Transmogrified Tiger

The way I think of Morris is that he sets a high enough floor that you need some consistent substance to unseat him. He's not an ideal match for the USMNT starting 11 because Pulisic's best position in the current system is on the wing, and Morris is much better at beating his man to the endline while Berhalter wants more of a playmaking winger. Even then, he's good enough at what he does(and his USMNT production proves it) that I'm not willing to cede a spot on the depth chart to someone like Llanez who hasn't played first team soccer, or even Weah who has done perilously little of it. I'd even go as far to say as you can make arguments for Morris being ahead of Reyna, but I expect those arguments to be out of date very quickly(plus Reyna is a better fit to be a playmaking winger). Bottom line, the best combination of results for Morris and the USMNT is him being able to drub CONCACAF opponents if there's injuries or lack of availability(someone made the point recently that every MLS team is better than every CONCACAF opponent save Mexico and I agree), and being able to run at tired legs against better countries off the bench. If even that isn't possible for him it should be because someone else(Weah, Llanez, Mendez, etc) has taken a leap forward that they are not certain to make.

Not talking about you, a significant portion of USMNT fandom made up their mind about Morris several years ago and is loudly ignorant of the player he's become. I do think it's possible that you're underrating him though, he's made a lot of progress that isn't blindingly obvious(he's not snaking around the field like Pulisic), but makes a very real difference. As an example, imagine the social media reaction if Tim Weah did this against Nantes or Mendez did against a 2nd division Dutch side: [tweet] [/tweet]

now we’ll never get to see cubswin11 play marry/f***/kill with Almora, Yelich, and Elon Musk

looks longingly at picture of Manuel Margot

32 year old with a big velocity drop this year feels like a suboptimal amount of downside even for an acquisition that isn't going to require a ton of resources.

Morris had a decision to make when he graduated and chose the Sounders over Werder, but since then there's been zero chatter about a move to Europe. Part of that is understandable since he had growing pains and lost a year to injury, but even when he signed the contract that wolf mentioned it took everyone by surprise, it wasn't in response to increasing transfer rumors or anything like that. I agree that Morris could easily be a regular on someone like Frankfurt or Wolfsburg, but I'm not sure he's the kind of guy who is going to give up his current situation for a marginal shot to work his way into a Champions League side in several years. From a development standpoint I think there's probably not much more gap between his current level and potential. Especially since there's legit things to criticize about his touch/one footedness that he's likely too old to really improve dramatically, even if those get exaggerated by the eurosnobs who can't bear that a player can be really good even if without the ability to fluidly dribble past 8 defenders.

It’s so funny to me to see multiple pitchers from the 2016 Indians become household names when during the world series I was thinking ‘now is the time, kill the scrub’ because they weren’t Kluber or their bullpen of death.

Not so much talking about specific tactics here but more general approach. On the pitching side of things, I don't want to oversimplify and say 'get good at developing pitchers', but I think that's the primary place to focus. They seem to be on the right track, but they need the farm system's output to catch up to their improvements at identifying scrap heap pitchers. Also, stop paying for high dollar relievers, I don't care where we are in the competitive cycle we're past that nonsense. The offense is more nuanced, but this I think is illustrative: Here is the list of Cubs with > 100 PA in a season starting with 2016: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=150&type=8&season=2019&month=0&season1=2016&ind=1&team=17&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2016-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31&page=1_50 Here is the list of those players who were not developed by the organization or had reached free agency when they had those PAs: 2019 Castellanos 2017-18 La Stella This is not an intrinsically bad thing, the Cubs had an incredible generation of talent come through and they've done well to follow up the initial wave with reinforcements(Happ, Bote, Hoerner). The problem is that it has made the offense's potential for unexpected improvement dependent on lifetime Cubs and post-30 free agents, which is not a great plan for smoothing over rough edges in performance. They need to cycle the player pool here, and to do that they need to do something they have refused to do, and that's part with their beloved position player assets. Maybe that's letting folks go in free agency(IMO Schwarber should be a non-starter for an extension and we really shouldn't with Rizzo either), making a trade a year early instead of a year late, and more generally targeting controllable position players that give the opportunity for fresh approaches(Castellanos the blinding example) and surprise improvement. As Bryant/Baez/Rizzo decline and/or leave they risk running into the problem of recent year Cardinals teams that don't have the star power to be truly competitive but not bad enough to blow up. You avoid that through decisive action, not trying to pick off bits at the margins. Not with every move(we aren't Jerry Dipoto here), but in a very literal sense that side of the roster is getting stale.

Im sure Martinez is a perfectly fine person, but I can’t bring myself to be anything but annoyed that positionless spaz is on the Cubs.

He plays exclusively on the wing for club, and his skill set is not a clean fit for how Berhalter's USMNT plays with a 9, so I would say no unless there's a big change. If you're looking for a winger that might be a sneaky good fit as a USMNT 9 I think it's Weah.

