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squally1313

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Everything posted by squally1313

  1. squally1313
    That's mostly fair. I don't think the potential benefit to 2025 and beyond is worth throwing away the admittedly mediocre chance they have this season. To be clear, I'm definitely like, running a present value of future potential benefits when making that determination. Give me somewhat good baseball now over hopefully very good baseball in the future. But also worth talking about the current state of the system, the plethora of prospects, and the crunch coming. You're not going to find many teams this offseason willing to trade impact MLB talent for minor leaguers. There's only like, 6 of them now. That might change come midseason, but it's not a guarantee, serious roster decisions will have to be made by then, and also that means unless you win free agency in a big way, you're probably looking at a team that's going to end up exactly where we are now.
  2. squally1313
    I don't want to reduce your whole post to this line, but you can't say this and then continue advocating for trading two of our four best players and giving up on the next two months of baseball. The current baseball team is 12-6 in their last 18 games. Not sure what else you're looking for. Go do things to make them more likely to win now, not in 2025.
  3. squally1313
    Two points here: 1. Repeating myself from another thread, but if you give up on the year and trade Bellinger as a .500 team, there's no way it's a good look for us when it comes to trying to sign him in the offseason, as obviously signing him by itself just brings you back to a .500 team. 2. Especially hard pass on being sellers if you can't meaningfully improve the 2024 team. I'll take the 15-20% shot this year over someone's 5th best prospect that might help us in 2025.
  4. squally1313
    Money is obviously the main determining factor, but it's not the end all be all, and the Cubs as a .500 team giving up and trading their best offensive player is a pretty big negative in terms of their sales pitch to Bellinger in the offseason. This isn't a 'these kids make too many damn money' argument....far from it, but it's worth pointing out that Bellinger, due to his early career success, has already made $58m in his career. This isn't a Contreras situation ($22m career going into the last offseason), there's probably some personal preference that's going to impact this decision.
  5. squally1313
    I just don't think the future potential upside outweighs the value of giving the rest of this year a shot. We make these trades, we just add to this glut of 40-50 FV prospects, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but we aren't going to add impact talent. And then you're going to get, what, 6 weeks of play in our system to make some determinations before you need to make some serious roster decisions? And if we're in late July and there are only like, 6 teams in sell mode, how many are you going to find in the offseason willing to trade real MLB talent for a bunch of minor league potential?
  6. squally1313
    You and I both know that it's unreasonable. Besides the fact that if they're willing to drop that much money (they aren't) and are able to beat out all the other teams that want top 5 FAs (they won't)....just skip the 31 year old third baseman, etc and go sign the best player on the planet.
  7. squally1313
    Just realized in this scenario we're writing off Bellinger too, so there goes most of the Chapman upgrade value.
  8. squally1313
    The first one replaces Stroman, at best. Is there any other option who has managed to post 4.00 ERA (or FIP) in AAA yet? There's no one out there that's going to require PCA, so that's a moot point. So it's basically just, win the Chapman sweepstakes and hope Mervis hits (which is true in either scenario) because the FA options are dire.
  9. squally1313
    Ah, yes, just sign like, three of the top 5 free agents. Got it, thanks
  10. squally1313
    Like the people in camp 'this team isn't good enough' are basically saying a team that has played to a +48 RD in 101 games is just not worthy of getting a shot, and are only going to be satisfied with some juggernaut. And the argument essentially comes down to: 1. Take a slightly above .500 team 2. Make it worse to get prospects 3. ?????????? 4. Be a 95 win team, immediately apparently, because god forbid we're an 82 win team this time next year, then we'll have to go back to step one.
  11. squally1313
    Just throwing it out there that we could also like, try and win baseball games these next two months rather than making the team worse and symbolically waving the white flag in the hopes of getting a package similar to what the Sox just got (a fringe-y at best defensive catcher with a .332 slugging percentage and an almost 24 year old pitcher who has pitched all of 30 innings this year, most of them in AA, and gotten rocked in all of them). Don't think I'll be losing much sleep over not getting guys like that.
  12. squally1313
    The peripherals have dipped, but he had a .235 BABIP in that stretch leading up to London and it's been .375 since. It's somewhere in the middle, right where he's always been. If you don't think we need Marcus Stroman, but still want to win....that's misguided.
  13. squally1313
    God I hate Mikolas. This is probably the Cardinals version of the World Series, but then again the last two games were the Sox version of the same. Just go take three of four, Brewers are down in Atlanta and the Reds are at the Dodgers (and also suck), so could be real interesting coming out of Sunday.
  14. squally1313
    I kinda....wouldn't mind a half assed approach? Trade some dudes in the 11-20 range, hold on to your prized assets, basically let it ride with this squad and a couple competent reinforcements to shore up glaring weak spots. Give yourself a couple months to figure out the Bellinger approach, etc. There's not enough talent out there to improve a .500 team to an 87 win team at this point in the season. The team just has to play slightly better (not out of the question!) and hope for some pythag luck.
