squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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No problem at all with them doing this somewhere weird, trying to grow the base, etc. Do think they might be stretching the limits of logistics here....these teams come back and play two more spring training games after this one, whereas the Cubs still have eight more. Have definitely argued that spring training is incredibly drawn out anyways, but seems a little tough to get fully up to speed down in Arizona, take like 10 across the world playing one meaningful game, and then spend a week readjusting back to our time zones with just a couple live action games before the rest of the regular season starts.
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yeah, horsefeathers that Mike Trout guy. Sosa has more postseason hits in this (incredible) video than Trout does in his career
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Yeah the concept of Tom horsefeathers Ricketts of all people, who took over the team right around the time all the kids watching Sosa in the late 90s finally got disposable income to spend at Wrigley, being owed an apology by anyone is incredibly laughable. McGwire works for the Cubs. Mark Grace was hired by Marquee 4 years ago (post multiple DUIs). The Giants retired Bonds number. Cleveland inducted Albert Belle, of all people, into the team hall of fame. This is unique treatment and the push to continue it is led by predominantly bad actors. If you're putting these bizarre 'he must humble himself' conditions around him returning to Wrigley, take a look at the type of people on your side of the argument.
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What does that mean? How was this unique to Sosa?
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This is really dismissive of how fun he was as a player for the fans in an era that was formative for a lot of people around here. The hop, the dugout camera celebration, the batting stance in general, sprinting out to RF (with the flag after 9/11), the two home runs that traveled approximately 1200 feet against Florida in the playoffs at wrigley. Ricketts literally writes a paycheck to McGwire. I’m not ignoring your points, especially the DV one, but I’ve been reading anti-Sammy arguments about the steroids and the corked bat for years and they are more often than not coded with bad motivations.
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Offensive lineup today could be pretty similar to what we see on opening day. happ, seiya, Cody, morel, Dansby, Busch, hoerner, tauchman (in LF), Amaya (anyone know how to get the bullet points/list on a mobile browser? Typing out nine names with the default paragraph spacing seems like it would come out way too long)
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But we have a guy who could slot in as the somewhat regular DH. He has three straight years of being an above average hitter and he can also improve your defense by swapping positions with your theoretical worst defender/starting third baseman. If he wants to take a minor league deal and goes off in AAA, great, we can have this conversation again in two months. But the only way to actually 'find out' is to give the guy who hasn't slugged over .370 in three years regular DH PAs or take them away from your top 100 prospect first baseman, neither of which I'm willing to do.
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I guess I don't really know what Peralta, Mervis, or Smith do on this roster. You've got Bellinger, Busch, and Wisdom who can play first. Peralta as a fifth outfielder? I guess, sure. The other two are basically just....poor options as pinch hitters for a lineup that was designed to not need one? Mervis is the only one who where you could put together a future on this team, but it certainly doesn't include taking one AB every 4 games. You don't really need to build redundancies in terms of offense. There just aren't going to be a lot of spots where the guy at bat is a significantly worse option than a guy on the bench. You want power, you go to Wisdom, you want contact you go to Madrigal, you want patience you go to Tauchman, things get real weird defensively you have Mastro to dump wherever. Like is there a scenario where Dom Smith is a better option offensively than who we would have at the plate?
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My progression is really boring, just mostly centered on not rocking the boat and keeping flexibility for injuries (and then eventually prospects). Opening Day: Amaya Tauchman Wisdom Mastro Cooper Madrigal on DL Madrigal comes off the DL, use an option on Mastro. Can keep that until you need another infielder (any sort of minor injury to Dansby, Nico, Morel, Madrigal, Wisdom), and then you DFA Cooper for Mastro to come back up if you need the spot. Hopefully PCA forces a different decision not long after that.
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Not at all 100%. Patrick Wisdom exists and is by far our best option of those bench names listed to hit RHP. And he's a better third baseman than Morel. It wouldn't make any sense to start Morel at third and Wisdom at DH. What does Mastro do better than Madrigal? Play shortstop? We've got Hoerner for that.
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Agreed, but the other side of that is Wisdom spotted Cooper 97 points in BABIP last year and only lost out on OBP by 15 points. I just can't look at this trend and see positive things going forward: 2021: 284/380/465, 12/27.2 BB/K 2022: 261/337/415, 8.5/25.4 BB/K 2023: 251/304/419, 6.8/28.9 BB/K
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Both Wisdom and Cooper have a 109 over the last three years. Wisdom is 119 v LHP in his career, Cooper is 120. Wisdom gets the advantage in being the only healthy guy on the roster with ML 3B experience for me.
