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Rob

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Everything posted by Rob

  1. Rob
    Yeah, because in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty three, baseball analytics have never touched on predicative stats. We're all still just out here counting RBIs and pitcher Wins.
  2. Rob
    Per Baseball Savant, Josh Bell's wOBA was .323 last season (.345 xwOBA). Cody Bellinger's wOBA was .370 last season (.327 xwOBA). In other words, based on their batted ball metrics last season, Cody Bellinger's stat line should have looked an awful lot like the "washed" Josh Bell's actual line. And Bell's line should have been better. Yes, Bellinger is the better player due to his defense and baserunning, but in all likelihood we aren't talking about drastically different bats here. Now, I'm not out here banging the drum for Josh Bell. But if his bat recovers to where we'd expect, he'd be worth near the value of his contract, but not the full value. It's not like taking him on is the equivalent of taking on a massive dead-money contract, such as Strasburg. It's probably more like $6-8M. You don't get Luzardo for peanuts by taking that off their hands.
  3. Rob
    Feels ever so slightly light on our end. I see that it's roughly even in a BBTV sense, but I feel like sites like those massively undervalue guys like Luzardo. There'd be a line out the door to trade for him if he was available, and somebody would overpay. I also think Morel's value is a bit depressed. It's painfully obvious to the rest of the league that for the Cubs he's best utilized as a trade chip. I've no doubt he's been included in every trade discussion we've had this offseason. At a certain point, that does start to lower the perception of the guy.
  4. Rob
    Michael Brantley just announced his retirement. I had some very mild interest in him as a possible option for LF/DH. His bat has always been solid -- he just had trouble staying on the field. I'm guessing he went on the market thinking of himself as a full-time starting caliber player, was finding he was only being offered a salary commensurate with part-time roles, and decided to pull the plug on what was a pretty underrated career.
  5. Rob
    I would fall all over myself to pick up Tarik Skubal if he's available.
  6. Rob
    I hate the billionaire owners. I like most of the players (or at least hate them less than the owners). If a player is ever in a position to take a bite out of one of the owners, I love that. And if Boras helps them do so, I'm a fan.
  7. Rob
    I was just posting something similar. While ownership might like the idea of an early signing deadline because it might decrease salaries a tiny bit, there's about zero chance the MLBPA agrees to something like that without significant considerations elsewhere. And even if you could get everybody on board, I'm not sure the commissioner's office would want to bother. Like you said, having a months-long media presence is probably a slight boon for interest. If December 31st was some sort of signing deadline, I doubt many of us would post here in January/February.
  8. Rob
    Kerry Wood's return was announced at the Cubs Convention. Probably some others, but I can't recall those offhand. https://www.nbcsportschicago.com/mlb/chicago-cubs/nearly-gone-kerry-wood-comes-back-to-cubs/300882/
  9. Rob
    Collusion implies some secrecy. This was all done right out in the open, with the full consent of the MLBPA. Tony Clark is an embarrassment.
  10. Rob
    He did lose a lot of value last year due to playing 1B, but he gained a lot of value through what is probably just random variance. While I too would hope for 4 WAR, I don't see enough to feel comfortable projecting him to that number. I like Cody Bellinger. I was a big fan of signing him last offseason. And if they resign him this offseason, I will happily root for him and hope last year was a building block towards him regaining his MVP form. But on the balance of risks, I feel as though everything above approximately 6/$130M is just wasted money he's unlikely to ever earn. At 6/$150M, that's basically a rounding error. At his asking price of roughly 8/$220M, suddenly that's a ton of cash that could have a substantial impact on how we're able to build a team around him going forward.
  11. Rob
    It's late and I've had too many drinks in me to try to do real math. But if he's a slightly above average bat and glove in CF, that's probably a 3 or 3.5 fWAR player. At $8M per win, that's $24-28M during his prime. So give him a couple more years around that mark and then bring him down half a win a year. If we are at 6/$130M I'm amenable to a deal. More years or money make me a bit twitchy, particularly if he's being eyed for 1B. That said, for all the red flags in his production, he's shown a boatload of skills at the major league level. So there's no single way for him to produce at put up that 3-3.5 fWAR. He could implode on all the things we are worried about and suddenly rediscover how to hit fastballs like he did when he was MVP and still be worth the contract. That's probably worth something, but I have a hard time quantifying it.
  12. Rob
    No, what you said was other teams had "given up." You want to complain people aren't reading actual content into your lazy hottakes, go ahead. And I get that, since being a (damn good) journalist is your primary job, reliably putting forth the same effort to post here would defeat the fun, escapist quality of NSBB. So I don't blame you for being a lazy bugger. But we aren't mind-readers. That said, we seem to be largely in agreement now that you've actually said something worth saying, so let's just drop the personal horsefeathers. I'll let you have the last stab at me, if you're feeling so inclined.
  13. Rob
    If you want to complain about how things ought to be, I'm right there with you. It's absolutely horsefeathers infuriating to see teams like the Pirates who could absolutely compete if their ownership wasn't more concerned about making a buck. But the reality is absolutely nobody sees what other teams are doing and decides it's not worth bothering trying to win. If you'd rather sit here doing Portnoy style hottakes, be my guest. But it's lazy nonsense, and you know better.
