Building around a new Correa? (Signed with the Twins for 3/$105m)

[UK]

You're disillusioned about the state of the farm?

 

It's a middle of the road farm system right now. It can be a blessing or a curse at the bulk of the talent is at A and lower.

 

The farm system is of a lesser concern than the lack of talent at the majors.

 

If you're going to be rebuild, need a top farm system and a willingness to spend for elite players in their prime. Right now, they don't appear to have either.

Stroman and Hendricks have been top 25 pitchers for like the last 5-6 years. Stroman, Hendricks and Miley project for over 9 WAR combined, Suzuki could be a star and there’s a lot of favorable projections, Madrigal might be the best contact hitter in baseball, the catching duo is probably top 3-5 in MLB, Frank/Wisdom/Ortega/etc might be real things, Nico is an elite defender and may be a good hitter/overall valuable player, Happ is still young enough for a breakout. There is talent on the major league roster. They still might suck, likely will, but there’s talent.

 

You're projecting everything to go right to get to what 85 wins at most.

 

My brain is struggling to compute that you think they will likely suck but have talent. Even the perennial dwellers have talent just not enough, including the Cubs

[Bertz]

Other teams have young/raw prospects too, guys. "Well yeah, it's average now, but a couple of these young players will hopefully get better at baseball, and meanwhile the other 29 teams will just...pass on developing their young talent? and voila, top 5 system!"

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-49-prospects-chicago-cubs-2/

 

The Cubs have 8 teenagers who are a 45 (a Generic Team's Top 10) caliber or better, and 4 of those are 50's (Top 100 Caliber). No other team FG has done so far has more than 4.

 

Like I get that you wanna complain, nothing from the last 3-4 years makes that unreasonable, but you don't have to pull things out of your ass to complain about?

[Cubswin11]

 

It's a middle of the road farm system right now. It can be a blessing or a curse at the bulk of the talent is at A and lower.

 

The farm system is of a lesser concern than the lack of talent at the majors.

 

If you're going to be rebuild, need a top farm system and a willingness to spend for elite players in their prime. Right now, they don't appear to have either.

Stroman and Hendricks have been top 25 pitchers for like the last 5-6 years. Stroman, Hendricks and Miley project for over 9 WAR combined, Suzuki could be a star and there’s a lot of favorable projections, Madrigal might be the best contact hitter in baseball, the catching duo is probably top 3-5 in MLB, Frank/Wisdom/Ortega/etc might be real things, Nico is an elite defender and may be a good hitter/overall valuable player, Happ is still young enough for a breakout. There is talent on the major league roster. They still might suck, likely will, but there’s talent.

 

You're projecting everything to go right to get to what 85 wins at most.

 

My brain is struggling to compute that you think they will likely suck but have talent. Even the perennial dwellers have talent just not enough, including the Cubs

I’m not arguing they will be good, they probably are a 70 something win team. But things could break right and your premise that there’s absolutely no MLB talent is wrong. Especially on the pitching side.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

there is absolutely not a very real chance of that, come on

 

probably are 5-6 guys that could have a chance to make the jump, sure, but very remote odds that they'll all explode on the scene in concert

 

I'll use Fangraphs grades/rankings since it goes very deep in a sortable way. In their updated 2022 rankings, there are 114 players with a FV of 50 or better and 5 are Cubs. Drop down to 45 grade(which includes 45 and their "45+" designation), and there are 213 players and 16 are Cubs, most of any org. It doesn't strike as particularly far-fetched that 3 of those top 5 play well(or hold steady and others fall off/graduate) and 2-3 of the subsequent 11 take a big leap, or some combination therein.

ok only focusing on the one service that's anomalously higher than the rest and assuming positive outcomes throughout paints a bright picture

 

in our rose colored daydreams last year at this time Amaya's and Marquez's and Franklin's arms stayed intact and Howard learned how to hit a baseball so who knows maybe the opposite is likely to happen this year with everybody's development, i just know i really wouldn't bet much on it

 

I mean if you know of another source that you can do a similar exercise with to help understand the system's depth and future potential, go for it! I don't know where another is or I'm not subscribed to it.

 

But the overriding point here is that this is a bit different than standard optimism that a normal amount of rookie ball talents all pan out at once. The Cubs had started digging out of the hole they made for the farm a year or two ago, and then traded 3 guys who could've gotten QO's plus Darvish for prospects in the span of a few months, there's a lot of depth even relative to other orgs.

