Offseason Trade Ideas

[Guest]

I'll put this here because it's a bit of an out there idea and I don't believe it's actually happening, but it's fun to play what-if.

 

One of the things I've wanted an MLB team to try for a while is to move away from the standard starting rotation. We do piggy-backing at the minor league level to get people innings, but I think that'd be a great thing to try at the MLB level, even if not for all of the rotation spots. What would you need to make that happen?

 

- A couple innings eating workhorses to mitigate the risk on the bullpen, since there's fewer arms available on those days.

- A cluster of guys who may not be great SP, but in a piggy-back scenario their stuff may play up or they may be better suited to that shorter stint

 

What if that's what the Cubs were doing? Between Wood, Wada, Doubront, Turner, Hendricks, Jackson, and Straily they could conceivably have 3 rotation spots taken up by a R/L pairing if they wanted to. They found one innings eater in Arrieta last year(6 IP/GS, 11 starts of 7+ IP), and their pursuit of Lester also makes sense in this light since he's thrown 30 GS/200 IP/6+ IP per start since Bush was president. It also puts some otherwise potentially confusing moves into context. Why keep Wada for 4 million when he's likely a similar value to cheaper guys with more potential who are controlled for longer? To add to the platoon pile. Why give up on Vizcaino or non-tender Wright? Because there's fewer bullpen spots to go around. I don't think they'd jump to having 60% of the rotation taken up by that experiment, but even 2 out of 5 spots, where the rest is Arrieta, Lester, and FA/Wood/Hendricks (depending on your preference) would certainly be possible. As soon as next season you have reinforcements in the form of Edwards and Johnson, both guys with injury/durability concerns that would suit them to that role. Even something like hiring Maddon tilts slightly in this direction because the front office would likely trust him more to handle what essentially is a pitcher platoon.

 

Anyway, to reiterate I don't think this is actually what they're doing, but I thought it was a fun thought exercise because you can make all the steps thus far fit that outcome.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

No.

[Guest]

I'll put this here because it's a bit of an out there idea and I don't believe it's actually happening, but it's fun to play what-if.

 

One of the things I've wanted an MLB team to try for a while is to move away from the standard starting rotation. We do piggy-backing at the minor league level to get people innings, but I think that'd be a great thing to try at the MLB level, even if not for all of the rotation spots. What would you need to make that happen?

 

- A couple innings eating workhorses to mitigate the risk on the bullpen, since there's fewer arms available on those days.

- A cluster of guys who may not be great SP, but in a piggy-back scenario their stuff may play up or they may be better suited to that shorter stint

 

What if that's what the Cubs were doing? Between Wood, Wada, Doubront, Turner, Hendricks, Jackson, and Straily they could conceivably have 3 rotation spots taken up by a R/L pairing if they wanted to. They found one innings eater in Arrieta last year(6 IP/GS, 11 starts of 7+ IP), and their pursuit of Lester also makes sense in this light since he's thrown 30 GS/200 IP/6+ IP per start since Bush was president. It also puts some otherwise potentially confusing moves into context. Why keep Wada for 4 million when he's likely a similar value to cheaper guys with more potential who are controlled for longer? To add to the platoon pile. Why give up on Vizcaino or non-tender Wright? Because there's fewer bullpen spots to go around. I don't think they'd jump to having 60% of the rotation taken up by that experiment, but even 2 out of 5 spots, where the rest is Arrieta, Lester, and FA/Wood/Hendricks (depending on your preference) would certainly be possible. As soon as next season you have reinforcements in the form of Edwards and Johnson, both guys with injury/durability concerns that would suit them to that role. Even something like hiring Maddon tilts slightly in this direction because the front office would likely trust him more to handle what essentially is a pitcher platoon.

 

Anyway, to reiterate I don't think this is actually what they're doing, but I thought it was a fun thought exercise because you can make all the steps thus far fit that outcome.

I've thought about that for awhile. Keep workloads down and lessons the need for bad pitchers to pitch (in theory).

[sneakypower]

I'll put this here because it's a bit of an out there idea and I don't believe it's actually happening, but it's fun to play what-if.

[...]

i mostly like the idea and i'd love to see it played out, but the time for that would have been the seasons where we didn't care much if we lost 90 games, rather than conduct a grand experiment that could easily single-handedly torpedo a season

 

the obvious significant drawback is the outcry when a pitcher underperforms or sustains an injury; those things happen with great regularity, but if you're following conventional routines you escape any perceived culpability in those outcomes

 

to my first point, it's another personal frustration in the Javy Baez entrenchment: if he doesn't hold much trade value then we should really have been targeting more similarly-flawed upside prospects in the 90-loss seasons with little to lose, and if he still does hold significant value, let another team currently in that same position deal with fixing him, especially when time & time again we've shown hopelessly incapable of curing broken swings (Jackson, Olt, Lake, Vitters)

[rawaction]

I'd love to see it. But my thinking is that it would be really effective with completely contrasting talents/repitoires.

 

Like CJ Edwards may never throw 7 innings or start 25 times, but him 1.5-2 times thru a lineup for 75-80 pitches followed by a guy like Wada could be successful. Same with Pierce Johnson actually, if he's going to walk people but be unhittable and rack up a ton of pitches like he did this year.

[Guest]

Wouldn't something like this fit better with an AL team? I would think it would be tough to have enough arms for the pen for late inning pinch hitting purposes.

