has two home runs hit a game tying home run in the last game against the Rockies, a three run shot in the Athenian.

However, of course, they did not win that game.

Michael Bush also appears to be coming out of that funk.

Like Tucker was not doing well in August, but the last two weeks he's betting three hundred, he has two home runs.

Nico Horner betten two fifty six, one home run.

He's about league average there.

The two guys, however, Saya, Suzuki, Pekra Armstrong, have not gotten out of those funks.

Both Pete and Sayer are showing uncharacteristic trends at the plate, neither good nor bad.

I would say, just uncharacteristic.

So we'll get into those two guys.

But overall, the offense does appear to be turning a corner, and you're seeing that they scored twelve runs one game.

They scored seven runs in their first game against the Atlanta Braves at Wrigley Field.

They come back, of course, down six to one, which we have not seen in about eight weeks.

So a lot of the bad feelings offensively may appear to be turning the corner.

Finally, as far as the pitching goes, we've seen a little shake up from Matthew Boyd.

All default to my friend last Brostowski.

He broke down Matthew Boyd.

There's some stuff going out at the forest seing fastball where he's not locating it as well as he used to earlier on in the season, and he's using them more than two story accounts.

My perception of Boyd is as long as this.

As the stuff is looking good and he continues to get some strikeouts and go deeper into games, my concern level is going to be oh shody, I Managa, My concern level is basically zero at this point.

He continues to go six to seven innings, give the Cubs a significant chance at winning every game he's been in since that June bad outing against the White Sox.

He's looking good.

Kate Horton continues to look good at a solid outing in Colorado.

Jameis Titian does go to the il hobbyst I throw six innings.

He's stepping up as what we've seen over the past few years.

I feel generally okay about the pitching staff, and I also feel pretty good about the bullpen.

Brad Keller continues to lock guys down.

Drew palmeranz has been used in slightly higher leverage situations.

Andrew Keechridge is kind of that Swiss army knife in the form what we used to saw when Joe Madden, Steve Sieziek just being used a lot against left handed and right handed matchups the Yanks with the bullpen is Daniel Palencia.

So Daniel Palencia does give up a walk off triple against the Rockies in that last game after the Cubs did tie that game up five to five.

He also had a rough outing against the Angels not too long ago, and just not the lockdown performances we've been grown to see from Valencia lately over the past couple weeks.

So a lot of this podcast is going to be centered on Daniel Palencia.

We're gonna go deep into Daniel Palencia stuff.

We're gonna look at what's under the hood, what's going on in the past couple weeks, and if any trends pop out.

Okay, time for some questions.

First question from at fave MLB name.

By the way, probably the longest term listener I've ever had, I believe, listening since twenty fifteen on the Cubs related podcasts Cio Cubs.

The best supporter I think Corey and I have that over the years.

The question is, quote, I'm officially worried about Daniel Palencia.

Should I be end quote.

I don't believe Daniel Poalencia's performances should cause significant concern.

I do think it should prompt some questions, but I believe those are different than causing significant concern.

So, like you, I'm washing Palencia, and I'm I'm looking at some of the Audians and they look not as sharp.

I'll give you an example against the Angels.

He did lock down that save, but there were a few pitches where he's throwing ninety six ninety seven.

The vilo was the lowest in that outing since the middle to end of May of this year, and the command was not as sharp the next couple of Audiens.

He did, however, have that velocity return to within the range of that ninety nine one hundred, one hundred and one miles per hour.

So the velocity we saw against the Angels and and that dip didn't carry over throughout the end of the week.

I think that's encouraging.

I also do think we need to weigh that he was sick like legitimately ill over the last week.

I don't know if there's lingering effects.

You're traveling to different time zones, You're going from the Midwest to the West, coast, you know, circadian rhythm, all that stuff.

There might be some just external factors that slightly change his ability to go out there and give his one hundred maximum value effort.

Now looking at the stuff, if we look at all fastballs he's thrown since August sixteenth, that's when you saw a little bit of a hiccup start to emerge.

A few runs here or there that year, Ray around one point five started to go a little bit up, but still pretty stellar around tewish and looking at every single forcing fastball thrown over the past two weeks, you start to see a little bit of a trend.

Whereas before August sixteenth, he's throwing more fastballs, a little bit more central and inside to left handed batters.

