squally1313

He had the lowest BABIP in baseball and his xwOBA (.372) would have been the highest on the Cubs by 14 points (over Suzuki).

Here's an unorganized plan I would like to see: Given recent rumors, trade for Alonso. Call it $17m for 2024, 2025 and beyond we're past the Stroman, Hendricks, Smyly, Mancini deals. Would not take one of our top guys, but probably a few from the second tier. Sign Bellinger. Tell him he gets to play center field for as long as he wants. Trade PCA for a young, quality starter with a couple years of control. On the trade value site the list of pitchers within 10 points/whatever of PCA is: Logan Gilbert, Hunter Greene, Eury Perez, Pablo Lopez, Framber, Gallen, Bobby Miller, Brayan Bello, Kyle Bradish, Joe Ryan. Andrew Painter if we want to get creative and the Phillies like the idea of PCA shoring up the outfield defense. Think PCA is going to be a really good player. But I don't think you want to make the whole plane out of Nico Hoerners and we already have essentially two. Canario and Mervis have the winter and spring to prove which one should be the DH. If you can get anything of value of Morel, especially on the pitching side, pull the trigger. Wisdom/Madrigal are fine for now at third. Sigh a couple bullpen dudes. Don't know who they are, don't care. Make sure they are good. Rotation is Steele, Stroman, PCA pitcher, Taillon, Hendricks, with Wicks, Ben Brown, Horton (and then the Kilians of the world) in AAA. Bullpen is Azlolay, new bullpen dude x 2, Smyly, Assad, Wesneski, Leiter, Merryweather, Palencia, Keegan, Hughes, Heuer, Cuas I guess, etc Lineup is Happ, Hoerner, Alonso, Belli, Seiza, Swanson, DH, Amaya/Gomes, Wisdom/Madrigal, bench is Gomes, Madrigal, Canario/Mervis, Tauchman

Candelario gave the Cubs a 106 wRC (0.2 fWAR) playing essentially half first, half third, which should not be too hard to replace. We got terrible (sub 300 OBP) offensive production at first base and the DH, in theory the two easiest positions to fill. We basically need to find starters in center (where we have a top 15ish prospect in baseball), third, first, and maybe DH, and we need those four positions plus catcher (just call it 2 fWAR, whatever) to total about 15 wins. That plus 15 from Happ, Dansby, Nico, and Seiya (16.4 this past year) gets you to 30, which would have been 5th in baseball. To 'only' repeat our offensive performance (9th in baseball), we need like 10 WAR from those 5 spots. It shouldn't be too tough on that side of the ball.

Generally confused by him saying 'Taillon was who we thought he was' and also 'he pitched way worse than expected' in the same sentence.

In a vacuum none of that is wrong, but you also have to consider the opportunity cost of stacking those good/not quite elite hitters. Eventually the problem will work itself out (see Castro/Baez/Russell), but in the meantime you've spent, what, half your FA budget on Bellinger where the plan if everyone plays well is to bump Bellinger and Suzuki down the defensive spectrum. I'd love to have the three of them challenging each other for ABs and giving our DH production a boost. But I think I'd prefer Bellinger in center, Suzuki in right, Canario backing them up, and, say, Eury Perez or Pablo Lopez (to pick two starters with a lower trade value than PCA) in the rotation. Or passing on Belli, trusting that PCA can be CF Hoerner, and grabbing Yamamoto/the best pitcher out there and then some cheaper corner infield bats. The pitching is too much of a mess to be able to afford that kind of crowded outfield luxury, basically.

I think if you sign Bellinger, you seriously explore trading PCA to 'cheaply' fill another hole and pencil Bellinger in center for the next 5 years. If you split the difference on wOBA and xwOBA, which is probably generous, he's a 350 guy, and 10 first basemen (with over 250 PAs) met or exceeded that. We need a guy or two that can mash, and we need somewhere to put him. Bellinger is a very good baseball player, but a good amount is tied to his defense and he's just not going to give you that elite offense (and neither is anyone else in our lineup currently). Let him give us that value in centerfield or look elsewhere. It's a 'good problem' to have, in that PCA is projected to be more than a platoon player and Bellinger and Suzuki both should be playing against everyone too. But I don't think you can or should platoon your way into keeping all of them.

