Transmogrified Tiger

I would laugh that off the phone for Bryant alone. I'd honestly have to think about it for Contreras alone. Trading Bryant and Contreras for 3 pitching prospects who have zero MLB innings and the Astros #14 prospect (a 3B) who got a cup of coffee this year is abject insanity. Whitley is the headliner and he hasn't reached 50 IP in a year since 2017. Another is a pitcher with 18 professional innings. I want to throw this trade proposal into the sun.

Yes, that's the idea. I don't think it's some seismic difference, nor would it consistently come back to bite you(the 2018 Cubs were particularly snakebit by inconsistency, for example), but I think the effect is real. The other thing to consider is that if you're this imbalanced as a starting point, you're more susceptible to negative variance in the form of injuries, underperformance, etc. I've already spent more words on it than I truly believe its impact, but I'm also not super keen on an OF where Schwarber is expected to put up the best UZR.

You can definitely model it, and to a certain degree (in the value sense) a run is a run. However, we've seen the consequences of a team that has imbalances in building the roster this way, you get uneven performances, underperform pythag, etc. Given the outward messaging being around balance when it comes to the offense, I'd be surprised if they sought out an extreme in the form of 3 sketchy defensive OF being starters. I can understand why a team like this could have more variance, but why would it be any more likely to underperform Pythag than overpreform? They go hand in hand. Pythagorean assumes that variance is noise and eventually levels out, if it's a feature/bug of your team design, then you're more likely to underperform it. To put a name to the variance, a team that sacrifices outfield defense for some extra offense will be more likely to see variance in low scoring games where everyone's hitting poorly, or maybe when the wind is blowing in and the offensive advantage is neutralized and the defensive disadvantage magnified. We're talking in generalities here, but that's how it can manifest.

Yup. The sum of the parts could be quite ugly, I think you could still make a Schwarbs/Heyward/Nick OF work to the point of it not killing you but we’d have to bring in a Billy Hamilton type to throw in to CF like every game we got a lead in the 6/7 innings and we’d also have to get back to shifting a lot and be good at it. There’s also the part where Nick very well may take up almost all the available money we have to spend this offseason and there’s plenty more holes to fill. It was discussed yesterday, but Souza could be a nice alternative to Nick if he’s healthy and he’s probably only going to cost $3-6 mil for 1 year to re-establish his value. I can imagine in my head that having three poor-range defenders in the OF can cause cascading defensive problems, but isn’t it also true that having a lot of high OBP guys in the same line up has a similar, positive cascading effect for runs scored? Do we still have a heavily GB-producing pitching staff? Can we trust Theo to have models of this kind of stuff? You can definitely model it, and to a certain degree (in the value sense) a run is a run. However, we've seen the consequences of a team that has imbalances in building the roster this way, you get uneven performances, underperform pythag, etc. Given the outward messaging being around balance when it comes to the offense, I'd be surprised if they sought out an extreme in the form of 3 sketchy defensive OF being starters.

[tweet] [/tweet] that scares the hell out of me. I feel like he's worth hanging on to, and another team out there will surely offer him a contract. especially a small market team needing pitching Hultzen had 17 IP last year between AAA and MLB, and still walked 11 guys. He turned 30 a few days ago. If some team wants to guarantee him an MLB deal on that, more power to them. Hultzen is a cool story and I'd like to see him in Iowa again, but I'm not going to worry if he's not. They just grabbed a comparable/better option off waivers in Pelham, that type of upside/risk profile in a reliever is not in short supply.

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What do you think it would take to get him, TT? I don't have a great feel for it. If you want to be optimistic, Margot has now had 3 full seasons without getting all the way across the line to 2 fWAR, so it's easy to envision the Padres seeing this as his level and being ready to move on. They also have a zillion outfielders so they aren't really creating a huge hole by doing so. On the other hand, a functional position player with 3 years of control and entering prime years isn't nothing, and the Padres are shifting to a competitive stage so any trade will have to 'hurt' in terms of taking players from the MLB team's orbit. The one I've been coming back to the last couple days is the basic framework of Quintana for Margot. On the Cubs end, it fits a lot of what the outward narrative has been about their intent. It's a shake up as it creates more innings to be filled without an immediate solution on the roster, which will force them to rely more on the revamped pitching infrastructure to fill those innings since they aren't going to be bringing in Cole/Strasburg. Margot himself and the pitchers they get to replace Quintana increase the years of control they'll have on the roster, hopefully extending the window. Margot also makes a bit more contact than lots of the roster, although he's no Altuve. From the Padres perspective, Quintana adds durability and stability to a rotation that already has youth(Paddock, Lucchesi) and upside(Richards, Lamet) options. Maybe he's a bit redundant with Davies or they want to aim higher if they add another SP, but it's not a huge stretch to see Quintana as a good fit. Margot isn't so high a price to pay and Quintana not so expensive that it ruins the rest of their offseason plans either.

