Jump to content
North Side Baseball

sneakypower

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13,448

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    16

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by sneakypower

  1. sneakypower
    Albers was an example of big budget teams being able to find roster space for reclamation projects, nothing more I still hate the Burroughs example because he's atypical in that he'd been out of baseball for 3 years (and without the rare immense physical gifts of Josh Hamilton), but as an Arizona fan in a lesser-of-two-evils thing, I guess I'd still prefer them giving him ABs to Mora, Bloomquist or Nady Melky Cabrera had played at an above-average level for four years (at ages 21-24 no less) with the Yankees previous to his disaster with Atlanta last year, which has to be attributed to injury or some other extenuating factor given how anomalous his defense was that season Francoeur also showed enough skills - great defense, throwing arm, good power - so where all he needed was neutral luck with batted balls to make him a useful player. he's gotten that this year: babip and hr/fb right in line with his career averages Andy Laroche isn't currently worthy of holding out a lot of hope, due to his extreme GB tendencies, but you could do worse than letting your AAA hitting instructor experiment with his swing
  2. sneakypower
    i'd offer McNutt, Marshall, Vitters, Barney for Ubaldo
  3. sneakypower
    talking about impact, Albers, Morales, Miller, Hill all have had a better WPA for the Red Sox than Saltalamacchia but this meaningless semantical tangent obfuscates my easily understood point
  4. sneakypower
    not really, since he has no apparent skills remaining; even when we had acquired him, he had already proven to be a dismal defensive player at 2B and he had shown no semblance of a power swing in 5 years, so what could you have put his upside at? Alberto Callaspo? with Stewart, for example, he's given indications he can be a capable fielder at 3rd and can be a good to very good hitter when not besieged by babip woes. he has enough tangible upside to make the risk well worthwhile common sense obviously plays a part; it's not like scanning through old prospect lists and saying "hey lookie here, let's sign Nick Adenhart!" and btw, i love the idea that Ryan Webb and Edward Mujica are irreplaceable firemen while Matt Albers and Franklin Morales are non-contributors
  5. sneakypower
    so put them in AAA and let them force the issue. right now we've got 60 games left to play and several lame ducks; try swinging a deal for somebody who fits that mold and give them a couple months. it'd be inexcusable for Baker, DeWitt, Hill, Johnson to get significant playing time from this point forth
  6. sneakypower
    we use it up on no-upside stiffs like Koyie Hill, Montanez, Reed Johnson instead, and the Red Sox found spots for Saltalamacchia, Andrew Miller, Rocco Baldelli, Rich Hill, Matt Albers, Franklin Morales, Jeremy Hermida on their roster but what the [expletive] do they know?
  7. sneakypower
    Pie is the worst-case scenario, though; truthfully, he should have been sent to AAA awhile ago if a team is reasonable about it, you demote him when it becomes apparent work is needed on his swing, or a position change warrants consideration; it stands to reason the potential payoff still far, far exceeds the minimal risk involved
  8. sneakypower
    and beyond that, those guys collectively have already in just over 1/2 season, provided roughly $65-70 million of surplus value to their teams and most are cost-controlled for at least a couple more years the potential upside is simply too immense to ignore
  9. sneakypower
    in what's already a lost season, might as well give LaHair one last shot, and see if he can remotely approach his .277/.345/.519 MLE (unlikely) and maybe carve out a role as a bench player somewhere man, i do wish we had tried to sell high on Colvin last year
  10. sneakypower
    I think he's at the peak of what he can do right now. Twenty-three percent of his balls in play are flyballs, yet 14 percent are clearing the fence. There's nothing in his swing that says he will consistently hit over half of his flyballs for home runs*, so I think his slugging is inflated. I also question if he's really a .300 hitter. Maybe I'm wrong, but .300 hitters who hit 54 percent of their balls on the ground and strike out 16 percent of the time seems out of line. So over a full season, I estimate that he's a .280/.330/.390 hitter. *ETA: Sixty percent of his flyballs are going for homers. Not even Adam Dunn has done that. i have no clue where you're seeing the 60% figure, it's 9.1% for his career and 14.6% for this year he's as good a bet as anybody to hit .300 - he hits a ton of LD, GB and flashes moderate XBH ability - basically he's Howie Kendrick with better plate discipline
  11. sneakypower
    i'm not sure i understand your implication, Mojo; both of those names were in their 30s and had previous productive seasons in the bigs Diamond, Jerome Williams, Max Ramirez and especially Barrett are better examples of when Hendry's tried employing that strategy; in all honesty i was a big fan of all four acquisitions, and despite the former three not panning out i'd love to see much more of it
  12. sneakypower
    objectively, might Jay actually be the better player of the two? for the past two seasons, they've been virtually the same offensively (120 vs. 118 wRC+) and Jay grades out as the superior fielder in CF (8.7 vs. -2.2 career UZR/150 [in an admittedly small sample for Jay]), and there's only a year of difference in their ages
