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Sammy Sofa

By Sammy Sofa,
in Chicago Cubs Talk

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Regular Show

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It probably is an "older brother" opinion.

 

Well, I trust my opinion over that of someone who says "Jen Ho-Tseng is my man" and uses him as their avatar pic lol. :lol:

J. Ho-Tseng, really.

 

i think it's J.-H. Tseng

 

My bad guys. Sorry, I don't care enough about this pitcher to correctly spell his name lol.

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squally1313 Myrtle Beach Pelicans

squally1313

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Fangraphs Positional Power Rankings are always pretty interesting. Cubs came in 6th for Catcher, which didn't seem too outrageous until I saw teams like Oakland (3rd) and Houston (5th) ahead of us.

 

However, Rizzo (with a little push from 21 projected first base PAs from Bryant, which, lol) came in first at first base, which seems a little generous given that Joey Votto exists.

 

The one stat that stood out was that the Astros' 5th place catcher rating was their 6th best ranking of all the positions. Not something we need to worry about until around Halloween, but they're going to be really good.

 

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2018-positional-power-rankings-catcher/

Cubswin11 All-Star

Cubswin11

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I'm not gutsy enough to pick them to miss the playoffs, and in the medium term they're still very good, but the Astros hangover effect and pitching regression is gonna lead to a lot of hot takes.

I really can’t see that, their division is so bad and their offense is good enough and they at least have depth for pitching/pieces left to trade for it (if/when regression hits) that I just can’t see them missing the playoffs. It might only take 85-88 wins to win that division and even if they hit their low end upper projections of low 90s wins they will win that division going away. I could easily see the regression hit and then just being an okay team but still think they have a solid margin of error over the division even with their pitcher regression baked in.

Transmogrified Tiger All-Star

Transmogrified Tiger

Community Moderator
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I'm not gutsy enough to pick them to miss the playoffs, and in the medium term they're still very good, but the Astros hangover effect and pitching regression is gonna lead to a lot of hot takes.

I really can’t see that, their division is so bad and their offense is good enough and they at least have depth for pitching/pieces left to trade for it (if/when regression hits) that I just can’t see them missing the playoffs. It might only take 85-88 wins to win that division and even if they hit their low end upper projections of low 90s wins they will win that division going away. I could easily see the regression hit and then just being an okay team but still think they have a solid margin of error over the division even with their pitcher regression baked in.

 

Yeah I don't think they'll lose the division, although LA and Seattle are decent enough that they could get breaks going their way a la Arizona/Colorado last year. I'm just really bearish on that rotation, I look at those depth chart projections and I'd take the under on every one of their SP. Toss in some hangover from the bats(or just BABIP regression in the case of Gonzalez/Correa/Altuve) and I think they'll be playing meaningful September games. It's not the most likely outcome, but you can see a world where Verlander tanks, Cole gets hurt, and Keuchel's ERA catches up to his FIP without too much trouble, and all of a sudden you're looking at a rotation full of league average types.

Cubswin11 All-Star

Cubswin11

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted
I'm not gutsy enough to pick them to miss the playoffs, and in the medium term they're still very good, but the Astros hangover effect and pitching regression is gonna lead to a lot of hot takes.

I really can’t see that, their division is so bad and their offense is good enough and they at least have depth for pitching/pieces left to trade for it (if/when regression hits) that I just can’t see them missing the playoffs. It might only take 85-88 wins to win that division and even if they hit their low end upper projections of low 90s wins they will win that division going away. I could easily see the regression hit and then just being an okay team but still think they have a solid margin of error over the division even with their pitcher regression baked in.

 

Yeah I don't think they'll lose the division, although LA and Seattle are decent enough that they could get breaks going their way a la Arizona/Colorado last year. I'm just really bearish on that rotation, I look at those depth chart projections and I'd take the under on every one of their SP. Toss in some hangover from the bats(or just BABIP regression in the case of Gonzalez/Correa/Altuve) and I think they'll be playing meaningful September games. It's not the most likely outcome, but you can see a world where Verlander tanks, Cole gets hurt, and Keuchel's ERA catches up to his FIP without too much trouble, and all of a sudden you're looking at a rotation full of league average types.

