Transmogrified Tiger
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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger
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No one's saying that OPSing .900 in AAA means MLB success ya goober, you tried parlaying that idea into the claim that OPSing .900+ is a "barely above average AAA hitter", which you've subsequently proven incorrect yourself with your hand-derived (and still overstated since *leagues* consistently perform better at home due to non-park related factors) park factor and statement of the league's average OPS. -
That's gotta be Top 5 for the dumbest hits I've ever seen
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Choosing to die on the hills that Principal Park is Coors-ian hitters paradise and out-OPSing league average by 100 points isn't good enough is definitely a choice. Godspeed.
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- alexander canario
- matt mervis
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The IL as it's currently constructed is 2 years old, and the last time the I-Cubs had an above league average team OPS was in 2016. Maybe a coincidence the last time they had good prospects they had a good offense! But let's read the thing being responded to again. Don't think so. Doesn't mean the rest of your takeaway isn't true, prospects fail and the jump from AAA to MLB is a huge one. To reiterate, I do not want Canario called up nor do I think he's more than a 4th OF at the MLB level. But if we're gonna antagonize folks about falling in love with prospects under the guise of objectivity, maybe suggesting that 'actually, crushing AAA pitching is pedestrian' is the wrong tact.
- 65 replies
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- alexander canario
- matt mervis
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This presupposes the only choice is between Smyly and Wicks. My original post on the topic was that Wicks was 3rd at best in that hierarchy, fixing the Smyly problem can be done with Wesneski or Kilian, or even more creatively with Shane Greene if you want to. Bringing up a Wicks who isn't fully baked as a prospect and isn't fully ramped to take on the role being asked of him is just hoping against hope to me.
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I'm not well read enough to have high confidence in this, but I think Bellinger's 2 strike approach bit is very relevant, and I think it's generally a *good* thing. Bellinger's batted ball metrics(average EV, barrel rate, etc) that are are a *function of batted balls* are down, and that's because he has taken a huge bite of his K rate. It's not an apples to apples comparison when so many more PA in previous seasons(good and bad) ended without a ball in play. If we extrapolate things like hard hits or barrels on a per PA basis instead of per batted ball, it's still not at the standard he was at in his first few seasons, but it's a lot closer, especially when you consider the other side of the coin is cutting out a big chunk of K's. That means there's dozens more balls he's putting in play in a higher BABIP environment(and which he has good speed to maximize), and it makes him harder to game plan and more platoon resistant. That said, if I'm signing Bellinger I'm not doing so with the expectation that he's this 145 wRC+ guy going forward. But I think his current line is closer to what we can expect than looking at his .328 xWOBA and thinking that's what he's got coming to him.
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I don't have a problem with this logic, but finding better uses of money than the **28 y/o** with a career 120 wRC+ and plus CF defense(and who you have a leg up on signing by already having 1st hand looks at and not having QO consequences) is not all that easy! Not that Bellinger is the only way, but 'just spend it a different way' oversimplifies the narrow set of options to find players of a similar impact, doubly so with just money.
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This feels like the crucial point. For me, having Bellinger's flexibility to play 1B in the short run is not the same as him being anchored to 1B long term. Like was pointed out, PCA is far from a sure thing, has injuries in his past, and generally will need to sit sometimes even if he's good. A Bellinger deal will almost certainly outlive the corner OF deals too so you aren't signing up for 6 years of Cody Bellinger: First Baseman Extraordinaire even if PCA hits the ground running. Or said another way, it reminds me a bit of the 'too many shortstops' dialogue from 2015-2016. These things tend to figure themselves out, and even with the guaranteed deals to Happ/Suzuki the 1B flexibility means you can put a better lineup out in more games. Especially if you pair Bellinger w/ Candelario you basically have one lineup spot unspoken for that you can fill with people who play any number of positions.
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Agreed, the person in me who likes shiny things could see him taking the minimal playing time that Wisdom currently has, but also the swing and miss is severe enough at AAA that I don't really have any confidence he'd be better than the current version of Wisdom. Maybe you could get a bounce where he can rip a bunch of XBH in the few weeks it takes MLB teams to dial in their plan of attack against him, but 'hopefully his inevitable struggles happen after we've snuck in some good performance first' isn't good process for a call up.