[UK]

Stroman and Hendricks have been top 25 pitchers for like the last 5-6 years. Stroman, Hendricks and Miley project for over 9 WAR combined, Suzuki could be a star and there’s a lot of favorable projections, Madrigal might be the best contact hitter in baseball, the catching duo is probably top 3-5 in MLB, Frank/Wisdom/Ortega/etc might be real things, Nico is an elite defender and may be a good hitter/overall valuable player, Happ is still young enough for a breakout. There is talent on the major league roster. They still might suck, likely will, but there’s talent.

 

You're projecting everything to go right to get to what 85 wins at most.

 

My brain is struggling to compute that you think they will likely suck but have talent. Even the perennial dwellers have talent just not enough, including the Cubs

I’m not arguing they will be good, they probably are a 70 something win team. But things could break right and your premise that there’s absolutely no MLB talent is wrong. Especially on the pitching side.

 

It's semantics at this point. They have talent both in the majors and in the farm, just not enough to be successful.

 

They also have the resources to be more successful and refuse to utilize them, which is more frustrating.

[jersey cubs fan]

Stroman and Hendricks have been top 25 pitchers for like the last 5-6 years. Stroman, Hendricks and Miley project for over 9 WAR combined, Suzuki could be a star and there’s a lot of favorable projections, Madrigal might be the best contact hitter in baseball, the catching duo is probably top 3-5 in MLB, Frank/Wisdom/Ortega/etc might be real things, Nico is an elite defender and may be a good hitter/overall valuable player, Happ is still young enough for a breakout. There is talent on the major league roster. They still might suck, likely will, but there’s talent.

 

You're projecting everything to go right to get to what 85 wins at most.

 

My brain is struggling to compute that you think they will likely suck but have talent. Even the perennial dwellers have talent just not enough, including the Cubs

I’m not arguing they will be good, they probably are a 70 something win team. But things could break right and your premise that there’s absolutely no MLB talent is wrong. Especially on the pitching side.

It's a major league baseball team, of course there is a talent. Jim Hendry's teams had talent too. Your collection of talent is measured against other talented major league teams and the other teams have a lot more talent than the Cubs. Pointing out a professional sports organization has talented personnel is pointless.

[squally1313]

Other teams have young/raw prospects too, guys. "Well yeah, it's average now, but a couple of these young players will hopefully get better at baseball, and meanwhile the other 29 teams will just...pass on developing their young talent? and voila, top 5 system!"

 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-49-prospects-chicago-cubs-2/

 

The Cubs have 8 teenagers who are a 45 (a Generic Team's Top 10) caliber or better, and 4 of those are 50's (Top 100 Caliber). No other team FG has done so far has more than 4.

 

Like I get that you wanna complain, nothing from the last 3-4 years makes that unreasonable, but you don't have to pull things out of your ass to complain about?

Fine, I'll slightly modify my point. I assume that the other sites who are putting the Cubs somewhere around the middle of the pack aren't just ignoring the lower levels of the minors. That would be pretty ridiculous as they aren't 'AA/AAA Rankings'. So it stands to reason that what they are doing is more heavily discounting the future success of those lower level guys than FG is. Given attrition rates and frankly, our success level at producing talent outside of top 10 overall draft picks (read: terrible), I'm going to side with them. And that's ignoring the fact that an FV of 45 means that these dudes project to, eventually, become the next Hoerner/Madrigal/etc level players of the 2025 Cubs. Yay.

[Tryptamine]

there is absolutely not a very real chance of that, come on

 

probably are 5-6 guys that could have a chance to make the jump, sure, but very remote odds that they'll all explode on the scene in concert

 

A lot of rankings already have Brennan Davis and Cristian Hernandez in there. Triantos, PCA and Alcantara have also appeared on a list or two. Figure in guys like Caissie and Preciado I'm not really sure where the argument is.

[imb]

at least there's something new to look at i guess?

 

im not optimistic about the team (obviously) but stroman and suzuki will be cool. Maybe Davis comes up at some point and impresses. I'm not going to watch most of the games or anything but im interested in the season because it's important that they at least show some progress and upside.

 

We can all keep wishing they would have signed correa and whoever else, or we can accept that it didn't happen and realize that they're going for the rome wasn't built in a day approach. I wish they would have gone for it all this offseason but they didn't. Hopefully the win 80 games this year and the guys who are longterm pieces are healthy and good going into next offseason to give us some momentum to keep adding to the roster.

