Cubs' Ensemble Cast Needs a Stronger Leading Man

Poppa Joe - the origin of current Cubs ownership - did not build TD Ameritrade as the championship financial trading company but a niche player using technology made available to "average" citizens. Very conservative for a visionary and his philosophy filters down whether he bangs the gavel or not. Stats nerds should be able to appreciate that situation.

Plenty of teams are using the same strategy and getting far better results. The Cubs just still pretty much suck at developing bats at the MLB level. You needn't look much further than the Brewers. While they do have Yelich, the rest of the guys there are not stagnating and entirely feeble in this era of high heat and freakish breaking balls, and they have largely overperformed their expectations from their prospecting days.

1 hour ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Plenty of teams are using the same strategy and getting far better results. The Cubs just still pretty much suck at developing bats at the MLB level. You needn't look much further than the Brewers. While they do have Yelich, the rest of the guys there are not stagnating and entirely feeble in this era of high heat and freakish breaking balls, and they have largely overperformed their expectations from their prospecting days.

I don't entirely disagree here. Hoerner and Happ were both first round picks, and while I think you can be happy with what they've turned into overall, neither of them are offensive standouts. The rest of the line up is outside hires, typically at a premium, and then Morel (2.8 fWAR in 1100 PAs), and Amaya (which, so far, yikes). Looking through the 2021 top prospect lists is pretty bleak: Davis, Amaya, Hernandez (still hope yet), Howard, Morel, Strumpf, Preciado, Caissie (please save us), Roederer, Pinango, Made. Obviously the typical hit rate is low, but....that seems really low. And that's before someone like Hoerner seemingly levelling out at a 100-105 bat, Happ not taking the next step, etc.

I'm more pro-Hoyer than most, but when things are going bad he kinda starts to look like the guy in the fantasy football auction draft who got a bunch of 'steals' in that they were projected to go for $20 and he got them for $15, but he never spent more than $30 and is left with the 7th best player at every position. I still don't think there's a bad contract on the roster, which is good. Individually, I don't think Happ, Belli, Suzuki, Swanson, Hoerner, Busch, even Morel are problems to be fixed given their expected production and cost. But it's also increasingly clear that we don't have an elite offensive bat at the major league level, we're scraping Ricketts imposed budget ceilings on all these second division starters, and we've limited ourselves on how much runway we can give the PCAs (and eventually Caissies and Shaws) of the world because handing them a starting spot comes at the cost of reliable MLB production during a 'competitive window'. 

I've taken issue, and will continue to take issue, with people saying guys like Happ and Swanson suck, should be traded, are the main issue on the team, etc. They're good players being paid like good players. But starting to wonder if we've eliminated the possibility of a 95 win team for the sake of putting out an 85 win team. 

21 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

I don't entirely disagree here. Hoerner and Happ were both first round picks, and while I think you can be happy with what they've turned into overall, neither of them are offensive standouts. The rest of the line up is outside hires, typically at a premium, and then Morel (2.8 fWAR in 1100 PAs), and Amaya (which, so far, yikes). Looking through the 2021 top prospect lists is pretty bleak: Davis, Amaya, Hernandez (still hope yet), Howard, Morel, Strumpf, Preciado, Caissie (please save us), Roederer, Pinango, Made. Obviously the typical hit rate is low, but....that seems really low. And that's before someone like Hoerner seemingly levelling out at a 100-105 bat, Happ not taking the next step, etc.

I'm more pro-Hoyer than most, but when things are going bad he kinda starts to look like the guy in the fantasy football auction draft who got a bunch of 'steals' in that they were projected to go for $20 and he got them for $15, but he never spent more than $30 and is left with the 7th best player at every position. I still don't think there's a bad contract on the roster, which is good. Individually, I don't think Happ, Belli, Suzuki, Swanson, Hoerner, Busch, even Morel are problems to be fixed given their expected production and cost. But it's also increasingly clear that we don't have an elite offensive bat at the major league level, we're scraping Ricketts imposed budget ceilings on all these second division starters, and we've limited ourselves on how much runway we can give the PCAs (and eventually Caissies and Shaws) of the world because handing them a starting spot comes at the cost of reliable MLB production during a 'competitive window'. 

I've taken issue, and will continue to take issue, with people saying guys like Happ and Swanson suck, should be traded, are the main issue on the team, etc. They're good players being paid like good players. But starting to wonder if we've eliminated the possibility of a 95 win team for the sake of putting out an 85 win team. 

 

I agree, though I don't think Happ or Swanson foreclose the possibility of building a 95-win team, even in the short term. What they do is make it more expensive, because you're paying $45 million to a couple of two- or three-win players. Alas: under this combination of front office and ownership group, making something more expensive IS a lot like eliminating it as a possibility. They refuse to spend $270 million a year on payroll. Well, ok. But you either have to get a lot better at player development and more proactive in the trade market, like the Brewers, or you have to come off that position and open the wallet. Because you can't un-spend the $45 million on Happ and Swanson, or the $17 million on Taillon, for that matter. If you're gonna pony up for average players, you have to either also pony up for superstars, or develop one yourself. Feels like they're far from doing either lately.

30 minutes ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

I agree, though I don't think Happ or Swanson foreclose the possibility of building a 95-win team, even in the short term. What they do is make it more expensive, because you're paying $45 million to a couple of two- or three-win players. Alas: under this combination of front office and ownership group, making something more expensive IS a lot like eliminating it as a possibility. They refuse to spend $270 million a year on payroll. Well, ok. But you either have to get a lot better at player development and more proactive in the trade market, like the Brewers, or you have to come off that position and open the wallet. Because you can't un-spend the $45 million on Happ and Swanson, or the $17 million on Taillon, for that matter. If you're gonna pony up for average players, you have to either also pony up for superstars, or develop one yourself. Feels like they're far from doing either lately.

Think you're being a little harsh on Happ and Swanson, both have been above 3 (Dansby pretty comfortably) the last couple years and Happ is projected for 3, Dansby for 3.2 even with their suboptimal starts. But yeah, a 3 win guy making $20m-$25m a year? Sure, that's not going to kill you. Six of those guys? Well now you start running into financial and logistical issues. 

Now, that's not to say that this level of dude can't go off for a year. Swanson gloved his way there last year, Bellinger played at about the same pace, Shota is already projected for 3.8. But we haven't had the elite guy at the top of the preseason WAR charts in a long time. And in my mind there's two ways to do that: pay them all of the money, which we don't have for PTR reasons but also for lack of cheap developed production reasons, or (ideally) develop that guy and watch him go off. But we're already seeing PCA in a weird timeshare situation and getting sent back to Iowa...Caissie or Alcantara blowing up would just add to that, do we give up on Morel's cheap 'production'/potential for Shaw (you can substitute 'Busch' or maybe even 'Hoerner' there)? Obviously these are all lacking nuance. But, in a crude hypothetical, you'd trade 2 $20m a year, 3 win guys, say Happ and Seiya, for a $40m-$50m/year 5 win guy and then roll the dice with the top 100 prospect making $600k. 

I think it's a fair criticism and potential downside of Jed's roster building approach, but I also don't want to overstate the fungibility of those stars.  Swanson was 25th in ZiPS preseason hitter WAR, and 16 of the guys ahead of them are pre-FA or otherwise with the team that developed them.  And below Swanson in that list are a number of hitters that previously have been thought of as 'stars' in that vein when they hit they were available and the shine is off or we're far enough down the long term deal that it's an afterthought while their salary is not.