Cubs (Rea) vs Rays (Boyle): 4/8/26, 5:40pm

[Geographyhater8888]

1 hour ago, BigbadB said:

You edited your post, but didn't edit Rae? 

There’s a y at the end, isn’t there. I’ll fix it. Thanks.

Edited April 9 by Geographyhater8888

[Geographyhater8888]

1 hour ago, 17 Seconds said:

tied for the MLB lead in fwar at 1.0 (with wilyer abreu)

He jumped Cam Brock for 1st. This is the year he finally makes an all star game. Long overdue.

Edited April 9 by Geographyhater8888

[CubUgly]

11 hours ago, Bull said:

Feel like that should have been an error on Comforto and an unearned run. 

Yeah, I mean I think it's one that could have been caught, maybe not should have been?  Awkward slide there. 

[mul21]

12 hours ago, chibears55 said:

The last 3 seasons and especially last season says he sucks, glad for the cubs sake he had a good game yesterday and a big hit today,  but I wouldn't bet the house on it continuing. Be nice but I doubt it

The under the hood/peripherals from last year say he was far from sucking.  There's a reason a smart team like the Dodgers kept running him out there.

[mul21]

13 hours ago, chibears55 said:

Well I mean the OPS and Slugging are high because 4 of his 8 hits are homers, you dont find it a bit concerning that he has struck out almost half his AB.

Yea, it ST but he struggled there too with just 7 hits and 8 Ks in 36 AB

The 4 bombs are cool but the dude off to a pretty rough start, theres no hate in saying a guy could use a couple days off to figure it out.

His career K rate is 26.5%.  His best full season K rate is 22.1%.  What you're citing here is a 22.2% K rate, which is pretty hilarious to cite as a concern when it would nearly equal his best season ever.  

People are just irrational about Happ and it cracks me up.

[squally1313]

4 hours ago, 17 Seconds said:

tied for the MLB lead in fwar at 1.0 (with wilyer abreu)

How long does it take walk rate to start becoming a useful metric, because, man, a .380 OBP version of Nico is a legitimate 6 win player.

Just scrolled through best individual offensive seasons by fWAR since 2000, I believe the best season of anyone who hit less than 20 home runs and wasn't a catcher was 2013 Matt Carpenter. .318/.392/.481, 11 HRs, good for 7.2 fWAR. I think hoping for those numbers is probably foolish, but Nico is going to have about 40 more steals and be an elite defender. 

[Rcal10]

2 hours ago, mul21 said:

His career K rate is 26.5%.  His best full season K rate is 22.1%.  What you're citing here is a 22.2% K rate, which is pretty hilarious to cite as a concern when it would nearly equal his best season ever.  

People are just irrational about Happ and it cracks me up.

Yep. And those who love to cut him down only focus on what he isn’t doing well. Not what he is doing well. If Happ was a kid with 2 years in the league, maybe I would be worried about his k rate now. But he isn’t. We have seen him for 7 years now. He is fine. 

[Geographyhater8888]

9 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

How long does it take walk rate to start becoming a useful metric, because, man, a .380 OBP version of Nico is a legitimate 6 win player.

Just scrolled through best individual offensive seasons by fWAR since 2000, I believe the best season of anyone who hit less than 20 home runs and wasn't a catcher was 2013 Matt Carpenter. .318/.392/.481, 11 HRs, good for 7.2 fWAR. I think hoping for those numbers is probably foolish, but Nico is going to have about 40 more steals and be an elite defender. 

Nico has never finished a season with double digit homers either. For single digits I’d think Ichiros 2004 season where he amassed a 7.1 with 8 homers tops the list without double checking. A difference of 3 home runs but I’ll cap it at under 10 digits just for fun. 

Nicos been on a tear since last September with a 2.2 in 37 games. If the playoffs counted he’d be at about 3 fWAR in 45 games. 

[squally1313]

3 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Nico has never finished a season with double digit homers either. For single digits I’d think Ichiros 2004 season where he amassed a 7.1 with 8 homers tops the list without double checking. A difference of 3 home runs but I’ll cap it at under 10 digits just for fun. 

Nicos been on a tear since last September with a 2.2 in 37 games. If the playoffs counted he’d be at about 3 fWAR in 45 games. 

