Rob

I think it's fair to say people were largely brushing aside the Ricketts political views in the early going. But I would argue against that lasting through the whole 2016-2019 run. I was able to put it aside in 2016 because, like most people, I thought Trump had zero chance of winning. When he did, I started paying a lot more attention to who had been supportive of him. For me, the Ricketts honeymoon lasted about a month after the championship before I quickly soured on them. I root for the team in spite of ownership. But I have totally stopped sending my money their way.

I am starting to like this guy.

Yeah, it doesn't pass the sniff test. You care enough about a player to offer them $300M+. But you don't care enough to follow up after a lengthy lockout during which it was extensively discussed that said player had changed his agent? If anybody was offering that kind of cash, they'd have been sure to at least text Boras on Day 1 after the lockout and make sure he's familiar with the previous offer.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nl-central-preview-who-will-play-spoiler-to-the-brewers/ Mind you, that doesn't include Bryant, Baez, and Rizzo all being shipped off at the deadline.

I liked Bauer when he was just that guy who fought with the Diamondbacks coaching staff because he wanted to keep doing long toss and doing the whole driveline baseball thing. He had a thing. It was data driven, and it had worked for him in the past. So I got why he wanted to give it another shot before tweaking everything. Then he got traded to Cleveland. Haven't liked him much since then.

I think Ortega really needs to show something quickly. It makes most sense that that roster spot comes down to a decision between him and Heyward. I'm guessing that the Cubs go with Heyward because of contract, status in the clubhouse, yada yada. I'd keep Ortega to see if his performance against right handers last year was real. This is a team that needs a lot of things to break right in order for them to compete. On the whole, Jason Heyward has been a disappointment on the field. His performances have mostly ranged from average to slightly below average starter production. And last year was his worst yet. But he's only 32 years old, and his 2020 season showed there's at least some potential that he might have something left in the tank. I think the Cubs will roll with Heyward out of the gate. He's always been lauded as a solid clubhouse guy, and this front office has placed value on that in the past. But I doubt his leash will be what it has been in previous years -- they're quickly approaching the point where eating the remaining contract is doable.

That's been the rumor floating around for a long while now. I think it's unlikely at this point. He's coming off a rough season, but he typically hits well in the first half. So if he hits well through the trade deadline, teams may be willing to pay just as much for a half season of him as they are willing to pay right now based off last year's production. That said, there's no good reason the Cubs couldn't trade him right now. Sure, they want to sneak into the back of the playoff picture. But if we're being honest, the difference between Willson and Yan Gomes isn't that substantial. If the offer is sufficient, I see no reason they have to wait until the deadline to move him.

I hated him so much circa 2016, but it was mostly because I was terrified of him.

A far less exaggerated Craig Counsell?

He's going to be a reliever (and very much relies on the fastball) at the next level. Scouts have been impressed and he's rising up draft boards. He would go in the 3rd-round currently, and I think maybe rises all the way to early 2nd-round area by draft time as long as he stays healthy. Yes, college pitching sucks this year, but no one takes a pure reliever in the 1st round (for those wondering why he wouldn't go higher). Reliever or no, I have to think he'll end up going surprisingly high. Teams have placed increasingly more importance on their relief corps at the major league level. He's a college guy with massive stuff who might be able to help more or less immediately. And of course, it only takes one team to be that high on him... Or to dream on turning him into a starter.

I think it's precisely because MLB catching is a "black hole of suck" that the Cubs would adopt this approach. Look at the fWAR leaderboards for catching last year. Contreras comes in 12th, surrounded by guys who aren't particularly well-regarded. And that's because most catchers either hit well or defend well, but only a sparse handful do well at both. Contreras can hit, but he's just not much of a defender at a position with a really high bar for it. And ultimately, that's the problem. I'm sure Jed looks at the catching marketplace and realizes that paying for a defensive specialist who can put up comparable total value to Contreras is going be a heck of a lot cheaper than a flashy, offense-first guy like Contreras. That’s a lot words for being so wrong. Be butthurt about it all you want. I'm just trying to explain what I imagine Jed is seeing. Willson is a guy whose bat has to carry him, but he's thirty years old, has a lot of mileage behind the plate, and his recent offensive numbers have taken a dip. If you want to believe he's immune to the forces that routinely derail catching careers, I hope you are right. But I think it's more likely than not that we've seen his best years.