Previously he was throwing those fastballs up at the top of the black part of the zone and not really left or right to the zone, just up, and that kind of matches the eye test.

I'm watching these outings against Colorado, against Anaheim, against San Francisco, I'm thinking, yeah, that looks about right.

He looks like he's not as high with the fastball, and he's kind of missing a little bit lower than usual.

The second question, I asked about Palencia, was well, is the fastball shape different?

Because for one outing there the villo was lower, but the fastball shape different?

Is the release point different?

Is there cause for concern in the fidelity of the pitch type?

And so I can go in.

We can just take every single stackast metric, download it and crunch it through this reduction algorithm.

Kind of nerdy, but you're able to see just bird's eye view trends of every single metric you can possibly measure, and there's no difference over the last two weeks compared to the first four months in his fastball shape or release point mechanics, at least from the public side.

So I look at the fastball shape being the same and the velocity returning, and it eases my potential concern.

My concern level was a little raised in that angel's outing and just because of the velocity, but the shape looks fine.

I don't think his recent view who runs given up should cause a lot of concern.

The third question is, well, what about the offspeed pitious The fastball is great, but what about that slider?

Similarly, the slider looks basically the same, and even more encouraging is the slider's located down and in to lefties or down in the weight varieties in the exact same bucket over the last two weeks as it was for the first four months.

So the slider command looks to be pretty good now.

For Daniel Palencia.

Over the past few years, the command escaped him.

We saw the command escape him on the slider.

We saw the command escape him on the fastball.

But we're not seeing those same trends in this little bit of a hiccup phase.

There's danger and saying oh well, he's fine, He's gonna be fine, But there's also danger to saying, oh well, this is a bad sign because you're not seeing a lot of those overwhelming bad signs under the hood.

Me personally, i'm encouraged by that.

Every fan will have a different opinion.

Maybe some don't really care about those under the hood numbers and the mechanics and the stuff.

They look at him underneath the highest of leverage and seeing the command escape them against the Angels, and that's enough for them to be concerned.

Sure, I understand that, but there's a lot of variation to randomness in this sport that for me to go forward as a fan I'm not going to get worked up over a few of those anomalies when the rest of the data looks pretty good.

Second question from at Dunstan nineteen eighty four.

Brendan, is there a stat that measures streakiness?

Will leave them out to you, but something that measures how often a player, over x number of games exceeds a defined delta between the peak and value and WRC plus over the course of a season.

End quote.

You know, Dan, sometimes I try to say I'm not a nerd on this podcast.

I genuinely believe I'm not a nerd.

By the way, I just kind of fell into this whole numbers thing.

I'm gonna do something with that, just not this week.

I was asking myself the same question about streakiness because of Saya's stretch and PCA's stretch, but specifically Saya's weirdness.

Again, a lot of this is anecdotal, so sometimes my memory tricks me.

But truthfully, I don't recall a hitter like says Zuki being so talented but looking so weird at the plate at times, And I think if I were to guess, Saya would have to what you call that large delta.

But I did look at Saya over the past few weeks, and I was trying to see if the abbets in some of like the swing decisions match what I was saying.

I read off some of the numbers.

I mean, whatever you want to look out of, say, yeah, the office has just not been there.

Batting average, home runs, whatever you want to put at WSC plus WOLBA, RBI, everything right is taking a step back over the six weeks.

I'm watching Saya and I'm coming away with each at that not confident he's seen pitches.

Well, that's reinforced by what Dustin Kelly said over the past week.

To paraphrase, he said he was in between pitches and looking at Saya.

In my memory, especially when making some graphs over the years, the production corresponds with aggressiveness and what we've heard as selective aggressiveness.

Saya is not swinging the baseball that Over the past three weeks, his outside the zone chase rates about fifteen percent on a twenty chance rolling basis.

Since August, his zone swing rates in the same sample sizes or fifty percent, which for context, Pete Kromstrong's chase rate at his peak is higher the Suki's zone swing rate over the past month.

And you saw it again in Monday's game where in the ninth inning you get two fastballs that he's just like they're black pitches near the edges.

I understand it, but you go down oh one, you go down oh two, and you're immediately fighting.

And it's not the taking of the pitch, but it's like the the body language and the way he's taking the pitch.

It's flinching and listen.

