squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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Cubs signed 10 players for a total of $310m last offseason, 5th most in baseball.
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Hosmer: 100 PAs, .234/.280/.330, -0.4 fWAR Mancini (to help your argument): 263 PAs, .234/.299/.336, -0.8 fWAR No one else besides Mervis turned in a negative fWAR performance in over 50 PAs Rowdy Tellez: 351 PAs, .215/.291/.376, -0.9 fWAR Jesse Winker: 197 PAs, .199/.320/.247, -0.8 fWAR Luke Voit: 74 PAs, .221/.284/.265, -0.4 fWAR Josh Donaldson: 69 PAs, .169/.290/.390, -0.1 fWAR That's not to mention giving .585 OPS Brice Turang 448 PAs. Teams have bad players.
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My overall opinion about this move is that it implies an exciting short term future of signings/trades/decisions/etc that will actually move the needle towards a more competitive team. I don't think this move by itself does much of anything. And my frustration here (and, candidly, boredom at work) is people attributing credit to Counsell and blame to Ross for things that largely have nothing to do with them. It's much easier to 'press the right button' when going to your bullpen when you have 5 buttons that are all right, whereas David Ross had an 'Albert Azlolay' button and then like 6 interchangeably bad ones. And people here spent the last month of the season blaming Ross for picking a bad option out of a set of bad options, as if Counsell's presence would have just magically imparted the ability to throw strikes. I hope the team does great with him as manager. I just can't imagine a situation where people in the game threads next year are going to be like 'wow, what an inspired reliever decision, genius'. It's just misallocating blame to Ross and patting each other on the back for the hypothetical moves people here would have made that would have saved the season.
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Can we talk about how FG projected the Brewers to win 84 games and the Cubs to win 75 games? Under that metric, seems like the performance was pretty even? You're not going to be able to point to any substantial evidence that one run records are at all sustainable or predictable going forward. Anecdotally, the Cubs had a disproportionate amount of blowout wins. That's what drives the advanced statistics being so favorable for the Cubs. There's an argument that you should discount those extra runs against position players or the back of the bullpen. Fine, but there goes your argument that the Cubs are better/equal to Milwaukee. Otherwise you're just dinging David Ross for the players grouping their runs in a very suboptimal way over the course of a season.
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I don't even know where the goalposts are anymore. You started by saying they play their home grown prospects, theoretically their relievers. Absent Devin Williams (wow, impressive that Counsell recognized that talent), that isn't true. Then I point to how the offensive prospects haven't turned into anything under Counsell, and it turns out those were just bad players regardless. I get it, all the players suck without Counsell, so any player that doesn't suck is because of Counsell.
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So, to be clear, we're crediting Counsell for some players playing well as a Brewer, and when other players play poorly, we're assigning blame to them being a small market team.
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I mean, maybe? Does he get dinged for the fact that they were 22nd in wRC this year? Their three best offensive players (Contreras, Yelich, Adames) were either savvy trades or predate Counsell. No one else above 1.4 fWAR. Should we expect our offense to take a step back next year?
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Devin Williams, yes. Joel Payamps, no. Hoby Milner, no. Trevor McGill, no. Elvis Peguero, no. Abner Uribe, yes. Bryce Wilson, no.
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Honestly attributing the success of their relievers to the coaching staff seems very backwards to me. Devin Williams has been elite for years. Joel Payamps was 29 years old, in his 5th MLB season, and has a career 2.6 BB/9 rate. Hoby MIlber was 32, had 150 career innings already, and has a career 2.57 BB/9 rate. Trevor McGill was 29, third season, 3.22 career BB/9 rate. That's the top 4 fWAR producers in their pen, all with major league experience and either elite, elite stuff or above average control. We had one of those guys.
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I assume in super important games down the stretch you're going to want Happ, Swanson, Hoerner, Suzuki, and Bellinger in the lineup. Plus Gomes is 6. Candelario is seven? If you think PCA and Canario and their 6 hits total this year change things in a seven game sample, then yes, sure, managers are the most important thing in the world.
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Cubs offense in the 7 games against Arizona: .212/.285/.329, for a 614 OPS. This is obviously David Ross' fault.
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If Counsell is worth 5 wins over an average manager and we got him for $8m a year, roughly the cost of 1 win in the free agent market, for 5 years, that's the biggest steal in baseball history. Alternatively, he could just not be worth that.
