Transmogrified Tiger
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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger
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Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
Transmogrified Tiger replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Yes at the start of the offseason most every competitor has a number of holes to fill, that's how offseasons work when a big chunk of the player pool is no longer attached to a team. The Dodgers rotation at the moment needs multiple guys to come back from TJS real strong real fast, they have no DH and are apparently betting real heavily on Heyward being a starting caliber corner OF. The Padres rotation is Musgrove(coming off shoulder injury), Darvish, and a pile of sorrow. Last year's division winners the Brewers have Jake Bauers and Tyrone Taylor as their 1B/DH and Adrian Houser as their 3rd best SP. At the root of this anti-logic is the sentiment that the worst thing you could possibly do is spend resources a year too early, I get it but it just isn't a significant risk. The Cubs were garden-variety variance from a playoff berth, will either have leg up in keeping Soto or recoup some cost through a pick, and he is a very snug roster fit. Waiting until you have all the other pieces in place before considering a star player(and I mean a real star level impact, not Pete Alonso/Jordan Montgomery level guys) who isn't a perfect contract fit is a great way to run into a situation where you don't have the ability to acquire one because they aren't available or not in a spot where you need to improve. -
Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
Transmogrified Tiger replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
There is no meaningful sentiment of folks here wavering on pursuing Ohtani because Soto is a trade target. -
I can't escape the feeling that from a results perspective, the main thing separating pre-FA Montgomery from pre-FA Taillon is that Montgomery got to spend 30 starts over the last 2 years in one of the worst parks for hitting HR while Taillon was a RHP pitching in Yankee stadium. I'm not sure they're exactly the same caliber, and I wouldn't forecast Taillon's 2023 for Montgomery. Nor do I think Taillon was an especially bad signing. But I'm pretty uneasy signing up to give a 6 year deal in the 20-25M AAV range for someone running such pedestrian K rates given the team's needs. Especially when Montgomery's stuff and pedigree doesn't offer much hope for further advancement.
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Ohtani to Dodgers for an ungodly amount of money
Transmogrified Tiger replied to JD94's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
It can be difficult to navigate this new media landscape with Ohtani having so much secrecy, it's a little complicated but I made a flow chart to help interpret all these rumors and rumblings -
Yep. In a reality where the Dodgers are also offering a half billion dollars and Ohtani cares about not being in Angels purgatory anymore, illustrating that he would be joining a team that is actively improving could matter. I don't think they'd make a move that they wouldn't otherwise, but it seems very reasonable to me that they could be motivated to pay a little bit more to get that over the line quicker.
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Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
Transmogrified Tiger replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I agree with this, under the assumption that Ohtani is deciding somewhat soon. Preller wants to maximize the return but he also needs to use the Soto savings on the roster, and if Ohtani unexpectedly waits til after the Winter Meetings then he may be forced to take the bird in hand unless he wants to play a dangerous game of signing players with money he doesn't currently have and with unknown holes filled by the Soto return. -
Ohtani to Dodgers for an ungodly amount of money
Transmogrified Tiger replied to JD94's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
why do I remember that it was katyperrysbootyhole, I have wasted my life https://www.nbcsportschicago.com/mlb/chicago-cubs/wetbutt23-and-katyperrysbootyhole-the-reddit-users-who-scooped-the-baseball-world-in-quintana-to-cubs-trade/306218/ -
I don't think there's any sourced rumors he's as available as Glasnow, and certainly not as a combo in anything I've seen, but I'm curious what the price tag for Glasnow + Brandon Lowe would be. Lowe has one guaranteed year, has had injury struggles and regressed a bit offensively, which potentially could make him a trade option for the Rays given his 8.75 million salary and their org depth. From the Cubs perspective he's a LHH bat who we can comfortably say is going to be a good hitter(Steamer says 118 wRC+), he could pretty conceivably be tried as a 3B given his 2B play(and at a minimum is a solid 1B/DH option), and he has team options beyond this year where he could be useful given they are only minor increases over his 9.75 LT number this year. The main downside would be availability(174 games the last 2 years), and that Glasnow + Lowe eats up a big enough chunk of money without getting a big bat that you might be forced to compromise further down the wishlist, and potentially even at the top of that list(e.g. Soto) to fit things in.
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I would probably bump power ahead of K-focused SP, but maybe that's my hitter bias talking. I'd also put a sizable gap between 4 and 5, or maybe more to the point I'd structure it like this: Tier 1: SP, Big Bat Tier 2: Secondary bat, leverage RP Tier 3: 3B, CF, additional RP I'd rather not do anything in Tier 3 to get to the best possible solution in Tier 1 and 2, but the opportunity is there if options start to dwindle.
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Glasnow starts to make more sense or less sense depending on other moves that happen around his acquisition. He's a 1 year commitment and one that has significant injury risk, but the Cubs are fairly well positioned to handle that given their pitching depth and the need for his caliber of upside. If you are using Free Agency to make significant gains in the offense and bullpen, and/or don't have to trade much of the MLB-ready pitching depth to fill other holes, then Glasnow works great. If making other improvements requires trading 2 or more of Wesneski, Assad, Wicks, and Brown, then Glasnow becomes a riskier proposition.
