Transmogrified Tiger

good grief Castellanos is the best hitter in the world

He's 19 with a 10% walk rate in the minors. What are you talking about? Have you seen what other people his age are doing? He blows them out of the water. 10/29 BB/K with a .826 OPS in his first ~700 PAs at 19 with a lot of those numbers coming in the brutal FSL is more than fine. You would be hyping any Cub with those numbers. Not to mention what scouts say about him and what he'll grow into. Wait until he’s in the Texas League and PCL... Lumping together Gorman's low-A and high-A numbers is not a very useful exercise. He was good in the midwest league, especially for his age, but not overly special, certainly not blowing peers out of the water. As a point of comparison, Gorman put up a .364 wOBA on 11% BB% and 28% K rates in low-A at 19, while the Cubs have Brennan Davis who has a .403 wOBA on an 8% BB% and 19% K% in the same league at the same age, and as a CF to boot. Cubs fans are excited about Davis's potential, but no one is saying 'watch out Cards fans' about his Major League impact yet. Then if you look at what Gorman's doing in High A, it's just not very good, .337 wOBA, sub-6% BB% and 31% K%. That doesn't mean he sucks, and it's noteworthy that he's not getting completely humiliated in High A at 19, but if we're talking about the major league team we are not at all close to 1) being sure Gorman is going to make it and 2) being certain Gorman is going to be an above average/impact player at that level. Also, some unsolicited advice from someone who has thousands of posts at a Cardinals message board: if all your posts are nitpicking the degrees to which the Cardinals players are better than Cub fan perception, it's not an enjoyable experience on either side. Trying to have your team be perfectly represented by rival fans is never going to happen, and then you just get associated as *that* person who is coming across as a permanent antagonist, even if you're not trolling or insulting people.

Bryant's rolling production this year looks a whole lot more like past years than 2018: A week ago he had an .826 OPS for the month, and as recently as 2 weeks ago he was riding a hot streak with 5 home runs in a 15 game span. Hard for me to interpret that as him wearing down compared to simply checking at a valley that all signs point to moving back to a peak like his career has dictated over a number of years.

I can't wait for 2022 with a Pulisic/Sargent/Weah front line in front of a Pomykal/McKennie/Adams midfield.

Rendon is really the only player who is remotely comparable that will be available and doesn't cost significant trade assets on top of money. Yes there are permutations where you trade Bryant for assets and then trade lesser assets for a different star that unexpectedly matures into a Bryant caliber player, but that 'paperclip to mansion' type of incremental improvement opportunity exists for every player ever. And even if you accept that the investment in Rendon is 1) objectively worthwhile to make and 2) not increasing total dollars spent in an offseason where dollars are gonna be tight, you still need to find a team that is going to be willing to go all in for a short term benefit in getting Bryant. I don't want to overstate how much Kris freakin Bryant's trade market might be limited, but there are a finite number of teams willing to go all in for him to the extent required for the Cubs to trade him. The Rays aren't trading for Bryant in a million years, to use that example.

The Cubs have won the bidding war for a top end FA in 3 of the last 4 years, and by the time Bryant actually hits FA they are far less likely to be near an artificial spending limit, or they're not going to want to be paying for Bryant's 30s because everything else has fallen apart. Trading Bryant for Lindor doesn't make the team better or save money, doesn't extend the competitive window(they're FA the same year), and it dilutes the value of whoever plays 2B between Baez/Lindor.

Trading Kris Bryant would almost certainly slam the Cubs window shut. Those windows are defined by stars, the 4-5+ win players who anchor a team even when role players ebb and flow in terms of names and productivity. Rizzo is leaving that status, Bryant and Baez are still there, you can maybe make the argument for Hendricks too(although even setting aside production F pitchers). You get rid of Bryant you're basically playing roulette that you're gonna be able to get another star, and you no longer have Rizzo or peak Arrieta as a hedge, plus there are no players of that caliber in the farm. I will be...very, very angry if they trade Bryant.

I don't really think that's all time bad. I have no problem with a big league player being pissed that the few other decent big league players (and his teammates) are being shipped off for the sake of a future roster that he probably won't be on. He was pitching his ass off for a team that wasn't trying to win. I don't blame him one bit for saying that. In fact, I'm not sure I'd expect or want him to feel any other way. I think that's more justifiable for the trade that actually sent Shark away, since the MLB team didn't benefit from it right away. The Feldman trade netted them 2 players who immediately went on the MLB roster, and even as soon as that year made the team better. it was a really dumb thing to say.

