The Bryce is Right, Bitch

[Brian]

Bryce just needs to sign so we have something fun to talk about.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Hendricks's birthday is today so you know he's going to suck

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Yeah.... Schwarber likely won't be as plus a defender, i dont know wtf is going on in CF but if you have confidence in Almora/Happ that's your burden. Heyward is obviously washed. Rizzo is out of the prime phase. Zobrist is 45. Javy likely won't be a 5-WAR guy ever again. Bryant is an unknown. Contreras can't catch and lost the ability to hit.

 

lester regressed, Hendricks seems like a guy who will just go to horsefeathers out of nowhere so youre kinda always waiting on other shoe to drop. quintana is trash. Darvish might have to pitch left handed. Hamels is probably a 4.50 era guy this year.

 

Yeah should be great

The above sort of begs the question, why would Bryce want to sign with these stiffs?

 

Because the Brewers are too smart to get sucked into a mega deal they’ll regret later

[ConstableRabbit]

I'm just an idiot parroting what I've heard/read.

Petition to change this to the banner slogan of NSBB.

[Post Count Padder]

Bryce just needs to sign so we have something fun to talk about.

Day 1 of the Winter Meetings in Vegas:

 

Harper calls a press conference. Sits at a table with hats of the Phillies, Nats, Dodgers, Yankees in front of him. Says he has decided.

 

Then, Anthony Rizzo appears, flips the table. Kris Bryant walks out, hands Bryce a Cubs hat, he puts it on, everyone rejoices. Edwards appears from off camera doing the worm across the floor and Theo casually hands Hoyer a towel.

[CubinNY]

Bryce just needs to sign so we have something fun to talk about.

Day 1 of the Winter Meetings in Vegas:

 

Harper calls a press conference. Sits at a table with hats of the Phillies, Nats, Dodgers, Yankees in front of him. Says he has decided.

 

Then, Anthony Rizzo appears, flips the table. Kris Bryant walks out, hands Bryce a Cubs hat, he puts it on, everyone rejoices. Edwards appears from off camera doing the worm across the floor and Theo casually hands Hoyer a towel.

All that's left is the feedback from when the mic dropped.

[Cubswin11]

Didn’t we already have a multiple page thread earlier this offseason talking about projecting guys for next year with some of the same doom and gloom going on in here, this topic seems familiar?

 

 

Edit: yes, yes we did

 

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2504&p=315862#p315862

Edited December 7, 2018 by Cubswin11

[Brian]

NSB is a flat circle

[ConstableRabbit]

Bryce just needs to sign so we have something fun to talk about.

Day 1 of the Winter Meetings in Vegas:

 

Harper calls a press conference. Sits at a table with hats of the Phillies, Nats, Dodgers, Yankees in front of him. Says he has decided.

 

Then, Anthony Rizzo appears, flips the table. Kris Bryant walks out, hands Bryce a Cubs hat, he puts it on, everyone rejoices. Edwards appears from off camera doing the worm across the floor and Theo casually hands Hoyer a towel.

I don't want to live in a world where this scenario doesn't involve Strop high stepping.

[Tryptamine]

I'll side with Theo until proven wrong, but man it would look bad that with all this MLB talent hitting the back half of their team control and all these new revenue streams that the Cubs will be arguably sending a worse squad out opening day 2019 then they have the last 2 to 3 years.

I'm curious how it is a worse squad. The only person on offense who should decline based on age would be Zobrist. Rotation is nominally stronger with the addition of Hamels.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of the pen being worse. Morrow is already injured and should Darvish not be ready for opening day then you lose Montgomery as well. The pen gets gross real fast.

[Sammy Sofa]

NSB is a flat circle

 

You know it, baby:

 

[imb]

the problem is there's no scenario where the offense improves outside of trades/FA acquisitions

 

that's ok if everyone matches their 2018 production, but if Bryant and Contreras don't bounce back you really HAVE to have Baez maintain his numbers because you can't count on Zobrist to play a full season at the same level. All of a sudden a top-5 ish offense becomes a top 10-ish offense.

 

We good defensed (and good Hamelsed) our way into a solid rotation, but Lester was lucky all year and Hamels is just as likely to be a 4.50 ERA guy as he is to do what he did last year. With Darvish a total question mark and Quintana unreliable, it's reasonable to expect the rotation to be a real mess. You want to project Lester to be better this year than last year? Good luck to you.

 

Hendricks is one of the best Cubs pitchers of my lifetime but we have always been waiting on the other shoe to drop with him. Any loss of movement or control and who knows what he looks like. And he's the only one in the rotation we can remotely count on!

 

The bullpen is Carl (last seen looking like 50 Cent throwing the opening pitch,) Stop (who has outlived the use by date of 99.9 percent of middle relievers,) Monty (might have to be in the rotation) and ????? Any reliever who can get an out without dying is going to be out of gas by June.

 

there are scenarios where everyone is healthy and unbroken and we win our division

There are many more scenarios where some combination of unhealth and regression happens and the results are really ugly.

 

Knowing what we know about our roster given the age and regression and injury history of the keystone guys, are we more likely to be first-half cubs, or second-half cubs (OPS below .700 in Aug/Sept)

[Cubswin11]

Knowing what we know about our roster given the age and regression and injury history of the keystone guys, are we more likely to be first-half cubs, or second-half cubs (OPS below .700 in Aug/Sept)

Probably somewhere in the middle. With the team going through stretches of looking like both teams and ending up winning 90+ games.