Nico got 10 in 2022, but sure. I think it's more likely he hits 13 than it is he gets anywhere close to Ichiro's .372 BA. Insane run for Ichiro back then. 

[JunkyardWalrus]

If this is what Nico is, I’m the horsefeathers. And happy about it. 

Where has this patience come from?

[JunkyardWalrus]

39 walks in 649 plate appearances 

8 walks in 53 already this year.

Seems like quite a difference. 

[Geographyhater8888]

20 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Nico got 10 in 2022, but sure. I think it's more likely he hits 13 than it is he gets anywhere close to Ichiro's .372 BA. Insane run for Ichiro back then. 

He definitely won’t finish with a 372 average. He wouldn’t have to with the league batting average over 20 points lower, with a universal DH and the difference positional value. It’s unlikely he sustains this level of play and finishes with a 7+ but finishing with 6 fWAR is optimistic but doable. 

[Bertz]

Random and mostly meaningless, but Shaw is grading out well in the outfield so far.  DRS has him as a +1 RFer, and statcast has him at 0 but says hes 64th percentile in range, so I assume that means hes on the positive half of the ledger even if he hasn't accrued a full run yet.

He looked awful at Wrigley, but to Trueblood's point it didn't cost him any plays.  And I'll say in Tampa he started looking pretty solid.  If he can fake his way through April before actually being pretty good from there that'd be a wonderful outcome.

[Jason Ross]

5 hours ago, squally1313 said:

How long does it take walk rate to start becoming a useful metric, because, man, a .380 OBP version of Nico is a legitimate 6 win player.

Just scrolled through best individual offensive seasons by fWAR since 2000, I believe the best season of anyone who hit less than 20 home runs and wasn't a catcher was 2013 Matt Carpenter. .318/.392/.481, 11 HRs, good for 7.2 fWAR. I think hoping for those numbers is probably foolish, but Nico is going to have about 40 more steals and be an elite defender. 

In an article from 2010 (so, dated, but I'd assume the information still rings true) walk rate stabilizes as a statistic around 120 PAs. Which for a data point is pretty large; many will stabilize in half that or less. 

 

https://share.google/DV55TDeixbH5Lszii

[squally1313]

2 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

In an article from 2010 (so, dated, but I'd assume the information still rings true) walk rate stabilizes as a statistic around 120 PAs. Which for a data point is pretty large; many will stabilize in half that or less. 

 

https://share.google/DV55TDeixbH5Lszii

Oversimplifying by a lot here, but my initial takeaway from that is that, generally, guys K about 2.5x as much as they walk, so you just need a bigger sample? 

Like, if the league average of something was 50%, you probably could start to pick up noticeable trends after 20 instances. If something happened one in a hundred times....you're going to need to wait quite a bit longer. 

[Bertz]

Obligatory Pizzacutter note about how the stabilization point is not hey this is this guy's true talent now but instead when you can definitely say something has changed.

Put another way thr stabilization point is where you someone like me should stop condescendingly being like "it's April" but the goalposts still move pretty slowly even after that point.

[Jason Ross]

9 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Oversimplifying by a lot here, but my initial takeaway from that is that, generally, guys K about 2.5x as much as they walk, so you just need a bigger sample? 

Like, if the league average of something was 50%, you probably could start to pick up noticeable trends after 20 instances. If something happened one in a hundred times....you're going to need to wait quite a bit longer. 

Yeah that's a general feel. One thing that came across my feed this morning is that since the implementation of ABS walk rate is up in Triple-A and MLB by around a percent. 

So I'll say that I still expect normal, swing heavy Nico come around and his walk rate to be a single digit. But if you told me he walked like 7.5% or 8% vs 6% at the year end? Id buy it. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

6 hours ago, Bertz said:

Obligatory Pizzacutter note about how the stabilization point is not hey this is this guy's true talent now but instead when you can definitely say something has changed.

Put another way thr stabilization point is where you someone like me should stop condescendingly being like "it's April" but the goalposts still move pretty slowly even after that point.

Yes, stabilization gets abused so much because that connection gets missed so often.  Even when you finally get to 'this is meaningful' (stabilization), the gap between 'this is meaningful' and 'this is predictive' is often still really big!