Just to put this into greater context, this year's LT payroll is right around 235, 245 if you think they would've been able to do the same salary stuff without Zobrist spending most of the year on the restricted list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VJ9nVwD1eUJabnL9tuQuxJa1K2oM2HXyqJS8Od0pMIo/pubhtml edit: woah, it embedded, that's fun Material increases in LT payroll for next year: Bryant Arb3 Baez Arb2 Schwarber Arb2 Contreras Arb1 Rizzo option Hendricks extension Staying on the high side to be safe, that's probably around 30 million. Let's be super safe and call it 35 million for the other prearb/arb increases(Kemp, Caratini, Wick, etc). And then the salary leaving: Hamels 20 Zobrist 14 Morrow 10.5 Cishek 6.5 Strop 6.25 Kintzler 5 Duensing 3.5 There's probably a couple mil more too from various relievers leaving like Brach, Cedeno, and Montgomery. Add that all together and if you put your thumb to the wind you can see somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million to spend before removing any guaranteed salary at the low(Russell, Descalso) or high(Chatwood, Heyward) end. Considering you need substantial bullpen help and maybe an SP too(depending on your view of Graveman, Alzolay, etc), it's going to be tight. Next year is the one year crunch that has been coming, since after it you have the first core shakeup(Lester, Rizzo, Quintana all FA).

I am here for Darvish ethering Kaplan on Twitter [tweet] [/tweet]

Fixed

To play devil's advocate, how good can his hit tool be when his contact rates are so low? Contact: 68% (league average 76%) O-Contact: 47% (63%) Z-Contact: 78% (85%)

Well this ruins the Castellanos is a star and a bargain at 6/200 bit I was going to do. I’m glad he’s hit the ground running, I’m skeptical of him in the longer run, but the stretch run benefit is undeniable even if he goes in the tank the rest of the year.

yikes [tweet] [/tweet]

did Alex Rodriguez just say that this generation is not going to outlive their parents

My hot take is that I’d rather have a handball rule that is consistent even if it leads to harsh/unlucky outcomes than to have to deal with measuring intent and how inconsistent that would be applied.

low key great sprint speed by Happ, who was short of 2nd and didn’t have a head of steam when that ball landed

It looks like it went from being a 10-9 split for St. Louis to 9-8 Cubs.

In terms of minutes you're sitting there watching it, soccer goals happen about the same frequency as touchdowns. while this may be true, literally nothing about this post is going to convince someone like myself to watch soccer. i don't outwardly hate on the sport, but i just don't like it. and that's ok. in regards to the "in terms of minutes" part, though, that seems a little lackadaisical in describing the action. Football is a sport that importance is dictated by field position. 3rd and 10 from a team's own 15 isn't going to require the same attention/anticipation as 1st and goal. Not all snaps are equal based on score, field position, time remaining, etc. In soccer, (in my extremely self admitting uneducated opinion) it's pretty much just "try to stop a goal" vs. "try to score a goal". There's just less nuance (as far as I can tell - I rarely watch it). First things first, people should like or not like what they want. Personally, I can't get into hockey outside of playoff overtimes, when I watch it seems like the goals are too much a function of what I'll call randomness, scraps in front of goal and aiming harder shots in the direction of the goal that a deflection or screen helps it through. I'm sure there's more to the planning than that, but I can't escape the feeling that teams have a lot less control in their scoring than I'd like to see. That said, if you are interested or curious, one of the things that helped with my enjoyment of soccer was to see the play on the field as most similar to basketball. Without the ball, teams have the option to press high up the field to try to create dangerous turnovers, give up a lot of space to stay compact and avoid the opponent getting close to goal, and (this is where the analogy breaks down a bit) they can also stay deep to try to lure the other team with the ball forward and then attack via a fast break of sorts when they get it back. With the ball, there's a lot of choreographed movement without the absolute structure of say, Football plays, players move without the ball to help create space for others and moving the ball around helps create opportunities. In other words, if you really like Xs and Os stuff in other sports, there's plenty of that in soccer too, but it also has baseball's slow burn as a viewing experience so it's not gonna have universal appeal.

Aldi-brand Soler’s throw was about 30 feet up the line, that’ll cover a lot of slow

who does this Ervin character think he is, Ian Happ

I'm a little skeptical of that article's framing. Murton did not have plus power for an outfielder, and he certainly wasn't working with the juiced ball of today. Less loft and more line drives is a pretty logical plan of attack. In 2006 he was pretty high on the list for IFFB% too.

He was under it and whiffed like a little leaguer

Almora if you could at least not let the brain worms infect your defense that doesn’t seem too much to ask