Cubswin11

Akiyama seems like a great fit for the roster, but being LH it would really become important to find a RH bat who can handle CF and it better not be horsefeathering Almora. Also I wonder if him and Yu know each other or played together ever, could help in the recruiting/selling. Obviously Yu has been over here for a while now but they’re about the same age so maybe they know each other from their teen/early 20 years playing baseball in Japan or even WBC stuff.

Mr clutch indeed

Oh boy https://twitter.com/christianyelich/status/1195462269594812417?s=21

Xander Bogaerts is probably the closest comp, and he got 6/120 last winter. That being said he was a year younger, a little better, and a year closer to FA, so maybe more like 6/100? AAV seems right given the two Arb years. Javy’s gonna make ~$9 mil this year and ~$13 next year. Xander is at $20 mil a year in the FA years he extended to. So yeah let’s call it 6/110, 7/125, 8/140 or so.

They seem to very much be trying something(s) and someone(s) new going back ~2 years now with the changes made internally. Especially with the moves this and last offseason.

Death by a million paper cuts for us the last 2-3 years vs the Astros death by a few gunshots since their WS, essentially.

Post WS win they did better than us in the acquisitions performing but they still didn’t win another WS and I think you could make an argument from 2020 on the teams are pretty close pitching wise (assuming they don’t bring Cole back). Maybe the Cubs could squeeze back into that middle ground between desperately scraping into the WC and then getting bounced/not making the playoffs and winning the WS. I mean, contrary to how I come across, I'm not looking at this as WS or bust. Either am I and we gave ourselves a pretty decent chance in 2017 and 18, IMO. More or less was just pointing out the vaunted pitching Astros aren’t all that much in better shape moving forward and their big all in years didn’t payoff anymore than us really.

Are we sure about that moving forward? Whitley took a massive step back this year, their depth was so bad they were bullpenning games after 3 starters (all of whom were acquired externally) in the playoffs and their 4 leverage RPs Osuna, Smith, Harris and Pressly were all guys acquired externally. They also had to take the dive on acquiring 35 year old Greinke at 3 years and $80 million or whatever it is because of the outlook. They were the darlings for a while but they aren’t in all that great of spot. They have as many WS to show for us with the same pitching acquisition philosophy and aren’t looking all that much better long term. Yes, I am very sure that the Astros outside pitching pickups (especially their starters) contributed to them being appreciably more competitive post-their WS win than the Cubs have been (due in no small part to their pitching moves). Post WS win they did better than us in the acquisitions performing but they still didn’t win another WS and I think you could make an argument from 2020 on the teams are pretty close pitching wise (assuming they don’t bring Cole back).

I mean everyone who’s on the other side of this has admitted they’ve lacked at the pitching side but also explained how their failings were also the more probable outcome when trying to develop pitching (especially SPs). The Happ/Schwarber stuff is just proving they are good at what they are good at and they picked a plan to go and were relatively successful with it. You can’t name names who would’ve been better outcomes than them if we picked different dudes over them. Ultimately I think the stance of some of us that your whole issue with or expedition of the FO is rather unrealistic when looking at the circumstances and around the league. When there’s a whopping 1 team (Dodgers) who you could say are actually pulling off what you want the FO to do. I’m 100% on board with you that what you want is how things should be run and should be the goal of every team to work that way. I just think in reality it’s not how things actually run and turn out the vast majority of the time given so many variables. Well, sure we can; there's the Astros, too. Except they did the whole, "horsefeathers drafting pitchers; we'll get them other ways," much better. Are we sure about that moving forward? Whitley took a massive step back this year, their depth was so bad they were bullpenning games after 3 starters (all of whom were acquired externally) in the playoffs and their 4 leverage RPs Osuna, Smith, Harris and Pressly were all guys acquired externally. They also had to take the dive on acquiring 35 year old Greinke at 3 years and $80 million or whatever it is because of the outlook. They were the darlings for a while but they aren’t in all that great of spot. They have as many WS to show for us with the same pitching acquisition philosophy and aren’t looking all that much better long term.

