Clem Fandango

Co-founder of Baseball Prospectus And of the West Hampton Davenports

Finally, my ticket to the 1%!

I concur

http://i.imgur.com/q0rBqtV.gif

I'll play devil's advocate even though I'm 100% content with Montero at catcher for this year and next year if need be and recognize we don't NEED Lucroy, but also because I'm bored and have nothing else to do at this moment in time and I feel like talking about baseball... --------------------Start Devil's Advocate-------------------- By all accounts it seems like Contreras needs another season in the minors to work on his catching abilities. Montero himself is a possible trade candidate in the upcoming offseason depending on Contreras' progress. The current catching hierarchy is: Montero Ross Schwarber They're obviously going to work Schwarber into an everyday LF role and he'll probably be phased out of a catching role by season's end one would assume. So next year it's looking like: Montero Contreras Schwarber (emergencies only) Contreras could very well flounder at AAA this season and prove he still needs time to develop his defensive prowess. We lose Ross (for better or worse) as the backup, and Schwarber probably won't be groomed as a catcher anymore by 2017. So our tentative 2017 depth chart is what it is above, but there's no guarantee Contreras or Schwarber will be proper candidates to catch behind Montero. And given Montero is getting older and has never played more than 141 games in a single season and has a history of nagging injuries, he's not the ideal candidate to be your rock behind the plate if you have weak backup options. If Lucroy can bounce back to just his 2013 or 2012 self, he'd be more valuable than Montero at a fraction of the cost. Lucroy was one of the best framers in the game before his shortened season last year (#5 in 2012, #1 in 2013, #3 in 2014), so we wouldn't be missing Montero's defense if he were traded away. Lucroy has a better bat, is younger, has arguably better defense, is substantially cheaper, and can be had for the same amount of time as Montero. The big hangup is Lucroy's health after last season and if you trust him to be 100%. If he's back to 100% I'd much rather have him on the roster than Montero, not that I don't love having Miggy on the roster. And Lucroy, at 100%, is a workhorse. He played 147 and 153 games behind the plate in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Most games Miggy has played in a single season is 141. Montero has 16.1 fWAR over his career since 2006. Lucroy has 16.2 since 2010. And that doesn't account for pitch framing abilities which Lucroy is arguably better than Montero at. Not only that, if Contreras shines and he's ready for MLB action come 2017 and you want to move your starting catcher to make room for him, who will bring back more value in a trade next offseason? The 33 year old Montero at $14 million a year or the 30 year old Lucroy at $5.25 million who, fingers crossed, just bounced back to his 2013/2014 form? Aside from his health the only concern is how much it would cost to get him being in the same division. if they ask for the moon (Soler, Baez, Torres, Happ, etc.) then obviously you pass because you're fine the way you are. But if he could be had for something like McKinney, Edwards, and Johnson or something to that effect, give or take another mid tier prospect... I'd do that and not think twice. Lucroy has 5+ WAR potential, but you can comfortably pen him in for 3-4 fWAR if he's healthy. That only makes this team better. -------------------- End Devil's Advocate-------------------- I'm fine without Lucroy, and he'd probably cost a lot to acquire. I like Miggy and what he brings to the Cubs, even if he is more expensive. Great clubhouse guy, excellent defensive catcher, not a black hole at the plate (looking at you, Ross), and a great vet to have on the team to mentor the youth. The rest of the lineup is so stout that you can live with whatever shortcomings you get at the catcher position, which isn't terrible, so... yeah.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/14604916/jonathan-lucroy-milwaukee-brewers-hoping-trade-contender If it were earlier in the offseason I imagine there'd be grumblings of moving Miggy and his salary in an attempt to pry Lucroy away, but it feels a little late in the game for a strategy like that, not to mention Montero is perfectly fine where he is. That said, Milwaukee is a sinking ship and Lucroy is one of the few enviable targets on their team, IMO. We have two years of Miggy left at $28 million total. Lucroy, with his 2017 club option, would be a shade under $10 million instead. The salary relief would be nice, but is it even worth it considering Montero has good value to the team already while Lucroy is relying on a comeback?

That's all I see, and it's not an official source of anything. Cafardo a couple days ago posted this... But that's nothing we don't already know

The real question is whether or not quoting is broken on Tapatalk again! P.S. Thank you Tim for your continued efforts to make this forum rock solid, even if unpredictable occurrences would prefer that not be the case.

I don't even see him. EDIT: Oh [expletive], he cut his hair. I see him now. I thought that was John Lester, until I spotted John Lester, so... I'm kinda with Derwood on this one.

Yeah, but was he more feared in the 80's than Jim Rice was?

Same. Well at least favorite all-time non-cub. I collected any and all of his cards. I think at one point I had like 150 or something. I got a Mariners hat because of him and naturally wore it backwards all the time, and I had this poster on my walls:

I'm glad Piazza is finally in there. He should've been a first ballot guy.

