Transmogrified Tiger

"Universal"?--- So, his 2017 Eugene numbers don't count? For me the only thing 2018 says about ademan is that as an underdeveloped 19 yr old he wasn't ready for high A baseball where the average player is 3.4 years older and much more developed. Universal in that his 2018 performance is unequivocally bad, not that he's been terrible throughout his entire professional career. It is absolutely possible Ademan was just rushed too high too soon. It is also possible that he is not capable of hitting full-season pitching. 2018(and really, 2017 at South Bend) has done nothing to cast doubt on the latter hypothesis, and as such I'm not comfortable saying he'd be any good with more age. He certainly could! But my picking this nit comes from thinking Ademan is entirely too high on most lists right now, because he doesn't have world-class tools and the performance has been shockingly bad even given lower expectations of a 19 year old in A+.

Unfortunate. That means you missed this gem. [tweet] [/tweet] That's the exact same mistake all over again, unbelievable.

Well, you’re just acknowledging then ignoring Ademan’s age differential with respect to his results. So, this is gonna be a useless conversation… Just one FWI, his age differential is closer to a few years than a “few months”. The point is not to ignore age entirely, the point is that universally bad results shouldn't be graded on an age curve. If Ademan were hitting .250/.325/.375 at Myrtle Beach we wouldn't be having this conversation since I would've agreed with your takeaway on him repeating a low level at age 20. Instead he's got an OPS 100 points lower than that modest example line. Players who are mediocre at aggressive age/level combos you can squint and see progression with age, players who are horrible at age/level you have to wonder if they have the ability at all.

I don't see how his play as an 18 yr old at Eugene doesn't project to higher levels. He's not physically developed yet and the Cubs are OK with him taking his lumps in high A. I think this says a lot about his mental toughness. If you don't like young developing players that are over matched against older developing players, then you don't like Hoerner either. I think he had a sub .600 .OPS as a freshman, and that was with an aluminum bat. The pro survival rate if our only data point is a .600 OPS as a college freshman is extremely low. Thankfully we have more information since then. Similarly, the survival rate of guys who put up a .620 OPS in their first 400+ PA in full-season ball is not high. Ademan does have that success in his 40 game Eugene stint, and scouts seem to think he's a decent prospect so I don't want to come across as if I think he's hopeless. But you don't translate youth by saying a .600 OPS at age X is equivalent to an .800 OPS at age X+2. Ademan's performance in full-season ball has been very discouraging, he isn't hitting even for mediocre average or power, and his K rate is pushing 25%. His age and the lower threshold of his position gives him opportunity to rebound, but there's nothing about that we can look at and think it portends well if he only were a few months older at this level.

I haven’t seen anything from Ademan that indicates that he’s a shoo-in to be a strong hitter at any level of full season ball yet. certainly capable of doing so, but taking a few walks while the bat gets knocked out of your hands in low/high A doesn’t fill me with confidence.

2 outs too, go for it

Subasic has graciously decided to make Croatia’s bad luck first half irrelevant

From today's Tribune: And the Cubs appear firm in their unwillingness to move any position players from their major-league roster to acquire pitching help. “We’ve shown were really loyal to this core group for a reason,” Hoyer said. “They’ve earned that loyalty with their performance over 3½ seasons. Our focus really is on supplementing that group.” To me, those comments don't include Happ. That’s a good point, depending on the question he’s answering, it could be inclusive of Happ/Almora or more like saying they aren’t going to trade Baez/Russell/Schwarber.

France haven’t done a thing right offensively and they have two goals, frustrating

Honestly, I wouldn't even highlight the things he says at this point. It's not entertaining, it's quite sad that he has such an unhealthy relationship with sports teams. Also, Almora's last 2 weeks look exactly like his season line(to the extent it's borderline spooky), so he can't even get things right on a factual basis before spinning it towards anger.

Girardi is actually an intelligent person though. There’s no way he’s possibly as bad as Matheny. I mean, Girardi is better at saying sentences, and Jersey may have the best context of being closer to his Yankees day to day, but it sure seems like Girardi carries the risk of the same problems.

They’ll trade Harvey since he’s a FA at year’s end, and if they find a really good deal for Hamilton or Gennett (unlikely) they should take it since both are FA after 2019, but otherwise yeah they’d be best served not getting rid of anything significant. Their best relievers aren’t flashes in the pan, which is the only other situation they’d want to look to sell.

