Cubswin11

Puig would be interesting, no idea what he'd cost. I'd assume Garcia's 2/20 that he just signed will be the minimum. Puig has oddly been significantly better vs RHP than LHP for his career, 130 wRC+ vs RHP 109 vs LHP, but it could be some batted ball stuff as he walks more and Ks less vs LHP. It would be nice if he could handle CF a bit but if we shift better, Heyward in CF and him in RF can probably net some positive results. As far as I'm aware he's never done anything bad, bad off the field or anything. It's always been team disciplinary stuff with showing up late to things, skipping things, disagreements/fighting with coaching about things, etc. type deals. Also if I recall some Dodgers didn't have the greatest things to say once he left but who knows, would have to trust you could do enough back checking with former teams/players/coaches to figure out if he's really an issue or not.

Honestly, it sounds really true to me. After that sample sizes and groups shrink, but yeah if there's 90 jobs, another 60 spots to OF reserves, and he's 97th among all guys who got the most PAs then yeah...I don't know how that would read otherwise? What's the expected WAR of a 4th OF? So far -.7 isn't and a hypothetical 1 WAR from another poster wasn't enough so we're talking already an almoswt 2 WAR swing An expected WAR of a 4th OF’er is a lot higher than negative horsefeathering point 7. 268 players logged innings in the OF last year, he ranked 252nd. 99 players logged CF innings, he was 93rd. 177th of 188 OF with at least 100 PAs, 63rd of 66 CF'ers who got min 100 PAs. 36 of 36 of CF with min 350 PAs. This isn’t that hard dude. Finding an upgrade over that isn’t hard nor is it a reason to stick with a guy because “he’s only a 4/5th OF’er.” He horsefeathering sucks. Players BABIP dependent are high variance, but Almora is more than BABIP dependent since his batted ball profile sucks so much. It’s hard to see the highs getting all that high again with his profile. It certainly isn’t worth giving him the ABs to pray it works out. Jay and Happ put up more WAR than him in 2017, Happ and Heyward put up more WAR than him in 2018 and 19. You can see how the plan was for him to be the RHH caddy to them with some expanded time but he failed miserably as he was allowed to play more and he’s sucked vs LHP for 1.5 years. This is more an indictment on Almora being so bad than it is Pillar being good but he brings far greater certainty and won’t cost more than $4-6 million. These are the exact margin improvements we need over last year. Him and Akiyama at $9-12 million combined with a little Heyward/Happ is a positive WAR CF rotation. Almora has lowered the bar so low that Pillar is a clear upgrade. I don’t know how you can call Pillar bad then still want to play Almora or think there’s any redeeming factors to him. Pillar is only going to cost $2.5-3 million more than him.

If the goal is just to get under, which if that’s the case a full rebuild and tear down should be on the table, but if it’s just for this year and greener pastures and actual spending can happen next year why not just move Q and attach a prospect to Chatwood and/or Kimbrel and be done with it? That allows everything to stay in tact for next year if we can actually spend and reload vs some half measure stuff of moving our best or 2nd best pitcher in Yu but still trying to win.

You know that’s not true and cherry picked the overall point and he was worth -.7 WAR. So yeah that’s not a 4th OF’er And the most recent seasons have not given any indicators he can turn it around or is good Jay/Happ/Heyward in 2017 were CF options, Happ/Heyward last two years. He was always viewed as the RHH caddy to one of them. Yet he found more time (especially 18 and 19) Yes that would be my plan with limited funds and it has far more certainty of producing positive results than Albert Almora, 4th OF’er. Pillar has amassed positive WAR every year over the last few years and even though his profile isn’t great it’s better than Almora’s. 103 wRC+ vs lefties for his career, 105, 89, 150!, 89 last 4 so his floor is at least decent and there’s upside plus he’s the short side platoon dude/defensive replacement. Almora’s floor knows no bounds at this point. Other than some defensive numbers on jumps and citing wRC+ what have you brought in data wise? Other than he once did this and I think he can do something? The batted ball data says other wise. What do you see in the numbers that point to him being anything? Anyways I think we can be done here. Nobody is convincing anyone of anything. Almora is a shitty player and hopefully we have less shitty players on the roster next year and if it’s Almora hopefully he somehow figures out to be a good baseball player for the first time in over 2 years.

He’s probably better than Descalso or Kemp but maybe not. That’s all I got. Still want a Cesar or Holt type add for the margin upgrade/guaranteed spot with a move like this just being depth in the minors.

