Rob
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Everything posted by Rob
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It sure was nice of Joe to wait until after Game of Thrones was over to put Contreras in the game. -
I am officially excited about the new kid.
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I'm not really sure there is such a thing as a conventional "backup" on a Joe Maddon team. Montero will probably get additional PA when he's playing 3B, or when Contreras is pitching or something equally wacky.
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Among position players with 0 or more PA this season, Chris Coghlan has been the worst player in baseball with -1.7 fWAR. Granted, part of that is a nasty .170 BABIP. Still, he shouldn't have cost Mendy -- even despite his decreased prospect stature.
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speed doesn't age well? he'll be 35 in august. That's the weird thing -- it does. Guys with well-rounded skillsets like Crawford in his prime have historically aged extraordinarily gracefully.
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I could see the Cubs trying to convince the Brewers to take back Montero as a piece in a trade for Lucroy, helping with the whole "have to carry three catchers" thing. I'd think you'd need to work that into a three team deal though -- find a cheap team with a big need at C and let the Cubs foot the bill for Montero, with the other team contributing some portion of the prospects needed to get Lucroy. The Rays, Rockies, and Marlins have guys at C that Montero should be an upgrade over in the short term. Same for the Rangers, but they've got the bullets to just go out and get Lucroy. Montero is an upgrade for the Angels as well, but they don't have any prospects. The Rays are probably the best fit. They've gotten -0.6 fWAR from Casali and Conger combined to this point. And the front office even sans Friedman is still smart enough to recognize Montero gets some real value from pitch framing.
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5/18 CUBS (Lackey) @ Brewers (Nelson) 7:10 CT, WGN
Rob replied to philosophizer75's topic in Fred Hornkohl Game Thread Forum
You got this, Wood. It's just Villar. -
At one point, I really wanted Fredi to be the manager of the Cubs. The guy seemed like a slam dunk great manager. He was open to all the sabermetric stuff, and had spent years being mentored by Bobby Cox. Unfortunately, if you're a moron it doesn't matter who is teaching you, or what you're being taught. You're just gonna keep doing moron things. God speed, you glorious moron.
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4/5 Cubs (Lester) @ Angels (Heaney) 9:05 CT CSN+, WSCR
Rob replied to UMFan83's topic in Fred Hornkohl Game Thread Forum
I am enjoying baseball. -
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We just released Rex Brothers. Should save us about a million bucks to spend around the deadline.
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Injured hand. Oh, that's anti-climactic.
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Something's up in the Cardinal's camp. Peralta was apparently sighted leaving the camp in street clothes, and the GM is expected to make an announcement in the next half hour. Another PED bust?
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It doesn't take much to imagine Victorino or Murton winning the 5th OF job over Szczur. That said, I'm guessing Victorino ends up getting released near the end of spring training to pursue other opportunities. He probably would have been fine with a 4th OF role, but I can't see him settling for 5th. He's probably just going to use spring training as a showcase for other teams to hopefully show them he's got something left in the tank.
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Here's how I would handle the lineups, with career wRC+ versus that type of pitcher in parenthesis. vs. R RF - Heyward (132 wRC+) 2B - Zobrist (114) 1B - Rizzo (133) 3B - Bryant (140) LF - Schwarber (161) CF - Fowler (101) C - Montero (110) P - Arrieta SS - Russell (104) vs. L 2B - Zobrist (128 wRC+) CF - Fowler (121) 1B - Rizzo (113) 3B - Bryant (120) RF - Heyward (85) LF - Soler (100) C - Montero (75) P - Arrieta SS - Russell (44) Schwarber has a 30 wRC+ against lefties, so I'm not exactly going to suggest we try to force him into the lineup against them. I'm also expecting his massive numbers against RHP to regress somewhat -- but if it doesn't, we may need to shuffle the top of the lineup a bit. Javy has a 97 wRC+ against lefties and La Stella actually has a 122, so I bet they see some playing time there. Maybe shift Zobrist to RF to give Heyward a breather against the real tough lefties, or Russell if he continues to struggle adjusting. Hell, even Rizzo and Bryant will need a few days off.
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I bet Theo Epstein was reading Dave Cameron's grade for this offseason and was just so gutted by the criticism that he had to go out and sign Fowler.
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Not that I really care, but not sure how this works. If Dexter is the one that opts out, does he still get the buy-out money? We will have to see how the contract is structured. There have definitely been cases where players got buyouts when not exercising their portion of a mutual option. But it's usually a smaller figure.
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It's probably pretty pointless to try to name a player as a starter at an OF position at this point. Maddon has a ton of options and will mix and match as he loves to do.
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Looks like the $9M option for next year is a mutual option. So unless Fowler really loves being a Cub, he's likely to turn that down. So in all likelihood this is a 1 year, $13M deal after you factor in the buyout -- unless of course the buyout is less than $5M if Fowler is the one to decline. Pretty awesome all the same though.
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Wow. Awesome.
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He's one of those guys who I always had a little trouble reconciling what we saw from him on the field defensively with the metrics. For his career, Murton's UZR/150 in the OF is 17.4. That's significantly better than guys like Starling Marte and Alex Gordon. And that's over a 2,000 inning sample. He never looked much better than passable out there, but I guess being contemporaries with guys like Raul Ibanez and Jermaine Dye can really help bring down the bar for "league average."
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We've got the personnel to break up the lefties all the way down the lineup, so I'd probably do that. My lineup would look something like this: Heyward (L) Zobrist (S) Rizzo (L) Bryant ® Schwarber (L) Soler ® Montero (L) Pitcher Russell ® You could convince me to shuffle the guys batting 2/4/6 or 1/3/5 in just about any order among their subgroup as long as it didn't leave Bryant or Rizzo batting lower than 4th in the lineup though. Hell, I would be fine with something like this even: Rizzo (L) Bryant ® Schwarber (L) Soler ® Heyward (L) Zobrist (S) Montero (L) Pitcher Russell ®
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Thanks so much for all the hard work, Tim. Since this is a fresh start, I assume DaBum is welcome to return?
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I actually kinda like the deal for the Cardinals. He's likely to be worth the money. That said, as a Cubs fan I'm happy they're spending that money on a pretty consistent guy without much of a ceiling. The Cubs are a better team than the Cardinals right now, and absent some truly bad luck for the Cubs the Cardinals need a few high variance guys to break through in order to catch up. Leake wont be one of them.