- 65 replies
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- alexander canario
- matt mervis
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I don't want Canario called up, but the additional context is Canario had a .924 OPS in Iowa last year in limited time, and has been rehabbing a significant injury where rust is a big component in his 2023 numbers. As a simple illustration, he has a .986 OPS in August after a .636 OPS in his first 2 weeks at Iowa in July.
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Depends a lot on what Ohtani wants. He's made allusions before that he didn't know how long he wanted to pitch, and that's gonna come flying back to the forefront of the FA conversation if a 2nd TJS is on the menu. If he wants to pitch indefinitely, then instead of getting a 29 y/o hitter and pitcher, you're essentially bidding on a 29 y/o hitter and 30-31 y/o pitcher with an additional arm surgery in his past, so I imagine bids get scaled down a bit. Or maybe there's some middle path where he telegraphs that he wants to fix this and pitch for X years and give everyone clarity on what they're signing up for so teams are comfortable maxing out to that limit? Hard to say.
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I'm not sure if there's a surgical option that isn't TJS. As a point of comparison, in 2018 Ohtani last pitched on September 2nd and kept hitting through the season, had TJS at right after the season ended, and was hitting every day in May 2019. The pandemic meant he wasn't pitching regularly again until 2021, where it looks like he was regularly skipped and pitched 130 IP.
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Does look like Citi is a pretty sneaky pitcher's park compared to how much you hear about the others down near it on the list(SD, SEA, OAK): https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors?type=year&year=2023&batSide=&stat=index_wOBA&condition=All&rolling=
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I think the amount of close games recently is a bit abnormal, but I think part of the experience is that the Cubs have very little recent experience being around average. We lament that the bullpen and rotation isn't quite deep enough, the offense has slumps or can't end enough games early, etc and those aren't incorrect, but we attribute it as a failing when it's actually definitionally part of being not quite a very good team. If the offense was good enough to more consistently turn these games into laughers or the SP were a bit better/healthier, we'd probably have had higher expectations going into the season! That's the maddening part of following a team good enough to care but not good enough to dominate. The good news in the case of the 2023 Cubs is there's no indication this is a one off or last hurrah, so the healthy thing is to enjoy a relative lack of expectation or downside for failure. If the SP run out of steam or Bellinger gets hurt spreading peanut butter or w/e that stinks, but ultimately this year is largely house money and we can enjoy the success and the ride(which at this point is likely to go down to the wire either way) without getting too hung up on what was lost if they don't make it.
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Adbert will put him through the spin cycle (this post will mysteriously vanish if Javy does anything positive)
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That's as impressive an opposite field drive as I've ever seen from Nico
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There's nothing *bad* about Alonso's BB or K rates, if anything the K rate is a positive for a player of his power. But what I'm getting at is that even with all those extra balls in play he's not hitting for average and he's not going to be an OBP stud as a result given the lack of elite walk rate. So while I agree that Alonso is a better hitter than Schwarber, when talking about the risk/reward of extending him he has more in common with Schwarber than he does with Murphy or Olson, who are diversifying their value to a greater degree than Alonso's (oversimplified) approach of 'hit fly balls and enough of them carry over the fence' without defense, baserunning, or out-avoidance as a plus.
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Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 8-23-23
Transmogrified Tiger replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
PCA did end up pinch hitting (a K) -
They can't rely on getting upwards of 30 innings a week from the pen during a big stretch without days off. The pen will either fail since it's not 8 elite relievers and the other team is paid to hit too, or they'll fail more often from overuse. They have to be able to try to get length from the rotation, or the offense needs to make the game a laugher. When neither does that's not Ross being stubborn, it's the practical reality of not having a clear winning choice.
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I'm not opposed to trading for and extending Alonso, but also mostly because I don't anticipate anyone is lining up to give him 6/180. He's not a good defender, and while he has a high bar of productivity that we shouldn't ignore, the lack of hit tool/AVG or walk rate means he's more Schwarber than the more well-rounded skillsets of Olson/Murphy(who also extended a year earlier than Alonso would be).
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nicky two outs strikes again
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Still fine here
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how does Bellinger keep getting away with this
