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Outshined_One

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Everything posted by Outshined_One

  1. Outshined_One
    Someone make sure @Jason Ross has season tickets the rest of the way.
  2. Outshined_One
    Considering he had a shoulder injury last season, I'm willing to give him a pass on playing 1B this year. If he's not a regular OF next season, then I'll worry.
  3. Outshined_One
    I'm there with you, but a Cubs system consisting almost entirely of a crapload of really fun OFs by the end of the season is also a nice thing to dream on. Imagine a system with Hartshorn, Kepley, Conrad, and Strosnider, and even guys like Lovich nipping at their heels.
  4. Outshined_One
    You're seriously a few short steps away from sifting through his trash for clues on team visits and interest. And I'm here for it.
  5. Outshined_One
    It's not just a couple of years; this is more like career-threatening issues. I'll grant that college baseball coaching/training has improved by leaps and bounds compared to where things were even a decade ago, but it's nowhere near close to college football, which churns out dozens of guys a year who are NFL-ready within a year of being drafted. College baseball is not a huge money maker, and schools by and large are not pouring money into things like Statcast or pitching/hitting labs for their programs. You're going to see those sorts of guys crash out in college because they won't have the kind of support structure around them that they would have in the minors. All it takes is some redass college hitting coach to wreck the next Ken Griffey Jr.'s swing to pound the ball into the dirt because of his speed, instead of realizing he has generational power/hit potential and going from there. Even a team like the Angels has better coaching/training than what you see from schools like Oklahoma or Florida.
  6. Outshined_One
    This sounds like an effort to save a few million dollars that will ultimately result in the loss of tens of millions of dollars.
  7. Outshined_One
    And when calculating batting average, sacrifice hits are...?
  8. Outshined_One
    You do realize that sac flies don't count for RISP, right?
  9. Outshined_One
    I don't want to resurrect 20 year old threads from the dead, but the bottom line is there is zero reason to look at RISP as a reliable offensive metric when it vacillates ludicrously year to year and even month to month across all players in MLB. Happ and Bregman have their own issues which merit discussion, but this is like using W-L record to argue who the best pitchers in baseball are.
  10. Outshined_One
    Christ, the RISP arguments again? What is this, 2004?
  11. Outshined_One
    I go back to a discussion from last year where some of us kicked around the idea of implementing player rentals, where guys like Wicks/Alcantara would have benefited from going to another team for 2026 where they'd have guaranteed playing time in the majors, take their lumps, and then get sent back for 2027. I have zero idea how that could be structured or implemented, but it always drives me nuts to see AAAA guys wasting away in Iowa.
  12. Outshined_One
    I was going to get catty about the first two selections, but then read this part: Schaffner seems like the sort of guy the Cubs would take, so there's that.
  13. Outshined_One
    Apples to oranges. MLB implemented a draft lottery in 2023 and included anti-tanking rules to prevent teams from undertaking multi-year tanks. @Jason Ross probably knows the rules/eligibility better than I do, but it's why the White Sox picked 10th last year despite having the worst record in baseball.
  14. Outshined_One
    Also, this chart is a few months old, but here is a list of every team's wins over the last decade: First, that Dodgers number is horsefeathers insane. Second, Theo obviously gets credit for 2016-2020, but Jed's held up enough of his end of the bargain to keep the Cubs in the upper third for win totals. If your goal is to get closer to the Brewers/Guardians, fine, but you again run into the issue of finding someone who can actually pull that off, and you damn well better be sure that the guy you get is the one who can do it.
  15. Outshined_One
    It's why I said he was a B grade GM. You can do better, but, objectively, you can do worse. A lot worse. The problem is that it's easy to demand firing Jed, but difficult to find an improvement over him. If you look at the most successful teams of the last decade, those teams either have had the benefit of ludicrously deep pockets (Dodgers, Yankees), an impressive combination of luck and player development (Brewers, Guardians, Braves), or are the Astros (Astros). I don't think the GMs of those teams are going anywhere, so you'd either need to luck out in hiring someone's lieutenant or have a Theo situation with Andrew Friedman. It's possible, don't get me wrong, but people need to be realistic when having these discussions instead of turning into a Score caller demanding the Cubs hire Mike Ditka as a motivational coach because everyone's a bunch of bums.
  16. Outshined_One
    Part of what kills me is, on paper, the Cubs had a fantastic offseason this last go-round. People were pounding the table for Cabrera at the deadline, and Bregman was seen as a big ticket bat who could replace Tucker. FFS, people were bitching about PTR and how ownership never gives out deals to guys like Bregman up until his signing was announced. The only people who hated those acquisitions either didn't like Cabrera's injury history (fair, but SPs get injured all the time), thought Caissie should have been kept (TBD, but he's having a really rough rookie year), or they were that one weird guy who irrationally hated Bregman for being on the Astros team that cheated its way to the WS. Don't pretend like these were bad deals at the time they were signed because of less than half a season of hindsight. Also, what the horsefeathers is this? Am I going insane not remembering the Cubs drafting Matt Shaw, Cam Smith, Cole Mathis, Ethan Conrad, and Kane Kepley with 1st and 2nd round picks? And how PCA spent two years in the Cubs system before being called up? If you're going to go all meatball on this forum, at least come with receipts.
  17. Outshined_One
    It was Cade Townsend posting a picture of himself implying he'd return to Ole Miss.
  18. Outshined_One
    I want to hear more reports about how Hartshorn has looked in the OF. He's played some CF, and if you told me that he has the arm, vision, and enough speed to play all three positions capably, he's a Top 30 prospect in MLB and the #1 guy in the system. If he's a 1B/LF, I'd put Rojas ahead of him, even if Rojas is more likely to end up at 2B/3B.
  19. Outshined_One
    Josiah Hartshorn might go down as Jed's best acquisition at the rate things are going for him.
  20. Outshined_One
    That doesn't look promising.
  21. Outshined_One
    My problem is that Jed is a B grade general manager who'll get you above average teams with the resources ownership gives him and his replacement is likely to be someone roughly as good as he is. Unless this team is willing to spend money when guys like Ohtani come along, you'll have a hard time finding an upgrade.
  22. Outshined_One
    I haven't followed college baseball this year closely enough to have favorites or rankings. All I ask is they take a pitcher and take someone fun (Horton) over someone safe (Wicks).
  23. Outshined_One
    Oh @Brock Beauchamp, you scamp.
  24. Outshined_One
  25. Outshined_One
    Probably, but he's in that weird space where I don't think the Cubs would get the sort of value for him that would make it worthwhile to trade him since he might qualify for draft pick compensation in the offseason. I'd rather they just try to extend him on a 2-3 year deal in the offseason.
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