  15. squally1313
    Hi guys. We should Buy.
  16. squally1313
    Lol that's incredible that I haven't even noticed. Everyone who hasn't been here 20 years took one look at the Politics thread and just nope'd out so quickly. Don't blame them in the least.
  17. squally1313
    Was mostly tongue in cheek. Had planned to come up with a second trade where pick up Javy's contract, but couldn't find anyone from the Tigers roster that would have made the joke land.
  18. squally1313
    FG has the Brewers projected for 84 wins and the Reds for 82 wins, so if there's a place to bet money on the division winner ending up with less than 89 wins, I would like to bet on it. I understand the basics of just projecting out their current win/loss performance, and certainly understand that only one of them has to do it. But. - They've been outscored by a combined 22 runs this year (Cubs are +26). - They are a collective 36-23 in one run games (Brewers being especially egregious at 16-7). - Woodruff hasn't even made a rehab start yet, and already had to pause his rehab once. Far from a sure thing. - Elly and McClain are certainly fun and worrisome, but they are currently both BABIPing over .400, with De La Cruz's xwOBA 78 points lower than his current xwOBA. Andrew Abbott is fine, but he certainly can't pitch every day, Hunter Greene is delayed getting back, and the rest of their (non-Alexis Diaz) pitching is garbage. Now, the Cubs are a .500 team that hasn't gotten the results of a .500 team. They've dug themselves plenty big of a hole. But the Marlins went 53-39 with a -5 RD, the DBacks went 52-39 with a +26 RD. It's unlikely, but I think that pace puts you right there.
  19. squally1313
    Get Arenado by offering to take the Contreras contract off their hands.
  20. squally1313
    Sure, that was more based on 'sell all the good players for top 20 in the organization' comments from earlier. Though to be fair, I think it's a weird stretch with how covid delayed things. This might be outdated, but I count 9 prospects on the FG Top 100 list that have their ages listed as 25+. Wesneski being one of them, if you wanted a specific example.
  21. squally1313
    I mean, he's put up a .970 OPS since he got sent back down. Jared Young had a .733 OPS last year in AAA and had an .836 this year going into June. He had an all time month and he got rewarded for it, and I assume it will be short lived. I think most people here would agree that if you were looking at those two prospects, Mervis was, again, the better call up of the two.
  22. squally1313
    Honestly, what do you guys think is out there in terms of the rest of the league. Hoerner is 5th in 2B fWAR since the beginning of last year (6.1 fWAR in 865 PAs, the leader is Semien, 7.5 in 270 more PAs). Hoerner is a first round pick who hit at every level, and outside of a rough covid year has been a consistent producer. He's 26 years old and we have him for the next 3 years at $35m total. If that is not a 'core contributor' then there's really no pleasing you.
  23. squally1313
    Just go get another one, how hard can it be? (Pulls up list of potential 1B free agents) 1. Joey Votto, 41 years old 2. Josh Bell, if he opts out of his player option, which I can't see happening on account of his current -0.2 fWAR 3. Max Muncy, if the Dodgers don't pick up his paltry $10m option, which is only really an option if he continues to hit .195 like he is right now 4. Rhys Hoskins, had ACL surgery in March, and so you have a three year stretch of 2.0 fWAR, 2.2 fWAR, and a ruined knee. Will be 31 next year. 5. Joey Gallo, hitting .190 this year with a 40% K rate, 0.7 fWAR 6. Brandon Belt, 0.8 fWAR on a .433 BABIP. Will be 36 next year. 7. Giovanny Urshela, do I really have to keep this list going, also he has a broken pelvis (and 0.4 fWAR in 228 PAs) Do you know what this board would be doing if like, the horsefeathering Blue Jays or whatever had a dude who raked in AA/AAA last year, has raked in AAA this year, and had a rough 100 PAs in his debut? They would be trying to trade Stroman for him so they could pencil him in as the 2024 MLB first baseman after another mini rebuild.
  24. squally1313
    It's never black and white. More information is better than less information. If he comes back and shits the bed again in a bigger sample, then you probably wish him well and hope he's not the next Rizzo. If he puts up a .900 OPS, you roll the dice that he's not the next Hoffpauir. The most likely scenarios fall somewhere in the middle, and make it even less 'settled', but what we're doing now is essentially wasting ABs on guys with no future and also no present.
  25. squally1313
    Since Mervis got sent back down in the middle of June, he's basically just gone back to being the same AAA killer he was before.....293/.408/.561. It's totally possible he's just an all time AAAA guy. But given that we know our first base production outside of him is going to top out at mediocre, I think it's an easy decision to bring him back up and give him the second half to sink or swim.
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