squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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But that's Jed's job to a certain extent, no? Miami or whoever comes and (correctly) points out how badly the Cubs need pitching, sure. But the alternative is a bad team miles away from contention stuck with declining assets one curveball away from essentially having to pay for their rehab until they hit free agency. Or, in a simpler example, Jed was sitting there with Happ and Suzuki signed through 2026, PCA entrenched forever, and Caissie, Alcantara, and Ballesteros with 300+ PAs in AAA. That's 6 guys for 4 spots. Choose a lane.
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I mean, PCA was 15th in overall fWAR this year. But at a certain point it's like....can you really make the whole plane out of Dansby/Nico/PCA type players? Will caveat/emphasize here that the 2025 Cubs were a very good offensive team overall, but you've got a year left on Happ and Suzuki, Tucker is contractually gone, and Shaw is thus far more in the glove mode than the slug mode.
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I agree with all of this and I also hate it.
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What I should be doing with a 92 win team, knowing the playoffs are a dumb dice roll: What I'm doing:
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The annoying thing on the Tucker front is that he's the top free agent and so the odds of any specific team getting him are slim, and in the (likely) event we don't get him, we'll never actually know how much of an effort we made to sign him. It would be malpractice to not make at least a token offer, but the details will be murky and sent through a PR machine and we'll all just be left trying to decide which of the talking heads we want to trust the most. We made this great offer for Bregman that Ricketts personally signed off on! The teams with the pitchers wanted Horton AND Shaw AND Caissie! All these reporters trade in access and know the rules of how it works. We can basically sleepwalk through the offseason and end up with a projected 87 win team, for better or for worse. We're at risk of falling back into the 2023-2024 trap where it's like...all of these guys are good, why take a risk? With the answer being that none of them are great. I don't know....I've been saying for like 10 months now that it's time for Jed to make some hard decisions and pick lanes on some of these players, and he's continually punted. But it seems like it's time again.
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To be fair, losing about a half a win for anyone past the age of 27ish is a pretty reasonable method of projecting depreciation/decline, and is pretty in line with how Zips does it if you look at the three year projections on their player pages. Like, here's the three year Zips for Nico going into this year:
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McNeil signed in January 2023 and the notes say that he avoided arbitration, which means at least one year of team control was bought out. 2021 has his contract as just being 'renewed', so likely his 4/50 deal bought out two years of team control, so not really a good comparison in terms of contract value. His take home pay for the two years that were post arbitration were $15.75m.
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The league wide average for players coded as 2Bs was a 92 wRC. For players actually played 2B, it was 90. Nico had a 109. He was also the best baserunner. Eliminating non-qualifying players from your scale makes it essentially worthless.
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What offensive metric/statistic do you prefer so that we can compare Nico's output to what the rest of the league is doing at second base?
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Nico Hoerner has been the 8th best baserunner in baseball over the last three years has been an above average hitter every one of the last 5 years
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The current players under arbitration are Tucker, Willi Castro, McGuire, Steele, and Eli Morgan. The only new player eligible for arbitration next year is Javier Assad, everyone else under team control (Amaya, Busch, PCA, Palencia, Shaw, Horton) are all pre-arb. Tucker and Castro are gone, McGuire is de minimis, and Steele and Morgan aren't going to get any sort of material raise over the $6.5m and the $950k they made this year. Either way, the 2026 FG projections have them projected for $11.5m, which seems reasonable. The idea of taking a 92 win team that lost in the NLDS, removing your 5 fWAR right fielder, and essentially filling in the gaps around that because of Caissie/Alcantara/Ballesteros just isn't going to fly. Schwarber is out there but a terrible fit. Tucker is a great fit. Ranger Suarez, Valdez, Cease, Kelly, King are all clear upgrades in the rotation on the free agent market. Turning excess outfielders into pitching or any sort of improvement that isn't cost controlled is always an option. Running a $175m payroll isn't.
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I think 6/$130 or so gives him about Dansby's AAV. Dansby was coming off a 6.4 fWAR season, and Hoerner has never cracked 5, but Hoerner's last four years have all been better than any other Braves year for Dansby. Plus generally contract values only go up, 2022 Dansby going into this offseason gets a lot more than what he got from us.
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Nico Hoerner has been the 22nd best offensive player in baseball over the last 3 years. Better than Semien, Elly, Adames, Chapman, Bregman, Harper just from looking in slots 23-30. 21st over the last two years, 20th best this year. Offering him $14m a year is an insult.
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There's roughly a $75m difference between the luxury tax number that FG has for 2025 ($220m) and what they have for currently rostered players under contract for 2026 ($147m). A bench outfielder would presumably not be one of any consequence, with Happ, PCA, Suzuki, Caissie, and Alcantara all already here. A depth starter is....$15m? The bullpen cost roughly $25m-$30m this year. You really foresee another $30m or so drop in total spend?
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Just foul pop outs and Ks
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Andrew Vaughn also a gold glover now, nice
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We’re allowed to get out of situations like that without giving up runs?
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horsefeathers Joey Ortiz continuing the inning
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2-3-4 facing Mis for the second time seems pretty crucial. Uribe and Megill aren’t Miller and Suarez but they’re still good.
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He tried
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Chet Holmgrem before puberty ass
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The three headed monster guy and this postage stamp of a strike zone seems like a bad combination for the brewers. Ideally if the cubs fans can get into his head a little bit.
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I like to think I’m a pretty levelheaded cubs fan but I know in my heart that Josh Ortiz and his 384 OPS absolutely converts if he’s in Nico’s spot there.
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I had that thought too but assume it’s more valuable to keep the platoon advantage for the next AB
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High strike is not there at all.
