Is it time to trade Bellinger?

[chibears55]

4 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Why

Well, with the upcoming top prospects that are ready/near ready there will be a bit of a log jam in the outfield.

Happ, Bellinger, Suzuki, Tauchman 

PCA, Caissie, Alcantara etc.

Eventually someone gotta be moved

[chibears55]

9 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

The thread is about if the Cubs should trade Bellinger now. My answer is no. I don’t think they should sell at all, and especially not now. As for what they should buy, that is a different topic. I do think if they buy, the LT threshold won’t be an issue. I think they will go over it. But again, that really isn’t the point of this discussion. 

You asked a poster why they couldn't be buyers ?

I simply responded to your question why they might not be

Edited June 11, 2024 by chibears55

[Ding Dong Johnson]

10 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Well, with the upcoming top prospects that are ready/near ready there will be a bit of a log jam in the outfield.

Happ, Bellinger, Suzuki, Tauchman 

PCA, Caissie, Alcantara etc.

Eventually someone gotta be moved

I'm still waiting for the "too many shortstops" problem to get worked out.

[squally1313]

10 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Well, with the upcoming top prospects that are ready/near ready there will be a bit of a log jam in the outfield.

Happ, Bellinger, Suzuki, Tauchman 

PCA, Caissie, Alcantara etc.

Eventually someone gotta be moved

Eh. A year ago right now PCA had an .880 OPS in AAA. We still haven't had to 'clear a spot' for him. Caissie is at .866 right now, with much bigger defensive questions. Alcantara has a .305 OBP in AA. Under your theory we should have cleared a spot for Brennen Davis a few years back. 

I hope these kids force some tough decisions, don't get me wrong. But trying to salary dump Ian Happ who 1. isn't overpaid, 2. has a NTC, and 3. is already giving you above average production just because those guys are making lists seems pretty rash.

[Tryptamine]

44 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

I completely agree. Don’t understand the references to the Cubs as not being good enough because for 5 weeks they have been playing not great baseball. Funny thing is that is probably the same people who were praising as a possible great team for playing great baseball the first 5 weeks of the season. Same guys. Same team. So which is it, are they great or do they suck? It is almost like people have never followed a baseball team thru an entire year.
My guess is they are somewhere in the middle. Pretty good. And as you just said, pretty good gives them a chance at winning the NL. 

I think a lot of us were saying it was smoke and mirrors and were shocked by how they were still putting up the record they were while waiting for the big names to return from injury.

[CubinNY]

Yeah, the thing about Happ, Suzuki, and even Belli is that they are good players to have on a team, but not good enough that they are going to fetch a return for anything other than a lottery ticket or an underproducer with a pedigree. 

The Cubs are less than the sum of their parts right now due to injuries, underperformance, bad luck (oh my!!), and maybe not bad management, but bad accountability (I don't know). 

They certainly can turn things around. The ASB might be just what the Dr. asked for. Rest, relax, reset. 

[chibears55]

Sounds like they won't be adding much if anything from the outside 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Sounds like they will add several outside guys.

[KCCub]

2 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Sounds like they won't be adding much if anything from the outside 

He's just saying that overall, the internal players will be responsible for how well this team does. Which is true. 

 

 

[Tryptamine]

13 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Sounds like they won't be adding much if anything from the outside 

It's only been 5 years, we all need more patience. With that said, Hoyer can put together a farm but he's complete dog horsefeathers on putting a team together in FA.

Edited June 11, 2024 by Tryptamine

[squally1313]

Just now, Tryptamine said:

It's only been 5 years, we all need more patience. With that said, Hoyer can put together a farm but he's complete dogshit on putting a team together in FA.

Did you not see the other tweet

[CubinNY]

Just now, Tryptamine said:

It's only been 5 years, we all need more patience. With that said, Hoyer can put together a farm but he's complete dogshit on putting a team together in FA.

In all fairness to him, it's a tough road to plow. But yeah, I don't think he's done a very good job to this point. 

[Tryptamine]

9 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Did you not see the other tweet

I did and it wasn't even solely based on that tweet. The fact is, he continues to preach patience which you cannot do over 5 years and continually completely botch FA while being too scared of your own shadow to make impact trades.  I do believe he'll probably make a trade or two, but it's not going to be an impact player.

[KCCub]

1 hour ago, squally1313 said:

The last three NL Champions have had 84, 87, and 88 wins. Would you not enjoy that because they didn't win 100 games?

