Kap: Cubs expected to spend next winter

[Guest]

No [expletive]; I'm not disagreeing with the obvious point that there's a ton of fluctuation when it comes to pitchers panning out. I'm pointing out how terrible a comparison 2009 is. It's like you're constantly tripping over yourself to make a point over and over and over again.

 

What you call tripping over myself to make a point, I simply call backing up my point with information. It was 2011, and it wasn't meant to be a direct comparison. Since we were imagining going forward two years, I thought it'd be interesting to go back two years.

 

Getting back to the actual point of our short- and medium-term pitching outlook.

 

Actually under contract for 2015, we have:

 

Jeff Samardzija's age 30 season

Edwin Jackson's age 31 season

Travis Wood's age 28 season

 

And that's backed by one of the the least inspiring bunch of upper-minors pitching prospects in baseball.

 

We can hold it together with some skill, luck and money in the next two years. But if things go badly and we aren't a very good team by that time, I'd suspect lack of pitching to be the most likely culprit.

 

so you're complaining that we only have 3 starters locked in for a season that is 2 years away.

 

and im pretty sure the pitching in the system will be improved significantly in the next 2 years.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

the arguments you're making can be made for pretty much every team. yea if we get a bunch of injuries and our pitchers suck and our prospects suck, then our rotation will suck. agreed.

 

OK, let's take a tour of the NL Central. Top to bottom by standings. Listing MLB pitchers locked up through at least 2015 and prospects who netted at least a B- from minorleagueball.com.

 

Cardinals

Locked up:

Wainwright, Garcia, Miller, Lynn

Prospects: Martinez (A-), Rosenthal (B+), Wacha (B+), Jenkins (B-)

 

Reds

Locked up:

Latos, Leake, Cingriani

Prospects: Stephenson (B+), Corcino (B+), Travieso (B-)

 

Pirates

Locked up:

McDonald, Locke, Gomez

Prospects: Cole (A), Taillon (A-), Heredia (B+), Kingham (B-), Holmes (B-)

 

Brewers

Locked up:

Lohse, Estrada, Burgos, Peralta

Prospects: Thornburg (B), Hellweg (B-), Jungmann (B-), Pena (B-)

 

Cubs

Locked up:

Samardzija, Jackson, Wood

Prospects: Vizcaino (B-), Johnson (B-), Underwood (B-), Maples (B-)

 

If I had a better knowledge of the other systems, it'd be even more enlightening to trim out the guys who don't have a 2015 or sooner ETA. Because 3 of the Cubs' 4 are clearly much further away than that.

 

The Cardinals are clearly ahead of everyone not just in this division but everywhere for all time. Freaking pixie dust. I'm pretty sure I'd take the Reds before us without too much reservation. I could go either way on the Brewers.

 

The Pirates are walking an even tighter line than we are. The guys they have in the majors are pretty blech. The prospects are awesome and there's a lot of them, but that's a high-risk, high-reward situation. Which is probably appropriate for a small-market team, but I wouldn't want to trade places with them.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

so you're complaining that we only have 3 starters locked in for a season that is 2 years away.

 

I'm complaining that we only have 3 starters locked in for a season that is two years away with very little to nothing in the minors behind them.

 

That lack of depth sinks seasons. It's already primarily responsible for this season going downhill. You can't go into a season with just enough pitching and expect to come out of it OK, 2012 Reds notwithstanding.

 

We added five useful MLB-quality pitchers as free agents last offseason. That's a huge haul, so much that "they added a ton of pitching" was the hallmark of our offseason. And it wasn't enough.

 

We had two injuries (Garza, Fujikawa) plus a rehab setback to a guy who was expected to join the team after a month or so (Baker) and the whole house of cards collapsed. Suddenly you've got replacement-level pitchers like Loe and Bowden pitching high-leverage innings and the bullpen is almost entirely the reason we aren't talking about the wild-card fight.

