imb

this is a real fun experiment because you're always saying things that don't help your cause and arguing two steps behind. He IS the same hitter he was post injuries. Only now his defense (where he got a lot of his value) is slipping due to age and the rest of the league has evolved at the plate, leaving him behind. a .735 ops in 2014 went a lot further (109 ops+) then than it does now (.731 ops this year was a 92 ops+)

Yes, take away 1/3rd of your data to suit your narrative and squint he is the same player. It is as if someone here has a conclusion they want to reach. Even including his good offensive year (.797 OPS in 2015 w/STL) it's still only 60 points off what he did this year.) If you want to pretend his 2016 season when he hit like neifi perez all year has any bearing, be my guest, but everyone involved agrees he was a wreck at the plate all year and starting in 2017 he basically ditched everything he had tried that year and started over.

2011 he had some shoulder thing and kept trying to play through it. Finally gave up and said he'd come back when he was 100 percent. Chipper Jones called him a baby so he came back and struggled all year. Bounced back the next year even though the swing was changed and then the next year the head shot happened.

take away the two big post-injury outlier OPS (2015 and 2016) and you have this .776 .735 .715 .731 That's the same player

dunno what to tell you man. the shoulder injury was well known and even in his cardinals season he didnt hit for any power. they obviously signed him because he was still young, had a pretty high floor given his defensive capabilities as long as he could be a slightly better than league average signing and they just went out and broke him. I don’t know what you should tell me either, but “I couldn’t predict it and neither could anyone else but this FO should have” isn’t it. They should have. Kinda their whole job.

2013 NL team OPS - .703 2014 NL team OPS - .694 2015 NL team OPS - .713 2016 NL team OPS - .734 2017 NL team OPS - .748 2017 NL team OPS - .721 Offense went up (the ball/launch angle revolution) but Heyward stayed the same, keeping his OPS in the same range it was post shoulder injury (outside of the 2016 season when he was completely mentally broken) but dragging down stats like OPS+ or wrc+

yes, the rest of the league adjusted, offense went up, and heyward stayed the same. OPS 2010: 849 2011: 708 2012: 814 2013: 776 2014: 735 2015: 797 2016: 631 2017: 715 2018: 731 that doesnt say what you think it says

this is a tough pill for you to swallow for some reason. there were obvious warning signs about heyward that they either ignored or thought they could fix. they were wrong, it got worse, Heyward is now outside the timeframe where you can hope for improvement, and it was a $150 million mistake. that's not "hindsight is 20/20," which happens to be a strong take for a person arguing that you can't criticize a bad signing because if you ignore the bad ones, all their signings happen to be good ones. Ah yes, all of the clear red flags and warning signs that the Cubs and all other teams willfully ignored that you and no one else noticed until he ended up being terrible, after the fact. I’d think it was a failure too if I believed that this FO and others saw serious, fatal flaws in a top FA and lined up to give him $180m+ with opt outs. I never said you can ignore all of the bad signings. Chatwood was a bad signing. Duensing was a bad signing. There are a lot of factors that go into evaluating a FO’s moves. Saying “wow that sucked and seems obvious now I can’t believe no one on Earth predicted that” or “lolz the Cubs signed him because he hit a big homer against us” is silly. dunno what to tell you man. the shoulder injury was well known and even in his cardinals season he didnt hit for any power. they obviously signed him because he was still young, had a pretty high floor given his defensive capabilities as long as he could be a slightly better than league average signing and they just went out and broke him.

His offense hasn’t declined. Are you drunk today or something? RC+ 2010: 134 2011: 96 2012: 121 2013: 120 2014: 109 2015: 121 Signs with the Cubs 2016: 72 2017: 88 2018: 99 yes, the rest of the league adjusted, offense went up, and heyward stayed the same.

what happens if harper's BABIP is .350 (like every season other than injury marred 2016) rather than .289? He has a 1.000 OPS.

The entire point of having a smart front office is to avoid signing highly coveted FAs who turn out to be horrible. Yes, that’s a huge part of it. But the hindsight is 20-20/ends justify the means mentality is a very challenging and misleading standard. this is a tough pill for you to swallow for some reason. there were obvious warning signs about heyward that they either ignored or thought they could fix. they were wrong, it got worse, Heyward is now outside the timeframe where you can hope for improvement, and it was a $150 million mistake. that's not "hindsight is 20/20," which happens to be a strong take for a person arguing that you can't criticize a bad signing because if you ignore the bad ones, all their signings happen to be good ones.

Nobody is saying anything is proof that they're dumb or a bad FO. And it looks like it should have been more debated, at least internally by the professionals who ideally know better; again, it wasn't some great secret what kind of health/injury issues he was going to be dealing with, nor that so much of his value was tied up in his defense. They likely thought that they, like a lot of the other teams that wanted him, figured he was still young enough to unlock the flashes of great offense he had shown to that point. It doesn't mean they were dumb; it just means they were willing and able to make the same mistakes as other FO's in that case. In hindsight, I wish they HAD been smarter than everyone else, us included, when it came to Heyward. Instead they weighed the risks and it didn't work out. I agree with all of this. IMB! didn't say that they were dumb, but that they tried to be the smartest guys in the room with the signing, which I fundamentally disagree with. They weren't trying to outsmart anyone; they were trying to sign one of the best and mostly highly coveted FAs of the offseason, who ended up being horrible. The entire point of having a smart front office is to avoid signing highly coveted FAs who turn out to be horrible.

