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

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.

FWIW Statcast has both in the zone, as well as one from an earlier at bat called a ball

It is 1-0 in the first inning

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.

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.

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.

what are you talking about

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.

so the styles are .900 OPS and 40 HR(current qualifiers on this pace league-wide: 5) or Helen Keller mediocrity

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.

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!

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

4 strikeouts from Merryweather in that inning

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.

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.

3B at A+

Hmm, the new account that created it had a follow up spam post so in flagging them as a spammer it might've eaten the thread. EDIT: Yep, that's what it was, got it restored.

Maybe the most useful article I've ever seen from Jon Greenberg: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5673025/2024/08/01/chicago-cubs-motorola-patch-sponsorship-deal/?source=user_shared_article Based on quotes from the Cubs (which still lacked specifics) and some known comparisons to other clubs, we can probably estimate this brings the team ~15 million/year Motorola also has a patch on the Padres and Bulls The Cubs insisted any patch mirror the jersey colors There will also now be permanent Motorola signage behind home plate

Thus far this season the team has had an off day about every 10 games, or slightly less to be precise. The rest of the season that's about every 7 games, and in September they'll have an extra pen arm. Plus there will be SP options returning to health to be eased in, with any luck. All that to say that I think there will be plenty of rest to go around among the stretched out arms, even if it's not formally a 6 man rotation. I did want to highlight this though: I understand the logic here, but I think this misses the forest for the trees. The most impactful thing the Cubs can do to bounce back from a frustrating 2024 is not optimize to get marginally more draft capital, it's to have the players on the roster make improvements and play well the rest of the year. Those two are fundamentally at odds, especially on this roster which has so few potential departing FA of consequence, and the organization is much healthier if Busch doesn't slump, Paredes shows his 2023-24 are repeatable, young pitchers don't hit a wall, etc. You should root for as few questions to answer in the offseason as possible, and while I love min-maxing within the rules as much as anyone and believe the draft capital is underrated in its consequence in general, it still pales compared to the MLB roster being the best versions of themselves heading into next season.

He got 3/80 with multiple opt outs last year while having the QO attached. He doesn't have to come particularly close to repeating last year to get offers that would exceed that, though he might value the ability to have opt outs again that drive it down a bit. There are probably more than a dozen teams that would give Cody 4/80 today if they could, which means that the actual contract would be higher than that.

I'd add that there's almost always shuffling at the end of the RP depth chart too. Brewer and Thompson stand out for being out of options after this year and not having seized enough of a role to get the benefit of the doubt.

He's still 29 and would no longer be burdened by the QO, I have to think that even if he stayed healthy and his line stayed static the rest of the year that somebody is likely to give him a more lucrative deal than what he's on. Whether he has the appetite to go through FA again for marginal reward or if he wants to aim to crush it next year and get 9 figures after 2025 is harder to say.