Rob

He is, ostensibly, a super utility player capable of playing decent defense at a number of positions, being a high percentage basestealer, and being a lefty bat with juuuust enough power to keep pitchers from throwing him meatballs and daring him to do something with them. The tools and the stats all suggest the above to be true. But I still have trouble buying that narrative.

At this point, the projected spread in the win total between the NL Central teams is 3 wins. The Pirates may be a true-talent sub .500 team, but they've already banked five wins, and are now projected for 79.8 wins in a division where 82-84 wins could theoretically take it. This division could be a dogfight.

Oh yeah, I got everything. It was just a stupid grind. There's always one "fastest" way to grind out packs and stubs. In 2022, there was a repeatable three team conquest map. I played the Braves, the Guardians/Guardians (I can't remember which year they switched), and the Angels over and over and over and over and over and over again. But I got my five packs each time I finished the map. Every time they'd release new content, I'd quickly sprint my way through it for the rewards. Then I'd get back to that three team conquest map. Over and over and over and over and over again. And when it was time to take a break and drop a deuce, I'd sit on the toilet buying and selling players and equipment through the damn phone app until my legs went numb. For reasons that are beyond explanation, I enjoyed that experience. But not enough to want to make it my life every year.

I think The Show is one of those games I can only allow myself to buy every 3-5 years. When I purchased it in 2022, I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to treat the game like the goddamn stock market. I spent as much time on my phone app buying and selling players as I did playing the game itself. It'd have been smarter to become a doordash driver and use that income to purchase the packs I wanted. It certainly would have taken less time to get what I wanted. But I'm too stubborn about in game purchases to give them a dime for packs.

I believe Henry Rowengarter may be available.

At a certain point, it's logical for people to look at a player and want to see results, rather than just process. Of course, we are just four games into the season. So those wringing their hands at this point are massively overreacting.

I'd still be interested in him on a minor league deal - he's a potential change of scenery candidate. I'd rather him than a guy like Curt Casali.

The rule has always been if you post a thread and they win, you continue to post until they lose. By rights, you're up for the next one.

Honestly, when I look at the Cubs, outside of the obvious remnants of the Mancini and Barnhart contracts, the Cubs are in pretty good shape. There are no obviously bad contracts.

Almost half the teams took Mookie.

Yeah, after the Boras client issues this offseason, I imagine the players union is going to take a much harder stance on the next CBA and we might see some significant changes. There's already rumblings of replacing high-ranking members of the MLBPA.

Bellinger has a mediocre season and doesn't opt-out at season's end. Busch rakes and develops into a solid, second-tier 1B. Morel is basically done playing 3B by the end of May unless forced there by injuries. Cuas develops into a set-up option. Our rotation stays in a permanent state of flux. At various points, just about everybody is getting a chance to start a game. We also do some openers and a brief experiment with a six-man rotation.

Everybody wanting Madrigal to be cut is going to be sorely disappointed. About the only chance for that is something clicks for Morel and overnight he becomes as good a defender as Madrigal. Otherwise, we are keeping the slick fielding high contact guy on our roster all season. And he's starting frequently.

That matters more than it used to. The bases being bigger and increasing steal efficiency was a nice rule change. I still hate the rule change about extra innings, but that also makes pinch-runners with defensive versatility a bit more desirable.

Yes and no. MVP Baseball 2005 programmed my brain to think that the only purpose of the bench is to have a couple fantastic pinch hitters, a fast guy, and a guy who can cover any position in case of injuries. Everybody else slots in at their preferred position every single day. That's really not the case. Especially in the DH era, when we don't need at least one or two pinch hitters for the pitcher on any given day. Counsell is a tinkerer. Guys are going to be sliding all over the diamond and playing matchups that suit them. On any given day, I wouldn't be surprised if a guy like Morel or Busch is available for late-inning pinch hitting duties. So the lack of conventional thump on our bench isn't necessarily an issue. That's what the rational part of my brain is saying, anyways. The emotional part would kill for a guy like Brandon Belt or Tommy Pham on the bench to know we've got somebody to pinch hit for the Madrigal types when necessary.

Yeah, I generally loathe the early start to the season. Accelerating the ramp-up speed for pitchers always just feels like a bad idea.

Very close to zero chance, here. MLB has a vested interest in keeping the image of one of its few marketable superstars squeaky clean. As do the Dodgers, since he's obviously still capable of performing at a high level. What's more, Ippei seems willing to fall on his sword here. So I would guess that, unless the Feds swoop in with some sort of indictment against Ohtani himself, MLB will sweep this under the rug.

I think that was always the most likely outcome, but I truly believe there was a slot there if he'd really looked incredible in spring training.

Yeah, it's precisely why I preferred Smith over Cooper. Oh well. Not like either one of them was likely to be much of a positive factor.

It was nice to see him in a Cubs uniform one last time. I wish him nothing but the best.

It's a generalization based on massive sets of data. Tom Tango didn't sit down and make up numbers wholesale. He took players that played multiple positions and compared them against their peers at each position. Other authors have adopted similar tactics, and some have attempted to reconcile this against the offensive production teams are willing to accept from different positions. All come to roughly the same agreement, it's just a function of scope. You can read more about it here. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/position-adjustments/ If you want to say the positional adjustment doesn't always work, I'll grant you that. I gave the Nick Madrigal example above. Players with outlier skillsets might see their skills work better or worse at certain positions. A 3B who is abysmal with the glove but has the world's best arm isn't going to be the best 1B in baseball -- it's just wasting his arm value. But as a general rule, the positional adjustment is fine as a way to estimate value. WAR is an attempt to reconcile everything about a player down into one easily-digestible number. It's basically impossible for it to be perfectly precise. The positional adjustment is the best fit we have for the data available to us. It's fine for that purpose. Perfect? No. But pretty decent. Edit: That defeats the exact purpose of WAR, which is trying to compare players to each other across positions and across historical eras. There are a million valid complaints about WAR. But the fact that you don't understand its intended use is a "you" problem.

While it's not strictly true, the notion is that one can generally move down the defensive spectrum and be roughly that much more valuable. For instance, an average fielding SS is usually an above-average 2B/3B/CF. An average CF is usually above average at LF/RF. Etc... There can be issues with this -- Nick Madrigal is a fine 2B/3B, but he's too short to play 1B. But outside of physical outliers, this tends to be the case. That's largely why they're valued differently. But there's also just an element of the frequency and difficulty of plays.

Purely the positional adjustment. It's difficult to compare defensive value. If I've got a SS who is 5 runs above average at SS, we don't think he's got the same defensive value as a 1B who is 5 runs above average at 1B. SS is the harder position, so the defense is more valuable there. So about 20 years ago, Tom Tango came up with the notion of the positional adjustment, to give an idea of how valuable each position is. A bunch of math went into it. And people continue to debate just how accurate that is. But generally speaking, Catchers get the biggest innate dWAR bonus. SS also get a substantial bump. 2B/3B/CF get a little bump. LF/RF take a substantial hit to their defensive value. And 1B/DH get a bunch of value deducted. Those are just the starting values. The remainder of the dWAR calculation comes from comparison to their peers at the position, which isn't really applicable for full-time DHs.

I'd be surprised if he has much in the way of trade value. We may be signing a low-end free agent and need a 40 man spot.

It's just a temporary spot, hopefully. Taillon should be back before too long.