Speaking of Cannon, it looks like he's going to Boavista in Portugal, which may be a stepping stone to Lille in particular. [tweet] [/tweet]

My hottest USMNT take is that Nagbe is wildly overrated by the fanbase. He's a good player, and isn't way below the standard of USMNT midfield depth, but one off wonderstrikes aside he's not goal dangerous with any regularity with passes or shots, and he's a passenger defensively. I'd rather have Yueill or either of Adams/McKennie at the 6, and for the USMNT setup I'd prefer Adams, McKennie, and Pomykal, plus probably Roldan, Holmes, and Lletget at the 8, especially against CONCACAF competition(to speak nothing of tweaking shape/roles to get one of Morris/Weah/Reyna on the field instead).

It sounds like Berhalter is pretty committed to his regista role, which simplifies things significantly as I think Yueill overrtook Bradley by the end of last year. Main questions would be: - Reyna or Morris on the right wing - who plays left back(A Robinson? Ream? Dest w/ Cannon on the right?) - what CBs are in the best form If we had a big game tomorrow, I think it'd be something like: Steffen Cannon/Long/Brooks/Dest Yueill Adams/McKennie Morris/Jozy/Pulisic with Reyna and A Robinson having legit shouts over Cannon and Morris, but I'll err on the side of conservatism since Berhalter hasn't given either a shot yet. By the end of WC qualifying or the 2022 world cup things get more interesting if another CB(or 2?) can break through like Richards, M Robinson, or Miazga, and if Adams/McKennie can play the 6 with one of the young attackers(Pomykal, Aaronson, Ledezma, Mendez, maybe even Reyna with Morris/Llanez/Weah on the wing) taking over as the pressing 8. A striker falling from the sky would also be welcome.

Steffen is at Man City too, plus Gloster and/or Ledezma have the chance to break into the PSV first team this year.

On that point, I don't think the owners have particularly virtuous intentions, but I also don't think the status quo was perfectly calibrated either. It's been a minute since I looked into this, but the pre-pandemic plans I saw for trimming the minor leagues were almost exclusively short season leagues with piddling attendance, many of which had D1 college baseball nearby so access to similar caliber baseball is not an issue. Maybe the pandemic changed things dramatically, I haven't seen any specifics, but I don't think the answer to 'is maintaining 6 levels of minor league baseball crucial to the sport's growth' is an unequivocal yes.

For the specific roles mentioned, the only thing that makes sense to me is that there's significant headwinds about shortening the draft and cutting out some of the minor leagues, which is going to limit how many people you need to do the draft and bring along your minor league teams(plus fewer other teams to scout). I don't know what the proportion of these cuts looks like though, is it 10% of those types of roles? 50%? 90%? I can at least see the logic for a non-trivial but non-majority cut of those roles if the league changes are all but certain. Otherwise it seems incredibly silly for the relative pittance you save if you need to grow that department back when covid is through.

Scouts are less necessary than they've ever been, but I think it's an extreme oversimplification to think that trackman and the like are replicating their work entirely. For one I'm not sure how universal coverage and data sharing is between various minor league parks and short season facilities. More importantly, scouts add value by understanding and articulating why an observable thing is happening so it's easy for teams to understand how repeatable/fixable it might be. Advanced data make the 'observable things' more specific and less noisy(e.g. exit velocity v. batting average), but there's still significant art in understanding what mechanics lead to those observable things, how they scale against better competition, and if there's opportunities for improvement/fixes. Where I think the biggest open question is, in a world with substantial video coverage of the minor leagues, how necessary is it for scouts to be in person to do that work? And if it's less necessary for scouts to be in person, are you able to get the same benefit with fewer scouts doing video analysis in a centralized manner.

This was interesting, it shows how Darvish's ZiPS projections have changed over the course of his Cubs tenure: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/darvish-has-whirled-his-way-back-to-the-top/ His outlook for 2021-2023 now is better than it was when he first signed, which is pretty crazy even considering he's drafting off a peak currently.

This strikes me as a very opportunistic and bet-on-yourself move, both of which are very on brand for McKennie. The odds of there being a semi-reasonable path to minutes at a club like Juve would've taken probably 2 more stops if not for the way 2020 panned out. My bias is towards playing time over club prestige, but McKennie has impressed me before so hopefully he keeps it up.

I want the Toronto Big Ball Chunky Times in the playoffs as much as everyone, but the difference in odds between them and Baltimore feels extreme given that they are currently separated by half a game in the standings.

The Brewers are 12-15 and have the 10th best record in the NL to go with the 13th best run differential. 60 games is going to introduce a lot of randomness and I'm not a big believer in the Reds either, but that roster is just not very talented when Yelich and Cain/Grandal aren't combining for 13+ WAR. I'm not going to lament them winning individual games, especially so when more than half the league is making the playoffs so ordering over 60 games isn't as vital.

Is there a tl;dr or important takeaway for non-subscribers? The lede makes it clear MLB thinks it can reduce expenses by taking over, but I'd also think that puts them at even greater risk of MiLB players getting added to the union, which would make that effort less easy.

These guys suck at managing a roster. Alternatively, the guy with no professional innings and the guy with a career 1:1 K/BB ratio, neither of whom have pitched competitively in 6-12 months, are not great bets to step right into major league relief roles.

I was a big proponent of trading Contreras last winter, but the odds of getting appropriate value at the deadline of this bizarre half season are less than zero.

really glad I backed out of my 'why do we want David Fletcher when we have Kipnis, Bote, and Hoerner' post before we went and started Perez at 2B, boy would I have looked foolish