Bellinger is an incredibly easy to like dude, and I think most people here actually watched enough of him to see the value/skills he brings that may not necessary show up in the advanced stats. But, at the end of the day the advanced stats show a very different/worse hitter than what we got out of him. His xwOBA was 7th on the team for guys with 250+ PAs, behind names like Morel, Tauchman, even Wisdom. I'm willing to give him some of that wOBA-xwOBA difference based on two strike approach, etc. But it's still a 39 point gap. And then ultimately, I just don't like paying top dollar for a dude and then limiting the value he can give you. He's a good defender at a premium position. Totally fine giving him the money and parking PCA in AAA through the all star break and figuring it out from there. I think we can find some version of Bellinger's bat that can play first for a fraction of what he's going to get on the market, and we have enough other holes that it wouldn't be how I spent the money.

The positives: Think it has to start with Dansby, given the importance placed on getting a shortstop last year, and seeing the struggles that the other options have gone through. Will throw Nico in here, who ended up 26th in baseball in offensive fWAR. The fact that our two most valuable players had a 104 and a 102 wRC on year gives me a little pause, but assuming you trust the people who put the overall metrics together, it makes their contributions very repeatable, and barring injury we've got two top 30 offensive players locked up for under $40m/year total for the forseeable future. Outside of the Braves, I think most teams would enjoy our position (Seager/Semien are better, but also $61m next year). Steele. I'm not totally in on him being a top 5 pitcher in baseball or anything (I just need more Ks), and I think my pitching expectations were kinda broken by Arrieta's two year stretch. But as long as we didn't wreck his arm down the stretch, all the underlying data points to him being a top 15 pitcher. Suzuki. Had kinda just assumed his ceiling would be Ian Happ, which is plenty productive but another 'simply' above average regular that leaves us one less spot for a stud hitter. Those last two months were really impressive, and knowing he has that ability to carry the offense for long stretches is really encouraging. I think the farm development was generally positive. Always easier to point to the successes (Horton, Canario, PCA, Shaw, etc) than the failures (Davis, I'm sure there are others). And I think next year is about all I've got in terms of patience for the 'the waves are coming' argument. But there's a lot of talent there. Not positives: To continue that last point....we need to nail what we do with that talent. We aren't going to be in a scenario where we're going to roll into April as easy Central favorites. The Brewers will be there, who knows on the Reds and Cards. Maybe you throw PCA in the deep end, but there isn't going to be a lot of room for Canario, I guess still Mervis, etcs, and having them sit in AAA and get written off the second their OPS drops below .900 isn't a good use of anyones time. We didn't really get anything out of the system this year, reinforcement wise, Wicks aside. Can't have that happen again. My vote is to put three of them in a package for a starter of some sort, but in an era where 20-25 are 'going for it' every year, I'm not sure who is trading a starter for prospects. The rest of the rotation. Two straight years with injuries for Stroman, if he's even coming back. The rest is shaky, and very BABIP dependent. The starters were 25th in baseball in K/9. Maybe Horton fixes that eventually, maybe Yamamoto does. But needs to get better. I'm fine, I think, with Kyle as the 5th pitcher. Steele is better, I think Taillon is a safe bet to be better. I would like two other guys who can clear that bar. The bullpen. I have no idea how to fix it. But it needs to be fixed. No more throwing stuff at the wall until July. Go find a couple shutdown guys. In terms of the Bellinger question, I'm pretty neutral on whether to bring him back or not, but if we decide to...you got to see what the PCA market is out there. Not sure if this guy posts here, but saw this tweet and thought it proved the opposite of what he was trying to say. Those are two very different groups in terms of offensive output for the same amount of money. Pay him to play CF or find a different option. And, more importantly, shore up the staff.