TIL Souza bats right handed, if you had given me 3 guesses my first 2 would’ve been that he was a lefty. Speaking of RH OF, the more I look around at the options, the more I really want them to pry Margot away from SD. Upside, defense, fits well with LH OF already here, and paves the way to punt Almora to the moon.

[tweet] [/tweet] Gregorius would solve a lot of problems at once. LH second base option that is good enough to start and can be platooned if not, makes decent contact, serves as the backup SS. Only thing missing is that he doesn’t get on base enough to hit at the top of the order, even against RHP. Fangraphs crowdsources his contract at 4/60, which seems crazy given his 2019, but with Moustakas getting 4/64 it’s hard to argue he’s that much worse a value, and that price could be prohibitive.

He can’t. He’s miserable. Nah, just having trouble getting excited about other teams' cast offs. If you're excited about an off season that may include trading our star third baseman and signing some reclamation projects, go nuts No one asked you to. No one is trying to say Kevin Gausman is better than signing Gerrit Cole, we don’t need a reverse every time the transaction forum discusses moves that take into account likely reality. We especially don’t need the implication that people are suckers for discussing the news of the day.

Can you go like a day without this unique brand of insufferable hot takery, or is “post through it” on your family crest or something

Gausman was non-tendered, he’s another good candidate if you want to go in on piggybacking starters like we mentioned for Teheran and Wood

What does Peraza provide over in house options? Slightly above average at 2B but below average at SS, right handed, high contact/low power, Almorian walk rate. Feels like if that was a need we would have it covered in Hoerner, especially since Peraza isn't really higher on the certainty spectrum.

I wonder how Addison is spending his final hours as a Cub. Even if they did tender him a contract, wouldn't Russell miss where to sign? He'd probably let the pen fly out of his hand trying to sign.

How do Fangraphs and BP calculate theirs? A quick glance at the BP framing page didn't offer much insight. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/25514/moving-beyond-wowy-a-mixed-approach-to-measuring-catcher-framing/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-pitch-framing/

It is bad. BP, Fangraphs, Statcorner 2017: -3, -9, +4 2018: -18, -18, -13 2019: -9, -9, +4 I would wager the depth of his 2018 struggles has more to do with being overused, but he is undoubtedly well below average.

If you got Teheran and Wood for the purposes of piggybacking them, seems like you could conceivably get 225 IP of excellent productivity for far less than it would cost otherwise. If you made sure your other bullpen options could go multiple innings or be optionable, maybe that makes more sense with the extra roster spot and the 3 batter minimum?

Fangraphs' assessment from March: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-38-prospects-texas-rangers/

He's a LHP that averages more than 96 mph

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looks like he was bad at baseball too

Duffy hasn’t played anywhere but 3b since 2016 and had a sub-.300 wOBA from the right side. I’m not sure what purpose he serves outside of maybe being the aldi-brand version of Bote after Bote gets traded.

No one can ever know how good those folks are going to be until they get into a specific org and do the work, but the resumes involved are a promising sign of the team living up to their words about modernizing their player development approach.

It was 2.8 fWAR that year and good for a worse wRC+ than Kolten Wong had this year. Also, and admittedly I didn't give him credit for this, he stole 34 bases at 81%. That could be a very good source of hidden value, but he was only 20 for 30 last year and again he's turning 31, so I'm not overly optimistic of him stealing a bunch of bases at a good rate going forward. On his defense, he's a career +1 2B and in 130 games of innings in the OF he's a -4 outfielder, he doesn't have a whole lot to lose. Lastly, his walk rate and plate discipline in general are dramatically worse than Zobrist's, I wouldn't consider them to be comparable skillsets at all.

I too would be very happy to get 2018-2019 Whit Merrifield. Unfortunately what is available is 2020-2022 Whit Merrifield and I’m way more pessimistic on that guy. Pop up non-prospect with no power or defensive value hanging on to his contact ability after turning 31 seems like a risky proposition. And if you want to be risky with that profile, you have Hoerner right there.