What a week for our Cubbies, eh? A huge trade deadline, guys healing up, other guys debuting successfully, two wins over the Dodgers, and a chance to sweep this afternoon at Wrigley Field? That is just some good old-fashioned fun right there.
And it’s hard not to get greedy when the final matchup (Shota Imanaga versus Eric Lauer) favors the Cubs. It’s an early game today, so this morning is going to be crunched. Lots coming, still.
Also, Brett will be out for the next three days (just a well-deserved break), so I’ll be on the bullets and primary coverage through Friday.
In isolation, Tarik Skubal was perfectly fine last night. He allowed just 2 ER on 4 hits and 2 walks over 6.0 innings of work. When wouldn’t you take that from your starter, right? But the Cubs offense did exactly what you have to do with guys like him: chase him out of the game and get to work against the relievers (doesn’t hurt that the Dodgers pulled him after only 85 pitches). In any case, after he left, the Cubs scored three more runs in two innings against the Dodgers’ pen, which has been struggling BADLY since the start of June: 4.99 ERA (4.79 FIP). And although I think it’s a little odd to boo Skubal (it’s not like he signed with the Dodgers … yet), Cubs fans were apparently letting him have it as he walked out to warm up in the bullpen. We’re doing a lot of booing this week. Whatever, though. It’s the Dodgers. They deserve it. In the meantime, Skubal had nothing but nice things to say about Wrigley Field: “It’s a ton of fun to play in front of crowds like that…I actually haven’t made a home start in the postseason. They’ve all been on the road. I’ve pitched in pretty good environments and I’d say that’s up there with any of those postseason starts.” Pretty good compliment. Feel free to remember that when free agency begins this offseason. Oh, and one last note on Skubal: According to Adam McCalvy (MLB.com), “The Brewers’ initial offer for Tarik Skubal included three prospects, all of whom were hitters, and at least two were top 100 prospects.” And one of those guys was Luis Peña, who is a top-20 prospect in baseball. In other words, they really did try hard to get him. That’s a legitimate offer. How can we talk about last night’s game without giving Javier Assad his flowers? What this guy has managed to do, shuffling in and out of the bullpen and up and down from Iowa for basically five straight seasons, is nothing short of incredible. He’s got a 3.46 ERA for his career over 97 games (64 starts), and he’s been almost exactly that guy this season: 3.58 ERA over 75.1 IP. And last night, he held the best team in baseball (and best offense versus right-handed pitching) to just 1 ER over 5.2 innings, while going up against Tarik Skubal. I really don’t think we can overstate how great Assad has been. And maybe I was already mostly there, but at this point, yeah … who cares about his peripherals or whatever. He gets the job done. Always has. Unfortunately, his reward will probably be yet another boot from the rotation, as both Kevin Gausman (Friday) and Clay Holmes (Saturday) make their debuts for Chicago. And even if Assad does survive for one more turn through the rotation, as the Cubs are planning to skip Colin Rea, he’ll likely be bounced when Edward Cabrera comes back in mid-August. Just know, we appreciate you, Javy. Just a gamer. Kyle Tucker is not having a nice week at Wrigley Field. He was booed in the series opener and (sort of) complained about it after the game (understandable, but also … understandable by Cubs fans, in my opinion). Then, Seiya Suzuki threw him out trying to stretch a single into a double. Then, he made this ugly play in right field:SIXTY MILLION DOLLARSPER YEAR.LOL. pic.twitter.com/2Jngi6tvUe
— OBVIOUS SHIRTS® (@obvious_shirts) August 5, 2026 … And THEN this happened, which … LOL:POV: Cubs fans to Kyle Tucker pic.twitter.com/0Mg7DndhiJ
— ? (@MalortMatt) August 5, 2026 He must feel like he’s got a raincloud hanging over his head. For the season, his first on his new $60M per year deal, Tucker is slashing .243/.341/.381 (103 wRC+) with 10 homers, 7 stolen bases, and 0.9 fWAR. Last night, Nico Hoerner hit his seventh home run of the season and third since the All-Star break. And in the 74 plate appearances since the break, he’s slashing .389/.405/.542 (164 wRC+) with a triple, 3 HRs, and 3 SBs. The Cubs offense is already cooking, but if he’s actually going to be the guy he was at the end of last season and start of this season … watch out. Interesting conversation happening over on X between @MLB_Simulator and Lance Brozdowski (Marquee) on the decision/plan to platoon-protect Ian Happ with Tyrone Taylor (discussed here yesterday). In short, the former pointed out that, historically, Happ and Taylor have pretty similar numbers versus lefties *and* Taylor’s success this season comes in a relatively small sample. And when you put the totality of that data into a model to project the rest of the season, Taylor does not actually come out on top. But that’s where Brozdowski’s reply gets the wheels turning:This is actually a great example of where human supplementation to models is more optimal than models alone. I don’t think Cubs are making this decision on model alone (which you did a great job breaking out here). Happ clearly fighting something from the right side of the plate this season. Can he figure it out? Sure! Will he? I have no idea. Maybe it’s a coin flip if putting probability on it? 40/60 no/yes? Taylor’s bat speed gains make pre 2026 less relevant imo (unsure what your expected bases is getting into from a model standpoint, but bat speed gains feel like a material thing to override prior results with worse bat speed, similar to velo?). Would be curious on a study related to this. So if you think Happ will take longer than 2 months to figure out righty swing and you believe Taylor’s bat speed gains are sticky, then it’s pretty easy to see Tyrone as the better option into the postseason.
Fun thought exercise!
Digging into the data: Taylor’s overall bat speed this year is up roughly 1-1.5 mph, which is notable but not dramatic. But his fast-swing rate (effectively how often he is getting off his A-swing) has risen dramatically from 8.2% for his career to 13.6% this season. Those are all still below-average marks, but represent a big lift for him. Maybe that does explain the change. It’s similar to what we noticed for Matt Shaw, right after he started breaking out before his last injury. In case you missed it, we are not getting Jameson Taillon (for the Blue Jays) versus Kevin Gausman (for the Cubs) in Thursday’s makeup game at Wrigley Field. Instead, Gausman will go on Friday while the Cubs have drawn Dylan Cease for Thursday. Dang it. That went from really fun (plus heavy Cubs advantage) to … not very fun at all. David Peterson will likely start that day for the Cubs. But on the bright side, the Blue Jays have been the single worst offense versus LHP in Major League Baseball this season. And after winning a game started by Tarik Skubal, maybe the Cubs will have some extra confidence to go up against Cease at what is basically his absolute best. META: I know I’ve been talking about how we’re going to “fix the site” for a while. And I know it not only sucks, but that it was an especially big issue at the deadline. I can tell you, though, that we have had a solution for our core problem ready to go for several weeks. But we decided against trying to make that change so close to the deadline, because big architectural changes to the back-end tend to have unintended consequences to work through. And the irony is that we were worried that it would mess up the deadline. But with that in the rear-view, I promise we are close to enacting the changes we’ve been wanting to make. And that should, hopefully, help us weather those heavy-traffic moments that routinely take us down. Likewise, the issues with reloading pages and blank screens are folded into this solution. I can’t promise it’ll go smoothly and everything will be amazing. But we got some extra help for this one, and I do think we are more confident that it’ll make a difference.Hence then, the article about beating and booing skubal assad is the man tucker s raincloud nico taylor happ and other cubs bullets was published today ( ) and is available on Bleacher Nation ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Beating and Booing Skubal, Assad is the MAN, Tucker’s Raincloud, Nico, Taylor, Happ, and Other Cubs Bullets )
Also on site :