Braves (Smith-Shawver) @ Cubs (Brown) - 5/23/24, 1:20 CST, Marquee

[thawv]

18 hours ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

Wonder if his seat will ever get hot, seems like Ricketts is fine with mediocrity 

Jed's job as far as Ricketts goes is to manage Tom's money and put a team on the field.  Jed has most certainly done what Tom wants. 

[thawv]

17 hours ago, Outshined_One said:

The system has a handful of hitters in the high minors with really intriguing upsides who could become superstars in their own right some day, but the likelihood that any of them could come up and produce at that level this season is pretty low.

Take PCA as an example.  He was productive and useful, you can see the reason for the hype, but he clearly needs time to grow and improve.

If we extrapolate his WAR to 600 PA's, he a 4.75 win player.  He should be in CF every day right now. 

[JBears79]

13 minutes ago, thawv said:

If we extrapolate his WAR to 600 PA's, he a 4.75 win player.  He should be in CF every day right now. 

Pretty sure they are manipulating his service time right now. Its the only thing that makes sense as to why hes not playing right now.

[Bertz]

6 minutes ago, JBears79 said:

Pretty sure they are manipulating his service time right now. Its the only thing that makes sense as to why hes not playing right now.

The entire fanbase is having a meltdown about the offense slumping, but yeah the only possible explanation that makes sense for sending down PCA is service time manipulation.

[thawv]

7 minutes ago, JBears79 said:

Pretty sure they are manipulating his service time right now. Its the only thing that makes sense as to why hes not playing right now.

Sadly, I think that you're right.  This team is not about winning, or putting the best players on the field.  That's extremely obvious. 

[UMFan83]

wRC+ for May:

Wisdom - 162

Hoerner - 132

Bellinger - 121

Morel - 101

Happ - 95

Busch - 90

Tauchman - 78

Crow-Armstrong - 77

Swanson - 65

Madrigal - 62

Mastrobuoni - 52

Suzuki - 51

Amaya - 29

Gomes - 1

[Derwood]

56 minutes ago, thawv said:

If we extrapolate his WAR to 600 PA's, he a 4.75 win player.  He should be in CF every day right now. 

His WAR is almost entirely driven by his defense. He's not helping the offense

[thawv]

42 minutes ago, Derwood said:

His WAR is almost entirely driven by his defense. He's not helping the offense

I don't disagree.  But if we're looking to put the best overall players on the field, he most certainly is one of them.  

[squally1313]

21 minutes ago, thawv said:

I don't disagree.  But if we're looking to put the best overall players on the field, he most certainly is one of them.  

To be clear, if we're just basing this off of accumulated 2024 fWAR prorated out, that means the guy who goes to the bench is Morel (-0.1 fWAR). Tauchman has been our best player, Bellinger, Happ, Seiya are all positive contributors, Busch is our second best player. We all good with that? Struggling offense, Morel out, PCA in? Or do we want to mvoe the sample size again to fit arguments better.

[Bertz]

Everyone remember that episode of the office where Andy wants to date Pam, and Jim gives her just the absolute worst advice by pointing him towards all these things she hates?  That's kind of what this morning feels like, people just throwing out the absolute worst ideas for fixing the team, to the point that it's gotta be a bit.

[We Got The Whole 9]

8 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Everyone remember that episode of the office where Andy wants to date Pam, and Jim gives her just the absolute worst advice by pointing him towards all these things she hates?  That's kind of what this morning feels like, people just throwing out the absolute worst ideas for fixing the team, to the point that it's gotta be a bit.

I honestly don't know if not starting Morel is a bad move. Do you just wait for the tide to turn with his stats/xstats? If he doesn't absolutely mash he's pretty much not helping the team. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

9 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

I honestly don't know if not starting Morel is a bad move. Do you just wait for the tide to turn with his stats/xstats? If he doesn't absolutely mash he's pretty much not helping the team. 

Morel had a 114 wRC+ at the MLB level entering this year, and had a 114 wRC+ for the season less than 2 weeks ago.  

A lot of the dialogue around the team(and this is basically any time results go poorly) is people asking questions about certain players or the team as a whole that carry the implication 'well you can't just wait/do nothing', when the answer is that you absolutely can and should in many/most cases.

