Transmogrified Tiger

I'm out of patience with Schwindel

Contreras has only played 65% of the team's innings behind the plate and has a .414 wOBA. I don't think that's the new norm, but we've talked before about his tendency to get worn down, so I think you can at least entertain the idea that in a world with a DH and a backup catcher that isn't a complete zero, Willson's new normal is higher than he's consistently shown. And as with Happ, you have to ask if you're not gonna use the money on him, then on who? There's not a bunch of 25 year olds or great values coming in FA, and there's not a bunch of other near-FA talent they need to splash cash to keep nor are they close to a payroll crunch with other contracts on the roster. That said, the age curve is not friendly to players in their 30s in this new norm of everyone throwing 97 with whiffle ball sliders. And unlike Happ, Contreras' pedigree and ability to play a premium position means he can get a longer deal from someone than Happ could(doubly so now that Happ is coalescing into a corner OF/LF only player). So it comes down to what Willson wants, if he wants to aim for 5 years and/or 9 figures, that's where it gets tough to see a workable resolution without him at least testing FA.

Yeah pretty much has to be

Velazquez with the 'contact is for suckers' line of 0 for 4 with 2 BB and 4 K

I'm all for things that cut down on Schwindel's playing time, but Rivas is 3 for his last 14 with no XBH facing RHP, and eyeballing yearly splits he had a sub-.700 OPS against LHP as a minor leaguer. Against LHP the better hope is that Villar regains some form and he and Wisdom man the corner infield in some combination. Or that Gomes is a good matchup and Contreras plays 1B.

They spent 40 million AAV on three new SP, but that's besides the point. Your assumption is that they spent right up to their limit which was too low because ownership are cartoon villains, and not because of the part that you clipped out of my post, which is that free agency is increasingly a terrible option for team building, especially when you need to make large improvements from the current roster like they did from October 2021. They signed the one real guy and then trash pickups. The actual dollar value is nothing to anybody who pays attention to the business of sports. I realize your predilection to licking the boot but my god son, wake up to reality. lol okay man. I get it, you've got your arbitrary payroll number that qualifies as trying to win, and anything below that is complete abandonment of on field product. All actual spending that happens is explained as farming for trades until they meet that marker, regardless of how little sense that might actually make compared to more sensible explanations. It's just Ricketts anger all the way down regardless of topic or circumstance, your worldview has been made clear.

We've got to be getting close to the endgame with Schwindel

The Cubs have to put their money to good use if they're going to get back to being competitive. . It can not be any more clear that the Cubs have no interest or ability to be competitive for the next few years. They were desperate for several starting pitchers this offseason and signed one, who is going to be traded. They got rid of several quality position players and brought back one. They had $100 million in disposable income they preferred to pocket. They aren’t interested in winning baseball games. There is no point in keeping a decent player like Happ when your roster is trash and have no hope for contending. They spent 40 million AAV on three new SP, but that's besides the point. Your assumption is that they spent right up to their limit which was too low because ownership are cartoon villains, and not because of the part that you clipped out of my post, which is that free agency is increasingly a terrible option for team building, especially when you need to make large improvements from the current roster like they did from October 2021.

The Cubs have to put their money to good use if they're going to get back to being competitive. Between now and the likely end of a hypothetical Happ deal there's barely any players clearly superior to him that they'll want to try to keep(Hoerner and....). The FA classes for the foreseeable future are dire, look at the group with 4 or 5 in front of their name, with rare exception it's a bunch of guys who are worse than Happ, will be multiple years older than Happ upon reaching FA, or both. Extending Happ isn't the only way forward, but keeping an above average player that is useful in multiple contexts hitting FA before age 29 is very likely to be a good option compared to the other ways to spend the money.

