TruffleShuffle

the wally pipp jokes would be especially dumb, because he was an old player who wasn't that good. castro is young, good and signed to a long term deal. if baez hits 50 home runs in the next two weeks while castro is on the DL, baez will just move to third base or second and castro will play short. or castro will move to second or third. he's not just going to be dumped because some other guy turned out to be better than him.

they should just bat alcantara, baez, rizzo and castro 1 through 4, so that people can go do something else for a while after castro bats.

neither milton nor michael bradley signed with the cubs in december 2009.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=24350

poor alcantara

lineup predictions? i'll go: 8 alcantara 7 coghlin 3 rizzo 6 castro 5 valbuena 9 ruggiano 4 baez 2 castillo 1 whoever is pitching

gleyber torres was 2-2 (both singles) but was subbed out of the game in the 4th inning as a defensive replacement. hopefully nothing serious. by the way, remember when he was hitting like .220 like last week? now he's at .300.

yeah but they will get a nice look at his elite bat speed as he's flailing at sliders low and away.

bryant 2-run double. he's doubled, walked twice and stolen two bases.

oliver is useless.

both bryant and soler walked. [expletive] i can't wait until our lineup is packed with terrifying power hitters who also have loads of patience, and getting through the lineup is like running the gauntlet of red sox/yankees lineups in the '00s.

ahahahaha this is great

hahaha i love it, there were at least 2 no votes a few hours ago. optimism abounds! (until baez goes 1-12 with 8 k's in the first series)

to be fair, he did have a 3.0 oWAR that year. just a lot of that was cancelled out by his adam dunn-esque dWAR.

hahaha i didn't notice the canadian maps before. apparently the 30 people or whatever who live in nunavut really hate the white sox. perhaps they've heard hawk harrelson call a game.

And risk that he does well, and has another hot spring and makes it very difficult to justify putting him back in AAA? What for? if bryant hits .500 with 10 home runs in spring training after hitting like 45 home runs in AA and AAA in 2014, there's already going to be immense pressure for him to start with the (major league) cubs. i don't really see how 2-3 weeks with the big club in september is going to make a huge difference.

the original discussion began because kyle said that gonzalez was an inferior pitcher to garza. which i disputed; kyle used their fangraphs WAR to attempt to justify his assertion. i don't think that's really an accurate view of garza's ability, since that year was far better than any other year that garza had pitched. plus garza's "traditional stats" (ERA/ERA+) were inferior to those of gonzalez' in the previous two seasons, and gonzalez was just reaching arbitration eligibility for the first time - which put him two years behind garza. that's massive. i don't see garza as having had the same value on the trade market as gio gonzalez. and let's be honest about the a's return for gonzalez - they've ended up being pretty fortunate in that deal. cole is basically reaching his ceiling; he's stayed healthy and his secondary deliveries have really come along. derek norris was a three true outcomes player in the minors and hit .210 the year that he was traded - his contact rate has increased drastically in the majors. he's at or above the ceiling that most people expected him at (which was a mickey tettleton-like catcher). they even got as much out of milone as they could really have expected. brad peacock was the only one who hasn't really panned out, but they still used him to get jed lowrie. even if the cubs could have gotten that kind of return for garza, it's unlikely that prospects ranked that highly are going to turn out as well as those that the a's acquired. and your point about selling low on garza, soto and marmol is a valid one, but that's going to happen sometimes to any organization. just as an example, soto was rookie of the year, followed by a bad season, followed by a very good one, followed by a mediocre one. i suppose they could've gotten something reasonable for him after the mediocre 2011 season, but there was always the risk that he'd have another big year like he did in 2008 and 2010, and then the sale would look like a poor one in hindsight.

so kyle can change his opinion on the value of what the cubs got back for garza like a year later, but nobody can have a different opinion about the value of garza versus gio gonzalez like 4 years later.

probably bryant, just because he's been destroying every level he's played at, and i don't expect it will take him long at all to be beating up on major league pitching. plus this year, todd frazier (!!!) is on pace to be a 5 win player and has a line of .282/.340/.468 with slightly above average defense. that's almost where i see bryant's floor.

The good thing is Gio Gonzalez was an easy sell as a 5 win player what with his 6.6 fWAR over 535 career innings. do you seriously believe that i have been arguing gio gonzalez is or was viewed as a 5 win player? or is it that you just cannot engage in an argument/discussion without creating some absurd strawman?

that works too

Jesus. players aren't traded based on fangraphs WAR. and good luck selling opposing GMs on garza being a 5 win player when he was regularly a 2-3 win player for every other season of his career, he had just posted his first FIP under 4.00 and his home run rate magically halved in his career year. not to mention that gonzalez had more arbitration years left and had just posted two seasons of 200 innings and an ERA a shade over 3.

agreed! now if you could extend this to university of illinois athletics and bears football... well, even better.