General Cubs Chit-Chat

[Bertz]

The nature of splits is that over the course of a full season, each team is going to have a few extreme performances in a few random splits. Remember the first inning thing from 2017? I believe there was also a home night games thing within the last few years as well?

 

Over a 60 game season? You're gonna see some real weird horsefeathers.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

The nature of splits is that over the course of a full season, each team is going to have a few extreme performances in a few random splits. Remember the first inning thing from 2017? I believe there was also a home night games thing within the last few years as well?

 

Over a 60 game season? You're gonna see some real weird horsefeathers.

With all of the different ways that you can split up SSS, it would be weird if you couldn't find something weird in there.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Mooney says the Cubs are too chickenshit to use Marquez or Carraway this season.

 

The Cubs do not view Brailyn Marquez and Burl Carraway as realistic options to help the major-league team this season. Marquez is 21 years old and has never pitched above the A-ball level. Carraway is 21 years old and threw 51 1/3 innings across three seasons at Dallas Baptist University before getting drafted two months ago. The Cubs have been patient with those talented lefties at the South Bend training site, focusing on player development and their long-term growth as pitchers instead of letting them loose.

These guys suck at managing a roster.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Mooney says the Cubs are too horsefeathers to use Marquez or Carraway this season.

 

The Cubs do not view Brailyn Marquez and Burl Carraway as realistic options to help the major-league team this season. Marquez is 21 years old and has never pitched above the A-ball level. Carraway is 21 years old and threw 51 1/3 innings across three seasons at Dallas Baptist University before getting drafted two months ago. The Cubs have been patient with those talented lefties at the South Bend training site, focusing on player development and their long-term growth as pitchers instead of letting them loose.

These guys suck at managing a roster.

 

Alternatively, the guy with no professional innings and the guy with a career 1:1 K/BB ratio, neither of whom have pitched competitively in 6-12 months, are not great bets to step right into major league relief roles.

[We Got The Whole 9]

Mooney says the Cubs are too horsefeathers to use Marquez or Carraway this season.

 

The Cubs do not view Brailyn Marquez and Burl Carraway as realistic options to help the major-league team this season. Marquez is 21 years old and has never pitched above the A-ball level. Carraway is 21 years old and threw 51 1/3 innings across three seasons at Dallas Baptist University before getting drafted two months ago. The Cubs have been patient with those talented lefties at the South Bend training site, focusing on player development and their long-term growth as pitchers instead of letting them loose.

These guys suck at managing a roster.

 

Alternatively, the guy with no professional innings and the guy with a career 1:1 K/BB ratio, neither of whom have pitched competitively in 6-12 months, are not great bets to step right into major league relief roles.

The Cubs are deploying 2 guys that you can say that about, and another 2 that are on the precipice IMO

 

And pitchers get super fast tracked like that sometimes. I just dont feel that there is much at stake to let one of them take one of these career minor leaguers spot before they go into a razor-thin highly competitive trade market.

[NOLA]

#PTR?

 

[Brian]

Most if not all teams are doing it. I know the Yankees just did. Not saying it's right or good.

[Sammy Sofa]

Most if not all teams are doing it. I know the Yankees just did. Not saying it's right or good.

 

It's 110% definitely wrong and bad.

[Brian]

I'm guessing teams kept these employees as long as they did hoping another round of PPP loans was coming

[Ding Dong Johnson]

My employer had an all-hands quarterly town hall last week where the CEO went on and on about how difficult it was to bring all employees back to full-time work (currently 1/3 are at least partially furloughed) because of the state of the current economy. Then finance lady's turn came and she showed how we were running with a 40% profit margin over the past 2 quarters.

 

I will never count an employer to do what's right for their employees.

[We Got The Whole 9]

This might be a totally stupid question to ask so rip away. But, MLB scouts- how necessary are they these days when we have Track man and such that totally blows away even the keenest eye tests? There's just so much information available that they could never provide. What are they even bringing to the table?