Ricketts playing the long game and taking the money saved from the 2012-2014 rebuilds, last years salary dump and rebuild this year, and combining it with the extra revenue from Marquee to having a ridiculous 1 year spending frenzy to win the world series. Gonna have a $500m payroll, book it! Or giving it to a Russian Oligarch, one or the other Doing the old Marlins play, eh? Acquire all the great players, win the world series, sell off the whole team immediately thereafter.

I mean we just signed a very high profile guy in Suzuki and by all accounts our pitch to him was great and we also got Stroman, who had plenty of suitors. I still trust they can get a guy they desire to target. But yeah, I’m kinda good with shopping/not extending Contreras unless the extension is on the teams terms. The injury risk/wear and tear with aging catchers aren’t low and Contreras hasn’t even stayed all that healthy as a younger guy. I’d love to keep him but get not extending him at this moment if it’s not on the right terms. I don't understand this thinking at all unless you think Amaya is going to be ready to step in next year or the year after. MLB catching is a black hole of suck and Contreras is already here. I think it's precisely because MLB catching is a "black hole of suck" that the Cubs would adopt this approach. Look at the fWAR leaderboards for catching last year. Contreras comes in 12th, surrounded by guys who aren't particularly well-regarded. And that's because most catchers either hit well or defend well, but only a sparse handful do well at both. Contreras can hit, but he's just not much of a defender at a position with a really high bar for it. And ultimately, that's the problem. I'm sure Jed looks at the catching marketplace and realizes that paying for a defensive specialist who can put up comparable total value to Contreras is going be a heck of a lot cheaper than a flashy, offense-first guy like Contreras.

Doesn't sound like they are even talking, and it seems like they have already signed his replacement so they can trade him at the deadline. It reads like they've already decided his fate, not as much a 'go test the market and see what you find out there before coming back to us' situation. And on the surface it makes sense. 29 year old catcher, not really a superstar or anything. And if you look at Rizzo, Bryant, Schwarber, Javy and Willson, individually they all make sense to not extend I guess. But collectively it suggests a emotionless way of building your baseball team. Like I said, this might not be a point everyone agrees with me on, but I think there is some value to doing your fanbase a solid and let the occasional player stick around. It might be the better baseball decision, but I think it hurts fan connection with the team. Yes all of those guys got worse deals than offered the Cubs, I recognize that but it seems really curious to me that we tried to extend all of them and none of them signed. Did the QO survive this iteration of the CBA? I can't remember. If so, I could see the Cubs holding onto Willy at the deadline and extending a QO if the circumstances justify it. Otherwise, yeah. It's seems more likely than not that he's traded. And I 100% agree, there's real value in having players stick around occasionally. This front office has definitely been concerned with things like clubhouse chemistry, and having some of the old vets on the team is a part of that. But as you said, Willson isn't exactly a superstar. He's an above-average catcher about to hit the ugly portion of the aging curve. Best to get value while the getting is good. There are other ways to get consistent presences in the clubhouse. We've still got Hendricks, and he seems a better bet to age reasonably well and sign relatively cheaply. Heck, Ross is the manager. And maybe in a couple years when we're competing again we might bring back Rizzo or whoever as the DH. It's not so much the overall concept that I think people will argue with you about. It's just trying to shoehorn Willson in as that guy that doesn't really work.

