Transmogrified Tiger

We won't know til we know, but that's net adding ~50 million in AAV, I'd say 30 is the high end of what we can hope for realistically, for reasons both reasonable and unreasonable.

you want to trade Kris Bryant for a reliever and an outfielder with a .667 OPS in High A Well that's one way you can view it Or you can see that you're judging a 100 PA sample, he posted a 400 woba the level prior, his Ks spiked to a highly uncharacteristic level, and he carries a 50 FV at our most desired position. Hes 75th on fg's board and could very easily be top 50 when the newest list drops. He was a 2nd round pick just 2 years ago and will be 20 when the season starts. Yeah, just an outfielder with a 6 something OPS at High A... Meanwhile Ginkel posted a 41% K-BB and kept HR relatively in check at the most troublesome level for a pro pitcher last year. He held his own in MLB and we need more high leverage arms. We should try to be less reliant on the rotation anyway so a guy like Ginkel could provide some good value for the team. I don't know why we'd scoff at a guy who could pitch multiple innings, throws strikes, and misses a ton of bats. On top of all that, that is just the foundation of the package I am curious about. All along I've been told to temper expectations of a return so I'm not really shooting for the stars there. I'm tying to remain reasonable. I mean we can slice it a bunch of different ways, but we're talking about the *foundation* of the trade being an OF who was 75th on Fangraphs recent Top 100 and has a 2022 ETA, and a reliever with a very good MLB debut who lacks pedigree(22nd round college draftee), elite velocity or control. I can appreciate you're trying to be grounded and not just list another team's best toys as a trade return, but if this is what we're dreaming up then the extremely obvious conclusion is do not trade Bryant. That type of deal would dramatically hurt the team's ability to contend in 2020-2021, and someone like Thomas is such a wild card that there's a significant chance of no benefit for 2022+ either. Any deal we can dream up has to be at least net neutral for the team's competitiveness in the short run or it's not worth it, and that's why there's so few realistic partners.

you want to trade Kris Bryant for a reliever and an outfielder with a .667 OPS in High A

Remember when we had too many shortstops? Torres has a -14 UZR at second base.

If you put together the team control, arb cost, position, and trade assets needed to be worth it, the only Bryant partner that makes sense is the Braves. Mayybe the Phillies or Angels.

I'm having trouble parsing the words of who's saying which side of this argument, but Boras has been extremely single-minded on getting his clients to free agency and then trying to wait out the market/put pressure on certain owners to get the best deal. He's had more than a couple clients he's done a disservice with that approach the last couple years, but he's been undeterred so far. When you combine that with Bryant's likely willingness to test the market(he'll have made north of 75 million in baseball already, we haven't seen any particular risk aversion to free agency from him, he's filed the MLBPA grievance over service time), it does seem real unlikely that Bryant extends before FA.

This most recent wave with Boone, Cora, etc. has been really strong in the early going. That being said, the first wave of these guys, Robin Ventura, Mike Matheny, Brad Ausmus, was kind of a disaster. I'm mostly with you on whoever we get probably being fine, but there is some risk. Feels like the quality of the front office is a pretty clear dividing line there.

Sign me up for this. You included Happ in a trade and have him on the roster though, which did you mean to do? But yeah it’s a fun exercise anyways, like you said with the spend all the money on Rendon then figure it out. I love your Q to San Diego trade. Him and Willy are really the two keys to making it all work to get something immediately useful back for that also cost less money. Whoops, included him in the CF rotation at the end, he gets included in the name of trade realism.

Since I'm all-out procrastinating by thinking about unlikely outcomes(there is no chance they're signing Rendon), what happens if we try run prevention uber alles? Grandal 16M AAV Rendon 28M AAV Shogo 8M AAV Bryant for Soroka and Ian Anderson Contreras for Luzardo Shogo Rendon Rizzo Baez Schwarber Grandal Bote/Hoerner Heyward Hendricks/Darvish/Soroka/Lester/Q Kimbrel/Luzardo/Wick/Ryan/Chatwood/Anderson(or AAA)/AAA Anderson and possibly Luzardo are possible rotation options after Q and Lester leave the following season too.

"fix the rest of the roster after spending all free money on Rendon" is a fun game. Quintana for Margot and Hedges +5.5M Almora for Yoan Lopez (gonna beat this one into the ground) +1.2M Contreras and Happ for Gray and Estevez -1.7M Pick up Graveman's option Rendon 3B Bryant RF Rizzo 1B Baez SS Schwarber LF Heyward/Margot CF Caratini/Hedges C Bote/Hoerner 2B Hendricks/Darvish/Gray/Lester/Graveman(Chatwood/Alzolay/Mills* also competing) Kimbrel/Wick/Estevez/Ryan/Chatwood/Lopez/AAA Hedges/Hoerner/Descalso/Kemp/Happ/Margot

To clarify, we never meant to impute any type of competence to Dave Roberts' managerial abilities. TT Inc apologizes for the error and the person responsible has been sacked.

