Jason Ross

Shota has 13 swings and misses and his fastball velo is sitting at 92.3mph on the day, mirroring his 92.5mph in Spring Training. He gave up a home run, but I'm encouraged by the stuff and misses. Those are really good signs.

To be fair to Shota, that pitch (labeled here as 4) is well off the plate.

Sigh. Some weak contact and then Weimer hit a HR on a pitch well below the zone.

That was a good sequence from Shota. And he was hitting 93mph. That's a big deal.

Right, but Bellinger is probably a good example of this. Bellinger over his last three seasons has a 125 wRC+ compared to Pete Alonso's 128 wRC+. I'm using the last three because Bellinger was really bad four years ago, but it also eliminates a 141 wRC+ season from Alonso which increases his wRC+ to 131. Regardless, in those three years, the HR difference is stark: 78 for Bellinger and 118 for Alonso. Bellinger is far more of a defensive asset than Alonso. ZiPS also sees this, giving Alonso a healthy 138 to 121 wRC+ projection in his favor despite their fWAR being very close on that projection. And yet, the difference in AAV between Bellinger (27m per year) and Alonso (31m) is just $4m. If we grade them on similar regression models, the .5 slip each year based on their most recent ZiPS projection for 2026: Pete: 3.8, 3.3, 2.7, 2.2, 1.5 = 13.5 over 5 years = 2.7 fWAR average Cody: 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5 = 16 over 6 years = 2,6 fWAR average These two contracts are very close. Cody got an extra year, but he's a few years younger. However, when we look at the ask of each, Alonso is being asked to average a little more per year, but the difference in AAV is $4m. It's not a massive change. And on total value, it's a difference under $10m. If we were seeing some league wide trend that players who gain value more through their bats, I think these contracts would not be so similar. Bichette probably does not belong in this conversation, however. His contract is an opt-out heavy deal that very likely will be a one or two year deal with the goal to re-hit free agency. We should probably bin that one in a different discussion. Overall, I think we may see slight biases towards home runs and offense, but I don't think there's some league wide trend where similarly valued players are being given significantly larger contracts. A few million AAV might be noticeable here or there, but even at $4m you're talking like the difference between a Hoby Milner.

We like that.

Yeah, I'd really hate his guts if he was a Brewer.

Ian Happ sucks.

Damn. Bregman smoked that.

Dansby is the mansby.

I'm also just a fan of his story. He's been through the absolute ringer injury wise, and he's kept trucking at the toughest position to play in the sport, and one of the toughest in all sports.

Based on the 1st K to James Wood, which was 2 inches over the box, but Wood walked away without even thinking about a challenge? James is a tall man. And then I saw the video replay and it looked right at the top of what I'd assume the zone is. I'd say "no way".

I wasn't that bold, but on the recent NSBB Pod my bold prediction on the year was that by the end of the season Amaya was the 1a to Kelly's 1b and would be the guy starting game 1 of a playoff series. Which isn't even because I think Kelly is going to be bad (I've got 105 ish wRC+?). But I think Amaya is a guy.

Any time! Man, I'm just jazzed to be talking baseball. It's good for the Cubs to be back. And you know, regardless of whether or not we think Hoerner is a scoosh under or overpaid, the good news is that the Cubs are actually spending money. 2-3 months ago the team had very little extended and guaranteed longer term. If they are going to start acting more like a big market, we all win.

Miggy!

It's hard to know how long the infield will keep up their plus-to-elite defense, but when you add in PCA and to a degree, Ian Happ, it's really fun right now with how good the team is defensively.

Cade Horton simply does not horsefeathers around.

Well, BABIP gods smile upon thee today.

Runs are good. I like runs.

Based on how Junkyard has categorized "glove first" players and Hoerner not even being a $20m player, I'd say he has been, which is why I mentioned "poo-pooing". But I also don't necessarily blame him; I think defense is the one thing that has always lagged behind when it comes to our understanding of the game.

I would say that none of these really make your argument for you. For Swanson, I think there was a good debate over "what is he?" because...it was hard to tell. He hadn't been as consistent as others. And in the end, each of these are at best anecdotal. Your argument really revolves around the idea that across the MLB, teams value defense less than offense. Like, yeah, Pete Alonso got 5/$155m, but he averages 3+ fWAR a season. Let's age regress him like others starting with his ZiPS this year: 3.7 (2026), 3.2 (2027), 2.7 (2028), 2.2 (2029), 1.7 (2030). This is a 13.5 fWAR total over 5 years. Using ~12m per win we get: $162m, or right in the ballpark of that data set above. If you want to make an argument that Nico Hoerner was undervalued by a little because he's more of a defensive player (let's say, getting on the short end of the $10.6 - $12.9m range) I'm not sure I'd fully disagree with you. I think biases are in play, and I think you could probably make that argument as at 13.5 fWAR, Nico was pretty close to the 10.6m per win marker with his contract (though I suspect there's a discount being given to the Cubs here, but I'll admit that's a guess). But even at best, your argument boils down to like, $1.5m per year here, which isn't like a really major difference. Over the course of a 5 year contract you're saving one-years worth of a mediocre bench player or reliever. If your argument is "the best players in the league like Juan Soto are really good hitters", I also don't disagree! The reality is that it is easier and there is a higher ceiling for oWAR over dWAR. But this is once again a bit of a different argument than "teams value one more than the other" because I don't think smart MLB orgs are doing that. They recognize that Soto is a 6+ fWAR player despite being a poor defender because he can compile so much oWAR, but it isn't that they're poo-pooing defense either. If that makes sense?

