Rob
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Everything posted by Rob
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JFC, TT locked this thread down so things would calm down here, and that's how you choose to start things back up? Nutslitting? Who the hell jumps straight to slitting their own nuts?
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People who get upset about minor league deals with spring training invites just confuse me. It's basically zero risk. Of course the odds aren't good they pan out, otherwise they wouldn't be available for essentially nothing. But every once in a blue moon you can fix something and find a contributor. Theres literally no downside. Why the consternation?
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That won't energize the meatballs all that much. Jed's reasoning is pretty simply. A win costs $8M or so in free agency right now. If Counsell is worth a win or two more than what we had (check), then he's a relative bargain compared to spending that money on the roster.
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The best thing about the Len Kasper booths was that he and the play-by-play guy (whether Brenly or JD) always felt like they were good friends. The broadcasts felt like they would if it was two buddies joking around and watching the game together. Like they'd probably head to the bars before/after the game. JD is fine on his own, but he and Boog don't really pass a vibes check together. Likewise, Boog is fine on his own but he doesn't seem to care about the team. These things may make for a more "professional" broadcast, but they're also a less fun. I want Len back.
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Meh, it's the same as it ever was. GM calls Boras about a player. Boras throws out a silly number. GM says "call me when you're serious." Every couple weeks, Jed probably shoots Boras a text asking if anything's changed, and if the player could be interested in a deal in a certain range. Boras holds firm. Repeat until one side starts getting desperate.
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I am on record in this thread as having said I liked Morel, and expect modest improvements. So let's keep it in perspective. Nowhere did I say he won't develop, or that he isn't a fine player as-is. That said, if he doesn't develop any further, he's going to find himself in an awkward position in 3-4 years. He's a good hitter, but not a great one. Once he starts getting expensive, the Cubs aren't going to want to pay him much money to be a DH. But we can cross that bridge when we get there.
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His OPS is slugging-heavy, which is less than ideal. His .821 OPS was roughly equivalent in value to Happ's .791 OPS which was heavier on OBP. I don't want it to sound like I'm bashing Morel. I like him. And I too have dreams of him finding the ability to play adequate defense, making some offensive adjustments, and looking like Adolis Garcia last year. But that's a pretty aggressive wish. More likely than not, he wont develop so well.
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Earlier in this thread, you said your favorite thing about the Ricketts was their support of Trump. And now you're going to pretend we're all persecuting you and making unfair assumptions because you never actually said you voted for him. This, while you sling out insults like calling people "libtards." Even if politics magically disappeared from this board overnight, nobody would be interested in holding actual discussions about baseball with you. And that's because your whole shtick is so disingenuous that we all know that any spirited baseball debate with you is going to be a horsefeathers chore where you'll refuse to engage with anything in an honest manner. You'll never admit to being wrong, you'll just dig in further, lie, and move goalposts until people get tired of responding. You aren't liked. You aren't respected. Your opinions (both baseball and otherwise) are disregarded immediately. Congratulations on your miserable life. Please go enjoy it elsewhere.
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Morel doesn't have much plate discipline and has major swing-and-miss issues. Some guys, like PCA, have a weakness. In his case, it's high heaters. And if you can get PCA to make whatever adjustments are necessary such that he can reliably get to high heaters without sacrificing his coverage of the rest of the zone, then he could cut the strikeout rate pretty significantly. But Morel's contact issues aren't quite as isolated like that. It's all across the zone, and on all types of pitches. He's a bit better against fastballs, so maybe you can make some improvement by getting him to wait back a bit on the breaking stuff, but that'll exacerbate the fastball issue such that it's probably a breakeven thing overall. So nobody is expecting anything more than modest improvements from Morel.
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I'm convinced this is a modern day Jonathan Swift. "If I have to listen to you talking about you and your kids being hungry, then you're gonna have to listen to me as I make A Modest Proposal."
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Chapman is criminally underrated here. Each of them came up in 2017. Bellinger has played 875 games, Chapman has played 868. So it's fair to compare them 1-1. Bellinger has been worth 21.6 fWAR in that time. Chapman has been worth 27.4. Thus far in their careers, Chapman has been the better overall player, and it's not all that close. I'll grant that there are other considerations such as age, skillset, and our current organizational depth that might make Bellinger a more attractive target for the Cubs if the contracts are roughly equal. But Chapman is a hell of a player. We'd be lucky to get him. If Morel can play 3B, I'd be thrilled. I was banging the drum for that earlier in the season. But if he plays it like he's done every other position thus far, he might not hold a glove after spring training. Penciling him in for the lion's share of playing time seems absurd until we've seen him show some defensive improvement.