Meh. There's some room for that, certainly. If you had all the pieces for a winning team in place and they'd decided to overpay Baez just so the fans could have the entertainment value from watching him play, I think everybody here would be fine with that. But the thing I want to see more than anything else is a winning team. Once the decision was made to sell last season, I was glad to see them go all-in on it, rather than offer somebody like Rizzo an extension to be an overpaid player on a bad team just because he's likable. Same for Willy. The Cubs window for real contention has closed. Barring some incredible luck, Willson Contreras will not be a valuable contributor on the next good Cubs team. So we might as well shop him and get some value for him at the deadline. Once some of these prospects start panning out, we can always develop new fan favorites. Maybe we'll talk about Davis, Hernandez, and Crow-Armstrong the way we talked about Bryant, Rizzo, and Baez. But I'd much rather see the Cubs winning than putting out more bad teams with our old core.

I am still in awe at how quickly the Ricketts family has managed to alienate the fanbase. They buy the team from an old fashioned ownership group. They let the team tank for the first couple years, but the money saved is clearly being reinvested in modernizing the front office and the farm system. Then a bunch of money gets pumped into the team and they win their first World Series in more than a hundred years, breaking one of professional sports most famous losing streaks. The city is elated. At this point, people were falling all over themselves praising the Ricketts. Here we are, a bit more than five years later, and they're almost universally reviled. It's honestly incredible.

What stars has Colorado even had? Helton Walker Holliday Tulowitzki Arenado Gonzalez Blackmon Helton and Blackmon never played outside Colorado. Tulo and CarGo were fairly washed up before they left Colorado. The rest have put up good years in STL that weren’t otherwise up to their standards. It’s not much of a sample.

From 2018 to 2021, Eric Hosmer has hit .264/.323/.415, good for an OPS+ of 102 -- which is the same number Ian Happ and Jonathan Villar put up last season. That's an oWAR of 3.6 in four years, lower than Heyward's 4.6 over the same timeframe. His ground ball rate is 56.9%. He's not getting many barrels. He's not hitting the ball particularly hard. There's absolutely nothing about his performance that screams all-star DH. He's essentially a league average bat with no defensive value. We've already got plenty of those. You can make his numbers look better if you go back to 2016 and 2017, like you did. And I'm perfectly happy to discuss that if you think there's actual relevance to his numbers in those years. But I'm having trouble seeing how that could be, outside of a generally applicable argument that a change of scenery could be helpful -- which is an argument I already conceded, and will concede for basically everybody who has ever had a track record of semi-recent success.

I clicked on this expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised.

If this is the team, what is the point in trading for Hosmer? Nobody is interested in acquiring Hosmer. As much as we rag on Jason Heyward for his performance since signing his contract, even he has vastly outperformed Hosmer since Hosmer signed his big contract four years ago -- 6.0 fWAR to 0.5 fWAR. So whatever you think Heyard's miniscule value on the field is, Hosmer's is ten times less. And Hosmer is owed $15M more dollars than Heyward. The value of Hosmer is the package of prospects the Padres would have to include to get somebody to absorb his contract. I could honestly see the Cubs trading for him and cutting him within the day, just for a chance to get the prospects. Though as far as reclamation projects go, he'd probably be worth giving a month of at bats to and see if a change of scenery from Petco helps at all. But I sincerely doubt anybody sees anything of real value in Hosmer at this point.

The Rockies thing for KB seems like a clear cut case of an agent leaking a rumor to try to get another team to up their offer just a bit more. I still think he ends up with the Mariners. The Mariners thing seems like a longer-shot to me after getting Winker and Suarez from the Reds, unless they have plans to flip one of them. I totally forgot about Winker and Suarez. Yeah, Phillies seem more appropriate in that case.

The Rockies thing for KB seems like a clear cut case of an agent leaking a rumor to try to get another team to up their offer just a bit more. I still think he ends up with the Mariners.

5 IP is kind of a pointless goal as you'd pretty much just be losing your DH in games you go down big early. But 6 IP is not great and I'd hate to incentivize major league managers extending their SP past their comfort zone just to keep the DH. Can Manfred please just take baseball behind the shed and give it the Old Yeller treatment already? Dragging it out like this isn't helping anybody.

I hope you fall into a carton of thick onion gravy.

Crossover post. Nah, looks more like a Model 3 than a Model Y.