Rizzo won the Gold Glove this year. But yeah not great.

Agree to disagree, demonstrating you can make the leap to producing at the MLB level is the biggest jump, so even if they have higher ceilings(especially debatable for Tucker), I'm not going to simply assume they're on track to produce more. Rodgers and Tucker were in AA and AAA and just barely getting a cup of coffee in MLB at the same age Happ was playing regularly, putting up positive WAR and helping us win the division. Today as trade chips sure Rodgers and Tucker are worth more, the shine certainly seems off of Tucker a bit though and to date Happ’s the only guys who’s actually contributed value in MLB. We also couldn’t have taken them over Happ anyways, as they went sooner.

That's a little bit of an oversimplification, looking at Happ's draft. Yes, for where the Cubs were at the time it made sense to prioritize a more polished bat. But in those 6 you have Brendan Rogers and Kyle Tucker, both of which are much more valuable than Ian Happ. Happ and Schwarber are valuable players; I take issue with them being tossed out like they're proof that it's ludicrous to expect this FO to have someone running the farm who could, apparently inexplicably, both have an eye for offensive talent and could just barely competently handle the pitching development side of things. Like, "how dare you want to see someone other than the mastermind that found Schwarber and Ian Happ" is a tad much. I mean everyone who’s on the other side of this has admitted they’ve lacked at the pitching side but also explained how their failings were also the more probable outcome when trying to develop pitching (especially SPs). The Happ/Schwarber stuff is just proving they are good at what they are good at and they picked a plan to go and were relatively successful with it. You can’t name names who would’ve been better outcomes than them if we picked different dudes over them. Ultimately I think the stance of some of us that your whole issue with or expedition of the FO is rather unrealistic when looking at the circumstances and around the league. When there’s a whopping 1 team (Dodgers) who you could say are actually pulling off what you want the FO to do. I’m 100% on board with you that what you want is how things should be run and should be the goal of every team to work that way. I just think in reality it’s not how things actually run and turn out the vast majority of the time given so many variables.

They’ve combined for 13.9 WAR, one is 25 and one is 26 going in to this season. Man I think you gotta recheck your expectations on draft/prospect outcomes.

Yeah assuming he can get back to like 85-90% of his former self this makes the Kimbrel deal look a lot better for only a few mil more and no draft pick.

Smith is solid, but I wasn’t interested in him for the draft pick and contract he’d go for so this is no real lost opportunity for us, imo. But is the pen really all that solid? Jackson is shakey, Melancon and Greene suck. It’s also really expensive. Smith/Melancon/Greene are gonna cost almost $45 mil this year combined. A little better planning and they could’ve been in on Cole, Strasburg or Rendon for that.

Abreu and Odorizzi accepted their QO’s. I believe everyone else declined theirs or will.

As a thought exercise, Contreras, Quintana, and a few million for Lamet, Margot, Hedges, and Munoz gets a substantial amount of shopping done for one deal. The Padres get more rotation certainty on top of a big catcher upgrade without giving up much 2019 productivity or financial flexibility to make further rotation upgrades. The Cubs could then get another live arm but question-mark SP(I mentioned Bote for Yonny Chirinos a few pages back) to go with a volume approach for the rotation(and pen), plus they'd have most all their powder dry to make a significant move elsewhere even though they've mostly covered the gaping holes at that point(2B would be the biggest question mark). You could even realistically consider if the trade cost were low enough to try and shake loose Betts or Lindor, since you've at least made some attempt to paper over the other concerns. Sign me up

Lamet is becoming more intriguing than Gray to me in a potential Willy trade https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2019/11/14/20957997/san-diego-padres-stephen-strasburg-chris-paddack-dinelson-lamet-sale-bauer-hill-bumgarner

