Transmogrified Tiger

Happ and Suzuki were 18th and 19th among qualified OF last year, You can't do better than that without paying a much higher price(see: Tucker), and Caissie/Alcantara are very much long shots to ever make it to that level, never mind in the next 2 seasons.

okay, that's enough babby's first day on the internet for me

Turnover luck hits hard

Robertson's ZiPS ERA is the same as Estevez. I know you're a big Robertson fan(I don't hate him myself), but pointing to his 40 year old season as a money-in-the-bank elite reliever option isn't reality.

We are talking about relievers, so no. Or in a best case scenario you can do that for 1-2 years on a 4-5 year deal(and only 1-2 guys per offseason) and play roulette that they're useless beyond that.

Also half a run worse than his post-Colorado totals, the point is that a better projection system sees a clear difference. And to Bertz's point he's spent 95% of his career in organizations with stone age pitching development so you'd hope to have a little more you can unlock from him. Not my top target, but I don't see much of a case for the idea that he's on the precipice of severe regression.

Gotta be careful about using per 9 stats when part of your point is that he had a particularly good BABIP season. That means there's simply fewer PA in general, his K% was middle of the road for his career, and his HR/FB is impacted by playing most of his career in Coors. Since leaving Colorado he has 2 seasons and over 115 innings with an ERA far under his xFIP, given his stuff it's very possible that assuming a league average HR rate(like xFIP is doing) is not a safe assumption. ZiPS projects him for a 3.76 ERA and 3.73 FIP.

I think this is largely people using the terms interchangeably, it's not like there's a reliever of similar caliber with no closing experience waiting to be signed that is being ignored. That said, given the rest of the pen has several players who can easily be leverage/impact guys but have limited experience closing games, I think ensuring your leverage RP addition has some experience in that realm is worthwhile.

I’ve liked him going back to his Colorado days, so wouldn’t be bad. He’s got a little of both of Finnegan and Scott’s imperfections in him, and I didn’t realize how much closing he’s done since leaving COL, so yeah sure let’s do it

Scott would have been fun but I've always been a bit apprehensive about the length given his relatively short history of throwing strikes(especially poignant as a closer) which probably will degrade by default with his age. Bring down Finnegan(my preference) or Yates and the pen looks good.

Everyone say good things about the pants so they get rid of the pinstripes once and for all

Bertz put more effort into his rumor update so we'll consolidate there

There have been drips and drabs from local reporters about the Cubs being after a late inning reliever and occasionally name dropping Scott among others in a list, but this seems like the strongest connection between the two of them yet.

I know no one is making a serious point to that end, but Sasaki will only count the league minimum towards the CBT. He's getting a 6.5 million signing bonus, so for CBT purposes that's treated the same as the Dominican 16 year olds that signed this week.

The Blue Jays are about to find out the price to buy your wedding ring back from the pawn shop

They don't have Suarez's contract right, he has an opt out after this season that amounts to a 2/16 player option, there is no option on the club side as far as I can tell.

I find it very amusing that the Mets just treat money as made up when they sign a free agent but simultaneously act like they will descend into anarchy if they give Alonso a single dollar more than offered

We try to have a light touch with this stuff and aren't super aggressive about siloing conversations, but we are going to ask that you do make some effort to match posts to where the discussion is happening. It's not a chat room where all discussion happens in one place. To mul's point, most of the time I've noticed you adding news tweets it's been after there's been discussion hours ago in another place, so a good rule of thumb is to at least check around because based on that history it's unlikely you're the first one sharing it.

They took on Myles Straw's deal to do it too? I hope it works but just an incredible scent of desperation for them

I'm beginning to think that Friedman has a vendetta against Toronto specifically and is telling these Japanese players to use them as a patsy for plausible deniability.

I will not set aside those feelings and slam the under on Hope being a Top 25 prospect in any publication 24 months from now

Wait we have new developments

Big week for phallic soccer talk

I think there's definitely something to the idea that Rea is a move meant on shoring up the end of the roster so that no other specific additions *have* to be made for depth reasons. So they can just hunt value wherever it shows up, though I suspect/hope the Bregman stuff is more due diligence and the actual value being hunted is on the pitching side.

I think a dynamic that is fairly true of all prospect evaluators is also uniquely unkind to the Cubs in this specific cycle. For all the refinement in scouting over the years and increased data at our finger tips, you're still going to see large variance with players at lower levels, and players may have flaws that simply cannot manifest themselves at those levels due to the quality of competition. So prospects with no other track record who wreck shop can get the benefit of the doubt because some of those flaws haven't yet come to fruition, so they might not! The inverse works with players at higher levels, especially those with 3-4 MiLB seasons under their belt. They've been exposed to both the time and quality of competition to see those flaws and to create educated skepticism about their ceiling and MLB futures. Now think about this dynamic in the context of the Cubs' top prospects as well as those they've traded away in the last 12 months. The shiny new toys are mostly those who are no longer in the system(Hope, Smith, Ferris to a lesser extent), while the remaining top prospects are those with several years and levels to build up skepticism(Caissie, Alcantara, Triantos, Ballesteros). Shaw is the closest to splitting the difference of great performance at high levels without much track record of imperfection, and as a result he's far and away the #1 ranked prospect in the system. This time next year it could be the inverse, you might see a chunk of that AAA cohort graduated or traded, a few 2024 draftees break out(Mathis? Southisene?), maybe next year's 1st round pick pulls a Shaw/Smith, and the story may be 'the Cubs graduated 4 Top 100 prospects and they're ranked just as good as last year'.