  14. Rob
    That has nothing to do with it. As I said endlessly during all the rule changes, making the playoffs this large disincentivizes teams from trying to win 100+ games. With this many short series, the playoffs are very nearly a crapshoot. If an owner is looking to maximize their investment, they'll put up a payroll just good enough to sneak into the playoffs and hope the team rides a hot streak, like the Diamondbacks nearly pulled off last year. Some franchises (Dodgers, Mets, Yankees) are run like baseball teams. But most of them, including the Cubs, are run like investments. The word from ownership is maximize the investment. Jed is doing exactly what he ought to do with a directive like that.
  15. Rob
    xFIP used to be my go-to, but I've felt like it's having a hard time taking into account the proliferation of the swing plane revolution. Using the league average HR/FB feels like a cop out when hitters are now more likely to tee off on certain types of pitches. I still look at it, but I trust it a lot less than I used to.
  16. Rob
    I'm envious. That's a good fit for Atlanta. They don't need to rely on him literally at all during the regular season, so they can try to save his arm mostly for the postseason. And if they manage to have a healthy Chris Sale during a postseason run, that's potentially a gamechanger for them. ETA: It ought to go without saying that the Cubs aren't in a similar "don't need to rely on this guy to make the postseason" situation. Our chips need to be spent on reliable guys just to get us there.
  17. Rob
    How am I supposed to complain about people who know I'm complaining about them? /s?
  18. Rob
    I honestly do appreciate the time and effort that you have put into reinvigorating this site. It's a lot more modern now. And for the most part, I've liked seeing the community grow. Problem is, modern sites attract modern users. And a lot of the modern sports crowd on the internet is the type of guy who loves sites like Barstool Sports. Absent you flying the pride flag all over the site so the right-wing trolls are worried they'll catch a case of the gay simply by browsing, I'm not sure what a solution would be. Never open up the off-topic forum to new users? Or make it invite only? I certainly don't begrudge you your attempt to grow the site. But if it ends up a site full of trolls, you're going to lose the existing posters who are sick and tired of dealing with them. That's not gonna help your growth. I'd welcome just about any idea you thought might offer some relief.
  19. Rob
    The defensive metrics on Bellinger are mixed. With respect to his time in CF, DRS saw him above average until 2021, and average to slightly below since then. UZR has him floating around average. The statcast metrics have him pretty solidly above average. With respect to his time at 1B, DRS sees him as slightly above average, UZR sees him as average, and the statcast stats see him as average. So just to make this easy on ourselves, let's call him both an average CF and an average 1B for the length of the contract. If that were the case, the positional adjustment would see him as worth approximately 15 runs more per full season as a centerfielder than a 1B. In theory, we should try to peg those runs to the run environment, but since this is a lazy projections, let's just call that approximately 1.5 wins per season. The cost of a win isn't exactly linear. But at roughly $8M per win in free agency last I checked, Bellinger would be worth approximately $12M less per season if we were playing him as a 1B than if he were a CF.
  20. Rob
    In 2019, Moncada put up 5.5 fWAR. In the COVID-shortened 2020, he played at a ~ 3.0 fWAR pace. In 2021, he put up another 4.0 fWAR. For those three years, he looked like a potential franchise cornerstone. 2022, he dealt with injuries, his walk rate slipped, and his BABIP was roughly 80 points below his career norm. The injuries were clearly impacting him. Last year, he put up 1.2 fWAR in a little more than half a season's worth of action, despite his walk rate dropping to the lowest of his career (outside of a cup of coffee in 2016). I want to be clear -- in no way do I think Moncada is likely to be worth the contract he's got for next year. But being willing to take on his contract would lower the prospect cost for a guy like Cease. Since we've supposedly got a fair amount of money to spend, but the problem is not having targets to spend it on, using cash to lower the prospect cost of Cease and simultaneous make a mild upgrade at 3B seems potentially worthwhile. [Meanwhile, there is a slim but non-zero chance that Moncada rediscovers his form and is actually worth the contract]. He's not a standalone deal, but I'd be interested in the Cease + Moncada package.
  21. Rob
    I would quibble with the description of Moncada as a "negative value player." His production has vacillated significantly over the last 5-6 seasons, but he's never been a negative fWAR guy. Even the last couple years, which have been clear disappointments, would put him in the Wisdom / Madrigal tier of player, which is below-average but above-replacement. If he has negative overall value, it is 100% due to his contract. And that's just because the contract is so heavily backloaded. That said, I'd have some interest in Moncada in the right deal. While he's probably no better than our current options, he does certainly possess a ceiling that neither one of them can come close to. Think of it like Bellinger last offseason -- there's always a chance these reclamation projects work out. The tools are all there -- it's just trying to find a way to reliably access them. If the front office thinks they see something they can fix, Moncada could be a very interesting target.
  22. Rob
    They're both bench quality players. Incidentally, I really like having them both on the bench. Madrigal for the times you just have to put a ball in play, Wisdom for when you absolutely need a HR.
  23. Rob
    Decatur, IL area. Lots of slow load times.
  24. Rob
    If it's not us, I'm just glad it's not the Cardinals. He struck me as a guy who could have been a thorn in our side for quite some time.
  25. Rob
    I do worry if there's some question of diminishing returns when it comes to infield defense. After all, Swanson is as good as anybody in the game at SS right now.
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