General Offseason Priorities

[Bertz]

18 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Ok but you'd think if the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated are printing it then it might have some validation to it as a rumor, No ?

🤷‍♂️

Sports Illustrated is not the brand you grew up with

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolekraft/2024/01/21/mass-layoff-appears-to-be-the-end-of-sports-illustrated/

It's pure AI/content aggregation slop at this stage

[chibears55]

1 hour ago, 1908_Cubs said:

How is Parades a journeyman? He's 25 and while he's been dealt a few times, it's not because he's someone who signs for a year and then bolts elsewhere. The Rays won 99 games last year with Parades as their 3b, so clearly this "80 win" thing is not really true, very good teams have had him be their primary 3b. He's been the 11th best 3b in baseball over the last three seasons. He's short of being a superstar or even a perennial all-star. But he's a borderline all-star type talent. 

This is just a wildly out of touch take on Parades. 

11th out of 30, I'll have to look but his overall numbers the last 3 seasons aren't that great,  so just wondering how unattractive 3Bmen has become lately. 

Is overall production there that low to where it's not a position of power or run producing anymore ?

[mul21]

40 minutes ago, Rob said:

We all know why people want Sean Murphy...

Is Christopher Meloni his dad?

 

[chibears55]

2 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Sports Illustrated is not the brand you grew up with

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolekraft/2024/01/21/mass-layoff-appears-to-be-the-end-of-sports-illustrated/

It's pure AI/content aggregation slop at this stage

Gotcha 👍

[Jason Ross]

18 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

11th out of 30, I'll have to look but his overall numbers the last 3 seasons aren't that great,  so just wondering how unattractive 3Bmen has become lately. 

Is overall production there that low to where it's not a position of power or run producing anymore ?

Over the 3 years he has a 123 wRC+ That's better than Arenado, Tatis, Ruschman, Teoscar Hernandez and Muncy and just 4 points below Bregman. Frasncisco Lindor is at 128 over that span, as is Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso.  I'm not sure how you could think his overall numbers "aren't great".  

Sure, he's not a superstar hitter. However, he was the 40th best hitter who logged 1,000 PA's in those three years. He's a well above average hitter who borders on "very good". 

[Rcal10]

7 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Over the 3 years he has a 123 wRC+ That's better than Arenado and Muncy and just 4 points below Bregman. Frasncisco Lindor is at 128 over that span.  I'm not sure how you could think his overall numbers "aren't great". 

Facts don’t matter. Some people have been against Parades since they traded for him. For some, he replaced Happ. 

[thawv]

2 hours ago, Joj said:

Acquiring Paredes was an admission that it was a position of extreme need and wanted to make it seem like they were actually trying to add talent.  But it also meant that they are still trying to fool everybody into thinking another cheap, mediocre journeyman is a potential superstar.  Having Isaac Paredes around as filler isn't the worst thing in the world, unless they use him as an excuse to continue ignoring the obvious offensive need. 

.240 with 20 Hr's is probably fine if you like 80 wins.  The batting eye makes him attractive as a bench/platoon type.  I thought he was a better player in the minors (less HR, better hitting)

I can't see Paredes netting anything worthwhile in trade.

 

I still can't believe that we were able to dump a bench player, and 2 minor league players for a 25 year old 3.5-4 win player.  He's an enormous upgrade!!

 

[We Got The Whole 9]

200 PA defined this player for a lot of fans

[Rcal10]

50 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

200 PA defined this player for a lot of fans

To be fair, some disliked him even before he played his first game with the Cubs. His Cubs AB were not the issue with some. 🤷

i was not one who hated him before and I still don’t. I think he is a fine third baseman and a nice pick up. 

[Rob]

40 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

To be fair, some disliked him even before he played his first game with the Cubs. His Cubs AB were not the issue with some. 🤷

i was not one who hated him before and I still don’t. I think he is a fine third baseman and a nice pick up. 

I doubt any disliked him. But I count myself amongst the number who are certainly skeptical. His profile seemed like a poor fit here, and so far it has been.

I'm hopeful he eats his Wheaties and makes some adjustments going forward. There's enough that he does well that he can still be solid even if he's not a 3-4 fWAR player going forward. But I'm not expecting stardom despite his prior performance. If he's putting up 2.5 fWAR, I'm pretty happy and he's still a reasonable upgrade from Morel.

[squally1313]

For me, this certainly isn't Paredes' fault and he's 100% an upgrade over Morel, but he's just another obvious starter, cost controlled for multiple years, where you'll be pleasantly surprised if he tops 4 WAR. Which is basically the profile of Happ, Dansby, Nico, and a little more pleasantly surprised for Busch, Belli, Suzuki, PCA. He should absolutely be getting every day ABs, he's more than good enough to deserve that. But he's not elite. 