[imb]

Knowing what we know about our roster given the age and regression and injury history of the keystone guys, are we more likely to be first-half cubs, or second-half cubs (OPS below .700 in Aug/Sept)

Probably somewhere in the middle. With the team going through stretches of looking like both teams and ending up winning 90+ games.

 

fans in every sport make this mistake every year. it almost always looks like this

"hey we should be fine, we're bringing back the same roster we had last year that was very good."

*other teams improve*

*injured guys are more injured*

*other guys get injured*

*weird declines happen suddenly or due to injury*

"horsefeathers we're a .500 team now"

[Sammy Sofa]

ending up winning 90+ games.

 

[Cubswin11]

Knowing what we know about our roster given the age and regression and injury history of the keystone guys, are we more likely to be first-half cubs, or second-half cubs (OPS below .700 in Aug/Sept)

Probably somewhere in the middle. With the team going through stretches of looking like both teams and ending up winning 90+ games.

 

fans in every sport make this mistake every year. it almost always looks like this

"hey we should be fine, we're bringing back the same roster we had last year that was very good."

*other teams improve*

*injured guys are more injured*

*other guys get injured*

*weird declines happen suddenly or due to injury*

"horsefeathers we're a .500 team now"

We certainly could be the 2018 Nats next year, that would be such an extreme but possible. Even with some minor additions (bullpen arm or two, backup C, back MIF, OF shuffled in/out, etc) I’d feel pretty confident we’re winning 90+ games.

 

Fans overreacting to 2 bad months of offense and ignoring the team won 95 games also happens every year. All I’m hoping for is we roughly split the difference between up to August offense and Aug/Sept offense, which I think is very reasonable and likely all we need to be quite good.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Cubswin11

[Sammy Sofa]

Fans overeating to 2 bad months of offense

 

Way harsh.

 

[jersey cubs fan]

Didn’t we already have a multiple page thread earlier this offseason talking about projecting guys for next year with some of the same doom and gloom going on in here, this topic seems familiar?

 

 

Edit: yes, yes we did

 

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2504&p=315862#p315862

that was during the season/collapse. Today is a new day.

[Cubswin11]

Fans overeating to 2 bad months of offense

 

Way harsh.

 

horsefeathering autocorrect.

 

Anyways, this is a dumb hypothetical but it would be interesting to me to see the sentiment surrounding the team currently if the season was flipped. What if the bad 2 months of offense happened to start the year through May then from June to the finish we were the great offense but we still ended up with the same results of 95 wins and a WC loss. Like would be in love with where this team was going because of the hot finish? Because the offense was really, really good for a longer stretch than it was bad last year. The bad offense is more recent though and sticks in our minds. I still think we are closer to the really good up to August offense than whatever the hell the last 2 months were moving forward in to this year.

 

Idk, just an interesting way to look at it to try and find a more favorable view of things.

[Sammy Sofa]

Wasn't their power lacking pretty much all of last year?

[Banedon]

Wasn't their power lacking pretty much all of last year?

 

Aren't we blaming Chili for a lot of that?

[Sammy Sofa]

Blaming...hoping...praying...

[imb]

Fans overeating to 2 bad months of offense

 

Way harsh.

 

horsefeathering autocorrect.

 

Anyways, this is a dumb hypothetical but it would be interesting to me to see the sentiment surrounding the team currently if the season was flipped. What if the bad 2 months of offense happened to start the year through May then from June to the finish we were the great offense but we still ended up with the same results of 95 wins and a WC loss. Like would be in love with where this team was going because of the hot finish? Because the offense was really, really good for a longer stretch than it was bad last year. The bad offense is more recent though and sticks in our minds. I still think we are closer to the really good up to August offense than whatever the hell the last 2 months were moving forward in to this year.

 

Idk, just an interesting way to look at it to try and find a more favorable view of things.

 

it's a useless hypothetical

 

yeah sure, if the offense was bad and people were injured in april and may and then everyone was healthy and the offense was good at the end of the year we'd all be feeling a little bit better.

 

the context matters - it wasn't like the offense fell apart and there was no explanation for it.

[Cubswin11]

Wasn't their power lacking pretty much all of last year?

By Dongs, yes. We were 21st in Dongs at the ASB, other power metrics we were better at though 7th in SLG and 14th in ISO at the ASB (we also led all of MLB in position player WAR at the ASB, fwiw). Then starting in August it all went to horsefeathers.

[Cubswin11]

 

Way harsh.

 

horsefeathering autocorrect.

 

Anyways, this is a dumb hypothetical but it would be interesting to me to see the sentiment surrounding the team currently if the season was flipped. What if the bad 2 months of offense happened to start the year through May then from June to the finish we were the great offense but we still ended up with the same results of 95 wins and a WC loss. Like would be in love with where this team was going because of the hot finish? Because the offense was really, really good for a longer stretch than it was bad last year. The bad offense is more recent though and sticks in our minds. I still think we are closer to the really good up to August offense than whatever the hell the last 2 months were moving forward in to this year.

 

Idk, just an interesting way to look at it to try and find a more favorable view of things.

 

it's a useless hypothetical

 

yeah sure, if the offense was bad and people were injured in april and may and then everyone was healthy and the offense was good at the end of the year we'd all be feeling a little bit better.

 

the context matters - it wasn't like the offense fell apart and there was no explanation for it.

If the context is just Chili and the death march killing the offense from August on it makes you feel a lot better about where we are at.