Sammy Sofa

When we're able to sadly boil it down in hindsight as that the Cubs were saddled with a bizarrely terrible Heyward for multiple years, and were limited to only replacing someone like Schwarber internally, yeah, it looks like they effectively had no choice. That is not, however, the ideal way we were expecting this org to be able to roll with these type of punches. One would think/hope that trading Schwarber after, say, last year, wouldn't actually be this potentially critical blow that they can't cover up or recover from. But, sadly...here we are.

It seems wrong and criminal that there's all of these national commercials during the games featuring a bunch of MLB players, yet Baez is in none of them. I mean, there's no Cubs in them period because I guess they're mostly a bunch of Q-rating duds, but no Baez seems genuinely egregious.

Baez is a [expletive] monster. He has so many good ABs; I think my "Soriano with awesome defense" tag is pretty unfair.

Woof. Bryzzo makes me sad in my guts.

Well, I guess the whole "good Cubs baseball only happens when I go running" thing is back on.

All I know is that despite Bryzzo actually being that black hole that was discovered last week, I'm feeling much better about the Cubs' dongs this year.

I'm not looking at the team like that at all; the Cubs are 10th in dongs, and only 4 off from the #5 spot. It's just Zobrist especially who seems to be a guy who is hitting well while getting JUST short on some big shots.

Right, which is why I wanted them to trade for at least another good pitcher who could slot in right away. I only mentioned pitching prospects as a possibility they could have opted to go for if they had wanted to be REAL bold right after the WS, but that's not something I was rooting for them to do.

It's the 21st law of power.

I feel like he's been the 2019 Cubs King of WTP so far. He's certainly not just getting by on a bunch of seeing eye dribblers.

Oh, I would, too. I'm just not feeling too good about it right now. Dude looks so far beyond even "oh yeah, Rizzo always sucks in April" levels.

Well, yeah, that's what you have to do to get the best return with these sorts of assets. It's an automatic risk that can't be avoided. Sure, boiling it down to just their BA makes them sound both unappealing to the Cubs AND other teams, but we both know that wasn't the case because of the success/value they had displayed despite their BA, and because of their ages. Yeah, trading both would have been dumb, but possibly trading one could have worked. They didn't have their backs at the wall, especially since, again, they're supposed to be so good at continually drafting and developing talent, especially offensively. They, unfortunately, hit the wall in the regard, and in being willing/able to sign impact players, so that just highlights not trading any of the promoted players besides Soler as potentially a really bad move. You keep repeating how many games they won last year, and so much of that was due to the offense. And yeah, that's great, but the pitching was obviously an issue, and going to become a bigger issue, and the cupboard is so very bare. They seemingly decided to put almost all of their eggs in the homegrown hitting basket, and unfortunately that might turn out to have not given them much more of a window. Dude was, confusingly, a ranked prospect for 5 years. Go figure.

Who gave them about a .930 OPS in April and May and a .280 .384 .482 .867 line in the first half. Ok fine, we won 95 games with a Kris Bryant that gave us 2.3 fWAR for the year. Right now ZIPs has him giving us 4.3 total for this year. That would be a pretty significant disappointment given our expectations after 2016 (and even after 2017). And still a clear improvement over what he gave us last year, when, again, we won 95 games. ZIPs is being REAL generous right now. And go with the whole "they won 95 games" mantra all you want. That was then.

I don't know enough about this statistics to really speak to them, and they all come with SSS issues obviously...LD% is up (would be a career high), but hard hit percentage is down a good amount. BABIP is in line with last year. I think he'll be fine....he doesn't have to hit any XBH if he can keep the OBP. But I think it's fair to expect less power just from general aging. Yeah, I wasn't really expecting him to hit for much power to begin with given his age and recent injury history.

