Nico Hoerner homers twice in a 9-6 loss to the Phillies.
The Cubs are playing out the string. Today they’ll have an off day and then they’ll have three more games against the Reds at Wrigley Field before packing it up for the season. They were mathematically eliminated last week and with that, there has been a little more variety in the lineup from day to day. Now injuries to Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch has paved the way for promising youngster Kevin Alcántara.
All of those things are part of the normal grind of a season. The ebb and the flow. Things we see year after year. One of the great things about baseball is that so much of it is a repetitive cadence. The longer you watch, the more you can feel that ebb and flow and see where things are going.
And yet, sometimes you see something you haven’t seen. Or at least you see something for a given player that you’ve never seen. On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, the Cubs had not one, not two, but three different players record a performance that they’d never had before at the major league level. And so even when the game itself felt relatively mundane, there was still something unusual.
We start with the bad. Javier Assad was charged with eight earned runs. That’s a wild number. Javier has been amazingly effective as a major league pitcher, be it as a starter or occasionally out of the bullpen. So effective that not only had he never allowed eight, he hadn’t allowed seven or even six. Javy missed time in late June and early July with an injury. He was not the same pitcher after. He’s thrown 64 innings, allowed 70 hits and 34 runs (33 earned). 4.54 ERA and a 5.24 FIP just isn’t effective. Before the injury, he threw 83 innings allowing 73 hits and 30 runs (28 earned). That was a 3.04 ERA and a 4.16 FIP.
I’ve seen a suggestion that he be removed from the rotation in 2025. I don’t know if it is a safe assumption, but I’d like to assume that there has been something nagging him physically since mid-season. I’d like to hope that he will return healthy and that he is a placeholder for the fourth starter in the Cubs rotation. If the Cubs do go out and sign another front line starter and then say one of their prospects shoves and looks ready to grab on to a rotation spot, I’m not distraught to see Assad pushed aside. But I’m not ready to otherwise just give up on him. He’s only 27 and this was his first relative full season as a starter. He fell 15 innings shy of qualifying for the ERA title, so it wasn’t even an actual full season.
Moving past the negative, we find some positives. The second unique accomplishment from last night’s game was the first career four hit game of Isaac Paredes. He’s had a number of three-hit games before in his career, including five of them this year, two as a Cub. In fact, this is his third game with three or more hits in the last two weeks. His full line as a Cub is up to .227/.328/.314. On August 26, Isaac got hot. From that date forward, he’s got a line of .300/.411/.356. The only concern is that his power hasn’t followed with this progression. All but three of his 27 hits over that span have been singles.
The third unique performance last night was Nico Hoerner. Nico had two homers in a game for the first time in the major leagues. Given the lack of any significant amount of homers, this is almost certainly his first two-homer game of his professional career. This gives him 29 homers in 2,211 career plate appearances. He had five of them across 404 career minor league plate appearances and just three in 769 college plate appearances. So this was a pretty unusual occurrence.
There was some talk in the offseason and early this year about Nico adding a little bit of drive to his game. Sadly, it just hasn’t come through. Unless he has a huge weekend, he’ll have the lowest batting average since 2020 and his lowest slugging percentage since 2021. Pouring over Nico’s career stats is so mind blowing. I remember his crazy rise to the majors in 2019, but it’s easy to forget just how long ago that was. Or that he’s logged innings in left and center as well as at third.
Like Assad, Nico is in his age 27 season. He didn’t progress as well as I or many others had hoped for 2024. Entering his age 28 season, we are probably seeing about what he can be. It’s always tricky to evaluate a guy like Nico. If I think of Seiya Suzuki, we see a player who’s contributions are almost entirely offensive. We have all sorts of formulas as to how much value a given offensive player adds. But Nico’s value is driven by defense first. We have metrics, but I’ve never felt we quantify defensive play quite the same way. And even then, you still get reasonable offensive value from Nico. A player with a career average of .278 and on base of .338 isn’t nothing. Particularly when you add in 101 career steals, most of which have occurred over the last three seasons.
I’m going to just keep talking about the tricky part of this offseason and going forward. The Cubs offense pretty clearly needs at least one more significant addition. Also, they have a bevy of prospects that have reached Triple-A Iowa. At some point, those guys either need to graduate or be traded for pieces. To be fair, most of those players reached Iowa at some point after the season started. For most of them, they haven’t played a full season there and you aren’t holding them back.
But you are going to need some openings to start working that talent in. Hoerner’s second base spot and Paredes’ third base spot are two of those places where maybe the Cubs could upgrade. But in either instance, you are pushing aside a decent major league player. It’s a good thing when you can replace a good player with a better player. But it is hard to break in minor league players in that scenario without injury. Otherwise, you are adding extra pressure to the already difficult task of learning to play at the big league level.
I think the next year or two in Cubs history could be extremely interesting to watch. Say it with me. The road to the top isn’t necessarily a straight line and nothing is guaranteed. We’ve seen that this year. It’s going to be hard to view this season as anything other than a sideways step towards the mountain top. They rallied to avoid a backslide. But there is so much work to be done yet.
Let’s find three stars.
Three Stars:
- Nico Hoerner was a one-man wrecking crew. A pair of homers and four runs driven in.
- Issac Paredes had four hits, a stolen base and a run scored in his first four plate appearances. All four were singles.
- Dansby Swanson had an RBI double, a walk and scored a run.
Game 159, September 25: Phillies 9, Cubs 6
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Nico Hoerner (.263). 2-4, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 2 R
- Hero: Isaac Paredes (.116). 4-5, R, SB
- Sidekick: Cody Bellinger (.026). 1-4, RBI
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Javier Assad (-.393). 4⅓ IP, 24 BF, 8 H, 3 BB, 3 R, 3 K (L 7-6)
- Goat: Patrick Wisdom (-.129). 0-3
- Kid: Keegan Thompson (-.105). 1⅔ IP, 6 BF, 2 H, K
WPA Play of the Game: Nico Hoerner’s three-run homer with one out in the fourth cut the Cubs deficit to one. (.192)
*Phillies Play of the Game: Brandon Marsh’s three-run double with one out in the fifth off of Keegan Thompson gave the Phillies a four-run lead. All three runs were charged to Javier Assad. (.141)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Rizzo Award Cumulative Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
- Shōta Imanaga +23.5
- Seiya Suzuki +18.5
- Christian Bethancourt +16
- Jameson Taillon +15
- Porter Hodge/Justin Steele +12
- Jordan Wicks -10.5
- Kyle Hendricks -11
- Miles Mastrobuoni/Isaac Paredes -12
- Christopher Morel -20.5
*Hoerner up to -1.5, Paredes moves up into a tie, Bellinger up to +1.5. Assad drops out of the top five at +9.5, Wisdom down to -10, Thompson down to +2.5.
**For all practical purposes, Shōta Imanaga locked up the Rizzo when Seiya Suzuki got hurt. It’s hard to imagine Christian Bethancourt even playing in all three games, much less ending up with a +8 weekend that would require two Superheroes and a Hero. Imanaga starting once more would help, but only if he were the Billy Goat.
Up Next: An off day before a weekend set with the Reds to close the season. The Reds come in at 76-83. They’ve only played two games this week and lost both. They’ve lost eight of 13. In road games during that time, they are 2-5. The Cubs should get at least two wins to get back to last year’s 83 win total.