Transmogrified Tiger
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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger
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I do not fear that even a little bit, there is pretty overwhelming evidence that Morel does not have the necessary skill to be a capable MLB defender.
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Carries risk, but decisively attempts to fix a position of need for multiple seasons. Doesn't touch prospect depth, fixes the potential logjam of DH's at the MLB level, and doesn't add meaningful payroll. Fantastic.
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I am begging the media to find a better way to talk about this then describing teams as buying or selling as if that informs how they will approach every player, especially non-rentals. The Cubs are not making trades to try to win in 2024, it is yet to be seen if some team is going to offer them an attractive enough deal to trade away Taillon's 2025 productivity since they intend to compete next year.- 85 replies
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- justin steele
- cody bellinger
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In-Season Trades and Transactions
Transmogrified Tiger replied to Post Count Padder's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
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A roll of the dice on a guy who may be a leverage reliever(w/ multiple years of control) in a new org, in exchange for two guys who lack big ceiling and aren’t currently on MLB trajectories. Works for me, I like it better than the similarly flavored Cuas deal last year.
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In-Season Trades and Transactions
Transmogrified Tiger replied to Post Count Padder's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Pretty sure Robinson Chirinos still has a few years of team control too -
Hasn't been a rumor connecting them, but in a similar vein I'm trying to manifest Tauchman for Drake Baldwin myself.
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Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 7-24-24
Transmogrified Tiger replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
if he's throwing a similar amount of innings, why does it matter if he gets them starting games -
General Baseball Chit-Chat Thread
Transmogrified Tiger replied to David's topic in General Baseball Talk
Cal Quantrill with the one shot kill -
In what world was that not a swing from Turang, come on
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I should also add, MLB moving the draft to July hurts the timeline for scouting resources too. Since teams are understandably putting max effort into that process, they have to wait until after the draft to get into the nitty gritty on potential returns for deadline deals.
- 85 replies
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- justin steele
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I think there's a couple things about most teams waiting til the deadline. One is that capital B Blockbuster trades don't happen in general as much as they used to, and they definitely don't happen at the deadline as often. Teams are less and less willing to give up top prospects, they don't overvalue fame, and only a handful of poor teams have much incentive to trade players before they are close to free agency. As a result, most deadline moves of substance are for rentals with the occasional 1.5 season rental. Because the players being traded away are rentals in an environment that zealously hoards prospects, there's almost always incentive for selling teams to wait. The odds of your guy getting hurt pale in comparison to 1 of 10 teams having an injury that increases their need, or the odds that your team has a hot streak where you'd rather roll the dice on low playoff odds instead of getting a low level prospect. So even if we can say 'just go get the guy early and pay the price if you have to', the person on the other end of that trade has just as much motivation to call the bluff that this offer won't be there later or that they can't get another offer as good or greater.
- 85 replies
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- justin steele
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Dodgers - Cubs Trade Chatter Happ/Nico
Transmogrified Tiger replied to KCCub's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Maybe! Happ is a midwestern lifer who signed that extension coming off 71 and 74 win seasons, so my intuition is that if that was really important to him he would've at least tested FA. Never know until the situation presents itself though. -
Dodgers - Cubs Trade Chatter Happ/Nico
Transmogrified Tiger replied to KCCub's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Yeah, maybe I'm overindexing on what is otherwise a puff piece, but there was an Athletic article with quotes from him a few weeks back about how he knows he's not going anywhere at the deadline. That's why he signed the extension and got the NTC so he has that peace of mind. Extremely skeptical that he would be going anywhere. -
He's probably too important to the Mariners to consider moving, but Dylan Moore would be a pretty snug roster fit in that vein.
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The point was not 'actually the Cubs offense is good, they just score fewer runs in this environment', the point is that the Cubs, while a below average offense, scoring < 4 runs so often is more normal than it might feel because of the run scoring environment. Also, we should be less enthusiastic about the starting pitching for the same reason, Shota and Taillon in particular with their FB tendencies probably have regression in their future(in terms of raw run prevention, not necessarily relative to league average).
