Cubs (Hendricks) vs Brewers (Peralta): 6/30/24, 1:10pm

[Bertz]

27 minutes ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

Id rather have Turners bat

Sure, and his wheels.  I think if you wanted to win a game tomorrow of the 4 I'd take Dansby 3rd.  I think my points are:

A) Dansby has played really well to this point in his tenure and the talent gap between him and the others is fairly narrow

B) Specifically thinking about contracts, Dansby's currently looks like it'll end up being the best for his team, probably significantly so over Turner and Bogaerts

[PeanutPunch33]

3 hours ago, Bertz said:

Coming into today Dansby Swanson has been the most productive of the 4 shortstops since they all signed their contracts

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2023&season=2024&pagenum=2&pageitems=30

He's the cheapest of the four, younger than Turner and Bogaerts, and not physically compromised like Correa.  You can complain about plenty of things Jed has done but complaining about Swanson is straight up dumb.

Lol that doesn't make him a good player, or make it a good signing, or make Jed above criticism for signing such an abhorrent player.  Jason Heyward had better or comparable statistics thru 2 seasons than Dansby Swanson.  

This is the funniest thing I've read today - "no big deal that we flushed 175 m down the toilet on a terrible player because some other incompetent teams did the same thing!"

Spending money for the sake of spending money is how stupid GMs like Jed Hoyer get fired.  The Braves signed Orlando Arcia for 5% of what they would have re-signed Dansby Swanson for and he has way better numbers 

Edited July 1, 2024 by PeanutPunch33

[LBiittner]

28 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Oh, appreciate the specificity since those teams are all equally good and have always been. I get now why buy/sell is a binary, too well thought out and straightforward not to be 

Always has been? Always is a long long time. Too straightforward to not be specifically obtuse.  

[WhyCantWeWin]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

Sure, and his wheels.  I think if you wanted to win a game tomorrow of the 4 I'd take Dansby 3rd.  I think my points are:

A) Dansby has played really well to this point in his tenure and the talent gap between him and the others is fairly narrow

B) Specifically thinking about contracts, Dansby's currently looks like it'll end up being the best for his team, probably significantly so over Turner and Bogaerts

Your first point makes sense to me, but i disagree about how his contract will play out. Probably will end up better than Bogaerts, who has been a disaster but with how quickly Swansons bat and glove have trended down this season i have doubts his next few years will be anywhere close to as valuable as he was last year. 

[Stratos]

8 hours ago, profisme said:

Could someone please explain to me how on earth Happ has won a Gold Glove for his defensive play?

Left fielders suck?

[Stratos]

8 hours ago, Andy said:

I'm the first to complain about luck but we're doing it every day. Either we're the most spectacularly unlucky team in MLB history or we just suck and you notice bad luck a lot more when you suck

I think at least offensively we were a bit lucky last year especially during the summer and this season we've been unlucky.  Offensively I think we're somewhere in the middle.

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, PeanutPunch33 said:

 Jason Heyward had better or comparable statistics thru 2 seasons than Dansby Swanson.  

It took Heyward more than 4 seasons as a Cub to put up the same WAR that Dansby has in a year and half.

[NorthsideAvenger]

I'd never seen a team more disinterested in playing baseball than the 2024 Cubs.

[CubinNY]

This thread is a spicy meatball. 

They all care more than we do. Many of them are not good enough to get the job done. 

[squally1313]

12 hours ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

Your first point makes sense to me, but i disagree about how his contract will play out. Probably will end up better than Bogaerts, who has been a disaster but with how quickly Swansons bat and glove have trended down this season i have doubts his next few years will be anywhere close to as valuable as he was last year. 

It's been 3 months, and in June he bested his career OPS by 25 points. Maybe we can pump the brakes just a little bit on the Downfall of Dansby Swanson

[Longhorn20]

23 hours ago, 17 Seconds said:

i'm sick of the kb hate. he's one of the best cubs ever and accomplished almost everything there is to accomplish. not only that, we didn't even get stuck with the bad contract! be grateful, because we have nobody even close to KB now. 

I wasn't hating on Bryant. Just the facts, ma'am. KB is probably my favorite Cub since Aramis Ramirez.

[Longhorn20]

15 hours ago, Bertz said:

Sure, and his wheels.  I think if you wanted to win a game tomorrow of the 4 I'd take Dansby 3rd.  I think my points are:

A) Dansby has played really well to this point in his tenure and the talent gap between him and the others is fairly narrow

B) Specifically thinking about contracts, Dansby's currently looks like it'll end up being the best for his team, probably significantly so over Turner and Bogaerts

Write him. Maybe he'll send you one.

