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Jason Ross
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Everything posted by Jason Ross
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If this is the case, it would clear out another team who may be in on Imai. There was a little smoke, though not a lot, about Imai/Boston, but if they're done with pitching...
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Yeah, my concern is far less about the velo and far more about the breaking ball issues. If you can get this guy to hit breaking balls, there's a Joey Gallo career in him, but that feels like a tall task. The White Sox are in a great place to take the gamble though. They can't really lose.
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League average fastball is around 91-92mph. Tatsuya Imai, who averages 95mph threw the second hardest fastball in NPV last year. MLB league average fastball is mid-94mph. NPB doesn't have anywhere near the velo we have in MLB. This is with a slightly smaller baseball, too.
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4-5 years around the same AAV.
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Fangraphs isn't a great prospect resource right now. They aren't dumb, but they are slow to update - I try not to use FG unless they're an outlier (for example, Logenhagen was the high-man on the pitcher that went for Shane Bieber at the deadline - but that's also around when FG updates things). As well, the Orioles have a super-deep system and guys like Bassalo are still on the list, even though they're MLB players now (he just still has "prospect" status due to a lack of PA). Instead of using FG's prospect rankings, use this article, also written by Logenhagen. This is a significant return for Baz. Caden Bodine had first-round-hype and fell because of signability more than talent, Slater de Brun got the highest bonus of any non-first round pick in the same draft. And there's a Comp-A pick. The Rays just essentially got three first round picks + two other prospects for a pitcher who has some cool under the hood stuff but hasn't put it all together, despite being with the Rays (a good pitching team). Don't get me wrong; I like Shane Baz! But this is considered an excellent return by the baseball community.
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Yeah, this is a good reminder as well. I probably didn't give him enough credit in my post for already being pretty good.
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Gore isn't a "number 2" today; it's about getting someone with his swing-and-miss ability away from Washington, who has one of the worst pitching infrastructures in baseball right now. They are pretty terrible as well from a player developmental stand point. Teams don't want what MacKenzie Gore has been, they want what they think they can fix. While not the same fix, all it took was getting Kyle Finnegan out of DC and into Detroit for him to fix a lot of his issues by simply changing his pitch mix (something many in baseball circles online had been screaming about).
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Levine suggested he's met with the Cubs on air. That I can say. If you want a positive, this whole thing reminds me a lot of Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga; we had some rumblings the Cubs were interested, but really, until signing day, it was basically crickets on actual reporting from around the league. Sieya looked primed to end up in SD just hours before he penned with the Cubs, and Imanaga was living in Chicago without anything.
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Gave it a listen. Not a lot of substance.
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I found this phrasing interesting. "Are the Cubs closing in on a starting pitching?" is a specific type of a question (not one that is more indirection like a "signing" or a 'trade"). With where Imai is on his timeline of signing, could be telling.
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Reading it back, I did too.
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It's moments like these I wan to convince myself that MoccBomb is real even know I know, very much, that he's not.
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It was after the meetings, I think. He was playing up the Yankees and that he felt it was unlikely the Cubs were going to get him between the two. And I agree, I think Rogers information is always solid. But where the information starts and opinion ends kind of gets muddy
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IIRC, Jesse Rogers was also the guy throwing water on the Cubs/Tucker trade talks, too. Not shutting him down entirely here, but he does have a track record of being the negative nancy of group at times.
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This doesn't come close to passing a sniff test. No one in their right mind is giving Bellinger $50m AAV
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He's madeajor mechanical changes. I don't think I'd rely on MLB numbers from 2019 at this stage as any sort of basis for what he will be. Again, I wouldn't project over a 19% strike out rate against lefties, but what he was over half a decade ago isn't it, either. It's probably less strikeouts than he had in MLB in 2019 and more than in NPB. I'd guess something like 22-24%.
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Patrick Wisdom isn't the name I'd go with. He was under a 19% K% against LHP last year. Wisdom struck out almost 30% of the time in the KBO, and 37.9% against LHP over his career in the States. We should expect Austin to probably K more than 19% against lefties next year, but I don't expect a 20% increase in strikeouts, either. Austin only hit 11 home runs last year (245 PA's) so I don't think the power is going to be there like Wisdom, either. Ultimately, I think Austin is going to be more like what we hoped Justin Turner to be last year if you put a gun to my head - someone who's going to give you a strong AB while adding double digit home runs.
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I think there's a real chance! It's hard to say exactly what this guy is going to be as a 34-year old who hasn't played MLB for a long time. But his profile feels like it'll play as a LHP masher. He's crunched lefties in the NPB and left handed pitchers just throw less hard league wide, so there's probably less of that "well maybe he won't hit velocity" question we have to do with NPB hitters. It's a pretty fun, cheap, dart throw at fixing the platoon situation, I think.
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A few things: 1. The Cubs like players from Japan. They've been heavily connected to almost all of the NPB players under Hoyer - big names and smaller names (hello, Tyler Austin!) 2. Age is a factor. The Cubs don't want long term contracts deep into a players' 30's. They'll sign short term deals like that, but don't want to pay long term for it. The one player they signed to 7 years? He was under-30. 3. The Cubs have a player profile of pitching they like. Pronators who have low arm angles. 4. The Cubs would prefer not to lose the QO pick as often as they could. That 2nd round pick matters to this team and they like to draft. You begin adding it up, and Imai fits into these boxes. I think we've learned over the years what the Cubs like, and what they don't. They're not going to sign Kyle Tucker for 11 years. I do think they'd sign Tatsuya Imai to 6 or 7 years.
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- hoby milner
- michael king
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I keep coming back to the thought that this is lining up very well to be the team standing at the end of Tatsuya Imai. I know I'm a high-man on him, but it just feels like the most "Cub" move on a longer-term deal that I've seen in a while, maybe since Swanson, now that I better understand the operating procedures of the Cubs.
- 7 replies
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- hoby milner
- michael king
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To be fair to that report, the original one never claimed it was *only* those three teams, but that those three teams were competing for King. I think it got misread and warped a bit by the media and people took at as "the only" three teams competing for him. A few other reports, like Mark Fiensand added more teams to the mix. The Padres, however are a bit of a surprise based on their perceived money concerns.
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So, here's a positive to the King thing; that is a Jed contract through and through. Entirely a Jed Hoyer contract. Maybe King super appreciated his time in SD and that's why he decided to go back, but that also feels like a contract Hoyer beats with more money up front or something. It could be as low as a 1/$22m deal for King, a pitcher we have heard the Cubs like. For all of the talk about Hoyer not getting irrational, he has never been afraid to pay more AAV to escape years. Especially front-loading a deal to encourage opting out (Stroman). So why didn't he? Well, maybe it's because the Cubs like where they are with Imai. I can't promise thats the reason. Cubs could be about to lose him, too. Maybe they don't love the King medicals. Maybe King loves SD and the Cubs tried that. But that isn't a deal the Cubs can't or probably don't try to beat most years because they love contracts like that. So we probably have to ask yourself "why didn't they?"