Looking at these three teams, I think we can get an idea on what to expect our deadline to look like:

Arizona 2023
Hitting - 18th wRC+ 
SP - 14th fWAR
RP - 24th fWAR
Fielding - 2nd fDEF 
Deadline adds - Sewald/Pham/Jace Peterson/Strzelecki

Phillies 2022
Hitting - 10th wRC+
SP - 2nd fWAR
RP - 9th fWAR
Fielding - 28th fDEF
Deadline adds - Marsh/Syndergaard/Robertson

Braves 2021
Hitting - 12th wRC+
SP - 13th fWAR
RP - 13th fWAR
Fielding - 15th fDEF
Deadline adds - Joc/Soler/Rosario/Duvall

Cubs 2024
Hitting - 17th wRC+
SP - 11th fWAR
RP - 22nd fWAR
Fielding - 24th fDEF

[Tryptamine]

I'd be thrilled if they added a pen arm as good as Sewald.

[Rcal10]

3 minutes ago, KCCub said:

Looking at these three teams, I think we can get an idea on what to expect our deadline to look like:

Arizona 2023
Hitting - 18th wRC+ 
SP - 14th fWAR
RP - 24th fWAR
Fielding - 2nd fDEF 
Deadline adds - Sewald/Pham/Jace Peterson/Strzelecki

Phillies 2022
Hitting - 10th wRC+
SP - 2nd fWAR
RP - 9th fWAR
Fielding - 28th fDEF
Deadline adds - Marsh/Syndergaard/Robertson

Braves 2021
Hitting - 12th wRC+
SP - 13th fWAR
RP - 13th fWAR
Fielding - 15th fDEF
Deadline adds - Joc/Soler/Rosario/Duvall

Cubs 2024
Hitting - 17th wRC+
SP - 11th fWAR
RP - 22nd fWAR
Fielding - 24th fDEF

Probably so. 

[UMFan83]

5 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

Why aren’t they good enough to be buyers? So are only 4 teams in the NL buyers? Maybe they don’t make a bold move that a sure playoff team makes, but I don’t see why they would sell. They are 3 games better than last year at this time.. And last year after 93 games they were 7 games under .500. And they didn’t sell. If the question is “is now the time to trade Bellinger” the answer is absolutely not. Maybe if they are 6-8 under 500 near the deadline they do that. But not at this time. 
 

You are right in that the Cubs are in a group of 8 teams that are all within 2 games of each other and fighting for 2 playoff spots.  You are right that we were in a worse situation last year and managed to barely avoid being sellers by ripping off a 50-28 stretch (essentially playing like a 104 win team for 2.5 months).  So as of right now they shouldn't sell.  If they are in a similar position at the deadline they should buy.  But chances are, out of those 8 teams, 2-3 of them are likely to go on a run (and the Cubs could absolutely be one of those 2-3 teams that get hot.).  And most of those 8 teams will also possibly buy.   

I'm not even sure what my point is other than the fact we're going to likely have to play quite a bit better over the next 6 weeks to remain in similar playoff positioning.  Last year we dug ourselves such a big hole that we had to play like world beaters for almost half the season.  This season the hole isn't as big but we're probably not going to be able to play .500 baseball and expect to buy when we get to late July and teams are starting to sell off.

[squally1313]

2 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

I did and it wasn't even solely based on that tweet. The fact is, he continues to preach patience which you cannot do over 5 years and continually completely botch FA while being too scared of your own shadow to make impact trades.  I do believe he'll probably make a trade or two, but it's not going to be an impact player.

To me, it's really not the FA and trading markets that cause concern. Sure, Mancini/Hosmer/Barnhart are all memes by now, but obviously no one thinks that finding different versions of those moves was going to make some huge difference. You're talking like, 300 PAs total. 

In terms of mid-season work, he stuck with the old core, in my opinion, as long as he should have, and then sold them off for some pretty solid prospects and watched them all regress almost immediately. When the team become relatively competitive again last year, he went out and got the best hitter acquired on the market, who then was pretty mediocre. 

In terms of his big offseason signings, Dansby remains the SS with the most fWAR since the beginning of 2023 of that group that was available. Shota has essentially matched Yamamoto so far this year. Taillon has been worth 2.1 fWAR in 200 innings since we signed him....not great, hardly some disaster. Bellinger was a good signing before 2023, obviously, remains to be seen going forward. Suzuki is probably...on the fence right now, but a lot of that is injury based.