Except for the time it lead to 4+ 90 win years and a World Series, that was good. Dude, come on. That's the baseball equivalent of "A WIZARD DID IT;" the Cubs being terrible at developing pitching for a significant stretch didn't "lead" to them doing all of that. Not developing pitching didn't lead to it, but how they went about building during that stretch very much left open the consequences of not developing pitching because they basically punted and neglected it. And it worked out, now we're dealing with some of the fallout. Not finding cheap bullpen arms is bad, that's a clear failure on their part. They should've had 2-3 guys emerge as reliable bullpen arms since 2016, but it's not some catastrophic failure. That's the easiest part of a team to build year over year (we also are shaping up to have a lot of homegrown guys emerge as pen options between this year and next, they are starting to do this). I'm just not going to overly fault them for failing to develop a SP, as TT pointed out the facts and circumstances show it's not all that probable to do it since 2016. Of course it would've been great to do but it wasn't an overly likely thing to happen so it's hard to hold that over their head too much, it sucks but the facts are the facts. Since 2016 other than the Dodgers who are teams that have won 90+ a year and drafted around us that have developed useful starting pitching? I just think your complaint, while somewhat justified, is also misguided in how big a miss/failure the SP development was given the facts and circumstances of how SP are drafted/developed. I'm not even trying to make excuses, changes clearly needed to be made because we do NEED to start to develop pitching and luckily they made them but I'm trying to look at it objectively as possible.

So are we saying this is a development that took them surprise? Like, we effectively have to be, because otherwise for them to act as they did is almost shockingly negligent. It also effectively means that we have to assume that the relative financial constraint from the Ricketts also took them by surprise, because otherwise for Theo Epstein, with his at least somewhat shaky track record of acquiring pitchers via signing and trade, to be plowing ahead with a "horsefeathers PITCHERS" approach in regards to player development while knowing all of that is....not good. Except for the time it lead to 4+ 90 win years and a World Series, that was good. Also TT is more than capable of answering for himself but I think all he’s trying to say is that it’s an issue a lot of teams face when they aren’t picking high with developing SPs. They weren’t surprised by anything, if anything they were very aware of it and it’s why they stayed away from pitching early on and took bats.

It also mentions that the FO believes in Almora enough to tender him and not try to dump him for nothing, and also that it's unlikely that Happ enters the 2020 CF race without real competition.

Do you count Hendricks, Strop or Jake at all? I would get the argument either way. Sure they weren’t drafted, but they either were prospects when acquired and “developed” or sucked at the major league level and fixed/“developed.”

I’d like to see the number of pitchers every team has developed since 2016 or so (drafted since 2015/16 and made it to majors) and see how we stack up. Are we 3 or so pitchers short? Closer to 10? More? Also would like to put some limits on it, like guys had to pitch at least 30 innings or accumulate positive WAR. Would also like to compare to teams who never picked higher than 15 or so too since we were always in the 20s or didn’t have a pick. We have been bad at it, no doubt. But I do wonder if this is one of the things a lot of teams fans complain about and think it’s solely their problem when everyone else is within range of each other on it?

Guessing it’s this tweet. I’m sure if they gave him the Arenado contract +/- he’d take it, but I doubt they offer that. He’s gonna make $40-45 mil in arbitration the next two years then is a FA at 30, does a 30 year old KB get more than like 6-7/170-200 in FA? I’m not sold he does. I’m sure the Cubs would be fine giving him like 8/210 today (so would I, or like 9/230, 10/250 and Cub for life him). But he probably wants the 8/260+ that Arenando got, which I get why him and Boras would use that as the benchmark but I also think it’s an unreasonable basis given Arenado was 27 when he signed that and would’ve been a FA at 28 (only bought out 1 Arb year in which he was projected around ~$30 mil so he essentially signed 7/230 as a FA at 28). If that’s what they hold firm on you just ride it out through arbitration and see what FA brings for him.