 

Rip away.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This might be a totally stupid question to ask so rip away. But, MLB scouts- how necessary are they these days when we have Track man and such that totally blows away even the keenest eye tests? There's just so much information available that they could never provide. What are they even bringing to the table?

 

Rip away.

 

Scouts are less necessary than they've ever been, but I think it's an extreme oversimplification to think that trackman and the like are replicating their work entirely. For one I'm not sure how universal coverage and data sharing is between various minor league parks and short season facilities. More importantly, scouts add value by understanding and articulating why an observable thing is happening so it's easy for teams to understand how repeatable/fixable it might be. Advanced data make the 'observable things' more specific and less noisy(e.g. exit velocity v. batting average), but there's still significant art in understanding what mechanics lead to those observable things, how they scale against better competition, and if there's opportunities for improvement/fixes.

 

Where I think the biggest open question is, in a world with substantial video coverage of the minor leagues, how necessary is it for scouts to be in person to do that work? And if it's less necessary for scouts to be in person, are you able to get the same benefit with fewer scouts doing video analysis in a centralized manner.

[Cubswin11]

This might be a totally stupid question to ask so rip away. But, MLB scouts- how necessary are they these days when we have Track man and such that totally blows away even the keenest eye tests? There's just so much information available that they could never provide. What are they even bringing to the table?

 

Rip away.

 

Scouts are less necessary than they've ever been, but I think it's an extreme oversimplification to think that trackman and the like are replicating their work entirely. For one I'm not sure how universal coverage and data sharing is between various minor league parks and short season facilities. More importantly, scouts add value by understanding and articulating why an observable thing is happening so it's easy for teams to understand how repeatable/fixable it might be. Advanced data make the 'observable things' more specific and less noisy(e.g. exit velocity v. batting average), but there's still significant art in understanding what mechanics lead to those observable things, how they scale against better competition, and if there's opportunities for improvement/fixes.

 

Where I think the biggest open question is, in a world with substantial video coverage of the minor leagues, how necessary is it for scouts to be in person to do that work? And if it's less necessary for scouts to be in person, are you able to get the same benefit with fewer scouts doing video analysis in a centralized manner.

Yeah it seems like if the data infrastructure is there you could have less scouts without it overly affecting things. Player development probably should have more bodies than ever though with all the data and programs out there to be as hands on and digging in to numbers with guys directly to grow them as much as possible. It’s probably more a shifting of resources once we’re back to normal than cutting staff overall.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

For the specific roles mentioned, the only thing that makes sense to me is that there's significant headwinds about shortening the draft and cutting out some of the minor leagues, which is going to limit how many people you need to do the draft and bring along your minor league teams(plus fewer other teams to scout). I don't know what the proportion of these cuts looks like though, is it 10% of those types of roles? 50%? 90%? I can at least see the logic for a non-trivial but non-majority cut of those roles if the league changes are all but certain. Otherwise it seems incredibly silly for the relative pittance you save if you need to grow that department back when covid is through.

[We Got The Whole 9]

This might be a totally stupid question to ask so rip away. But, MLB scouts- how necessary are they these days when we have Track man and such that totally blows away even the keenest eye tests? There's just so much information available that they could never provide. What are they even bringing to the table?

 

Rip away.

 

Scouts are less necessary than they've ever been, but I think it's an extreme oversimplification to think that trackman and the like are replicating their work entirely. For one I'm not sure how universal coverage and data sharing is between various minor league parks and short season facilities. More importantly, scouts add value by understanding and articulating why an observable thing is happening so it's easy for teams to understand how repeatable/fixable it might be. Advanced data make the 'observable things' more specific and less noisy(e.g. exit velocity v. batting average), but there's still significant art in understanding what mechanics lead to those observable things, how they scale against better competition, and if there's opportunities for improvement/fixes.

 

Where I think the biggest open question is, in a world with substantial video coverage of the minor leagues, how necessary is it for scouts to be in person to do that work? And if it's less necessary for scouts to be in person, are you able to get the same benefit with fewer scouts doing video analysis in a centralized manner.

