Jason Ross

I bet there's a fix/change they want him to work on.

So looking deeper on Cuas...he actually has really impressive vertical movement on his slider but his slider placement is horrible. He's leaving it all over the plate. If you can get him to get that slider more on the black and use your vertical movement to generate the chase rate up, I think you'll have something.

The Royals horsefeathers up pitchers left and right. Their pitching infrastructure is jacked. Cuas is a sidearm guy. He's got great whiff rates, terrible chase rates (this doesn't make much sense). I think there's a tweak here or there you can use to exploit these things. There could be a good RP arm here.

A bit of an ouch on the Kevin Made front on first feelign, though he's slowed down considerably this year. Cubs have Rojas chasing him. Herz...belongs in the BP. It feels worse on the name-brand feeling of it.

Unused and if Candelario is going to come play 3b...I don't see what he does to get playing time. I don't know why Mancini keeps getting PT, either, if we're being honest, so I'd be fine to make him go away as well, but I think it'd be more likely Wisdom.

Yeah, Christian Franklin is a nothing burger from me. Kohl still has arguably the best changeup in the system and a fastball that hits 97/98. Zero consistency and at this point I'm not sure he'll ever find it. Could be a leverage reliever, he has the stuff. With that said, he's the kind of prospect you trade.

Yeah, I had suggested him as a maybe up top, too. Nationals love tools. I'll be disappointed to see Franklin go because he's been a favorite of mine stuff wise, and I still think there's real deal upside, but he's a risky-ass prospect and in baseball sense, it's not a major loss more than likely.

Loxas is unreliable on his best days, IMO.

I'd guess Wisdom.

So, definitively Perlaza is one.

I'll call it; Perlaza and someone like Killian or Franklin. The Nationals love tools. They can't develop them for horsefeathers, however.

I'm not against the idea of Candelario. I don't think he's a stud, and worry there's a bit of inflation (batted ball data is less good than his raw results so far in places). I'm skeptical of his ability to play 3b (he's usually a negative fielder there). With that said, he probably won't be super expensive, and he'd provide an upgrade.

Brewers pick up Canha.

Fangraph's article was written sometime in late May. We can see this as we read the data on PCA and his walk rate (which has greatly increased over the time of mid-late-May to July). While I appreciate what Fangraphs pospects used to be, and I still find fangraphs to be a leading source of MLB data, their MiLB section has been lacking so to say. It's clearly parceled out to fill content (they post teams top-prospects infrequently instead of all together, for example) and do not recycle and update prospects until they re-examine another team. They also run on some pretty outdated information; we can see this the last few trade deadlines as Eric Logenhagen was working with pretty old data for Wesneski and Killian on pitch data and velocity. That doesn't absolve either prospect of defaults, only that Logenhagen was clearly behind. I actually don't blame Logenhagen; he's one man and there are 30 teams with 150 prospects each; FG has also seemingly scaled back prospect coverage. I would not mark Cade Horton as a 45 FV+ today. Personally, I think he's a pretty high end prosect...probably deserving of sitting comfortably in the top-50 in baseball as of today. He's leading the Midwest league in swings and misses regardless of being promoted there in May (and the Cubs famously limit innings and pitches). He's working with a 2.53 xFIP in A+ as of today, an impressively high 45% GB%, and a really impressive K% over 12 and a walk rate around the low 2's. There's clearly polish to occur; he still has a habit of getting lazy with the baseball and just throwing it by guys in bad spots (his "bad" games generally happen when people hit those fastballs) and the changeup is a work in progress. He's not MLB ready today. With that said, he's progressing down a road in which next season at this time, he very well may be among the best RHP SP prospects in baseball...he's honestly not far away today IMO.

The burden of proof is on the accuser, not the other way around. If you'd like to make a point, than it's upon you to provide evidence, not demand people find the obscure evidence. Secondly, your goal posts have changed, your initial point was not that WAR devaluates relievers but that it devalues high-leverage relievers. I really do want these articles. If they're as easily found as you claim they are, simply posting a link to them would be quite easy. What I can say is I did what you suggested and googled, exactly "War Undervalues Relievers". The top result was from fangraphs, so I guess we're using fWAR (awesome, that's my favorite!). The article states this: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/war-and-relievers/ The article can be found at the link. It does not seem to support your premise, however. As stated, each batter is more critical, but this is actually accounted for in fWAR. This means that fWAR does not misinterpret high leverage relievers. Now, there is this article: http://camdendepot.blogspot.com/2017/04/why-war-based-systems-underestimate.html But the issue is this; it's written after the Fangraphs article and quotes a 2010 article. We can see that in this quote, here So while I think the article is getting at what you want, it is using pretty outdated information. Fangraphs itself, in 2018, claims that leverage is handled in fWAR, while this article, using data 8 years previous claims it's not. Should there be an article I should be looking at more in depth? I'd be glad to read it.