This is still the kind of melodramatic absolutes that are less about adding and more about piling on repeating the same stuff. Come on - you're among the first to pinch pennies and here's a guy who has done everything the 4th OF would be expected to do if the starter group stays the same. It's as cut and dry as it is that he's not an impactful offensive player and shouldn't be expected to be - true from day 1. Also CF is hardly the easiest position on the roster to fix and improve since it requires a trade - the easiest would be 2B with a large FA pool at the cheaper prices plus more in house options I'm the first to "pinch pennies" because I'm trying to figure out moves that could potentially happen and help that are based in reality and not living in your horsefeathering fantasy land offseason of adding Cole, Betts and Lindor. He's not a 4th OF, he was the 97th best of 100 OF'ers who got a min 350 PAs last year (36th of 36 CF'ers who got 350 min PA) and 177th of 188 OF with at least 100 PAs (63rd of 66 CF'ers who got min 100 PAs). He's been a bottom 10 OVERALL player in baseball since June/July of 2018, that's not a 4th OF, that's a guy who should be in the minors or playing in Japan or Korea. And the last two years he's found a way to find "impactful" ABs on the roster even though the design was him being a 4th OF type (800+ PAs), I don't trust that will magically change if he's around in 2020 because if he's on the roster he's gonna play and probably play too much when he shouldn't. The trade options are more appealing but even Pillar is a clear FA upgrade over him, he's been over 2 WAR 3 of the last 4 years and has proven over time he's actually good at defense and can hit lefties he's basically the LHH, defensive CF option Almora should've become. Pillar and Akiyama and Happ solves CF pretty easily and cheaply IMO. There still should be a way to improve 2B, because I agree there's plenty of options and it's a need. Also I think it's pretty horsefeathering telling you are the only guy backing Almora here when there's multiple people showing how shitty he is. You've given no data other than wRC+'s from 2-3+ years ago, haven't refuted the horsefeathers batted ball data, or pointed to anything that backs up you thinking he's a fine 4th OF'er/LHH CF platoon guy other than BABIP variance and his HR's went far.

Bold: A summary of the first two posts Italics: Almora put up a 104 wRC+ in 323 PAs the next season...ML wRC+ by year: 101, 104, 89, 64....Trending down...All things already said and agreed...Almora bad at offense...already said and agreed Just so maybe what I think is clear: I would prefer a Betts, Haniger, Marte, or Happ/Margot situation just among CFers who may or may not get traded this offseason. None are likely to happen, and there's no clear options after those guys. No one is saying no to getting better on offense or adding better players than Almora. At minimum the team needs a 4th OFer who compliments the current starting Schwarber/Happ/Heyward OF depth chart, Almora happens to check alot of boxes plus no trade cost on a team friendly deal (very important things for the Ricketts). He's got a high variance style of offense and with it through age 26 he's offered a pretty wide range of outcomes, most of them usable on the 2020 Cubs and not less likely to happen in the likely much more tailored role. This is true of pretty much all potential trade targets not named Marte, Betts, or Haniger including Margot...Does it suck? Yeah, but at this point mostly because it seems like the fanbase gets more up in arms about not spending enough on a 4th OFer than not signing Gerrit Cole or Grandal or Machado or Harper or probably Betts next year! My god. He’s a terrible horsefeathering baseball player. He has no use and there’s nothing in the numbers to suggest a bounce back or he has talent. He got significant ABs last year and the horsefeathers end of the roster of him Descalso and the other idiots could have very well cost us the playoffs. That’s the clear part of the roster that’s easiest to fix and improve on, that’s why we’re upset about this horsefeathers player more so than missing on Cole or whatever. His awfulness is clear and it’s easy to find a way to improve. Simply adding Pillar could work wonders over the horsefeathers bag Almora is.

He seems to be saying and doing a lot of the right things, IMO.

It is a terrible approach to take, I'm not advocating for it all. But it still can also be true that a core of KB, Javy, Willy, Rizzo, Hendricks and Yu with a supporting staff of Scwharbs, Bote, Q, Lester, Heyward and Happ is still the best core and group of next 3-5 best players in the division and they likely are favorites as of today. It also shows how ridiculous it is just to stand pat because with just cleaning up around the edges we'd be the prohibitive favorites. Instead doing very little (while still favorites) lessens the margin for error and horsefeathers like last year and winning 80 whatever games especially is more probable, 2018 they still won 95 games and it took a moon shot for another team to catch them, if they go win 95 games next year I'd take my chances we win the division. We're the only team in the division with multiple 4+ win projected players on offense and have the most 3+ win projected players and only the Reds top 5 pitchers project for more than our top 5 right now. Again this isn't a reason to do nothing, at the least some horsefeathers needs to get cleaned up, but it's also still likely the best team on paper going in to the year next year as of today.

On paper it still likely is. Look around the division right now, who is better? It doesn’t mean they will win the division but they’re still probably the best team on paper/projections going in to next year as of today.