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I don't agree with any of this. Morel is currently something like our 4th or 5th best option at 3B because his defense is abysmal. Counsell may be giving him an opportunity to work his way up that depth chart by improving his defense, but by no means is it "[his] spot to lose." And it's a pretty frequent occurrence to have teams pushing "we're happy with the roster we've got" articles precisely to try to gain leverage in free agent or trade negotiations. This isn't particularly telling at all. I'm sure Hoyer is still in touch with Boras, and is keeping tabs on Chapman. I doubt it goes anywhere, but I'm sure Hoyer would love to swoop in if the value gets where he wants it.
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Pretty much zero chance he takes a one year deal. There is, however, a very good chance he takes a deal with a lower total guarantee than he'd like, but with early opt-outs. He could take something like 8/$140M and know he'd have an opportunity to cash in for more if he shows last year wasn't a fluke.
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Better yet, we should all be making these silly bait comments and banning the people that can't resist responding to them with right-wing buffoonery. But the bait comments should be funnier. B2B's sucked. Also, I should get a pony.
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That's been the case for a long, long time. Boras doesn't make his money by selling his players to the Presidents and GMs. Rather, he's famous for his end-runs around those guys to talk straight to the owners. With a direct line to George Steinbrenner, did it really matter what Cashman said? Likewise, he called individually on Ilitch, Moreno, etc... Got all of them to sign some bad deals. It's just how he operates. You can be sure Boras is trying to approach the Ricketts individually and not really focusing directly on Jed.
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We gave this guy a record-setting contract so we wouldn't have to spend money!
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Yeah, absent a Morel trade, the Busch trade foreclosed a lot of possible avenues of roster construction. The Cubs clearly believe in each of their bats. But we're going to have a very hard time adding a starting caliber 1B/DH type because we just don't have playing time for them. If Busch or Morel shows up on day 1 of Spring Training and looks like they've been possessed by the ghost of Brooks Robinson, suddenly all bets are off. Or if there's a good trade for Morel out there. But until then, I think we need to accept that it's either going to be a lesser hitter or somebody with some positional coverage to fill the slot you all keep wanting to put JD Martinez / Soler / Belt in.
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Yeah, I didn't get that. Maybe it was meant give their defensive unit a break, since they'd just been driven deep down the field? When they were explaining the new OT rules, that was the only feasible explanation I could come up with why anybody would want the ball first in OT.
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Yes, but we're enjoying this brief interregnum.
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Kate Upton / Justin Verlander Not even their leaked nudes got that kind of attention. Granted, Jennifer Lawrence and others were leaked at the same time... -
Don't count on the start of Spring Training doing much to create time pressure for either side.
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Yup. Cubs or Reds are most likely to win if you're the type of person to believe in prospects taking a step forward and contributing. Cardinals are the team to beat if you only believe established 30 year olds are capable of winning. Brewers walk a weird line between the two after the Burnes trade, so everybody expects them to be in 2nd or 3rd. And the Pirates exist, I guess.
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Yeah, I have essentially zero interest in Jake Burger. We've got a smattering of major league caliber players who make up a bizarre platoon, but it's looking like a reasonably effective one. Meanwhile, Burger can hit, but he can't field worth a damn. Ultimately, our platoon is projected to give us just as much production as the Marlins get from Burger. There's some value to be had in condensing all of that production into a single roster spot, but it's not worth the likely cost.
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I mean, ZiPS is still generally more accurate as a projection system... But for those looking for hope, these systems do tend to underrate teams with great depth. That's one of the reasons the Rays tend to outperform every year -- when the full gamut of injuries eventually do strike, they usually manage to alter their roster alignment in a way as to minimize the damage. While I don't mean to imply that the Cubs innately have depth in the same vein as the Rays, we do have an incredibly deep farm system. A good chunk of those are in AA or AAA, and for those positions where we lack a potential impact bat, we should still have the pieces necessary to trade for one -- the problem is simply that impact pieces might not be available when we need them. Might have to tough it out until closer to the deadline.
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Given our earlier discussions, I'd like to mention that fangraphs just posted full zips projected standings. Had the Cubs at 81 wins. Lower than Szymborski had suggested.
