squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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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.
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But Madrigal is hurt and Mastrobuoni put up a 71 wRC last year. Mastro's value is in his ability to play the middle infield (and everything else), any improvement with the bat is a bonus. He should not be a starter, and Madrigal isn't healthy enough to be one. Whatever marginal step up you see in Cooper's bat over Wisdom is, to me, outweighed by Wisdom's actual ability, however mediocre, to play third. (Alternatively, trade Morel/PCA/Wesneski for Ramirez/Bieber, fire Wisdom and Madrigal into the sun, and win 93 games. Kidding. Kinda.)
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I'm overall pretty happy with the offseason, but I do wish we figured out a path to go into opening day with an established, every day third baseman, one that fit the approach of the rest of the infield (ie, a good glove). Right now we basically just have like...4-5 dudes who can kinda, maybe play the position, all flawed (either defensively, offensively, health, or some combination), and, maybe projecting here, but a hesitancy to find a final solution because of a top prospect who everyone just assumes can play third but isn't really based on anything. There's not really a combination of the current group that platoons especially well (as mentioned, Wisdom and Morel have the same profile), Madrigal is the only one with (maybe) a plus glove and he's hurt because that's his actual main trait, Busch got written off there almost immediately it seems like and Mastrobuoni is....Mastrobuoni. It's just....messy.
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Clearing up a little confusion here: Bull was saying Kiermaier, per BRs calculation of WAR, generated 2.0 oWAR AND 2.2 dWAR, or 4.2 total. This took me a second because FG gave him 2.2 fWAR total last year, so obviously BR liked him better. 4.2 I assume you're much more comfortable with right? He also did that in 408 PAs, so extrapolating out to 600 makes it an incredibly impressive year. I prefer FG, but I think to Bull's point, expecting some proxy of Kiermaier's defense and a 110-115 OPS+ puts him in the arena of 'best player in baseball'. I don't think that's a realistic expectation for anyone, much less someone who has pretty much never been a top 3-5 prospect, hasn't shown anything above AA, etc. I'd assume you'd agree that expectations should not be 'one of the best players in baseball' (although during Mike Cameron's peak of 1999-2009 he produced the 16th most offensive WAR, so maybe you are?). So if we lower expectations down to 'consistent above average producer, couple all star teams, etc etc' (one could split hairs here, I'd rather not), we need to regress at least one side of this Budget Mike Cameron bat/Budget Kevin Kiermaier glove comp you're putting on him. Personally I think he's much more likely to approach Kiermaier than he is Cameron.
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No, the guy who said he could have a 'decent bat similar to someone like Cameron' wouldn't be in agreement with that statement, because Mike Cameron exceed 110 on ten separate occasions, which would make it very much not a 'peak year season'