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Yes, think back to the first half of the year and then think of who would've been available to take the dozen Taillon starts. In a similar vein, for all the understandable irritations with the offense, a big chunk of that is the run environment, hence all the close games. Very real possibility that even if they don't trade Taillon, fan sentiment is 'the rotation is fine, fix the offense', and then next year the environment changes and the problem spots switch places when Taillon/Shota give up more HR, Wicks or Assad faceplants, etc. tl;dr the offense is probably not as big an issue as it *feels*, and by the same token the pitching is not as strong as it feels either.
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74 players have 400 innings at 3B since the start of 2022(Walls has 412). Walls is tied for 27th in OAA and 18th in UZR. The idea that he's one of the ten best defenders in the league is an extreme stretch. His AAA numbers are not very distinguished given the current gap between AAA and MLB, it's very similar to Mastrobuoni who is not playing at even a platoon level currently. He had 466 PA in Tampa in 2022 and 349 last year, this is not someone who is getting one at bat a week that's suppressing his numbers. Fangraphs put a 30 on his game power, there isn't a hidden vein of slug that makes him a viable 3B. His LHP numbers last year are in 90 PA, and in a slightly larger sample the previous year had a 67 wRC+ against them. Lastly, Walls is 28, and about to be arb eligible, which means especially for a fringe roster guy he is not particularly young or cheap. Just wait for Madrigal to be healthy, we can do the same squinting in a slightly different offensive package.
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Walls has 6 bWAR based on being a +42 defender in less than 2 seasons worth of innings, which is unfortunately not substantiated by UZR(roughly +5) or OAA(-10) and why he has cumulative 0.4 fWAR. He has over 1000 PA of 73 wRC+ at the MLB level, how does that fit the current roster at all
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Third base may end up be the defining choice for how long Jed's tenure ends up lasting. Because of how the rest of the roster is shaped(established vets in the corners + Busch at 1B, glove first options at 2B, SS, & probably CF), it is the obvious place to make a big upgrade if you can at all. But the position just doesn't have that league-wide, you're either paying through the nose for a Paredes and hoping he continues, paying all the dollars and a pick for Bregman for him to go back to juiced-ball/trashcan levels of production, or you're doing something more creative. I don't have an objection to creativity, but it means by definition you probably can't count on that spot being a big bat, which means the margins in the rest of the offense are that much narrower.
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His last 30 days entering tonight: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 12/4 K/BB
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It is that far out of the realm of possibility for 2025, probably 2026 too. I mean we're talking about Kjerstad(ZiPS 110 wRC+ projection as a COF/DH) and Mayo(ZiPS 106 wRC+ as a 3B/1B/DH) as the headliners in the 'well the Orioles won't do it but if they did then yeah it's on' mold. In the offseason you can at least squint and come up with something since teams might be willing to trade players who have more MLB certainty, but not at the deadline. Or we could flip this on its head and just trade from our own list of high minors Top 100 hitters or graduate them. We have five of them already!
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I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm saying if you trade Steele you need to nuke the roster. I'm not going to be a luddite and think that trading Steele can't be a net positive, but I do think it's extremely unlikely to be a positive on a 2025-26 timeline, and if you're making a team already selling at the deadline worse in 2025-26, then you need to lean in and finish the job by either trading or extending several more guys.
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Mayo + Kjerstad would be a short term step back for the window that this roster has. If you're trading Steele you ought to be firing Jed and trading *everyone*, but instead we seem to be of the mind that the 2025-26 Cubs can be better by trading Steele, which is a very poor assumption. Let's say this another way, no one had any interest in trading Steele prior to this season, and I would bet a lot of fake money that anyone who as eyes on being competitive in the upcoming 2 years will not be very interested in trading him in the offseason either. But since being a "Seller (tm)" demands getting rid of players and we don't have a classic rental to haggle over the cost of trading, we offer Steele because he 1) could get a large return and 2) is potentially desirable to a "Buyer (tm)". But it doesn't actually help towards the goals that make you decide to sell to begin with, again unless you're on team 'nuke the roster', which I don't really see in any significant number.
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Steele is 7th in MLB in ERA since the start of 2022, he doesn't need more upside and his current level can decline and still be very valuable to a competitive Cubs team. Trading Steele would be for players with much larger downside risk as well. I continue to not understand so many people's thinking about how to approach the deadline.