[Tim]

There were only 33 batters who beat 4 WAR this year. Each of Dansby, Nico, PCA, Happ, Suzuki and Paredes could all reasonably reach that next year. They're not all going to do it, but having 6 guys that are all capable of that is a fantastic place to start the offseason.

I want Soto. But we don't have to go out and get a "big bat" to have a really good set of position players. #1 priority is upgrade catcher. What comes next depends on Bellinger.

[Bertz]

I've gotten up on this soapbox before, but fans have this silly tendency to assume any player who has been lucky is bad.  And that's not true.  Blake Snell is an example I like, in 2023 he pitched at an All Star level, got lucky on top of that, and won a Cy.  But don't lose the pitching like an All Star part!

Paredes was lucky to play in a home ballpark that was tailor made to his swing.  HOWEVER, just because he was lucky to put up a 130 wRC+, does not make him bad when you remove him from those favorable conditions.  On the road as a Ray he put up a 110!  That would make him offensively the 10th best qualified 3B in the league last year.  It also ignores that players universally hit better at home than on the road, so that floor is probably more like 115, which is what the Phillies got out of Alec Bohm this year.

Like Squally said it is not the sexiest profile.  That said 3B on a league level is pretty badly hurting for guys with sexy profiles, so it's not like there was some grand alternative to be had unless you have some kompramat on the Guardians or Red Sox leadership.

[Rcal10]

16 minutes ago, Rob said:

I doubt any disliked him. But I count myself amongst the number who are certainly skeptical. His profile seemed like a poor fit here, and so far it has been.

I'm hopeful he eats his Wheaties and makes some adjustments going forward. There's enough that he does well that he can still be solid even if he's not a 3-4 fWAR player going forward. But I'm not expecting stardom despite his prior performance. If he's putting up 2.5 fWAR, I'm pretty happy and he's still a reasonable upgrade from Morel.

I know when the deal was first made there were a few people who didn’t like Parades. They are not using 200 AB as proof that he isn’t good. They felt that way before. If anything, now those AB are being used to confirm their opinion. 
I do understand some concerns. But as you said, maybe he won’t be a star, but he is a reasonable upgrade over Morel, even if some of the concerns people have about him become a reality. Personally I think he is a solid player and a top 10 third baseman. So I am happy to have him. He has had a wRC+ of 123 over the last 3 years, when he was 23-25. I see no reason he should be able to stay that was over the next few years. And that would be a very good player. Maybe not a superstar or all star, but solid. 

[Rcal10]

Boy do I hope you are right about him. I would be happy with a decent bat who can slot into the 6 hole of a good line up. Anything behind that would be great. 

[squally1313]

2 hours ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Nah guys, Paredes game is pretty damn sexy. The only thing he *doesn’t* do is hit rockets all over the field. Otherwise he’s an established two way starter at 25-26 with experience at multiple positions, an ideal offensive approach including some of the best plate discipline in the league and lots of flyballs. He hit the throughout the minors to the point he reaches the MLs at 21 in an era the debut age has jumped to 24, and he had a case for age 20 spending the entire year in the upper minors. If this isn’t a player we can hit with increasingly nonsense descriptors like elite then we ain’t ready for 2.0, 3.0, whatever’s coming

I meant to reply to Whole 9’s 200 PA post….he put up a .371 OBP over the final 2/3 of those PAs too fwtw

 

I mean, you’re better than this. 2/3rds of his last 200 PAs? What he did in the minors 5 years ago? Don’t turn this into a pedantic/pseudo-political discussion. ‘Elite’ is just fine as a proxy for ‘first division’, ‘top X’, etc, and is just as nonsense as ‘sexy’.
 

Paredes is a valuable player in the way that Swanson, Hoerner, Happ are valuable players, and I’ve been one of the biggest defenders of all of those guys all year (or longer). All I was saying is that if you can use him to acquire a guy with 140 wRC (180 in 2024), I would explore that idea. 

[squally1313]

42 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

I’m not saying a .371 OBP in 140 of a half season’s ~210 is why he’s elite, just that it happened. Cubs did and will do little to land a mid-20s two way player with a decade pro experience, playoff experience, an extremely coveted offensive approach (minus huge EVs)! That’s first division/elite stuff!

There’s a farm system to go after Tucker, definitely pass on swapping a starting 3B on a two year rookie deal for a starting OF with one more rookie deal year. It’s hard to see him as the Clinton Portis to Tucker’s Champ Bailey when both Cubs and the league don’t have an NFL RB kind of backload at 3B

I've been very clear on why I keep bringing him up as the potential trade guy for Tucker. The Astros, due to their ballpark dimensions, can extract unique value from Isaac Paredes and his batted ball profile. This isn't like Coors where you measure everyone on a different curve. This is Paredes and his extreme pull heavy approach.

