Rob
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Everything posted by Rob
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And for that matter, he rated as a 0 by OAA and RAA, and a 0.3 by UZR. Only DRS saw him as particularly valuable, at 5 runs.
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Carlos Santana is listed pretty generously at 5'11" and 215 lbs, and he's always been a heck of a defender at 1B. Height can help cover up some deficiencies, but in so far as there might be a minimum height necessary in order to be adequate, I think only Nick Madrigal would be disqualified on the current roster.
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This isn't trying to sort out which of Jeter or Arod plays SS. It's Ian Happ. And if Ian Happ has such an ego that he fights a move to 1B, his intractibility would hurt his free agent market more than the position switch would. He'd move. He might not be happy about it. But there's no doubt he'd do it.
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This isn't 1996. Teams don't give a horsefeathers if you get a gold glove for your defense. They've got their whole analytics department whispering in the GMs ear not just about general defensive value, but metrics that granularly break down precisely what a player can and cannot do effectively. How fast is his jump? How efficient are his routes? What's the release time on his throws? Etc... Every single front office in baseball is going to come to their own conclusions of his defense, and I'm sure a bunch of them already think he's a 1B. The gold gloves look good on a mantle or a press release, and that's just about it. Maybe if you're lucky and get one during your pre-arb years you can parlay it into a bit of extra cash from a clueless arbitrator. But that's not his situation. Acting like people out there give a crap about GGs in LF. C'mon...
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Okay, consider me interested. Is your argument that 1B is actually harder than LF? Or are you arguing that Happ is so bad in LF that he needs to be skipped over 1B entirely and moved straight to DH? Or something else entirely?
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Something I've been noodling is whether it makes sense to try to move Ian Happ to 1B. He played a little bit of 2B and 3B for us way back when. He was pretty bad at each. But despite snagging a GG in LF, the metrics are pretty mixed on him out there. I think he could be a fine 1B with a little practice. FA is a wasteland right now, but upgrading an OF spot is going to be easier than 1B. Heck, even if we're thinking of bringing back Bellinger and giving PCA a shot, I think it makes more sense to deploy Bellinger in LF and Happ at 1B rather than putting Bellinger at 1B.
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Because food can often be an addiction. But unlike heroin or alcohol or other substances you can give up and avoid entirely, people will always need to have some food to survive. So for many it can be a much harder thing to manage.
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I just wanna know if Yusei Kikuchi ever got his sushi. Sometimes when I'm alone at night I just picture him like Huell being left alone at the end of Breaking Bad. Yusei just hanging out by himself in a darkened sushi restaurant, hoping the door will open....
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I'm still surprised we haven't been linked to Brandon Belt. He's 36 years old, and a lot of his success in recent years has been at least partially attributable to an inflated BABIP. But he's at least a decent bet to perform reasonably well as the strong side of a 1B or DH platoon. Since we don't really have any in-house options for either aside from guys the FO seems down on, he strikes me as a decent pickup.
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Imagine a contract that paid $1M for ten years, and had a deferred balloon payment of $690M in the year 2060. That $690M in 2060 is a lot less valuable than it would be now. Inflation being what it is, $275M now has roughly the same buying power as getting $690M in 2060. Getting the money upfront thus has a huge advantage for the player. So when contracts with large deferrals are signed, the CBT looks at the "net present value" of the contract. Not what the buying power will be later, but what is equates to now.
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It only helps a tiny bit for luxury tax purposes. But for actual payroll under that hypothetical, he'd "only" cost $30M per year (plus luxury tax). That would help a lot with roster construction.
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I saw something earlier mentioning "unprecedented" deferrals. That's certainly drawn my attention. If this is a Bobby Bonilla situation, where Shohei is getting healthy paychecks well into his retirement, it could certainly make an impact.
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I am very interested to see what the details are on the deferrals. Honestly, it might bring the real value of this contract down into the $550-600M range.
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I just read through the last six hours of happenings. Beyond crazy.
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Bellinger has never made sense this offseason. He's going to get paid like a premium defensive CF. But PCA is going to get every opportunity to be the CF of the future. Going forward with us, Bellinger would likely be slotted in primarily as 1B. That's a huge waste of resources.
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We also have no reliable information that he hasn't come to Wrigley, or doesn't plan to.
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Cubs lose no players during the major league phase. I'm not gonna keep track of the minor league phase.
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And with their pick in the major league portion of the draft, the Cubs pass.
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Rule 5 Draft starting now.
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If he was doing it for the attention, he'd be doing it how LeBron did. And he'd be getting paid extra for his troubles. At worst, this seems to be an arguable case of the Streisand effect, where his intent to keep something secret has backfired. But honestly? I think there was zero chance a phenom like him wasn't going to get hounded about this decision during the offseason.
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2024 MLB Draft Thread
Rob replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Cleveland got the first pick, and Cincinnati second. So some teams got lucky, it just wasn't us... -
I've never understood the whole in/out dynamic on the way these deals are reported. Like, I get it if Ohtani just decides that under no circumstances does he want to play in Chicago. It's just too cold for him or whatever. If that's the case, I could understand how we'd be "out." But if it's just a question of money, the Cubs could decide to buy their way back "in" on these discussions up until the moment he signs elsewhere. Jed could have a stiff drink at dinner tonight and bump our offer 10% and suddenly things would look very different, in all likelihood.
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2024 MLB Draft Thread
Rob replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in MLB Draft, International Signings, Amateur Baseball
Draft lottery is tonight. Cubs could theoretically get a lottery pick in the top 6, though the odds are extremely low. https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-mlb-draft-lottery-odds -
One thing that's been pretty true of the Hoyer era is that he operates pretty stealthily. There are, of course, times when the fit is just so obvious that everybody assumes it'll come together (Bellinger last year). But I wouldn't necessarily expect to get much lead time before finding out something has actually happened.
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This roster needs to add roughly 8-10 WAR for me to be "happy" with the offseason. I don't really care where it comes from. Ohtani and scrubs. Fine. Bichette, Alonso, and another? Fine. Once we get into that 12+ win range, I move from "happy" to legitimately excited.