I'm not saying they're supposed to magically know which guys aren't going to pan out; I'm saying the assumption should be that some of those guys weren't going pan out because that's baseball, and the prudent thing to do is to take the inherent gamble on who they think that guy or guys might be and try to bolster another part of the team. To not utilize ANY of them as a trade asset is what bugs me. Maybe the right time never was there, but it just seems kinda glaring to glom onto essentially everyone of note you've promoted when the FO is supposed to be so good at being able to continue to spot and develop talent. But...they did? They turned Eloy into a starter who was top 10-top 20 in fWAR oover the previous few years with a bunch of control. They turned Vogelbach into a swing guy with a ton of team control. They turned Gleyber into the best closer for 2016, then they turned Soler into an elite closer for 2017. They clearly prioritized trading people who were still in the minors vs players that had shown some level of major league success, but we've been in 'win now' mode for 4+ seasons now...it's not exactly surprising they chose to deal from the minors than take away from talent that was (at the time) producing in the major leagues for a contending team. I never slammed them for not being willing to trade prospects like Eloy, Vogelbach and Gleyber; Soler is the only guy along the lines of what I'm talking about. And trading guys like him doesn't take them out of win now-mode; I would have preferred for 1-2 more moves to happen along those lines to bolster the pitching more. I would have much rather gone after another Quintana-type of target than having to sign someone like Darvish.

The damage Chili Davis wrought upon KB’s swing may be irreversible. Chili Davis sounds like a name a warlock would choose if he was trying to blend in with society.

And I looked up Zobrist after UMFan's post because I hadn't thought of there being anything off with him...and I'm still thinking there isn't despite him not having a single XBH so far this year. The guy's getting on base at a .407 clip with a BA of .295, and it seems like he is making some loud outs...so I'm kinda fine with it?

We won 95 games with a garbage KB last year. Who gave them about a .930 OPS in April and May and a .280 .384 .482 .867 line in the first half.

I'm not saying they're supposed to magically know which guys aren't going to pan out; I'm saying the assumption should be that some of those guys weren't going pan out because that's baseball, and the prudent thing to do is to take the inherent gamble on who they think that guy or guys might be and try to bolster another part of the team. To not utilize ANY of them as a trade asset is what bugs me. Maybe the right time never was there, but it just seems kinda glaring to glom onto essentially everyone of note you've promoted when the FO is supposed to be so good at being able to continue to spot and develop talent.

That, and it applies potentially to multiple guys on the team. I get the video game appeal of fielding a team of almost nothing but homegrown stud bats, but that's not something likely to pan out, and it's not like the pitching issues were ever going to be something to take them by surprise with the way the team was constructed and how their drafting went. They won a WS and have the most wins in MLB since all these guys were up together. I’d say it has panned out. The WS was in 2016. Running the team since then like they figured everyone they promoted was going to pan out in the long run is some completely unrealistic video game nonsense. Again, it's about dealing from a position of strength for a position of weakness; it's been obvious for a while that pitching development wasn't panning out AND that the Cubs had a starting rotation that needed some work. I simply would have preferred they had moved to bring in pitching prospects and/or established starters instead of hoarding all of Their Guys. Sure, maybe the moves simply weren't there, or the timing didn't line up. And I'm not saying they should have traded all or most of those names. But to act like keeping them all was some kind of, "well, what do you expect, ah-doy?!?"-move doesn't track.

Or for not trading him when his value was high? That, and it applies potentially to multiple guys on the team. I get the video game appeal of fielding a team of almost nothing but homegrown stud bats, but that's not something likely to pan out, and it's not like the pitching issues were ever going to be something to take them by surprise with the way the team was constructed and how their drafting went. It's just long bugged me how seemingly every single significant minor leaguer they developed or drafted who got called up seemingly became untouchable once they arrived. I know a lot of it is hindsight, but it can't help but annoy me that between Baez, Russell, Contreras, Happ, Almora and Schwarber, NONE of those guys were traded when they would have brought back or helped bring back a really good return in an area of weakness from an area of strength.

Actual fun with arbitrary endpoints: the Cubs have have won 4 of their last 5 games.

Huzzah.

Man, stuff is coming together, but this gigantic Bryzzo-shaped hole in the lineup is bumming me the horsefeathers out.