Rob

Yeah, I'll be honest, I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen more of an attempt to play Morel at third. He's always had a plus-plus arm, but troubles with range and hands. That combo would seemingly play better at 3B than 2B, but the Cubs have been more comfortable letting him play 2B. I mean, I'd get it if they just decided he was an outfielder. But if they're gonna let him play infield, they ought to try to maximize the value of his arm.

Part of the reason I've been so down on reupping with Bellinger is because PCA's defense gives him a pretty high floor in CF. So I don't generally see the 1-2 win gap between their expected production as worth the contract Bellinger will demand. That said, if we could turn PCA into a guy like Luzardo, I'd be a lot more interested in a reunion with Bellinger.

Signing Bauer cheap isn't the problem. It's that their insurance doesn't cover sexual battery.

I still don't see it. There are bigger issues at stake. Namely, the league's antitrust exemption, which has been under constant fire in the last decade. As has been stated previously in this thread, there is a specific rule governing deferrals. And it states that there is no limit. This is what the sides bargained for. The point of the "best interests of baseball" clause is largely flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances. But since the owners and players bargained about this exact point, it would be an incredibly aggressive use of the clause. And having a commissioner with virtually unchecked power who uses that power aggressively would give those arguing against the league's antitrust exemption a very strong data point on their side. And again, I would caution against thinking of this as an end-run circumventing the rules. It's not a loophole. Think of it as two separate agreements. (1) Ohtani signed a 10/$460M deal. (2) Ohtani agreed to loan the Dodgers $44M per year of that deal at ~5% interest over an additional ten years. Neither of those agreements would violate any rules on their own. There's nothing about this that is obviously bad for the game.

Rumor has it, the OF may not be Margot. It could be Arozarena. Apparently he scrubbed one of his social media profiles of the Rays, and tagged Shohei in a post. And I guess Ohtani's interpreter just followed Arozarena? It's probably more flight-tracker stuff. But I'd be a bit miffed about this.

Honestly, I'm surprised that's the marginal proposal you're jumping on. Literally a page or two earlier I suggested signing Josh Donaldson because I thought he might get roided out. That's a far less defensible sales pitch.

Setting aside that you think I don't understand the statistics for no apparent reason, I am hardly the only one to look at them and find cause for concern. Basically every site is full of people wondering whether Bellinger can replicate his 2023. And if he can't, that's not a ~ $180M player. Full stop. On a side note, I do fully endorse your claim that you are the exception to the swear filter. But I do wish Fred was here to get mad at us for it nonetheless.

You're calling me the dumbass, and that's the whole of your analysis? I can't possibly make a good point because I suggested signing a talented but troubled guy as a 4th OF? Or is it that I don't pay enough attention to awards? Good thinking, Jim Henry! I liked the Bellinger signing for peanuts last off season. But there's a 50% chance this signing ends up looking a whole lot like Jason Heyward, and our ownership sucks too much to be comfortable with that much risk. If we were the Dodgers, with an ownership group that actually spends, you and I wouldn't be having this discussion. I'd be fine with it. But so long as the Ricketts remain the Cubs owners, it's a bad idea. Dumbass.

Honestly, taking the contract is probably enough. That said, I have trouble seeing the point. Cronenworth is a 2B, but we don't need that. He played 1B for the Padres last year, but he doesn't have the bat necessary to be much of a contributor there. The only way I'd be interested is if I thought he could transition successfully to 3B. I haven't watched enough of him to have an opinion on that.

Alright, we've talked a lot about batted ball issues, two strike approaches, and basically everything under the hood with respect to his offensive performance last year. What part of the analysis do you actually take issue with?

Should I just pm you my address or something? Because I'm not backing off the "Bellinger got lucky, and signing him to a big contract would be a mistake" position.

Yes and no. Lugo has managed to put up 2.0 fWAR out of the pen before. If he can pull off a season like that every year, $15M is fair regardless of whether he's utilized as a starter or a pen arm. That said, putting up approximately 2fWAR per year as a reliever is a heck of a difficult task. Last year, only four pitchers managed to do so. Tanner Scott, Felix Bautista, David Bednar, and Matt Brash. That said, if we lower the threshold to 1.7 fWAR, there's another 7 names. Earning his pay would certainly be easier as a starter. But it's not impossible as a reliever.

Yeah, I actually like that a fair amount. Converted back to the rotation last year and put up 2.8 fWAR in roughly 150 innings. Might be able to squeeze a bit more out of him next year. If he's a starter, this is probably a steal. But there's a real chance he ends up back in the pen. It's probably about fair, but I like it nonetheless.

Respectfully, Bellinger last year would have fit this description perfectly last year. Retread coming off some terrible years and looking for a one year pillow contract while he tries to rebuild some value. Bargain bin shopping isn't all bad.

Yes. That's actually mentioned multiple times in the post you quoted, and has been discussed in the thread since then. As I pointed out, Zack Greinke spent the whole of the 2006 (IIRC) season away from the Royals due to severe anxiety. It's not necessarily the end of a career. But as a shrink, I wouldn't mind your take.