It reminds me when I played baseball.

I would be flinching up there like crazy if I were guessing.

It reminds me of what I saw from Hovey at times and Wilson Contrera's at times.

It just doesn't look like they're seeing the ball well.

And again this is reinforced by Dustin Kelly saying the same more or less, as well as the data just showing that he's not convicted with his swing.

I don't know what to think of saying guess, I really don't the overall offensive production, if this is who he is, he's well above league average.

He's probably going forward slightly more productive than an Ian Happ bat, which is valuable in and of itself.

My expectations had nothing to do with any type of projections, but had more so to do with peak potential.

My expectations were two seventy five plus batting average, thirty plus home runs, a good walker, right and if you like the weight on base average three eighty plus.

There was no reason to expect that, but my expectations.

I thought he could reach that given just the under the hood athleticism and the high stretches he's shown over the years.

Then we started to see that in the first two and a half months of the season, and I'm thinking crazy stuff at this point, like up, he's carrying over a lot of the same trends we saw last year that were good.

We're not seeing any of that in between stuff that we saw at some stretches.

Finally, say it turned the corner, is what I was thinking, and then this step back.

It just brings up some of those memories from two to three years ago where it just doesn't look like it's clicking, and it's it's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean he's not valuable, nor that he can come out of it, especially in September going into October.

Thankfully, the Cubs have an anchor and Kyle Tucker and thankfully the rest of the lineup with Ian Happ, Michael Bush, Nico Horner and Dansby Swanson and above Asher Peker Armstrong, it's still a good lineup.

You don't necessarily have to have, say a Suzuki meet the expectations I laid out, you know, three seventy five batting average, thirty plus home runs.

It would be nice, but it's not really necessary at this point in this season, especially when you get into October.

Really is a coin flip, man, I mean a comparison is Hovey Bias twenty sixteen.

Hovey Bias finished that year with a ninety four WSC plus a below average bat Hovey Bias was the co NLCS MVP with John Lester in a route to a World Series.

Hobby Bia is gonna walk off or go rather go ahead home runs against Johnnyquado in the NLDS, hitting game time bas hits against Hunter Strickland in the NLDS.

We know what he did against the Dodgers home runs in the World Series.

He went on an absolute heater, and so I do believe say is well within reason to do the same thing the same discussion.

What we're having right now in terms of this valley is reserved for twenty twenty s.

At this point, anything can happen.

You have six weeks to go, hopefully in a playoff spot before you start thinking crazy world, serious thoughts.

Literally, anything can happen at this point.

In the last two minutes, a few housekeeping moves.

Number one, the Cups signed Carlos Santana.

Yes, that Carlos Santana from Cleveland over the years.

The rationale there is he is a quality first base defender.

It allows correct council to pinch it Justin Turner for Michael Bush earlier in the games, and then turn around and should there be a variety, pincher Carlos Santana for Justin Turner and put him at first base.

You saw exactly that in the first game against the Braves.

In doing so, own case he does go back down, Kevin o'contra comes back up.

That's a depth move, first and foremost center field for Kevin Alcantra.

And then second, you have own case in getting consistent at bats in triple A and if you need a if you need a power bat, you can call him back up towards the back and for the pitching.

The Cups signed Aaron Savali.

Interesting move.

He was fighting with Milwaukee about starting.

He requests a trade, He goes to the White Sox.

He has an earway of five and a half, and then of course he gets released.

The Cups sign him.

He is now in the bullpen Arion Savali.

If you want anything to know about him, he has a fastball shape that resembles a lot of fastball shapes the Cups have targeted.

Slightly more cut, a little bit more ride will be interesting what he looks like in a bullpen roll.

He did have three innings pitch, no runs, forced wreckouts against the Atlanta Bereys.

Personally, I like the move quite a bit.

I like having more depth.

Give me as many pitchers as possible entering the tail strutch in September and see how they shape out.

I like the move for Aaronsavali.

I like the move for Carlos Santana.

It's not to say they're going to produce, but it gives the Cups flexibility and more options to get their entire rows in check for in October push and for the Wildcar Series at this rate, so I'll leave it there.

The Cubs will finish off two games against the Atlanta Braves, and they play the Nationals at the end of the week.

By the time we talk again, hopefully they're making more ground up against Milwaukee Brewers.