Transmogrified Tiger

Two things that might make a match here possible even with a celebrity premium: 1. The Jays are a fairly good match with other guys they may sell. If the Jays insist on 2 Top 100 guys instead of 1 and a rising prospect, expanding the deal to be more one stop shopping could break that deadlock in a way other teams may not want to. 2. This is far from certain, but there may be a permutation where the Cubs would prefer to pay a higher prospect cost in order to get the Jays to pay down some of Vlad's remaining arb money. The teams who can afford Vlad generally speaking would probably prefer to pay less and take on his arb number. Similarly, we know Jed's preference for prospects over paying big money, and that's a reason this may not happen. But this kinda works in reverse. If Vlad is one of only a couple big bats that may be available this deadline + offseason, and the alternatives are gonna require huge money that Jed can't/won't pay(Soto), then it may be more palatable to pay the prospect cost to get Vlad over the line and also maintain a bit more of his cherished financial flexibility.

The way I think of it is that Diaz restores a floor of production from the position. Cubs catchers are currently playing at a full season pace of almost -3 fWAR, even if Amaya still splits time and doesn't improve, replacing Gomes with a player of Diaz's profile is potentially a multi-win upgrade for a price far less than those typically go for at the deadline. Would I consider the catcher position solved? Not particularly, but it would no longer be a bleeding wound on the roster. But I probably wouldn't use further assets on it unless something else significant changes. I'd be okay with gambling on the odds of one or both of Amaya/Diaz having enough of an offensive turnaround to provide upside that it can be decent instead of merely 'not horrific'. Especially since the odds of a 'definitely better than Diaz' option being available basically hinge on the Blue Jays selling or some other team deciding to give up on a pre-arb catcher, which is far from a slam dunk.

I agree that Diaz isn't a huge prize, I'd bet on him exceeding his career line but he's a tossup to be an average hitter and the defense as you say has waxed and waned, in particular the receiving. That said, if Colorado is willing to do something very soon, I think the duration of time you'd have him may be worth pulling the trigger. Another 5-7 weeks of the current catching situation waiting for the Jays to maybe sell Jansen or some other non-obvious target (that needs to be clearly better than Diaz) to become available is a significant opportunity cost given how dire the current catching situation is. You could also argue that Diaz's likely cheaper price compared to a Jansen or a long term solution may be helpful for them to make even more productive additions closer to the deadline too. As a hypothetical, Diaz + Vlad > Jansen + this year's Candelario.

Over 70% of Busch's minor league innings came at 2B. I doubt he's going to look particularly great there, but he wasn't as error prone as, say, Morel was as a MiLBer on the left side of the infield.

Fraley sliding in feet first on that seems both counter productive and dangerous in a dickish way. Basically the Reds whole vibe

Marquee's K-zone is way off, Strike 1 to Busch was like 3 inches high by their graphic and Statcast has it comfortably in the zone.

No game threads are notorious for their cheery optimism and their sober minded analysis

Let's please not turn this into a case study in how many runs can score with a BABIP of .000

Cody you've gotta be on 3rd man, Friedl had a beat on that immediately

Since the start of 2022, the Reds have hit the most batters in baseball, and the difference between them and 2nd is about the difference between 7th and 9th.

Both World Series teams last year had similar or worse stretches, after the all-star break.

Nico's hand is bad enough that he can't grip a bat well enough to play but he's gonna run and potentially slide into home with that hand unprotected?

Alexis Diaz could be the Reds closer for the next 10 years and I would still see his last name on a scorebug or boxscore and think it was Jumbo Diaz.

Don't mistake decision making for execution, Bellinger had terrible trouble picking up the breaking ball, was sitting fastball(especially with bases loaded and following the walk), and got a good pitch to hit.

whatever happened to Toy

full available schedule the other 2, one of which was a 60 game season. And again, 100 games is not an okay level either, *just missing* 100 games played means you missed about 25% more of the season than you would want in a regular. For his career he's averaging 100 games per 162, that's not enough to make qualifier leaderboards. Not a small thing if you're talking about making a significant trade for a player.

cackling at JD hanging Boog out to dry "I don't like the stripe across the hat, it looks weird" (pause) "K"

Okay, so Robert has never missed time aside from 2 of his 3 full length seasons, while he was very healthy for the short pandemic season and last year. And he's already missed over 50 games this year. This is not a made up thing! However convenient you might find it, a guy you're looking at paying a steep price for consistently failing to play 100 games, never mind 130-140, is a significant factor.

Minor Leagues don't play 162 games. Robert has played 58% of games in the 3+ full seasons since the pandemic-shortened season, a 94 game pace. There's a difference between 'oh this guy gets a little knock every year and gets rested like most modern players', and spending most of his career missing ~3 months worth of games per season.

Why do you think he put Wisdom 1st?

I split this off because I think it's a worthy topic that isn't specific to the White Sox sell off. My quick .02: I agree that you probably need to make a more decisive move than they have fairly soon, both because of what Bertz mentions about the diminishing returns of hoarding upper level prospects, and because their point in the competitive cycle it will make sense to be a bit more bold. The deadline and this deadline in particular is going to be a suboptimal time to make such a move. There's already news stories about how few sellers there might be, and in general the deadline has trended away from splashier moves In particular, the sellers this year don't have a particularly good match for what the Cubs might want to add. This is not to say there's no one worth trading for, but if you made a list of the profiles the Cubs would be most interested in trading for, the top couple on the list probably don't have a good match to players likely to be traded in July. Having said that, there are a few interesting names if you start dangling multiple Top 100 names that most orgs will hesitate to give up or even have. For SP, Crochet and Luzardo probably highlight the list. At 3B, if the Rays are open to it and a playoff longshot you could maybe tempt them out of Paredes(especially with their 2 best prospects being 3B at AAA). Robert was mentioned in the other thread and could be worth it even if the fit is suboptimal.

BBTV implies that proposal is a slight overpay, though they have Kopech has negative value and I would assume any trade for Robert will be at least a little irrational from a value perspective. Still not so far off though, players like PCA simply don't get traded anymore unless they're also getting pre-arb quality in return(e.g. Varsho for Moreno). More likely, I think you'd see like Alcantara and one of Ballesteros/Caissie as the primary pieces?

Having done copious research read at least 2 ranking lists of scouting reports, I think of the consensus names that may be available, I'm most interested in the FSU guys. Further down the board, I'm kinda intrigued by Janek? Surefire catcher defensively and big small school numbers are intriguing, especially when he held his own in the Cape and his offensive explosion came after that. I also wonder about this FO taking their chance with Brecht, he's functionally the Wiggins pick on steroids.

only slight though