The Dodgers are my team for this and my kinda sorta can see them missing the playoffs/not being a super team. Kershaw pitches closer to 150 than 175 innings, Rich Hill pitches like a 38 year old should and gives under 100 innings and deals with the injuries he always has, Alex Wood pitches like a guy who has had injuries his whole career and who saw some periods of alarming velo dips last year, Maeda is just a tick above replacement level when needed to go 180-200 IP, then you have Buehler/Ryu/Urias being the other guys needed and Buehler is going to have his up and downs as a 23 year old and likely hit an innings limit, Ryu has been replacement level since 2014 and Urias has to deal with coming back from TJS and still being really young. The bullpen could have problems getting the ball to Jansen. Turner is already hurt and 33 and wrist injuries are hard to come back from, especially in year, Chris Taylor realizes he's Chris Taylor and not a ~5 WAR player, Bellinger gets adjusted to as a 22 year old and struggles, Puig remains and enigma, and Seagar has that lingering elbow issue.

Transmogrified Tiger All-Star

Transmogrified Tiger

Community Moderator
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I can see that, in fairness you can really do this with any number of teams because pitching is so fickle. I wrote this elsewhere about a month ago and it still applies.

 

Especially since some of these teams clearly aren't going to go above the luxury tax threshold even for midseason, if things go wrong they could go very wrong, and you don't have to look much further than the rotations. The Indians have Salazar already behind schedule and it only takes one big injury to make them look a lot more pedestrian in the rotation. Give the Twins an FA starter like Cobb that they're clearly in the market for and a bit of age-related improvement and it's not difficult at all to see them taking the Central. The Cubs prioritized stuff over health this offseason(Darvish, Chatwood, Morrow) so they're more at risk for a wave of injuries. The Dodgers lost a lot of their depth and Kershaw has missed 5+ starts in 3 of 4 seasons. The Red Sox are requiring a lot of heavy lifting from what's left of David Price, and if Severino isn't a 5 win starter again the Yankee rotation looks pretty average on top of having multiple injury concerns. The Astros are counting on 2 starters north of 34, Gerrit Cole not continuing to be terrible against lefties, McCullers holding up for a full season and Keuchel's FIP not catching up with him at age 30. The Nats have no rotation depth and are counting on multiple guys in their mid-30s too, but I'll be honest I simply don't see anyone else in that division being good enough to take it from them.

 

Those might seem a bit contrived, and they certainly won't all happen, but mathematically we can basically expect one of those 7 elites to do much worse than expected and probably another to be bad enough to let other teams make a race of it.

David GOAT

David

Old-Timey Member
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Posted

idk what the rules are with regard to posting short excerpts from premium/pay sites, but feel free to delete if it isn't kosher, mods.

 

The righty was sitting in the mid-90s all day long and had his former teammates off balance the entire time he was on the mound. Numerous Rangers looked back at the umpire in disbelief as a breaking ball slashed through the zone or a fastball didn’t break out of it.

 

It’s that ability to keep the opposition guessing that really makes Darvish so exciting. He has a wide variety of pitches, something the Cubs plan to capitalize on now that he’s three years removed from Tommy John surgery.

 

“Pitches in general, especially sliders, hitters were reacting the way they did prior to my Tommy John surgery,” Darvish said. “I think that’s a good indication.”

 

Darvish got multiple awkward swings on sliders, including his strikeout of Delino DeShields Jr. to start his day. The slider was one of Darvish’s best pitches when he came over from Japan. Prior to undergoing Tommy John surgery, Darvish had a 39.6 percent whiff/swing rate on the pitch. Since returning, that number has dropped to 32 percent.

 

The Los Angeles Dodgers tried to help Darvish get the pitch to move the way it did pre-surgery, but never found much success. Apparently, a little more time has allowed him to do just that.

 

https://theathletic.com//283197/2018/03/21/joe-maddon-wants-another-week-of-spring-but-these-cubs-look-ready-for-the-regular-season/?redirected=1

Brian MVP

Brian

Old-Timey Member
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This team is unreal. This has to be golden age of all of our sports fan lives. They've made Tommy LaStella fun.
Regular Show ACL Cubs

Regular Show

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

 

Pretty solid.

 

LMAO. That was fantastic. I can't tell if Tommy is joking or being serious. Good sport either way. I thought the video was originally going to be about losing his BFF Jake, and how lonely he is now. That was great.

David GOAT

David

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

 

Pretty solid.

 

LMAO. That was fantastic. I can't tell if Tommy is joking or being serious. Good sport either way. I thought the video was originally going to be about losing his BFF Jake, and how lonely he is now. That was great.

 

I'm assuming those Tommy clips were for some in between innings tomfoolery on the Wrigley video board. He didn't know they were going to do this and it was probably recorded weeks ago.

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