Was going through old hard drives and found scans of old baseball cards I collected about 8 years ago and found this card that I now, in hindsight, should've kept. Whoops. http://i.imgur.com/FVvQYbl.jpg

I was gonna say they're not too fond of Jorge. If he breaks out and starts fulfilling some of that potential then this team is gonna be other worldy, which they're already pretty close to.

I'm more perplexed by the use of "offensive comp" when talking about pitchers.

Yasiel Sierra was officially declared a free agent today. I know Tim has been beating the Sierra drum for a while.

Welp, they updated it for east coast bias. It now reads "Henderson, '86 Red Sox ALCS hero, dies at 57"

A simple "Dave Henderson" would suffice

Dave Henderson died. THe headline on ESPN said "Henderson, member of 1989 champion A's, dies", and I about lost my [expletive]. Not that Dave Henderson dying isn't sad enough, but that's a shitty way for ESPN to title that story.

I agree, but if you're cooperating with Al Jazeera in the first place to help break a story open, why would you recant the info you gave them? It seems odd, and if he is telling the truth then it sounds like he did in fact have info to give but the guy never came back for the whole story which is just sloppy. So who knows. Maybe he got cold feet and denied it, but the guy also apparently wasn't even employed at the clinic in question when the report indicates, and only interned at the place for 3 months in 2013.

Everyone is denying it, even the source who gave Al Jazeera that information. Apparently the source said he gave the reporter a bunch of names he's never worked with just to test his integrity and skills as a reporter to follow up and fact check and he apparently just took the info and ran with it.

I figured it was a given that everyone in New York knew since before the season started that the Mets weren't planning on bringing Daniel Murphy back.

So fast before Tampa can try and take the offer off of the table. My love of dong heavy offense disagrees with that, though I acknowledge Kiermaier's presence as the best defensive CF'er in baseball and how valuable that would be allowing Heyward to stay in RF where he is the best defensive RF in baseball. With how defensive metrics aren't particularly exact, I wonder how much of Kiermaiers WAR value is skewed from flawed metrics? He was a 7.3 rWAR and 5.5 fWAR player last year. And it was pretty much all defensive value. Is it worth having a light hitting ultra elite defensive outfielder over an average fielding and above average hitting outfielder? EDIT: He was 7.3 rWAR, not 7.7

No stats to back it up, but he seems to absolutely destroy the Cubs each and every time they play. Hopefully it's just Blackmon. He absolutely destroys the Cubs. 1.079 OPS against them. Next highest is Blue Jays at 1.007, which he's only played 10 games against. In fact, he has a .900 OPS or better against every NL Central team except the Cardinals. Now, that being said I'm gonna play devils advocate and say all this from a "which move hurts the Cardinals more in the long term" perspective: I think CarGo is who I'd prefer they go after for the following reasons: 1) He's the oldest of the bunch - 30 years old 2) He has trouble staying healthy for a full season - His 153 games this year was a career high. He played in 180 total games over the previous two seasons combined 3) His defense is not that great - He can play all over the outfield, technically, but by any metric his defense has never been truly stellar over the course of any full season of his. If anything he's been well below average. 4) He has the fewest amount of controllable years available of the bunch - FA after 2017. Blackmon is a FA after 2018 and Dickerson 2019 5) He's the most expensive in terms of salary - $37 million over the next two seasons. The others are still in arbitration. 6) He's likely the most expensive in terms of what the Cardinals would have to give up to acquire him - Because of his pedigree, star status, and the fact he still has two years of control vs. being a rental, I suspect he'd likely cost the most in quality players going back to Colorado, making it possible that the Cardinals sacrifice some quality in the future to try and win now with the aging core they have. 7) Even if he may seem like the scariest option of the three, he probably still doesn't put them over the top. - In a year in which he hit 40 home runs, he was worth only 2.4 fWAR. To put that in perspective, here are a few other players with WAR figures between 2.5 and 2.3 fWAR: Derek Norris Neil Walker Brock Holt Billy Burns Austin Jackson Kolten Wong Steven Vogt His defense really dragged him down. Even though he's had some success defensively in RF in recent years (small sample sizes), his defense will never match up to Heyward, and he will lose some pop moving away from Coors. Could he put up a 3.5-4.5 win season? Sure he could, but the odds of him being fully healthy is not in his favor, his defense is declining each year, he'd be leaving an extreme hitters park, and he's going to be on the wrong side of 30 before too long. Even if he puts up a 3.5 win season, that's still a sharp downgrade from Heyward. The Cardinals are not going to get that WAR back with Cargo in RF. I think Cargo will give the Cubs fits all the time, no matter who he's with, but I don't think he makes the Cardinals some sort of juggernaut like I suspect many in the media and public would seem to think.

And for less money