 

You are right in the oversimplification of my observation, but thats actually more along the line of where my thoughts are. I guess it just doesn't surprise me at all that they called in the Bob's and came to this conclusion, what with the smorgasbord of data and video available. I would think that over the last few years as this stuff became commonplace they probably started to see the writing on the wall (like in my line of work as a grocer, the self-checkout line is a growing, inevitable threat we are keenly aware of) and weren't necessarily blindsided Podesta-style. It sucks when anybody loses a job, unless its due to egregious incompetence or detrimental conduct, etc, but sadly thats the reality we live in. Efficiency is key, and like you said, they could possibly achieve comparable results even with a smaller staff. I have doubts that this is a COVID motivated move but rather the new norm.

[CubinNY]

For the specific roles mentioned, the only thing that makes sense to me is that there's significant headwinds about shortening the draft and cutting out some of the minor leagues, which is going to limit how many people you need to do the draft and bring along your minor league teams(plus fewer other teams to scout). I don't know what the proportion of these cuts looks like though, is it 10% of those types of roles? 50%? 90%? I can at least see the logic for a non-trivial but non-majority cut of those roles if the league changes are all but certain. Otherwise it seems incredibly silly for the relative pittance you save if you need to grow that department back when covid is through.

Yes, they are going to kill the game long term to make a larger percentage of dollars, short term. Nothing says more about the current state of America than this. We are a nation of 17 year olds with untreated ADHD.

 

For many people, kids especially minor league baseball is their only live access to professional sports. It's really bad for a game that is losing fan interest. Minor league baseball is an investment in the future, like R&D and they are treating it like a product that should make a profit.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Yes, they are going to kill the game long term to make a larger percentage of dollars, short term. Nothing says more about the current state of America than this. We are a nation of 17 year olds with untreated ADHD.

 

For many people, kids especially minor league baseball is their only live access to professional sports. It's really bad for a game that is losing fan interest. Minor league baseball is an investment in the future, like R&D and they are treating it like a product that should make a profit.

 

On that point, I don't think the owners have particularly virtuous intentions, but I also don't think the status quo was perfectly calibrated either. It's been a minute since I looked into this, but the pre-pandemic plans I saw for trimming the minor leagues were almost exclusively short season leagues with piddling attendance, many of which had D1 college baseball nearby so access to similar caliber baseball is not an issue. Maybe the pandemic changed things dramatically, I haven't seen any specifics, but I don't think the answer to 'is maintaining 6 levels of minor league baseball crucial to the sport's growth' is an unequivocal yes.

[Sammy Sofa]

Any org that will use multiple variations of "we've gotta cut costs; times are tough" on the one hand, and then uses the other hand at the same time to continue to jack up ticket prices time and time again can go eat all of my shorts. They're never getting another cent from me.

[Cubswin11]

Souza and Bryant both back tonight

[Derwood]

Wasn’t Kipnis hitting over .300 like a week ago? Can anyone beside Happ and Heyward hit on this team?

[squally1313]

Wasn’t Kipnis hitting over .300 like a week ago? Can anyone beside Happ and Heyward hit on this team?

 

Team wide we're at a 102 wRC, 3rd best walk rate, 4th worst K rate, 6th in total offensive fWAR, though some of that is helped by baserunning (5th) and defense (9th).

 

Happ and Heyward are over 150 wRC, Rizzo/Schwarber/Kipnis/Bote are between 105 and 121. Contreras/Baez/Bryant/Hoerner have been very bad, Almora historically bad but he's gone so whatever.

[Brian]

as everyone predicted, Cubs with the best outfield in baseball so far

 

[tweet]

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[Bertz]

The team has been unlucky with balls in play as well. They're 24th in BABIP at .274 despite being 4th in average exit velocity, 3rd in hard hit %, 5th in barrel%. The swing and miss is probably going to keep them from being elite offensively, but they should probably end up more in the 5-10 range rather than their current middle of the road production.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

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[Derwood]

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That video is kinda completely awful