That's from the Iowa Cubs, saying that he is with the Iowa Cubs now. Zastryzny for Carl is the only move I believe.

Ah, that explains this: [tweet] [/tweet] And also why they pushed him for 1+ IP last night.

gonna console myself that I was critical* of the Chatwood signing and this justifies my skepticism *in maybe the most milquetoast way possible

oh did 33 year old Junior Guerra not actually turn into a Cy Young candidate

[tweet] [/tweet]

This is my thinking as well. Bote seems to be able to replace Happ within reason and this might be Almora’s peak year which is plenty fine but a 2-3 WAR OF isn’t that hard to find/replace (like I mentioned Maybin as an in season replacement). I also am just not a huge fan of Almora’s profile long term in terms of ever being much more than a 2-3 WAR player. Plus it opens things up for Bryce in the OF in the offseason and doesn’t make a Happ/Almora trade a forced trade in the offseason. Then you maybe also look to add a bench bat that’s RHH and capabale or playing CF in the offseason. Does Happ even start in the Mets outfield when Cespedes comes back? None of Nimmo/Cespedes/Conforto can play CF with any level of ability, so yes. They'd probably be best served by Cespedes/Almora/Happ/Conforto all sharing time across the OF and moving Nimmo to 1B. Happ could also help out at 2B/3B once they have no use for Todd Frazier or Cabrera anymore, since Cecchini is the only longer term option and he hasn't shown he can hit yet.

Hendricks is pitching Saturday so normal rest would put him at the Thursday start. If they stick with that then Lester would be in line for Friday. But that would leave Quintana on 10 days rest for one of the Saturday DH and then Montgomery and/or Chatwood in the other game. My guess is they don't want either of those guys pitching in the doubleheader, since they are bound to get pulled early and tax the bullpen in at least one game. Then Monday the 23rd becomes an issue, since none of the current 5 would be on normal rest. Maybe they come back from the break with Quintana and Montgomery each coming off 8 days rest, then let Hendricks and Lester handle the DH with the hopes of saving the bullpen. Then it is all hands on deck for the Sunday game. They have to be ready to dial back Montgomery's innings. Maybe they'd be better off using Chatwood/Montgomery as a piggyback situation and calling up Underwood. Then again, we could be due for a Casey Coleman "take one for the team" start in this series. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the 5 game series in 4 days coupled with 2 guys who can't be counted on for 6 innings means there are about a million combinations that can happen before we get to July 25/26. It depends on how they deal with the DH and who does/does not make it through 5 innings. Since they need 6 starters in 5 days, I'd imagine they use the 26th man on the double header to give a start to Underwood/Mills/Tseng. Starting Quintana Friday and giving Lester another day's rest(especially if he pitches in the ASG) to let him hopefully suck up a bunch of innings in one game of the DH makes sense too. That also pushes Montgomery to Sunday to give him that little bit more rest, although I don't think he needs to be aggressively reined in, especially for this month.

lol, I was so certain that one of those Tunisia goals was a penalty that I missed it even though I pulled up the box score

If you can make a deal for DeGrom using Happ and Almora and basically any reasonable permutation of minor leaguers, that's realllly hard for me to turn down. Especially with Bote looking at least LaStella-caliber with the bat, you can add a bench OF too and shift more of Zobrist's innings to the OF without losing too much. If Bote isn't for real you lose the super-duper depth of position player even if you add Harper for 2019, but DeGrom is very, very good.

Yeah, I admittedly would only exclude him based on how poorly his game seems to have translated to the AA level through his first 3 starts there. It's probably short-sighted, but in a system filled with pitchers that have to prove it at every level, ones that don't get bumped down considerably for me. Thus far it looks like he had some first AA game jitters and had that go poorly, and then has been very good since. June 23: 3 IP, 9 H, 8 ER, 1/1 K/BB, 2 HR, HBP June 30: 6.1 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 7/2 K/BB July 7: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2/2/ K/BB

Harry Kane winning the Golden boot with one goal that wasn't a penalty or a teammate accidentally hitting him in the heel is also extremely funny

Given his size, I doubt he sticks as a starter. Height is overrated, and with the quality of the system at the moment you definitely don't need to be a surefire prospect to be underrated significantly.