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He let the starters pitch too long for their ability and then also used the few good relievers he had too much. Maybe, just maybe, the issue didn't lie with David Ross. It was a middle of the pack pitching staff on a team that was designed to be middle of the pack, and it didn't get fixed during the year. The Brewers had 5 relievers pitch over 55 innings this year and the highest ERA among the 5 of them was 3.38. If you want to call that some sort of Counsell magic, go for it. But to me that's just hitting on talent when putting the roster together in a way that Hoyer very much didn't. Otherwise, what TT said. I don't think this manager swap really matters really matters on its own but it's not my additional $4m. Outside of this being a situation where Counsell fell in love with Wrigley as a kid, every team came in and pitched him on their future and he picked us. It is the definition of signaling that you're ready to win and compete and make the tough decisions sometimes required to do so. It's reminding everyone else in the Central that the Cubs are the lone big fish in an otherwise small pond. Looking forward to seeing what happens the next couple months.
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This move by itself doesn't do much for me. The implications of this move have are pretty incredible.
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Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
squally1313 replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Said another way, Juan Soto is so, so good at hitting baseballs. -
Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
squally1313 replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
If you trade Morel for Soto you have 5 players that combined for 21.8 fWAR last year, which on their own would make them the 11th most productive offensive team in baseball last year. Gomes and Amaya gave you 1.6 last year, let's not even round up for getting rid of Barnhart and you're at 23.4. Madrigal and Wisdom gave you another 1.6 in not a full season of PAs, there's 25 (better than the Cubs as a team). Can we get 4 wins out of CF, 1B, better backups given the existence of PCA, Canario, Mervis, name a random old first baseman you could trade for, etc etc etc? Because there you go, you're a top 5 offense in baseball. -
Well that was ultimately a pretty terrible October. Time to put 100% of our focus on arguing about Morel's value.
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Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
squally1313 replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
If the Cubs don't believe he can play third base or center field, and don't have a spot for him at second base, and other teams think that he can or have an opening at second base, that means that he's an asset that's worth less to us than to other teams. You can argue the Cubs are wrong, or that Morel is capable of getting up to speed at a non-first base/COF position in one offseason, but we haven't seen any evidence of that besides that he can throw hard. It's all wishful thinking and half-informed projections or like, retro-fitting Javy's Cubs career onto him. The Padres, as a team making a mini reset and looking to retool and cut costs for a year, are a perfect team to give Morel 650 PAs and all the time in the world in the field to sink or swim and see what comes out on the other end. So is any other team that's on either end of the competitive bell curve, either the rebuilders who see a potential future key piece with tons of team control, or a team very confident to make the playoffs who have the depth and cushion to exploit his hot streaks. The Cubs have a large majority of their PAs spoken for and need the rest filled out by improved performance they can rely on. Morel isn't it. -
Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
squally1313 replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Why is Morel expected to improve going forward? Is this 2.5 WAR projection just accumulation from handing him the keys to an every day starters job? All of 2 people had a single digit BB rate and a 30+% K rate (which he also carried in AAA this year, somehow) and gave you 2.5 fWAR or more. Jose Siri and Luke Raley. Neither above 3 wins, Siri being a very valuable defender. How you get marked improvement with that plate discipline profile and a complete lack of evidence of defensive skill is kinda beyond me. He's going to have unreal hot stretches and he's going to have times he's almost entirely unplayable. A lot of these arguments are weirdly circular and just seem to want to avoid doing anything. There may be some (very) marginal benefit to having a year to negotiate, but ultimately we're going to have to convince him that we're offering him more money than he could get anywhere else. That isn't generally an 'efficient' way of paying baseball players, but it's the way you need to do things if you want to get elite players. -
Going somewhere, Soto? Yes, to the Yankees
squally1313 replied to Bobson Dugnutt's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
If you're saying that 2025-2030 or whatever Cubs without Christopher Morel don't have any chance at contention, then honestly they're probably screwed for that time frame either way. -
To lean even more into it, as someone who follows Grant Brisbee, David Roth, and Clue Heywood, it's front of mind in pretty much every Arizona game this month.
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For the terminally online
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1. Bellinger CF/Mervis 1B/whatever pitching we can get for PCA 2. PCA CF/Mervis 1B/Ohtani or Soto at DH 3. PCA CF/Alonso 1B