 

For 2014, we're facing the same conundrum. We lose Feldman, Garza, Baker, Gregg, Camp and Marmol to free agency (and who knows what we might lose to the trading deadline). Vizcaino and maybe the No. 2 draft picks are our only tenuous pitching projected to be supplied by the farm system. So we're going to need another 5-pitcher haul kind of offseason just to get to the point where we are now: Hoping for no injuries and precariously holding on.

 

By 2016, I'd guess the first waves of the Hoyer/Epstein era (plus Maples) should be hitting the majors and we won't have this problem anymore. But until then, we are definitely on the pitching side in one of those farm-system gaps Epstein talked about in Boston.

[davell]

Look at this again, after the season is over and I'm very certain your opinion will change. Between trades, the draft, and possibly even IFA, our pitching will look much, much better.

 

No, we won't be catching the Cards anytime soon in this department. Everyone else though from a total organizational standpoint? I think we'll pass them by the beginning of the 2014 season.

 

As for the prospects you listed, Jenkins won't be in the majors by 2015 for the Cards. Stephenson is a stud for Cincy but my guess is thats about his ETA. Corcino has less of a chance to stick than Vizcaino does and Travieso isn't remotely close to contributing by then. Cole and Taillon are studs, I'd love to have a pair of pitchers like that coming up. Heredia and Holmes are eons away. None of that group from the Brewers does anything for me, if any of those guys develop into anything more than a 4, at best, I'll be surprised.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Look at this again, after the season is over and I'm very certain your opinion will change. Between trades, the draft, and possibly even IFA, our pitching will look much, much better.

 

When we talked about this last year, I recall several people insisting that it was fruitless without including all the near-ready pitching we were going to get in a Garza deal.

 

Yeah, there's a route to it getting better. Paniagua gets his visa and dominates Daytona before a brief taste of Tennessee. Alberto Cabrera keeps it up. Appel falls to us. We get three really good pitching prospects at the deadline. Suddenly it's all roses.

[Little Slide Rooter]

No [expletive]; I'm not disagreeing with the obvious point that there's a ton of fluctuation when it comes to pitchers panning out. I'm pointing out how terrible a comparison 2009 is. It's like you're constantly tripping over yourself to make a point over and over and over again.

 

What you call tripping over myself to make a point, I simply call backing up my point with information. It was 2011, and it wasn't meant to be a direct comparison. Since we were imagining going forward two years, I thought it'd be interesting to go back two years.

 

Getting back to the actual point of our short- and medium-term pitching outlook.

 

Actually under contract for 2015, we have:

 

Jeff Samardzija's age 30 season

Edwin Jackson's age 31 season

Travis Wood's age 28 season

 

And that's backed by one of the the least inspiring bunch of upper-minors pitching prospects in baseball.

 

We can hold it together with some skill, luck and money in the next two years. But if things go badly and we aren't a very good team by that time, I'd suspect lack of pitching to be the most likely culprit.

 

so you're complaining that we only have 3 starters locked in for a season that is 2 years away.

 

and im pretty sure the pitching in the system will be improved significantly in the next 2 years.

 

I like it that way. Leaves options open. I wouldn't put a big trade past them. And while our upper level pitching prospects project as depth at best aside from Vizcaino and maybe Cabrera, each of whom could end up in the pen, by 2015 Maples, Johnson, Wells, Underwood, Blackburn and our 2013 pick should be approaching big league ready; I sincerely hope that at least 2-3 of those guys pan out as more than depth.

[Sammys Boombox]

I really hope they spend this next offseason. I understand the whole philosophy behind what they are doing, and if it works I'll be so happy, but for the third season in a row I feel like I have to make myself watch the Cubs and ultimately just end up changing the TV to another game.

 

I just want to get back to the point where I actually care if the Cubs win each day. At the moment I honestly do not. I just wait for Castro and Rizzo to bat and then get bored again.