Cubs Telling Potential Trade Partners They're Undecided On Selling At Deadline

[Tryptamine]

17 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

I know what some other people wrote above. But the Cubs are not a catcher and bullpen away from having a good team. If the goal is to be in the hunt for the playoffs, the goal is too low. They have a 200M dollar payroll and a bad team. Jed bet 100M dollars that his shortstop would win games with his glove and leadership skills. They are a team filled with complementary players which is great if you have a star or two. They do not and it's by design. 

This is the part I don't get about his 2024 roster. In 2023 with Nico already at SS, he brought in Dansby which made it very clear he highly valued defense. The same could be said of the Bellinger move. They were a very strong defensive team up the middle. This led to a top tier defensive team. Then in 2024, going in the exact opposite direction of what worked in 2023, they put Morel at 3B. Maybe that was entirely Counsell's call, but it seems in perfect contrast to what Jed was trying to do.

[Bertz]

58 minutes ago, mul21 said:

These are Amaya's projections from before the season with his actual numbers at the bottom.  He's at minimum a half win worse than the worst projection out there and a full win worse than the best.  By the end of the season, that's 1 to 2 WAR worse than projections.  I'm not sure how you can blame Jed for a guy just completely falling on his face when there were zero indications it would happen.  In addition to that, while the pen has been an absolute mess, the injuries to essentially your top 3 pen arms have to be taken into consideration.  Jed doesn't get a complete pass from me, but there's a whole lot that's happened this season that even the Carnac the Magnificent couldn't have seen coming.

Expecting *this* would have taken magic powers, but catcher was supposed to be among the worst in the league.  The team prioritized gamecalling which is a black box to public WAR.  They also didn't really gather any quality depth despite Gomes (age) and Amaya (injury an inexperience) both being quite risky.  I would compare this to 1B last year where it should have been a hole and then they got a far left tail outcome on top of it.  3B is similar but not to nearly the same degree thankfully.

The bullpen being this bad is just plain bad injury luck.  We all thought they were an arm short but that's an arm short of having an impact group not an arm short of being adequate.

[CubinNY]

Every year someone will underperform, get hurt, and not be at a level of what you thought they should be. If you're trying to scratch out a wildcard or hope for some luck to win the division, you are gambling on long odds. 

I know that they have a "deep" farm, but they are plagued by the same issues. Lots of good and not very much great. Maybe Jed can find the right combination of guys to make it work with the Cubs, but does anyone see a great team nucleus anywhere in the system?  

[CubinNY]

6 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

A $200 million dollar payrol might have been news in 2002. It fascinates me how much of western economics is built around willful ignorance and phony outrage. The things you guys care about not only don’t matter, actually work against your interests, but time and time and time and time again lol 

What is your point here? They have twice the payroll of the next team in the division. If you're arguing they should be spending more. I agree. 

Your posts are tedious and windmill-tilting garbage that make absolutely no sense 9 out of 10 times 

[sneakypower]

13 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

• I think the team is generally closer than their last 2 months would imply.  They're one game/month from being at .500 and 1 team/2 GB of the playoffs.  I find it very plausible they would be there with slightly less catastrophic injury luck.

worst record in the NL since April ended and you're totally undaunted, as usual impressive amounts of blind homerism on display here

[Tryptamine]

15 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

What is your point here? They have twice the payroll of the next team in the division. If you're arguing they should be spending more. I agree. 

Your posts are tedious and windmill-tilting garbage that make absolutely no sense 9 out of 10 times 

It's word soup that conveys a message in a paragraph that could have been conveyed more clearly in just a sentence or two. I think Tom has forgotten that we're a sports message board and he's not writing an OP/ED for the New York Times. 

[Rcal10]

5 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

What is your point here? They have twice the payroll of the next team in the division. If you're arguing they should be spending more. I agree. 

Your posts are tedious and windmill-tilting garbage that make absolutely no sense 9 out of 10 times 

First off, unless the Cardinals payroll has reduced more than I think it did, the Cubs are not twice all teams in the division. But I could be wrong. Next, when comparing payroll of the Cubs and any other team in the division, it is not ever an apples to apples comparison. Those other 4 teams have built in advantages so that they don’t have to spend as much. An extra high draft pick every year, for one thing. That is incredibly valuable. Hit on even one very 3 years and they are filling a few spots by cheap guys the Cubs don’t have the same chance of getting. 
I am not suggesting Jed has done a good job. I am just pointing out the Cubs payroll should not be compared to the rest of the central to use in criticizing Jed. The system is out in place to make it harder for major market teams to win with a low payroll. 

[Tryptamine]

12 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

The thing I said: the things you maybe claim to care about don’t matter at all except that they work against the actual interest of being good at baseball.

