Transmogrified Tiger

If they have 5 or 6 Cubs guys in the Top 100(including a couple likely Top 50 guys in Contreras and Torres), then I'd find that to be a specious argument. Reason for the Cubs not to be in a Top 10? Sure. But 20 is another standard deviation below, at which point you're basically saying that having the #27 prospect v. the #42 prospect outranks having much better depth. I get the point on upside, but at a certain point you're being blinded to it. Again, this isn't to say that skepticism isn't warranted(personally I'm bearish on at least half of BA's Top 10 for the Cubs), but if you're going to say the system is down, then make the system down and don't give them 2x the average in the Top 100.

I don't have a huge issue with the system being ranked as below average, there's a lot of depth but I'm not overly bullish on many of those players. What will be interesting to see is if BA is consistent with that bearish outlook when it comes to the Top 100. The Cubs, for their lack of elite talents, have had 5 or more consistently show up in those Top 100 lists from other outlets, which seems incompatible with a bottom half system overall to me(at least given the state of this particular system where there isn't a chasm after those 5-7 guys).

It's also a promo/ad so it could be doctored a bit.

maybe it's because you hate white players

It looks like that altercation was in 2012, unless there was another one. http://www.amazinavenue.com/2013/11/13/5049256/international-free-agent-profile-2014-matt-murton

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nono, Theriot is going to MAKE someone a billionaire.

Heyward is a close 2nd to Lorenzo Cain in outfielder range the last 3 years, and 3rd place is nearly 20 runs behind them: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=of&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2015&month=0&season1=2013&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d Overall, Heyward leads all OF in accumulated UZR (and UZR/150) in that timeframe. Heyward may not have a ton of CF experience, but he's not a guy with much/any uncertainty about his ability to handle the position.

"FINALLY, more Thursday games" - no one

How did Nguyen and the young subs look today?

The biggest problem with the trade is that Jean Segura is bad and he presumably was traded for because they intend him not to be bad, which will probably bite them. All the MIF options are RH so there's no platoon/time-sharing benefit either. That doesn't means there's anything inherently wrong with gambling that Segura turns things around after 1100 MLB PAs of replacement level hacking, but it also doesn't move the needle much. They're still a mediocre team(Steamer says 9th in the NL, 3rd in the West, well behind the true WC contenders), and they still have 4 to 6 spots where they will likely be below average on offense(including 2-3 IF spots). Trading for Segura does not make Arizona appreciably better than they were yesterday, signing Kendrick would have.

I noticed this yesterday, it's very nice not to have to do the 'will NSBB be crashing' math if I'm browsing between 11 PM and 1 AM.

To clarify, right now McGee is basically worth Dickerson(to me that's pretty fair so I don't think the Rockies did great or poorly from a pure value perspective). Whatever McGee gains from showing he's healthy(which itself is a misnomer because he still has the injury history and 30 healthy IP won't change his risk), he similarly loses because he's got 25% less team control at a minimum when he gets dealt. While Kimbrel and Giles both brought a haul in trade, both have more consistency in terms of performance, do not have McGee's injury risk, and have more team control. And for every Kimbrel there's a Clippard who while not a 1-to-1 stuff comparison, was a very good reliever for many years and was basically given away with half a season to FA. There's no arbitrage to turning Dickerson into McGee. The Rockies did it because they think they're a contender for some reason, and they'll pay the price either in McGee's likely lower trade value when the team goes south, or in the missed opportunity now when they could have gotten someone more useful for 2017 and beyond.

To me that's tantamount to having a valuable old baseball card, then selling it for Bitcoin so you can reap the rewards if Bitcoin's value takes off. If you're trying to get arbitrage by trading the existing player, it probably doesn't make sense to first put that player's value into a much more volatile form(pitcher, reliever, reliever w/ recent injury, reliever w/ recent injury and not cheap or controlled long term) before getting what you actually want. OTOH, they wouldn't have gotten Mcagee at that price without taking on some risk. Rockies are basically betting they sold high on Dickerson, thanks in part to the value teams put on control, and he's more Seth Smith than Matt Holliday. A reliever with McGee's velocity and career level of performance easily sells for more. It's a risk worth taking for a rebuilding team with an extra, cheap platoon COF to sell, even if unconventional. McGee is real good, but I don't think he's amping up his trade value all that much. For as much as he can prove he's healthy, he's a guy you have for maximum 1.5 years when he gets dealt. With that in mind, if the idea is selling high on Dickerson, then you should either get someone who you have longer time for their value to appreciate, or just get the type of player you want all along instead. But this is the Rockies so they seem cursed to live indefinitely in a state where they are not good but act like they need to put finishing touches on a contender.

To me that's tantamount to having a valuable old baseball card, then selling it for Bitcoin so you can reap the rewards if Bitcoin's value takes off. If you're trying to get arbitrage by trading the existing player, it probably doesn't make sense to first put that player's value into a much more volatile form(pitcher, reliever, reliever w/ recent injury, reliever w/ recent injury and not cheap or controlled long term) before getting what you actually want.

If you swap Soler for Fowler on a 1-2 year deal, you're basically creating a similar situation in the OF. Coghlan and Fowler are both short term guys like Lackey and Hammel, and Schwarber has a chance of moving to catcher or DH at least for a decent chunk of games, leaving Heyward as the only real OF of certainty. Cubswin11 is right, if you can basically swap Fowler for Coghlan and get something worthwhile for Coghlan, then that's great. Fowler's a better fit as the extra OF so if they can convince him there's enough PA to go around(and he could get 400-500 easily) then it's a pretty easy win. Swapping Fowler for Soler is a search for the 'perfect roster' that isn't at all fruitful

I'm late to this but I kinda can't believe that Sharma is pairing up with Greenberg. Everything I've read from Greenberg has been smarmy and superficial, basically the opposite of Sharma's work. The Athletic will almost certainly fail, but definitely worth it to try on the off chance they stumble into something, since writing jobs that pay the rent aren't a growth market. Sharma will be no less employable after the Athletic than he was at BP.

Only 2 split squad days, is that unusual? I would have guessed that there were like 5 to 10 of those in most years.

i want to go back and laugh at all the people who said they wouldn't want him because i'm pretty sure i wasn't one of them Wasn't it a Castro for Harper-type of deal? I think more like Soler + Russell + others Also there's not a lot of indication that Washington actually thought he wasn't worth the trouble. There was that allusion around the winter meetings last year to a huge, huge deal that some team was working on that never got far enough down the line. I like to think it was a Harper deal, and hopefully the Cubs, as they're one of only a few teams who had resources to trade that would have been enticing.

Bryant's BABIP will probably come down, but probably not crash down for at least a few years while he still has his current footspeed. It's also good to remember that he got off to a very slow start in the power department, so odds are he'll lose a few more balls in play to home runs to help mitigate that effect.

Your hatred there destroys mine of the idiot on BP Wrigleyville. what about lahair tho I don't know how to say 'We don't say his name' in Japanese.

It did bring back the name of Robinson Chirinos......

He thinks people are quoting Geovany Soto as a rebuttal to his point.

Give me Hannemann as a prospect who might pull a Contreras, although I've always liked him in spite of the results. Or if you want to go way off the reservation, talk Martarano out of football and maybe he takes a leap.

FYI Tim, I'm pretty sure the post love thing has a bug where users are randomly liking many posts per day. I've seen a few different users where this seems to be the case, but dalgreen seems to be the most obvious one since he hasn't been around in forever. Not a big deal, but now you know.