It was actually: "OMG it was so obvious Heyward was going to suck I can't believe that our supposedly smart FO signed him trying to out-smart themselves" "Our FO has made a lot of good moves and also weren't unique in wanting to sign Heyward, who was the most coveted FA of the 2015 offseason" "Signing a guy who ended up being bad is proof that the FO was dumb" None of this happened. I mean go read the posts here my dude

the idea is that the cubs guys we expect to be smarter than people like me who were like hell yeah jason heyward! But they weren't, they were in fact dumber because they were the ones who actually gave money to the guy who can't slug more than 375 without a flukey high average. We have loads of data points that indicate that the Cubs FO is one of the smartest in baseball, yet your argument equates to you should ask yourself why you're taking my extremely obvious point so personally

the idea is that the cubs guys we expect to be smarter than people like me who were like hell yeah jason heyward! But they weren't, they were in fact dumber because they were the ones who actually gave money to the guy who can't slug more than 375 without a flukey high average. I would set the over under of baseball GMs that would have expected Heyward's offensive production to decline this much...or even at all, at 3, and they probably also suck as being baseball executives. The question was if Heyward's defense in the OF was worth the pricetag, not that his present hitting numbers were unsustainable. His offense hasn’t declined.

ahhhh yes this is the good stuff

yeah dude, we know. the question is how did a smart group of dudes likes theo and his associates fall into the trap of offering $150 million to a broken down wreck. This is the process vs. results debate again. They weren't pulling a "smartest guys in the room" move -- they were aggressively pursuing a good free agent that other front offices (successful ones, by the way) also thought was a good free agent. This wasn't some market inefficiency/spin rate/4D chess thing: it just didn't work out and it sucks. the idea is that the cubs guys we expect to be smarter than people like me who were like hell yeah jason heyward! But they weren't, they were in fact dumber because they were the ones who actually gave money to the guy who can't slug more than 375 without a flukey high average.

what if we pulled a Dexter (season 4 dexter which was good dont @ me) and let happ kill russell to satiate his blood lust? Could be a two birds one stone situation, happ gets murder off his mind and can focus on the field and russell disappears

they were just doing the smartest guys in the room stuff again. Heyward was a high floor guy because of the defense and the lack of Ks. his body was borked and he still hit .290 so "hey, if we can get the swing straight he'll be a GG defender who walks doesnt K and hits for power again. the shoulder can't be too bad, he hit .290!" but he just literally can't swing anymore. Again, he had multiple offers and he reportedly had offers higher than what he signed for with the Cubs. This wasn't some random shot in the dark -- several teams were trying to land him and willing to pay a lot of money. yeah dude, we know. the question is how did a smart group of dudes likes theo and his associates fall into the trap of offering $150 million to a broken down wreck.

there are at least 3 people in that picture im convinced are chatwood

they were just doing the smartest guys in the room stuff again. Heyward was a high floor guy because of the defense and the lack of Ks. his body was borked and he still hit .290 so "hey, if we can get the swing straight he'll be a GG defender who walks doesnt K and hits for power again. the shoulder can't be too bad, he hit .290!" but he just literally can't swing anymore. Yeah; I'm just a moron who read a Wikipedia page, and as soon as I got to the part about "DEGENERATIVE BACK CONDITION," klaxons started blasting even though I am in no position to dish out huge baseball contracts to guys whose value is largely predicated on something that tends to decline suddenly and even with guys who DON'T have DEGENERATIVE BACK CONDITIONS. the new market inefficiency is avoiding degenerative conditions while focusing on (checks notes) signing pitchers with fettucine for ligaments

still laughing at this post

He was a 4 win guy in 2014 because of defense - his slugging that year was lower than it was in 2018 or 2017. He's had 3 good offensive years, two were before the injuries and one was the weird cardinals season where he hit .293 randomly. If you think he's hitting .293 again, i think you're setting yourself up for disappointment. The whole signing looks worse and worse for the FO as time goes on. Like, it's not like any of this stuff was any kind of secret, yet they seemingly went all in on him more just to spite the Cardinals as opposed to actually signing someone who looked like they were going to be a reliably valuable baseball player. they were just doing the smartest guys in the room stuff again. Heyward was a high floor guy because of the defense and the lack of Ks. his body was borked and he still hit .290 so "hey, if we can get the swing straight he'll be a GG defender who walks doesnt K and hits for power again. the shoulder can't be too bad, he hit .290!" but he just literally can't swing anymore.

If it was Jon, I am not sure it was him [expletive] on his teammates. If anything, I think he is really pissed from a competitive standpoint of not staying in the game. Yeah, I have a hard time picturing him crack his knuckles and say, "now it's time for daddy to parlay those 6 strong innings into a high score on Candy Crush." there is no way anyone on the cubs roster would interpret anything jon lester did after that performance as being uninterested in the outcome or whatever passan is alluding to. It's either someone else or passan is just making horsefeathers up.

I want Chavez back, give him a Duensing type deal to lower the LT hit. and also kill duensing can you imagine how fucked up it would be to be dumpy old brian duensing and have the one thing you're remotely good at in life be "being a part of the small population of left handed people who is part of the even smaller group of lefthanded people who can throw curveballs to the even smaller portion of people who bat left handed" and then read online where some dumbass is like "he should be murdered" and other people are liking the post like "yes i agree, murder is a fitting outcome for him."