Of course I make sense no to you! Out of one side of your mouth it’s whining about payroll being too high/inefficient, the other is saying spend more. Tear it down and then spend more. How can anything make sense when you work that way?

You understand they can spend more and still do it efficiently right? They aren't mutually exclusive options.

[KCCub]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

As for improving the bench, that is just not going to happen unless it happens by a fringe guy having a good year. 

The answer to this is right in front of us, but most won't like. Add a legit 3b. move Suzuki to DH (Belli RF), and all of a sudden you have a legit bench bat in Morel. Belli plays CF against lefties with Suzuki in RF and Morel DHing.  

[squally1313]

14 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

Every year someone will underperform, get hurt, and not be at a level of what you thought they should be. If you're trying to scratch out a wildcard or hope for some luck to win the division, you are gambling on long odds. 

I know that they have a "deep" farm, but they are plagued by the same issues. Lots of good and not very much great. Maybe Jed can find the right combination of guys to make it work with the Cubs, but does anyone see a great team nucleus anywhere in the system?  

I think you have 6 guys (Happ, Busch, Hoerner, Swanson, Steele, Shota) that based on career or current performance can be relied on to give you 3 WAR next year. All of those players are signed for the next 2 years (some significantly more). Morel and Seiya are pretty clearly DH only options going forward, and I'd prefer not to have both of them around. Getting rid of Seiya frees up money, Morel probably brings back more capital. For the other two outfield spots you have Cody and PCA with Caissie and Alcantara not too far off, and the Canarios of the world still floating around. Soto is an obvious enough difference maker to pursue, but beyond that, with the uncertainty of Cody's option I don't think we need to do anything drastic here. 

Catcher is a black hole, it doesn't seem like Mo Baller is going to solve that problem anytime soon, go find a solution sooner rather than later. The more creative the better, but as others have mentioned just get back to replacement level and it's basically a substantial improvement. 

For third base, I think you either blow away the Rays for Paredes (including names like Shaw, Triantos, Alcantara, Ballesteros) or you go sign Chapman a year too late and figure out a long term solution later. 

The starting pitching is fine. Worked through plenty of injuries and are still 9th in overall production there. I don't think moving Taillon is going to generate anything of value (other teams understand peripherals too), and hoping to free up cash for Soto seems like a fools errand. Steele/Shota/Wicks/Assad/Taillon/Brown is a perfectly acceptable base and that's before Horton, Birdsong, etc. For the bullpen, I don't know...spend whatever money you have left on more arms to throw at the problem. But feel like that solution, to the extent it exists, needs to come internally. 

I'm honestly not sure if that sums up to a good team or not. Paredes/Happ/Swanson/Hoerner/Busch gets you to like...16 WAR, with the goal being around 25 (9th in baseball last year), so you'd need 9 from CF, RF, DH, and C. Pitching you're shooting for 18 or so (8th in baseball last year)....Steele/Shota/Wicks/Taillon/Assad/Brown certainly seem capable of giving you 15 as starters, which means you're kinda just asking the bullpen to not be terrible. Realistically, you need one or two of these top 100 prospects to click, and to click at a position of need. But, there's a bunch of them, it's not far fetched. 

[CubinNY]

9 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

First off, unless the Cardinals payroll has reduced more than I think it did, the Cubs are not twice all teams in the division. But I could be wrong. Next, when comparing payroll of the Cubs and any other team in the division, it is not ever an apples to apples comparison. Those other 4 teams have built in advantages so that they don’t have to spend as much. An extra high draft pick every year, for one thing. That is incredibly valuable. Hit on even one very 3 years and they are filling a few spots by cheap guys the Cubs don’t have the same chance of getting. 
I am not suggesting Jed has done a good job. I am just pointing out the Cubs payroll should not be compared to the rest of the central to use in criticizing Jed. The system is out in place to make it harder for major market teams to win with a low payroll. 

waaa! The massive financial advantage the Cubs have and don't use is unfair to the Cubs. 

[sneakypower]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

These are Amaya's projections from before the season with his actual numbers at the bottom.  He's at minimum a half win worse than the worst projection out there and a full win worse than the best.  By the end of the season, that's 1 to 2 WAR worse than projections.  I'm not sure how you can blame Jed for a guy just completely falling on his face when there were zero indications it would happen.  In addition to that, while the pen has been an absolute mess, the injuries to essentially your top 3 pen arms have to be taken into consideration.  Jed doesn't get a complete pass from me, but there's a whole lot that's happened this season that even the Carnac the Magnificent couldn't have seen coming.

i feel like i keep asking this but if the PBO can't even be held responsible for explicitly deciding to expel the currently best hitting C in baseball and replacing that production with intangibles guys, then.. who is

[sneakypower]

"he had no idea that a player developed from start to finish entirely under his leadership was gonna suck"

oh in that case he can be excused

[sneakypower]

56 runs of offensive value difference the last full year between Willson Contreras and Yan-maya is just bad luck, sad to say, nothing can ever be valued or foreseen in a sport full of such randomness as this

[Rcal10]

7 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

waaa! The massive financial advantage the Cubs have and don't use is unfair to the Cubs. 