Consistency, perhaps? For the sake of argument, let's take a curveball for example. A lot of guys have it as their third or fourth pitch, so it's not used all that often. As such, I've seen that there can be quite a variable degree of break to them. A curveball in the first inning might be a lot tighter than a loopier one thrown a few innings later. Time spent in the pitch lab could be spent focusing on that pitch. Learning to do it the same way each and every time. So you can more predictably estimate how far one will drop one into the zone, even if you aren't able to place it quite as precisely as you'd like.

Zack Greinke absconded from the Royals for a year. It's quite possible that Meadows' career is over. But it's hardly a foregone conclusion. If he thinks he's up to it, I think he's worth gambling on.

The Cubs should sign Austin Meadows. Picked 9th overall in the 2013 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates, Meadows (along with Tyler Glasnow) was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays for Chris Archer in 2018. He was considered a top prospect at the time, and would go on to put up a .291/.364/.558 line in 2019 during his first full year in the majors. He put up 4.5 fWAR that season. In 2020, he tested positive for COVID and missed a significant chunk of the shortened season, limping to a .205/.296/.371 line. 2021 saw him bounce back a little bit, to a .234/.315/.458 line in 142 games. He accrued 1.6 fWAR in the process. On April 4, 2022, Meadows was shipped off to the Tigers for Issac Paredes. He would once again be infected with COVID and dealt with vertigo issues. Shortly after rejoining the team, he injured his achilles and missed the rest of the season -- partially due to mental health issues. 2023 saw him missing time again with anxiety issues. He only played 6 games last year. Given how much time he's missed, it's hard to get a read on him as a player. But he's still just 28 years old. He's left-handed. He's got power and puts the ball in the air. He could be a really good change of scenery candidate. Pick him up on the cheap. Counsell likes to mix-and-match a lot, so he'd probably pick up a fair amount of time at LF/RF/DH and get good matchups when doing so. If he was capable of playing CF, I'd liken this move to last year's Bellinger pickup. But while he's played there a bit in the past, he'd probably be stretched pretty thin doing so. That said, Wrigley has an easier CF than most ballparks. Still, he strikes me as a worthwhile change of scenery gambit.

Even there, I'd rather trade for a post-hype guy like MacKenzie Gore. Maybe you can make a couple tweaks and turn him into the next Jake Arrieta. And if that doesn't work out, you can always then convert a guy like that into a bullpen role where the fastball + slider should play up and make them darn near as effective as Hunter Harvey anyway.

It was either make that post, or study for my international criminal law final. Seemed an easy choice to me. But the bizarre roid rant was basically an excuse to chat about that Pujols conspiracy theory. Even without it, Donaldson looks like a slight upgrade over Wisdom. (Side note: I'm thinking today's argument instead of studying will be to sign Austin Meadows, but I'm still thinking through that one.)

Bellinger's .370 wOBA was the 13th highest among qualified hitters in baseball last year. The guys ahead of him were pretty much all current or former MVP candidates -- Ohtani, Acuna, Seager, Betts, Olson, Freeman, etc.... (though Marcell Ozuna was also there, weirdly enough). Meanwhile, you have seemingly taken great umbrage at my labeling of Bellinger's .370 wOBA last year as "lucky." Well, I've got news for you. If you're saying Bellinger wasn't lucky -- that his true talent level actually puts him in the top dozen or so hitters in baseball while being a plus defensive center fielder, then you're also saying he's going to be in that MVP discussion pretty much by default. Also, as 17 Seconds pointed out, others have said that.

Max EV is a single data point. One. It's not totally useless, but there is a whole season's worth of data to look at that says that Bellinger has not, in fact, returned to MVP caliber form as a hitter. Rather, he's a plus defensive center fielder who is maybe, just maybe, slightly above average offensively. That's valuable, absolutely. But he's a lot closer to being Kevin Kiermaier than he is to being a perennial MVP candidate. So why would we want to pay him like one?

You're cherry picking. xBA is a component of xwOBA, which also includes his power and walk rate. So sure, having a higher than normal batting average might be expected. But that doesn't make him a good hitter. And while his max EV went slightly up last year, his average exit velocity was the absolute lowest of his career. It ranked in the 22nd percentile. That's not a power "rebound." His barrel and hard hit rates were also the lowest of his career. Put more simply, his xwOBA was .327. His actual wOBA was .370. Now, I put a little bit of stock in his adjusted two-strike approach. But it's not worth .043 points of wOBA. He was lucky last year, plain and simple.

I'll be honest -- I simply don't trust Bellinger's production going forward. I don't want any part of a massive contract for him. We've all seen this discussion before, but the underlying metrics are not pretty. His xwOBA was merely in the 53rd percentile last year. Overall rank of 121 out of 258. He was right behind Jake Fraley and Luke Raley. He looked like a league average hitter who got lucky. Now, I understand some people think it's not luck -- that maybe it's at least partially attributable to his two-strike approach. But that's not really a testable hypothesis on a single season's timeframe. And even if you believe it's true -- how much of a difference can that make, truly? It's probably not enough to take a league average guy to near MVP caliber when healthy. And it's not like we can look to his recent past to allay our concerns. His recent past showed him being abysmal with the bat. Last year I was one of the chief defenders of signing him. There was enough in his profile that I thought he warranted a look on a cheap one year deal to see if he could pull it together. And he has -- at least partially. But this year I look at him and see the warts. I think he's going to be paid ~$80M or so more than he's worth. We're best off letting him walk and collecting the QO pick.