[Bertz]

3 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

I honestly don't know if not starting Morel is a bad move. Do you just wait for the tide to turn with his stats/xstats? If he doesn't absolutely mash he's pretty much not helping the team. 

Do you have a tangible reason to expect his actual numbers to not match his expected numbers?  He's not fat and slow, he's not hitting too many balls into the large part of the park (in fact he's quite good about pulling the ball),  he doesn't have a history of it previously.  If not then why would you bench him?  Just because your frustration has bubbled over?

[Bertz]

3 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Morel had a 114 wRC+ at the MLB level entering this year, and had a 114 wRC+ for the season less than 2 weeks ago.  

A lot of the dialogue around the team(and this is basically any time results go poorly) is people asking questions about certain players or the team as a whole that carry the implication 'well you can't just wait/do nothing', when the answer is that you absolutely can and should.

This is such a good and succinct way of putting it

[Rcal10]

6 hours ago, Brian707 said:

The ceiling for this team is 87 wins. I don't know why many are surprised or angry.  They probably played a bit over their heads in April. They lost a lot of games they should have won and won some They should have lost. Blame Jed, but more importantly blame this horrible family who owns this team. 

They are who we thought they were

 

I disagree with the statement the Cubs ceiling is 87 wins. I would say they built a team you can expect to win between 84-90 games. And basically that is what they are doing. I don’t disagree with what else you said. I just think using the word ceiling is wrong. 

[WhyCantWeWin]

I think you gotta keep playing Morel, he’s hitting the ball hard and taking good at bats. He’s just been extremely unlucky, his expected numbers are way higher than what he’s put up so far. 

[Andy]

18 hours ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

I think you gotta keep playing Morel, he’s hitting the ball hard and taking good at bats. He’s just been extremely unlucky, his expected numbers are way higher than what he’s put up so far. 

Completely agree, most of the time when guys aren't hacking it offensively you can almost tell just by watching them, but Morel is pretty much doing everything he usually does (and when it comes to K/BB he's actually doing it better), and he's just not being rewarded yet.

[LBiittner]

18 hours ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

I think you gotta keep playing Morel, he’s hitting the ball hard and taking good at bats. He’s just been extremely unlucky, his expected numbers are way higher than what he’s put up so far. 

On a somewhat related point: some here wanted Chapman to play gold glove defense. Check out Chapman vs Morel overall numbers. 

Chapman 2.2 war, 120 ops+ 

Morel -.2 war, 96 ops+

Edited May 25, 2024 by LBiittner

[squally1313]

19 minutes ago, LBiittner said:

On a somewhat related point: some here wanted Chapman to play gold glove defense. Check out Chapman vs Morel overall numbers. 

Chapman 2.2 war, 120 ops+ 

Morel -.2 war, 96 ops+

As a Chapman guy I was keeping my eye on his numbers…he had 650 OPS through April, couldn’t even imagine the reaction there, but has been .880 in May. 
 

That said, morel has made significant strides and all the advanced metrics say he should be hitting a lot better than he is. 

[Rcal10]

33 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

As a Chapman guy I was keeping my eye on his numbers…he had 650 OPS through April, couldn’t even imagine the reaction there, but has been .880 in May. 
 

That said, morel has made significant strides and all the advanced metrics say he should be hitting a lot better than he is. 

Honestly it would have been nice to have both. Morel mainly DH. With injuries and some strugggles I am sure Tauchman would have still played plenty as well. But TR didn’t want that money spent. 

[LBiittner]

2 hours ago, squally1313 said:

As a Chapman guy I was keeping my eye on his numbers…he had 650 OPS through April, couldn’t even imagine the reaction there, but has been .880 in May. 
 

That said, morel has made significant strides and all the advanced metrics say he should be hitting a lot better than he is. 

Chappy is over a third of the way to being a 6 war player this year. All the experts here were screaming bloody murder against his signing.

While Morel is a third of the way being a negative value. He'll have to really turn it around inorder to finish close to a 2. 

I firmly support jeds & the experts reasoning. LOL.