[We Got The Whole 9]

14 hours ago, squally1313 said:

How long does it take walk rate to start becoming a useful metric, because, man, a .380 OBP version of Nico is a legitimate 6 win player.

Just scrolled through best individual offensive seasons by fWAR since 2000, I believe the best season of anyone who hit less than 20 home runs and wasn't a catcher was 2013 Matt Carpenter. .318/.392/.481, 11 HRs, good for 7.2 fWAR. I think hoping for those numbers is probably foolish, but Nico is going to have about 40 more steals and be an elite defender. 

Speaking of

 

Matt Carpenter thought his days of bad hops were over ... think again 😭📹 https://share.google/HqhBpzkkQVulzBJLD

[Geographyhater8888]

14 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

Yeah that's a general feel. One thing that came across my feed this morning is that since the implementation of ABS walk rate is up in Triple-A and MLB by around a percent. 

So I'll say that I still expect normal, swing heavy Nico come around and his walk rate to be a single digit. But if you told me he walked like 7.5% or 8% vs 6% at the year end? Id buy it. 

When can we expect PCA to  progress to the mean and finally see some stabilization? He’s face planted in the wrong direction after his 6 month tear from August of 24-July 25 with a 130 wRC+ and 7.3 fWAR. 

Edited April 10 by Geographyhater8888

[Jason Ross]

28 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

When can we expect PCA to  progress to the mean and finally see some stabilization? He’s face planted in the wrong direction after his 6 month tear from August of 24-July 25 with a 130 wRC+ and 7.3 fWAR. 

We have a bad habit of grouping things and ignoring others when it comes to baseball. Particularly, I think we're predisposed to negative beliefs about our players or our team. For example "we are so inconsistent", "we can't hit with runners on and less than two outs" or about a player being "hot and cold". It creates a situation where it acts like every other team or player isn't. 

Pete had some mechanical inconsistencies last year at the end of the year that caused him to get out front of the ball too much. That's a normal happening. Freddie Freeman had a long stretch where he had a 60 wRC+ last year between great play. He's nevermore than hot stretches. But he won't be a 70 wRC+ hitter outside of cold ones.

Pete Crow-Armstrong was a 115 wRC+ hitter last year. His wOBA was .321 and his xwOBA was a .323. I think that's a fair guess as to where he finishes this year. When's that going to happen? As with anything, it's more likely a player becomes who they should be every day than what they aren't. So, I think sooner rather than later he'll start being the Pete we know better. Players have rough starts to the season. We're barely into the season. He will be fine.

[Geographyhater8888]

1 hour ago, Jason Ross said:

We have a bad habit of grouping things and ignoring others when it comes to baseball. Particularly, I think we're predisposed to negative beliefs about our players or our team. 

Freddie Freeman had a long stretch where he had a 60 wRC+ last year between great play. He's nevermore than hot stretches. But he won't be a 70 wRC+ hitter outside of cold ones.

Pete Crow-Armstrong was a 115 wRC+ hitter last year. His wOBA was .321 and his xwOBA was a .323. I think that's a fair guess as to where he finishes this year.

The thing with PCA is that he shattered everyone’s wildest expectations in very unconventional ways with his low OBP, strikeout rate and bad plate discipline. How sustainable is that? I’m not worried about Bregman, Busch or Swanson because they’ve been consistent and have have rebounded from slumps before. 
 

PCA finished with a 109 last season. Not everyone is Ian Happ who you can pencil in for a 115 wRC+ every season. I’m not worried in the sense that he’s a 70 wRC+ guy, will he be mid 90’s-low 100’s, better? Much better? 
 

It’s a lot easier forecast someone with more traditional slash slash lines. I’m not boxing him in with Frank Schwindel because he’s had a 6 month stretch of MVP play with success at all levels but he’s really up and down. 
 

To your first point, the first half offense offense broke the fanbase with unrealistic expectations expecting a 40+ home run pace from PCA and Suzuki to hold, in addition to Busch’s first half tear. It’s like saying that the post July 3rd cubs of 2024 were the real cubs and the anemic May-June offense were frauds. I’m more than guilty of knee jerk reactions.

Edited April 10 by Geographyhater8888