Jump to content
North Side Baseball

Transmogrified Tiger

Community Moderator
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    38,769

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    70

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Chicago Cubs Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger

  1. Transmogrified Tiger
    I agree that if you distill being a good prospect down to three things and pretend that Hearn is good at all of them, he is a good prospect.
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    Here are some things that might make a player a good catching prospect. Hitting for Average: Hearn has career high .230 average this year and has historically run very low BABIPs given his K rate Hitting for Power: Hearn has done this decently well(roughly .200 IsoP), with the caveat that he's repeating the level when he does so Take walks: After previously showing some eye for free passes, Hearn's walk rate is below league average at 8% Make contact: Long a problem, he's striking out 29% of the time in his second go round at A+ Perform well relative to age and league: Hearn turns 24 in 2 weeks and is still in A ball so he's behind the curve. On the worst offensive roster in the org he's 4th among regulars in OPS. He's also either outside the Top 10 in OPS or in the back half(depending on your definition) of catchers in the MWL Avoid errors/misplays: Hearn has 18 errors in 53 games behind the plate, a rate that has been pretty steady at each level Throw out baserunners: Hearn's 18% CS% is worse than the league average of 23%
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think we're really close to a breakthrough here fellas, just a couple more pages should do it
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    stop and think about the causation between these two facts
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    When you're talking about half the lineup's worth of positions(OF+1B+DH), if you have one person per spot you're actually short. If you have 6 players for 5 spots you've got an average of 135 games per person, a very reasonable target. Case in point, we're 120 games into the season as of tonight, and Seiya & Bellinger have missed 30 games each. Throw in 10 games each(at least, given Busch and PCA's uncertain platoon strength) for the other 3 spots for rest and matchups and you've got a near full time work load for someone. Also players can have long term injuries, pitchers could figure out PCA or Busch and make them unplayable, etc. What this does do is make it a little bit harder to convince certain players to join your project. Juan Soto won't care, he's at the top of the food chain no matter what lineup he joins. But any bat-first FA they approach might have second thoughts about how long they'd be allowed to work through any struggles. That JD Martinez/Anthony Santander caliber of player that may be a fallback(or primary depending on other moves of significance) is the type of guy who may go elsewhere so he doesn't have to worry about a PCA breakout ruining his ability to get another contract.
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    For me the foundational thing with Hodge is throwing strikes. It's probably a big part of what got him removed from the pen, and it's the big differentiator in terms of his big league results. I'm curious if there's a mechanical or other change that's been made to improve the strike throwing ability or make fewer uncompetitive pitches, because 25 innings is still a small sample but it's big enough that it's greater than the 'good couple weeks' we've seen from countless relievers before. I don't see anything significant in plate discipline data between his limited AAA time and MLB, outside the fact that major leaguers are simply swinging a lot more despite a similar amount of pitches in zone and an unremarkable first pitch strike percentage. Hopefully there's an underlying reason for that and an advanced scouting tweak to swing less doesn't send that walk rate back up north of 15% like it was at Iowa.
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    Considering he only has 12 IP at AAA and he doesn't seem to have a high likelihood of being an elite relief ace in the Hader/Williams mold, I'd be a little bummed if they burned Neely's first option year on getting a handful of MLB innings when they don't really have to.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    I've mentioned it before, but I'm gonna be pedantic and say that no bullpen building strategy would have withstood the amount of late inning and rotation injuries that derailed the first couple months of the year. Ponying up for Hader doesn't mean anything if he's on the IL, and all the prospect depth in the world can't help the pen if it's hurt or has to be thrust into the rotation. This is less impactful, but I also think the suggestion that Jed sat out a bunch of higher end RPs and dug around for leftovers is a bit overstated. There were basically 3 RP deals that were meaningfully larger than Neris(Hader, Stephenson, Kimbrel), and one of those hasn't pitched at all due to TJS.
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    A useful skill is learning what arguments are worth having on the internet, even if you think the other side is wrong and/or overreacting. Sincerely, Guy whose NSBB claim to fame is hating tipping
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    Admittedly I was not watching the at bat in question, but it doesn't even appear to be super borderline I always try to check myself when it comes to high/low pitches because the broadcast zone can dial in the plate pretty well, but the up/down adjustment seems more fraught in terms of potential measurement error.
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
    FWIW Statcast has both in the zone, as well as one from an earlier at bat called a ball
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    It is 1-0 in the first inning
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    With it being TJS I think this increases the likelihood he stays in the org. It'll be easier to non-tender and re-sign him to an off 40 man deal to let him rehab compared to a surgery where he might hope to be pitching in games by May.
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    Yes! He's having a perfectly cromulent offensive season, but a college draftee 1B(maybe 3B or 2B) with a 119 wRC+ in Low A is not all that exciting. They just drafted several guys who we'd expect to do the same, one was just announced as skipping A- entirely.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
    Mike Trout turns 33 tomorrow, is owed 6/222 on his contract, and will enter next season having averaged 66 games played a year since the pandemic-shortened season.
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    what are you talking about
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    There's a bit of a gap between 'not Yadier Molina right away' and 'on a per game basis yielding 3 SB & 1 misplay'. That said, for me the issue with Trice's defensive progress at catcher is less the stats and more that he is not playing catcher in games. I'm sure he's doing off field work at the position, but as a convert the game reps are especially important for the soft skills and the fact they haven't felt he was ready to catch more than once a week is probably not an especially good signal itself.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    so the styles are .900 OPS and 40 HR(current qualifiers on this pace league-wide: 5) or Helen Keller mediocrity
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    If you're drawing a line that groups Happ, Bellinger, Hoerner, and Tauchman all together stylistically as offensive players, you have drawn a very poor line.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    The balance beam finals were borderline goofy, it feels like I saw more falls off the beam between the Team and the individual finals than I'd seen in the last 5 Olympics combined. Someone fell off the beam and still got a medal!
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    Paredes has a 116 wRC+ on the road in his last 500+ road PA. We don't have to do this, we can let players struggle for even weeks at a time(or the pitching equivalent) over the course of 162 games without gnashing our teeth that the jig is up and the player's multi-year run of form is in fact over. You'd think after seeing it proven out over like 5 different guys this year alone we might not, but I guess you have to be true to yourself
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    4 strikeouts from Merryweather in that inning
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    Probably in the next week for the college hitters, maybe after the weekend for simplest travel logistics. For reference, the draft started on the 11th last year, and Shaw appeared in the complex league starting on the 27th. This year the draft wasn't til the 14th and the complex league is done this year, so they may give them a few backfields reps before jumping those guys to affiliated ball.
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    Mervis was never a scouting darling and plays the position with the highest offensive bar. Sometimes those guys break through, even if only temporarily(Schwindel, apparently Ryan Noda), but most times they don't and teams know this. Canario was and is a guy who can have a role on a major league roster, but his progress was stunted by a catastrophic injury, and now in terms of his value he's at an all time low because he's had further nagging injuries and isn't lighting up AAA. Most importantly though, this is his last option year so his value to the Cubs or other teams in the future goes down significantly without the ability to stash him at AAA. Depending on the offseason I can see a path to him making the 2025 Cubs, but from now on you should think of him not too differently than you do to guys like Tauchman when they break into a roster.
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    3B at A+
×
×
  • Create New...