Transmogrified Tiger

Not a Cubs Q obviously, but something to keep in mind for college guys their first summer. Like I'm very disappointed in what Strumpf has done since signing, but it's hard to take numbers the summer after the draft too seriously, good or bad. On one hand, I definitely see the argument there, especially since the conditioning program at the college level should hopefully be lesser than what someone can get in a pro offseason. On the other hand, to use Vaughn as an example, he's played 107 games this year, and every full-season team is between 130-140 right now. Maybe playing regular games over a slightly longer time horizon is more taxing, but that doesn't seem like such a heavy workload that you should expect a guy to be substantially worse than expectations.

The guy I would go after to replace Zobrist and pinch hit is Howie Kendrick. viewtopic.php?p=364499#p364499

Castellanos has a .607 OPS as a pinch hitter, can't keep him. Rizzo is at .478, might be time to put him out to pasture too. Baez is at .542, definitely pump the breaks on his extension. Bryant is at .583, the gutless choking dog. Thankfully, the MLB leader in pinch hitting the last 3 years(min 10 PA of course) is going to be available, so we can snap up Adam Jones and fill that gaping hole in the roster.

JD Martinez seems like a near-perfect analogue, but all bets are off in this newfound era of collusion so, maybe? Martinez was a fair amount better with the bat for a long while, although he was 2 years older. 4/60 feels like a decent starting point to me, I wouldn't be surprised with AAV going up a few million or a 5th year, maybe both in a hotter market.

The point is that Gorman is not “blowing away his peers”, most organizations have a player with a similar age/production profile. He had a .623 OPS in the month before his promotion, so it’s quite an assumption that he would have been wrecking the MWL if he stuck around. But if you want to leave that tangent, if you’re trying to talk up the long term viability of either team, you need to start at the top of the roster. The Cardinals have missed the playoffs 3 straight years not because they don’t have role players like Bader or fringe major leaguers like Edman, but because they’ve lacked star power, guys who can put up a 5 win season, and preferably with consistency. The Cubs are in their most precarious roster position in the last half decade, but they still have multiple years of Bryant, Baez, and Hendricks, plus guys who have very recently done so(Rizzo) or could make the small leap to that echelon(Contreras). The Cardinals still don’t really have anyone to count on in that regard, since Goldschmidt and Carpenter have fallen flat and have decline in front of them. You can maybe squint and see DeJong or Flaherty in the Contreras sense, but the roster still lacks starpower. If the solution to that is Carlson, an avalanche of roster fill, and far off prospects like Gorman, then their long term prospects as a team are going to be as dim as their recent past.

My point is that being young while failing doesn’t give you extra credit(fwiw its the same point i’ve made about Cubs prospects like Ademan). In the MWL Gorman was barely in the top 10 of fellow teenagers in offensive performance. In the FSL there are very few teens, but he’s still been outight bad there, and the things that were suboptimal about his MWL performance have been even more worrisome. That doesn’t mean that Gorman isn’t a good prospect, not completely collapsing in the FSL at 19 is commendable. But being 19 doesn’t mean its a given you’re going to start destroying that league and the multiple leagues between there and MLB, especially when his MWL performance wasn’t elite and he plays a position that requires a big bat to be valuable. Gorman remains a good prospect and a big part of the Cardinals organizational depth, but if you’re writing him in a future MLB lineup in pen, or treating him in the same caliber of actual elite prospects(past STL examples being Taveras and Rasmus), you’re putting the cart before the horse.

how did Hiura come up lame running that slowly?

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.