  13. sneakypower
    i could imagine Hendry insisting upon Pollock
  14. sneakypower
    ...former top prospects whose teams have lost patience here's a likely playoff team team you could have compiled by purely dumpster diving (requiring roughly minimal compensation): C Saltalamacchia ('06 #18) 1.6 fWAR 1B Kotchman ('05 #6) 2.1 2B Sizemore ('10 #57 -BP) 0.8 (36 games) SS Hardy ('05 #28) 2.0 3B Wood ('07 #8) 0.6 (59 games) RF Francoeur ('05 #14) 1.9 CF Maybin ('09 #8) 3.3 LF M Cabrera 3.2 these 9 guys have been more productive than all but 10 teams in the league, as a whole among the teams who these players collectively outrank, are the Pirates, Braves, Giants, Indians, Tigers, Phillies (and us of course) who are other players in this mold worth looking into acquiring cheaply? Ian Stewart, Teagarden, Brignac, Barton, Hermida, Blanks, LaRoche, Gomez, Pie, Milledge, (Fowler?), (Rasmus?). all these names are (to varying degrees) much more intriguing to me than much of the slop occupying our AAA roster or serving bench roles on the MLB level there's seemingly far fewer examples for pitching (only Humber, Andrew Miller, Morales immediately come to mind) and you'd have a near-impossible time discerning targets without scouting due to skills erosion and injuries
  15. sneakypower
    http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=lf&stats=fld&lg=nl&qual=500&type=1&season=2011&month=0&season1=2008&ind=0 his defense is more than fine; stop being such a dumbass, davearm
  16. sneakypower
    not nearly, he can be a Drew Stubbs-type player, which has a ton of value
  17. sneakypower
    you'll have to explain this one to me. or is your premise that because the two were both top-3 picks that they're remotely similar in terms of tools? that's a little embarrassing to suggest "Can you imagine someone so good at so much that he could be a lefthander throwing 96 miles per hour -- and not be wanted as a pitcher?"
  18. sneakypower
    That paints Hamilton as an everyday failed uberprospect that comes along year after year. He hadn't played professional baseball in years. Years! And there was the whole devolution into hard drug and alcohol abuse as well. He was extremely likely to not make any type of contribution to a MLB roster at the time of the draft. put it this way: if Bryce Harper goes on a 4-year or whatever sabbatical and gets left unprotected for the Rule V draft, i'll still be advocating like hell we take a chance on him you can keep rationalizing reasons to pass up on guys with star potential and then you're left wondering why you don't have but one star player in the entire organization
  19. sneakypower
    correct, but it's a semantical quibble, my main point remains: Guyer or Flaherty is the likely most valuable MLB contributor we'll have produced from three years of drafts, which is abysmal
  20. sneakypower
    (re: Cashner) Flaherty playing all over the diamond suggests that he's not in the team's plans to be an everyday player; the difference between him and Guyer is uncertainty in roles, so Guyer's a better bet to get the AB to compile average WAR seasons
  21. sneakypower
    I would call Cashner, Flaherty, and Russell solid bets to be league average for their positions. There's a couple others who still have reasonable chances to be that good. i meant more "league average" as a 2-win guy Cashner's bound for the pen, it seems like we're priming Flaherty for utility duty, with how he's been slotted (2B, 3B, LF, SS, RF, 1B), and Russell is replacement level
  22. sneakypower
    the 06-08 drafts are just utterly woeful; i can't find a guy in there who's a good bet to be a league average player, besides perhaps Guyer and Barney
  23. sneakypower
    the arguments some people make to defend our handling of the Hamilton thing are even worse than people bemoaning it he was the former #1 pick with tangible all-world talent. everybody knows the kind of arm he had, and the kind of raw power he had. this isn't a Pujols situation, and the comparison is so ludicrous. i was a little miffed at the time, thinking his defense and power stroke alone would well warrant him being rostered as a 25th man for a year just for the hell of it; not any worse at all than a Freddy Bynum type the only really valid defense of the move is that we wouldn't have had a support system in place, like the Reds had with Jerry Narron's brother
  24. sneakypower
    a trade the really pissed me off at the time was coveting old, useless Steve Trachsel everybody mentions Baker ruining the young arms, but on top of that he made us markedly worse from all the playing time he gave to awful bench veterans he requested, and probably ruined Corey Patterson by trying to shoehorn him into a leadoff role
  25. sneakypower
    damn, i picked the wrong day to go to Fort Wayne; i was there yesterday to see a game fwiw, a few stray observations i had (it was Las Vegas 51s vs. Tucson Padres): -James Darnell looked like Ronny Cedeno, physically, doesn't seem too promising in terms of power -Kyle Blanks and Adam Loewen both hit majestic 370+ foot foul balls -Brad Mills took a no-hitter into the 8th. i don't think he ever hit 90, but his changeup is deadly. guys looked completely foolish against it. -for whatever reason, there were tons of IF popouts for both teams (former Cubs great Jon Leicester pitched for Tucson) probably the hottest i've ever been in my life, too; we moved back from our seats a few rows behind the plate to the top of the section, in the shade
×
×
  • Create New...