Okay fine, it's still a tool that isn't all that special or ranks all that highly amongst his peers. The underlying things like LD/GB rates, soft and hard contact were worlds better for Whit, plus his speed. He was starting from a better basis than Almora at literally everything and you could at least see how he could turn in to something useful. The foundation Almora is built on sucks, using Whit as a comp to prove he can grow isn't really fair because they have pretty different batted ball profiles, being BABIP dependent doesn't make them comparable. He's closer to Dee Gordon, Orlando Arcia or Mallex Smith on the batted ball data and he doesn't have those guys speed tools to make it work and they also suck mostly anyways as well. Finding some of these mid 20 guys with “BABIP dependency” to try and find some scenarios where they turned out useful should start with finding ones with more similar batted ball profiles to Almora. Whit does not fit that, was my point. Well he was really horsefeathering bad this year, everything backs that up. He's not overly athletic/fast/good thrower, him remaining bad with average being his ceiling out there as he ages seems like a completely reasonable outcome. Plus being amazing defensively kinda needs to be part of his game to support any value. It's pretty bad, especially when all those guys could bring at least another positive to the game to carry value like the power, BB, base stealing, or being fast to actually beat out GBs.

Thinking that Yelich isn’t the best player in the division — as much as it pains me to say it — is irrational. Was Bryant even the best player on the Cubs? He was.

The bold stuff were all true before 2019 when he was mostly productive and are still true after 2019, with the last one still important to keep in mind given his relative youth and high contact ability Remember how you were stumping for Whit Merrifield as a Cubs CF and leadoff hitter in 2020? Here are some season lines from Whit Merrifield before emerging as a ML starter in his late 20s around a BABIP intensive batting line and late blooming power: Age 26 in the PCL (AAA): .265/.317/.364 over 594 PAs Age 24 in AA: .270/.319/.391 over 353 PAs These high contact hitters *are* very high variance especially in their mid-20's and it's not all doom and gloom. Merrifield found his power stroke at 25 in the minors. Coincidentally, Almora set a new pro high in HRs at age 25 and at the ML level. Neither is particularly fast, I've seen 28.6 ft/sec for Merrifield in 2017 and 28.5 for Almora this year. Neither are patient hitters. One actually plays CF... As far as I can tell, the Cubs aren't trading for Marte and Betts or even Haniger aren't available. It would be nice to land Margot, a souped up Almora in alot of ways and yes I like him more, or some other young buy low CF but that still requires the Cubs doing something and probably getting lucky or trading someone good. The way I see it, outside of an established starter like Marte, most of the other CF options discussed don't really work without an improbable Ian Happ or New Guy break out offensively into legit everyday starters. In that sense, Almora's an already here version of that player with less of a claim to a starting job meaning more competition with more or less the same chance that everyone involved sucks anyway The mostly productive stuff pre-2019 (really pre-June/July 2018) was based on garbage peripherals and underlying numbers. He doesn't have really high "high contact ability." He's at 77% for his career and between 76-77% last two years, that's good but not elite or high. He ranked 109th in MLB this year in Contact% of guys with min 350 PAs. Almora hitting a whopping 12 HRs in this environment I don't think is any remarkable feat or indicator he's taken a leap/is a sign of growth. Even if Whit isn't fast, he's shown he can use whatever speed he has by stealing and base running. That's something Almora has never done and at least gives White another aspect of his game to provide value with. Whit has shown an ability to walk a little bit too the last two years (especially 2018), Almora has not. Whit also has a career 82% contact rate, over 80% every year of his career, that 3-5% jump on Almora is pretty significant when we are talking being at the upper levels of the contact range. Whit also has a demonstrably better GB and LD rates (26% LD and 37% GB vs 20% LD and 50% GB) and lower soft contact and higher hard contact rates. At this point I don't think we can reasonably say Almora can play CF anymore either, he was brutal out there this year by the numbers and eye test. The comp to him and Whit is just wish casting on Almora's end at this point that something magically will change at 26/27 for reasons when the batted ball profiles were drastically different between them and Whit could use his speed. This would be like saying maybe Alec Mills turns in to a TOR starter this year because Arrieta once did it in the late 20s and they were both castoffs essentially. Ian Happ has been better than Almora the minute he joined the team, so we should just go with him in CF vs going with Almora. He doesn't need to improve to be better than Almora. It would be nice but shouldn't be a prerequisite to take the job from Almora. Almora is at a career 50.4% GB and 21.6% soft contact rate (both these numbers have gone in the wrong direction the last two years). Since he's been in the league there's only been 5 players to run a >50% GB grate and >21.6% soft contact rate (Eduardo Nunez, Mallex Smith, Dee Gordon, Orlando Arica and Johnathan Villar) all those guys have shown at least 1 (if not more of) the ability to hit for power, walk or that they're fast and can survive on a GB heavy approach and steal some bases. On a whole that's just some really shitty company to keep.

