Transmogrified Tiger

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My instinct is that they'll have tighter leashes on HS draftees compared to college, and they've drafted mostly college pitchers. It's not a 1:1 comparison for a couple reasons, but Cease was in a similar situation in his time at Eugene.

I can't seem to link to it but the highlight is here: https://www.mlb.com/gameday/cubs-vs-giants/2019/07/22/566521#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=videos,game=566521 There is no way in the world that's actually a 70% catch probability

Yeah I like a Starlin/Lemahieu (taking out some of the Coors inflation) type with more walks as a comp and also at least a little more versatile defensively. What even happened to Castro? He kinda just began to suck and it kind of seemed like it came out of nowhere. Even at his peak, most of Starlin's value came from batting average and positional value. Moving to 2nd, the launch angle/juiced ball devaluing the hit tool more, and some decline as he maybe didn't have his 20 year old twitch reactions in his late 20s mostly did him in as a regular(or at least an above average one).

Long time reader, first time watcher, do the games normally have stuff besides almora and russell taking turns choking on their tongues, or is that it

You missed Fowler at .755, which helps a small bit.

I will admit that I have no idea what Boone is talking about in the context of arguing with the umpire. Like I get the positive connotation of 'savages in the box', but how does that at all relate to them being angry with the strike zone? I thought it was a bad lip reading thing until I actually played it with audio.

He had 1000 PA as roughly a league average hitter prior to this season. I know a lot of people are predisposed to dislike Almora because he swings too much and therefore doesn't walk or hit for a ton of power, but he was a perfectly fine role player for multiple years until his struggles this year. That could be a blip and it could be him finally getting figured out for good, but scoffing at the idea that he's ever been useful is silly.

Basically the only difference between Bryant's MVP season and 2019 is that in 2016 UZR says he was an elite outfielder(in < 40 games) and this year UZR says he's a horrific outfielder (in <30 games). Which is the long way to say that he's been just as good as he was in 2016.

Bryant taking 3rd, <3

Montgomery's been saying 'I want to start' for 2 and a half years, the idea he forced a move in the midst of his worst season as a Cub seems really unlikely.

Some Twitter searching isn't getting me much anywhere, how do I get a little more context without clicking a barstool link?

As far as the trade itself goes, lots of folks have made these thoughts, but in no particular order: - Contreras might be out for an extended period, although early reports are this is unlikely - Caratini might be on his way out the door in another trade, which would be good business, IMO - Maldonado is a playoff-oriented addition, he's not going to be much of a pinch hitter but he's able to fill that Ross gap in a way that Caratini can't. Especially on a playoff roster, you can use a defensive catching replacement easier than you can use your 5th best pinch hitter - Montgomery has fallen out of favor with the team. He's having a bad year, he's not particularly young or far from FA any longer, even at his best he was never murder on LHP which means his primary value is as a swingman, which the team already has Chatwood and Alzolay to help with(plus more help in future seasons from the farm than in the past) I think it's probably a pretty proportional combination of those 4 factors.

Team ERA- by year: 2017: 91 - T-4th in NL 2018: 91 - T-2nd in NL 2019: 93 - 4th in NL KBB (where framing really shows, IMO) 2016: 2.91 2017: 2.60 2018: 2.14 2019: 2.53 1) how is this showing a progressive degradation 2) focusing on raw K/BB as evidence of the progression/regression of a catcher's impact on a pitching staff is profoundly bad logic

Team ERA- by year: 2017: 91 - T-4th in NL 2018: 91 - T-2nd in NL 2019: 93 - 4th in NL

Tony Thomas! Younger, dumber me definitely thought he was gonna be a MLB 2B

If they add the rule about pitchers needing to step off to pickoff runners, all those runners are gonna have an extra half-step on their leads to make up for geared up catchers. Net neutral on the running game, the strike zone is more accurate, and we give the LHP balk pickoff moves the fiery death they deserve. win-win-win

How far does Lester’s home run go without the juiced ball, I say 200 feet

Just for a quick comparison, there are 35 catchers with 300+ innings so far this year. Contreras would be 22nd in WP+PB/Inning and 23rd for only WP/Inning.