 

you can squint and put yourself back in 2013 or whatever when the most important thing was that the prospects all kept developing so we'd at least get a few of them up and cranking. That's how we ended up in 2016 with a core sort of coalescing and them topping it off with zobrist, heyward (lol) and adding chapman to the mix midseason. It's not ideal but it's what we've got.

[David]

there is absolutely not a very real chance of that, come on

 

probably are 5-6 guys that could have a chance to make the jump, sure, but very remote odds that they'll all explode on the scene in concert

 

A lot of rankings already have Brennan Davis and Cristian Hernandez in there. Triantos, PCA and Alcantara have also appeared on a list or two. Figure in guys like Caissie and Preciado I'm not really sure where the argument is.

 

yeah, i think law even said something to the effect of them having 5-6 guys who could not only break in but be more towards the middle of the midseason list than at the back end.

[sneakypower]

the optimistic take being that we're unlikely to do better than 3rd place in a weak division, but(!) there's help on the horizon with some talented kids who mostly haven't even seen stateside competition yet, so come.. 2025? you can start to conceive of a manner we'll have some pieces in place to put up a fight

 

kinda bleak if you ask me

[SpongeWorthy]

on the one hand dreaming on the farm system is probably hopeless coping

 

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum when we are 10 gb from the 3rd wild card in July

[sneakypower]

at least there's something new to look at i guess?

 

im not optimistic about the team (obviously) but stroman and suzuki will be cool.

makes sense for a moment til you reason that instead of Schwarber Darvish Bryant doing nice things sometimes, you just have a couple new guys to provide a few compelling moments on a kinda dog horsefeathers team

 

in actuality you get to May and you're sick to death watching Andrelton Simmons pop out so you steadily tune out for the remainder of it

[Sammy Sofa]

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum

 

Sir, how DARE you.

[jersey cubs fan]

on the one hand dreaming on the farm system is probably hopeless coping

 

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum when we are 10 gb from the 3rd wild card in July

Are people saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless or pointing out that it is pathetic that we're back to this so soon? Over half the Ricketts' ownership era has been about dreaming on the farm system.

[minnesotacubsfan]

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum

 

Sir, how DARE you.

 

right? I mean most of us cant even read

[Derwood]

on the one hand dreaming on the farm system is probably hopeless coping

 

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum when we are 10 gb from the 3rd wild card in July

 

NSBB has a minor league forum?

[jersey cubs fan]

on the one hand dreaming on the farm system is probably hopeless coping

 

on the other hand everyone in this thread saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless are gonna be reading the minor league forum when we are 10 gb from the 3rd wild card in July

 

NSBB has a minor league forum?

viewforum.php?f=2

[imb]

at least there's something new to look at i guess?

 

im not optimistic about the team (obviously) but stroman and suzuki will be cool.

makes sense for a moment til you reason that instead of Schwarber Darvish Bryant doing nice things sometimes, you just have a couple new guys to provide a few compelling moments on a kinda dog horsefeathers team

 

in actuality you get to May and you're sick to death watching Andrelton Simmons pop out so you steadily tune out for the remainder of it

 

i steadily tuned out the last 2-3 years too though with all those guys doing good stuff occasionally.

[jersey cubs fan]

at least there's something new to look at i guess?

 

im not optimistic about the team (obviously) but stroman and suzuki will be cool.

makes sense for a moment til you reason that instead of Schwarber Darvish Bryant doing nice things sometimes, you just have a couple new guys to provide a few compelling moments on a kinda dog horsefeathers team

 

in actuality you get to May and you're sick to death watching Andrelton Simmons pop out so you steadily tune out for the remainder of it

 

i steadily tuned out the last 2-3 years too though with all those guys doing good stuff occasionally.

The death row beat is a more enjoyable and uplifting experience than following the cubs.

[David]

 

this has to be the switching to boras horseshit right?

[jersey cubs fan]

either that or he read this thread title and was offended

[Sammy Sofa]

Probably just a cheap ass offer written on a gigantic piece of paper.

[UMFan83]

No love lost between Scott Boras and the Cubs that's for sure. I'm also wondering which side is leaking that. Is this a "see we tried" leak from the Cubs? I don't see why Correa would take essentially a 1 year deal from the Twins over a "huge offer" from the Cubs because his newly signed agent is butt hurt over previous clients

[David]

https://twitter.com/670TheScore/status/1511778754674282497?s=20&t=6LHJTQ1oTrfjc0eEymlcnQ

 

you can file this one under "duh" but it's nice to see reported anyway.