Whatever the market value for Paredes is (and honestly, I have no idea! I don't really disagree with anything you're saying as to his skill set, but also 3 months ago his market value was a guy with 3 fWAR in 1300 PAs), I think it's logical that the Astros would value him higher. If you don't think one year of Tucker is worth two years of Paredes, that's fine, ask for more (like one of their two offensively inclined catchers, hypothetically).

[squally1313]

4 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

It’s less about market value or whether the Astros like his fit so much, and more that Paredes’ tremendous fit with the Astros’ park doesn’t necessarily make the Cubs better in 2025 than would using Top Prospects to land Tucker (or esp a catcher). Getting Tucker and a catcher makes it interesting, but what are the chances? 

OTOH I’m here “hoping” Hoerner for Gilbert and Bliss is available so wthey 

Fair. Paredes + Tucker is obviously a better starting point than Shaw + Tucker. To make a worse inter-sport analogy than your Bailey/Portis one, it's like having the draft rights to Bronny James, but he's actually a good player. There's an established trade market, and then there's what he's worth to the Lakers. 

My less analytically sound angle to this argument is that I think I kinda want to open up what is essentially a starting spot to a prospect if only to widen the error bars/standard deviations of performance a little bit. Like, PCA played at a 6 win pace the last two months of the year, but the opening day plan wasn't to give him consistent MLB PAs (nor did he earn it in AAA). He got there through injuries, and yeah, could and probably will happen again in some form. But now we've got this upside that we didn't have before. In 100 Shaw seasons and 100 Paredes seasons, Paredes is going to outperform him most of the time. But I think Shaw's ceiling is higher (shiny new toy? maybe) and I think the path to a 95 win team given implied budget constraints is hitting on one or two more of the AAA guys.  Said another way, given appropriate pitching updates (and we'd have essentially the same budget either way), I think Tucker+Paredes is a playoff team, Tucker+a 95 wRC Shaw+like Kevin Newman or whatever is a playoff team, but Shaw turning into a 3-4 win guy right off the bat opens up a much higher team ceiling in 2026 and beyond.

[Joj]

23 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Calling him filler is an unserious opinion.

Then I suppose it's a good thing that posting on a nearly dead baseball forum is a WHOLLY UNSERIOUS ENDEAVOR.

😉

Edited October 16, 2024 by Joj

[Joj]

19 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

To be fair, some disliked him even before he played his first game with the Cubs. His Cubs AB were not the issue with some. 🤷

i was not one who hated him before and I still don’t. I think he is a fine third baseman and a nice pick up. 

I've watched you type this several times.  Completely untrue.  Nobody has personal feelings about any of these guys.  Because nobody knows these guys personally.  It's obviously all about the performance.

[Bertz]

 

 

[Joj]

22 hours ago, mul21 said:

Lol some of these grown men get very testy!

[chibears55]

17 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

Boy do I hope you are right about him. I would be happy with a decent bat who can slot into the 6 hole of a good line up. Anything behind that would be great. 

Agree, I hope we see more of 2023 Paredes offensively and not too much of 2022 and final 3-4 months of 2024.

 

[Joj]

20 hours ago, Tim said:

There were only 33 batters who beat 4 WAR this year. Each of Dansby, Nico, PCA, Happ, Suzuki and Paredes could all reasonably reach that next year. They're not all going to do it, but having 6 guys that are all capable of that is a fantastic place to start the offseason.

I want Soto. But we don't have to go out and get a "big bat" to have a really good set of position players. #1 priority is upgrade catcher. What comes next depends on Bellinger.

I'm viewing Paredes as a 2.5 WAR guy because that's what he's been outside of 2023 (more AB's, essentially).  To me, that makes more sense than going with the anomaly, especially when he failed to back it up in 2024.  (went right back to 2.5).   It's all offense, Paredes is essentially 0.0 dWAR.

Hey, maybe he's a 3.  That's pretty good. 

I also want Soto.  But falling back to the, "really good set of position players" doesn't quite track since that's essentially what they did the last two seasons.  Upgrading someone like Morel shouldn't be the standard of excellence around here 🙂

Edited October 16, 2024 by Joj

[squally1313]

15 minutes ago, Joj said:

I'm viewing Paredes as a 2.5 WAR guy because that's what he's been outside of 2023 (more AB's, essentially).  To me, that makes more sense than going with the anomaly, especially when he failed to back it up in 2024.  (went right back to 2.5).   It's all offense, Paredes is essentially 0.0 dWAR.

Hey, maybe he's a 3.  That's pretty good. 

 

I'm aware it's dumb to split hairs on WAR in October, but BaseballReference has him as either a 2.7 or a 2.8 WAR guy in 2024. fWAR, which I've always believed to be more predictive of future performance than bWAR, has him at 3.4 for 2024. So 2.5 is more pessimistic than any recent performance measured in any reasonable way.