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We aren't going to go into Opening Day with Morel as our starting third baseman and Mastro as our only backup for 3B, SS, and 2B.
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Not to derail this conversation, but does anyone see Dansby or Nico at third base in the future if we get to a point where Morel or Shaw absolutely have to be in the line up and are also pretty unplayable at third? I guess I'm not sure if that's just moving the problem around or if there are legit skills that play at second that don't translate to third.
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Yeah fair, I'm somewhat lazily mentally offsetting the bad Bellinger projection with the somewhat optimistic (to me) Busch projection. Understand where it's coming from just....kinda need to see it in action a little bit. By way of comparison, here are the wRCs of the 9 hitters with the most PAs last year: 118 (Happ) 102 (Hoerner) 104 (Dansby) 126 (Seiya) 134 (Cody) 119 (Morel) 95 (Gomes) 107 (Tauchman) 109 (Wisdom) Similar approach, really. Cody gave us a little bit more elite production (13th in baseball), but you hope for Cody and Seiya to get more PAs relative to Dansby and Nico, and then try to avoid the garbage that follows in the 10th-16th most PA spots (83, 74, 106, 94, 71, 53, 67) and there's a path to duplication, if not improvement.
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It feels dull because Belli was here last year and it was reported as a foregone conclusion for months, but they still come in as contractually spending the 4th most money in the offseason (obviously option heavy contracts, but still). FG also has us as adding (again, including Belli) the 7th most fWAR. Seems dull, but really wasn't at all compared to the non-Dodgers rest of MLB in terms of overall impact.
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Yeah, would I prefer if we had something better than the 29th best projected hitter somewhere in this? Ideally, yes. But there's really no weakness there, especially if you buy into Amaya. You just have to dream on Shaw, Caissie, etc or you can hope they throw the farm at Jose Ramirez (18th) or Bregman (17th).
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A perspective as someone perpetually in the process of trying to be a bigger soccer fan: I know there are some MLS markets with a pretty devoted following, but living in Chicago the Fire seems like a pretty big afterthought. I think the gap in ambience between a Premier League game and something like a Fire game is pretty large and would take away a lot of the appeal (or it least it does to me). Would suggest starting PL and if it really takes hold, then use the MLS to fill in schedule gaps (both in terms of season schedule and just the timing of games on American TV) and to open up the opportunity to see games in person. From there, feel like most adults who are also born and raised Cubs fans probably have an aversion to just jumping on a frontrunner right away. The nice thing about the PL is the race at the bottom is, a lot of times, just as fun as the race at the top. Worst case would be picking a team projected to finish like...12th. Find a team near the bottom, preferably with an American or two (Leeds was my choice a couple years ago, which didn't go so well), and go from there. But also, definitely make time for the big Liverpool/Man City/Arsenal games....it's a different level of pretty much everything.
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112 124 108 108 104 111 98 103 (Wisdom) 85/87
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He's definitely a little slept on, I can't figure him out. Not sure how he's going to replicate/replace getting hit by 11 pitches in 156 PAs, which is what was a large part of his perfectly slightly below average slash line last year. But the minor league offensive numbers are there, a bump there would be wonderful.
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Agreed on the offset with all the embeds, but I don't see IMBs (for example) post anywhere on that particular page in the Politics board. Maybe it's a setting on posts per page? Think I have 25 per page.
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Might be user/my computer error, but don't think the links to the particular posts are working correctly at the moment.
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Honestly, given everything we know about the guy, I was expecting it to be at least morally way worse. Certainly didn't need it before 9 AM on a Wednesday though.
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Steele Opening Day Starter/Initial Rotation discussion
squally1313 replied to Bertz's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Going to continue my annoying trend of making dumb trade suggestions by saying that we should trade for Cease (and we should also consider including Moncada) for not high end prospects and various other flotsam with endless team control and solve all our problems at once. If we need to make salaries work, hope Taillon didn't put the Sox on his 10 team no trade list (he almost certainly did), and swap his bad contract for Moncada's I'm bored, season needs to start, feel free to ignore me. -
If they want to go out and sign or trade for a legitimate bat (of which I don't consider any of the NRIs to be one), I think it's a reasonable conversation. But in the current roster make up, he's not blocking anyone who clearly offers something better in terms of a roster spot, and he's currently the only healthy player on the roster who has played third base for an extended period of time in the majors. If/when Madrigal gets healthy is kinda irrelevant given his historical inability to stay healthy.