What does this mean. All I am saying is you can’t compare low budget teams salaries to the high revenue teams. They do have advantages to get players cheaper. They also get more international money, get a higher round draft pick if they lose a FA, lose less of a draft pick if they sign a FA. It just a fact. No one is crying about it. Just pointing out because of those advantages it is not comparing apples to apples when talking about how much is spend on a roster and what should be expected for that money. 
 

[Tryptamine]

21 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

No, I don’t. Efficient is not only made up and arbitrary, but also neither a goal or strategy

How do you guys not see how obviously full of crap your arguments are? Payroll too high but they need to spend. Why do they need to spend? For efficiency’s sake! Its pure insanity

To narrow efficiency down to an exact number is impossible correct, but to get a general concept of it in comparison to all the other teams is not. In all seriousness, no forum horsefeathers, are you doing ok? Over the last month or two your posts are getting a little out there.

[CubinNY]

1 minute ago, Rcal10 said:

What does this mean. All I am saying is you can’t compare low budget teams salaries to the high revenue teams. They do have advantages to get players cheaper. They also get more international money, get a higher round draft pick if they lose a FA, lose less of a draft pick if they sign a FA. It just a fact. No one is crying about it. Just pointing out because of those advantages it is not comparing apples to apples when talking about how much is spend on a roster and what should be expected for that money. 
 

They don't have an advantage. They don't get players cheaper. The draft is a crapshoot every year. How about we compare win-loss records? 

[CubinNY]

18 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

No, I don’t. Efficient is not only made up and arbitrary, but also neither a goal or strategy

How do you guys not see how obviously full of crap your arguments are? Payroll too high but they need to spend. Why do they need to spend? For efficiency’s sake! Its pure insanity

Asshat, who said the payroll was too high? No horsefeathers body. That's you living in your world box of you vs. the lemmings who don't understand the rich are destroying Western civilization (a theme of every one of your goddamn brain farts).

 

[Tryptamine]

16 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Please spare me fake concern to avoid talking about these terrible, backwards economics intended to make things worse than ever. I’m much more interested in hearing more abt achieving efficiency through tearing down (for what? Who knows or cares) and then spending more than ever 

No, I was being genuine, but you be you I guess.

[WhyCantWeWin]

Im liking the discourse in this thread

[Rcal10]

19 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

They don't have an advantage. They don't get players cheaper. The draft is a crapshoot every year. How about we compare win-loss records? 

Ok, fine.  If you can’t acknowledge low budget teams do get advantages so that they can put a good team the field for less money them I  don’t know what to say.  They do get more players to build a system around. Sure the draft is a crapshooot, but getting an extra pick and the money allocated to that pick every year does give them more opportunity. Again, I am not saying Jed is doing a good job. He isn’t. I just don’t think it is fair to compare the Cubs payroll to the others in the division.

[imb]

tom being the worst poster across several message boards over a 20 year span is an impressive feat

[Rob]

12 minutes ago, imb said:

tom being the worst poster across several message boards over a 20 year span is an impressive feat

He has Mojo's posting rate, with Da Bum level commentary in every post, and HCCF's level of unintelligibility.

If you were to create the most perfectly imperfect poster (non-swastika division), you couldn't design him a whole lot better.

[Tryptamine]

14 minutes ago, Rob said:

He has Mojo's posting rate, with Da Bum level commentary in every post, and HCCF's level of unintelligibility.

If you were to create the most perfectly imperfect poster (non-swastika division), you couldn't design him a whole lot better.

The thing is, he does bring posts with some thought into them, especially in the minor league forum. It's just those get lost when he starts to go on these tangents.

[CubinNY]

11 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

The thing is, he does bring posts with some thought into them, especially in the minor league forum. It's just those get lost when he starts to go on these tangents.

Most people who post here agree with his basic assumption, the Ricketts are awful people. Most people agree that MLB ownership is, in a word ******. Most people agree the super rich are destroying the social fabric of this nation. But we don't need a dissertation written in convoluted innuendo that 1) we are all too brainwashed to realize what is happening and 2) have it be wedged into every single topic about baseball. His takes on the minor leagues are usually about some 16 year old hitting in the Dominican Republic or noting that BJ Murrary had a double and only struck out twice. At least Ethan Hearen isn't talked about any longer. 

He's his own worst enemy.