Sammy Sofa

Bears - 20 Vikings - 94

How many $ is a win worth these days? I’d say yes he should definitely be picked up, he’s probably more of a 4.00ish era pitcher than a 5. His ERA was below 4 before he inexplicably fell apart these last 5 starts. Fangraphs has him worth over $26 million this year. Honestly, the main outlier for him has been the dongs. The concerning part is that that issue first showed up in 2017, and isn't considered that this league-wide power surge didn't happen until last season?

There isn't another pitcher out there for $10.5 million that can give innings and actually has some upside? If you include the bolded part? Probably not, no. Quintana is a nerd, but he's going to be just shy of a 3.5 fWAR starting pitcher this season, and outside of last year has been even better than that for 4 straight seasons. If they actually do get rid of the juiced balls, he suddenly looks a LOT better.

I gotta say, it's weirdly pretty damn impressive to basically end the season just getting absolutely pantsed like this time and time again.

Man, he is, again, lame as horsefeathers, but not picking up his option makes zero sense. It's only $10 million, right? The rotation is even more fucked without him, and that's just yet another spot that needs to be filled.

He’s getting paid $10m to be a top 50 pitcher in baseball while the dude we traded for him struggles to hit a .300 OBP. I was hoping for better, but we’ve done far, far worse. It doesnt matter what eloy is doing. his value when he was traded was immense and we got a complete bum for it. Yeah, the whole, "oh yeah?!? Eloy SUCKS!!!" thing is so old; I don't think there's anyone here actually pining for Eloy to still be with the Cubs. The frustration is that a very, very valuable trade asset was traded for one of the lamest technically good pitchers you could possibly find. Being lamely technically good seems to be the Theo Cubs specialty, like, 75% of the time.

On Crabmeat Ankle - The 2019 Cubs Thread

But enough about the Cubs...

THE DEATH SPIRAL CONTINUES. Cubswin11, it's all on you.

Sooooooooooooooo maybe the 2019 Cubs are killing the board, too?

Not shockingly at all, the baseless speculation in a Reddit thread about who banged Ben Zobrist's wife comes smothered with a heaping helping of not so subtle racism sauce. "I heard it was this one brown guy that did it! No, I heard it was that OTHER brown guy!!!! No, the OTHER OTHER brown guy!!!!"

https://deadspin.com/tarik-cohen-unwittingly-exposes-a-nude-kyle-long-to-the-1838409753

Whether or not jersey start's today's game thread is more exciting than the game itself.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/yu-darvishs-futile-heroics/

Hey, this is just them paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Collapse of '69.

Oh, horsefeathers; completely forgot about that debacle. TRADE AWAY.

jersey, it's technically your go. Enjoy the pain.

What is this, the baseball version of the Obama tan coat "scandal?!?"

Contreras is easily the second coolest person on the team behind Baez, and it's not even close, so it pains me that he and his sexy, sexy bat make the most sense to be traded to fix Theo's stinkeye for pitching. Sadly, he'll probably horsefeathers it up this time, too.

I don't know if there is already a successor in place, but San Francisco makes sense too. Veteran that is past his usefulness is a very Giants of the last couple of years move. I think SF goes younger as they finally enter the rebuild. For Maddon I’d say San Diego, Angels, Phillies, Rockies, Mets, or White Sox (to own the Cubs or something) as landing spots. He’ll have a job if he wants one. Yeah, White Sox are my #2 pick after SD as to where he likely ends up, then Phillies #3.

Right, and like I said, it's impressive that he still put up the year he did despite the knee issues and, IMO, the lingering shoulder issues he was dealing with (or whatever rust had to be shaken off via his very cruddy start to the season). But this is 2 seasons in a row now where he's had to deal with lingering injury issues and, again, I don't think it's unreasonable to be very wary of that as it's something that is more likely to get worse as a player gets older. Combine that with his slugging getting back to what it had been in the context of this juiced ball environment, and it makes me trepidatious. And I do genuinely think the Cubs need/expected him to be better than he has been these last 2 seasons. That, rightly, seems somewhat ridiculous to say about a 5 WAR player, but given the context of how this team is made up and their limited resources, I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that they were banking on the Bryant of 2016 and 2017 being either the norm or even preludes to what kind of seasons he'd put up (Kyle's naysaying that players peak by the age of 14 or whatever be damned). There's the, IMO, good SI article linked to in the general Cubs discussion thread that breaks down the holes in the Cubs lineup, and even in the approaches at the plate of a lot of their better players, and in those circumstances they arguably need Bryant to be even more than 2019 Bryant, who might arguably end up being peak/best case scenario Bryant going forward. Yeah, that's a lot of projection/guessing, but it's a big reason why I'm not tremendously optimistic about what the Cubs do in the (likely) final 2 seasons that Bryant is with them. I'd love to be wrong and he bounces back (again, LOL to bouncing back from a 5 WAR season, but that IS, as we agree, how good he has been and everyone hopes he can be) and kicks all kinds of ass to the tune of a 7-8 WAR season. Unfortunately that's what the Cubs need, especially since they're likely to trade of someone like Contreras or Schwarber (or both) to try and address the pitching, and since the money for outside help is likely going to be relatively minimal again.

Because I don't care to post enough. This is a weak ass response lol, I'm right and you don't have a rebuttal. No, it's a pretty good response to a weird, "I usually like you" post, Guy I Thought Was CubinNY until a minute ago. And I'm not sure how you can argue away, "I think Kris Bryant is going to be dealing with nagging injuries too often," like you think there's some kind of slam dunk response.

Yeah, this is 2 seasons in a row where he's had long, prolonged, nebulous injuries. Feel free to blame plenty of that on the Cubs' terrible medical staff, please, but it's the kind of thing that tends to not get better as players get older, and just the vague ongoing nature in both cases is worrisome. It speaks to how talented he is that he still put up the season he did (per Fangraphs; BR is not as much of a fan) as hurt as he was.

Pittsburgh was my guess. I mean, sure, if they offer the best deal, I don't see why he wouldn't go...I just have a feeling he'd rather go to a team with a young core trying to figure it all out, and those are the types of teams that would be most likely looking to bring him on. The Pirates are just kinda there in baseball limbo.