[sneakypower]

I'll put this here because it's a bit of an out there idea and I don't believe it's actually happening, but it's fun to play what-if.

 

One of the things I've wanted an MLB team to try for a while is to move away from the standard starting rotation. We do piggy-backing at the minor league level to get people innings, but I think that'd be a great thing to try at the MLB level, even if not for all of the rotation spots. What would you need to make that happen?

 

- A couple innings eating workhorses to mitigate the risk on the bullpen, since there's fewer arms available on those days.

- A cluster of guys who may not be great SP, but in a piggy-back scenario their stuff may play up or they may be better suited to that shorter stint

 

What if that's what the Cubs were doing? Between Wood, Wada, Doubront, Turner, Hendricks, Jackson, and Straily they could conceivably have 3 rotation spots taken up by a R/L pairing if they wanted to. They found one innings eater in Arrieta last year(6 IP/GS, 11 starts of 7+ IP), and their pursuit of Lester also makes sense in this light since he's thrown 30 GS/200 IP/6+ IP per start since Bush was president. It also puts some otherwise potentially confusing moves into context. Why keep Wada for 4 million when he's likely a similar value to cheaper guys with more potential who are controlled for longer? To add to the platoon pile. Why give up on Vizcaino or non-tender Wright? Because there's fewer bullpen spots to go around. I don't think they'd jump to having 60% of the rotation taken up by that experiment, but even 2 out of 5 spots, where the rest is Arrieta, Lester, and FA/Wood/Hendricks (depending on your preference) would certainly be possible. As soon as next season you have reinforcements in the form of Edwards and Johnson, both guys with injury/durability concerns that would suit them to that role. Even something like hiring Maddon tilts slightly in this direction because the front office would likely trust him more to handle what essentially is a pitcher platoon.

 

Anyway, to reiterate I don't think this is actually what they're doing, but I thought it was a fun thought exercise because you can make all the steps thus far fit that outcome.

i actually had a better idea:

instead of Lester, just sign Brandon Beachy, Brett Anderson and Kris Medlen and tell them we only need 10 starts from each of them, each 15 days apart

 

we could just DL them between each start and nobody would ever accuse us of abusing the system because it's always very believable they're worthy of a stint

 

edit: Josh Johnson would also work for this

[Guest]

hahaha, amazing

[rawaction]

Wouldn't something like this fit better with an AL team? I would think it would be tough to have enough arms for the pen for late inning pinch hitting purposes.

 

Yeah, you're really screwed when a starter gets roughed up. But with the way you hope the future Cubs team is constructed, I wouldn't be worried too much about pinch hitting and defensive replacements. If everyone even close to pans out, they'll have several guys that won't come off the field.

 

I figure

 

1-2-3- regular starters

 

4/5 and 6/7 for piggybacking.

 

Then you can have 6 in the pen, and a short (4 man) bench with a very strong lineup. Hell, the Cubs had a 4-man bench a lot of last year, I believe.

[Guest]

IMO you're less screwed when a starter gets roughed up, because they're responsible for less. In a 5 man rotation you're expecting 5-7 innings from the SP, so if they get shelled and get pulled in the 2nd, the bullpen is covering 4-5 innings you weren't expecting. If you have a tandem of starters that are expected to go 3-5 innings and one gets shelled, you're covering about 2 innings that you weren't expecting. Covering 2 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 5-6 is going to be easier than covering 4-5 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 7. After all, many teams keep a roster spot for a 'long man' anyway mostly for this purpose, mitigating the benefit of even having a larger pen.

[mul21]

IMO you're less screwed when a starter gets roughed up, because they're responsible for less. In a 5 man rotation you're expecting 5-7 innings from the SP, so if they get shelled and get pulled in the 2nd, the bullpen is covering 4-5 innings you weren't expecting. If you have a tandem of starters that are expected to go 3-5 innings and one gets shelled, you're covering about 2 innings that you weren't expecting. Covering 2 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 5-6 is going to be easier than covering 4-5 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 7. After all, many teams keep a roster spot for a 'long man' anyway mostly for this purpose, mitigating the benefit of even having a larger pen.

 

You're more screwed in this scenario if one of your top three gets shelled though.

[Guest]

IMO you're less screwed when a starter gets roughed up, because they're responsible for less. In a 5 man rotation you're expecting 5-7 innings from the SP, so if they get shelled and get pulled in the 2nd, the bullpen is covering 4-5 innings you weren't expecting. If you have a tandem of starters that are expected to go 3-5 innings and one gets shelled, you're covering about 2 innings that you weren't expecting. Covering 2 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 5-6 is going to be easier than covering 4-5 unexpected innings with a bullpen of 7. After all, many teams keep a roster spot for a 'long man' anyway mostly for this purpose, mitigating the benefit of even having a larger pen.

 

You're more screwed in this scenario if one of your top three gets shelled though.

 

That's a constant though, your top 3 guys getting shelled(which shouldn't be as often by nature) is going to happen in either format. Sure you have a leaner pen to make it through that particular day, but you can make up with it more on the back end because in the piggyback scenario you're expecting 7-9 innings from 40% of your 'rotation'. In the 5 man rotation when your ace gets rocked you have to play catch up for a longer period of time because you're seeing incrementally worse starters, and therefore a higher risk/probability of bullpen innings.