You only need a free account to read it. The short version is that when looking at batted ball data for the playoffs, if the ball was the same as the regular season you would expect there to have been 24 more home runs already, a 50% drop. The first thing I thought of was cooler weather, but he mentions average temperatures are a shade higher than for the season as a whole, so that's unlikely to be a big driver.

The other way to think about this is the option cubswin11 keeps pushing, which is just keeping Almora for that spot since he'll probably bounce back, and lefty mashing outfielder is possibly the easiest thing in the baseball world to find if not. Excuse me I mean if custom ranks weren't broken I would've made yours "Mr. Almora" a long time ago, we get it, you love the guy

Mostly because I looked at the bench and didn't like that the only lefty with pop was a catcher. Considering all 3 starting OF are LH in this scenario and Happ and Almora are both traded, I think you might be right that RH would be probably be preferable. It's really unfortunate that Almora completely lost his one ability (hitting LHP), and Happ hasn't had it the last two years. Makes someone like Castellanos that much more valuable, but I still don't think you can justify spending limited resources there when you have a left handed version in Schwarber already on the roster. Without getting into the details, picking up a starter like Grey purely through prospects and the Happs/Botes of the world, and then using Contreras to find a legit starting RH outfielder would create a lot more flexibility out there. The other way to think about this is the option cubswin11 keeps pushing, which is just keeping Almora for that spot since he'll probably bounce back, and lefty mashing outfielder is possibly the easiest thing in the baseball world to find if not.

Mostly because I looked at the bench and didn't like that the only lefty with pop was a catcher. Considering all 3 starting OF are LH in this scenario and Happ and Almora are both traded, I think you might be right that RH would be probably be preferable.

Something like Shogo, Grandal, Contreras for Gray, plus Happ and/or Almora for relief help with a lower tier FA RP supplement would be a pretty good outcome given the dollars they have to spend. EDIT: Let's make this into something more detailed. Shogo 3/24 Grandal 4/64 Contreras + Happ for Gray + Estevez (Rockies OF needs help and Estevez while promising didn't appear to be more than 4th in the pecking order when everyone was healthy) Almora for Yoan Lopez (change of scenery for both, Lopez has a rare combo of velocity and control plus some MiLB success to bank on, Almora has pedigree and is an easy Dyson replacement) Sign/trade for an inexpensive bench OF that has a little pop and preferably LH, let's call it Lonnie Chisenhall to give it a name Shogo CF Bryant 3B Rizzo 1B Baez SS Schwarber LF Grandal C Heyward RF Bote/Hoerner 2B Caratini/Hoerner/Descalso/Kemp/Chisenhall Hendricks/Darvish/Gray/Q/Lester Kimbrel/Wick/Estevez/Ryan/Chatwood/Lopez/AAA shuttle

Statistically it looks like he's got a fair amount of pop in his bat: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=akiyam000sho Wonder if he's more on the Fukudome or the Aoki end of the spectrum, contractually speaking.

I'm not very impressed with Roberts the tactician(although admittedly that's in the playoffs which are a slightly different animal), but if I'm going to live up to my words about caring the most about player development, I can't ignore that the Dodgers have been the absolute gold standard at it. Yes they've had plenty of top prospects, but they've all hit, and they also have been able to resurrect careers too(Muncy, Turner, Hill, Morrow, etc)

Yeah that stretches past the realm of likely limitations the team is going to have, by at least 10 million, I'd say.

Given the way the league has trended and especially given how the Cubs have stagnated, it feels like we shouldn’t be looking at how much candidates love numbers as the primary differentiator(though that does matter), but how they develop/improve players.

By getting the next one. Jon Gray is the obvious parallel that could be available.

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the hornberger method, classic

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The players aren't as good as we think they are to naturally make adjustments and the coaches and advanced scouting/FO don't prepare them well enough for the day to day stuff (like getting our butts shoved vs Gio, Peter Lambert, Mahle, etc). The FO/Coaching changes on some of this stuff is as important, if not more, than the player turnover we expect. Agreed. And if a pitcher can tunnel we really fall off the rails. Pretty much every hitter was befuddled by the high fastball/breaking ball in the dirt combo. The numbers against curves and sliders were really bad for an offense that was supposed to be as good as ours was expected to be. A lot of that can be countered with proper preparation. I remember early in Joe's tenure he said something to the effect of not wanting his hitters to get bogged down in the details and wanting them to go up there with a clear mind. He was not a proponent of the percentages and tendencies being fed to hitters and I think that's part of the reason that guys stagnated in their development. Pretty much every hitter is going to be susceptible to tunneling, that’s why it’s so attractive as a concept. And the Cubs had above average pitch values against curves and sliders. I think there’s something to the idea that the Cubs had too many hitters with similar weaknesses, but chalking it up to lack of preparation or going back to the “they can’t hit curves” well is overly simplistic at best.