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Transmogrified Tiger

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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger

  1. Transmogrified Tiger
    Like the NBA Jam "Nail in the Coffin" audio in written form.
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    Ah yes, that time honored early December tradition, Ohtanukkah
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    Oh man I will laugh so hard if he signed for like 2/150
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    Increasingly convinced Ohtani's agent calls each finalist every evening and tells them "good night, sleep well, I'll most likely tell you in the morning"
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    No, the article he quoted says the Royals are aggressively pursuing SP in both FA and trade, and Melendez is one of the players who could go the other direction in trade. But no mention of the Cubs in particular.
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    Mine jumped up too. I think it's still split across another ghost profile because in the merge a bunch of posts got associated with the separate profile I had to create at the old site for my prolific(read: two) article writing career, but not something I'm concerned about.
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    I misremembered his estimate being 22 for this year when it's about 20.5, so we can split the difference and call it around 45. But that's a high enough price compared with his hackery at 1B that even if you're a bit optimistic about his return to form, it doesn't leave a ton of room for it to be worth a large trade price over two years.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    But no team is going to trade a big price for Vlad at roughly 2/50 in arb salaries, and Vlad is objectively a better option than Horwitz, so the main benefit you get from trading Vlad is cutting his salary. You might use that salary elsewhere instead of pocketing the savings under the auspices of paying for Ohtani, but the salary is the reason.
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think if you swap Twitter in for X in the URL that should consistently do it, if that doesn't help you can also eliminate everything in the URL after the question mark(including the question mark).
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    Summarizing for those who might be curious but can't/won't watch the video: - The jet making that flight is the same model that Shohei has been seen flying on social media before - The jet was previously in Oakland(timing the rumored visit with the Giants) and Hawaii(where apparently his girlfriend lives?) - Today is the Japanese day of luck and the day Shohei signed with the Angels
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
    please Shohei, my offseason, she's very sick
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    The bolded is technically true by FIFA ranking, but of those 4(Panama/Chile/Venezuela/Paraguay) I would prefer Panama 1000 times out of 1000. Good draw, I believe I have a good chance of going to the Uruguay game which is extra exciting.
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    Think about how many teams this paragraph can accurately apply to, I think at least 7? What does that mean in a leaner market where there are only a couple big prizes and they have fairly universal appeal(DH/OF and SP)? If they aren't over the LT this offseason, barring incredible circumstances I would agree. I just don't think that is at all likely. Jed says a variation on the same thing every offseason and last offseason he added about 80 million AAV in Free Agency to a team that won 74 games. If you're taking these comments as an indicator that they're not going to add a bunch of payroll the rest of the offseason, I think that's a reflection of your prior conception.
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    Jed is 1) setting expectations/maintaining leverage/being noncommittal like basically every exec 2) 1000% correct. Doesn't mean he can't be too conservative with the moves he does make, but teams that are consistently excellent very rarely are the ones making a flurry of high profile moves. You can and be successful in the short term and maybe longer if you're good/lucky, but the Padres and Mets provide a very visceral example that it's not that simple.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
    The QO is the other thing that dulls my enthusiasm a bit. I could definitely see a situation where his market struggles to materialize and he makes sense as part of a contingency plan if you miss out on other targets. In some ways I kinda prefer him to Bellinger in that 'I have too much money to spend in late January' type of situation. But the redundancy of his profile on top of the lost QO resources(and let's face it, probably his likely contract terms) keep me from mustering much excitement even if my contrarian voice tells me the wailing and moaning about him as a target is overwrought. That said, I was worried Swanson was going to be Jeff Blauser redux in terms of Braves SS falling short of FA hype with the Cubs and that didn't come to fruition at all, so maybe I have a blind spot for these defense-carrying hitters who can hit a bit.
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    But even a partial season of PCA instead of Mancini/Hosmer/Candelario probably adds a chunk back? Said a different way, the Cubs were tied for 1st in BsR and by that metric Bellinger was the 4th biggest positive impact, closer to Morel in 5th than to the top 3 of Hoerner/Swanson/Mastrobuoni. Will they be 1st overall again? I wouldn't necessarily bet on it. Would I continue to estimate they're a bit better an offense than team wRC+ implies? I'd say yes.
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    One small caveat is that wRC+ is not incorporating baserunning, and the Cubs were an elite baserunning team which is part of why despite being 12th in wRC+ they were 6th in runs.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    Who is in this 2nd tier that you think they're skipping?
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    In an offseason without Ohtani, my expectation is that they'll exceed the luxury tax but probably more in the 15-20 million overage, which would mean they add 65-70M in AAV. I think they'll probably add 3 pitchers and 2-3 position players. I think SP is probably the key decision in terms of the exact shape of the other moves. If it's Glasnow I bet they try for another SP to hedge his injury risk, and it's possible then the 2nd SP is a Morel-based trade. In that permutation then the 3rd position player is probably a low dollar bat, hopefully better caliber than Rios last year but also probably not a 10M+ AAV like JD Martinez. If they don't get a 2nd SP then I think they probably add a 2nd RP but more in the Robertson/Boxberger range. So a couple different permutations of what this could look like: Glasnow/Imanaga/Robertson on the mound, Hoskins/Polanco at the plate Bieber/Stephenson/Fujinami on the mound, Bellinger/Belt at the plate Glasnow/Cabera/Miller on the mound, Hoskins/Naylor/Gallo at the plate I can also see some plan B/C permutations where they put money they don't have a better home for into Woodruff.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    I'm with you, and I do think they did aggressively pursue Ohtani at least, and at a minimum pursued the contours of a Soto trade. I know some folks are taking the waning belief Ohtani will sign as an indicator they offered him like 7/400 as a last offer or worse didn't try at all, but that is not the impression I've gotten from combing the Cubs internet. And this also might be just a coping mechanism, but I also try to remember that everyone wants these guys and the other parties involved have agency, so there is some element that is beyond their control. If Ohtani thinks Wrigley is a dump or Chicago is too cold or too long a flight or w/e, and Preller says 'We need pitching but I'm not a big fan of Wicks or Assad/Wesneski', then no amount of aggression or even foolhardy levels of pursuit is going to do it.
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    This might be just my coping mechanism at not getting our version of a nut-shelling squirrel, but I'm getting the impression that they have a higher view of the current roster and baseline they're working from than a lot of us do. There's some logic for that since the team's underlying performance was very good, and some of the ways they failed to meet it have been addressed or there's still plenty of opportunity to(rotation depth, bullpen firepower, Ross if you believe he was the problem). Plus they'll pursue backfilling the production lost from Bellinger/Stroman. I don't think they're calibrated quite perfectly, it puts a lot of pressure on a couple of the prospects in particular to be good fast instead of investing in higher quality to give them greater breathing room. But there's always tradeoffs so if they feel they have a wave and some redundancy on that front, then I can understand it at least.
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    This is an amazing reference that reminds me of my own mortality, I love it and hate it.
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    So in the last few days the Yankees have traded most of their upper level pitching depth for 3 outfielders, and now they're within 5M of last year's payroll(which was a record high for them AFAICT) with a rotation of Cole, the hope that Rodon is healthy/unbroken, Schmidt, Cortes, and a bodega cat. What's the plan here, are they gonna just tack on money since they're over the third threshold and paying third time repeater penalties anyway? Continue selling off the farm for another SP? The rest of that lineup isn't exactly the stuff of dreams either.
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    Maybe they know that all of their infielders are in for regression and are trying to cash in while they can
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    I've been working and may have missed it, but if Grisham is still in the deal he's got non-trivial surplus value. So doing the deal without him probably knocks off one of Assad/Wesneski?
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