[sneakypower]

per fg Dansby Swanson is pacing to be the 27th-best SS-capable player

paying $177M with a finite budget for a decidedly average player starting his decline phase is inexcusable; Jed has always been afraid to shop in the superstar aisle and this is what we're left with, at the midway point 1/4 of the entire payroll put into just Bellinger & Dansby has produced lower combined WAR than Josh H. Smith

some people will cheerlead anything i suppose

[squally1313]

7 minutes ago, sneakypower said:

per fg Dansby Swanson is pacing to be the 27th-best SS-capable player

paying $177M with a finite budget for a decidedly average player starting his decline phase is inexcusable; Jed has always been afraid to shop in the superstar aisle and this is what we're left with, at the midway point 1/4 of the entire payroll put into just Bellinger & Dansby has produced lower combined WAR than Josh H. Smith

some people will cheerlead anything i suppose

No one is denying that Dansby is having a very subpar year by his standards but when you include 'decidedly average player' in reference to a guy who was 8th in offensive fWAR the year before he hit free agency, 14th in fWAR over the 3 years prior to free agency, and 21st the year after he signed his contract, you're losing a little credibility in your analysis. 

Like, he has the 31st highest AAV contract in baseball and has been something like the 45th best player in baseball (hitters and pitchers) since he signed. This is not the disaster that everyone is making it out to be. 

[sneakypower]

Quote

a guy who was 8th in offensive fWAR the year before he hit free agency

this is really funny when you see who was 6th during that span, should've just let the Braves pay him then as thanks for his services, getting served meatballs in the middle of a stacked lineup wasn't repeatable, i thought everybody kinda realized this

[squally1313]

7 minutes ago, sneakypower said:

this is really funny when you see who was 6th during that span, should've just let the Braves pay him then as thanks for his services, getting served meatballs in the middle of a stacked lineup wasn't repeatable, i thought everybody kinda realized this

Yeah the 2022 Braves and their....7th in baseball wRC was the key to Dansby being a good hitter. That explains how terrible and unproductive he was last year. 

[CubinNY]

10 minutes ago, sneakypower said:

this is really funny when you see who was 6th during that span, should've just let the Braves pay him then as thanks for his services, getting served meatballs in the middle of a stacked lineup wasn't repeatable, i thought everybody kinda realized this

For a team that likes to talk about analytics and whatnot, it's a bit inscrutable that when Jed signed him they talked up his leadership skills and winning attitude. Then he brags about doing nothing during the offseason. But he's a bible thumper and I'm sure a tough-love kind of guy. Too bad he can't hit. 

[sneakypower]

15 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Yeah the 2022 Braves and their....7th in baseball wRC was the key to Dansby being a good hitter. That explains how terrible and unproductive he was last year. 

ok ok it seems you've heavily invested in his baseball cards i'm sorry for dogging on a below-average hitter with horrid WPAs

[Bertz]

If you remove guys who aren't really shortstops anymore, e.g. Fernando Tatis Jr., ZiPS has Dansby Swanson as 10th in the league amongst SS and worth 4.2 WAR/600.

Our dumbass fanbase learned literally nothing from how nasty they were to Ian Happ and how dumb that looks a few weeks later.  Now those same chuds have set their sights on Swanson as the new designated punching bag, but very little of this stuff really holds up to much scrutiny.

[PeanutPunch33]

12 hours ago, Stratos said:

It took Heyward more than 4 seasons as a Cub to put up the same WAR that Dansby has in a year and half.

I'm talking about their profiles as Hitters.  Swanson is so MID.  In fact, I think I hate him. 

Edited July 1, 2024 by PeanutPunch33

[squally1313]

14 minutes ago, PeanutPunch33 said:

I'm talking about their profiles as Hitters.  Swanson is so MID.  In fact, I think I hate him. 

But you're still wrong. Heyward had a .668 OPS in a much friendlier offensive environment in his first two years (79 wRC) while playing a corner outfield position (to his credit, at a mostly elite level defensively). 

Dansby has a .717 OPS with the Cubs, which is a 99 wRC, playing the most important position in baseball besides catcher (I think?). Sure, a 99 wRC is basically the definition of league average (or 'MID', I guess), but stripping out everything else he brings to the table (he's added the third most defensive value in baseball since the beginning of last year, 29th most in baserunning) is a really lazy and bad way of trying to judge a baseball player given the information available. And again, he's been a much better hitter than Heyward was. 

[sneakypower]

his outsized statistical defensive value in '22-'23 was anomalously high and is already showing signs of dissipating, reverting to average performances in both major phases of the game that characterized his career prior

 

Edited July 1, 2024 by sneakypower

[squally1313]

Choosing to omit his most recent two years of (good) performance but focusing on the (less good) stuff that happened before then and earlier this year is certainly a choice. 

[Bertz]

24 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Choosing to omit his most recent two years of (good) performance but focusing on the (less good) stuff that happened before then and earlier this year is certainly a choice. 

If only we had tools available that do the math for us on weighting these things properly AND taking age into account.

[sneakypower]

29 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Choosing to omit his most recent two years of (good) performance but focusing on the (less good) stuff that happened before then and earlier this year is certainly a choice. 

i made direct reference to his 2 oddly out of character years following 5 seasons of established mid, what are you even on about

rhapsodic paeans for a .293 OBP & 8 HRs is certainly a choice