Miles Robinson might've just done his achilles

Bryce Ball might be figuring some things out, 3 for 5 tonight with a 2B and HR, up to .290/.340/.484 on the season. An interesting wrinkle given how minor league schedules work, he's had 3 strong weeks with one poor one against the Angels affiliate. He went 3 for 19 against them, .324/.367/.568 (79 PA) against all others.

Just trying to make sure I understand, are you suggesting that Happ likely will not accept a team friendly extension below his potential market value due to his ties to the MLBPA? I think that's what you are saying but wanted to verify. If so, I hadn't thought about that component of it but I guess it makes sense. More or less, I think Happ's labor involvement combined with his inconsistent production means it's less likely they can agree on a pre-FA extension, and that assumes the team is particularly interested in extending Happ, which is at least an open question.

I'm actually of a different mindset when it comes to Happ. As mentioned, if you're getting a return for Happ for a higher level prospect, it's likely going to be a guy who might be as good as Happ. I would instead prefer to see if the Cubs could get a handful of lottery tickets for him. If we're trading Happ to, say, the Padres, I'd be totally in favor of the Padres including their Competitive Balance pick along with a player or two from their lower levels. I don't foresee this team's window opening until at least 2024, so I do not see the harm in stocking the farm system at the lower levels to help keep that window open longer than a year or two. I think if you believe the bolded that's a plenty fair way to look at it, but I don't think that's at all an accurate way to characterize what their competitive timeline is likely to be or ought to be.

Happ is a tough call for me, I'm not sure how I feel about it for now. In the trade column, Happ isn't a high ceiling player and isn't going to fix the biggest barrier between here and playoff contention(starpower). He increasingly is only an every day option at LF, where you might want the flexibility to mine for players who have a more specialized skill set than Happ's jack of all trades fit. He's under 2 years from FA and given his labor involvement and uneven production it feels unlikely an extension is coming, so trading him soon can help maximize his value and prevent talent drain, especially combined with his hot start. On the other side, Happ even at his best is unlikely to bring a prospect with a realistic chance of being higher ceiling than Happ's current production. More importantly, the 2023 Cubs are not close to good enough where I can be comfortable trading present production for future production. With free agent classes getting older and older and the Cubs being so far under where they should be in terms of payroll, it's very possible extending 28/29 year old Happ is the best way to use that money. I think Bertz is on the right track here, it needs to be a return where the potential is unmistakable and/or the impact is immediate. The Padres have several names that have been floated in the past that might fit this bill: Campusano, Gore, Paddack before he was dealt. I'm skeptical Happ has the juice to bring a player like that unless he goes full Adam Frazier until the deadline, and even in that example Frazier did not bring that type of player in trade. The only other way this can make sense is if there's a fairly immediate turnaround in the Cubs' outfield fortunes. Frazier coming back and hitting like a regular, Davis turning it around at AAA and Velazquez joining him and mashing, someone like Ortega or Rivas looking like an every day OF, etc. If you can have reasonable belief in internal options minimizing the downgrade from Happ to alternatives, then you can come out ahead with a slightly less narrow path.

I was looking/marveling at Julio Rodriguez's minor league track record earlier today. He was a big time prospect already thanks to his pedigree and pre-pandemic performance in Low-A, but his numbers became cartoonish last year when he started off with a .434 wOBA/162 wRC+ and 14/29 BB/K in High-A over 134 PA before moving up to AA and destroying that too. On a completely unrelated note, first round pick Pete Crow-Armstrong in his first taste of pro ball has a .516 wOBA/210 wRC+ and 11/14 BB/K in 88 PA at Low-A. At least that's what it was prior to going 2 for 4 w/ a BB and K tonight.