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I'm pretty sure Glasnow's LT number as a Cub would be 25 million, a traded player's LT value is the AAV of the remaining guarantee. It didn't used to be that way but within the last couple years it changed.
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Douquet Says Bregman May Be Available
Transmogrified Tiger replied to CubinNY's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I'm with you, though the list of teams ruthless enough to do this is very short and also includes the Astros. "Normally" in this situation there would at least be some type of internal option that they may have a higher opinion of than most, but looking at that roster it sure seems like they'd need to add an infielder. And unless they were so impressed with Madrigal's transition they want to move Altuve to 3B, or they think Pena is a 3B and they really love Tim Anderson or something, they'd have to play in some shallow waters in adding a 3B. -
Personally I think this is a very good thing. Shaw had a swing-happy approach and was consistently doing damage to the opposite field, and those that I saw both HR and 2B/3B were mostly line drives as opposed to fly balls drifting into a gap/over the fence. I think there's a lot more opportunity for him to be a little more discerning and do *more* damage with his swings rather than there is risk his pop was a SSS fluke.
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I like that the Cardinals saw the Mets flame out spectacularly with a rotation full of super old arms who used to be elite and their takeaway was to skip the 'used to be elite' part.
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Once every 12 to 18 months there's a situation that is not so dissimilar to Manoah's, a guy who had been very good inexplicably falls off or has some type of personal/unknown issue, and all of us obsessives perk up at the thought of arbitrage and getting that caliber player for less by rehabilitating him. In practice, this mostly tends to not happen, Manoah is pre-arb and a pitcher so the odds of the Jays not being able to find room for him if they want him are minimal. And even if they were ready to cut bait, the market for teams interested in a potential 4 win SP on pre-arb salaries is everyone, so the winning bid tends to be much less of a discount than we initially think.
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Maeda is 36 in April, does not throw hard, and his last 3 years have gone 100 IP of 3 WAR pace, TJS recovery, 100 IP of 3 WAR pace. His run prevention lagged his FIP in both of those non-injury seasons, and last year hitters started hitting the ball harder too. Across the 2 years of his deal, getting 200 IP and 3 WAR would seem like a pretty good outcome, and I struggle to see that outcome getting paid 2/24 as a gross injustice relative to anything we've seen in recent FA deals.
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Perfect move. Get the guy who averages 8 wins a year to go to the school that averages 8 wins a year and then have everyone be furious at him 3 years later when he averages 8 wins a year.
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The odds of the team not going into the luxury tax if they sign Ohtani is 0%, if the hesitation is that they won't make other marginal upgrades on top of Ohtani then you do not have to worry about it. They may still be mindful of the 2nd and especially 3rd level(since that has draft and compounding monetary penalties), but they wouldn't be pursuing Ohtani if he was taking up 95+% of their money to spend, they probably wouldn't have picked up Hendricks' option, etc.
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Probably not a great sign that the market for the lower/middle class of FA is going to be that hot, presumably due to how much TV money has evaporated in the last 12 months from clubs that do a lot of their spending in that bracket.
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They put the surplus value calculation right there. They see Steele with 132.8 million in value for those 4 years(33 mil/year) at combined salaries of 73.4 million, and Peralta with 85.7 million in value for those 3 years (28 mil/year) but only 21.7 million in salary. So they think Steele is a bit better a pitcher for those seasons(Steele being a year older probably inches them closer), but Peralta makes up for that due to having a low arb starting point while Steele is a super two who coming off his best season is setting a much higher arb baseline.
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I can't tell if that was an incredible throw or one of the most successful horrible throw decisions I've ever seen. That DB looked like an old video game character just running away from the flight of the ball.
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I think this type of criticism misunderstands what BBTV is actually useful for. Yes, you can get it to say any number of unrealistic trades are 'fair', and if you look at the user generated proposals it's clear people use the calculator to try to make various 4 for 1 'my trash for your star trades' that would never happen. The utility of that site is that it's an objective *starting point* that isn't so far off how players actually get evaluated, so in thinking about a possibility it can be a very useful tool. That doesn't mean its valuations are gospel, they acknowledge that up front and present them as a min/max/median, and even then there are places across thousands of players where it's not gonna be quite right(Trout being an extreme example). But if you approach it with the thought of 'could a deal work to trade X to Team A or X for player Y, it's a perfectly good foundation where you also need to take into account the other team's needs and motivations. Most people just skip over the second part and then other people get mistakenly irritated at BBTV for that.
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There's 'okay maybe a multi-year deal for a reliever', and then there's 'give up a QO pick to pay a reliever a multi-year, 8 figure AAV'. The former is believable, although maybe not so much plan A depending on where the market goes with AAVs. The latter seems like a desperation Plan D at best.
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Yoshinobu Yamamoto to...the Dodgers? Really? Again?
Transmogrified Tiger replied to UMFan83's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
The relationship is apparently greater than Nootbaar just being allowed to play because he has the right relatives.