For the record, I'm ambivalent on abolishing the draft. I think abolishing it has some appealing positives, but I also recognize that the odds that route ends up favoring big market teams is pretty high. I'm just not sure how much it favors them. For the rest of those concerns, to me that gets lumped in to the devil is in the details. Yes, they'd absolutely need to raise the luxury tax if they went that way and have some type of floor as well as some potentially bigger penalties. I think IFA has shown that the right penalties can influence behavior and the wrong ones will be entirely ignored, so what that is is important. I'll borrow from my list of ideas here to give a slightly more complete thought: In hindsight, you can probably add 'or eligible for national TV money' to that threat of penalties for missing the floor, or you can just say that they're penalized 10 or 100x the shortage, whatever influences the behavior is the important thing.

Concacaf announced the new qualifying format for the 2022 World Cup: https://www.concacaf.com/en/world-cup-qualifying-men/article/concacaf-announces-format-for-the-2022-fifa-world-cup-confederation-qualifiers As far as I understand it, this is the short version: - The Top 6 teams by FIFA ranking in June 2020 play a round robin like the old Hex in late 2020/early 2021, the Top 3 teams automatically qualify for the World Cup - Simultaneously, rest of Concacaf is broken into groups of 4(one group of 5) and play a round robin with their group. The winner of each group makes a knockout tournament, and the winner of that knockout round plays the 4th place team for the right to make the playoff with Oceania for the remaining World Cup spot(last go round Honduras lost to Australia). This is mildly good news for teams that aren't in jeopardy of falling off the Top 6 in FIFA rankings, like the US, Mexico, and Costa Rica. They weren't at much risk for not making the hex anyway, but now they don't even need to bother with the minnows. This is bad news for teams around that border: Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Canada, Curacao. Right now the latter 3 would both get relegated to that minnows tournament as their only shot, but the gap between them and the line isn't very big, especially since the current FIFA rankings don't include the gold cup, where Panama, Curacao, and Canada advanced and both Honduras and El Salvador failed to do so. As a result, this means the Nations League games this fall and next spring that involve those teams should be really, really important.

No it wouldn't. The biggest spenders aren't going to be able to horde everybody any more than they already can. A team's operating budget will still be a budget. If a Baltimore only wants to spend $60m on the major league roster they will have all the money in the world to sign any prospect they want. Hard capping it solves nothing. Get more money into the hands of younger players earlier in the process. Yes, set the luxury tax inclusive of draft/IFA spending and get rid of the pools, and that problem solves itself. If someone would rather give the next Kris Bryant(or Mark Appel) a 15 million bonus instead of the current Tyler Chatwood a 15 million AAV in free agency, that's fine with me. It also opens up more opportunities for teams to be smarter about their scouting and be more creative with where they try to find value at the amateur level. Maybe a team wants to experiment with paying through the nose for 5 guys who are top 20 talents and then doing no other draft spending of note, or maybe someone wants to give 1 million to 20 different guys. You can't do that in the pool system.

I didn't include supplemental firsts because 1) their success rate is quite different than the rest of rounds 2-10; 2) they aren't consistent picks, the Cubs have had 4 supplemental firsts in the draft pool era(2 in 2012, one each in 2017 and 2019), the Cardinals have had TEN, thanks to their competitive balance comp nonsense.

To continue with the draft pool era comps: Cardinals draftees in Rds 2-10 with 2+ bWAR 2016: none 2015: Bader & DeJong 2014: none 2013: none 2012: none And the Astros: 2016: none 2015: none 2014: Mengden 2013: none 2012: Brett Phillips Granted, the Cubs are 0 fer in that window(Godley is just short of 2 bWAR), but I'm not sure 2 for 45 is materially different than 0 for 45 when those picks don't have much of a success rate to begin with.

For a point of comparison, 2012 was the first draft with bonus pools. Here's the breakdown of players who reached 2+ career bWAR: 1st round: 14 players (1 Cub, Almora) Supplemental round (also 30 picks): 10 players (no Cubs, Johnson and Blackburn picked) All other rounds combined: 23 players (1 Cub, Bote) Total: 47 players, 2 Cubs Based on the success rate of the whole group and a bump for the Cubs drafting high in the first round, you'd expect the Cubs to have had about 2 such players, and that's what they got. Your point is valid, but they got super lucky on Bote. Great late round pick, but you don't expect that kind of success from a late round pick. This is exactly the point, it's more or less a dice roll. Bote was far from being alone in that regard, that draft also had college draftees in rounds 15+ like Leone, Strahm, Oberg, Suter, and Matt Duffy meet the 2 WAR criteria. That doesn't mean those teams are especially shrewd, but it emphasizes how much failure and randomness there is once you get beyond the top 25-50 picks.