Rob
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Everything posted by Rob
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ZiPS doesn't care about the provenance of runs. Lefty power hitters, speedsters playing smallball, heck -- it barely cares if you score runs at all, provided you can prevent the other team scoring them via pitching and defense. That said, Ian Happ and Michael Busch are solid power sources. PCA is projected for a low-teens HR total. Mervis, Caissie, and Perlaza may also get some playing time this year and are projected to have decent power. It's not ideal, but it's not a wasteland either.
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PECOTA has been broken since Nate Silver left BP. Fangraphs has us around 81.5 wins using their ZiPS/Steamer blend. Pure ZiPS sees us as 83-88 without any additional moves.
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PCA was 21 years old last year when he made his debut in MLB. He showed a serious hole in his game, striking out way too much. But I've posted two stat lines above from key contributors to the 2016 World Series run. Both of these guys made their debuts at age 21 and had some problems adjusting to big league pitching. Not every prospect is Kris Bryant and comes out looking like an MVP candidate. And as much as we'd like to see the Ricketts family open their pocketbooks, it's unrealistic to expect them to pay for established all-star caliber players to fill in every position where we don't have a Kris Bryant. If the Cubs are going to have any significant long-term success, we need to give guys like PCA a chance to adjust. Just like and
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I don't think that's true at all. Look at Imanaga's contract. There is just about zero chance that Hoyer came in with that monstrously weird contract right off the bat and sat there until Imanaga took it. No, a contract like that is almost certainly heavily negotiated between both sides.
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Yeah, Urias only has allegations of violence against him from one woman!
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It's also worth noting the Cubs haven't had a lot of guys like Bobby Witt Jr. to sign to massive $200M+ extensions. 23, coming off a 5.7 fWAR season, former #2 overall prospect in MLB... The only real comp we have had in the last twenty years is Kris Bryant. And he's a Boras client. Also, Theo was still in charge then. Rizzo and Bryant both had a bit more age and service time on them when they broke out, and neither had quite the prospect pedigree (though both were highly regarded at times). And again, Theo was still in charge then.
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Cubs opening day payroll ranks (mlb) and W-L records under Jim Hendry: 2003 - 11 (88-74) 2004 - 6 (89-73) 2005 - 8 (79-83) 2006 - 7 (66-96) 2007 - 8 (85-77) 2008 - 8 (97-64) 2009 - 3 (83-78) 2010 - 3 (75-87) 2011 - 6 (71-91) Our payroll was well above average during that whole period, and our cumulative W-L record in those years was 733-723. How easily we forget -- Hendry's problem wasn't a lack of spending. It was a lack of spending smartly. He didn't want to pay for a real analytics department or minor league development. We overpaid for role players and relievers. Hendry didn't like pre-arb extensions, preferring to wait to extend star players like Aramis Ramirez until free agency was two weeks away. Having lived through the Hendry era, I'm glad to see the Cubs exercising restraint and spending smartly.
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What's the point of such a specific hypothetical? Is it a reference to a specific rumor I've missed? The general point was that, yes, there are circumstances in which I could see myself giving up a few million dollars in exchange for other various quality of life improvements. But your hypothetical involves so many moving pieces that there's no way to ascertain what somebody might prioritize. Do they have family nearby? Do they like the weather? Do they have faith in their ability to cash in on a subsequent contract? Do they think their kids would make friends easily at a new school? Etc... TL;DR: It depends. It always depends.
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Maybe I just feel this way because I'm boring, but I can't imagine that I'd ever feel the difference between a $100M contract and a $105M contract. I mean, sure, it's five million dollaredoos. But at a certain point, we've already eclipsed more money than I would ever spend in a lifetime. So I would definitely consider the smaller contract if it greatly increased my quality of life over the duration of the contract.
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Yeah, I think we're likely to see a lot of different permutations and combinations. If done well, it could actually be a strength -- to the point that I've soured a bit on spending the money on Chapman (despite being higher on him than most around here).
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So something may or may not have happened, and it may be either good for the Cubs, or bad for the Cubs.
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I'd love to see the Giants sign one of them. I don't like the fact that they're out there with so much money on hand and so little to spend it on. If they can spend themselves out of the Bellinger/Chapman market, that helps us quite a bit.
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A rundown on upcoming features
Rob replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in North Side Baseball Issues & Suggestions
I barely use the ones we've got. A like button suffices. -
It's possible. But it's equally possible they met at some random fundraiser or something.
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Whatever it is has been deleted.
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Madrigal has a penchant for being injured, granted. But when he's healthy, he's probably penciled in as our primary 3B. And even in those games where he doesn't start, he's going to get plenty of pinch hitting opportunities whenever it's a situation where contact is needed more than power. So he's probably appearing in 80+% of the games he's healthy for.
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Apparently nobody does. It looks like I misread the post I was responding to.
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I understand on an intellectual level that Mastrobuoni ostensibly has some value to this team. (He's a high-percentage basestealer with positional versatility. In the minors he showed an ability to avoid strikeouts, to take a walk, and even to hit for a modicum of power. Yada yada yada...) But for whatever reason, I just can't believe that he will provide any real value. For reasons that elude me, I have no faith in him whatsoever.
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A rundown on upcoming features
Rob replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in North Side Baseball Issues & Suggestions
Yup. The weather thread gives me climate change anxiety, and I'd be significantly happier if I could make it disappear from my feed forever. -
Madrigal is 5'8" You don't have to be tall to be a good 1B, but it does help an awful lot. Of recent 1B who are below 6' tall, only Carlos Santana has a particularly positive defensive reputation. And he's 5'11. I just think Madrigal is going to have a hard time reigning in the occasional errant throw.
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I'm not upset to lose out on Turner at that price. His value at this point is basically whatever is left in his bat, and it's showing some signs of age-related decline. He could bounce back, certainly. J.D. Martinez did last year. But Turner is 39. Each year that goes by makes it increasingly likely that he just falls off a cliff.
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Darn, I was hoping that we'd be involved in their rumored trade.
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A day or two ago there were some rumors about the Mariners having interest in Cease. I didn't see the point in that unless he was unloading some of his pitching surplus. I wondered if we might be involved. God bless Jerry Dipoto and his tradelust. He always keeps it interesting.
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I could definitely see Bellinger and/or Boras prioritizing something with an opt-out after 1-2 years. A lot of teams are hesitant to pony up for Bellinger because there's just so much to dislike in his batted ball data. If he can show that it's not a fluke, teams will be much more inclined to pay up.
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If it helps, you can think of our last trade as Busch for Ferris and Almonte for Hope. That's probably pretty close to how they were valued.