Well, you may believe that a simple statement is proof, but sadly, I would have to disagree with you. If you can provide data to prove your statement of "WAR devalues leverage", I'd be more than glad to dig into it and read it. However, until you can show that kind of proof, I'll simply have to respectfully disagree with you as I have yet to see anything to provide evidence to the statement. Your simple quote of "leverage exists" is sadly not enough for me,

I'm pretty good at things like WAR; I'd be able to describe the difference in fWAR, bWAR and eWAR (as well as why fWAR is the superior). I'm also very understanding of what "leverage: ist. My question to you was to prove that WAR (I'd prefer fWAR, as again, I find it superior) undervalues leverage, It's really very simple; If you have real data to prove that, I'd be glad to see it. It'd interest me, and I'd love to see it. I'm much less interested in some random quote. Do you have an article written by a respected author to show why WAR devalues leverage?

Yeah, I don't think either as good as Bednar. I just think the general difference is...minimal. Especially for where the Cubs are at, a guy who's marginally better probably doesn't matter unless you think they're truly a WS team and we need to find success at every margin. There would be a time I would say "Yes, get the better player", I just don't think today we're there. Totally fine with agreeing to disagree. I live in the real world, sometimes I have good ideas, and frankly, sometimes I'm wrong.

A 40-Man roster is 40 players deep. The Cubs shouldn't have an issue finding 39 players and keeping Alcantara. The upside is real here; he's a possible 60/Hit,. 60/power player who can cover any OF position (though I think if we're being realistic, won't be in CF based on his size). The Cubs kind of haven't been the best dev team in baseball, but realistically, the current dev team (Breslow, Kantrovtitz) hasn't had much time; it's like 2021-now. We're already seeing fruits with Steele, Alzolay, Morel, Amaya. I think that suggests the team is capable. We're a little too young to know if they dev system works for many of their young hitters. I think it's fine to be questionable whether the Cubs can realistically turn into a dev powerhouse. With that said, there's a pretty consistent turnover on Cub development each year where high end prospects are more than naught, moving to higher levels and finding success. I'm actually pretty excited about where the talent goes. I don't think that should make it entirely off limits, but I think right now, the Cubs should be selective on where those prospects go. I just don't think we're at "trade for a closer" stage.

That's really good. It's still 4.4 fWAR. It's a marginal gain over, say, Paul Seawawls' 2.9 fWAR, who's likely available, or Andrew Chafin's 3.0 fWAR. Why we should be careful trying to build on the margins. I don't disagree, I think David Bednar is really good. I think the Cubs are pretty good at deciding who's a good RP and who isn't, and paying a prospect premium for a RP seems like bad business.

How many are showing MLB success? Well, that's a bit unfair because many of these prospects are currently in the MiLB still. But if we want some examples of prospects who struggled initially at levels and then broke out: Owen Caissie: struggled initially at A, A+ and AA only to breakout mid season PCA: Struggled initially at A+ only to break out Haydn McGeary: Struggled initially at AA only to have broken out Moises Ballestros: Struggled initially at A+, has been signfiicantly better Kevin Alcantara: Struggled initially at A ball to break out. Seemingly has done similar in A+ Alexander Canario: Struggled at AA, only to break out I think there's a pretty strong data set that the Cubs have with hitters in the MiLB, IMO. There's a pattern we can see as we look at prospect in the Cub systems; prospects generally struggle from April through May, and then June/Mid-June we see breakouts. Will this translate to MLB success? Well, I can't say. We have seen Christopher Morel and Miguel Amaya breakout in ways at the MLB level. We might see Matt Mervis do the same, if given a chance. I don't think "MLB Success" is a far barometer for players in A-AA right now. We'll see what they do.

That is a good thing in theory. However, per Fangraphs, "it's not predictive" and "should not be used for player evaluation". https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/wpa/

Maybe they aren't. RP's are super volatile. They don't pitch a ton. I don't think that fWAR should be taken entirely literally, but I also think we have to understand that maybe high leverage RP's are more valuable on the margins than they are in general.

Yeah, we'll have to entirely disagree with that valuation of Kevin Alcantara here. I think Alcantara is a pretty wonderful prospect. There's some risk here, but he's been figuring things out the last month. I can't tell you how to view prospects, it's subjective, but he's someone who's posted a whopping 218 wRC+ over his last 80 PAs, a shrinking K% (under 24%) a far increased walk rate (14.9%) a much more refined approach, and 14 xBH in that span. Development isn't linear and Alcantara, right up to an unfortunate calf strain was suggesting that he had figured out A+. It's not enough for me to say definitively, but this is also a similar path many Cub prospects have followed over the last few seasons. A month or two of struggles followed by a significant break out. We'll see where go from here, but I think we should be very careful on using season long data here.

That isn't "proof" so much as you just kind of made up a quote from no one, then pretended you "proved" something. You stated that WAR undervalues relievers. I'd need to seem some data to prove that.