I've been on them hard for the last month saying that they should have gotten reinforcements at the deadline, once it was clear it was a contending team. But it was pointed out to me that in theory every contending team, all 20 of them, was looking for extra arms at the deadline at not a lot changed hands. As far as the offseason goes...there seemed to be a clear plan to open up a 3-4 year window that kinda started this year but not really. I'm not going to pretend to be able to tell you the intricacies of the luxury tax but I know enough to surmise that they looked at the team, decided they were a year away from legitimate contenders, and made sure they stayed under the tax. And so you have a limited amount of free agent dollars. And, to my earlier point, even if you pretend the luxury tax doesn't exist, the Ricketts are terrible and greedy and are going to set artificial caps anyways. Would you rather that they signed a couple top bullpen dudes instead of Bellinger? Dansby appears to be a steal so ignoring that one. Taillon has been mediocre, but we needed starters and he ended up with a 1.5 fWAR. My point is you can't just say they should have spent an extra $10m or $20m or whatever to supplement the bullpen. I wish they would have, and then also gotten a better first baseman and outbid everyone for Senga, etc etc. There are finite dollars.

I mean, that's probably just a different debate/conversation. It's pretty conventional to not spend serious money on the bullpen if you aren't planning on being a contender, but having said that, I think we, and most people here, are probably in agreement that we would love the super rich owners of the Cubs to spend more money on professional baseball players (and ideally less money on ****** politicians!). But at this point pretending that there's not some spending guideline, if not hard limits, is probably naive. Hypothetical money spent on the 2023 bullpen maybe costs you your 2023 centerfielder. Yeah, there's enough money in the bank account for both/all of them. But that's just not how it works.

I do think he got caught in the middle in what had turned into a decent strategy in those down years. Sign a bunch of clearly flawed arms for pocket change, and count on your internal team to turn 1 or 2 of them a year into a fringe top 100 prospect come July. The team was projected to be about 500, comfortably behind Milwaukee and St Louis, wouldn't have made sense to go make a big splash before year on a reliever. I've complained more than most about their inability to add pitching depth at the deadline, but it's been pointed out that you would think every team is in the market for that and no one really did, so maybe, for whatever reason, it just wasn't out there. I expect them to seriously address it this year, and think there's a couple avenues to that. Will be pretty upset if we take a similar approach.

Are we going to get the K rate under 30%? We've got 841 MLB PAs already. I don't know how you turn that K rate and a lack of any defensive value into something substantial. And I don't know how we're the team to give him the chance to do it....do we want him as our third baseman next year? Our center fielder? He's a cheap bat who's going to run into a home run every 5 games. So is Wisdom, except he doesn't take his shirt off nearly as much. If Morel has perceived value, we should take advantage of that.

yeah that's about right. this team certainly hates being blown out, unfortunately. i'll save the objective, big picture thoughts for another thread. annoyed enough people here enough i'm sure

He has 416 PAs this year and has given us a 1.0 fWAR on the year. We should be trying to do better. He shouldn't be getting this many PAs on a contending team, he's the kinda guy who should be traded to some non-contending team to see if he turns into anything more while we pick up an ace reliever or a soon to be expensive starter.

Wisdom has the same bat, the same defensive value, the same team control, and like 10% of the perceived value. Don't need them both.

They should pinch hit PCA for Wisdom here

What positions does he play and why hasn't he been playing them

This was a general thought, mostly impressive at bat.

Please sell high on Morel this offseason, whatever 'high' means

Lol tied?

Eh. I’m just coping too. Having been a fan of this team my whole life I’d never even dream of going on one of those ‘last wild card to the world series’ runs. It was going to end at some point. They gave us like, what, 50 games to be emotionally invested in? I’m not going to be super mad that it wasn’t 60. But you’ve got people in here who seem like they would call for PCA and canario in game 4 of the NLCS if we were down 3-0.

I mean this is just dark. Playing game 160 while still technically alive and people are calling for them to basically concede the season to give PCA and canario 8 at bats.

No one in the world hates the cubs more than this game thread right now

(PCA should maybe start next year in AAA)

2023: 28-18 2022: 28-23 2021: 21-15 2020: 11-5 2019: 27-18 2018: 33-19 2017: 25-22 Which is a preposterous run. I'm still Team Luck/Variance. But, in all honesty, started doing that figuring I would prove you wrong and was badly mistaken.