- I don't know the ins and outs of BABIP but have serious doubts there's a profile with a consistently expected BABIP in the .250s. Is there something I can read? The only xstats site I can find without running out of patience doesn't hate his 2016-2018 where his xBABIPs are .356, .325, and .335...I can't find 2019: https://www.xstats.org https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k8d972fng34anlhbOJD9aUlVJgkR5mMesjDNNrmZ3Us/edit#gid=664839515 - I would say it's extremely unlikely he is that hitter against LHP anymore after such a big collapse, but also at 26 reaching 96 isn't the most unlikely outcome - Almora's offensive success was always BABIP dependent. Last year his BABIP collapsed, the offense went with it but certain things like HR distance and IsoSLG were career bests. I don't think maxing out the power on a high contact CF in his mid-20s is the worst idea if just trying to get a positive contribution, especially if his BABIP can bounce back to a more league average .300ish In general, he still checks alot of niches on this roster - RHH capable of backing up the entire OF including CF with a history of success against LHP. He even covers Theo's desire for more contact without requiring a starting job. Obviously I'm down for an upgrade or new blood with more upside, but also think there's a route to an effective 2020 Almora Other than just trying to be contrarian I don’t get how you can actually think any of this if you watched him play and look at his numbers (not only the results but the underlying profile). His profile stinks and any success will largely take a ton of luck (like a high BABIP on horsefeathers contact quality/batted balls). He’s just a really shitty baseball player. The .250 BABIP comment may have been a bit hyperbolic but with his profile it leaves him open to high variance there and he NEEDS to BABIP in the low-mid .300s to carry any value offensively. With the juiced ball I don’t think things like distance and ISO can mean as much either since I’d guess the ball has more to do with it than any real changes/improvement. The data points you are citing of him being good are further in the past than the more recent pretty decent sample of him being ass. And even when he was doing well there were plenty on here pointing out the success was largely built on a shakey, underlying foundation and long term success was going to be tough with that profile.

Of course, to be fair, the team with KB/Baez/Hendricks (Rizzo/Contreras/Yu) was largely mediocre last season and couldn't even sneak into the playoffs. So, I suppose it's not that difficult to imagine looking at the same roster and thinking that. Same roster, maybe, still would be favorites. But same core with some margin tweaks well it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t be the best projected team. I’m not letting the Brewers 1 in a billion season in 2018 and underperforming year by us in 2019 skew the fact we still have the best core to go to battle with the next two years in all likelihood.

Oh, I agree he's anything that concludes Almora is a weak offensive player and getting so many opportunities with the Cubs is a slap in the face of fans. That said, those year by year wRC+'s might be more of a range of outcomes for his age 26 season? There's little things to like coming off 2019 like a career high IsoSLG, .182 IsoSLG against RH, a probably overcorrected BABIP (.255), the still playable career 96 wRC+ vs LHs...He fits a few niches on this roster as a RHH capable of backing up all 3 OFers and making alot of contact off the bench That BABIP is probably in range of where it should be for someone with his speed and GB/soft contact profile, as has been pointed out as well he isn’t that wRC+ hitter vs LHP anymore or you’re basically going to leave it up to the BABIP gods hands to get there.

The Cubs currently have the best team in the Division. As many have laid out, spending somewhere in the $20-30 million range on the margin moves is all this team needs to be the pretty decent favorite going in. There’s really no “gamble” in doing that. They aren’t trading away any top prospects to fill holes or committing huge money long term to hold things up going down this path.

Because the trend is worse than simply writing off 2019 and saying things are fine: He's never reached that 94 wRC number against RHP. To echo TT, it's just getting worse: 2016: 93 2017: 82 2018: 84 2019: 76 Once everyone realized he didn't have Gold Glove ability in CF, and that his lack of speed basically led to him looking like Jim Edmonds 5ish times a year, his ceiling essentially became the short end of a platoon. For me, that's literally the highest of hopes for him. And yet... 2016: 114 2017: 138 2018: 101 2019: 37 You'd think after 2018 where he was barely above league average against lefties, he'd have realized that his 'back was against the wall'. Instead he fell off a cliff. Given the lack of any reasonable upside, there's just no point in making an effort with him. We’re only asking him to basically change every aspect of his game offensively from pitch recognition, discipline and approach all the way to his batted ball profile. I don’t see this being a big ask for a guy who’s been one of the worst players in MLB for two years and never really showed anything as a prospect.

Looks like this years Johnny Field signing for minor league OF depth, more or less.

Lol