Trade Happ?

[CubinNY]

 

lol okay man. I get it, you've got your arbitrary payroll number that qualifies as trying to win, and anything below that is complete abandonment of on field product. All actual spending that happens is explained as farming for trades until they meet that marker, regardless of how little sense that might actually make compared to more sensible explanations. It's just Ricketts anger all the way down regardless of topic or circumstance, your worldview has been made clear.

There were clear opportunities to upgrade in free agency. I honestly have no clue why the went after Suzuki and Stroman if they are choosing to surround them with replacements. The Cubs have 2 starting pitchers and Happ, Nico, Wilson and Suzuki. They are great at building a pen, but at some point their luck is going leave. They are intent on letting Wilson leave and the consensus seems to be to trade Happ.

 

They have no stars to trade and teams seem to be coveting prospect. As you noted, the FA market isn’t great. The team is on the road to at least three more years of awful on top of last year and this year.

 

Who else is to blame if not the Ricketts?

 

The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender.

 

If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild:

 

-On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood.

-In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur

-They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some)

-Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball

 

Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface.

As much as I hate it, they need to trade Wilson rather than letting him hit FA. He's about the only "tradable" asset that will bring in good value that is not more than three years away from MLB. Maybe Happ, but he's a really nice complimentary player and not someone who will command a good prospect or two. Short of that would they consider trading Hendricks and what would he bring back?

[d_money]

There were clear opportunities to upgrade in free agency. I honestly have no clue why the went after Suzuki and Stroman if they are choosing to surround them with replacements. The Cubs have 2 starting pitchers and Happ, Nico, Wilson and Suzuki. They are great at building a pen, but at some point their luck is going leave. They are intent on letting Wilson leave and the consensus seems to be to trade Happ.

 

They have no stars to trade and teams seem to be coveting prospect. As you noted, the FA market isn’t great. The team is on the road to at least three more years of awful on top of last year and this year.

 

Who else is to blame if not the Ricketts?

 

The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender.

 

If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild:

 

-On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood.

-In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur

-They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some)

-Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball

 

Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface.

As much as I hate it, they need to trade Wilson rather than letting him hit FA. He's about the only "tradable" asset that will bring in good value that is not more than three years away from MLB. Maybe Happ, but he's a really nice complimentary player and not someone who will command a good prospect or two. Short of that would they consider trading Hendricks and what would he bring back?

Kyle is totally affordable and under control next year and vesting option for 24. Maybe to a contending team like the Twins or Dodgers

[Backtobanks]

 

lol okay man. I get it, you've got your arbitrary payroll number that qualifies as trying to win, and anything below that is complete abandonment of on field product. All actual spending that happens is explained as farming for trades until they meet that marker, regardless of how little sense that might actually make compared to more sensible explanations. It's just Ricketts anger all the way down regardless of topic or circumstance, your worldview has been made clear.

There were clear opportunities to upgrade in free agency. I honestly have no clue why the went after Suzuki and Stroman if they are choosing to surround them with replacements. The Cubs have 2 starting pitchers and Happ, Nico, Wilson and Suzuki. They are great at building a pen, but at some point their luck is going leave. They are intent on letting Wilson leave and the consensus seems to be to trade Happ.

 

They have no stars to trade and teams seem to be coveting prospect. As you noted, the FA market isn’t great. The team is on the road to at least three more years of awful on top of last year and this year.

 

Who else is to blame if not the Ricketts?

 

The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender.

 

If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild:

 

-On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood.

-In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur

-They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some)

-Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball

 

Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface.

 

You said yourself that that team had the pieces to trade for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, Hendricks, Russell, Edwards, Grimm, etc. Where are the tradable pieces on this team? We are miles behind the situation in 2012 and we don't have Theo's competence to save us.

[UMFan83]

There were clear opportunities to upgrade in free agency. I honestly have no clue why the went after Suzuki and Stroman if they are choosing to surround them with replacements. The Cubs have 2 starting pitchers and Happ, Nico, Wilson and Suzuki. They are great at building a pen, but at some point their luck is going leave. They are intent on letting Wilson leave and the consensus seems to be to trade Happ.

 

They have no stars to trade and teams seem to be coveting prospect. As you noted, the FA market isn’t great. The team is on the road to at least three more years of awful on top of last year and this year.

 

Who else is to blame if not the Ricketts?

 

The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender.

 

If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild:

 

-On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood.

-In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur

-They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some)

-Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball

 

Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface.

 

You said yourself that that team had the pieces to trade for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, Hendricks, Russell, Edwards, Grimm, etc. Where are the tradable pieces on this team? We are miles behind the situation in 2012 and we don't have Theo's competence to save us.

 

Pieces traded for these players were Scott Feldman, Steve Clevenger, Luis Valbuena, Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel (not on 2012 Cubs), and Ryan Dempster.

 

This years Cubs team could theoretically trade Hendricks, Smyly, Miley, Robertson, Givens, Coldplay dude, Contreras, Happ, Villar and Frazier. Not saying they would trade all of them or that they would all get as much value as they got from the guys mentioned in 2012 (FO had a ridiculously high hit rate on trades), but they definitely have enough tradeable pieces on the team.

[squally1313]

I think this thread took a little turn towards 'Bash the Ricketts' which...never really going to have much of a problem with that.

 

My original point was that Ian Happ in May 2022 isn't going to get you anything substantial because it's basically just like, 6-8 weeks of success going back to the end of last year. If he throws a couple 'NL player of the week's in there like he's been known to do and the rest of the team still looks totally hopeless, then you can explore trading him for a more legitimate return as we get closer to the deadline. If he keeps chugging along in the low-mid 800s for OPS, and maybe you can start to squint and see a path to contention for next year (which, let's face it, is 80% 'the reds and pirates are terrible, the cardinals are old, and the brewers are super reliant on pitching which breaks'), then it becomes, to TTs point a question of 'do I get more from a mid level package of prospects than I would from Happ putting up 2.5ish wins for a team that may be a fringe contender? People seem real willing to just dump the entire (bad) ML roster to (therefore not incredible) prospects while also trashing the organization for not producing anything of value coming through the system.

 

Happ is here, he's going to give you 2+ wins this year barring injury, and he'll be projected for the same next year. He will not, right now, get you anything of substance on the trade market.

[Cubswin11]

 

The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender.

 

If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild:

 

-On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood.

-In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur

-They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some)

-Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball

 

Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface.

 

You said yourself that that team had the pieces to trade for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, Hendricks, Russell, Edwards, Grimm, etc. Where are the tradable pieces on this team? We are miles behind the situation in 2012 and we don't have Theo's competence to save us.

 

Pieces traded for these players were Scott Feldman, Steve Clevenger, Luis Valbuena, Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel (not on 2012 Cubs), and Ryan Dempster.

 

This years Cubs team could theoretically trade Hendricks, Smyly, Miley, Robertson, Givens, Coldplay dude, Contreras, Happ, Villar and Frazier. Not saying they would trade all of them or that they would all get as much value as they got from the guys mentioned in 2012 (FO had a ridiculously high hit rate on trades), but they definitely have enough tradeable pieces on the team.

And, ya know, they traded players all better than anyone traded mentioned above last year and got some really highly regarded prospects. It’s not like this year is the first year they’re trying to trade/flip stuff.