You keep saying this, but have provided no data. I literally just broke down how league wide spending is going, and how the league values fWAR in different tiered players. I also broke down the contract and what we could expect based on him per fWAR. For Hoerner to have not gotten even the lowest level of 2+ fWAR players you either would have to: 1. Believe that the league would have made him the least interesting 2+ fWAR free agent the league has seen recently - in which, I would like some reason other than feelings behind it 2. Believe he does not belong in that tier to begin with because you feel he's not going to average 2 fWAR over his 6 years (or accrue 12 total fWAR) - in which I'd love to see your regression model for Hoerner and why that would be. So until you can provide any sort of league wide data spending on oWAR vs dWAR from recent years and trends, you've really got not a single leg to stand on. Instead, it feels very much that you simply feel this way because there seems to be no trends I can find to support this. I can find some articles over the concept that date back, say, to 2017, but we're literally a CBA beyond that and almost a full-10 years. Spending patterns from 2017 are outdated and meaningless comparatively. Until then, the best course of action we have is using the spending trends we legitimately can see, and that puts expected contract somewhere in the range of the Fangraphs article I provided. Meaning not only was there no way he was ever getting $20m or less AAV, it's very possible the Cubs will find surplus value in this deal as long as he remains a viable MLB starting player through age 33 or 34.

Here is a recent article from Fangraphs exploring how free agents are being paid on the market currently. This goal of this article is to see how teams are valuing different tiers of players who hit free agency. What the article found is that players who are projected to be roughly 2 wins per year (or more) over the lifetime of their contract were being paid between $10.6m and $12.9m per win. Nico Hoerner's real world dollars will bring him in at $135m. Over his next 6 years, to average 2 fWAR per, feels very likely between the ages the Cubs just locked him up at. He's been worth 17.4 fWAR over his last four, which is a 4.3 fWAR average. So let's do a simple age regression starting at 3.5, where he loses .5 fWAR per. I'll note here this is a pretty low position, as it assumes his worst full-season of his career (his lowest fWAR to date is 3.8). This means we're looking at a regression of: 3.5 (2027), 3 (2028), 2.5 (2029), 2 (2030), 1.5 (2031) and 1 (2030) This gets you to 13.5 fWAR and I think is an incredibly pessimistic outlook for his ages-33 and 34. But this is also well above the 2 fWAR per year threshold as 12 fWAR would be that number to crack to put him in this tier of free agent. To get him to the 12 fWAR threshold to lower his FA expected dollars you'd have to essentially have him age regress out of being a starting player by age 32. If teams are willing to pay at minimum, the lowest level, at 13.5 fWAR, his contract should be around ~141m for six seasons. The Cubs signed him to a 6-$135m (accounting for deferred money and real-world dollars). So to recap: even if we assume a pretty negative view of his regression curve, and that teams would pay Nico Hoerner at the very bottom rung of what 2+ fWAR projected players are getting, he's still coming under the number we would expect. There's a bit of a "New CBA boogeyman" we can't account for. As next year's free agency is likely to be truncated and with at least a new CBA and some quirks to it it's unlikely to be world shifting (like I don't expect a cap/floor) and we probably won't really know what an offseason looks like until 2028. Hoerner would have hit FA next year, so there's some weirdness to his situation, I still think it's best to look at the world as we at least know it instead of some hypothetical mystery. If we assume that he'd have come closer to the $12m mark at 13.5 fWAR that puts his contract over $160m. And if we give him a less negative age regression, say one that starts at 4 fWAR, we're looking at 16 wins overall and the contract can adjust more. None of this sounds like having a "Hoerner Boner".

It's a great example of the limitations of OPS. OPS weights SLG higher than OBP which leads us to think PCA is a significantly better hitter. But with wRC+'s missing being to balance these on a similar playing field, we get two players who were instead identical production wise with very different styles. 2007 me would have been harping hard on why PCA was better. 2007 me would have been so wrong.

So one thing that we need to understand here on bat speed and EV: players who trade contact for power tend to lower their bat speed (this keeps the bat in the hit-box longer and gives them more swing control) thus dropping their EV. They further drop their EV as they trade K's (which have no effect on EV) for weak contact (which lowers our average EV). The idea that Hoerner could increase his power is possible. But we'd likely see an increase in bat speed, an increase in K's, and thus, EV's and hard hit% would go up. It doesn't always work out. Jake McCarthy with Arizona is good example of this. He traded power for contact last year and became a far worse hitter.