For me, the concern to date isn't his performance in the market, it's that he's had to spread the money so thin to cover so many spots because the player development was frankly garbage for like 5 years there. It's starting to show results (Steele, Hoerner, Brown maybe?), but having to go out and pay market rates as often as we have keeps you from committing $40m/year on a true stud. The current crop is good, according to everyone. But...they haven't shown it yet.

[chibears55]

19 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Sounds like they will add several outside guys.

I hope so, but we hear this alot and then when the time comes we get a couple of contract expiring mids.

 

[Rcal10]

11 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

I hope so, but we hear this alot and then when the time comes we get a couple of contract expiring mids.

 

For the record, I don’t think they make a big move (high end) at the deadline, either. I just don’t think they sell. As for Jed’s comments, he could add a pen arm, a guy who gives them something off the bench, an inning eating starting pitcher and that would be considered all sorts of upgrades. But it still wouldn’t be a big splash. I think something like that is as big as can be expected.
 

[731.4life]

23 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

For the record, I don’t think they make a big move (high end) at the deadline, either. I just don’t think they sell. As for Jed’s comments, he could add a pen arm, a guy who gives them something off the bench, an inning eating starting pitcher and that would be considered all sorts of upgrades. But it still wouldn’t be a big splash. I think something like that is as big as can be expected.
 

Because at the end of the day, as long as they're a mediocre wild card team, then everyone is happy!

[Rcal10]

2 hours ago, 731.4life said:

Because at the end of the day, as long as they're a mediocre wild card team, then everyone is happy!

Honestly, what would you expect them to do? Look at what other teams in their spot have done. They aren’t going to give away higher end prospects for rentals, and they shouldn’t. There is nothing they can do to make them into a team that will challenge the Dodgers, Braves or Phillies for wins. So there isn’t a reason to deplete the farm to add guys to try catching those teams. A team that might catch the Brewers or at the very least is a wild card team is the best they can do. So why isn’t making smaller moves to improve the team such a bad idea. Seemed to work for the last 3 teams who went to the WS in the NL. 

[731.4life]

3 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

Honestly, what would you expect them to do? Look at what other teams in their spot have done. They aren’t going to give away higher end prospects for rentals, and they shouldn’t. There is nothing they can do to make them into a team that will challenge the Dodgers, Braves or Phillies for wins. So there isn’t a reason to deplete the farm to add guys to try catching those teams. A team that might catch the Brewers or at the very least is a wild card team is the best they can do. So why isn’t making smaller moves to improve the team such a bad idea. Seemed to work for the last 3 teams who went to the WS in the NL. 

I would expect them to sell. Not much else to say.

[Rcal10]

On 6/11/2024 at 7:04 PM, 731.4life said:

I would expect them to sell. Not much else to say.

So only buy when you are a team that wins 100 games. Otherwise sell. Great idea. No sense being a team who wins 84-90 games. Those teams never make it to the WS! Right????? 

[731.4life]

10 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

So only buy when you are a team that wins 100 games. Otherwise sell. Great idea. No sense being a team who wins 84-90 games. Those teams never make it to the WS! Right????? 

I was going to drop this conversation until you replied back, so I'm going to give you my take.

You're not fooling me, I do realized the last three NL Champions have won less than 90 games in the NL. What I also realized that two of those teams were Atlanta and Philadelphia. Two teams that are far more superior talent wise than what the current Chicago Cubs are in. They have MVP caliber players, the Cubs do not. When it comes to Arizona, the only reason why Arizona made the playoffs was due to the Cubs going 7-14 in their last 21 games, with 3 of those 7 games coming from a sweep from Colorado. No sense of living in that past all over again.

It's not all about the results, which is something I do believe fans get caught up in, it's about how the Cubs play against  their opponents. They could've/should've won today, and take 2 of 3 against Tampa Bay, and it doesn't change my mind about how they're playing. Yes, they swept the White Sox in that two game series at Wrigley, but they still played like dog crap. 

They can't hit, they can't play defense, especially at 3rd and catcher positions, and they have a bad bullpen. All of those things will not get replaced or get better over the 90+ remaining games left in the season. At some point, they are who they are, and in my opinion, that "same point" is here. 

I know your theory, try to get to 84+ wins and to get in the playoffs and "see what happens." Which some how worked for Arizona last year by beating a depleted Dodger team in their starting pitching, a Phillies team that tried to hit a 3-run home run with no one on base. It ended up getting them to the World Series, before losing to Texas in 5 games because they don't have the players like Texas does, and it was obvious. Arizona was outmatched.  If you want to "buy small" at the deadline, then go ahead, but it doesn't cover up the issues at other spots.