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Transmogrified Tiger

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  1. Transmogrified Tiger
    This is already too many words for a hypothetical I said has max 10% likelihood. Bethancourt's arb estimate is a million more than Thaiss's. This is putting a lot of faith in 30 game defensive metric extrapolations at one of the hardest positions to get to a run value for. Thaiss hits slightly better than a backup catcher and is likely a poor defensive catcher. Bethancourt is a 34 y/o defensive catcher who cannot hit and is at the age the defense can go in a flash(see Gomes, Yan). Reasonable people can disagree on which one they'd rather have, that's why they would non-tender one and acquire the other regardless of future purpose. Quoting partial season fWAR totals is not very compelling to try to sway someone to one side of that.
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    He's less expensive, younger/not post-prime, and a better hitter who fits cleaner with Amaya. Worse defender though.
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    These are thin margins, but contract crowdsourcing seems to indicate there's not a huge line there with this group, which I think is probably mostly true given their track records and ages: Maybe Estevez or Holmes gets a 3rd year?
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    More discussion on Thaiss here: We left this thread for a few weeks while not much was happening in terms of offseason news, but since we'd prefer not to have a single thread for all chatter and it's eclipsed the original purpose I made it, I'll go ahead and lock this one.
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    Yeah I'm fairly sure that Thaiss is not long for the 40 man roster or he's taking the place of another player on the margins(like Mastrobuoni). I also think counting on an Amaya/Thaiss catching situation is a bad idea. But! Solving catcher for nothing would let you do some more interesting things with the bench or even rotation if you wanted to do it that way, plus Thaiss as a LHH would allow for a pairing w/ Amaya to hopefully be better than the sum of your parts. I would say it's like a 10% chance, but there is a chance they're high enough on Amaya(and/or high enough on Ballesteros as a C?) for that to be where it lands.
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think the years are the differentiator more than the dollars. e.g. I doubt it was the 2M AAV difference between Stephenson and Neris compared to 2 vs 3 years.
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    Jed has also not been afraid of having an RHP be his LHH matchup guy, and like was mentioned Morgan doesn't have strong splits so with the 3 batter minimum it's less crucial than it used to be even if it's suboptimal to have one LHRP and it being the 6th best pitcher in the group.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    I've been kicking around the idea that they're likely to add 4 pitchers, and whether they add 1 SP or 2 impacts how they'd shop for RP. Morgan being a super cheap and optionable RP keeps a lot of flexibility open. The one part that does seem a little out of place is the lack of a LHRP though. Little should be around and I'm sure there's some fringe guys they can add to the pile(Zastryzny, maybe Riley Martin by midseason), but it feels like a conscious decision/design flaw considering the only real way for the 'big RP' to be LH is if they sign Scott(unlikely, imo)
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    Perfect world I'd want a little more leverage RP potential for a deal with Rosario, but he has AA flameout written all over him at this point so I'm not gonna quibble over it. I'm curious given the Hawkins familiarity and the timing of the Zombro hire, if they're aggressive in adding Morgan because they think they can optimize/improve his repertoire in particular.
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    I believe that's a Bugs Bunny riff
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    Given how much of the flexible/uncertain portion is around pitching, I bet we see something like the ~3 cuts and then as moves happen you make room with the underbelly of the pitchers(Wingenter, Zastryzny, Keegan, Hollowell, Kilian, maybe Merryweather). With the addition of Cowles and the seeming likelihood of another IF being added, I wonder if Mastrobuoni is in jeopardy to some degree too.
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    There were also like 3 national guys who specifically name checked Fried to the Cubs, and IIRC not in a list of 5-7 suitors either
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    I also think that's a fair bit too much to give up in the Garcia deal. Maybe more importantly, I don't think Jed would give up a well regarded MLB-ready SP and IF prospect for any reliever, regardless of contract or team control. I have my doubts he would give up either Wicks or Triantos in such a trade, never mind both.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
    I would start with deconstructing how they're arriving at those future values. In your previous link they mention using a $/WAR of just over 9 million as a baseline, which seems reasonable, plus some positional adjustments and their own future projections. So some combination of positional adjustments and their projections are estimating Hoerner to be worth less than 5 cumulative WAR over the next 2 years, and just over 7 for 3 years for Raleigh. Given that Nico plays up the middle(at both positions) at an elite level and Raleigh has been one of the more durable catchers in the game, both of those feel like severe underestimates when you consider their consistent production and age. At a minimum, given the context of a team trading for either, you would assume an acquiring team would be bullish on them continuing their current levels through their team control and value them as such. Maybe that dynamic doesn't quite work for all players or in an agnostic tool like BBTV, but it does work that way in practice(and is part of why trades are harder than they used to be!). That dynamic also applies to any uncertainty about Nico's surgery recovery, like I mentioned upthread.
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    I liken it to Steamer. It is objective and consistent and useful to those ends, but has enough holes that I wouldn't consider it a gold standard or a refutation of a well-articulated argument on an individual basis.
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    That's fair if the belief is that his stuff is really cooked, and non-tendering him isn't the same as him making it to April or August on the roster. Personally I don't mind betting an offseason 40 man spot and 500k on the chance that it bounces back, but I don't have the inside info to clarify how likely that chance is.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    I'd also argue that Merryweather is way too high. The roster spot costs 800k, and when he's been healthy the ceiling is well worth the 500k gamble.
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    I like BBTV as an objective starting point, but there is simply no way in the world Hoerner has less than 20 million in surplus value. He's a consistent 4 win player, that surplus number is closer to 60 than 20. If a team wants to hesitate on their valuation for him because of the surgery, you simply hang on to your extremely valuable player.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    He struck out 30% of hitters he faced, maintained a GB% over 50%, and gave up 2 HR in over 50 innings. The walks color all of that but again that's why he's in the 'talented but flawed' echelon of prospects. You're talking about him like he's so wild that it's all stuff no results, and that was not the case.
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    Also, look at the names behind Wiggins on the list. This is the point in a prospect ranking where everyone has a fatal flaw that will probably tank their ability to be a productive major leaguer. We've known all along that control/command will be the bellwether for Wiggins, he's made some small strides and has reasons to at least hope for more(full injury recovery, limited college/pro developmental time due to the injury). I would put Birdsell ahead of him on a list today, but it's not outrageous to shuffle a bunch of the names around at this point. They're all likely to fail from an actuarial standpoint, shouting 'this guy isn't gonna do it' is uninteresting.
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    I am curious with a bigger audience if the tweaks BlueSky has made around moderation and amplification make a noticeable difference. But I also fear that too many people have been trained around Facebook/Twitter incentives so anything that looks remotely similar is gonna have a similar path to being an unending wheel of outrage engagement.
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    It's less that people think they're drafting a star in the 5th round(though in the 'NSBB era' Samardzija, Steele, Szczur, Birdsell, Velazquez is a decent track record), but what it does to your overall ability to give out bonuses in the 1st and other rounds. This is why even the big market teams people most want the Cubs to emulate generally(but not exclusively) sign a QO when they have the fallback of a QO comp pick themselves.
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    Some folks are so eager to be upset about bits of news that we end up with contradictory sentiments like the Cubs are doing what everyone else does(not true) while foolishly departing from what many other good organizations do. Also the rush to label this about stats vs scouts is exhausting and oversimplified.
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    It won't happen but this is a big week for the dream of 7 SEC teams with 2 losses. Need Georgia and Mizzou to win, then it's just about avoiding bad upsets and having aTm beat Texas.
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