Simplistic made up example. STH pay $30/ticket for the whole season, right now individual buyers are getting them on the secondary market for $10. Fewer STH means less of those $10 tickets available, which the club prices at $20. That $20 can change to find the revenue maximizing point, but it's never going to hit $30 if the team is the same quality(which is assumed if STH decrease), so the team loses money. We also assume that the individual prices are never going to stoop so low as to hit $10(it's almost certainly better for revenue to have fewer people paying $20), so the total number in paid attendance will never reach the amount from before the STH decrease. Couple points here: 1. You guys probably knew this, but season tickets are still priced per game. Our draft would always charge people on an average ticket price/per game, but I know some people who charge per ticket. Think your overall point there still stands, that they can be more reflexive in season if attendance starts to lag vs STHs who paid everything up front. 2. I'm curious on the actual breakeven point once you start pricing that low, factoring in the price of beer/concessions, potential memorabilia, and whatever value you want to assign to recruiting future fans. Seems to be the most purely profitable part of the experience for them is taking the 15 seconds to pour a beer they paid 80 cents for and having someone swipe their credit card for $12. Yeah there's a whole lot of complexity and pricing theory that we're bypassing in either direction. The people who would've paid $30 might be more willing to pay $10 if that's an option, there's a whole lot of dynamic profit maximizing/rent seeking changes you can do on different axes to minimize the downside. But to your larger point, if the team is uninspiring enough that season ticket holders are going down, you can be pretty confident that any changes made in response are defensive and hoping to minimize losses(to revenue, top line attendance, etc), so from a business standpoint it's unmistakably bad.

Help me understand the bolded. Is this due to having ticket prices that change based on demand as opposed to set pricing while STH pay a flat rate for the entire season? Simplistic made up example. STH pay $30/ticket for the whole season, right now individual buyers are getting them on the secondary market for $10. Fewer STH means less of those $10 tickets available, which the club prices at $20. That $20 can change to find the revenue maximizing point, but it's never going to hit $30 if the team is the same quality(which is assumed if STH decrease), so the team loses money. We also assume that the individual prices are never going to stoop so low as to hit $10(it's almost certainly better for revenue to have fewer people paying $20), so the total number in paid attendance will never reach the amount from before the STH decrease.

Right, and if the season ticket base starts dwindling, there's gonna be less money going to the team(individual buyers paying less per seat for these weekday games than STH) and paid attendance goes down with it(since some individual buyers aren't paying the prices without that STH subsidy)

I think if you want the case for Hendricks optimism, it's in both his history and his current results. His recent results are bad, but not bad in a way that suggests the way he got hitters out before doesn't work any more. He's reliant on elite command, and he doesn't have that right now. His history also shows that more often than not, his worst month is at the beginning of the season, which logically checks out given that his feel and command should improve through repetition. That's not to say 'don't worry he's fine', his end of 2021 was bad and eventually age will rob him of margins that he previously needed, even in terms of consistent command. Maybe that means he goes from an ERA below 3.5 to above 5.5 in a snap. But I think you can also make the case that a feel-dependent pitcher who regularly has subpar starts to the season, coming off an abbreviated spring training after a lockout(and potentially adjusting to the new ball) has room for (significant) improvement that wouldn't be much of a surprise.

I think I've made this point before, but I think it highlights that the gap between Liga MX and MLS is really just the gap in the top 2-3 Liga MX spenders and who happens to be at the top of MLS the rest of the year. After last night, MLS v. non-Monterrey(Tigres & Rayados) teams are .500 in the current format that started about 5 years ago. So the Sounders definitely benefitted from neither of those teams(or Club America if they built a good team) being in this year's tournament, but also MLS sends unworthy teams to CCL fairly often through the domestic cups(especially the Canadian Championship), so that doesn't take away from the accomplishment or statement on league quality.

Strumpf raised his OPS from .764 to .835 today

Honestly the 2 walks are more exciting than the HR when it comes to Velazquez. If he's gonna be selective enough to not just be a hacker who runs into some bombs his chances of being more than a platoon guy are much higher.

Hard to say for sure, but I think that might be lined up to be a Wicks start? In any case, with Herz, Wicks, Franklin, and Palencia, there's a very high likelihood you're gonna see someone interesting.