squally1313

You do know most good teams get there by mostly beating the bad teams and not sucking against the good ones? They're 24-28 against teams over .500. Come again? They have a bunch more games against good teams. We'll see how they do. 2016 Cubs: 31-25 against over 500 teams. 72-33 against under 500 teams. Like, you've been around for a while, you have to know this is how this works.

This has been an incredibly satisfying and entertaining half inning.

He's been a 0.5 fWAR player in 218 PAs, who cares.

Maybe this is just a hindsight thing in that the ones who made it are the only ones I remember, but checking the minor league threads almost feels more fun now than it did in 2013-2015. Back then we had the studs but there were really just a few names to keep an eye on and if there were any minor injuries or cold stretches it seemed like there weren't any positives coming out of the system. Now it feels like every day there's 2-3 people with some sort of future major league potential putting out something impressive, and that list is like 40 deep.

In case anyone just uses these threads to see how the team did (guilty of that)... 4.2 IP, 6 hits, 1 walk, 4 Ks, 4 unearned runs. Was scoreless through 4, then... Reached on error Single to shallow right Single to left K Bases loaded GB to third, out at second, runner scores Single to right center, runner scores Stroman pulled Double to shallow left, both runners score

Doesn't really seem to be looking at the whole picture to just mention rolling snake eyes on the injuries to our starters, a good portion of which are bad when healthy, and ignore Steele and Thompson exceeding all expectations and then Sampson giving us like 10 very above average starts. Yes, 10% of the games were started by bad pitchers. But, Alec Mills was regarded as our 5th starter to open the year.

But our bullpen has generally outproduced the rest of the team, after being projected to come in as 23rd in baseball (not to over rely on the FG numbers, but seems like a solid resource for this discussion). 21st in ERA, 22nd in FIP, 6th in xFIP (we're also bad defensively!), 15th in fWAR with, to your point, a ton of innings pitched, so not the most efficient way to get to league average. Again, was supposed to be bad, is bad, just maybe for different reasons.

I suppose they could both be true, if Hoyer was naive enough to believe they would never have an injury. There’s a lot of space between never having an injury and the top 6 starting pitchers in the organization at the beginning of the season all being on the IL at the same time, which was the case at one point in July. This has basically been a .500 team since Stroman and Smyly got off the IL. Which is not good enough and nothing Cubs fans should be happy about, but not the team that was on pace to be one of the worst teams in franchise history at the ASB. The Cubs were projected to be 25th in the league in starting pitching fWAR at the beginning of the year. They are 26th. It was supposed to be bad, and it is bad, just in a different way. Giving us another win or two in the standings from hypothetical Stroman/Smyly innings doesn't change much in terms of the overall outlook.

Today’s game one included, Hendricks, Stroman, Miley and Smiley have started 47 of 103 games this year. Consider what kind of disaster this season would have been if Thompson and Steele weren’t able to perform as well as they have. So maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but Thompson and Steele have performed above average, so they are far from the main causes of us being terrible. Sampson, somehow, has also given us 7 starts of a 3.74 ERA. So that leaves us with 16 games by the other misfits, which, to your point, went pretty terribly. But I don't think you really want to lean on a hypothetical of like, Hendricks or Smyly taking starts from Steele/Thompson and somehow giving us better results.

Optimistically, it's him getting tired of getting the Schwarber treatment on borderline pitches and just swinging more, though I can't find the swinging strike stats that would easily prove/disprove that hypothesis. Walk rate is way down in July, but he got his K rate below 20% after it being 27% in April and 32% in May.

If I remember correctly K% normalizes quite quickly, so we should be at a large enough sample size to confidentially say that there's some type of mechanical change that caused this and we should be optimistic about it going forward. I understand conceptually what you're saying, but that also requires you to toss out the theoretically 'normalized' K% from the first set of games, so probably a little early to be sure of what's going on.

But not here.

lol garbage take

Willson in July: .149/.259/.230/.489 Happ in July: .279/.299/.385/.684 Happ’s is a “I’m a good hitter slumping this month” type of stretch, Willson’s is a “I’m either hurt or I have something occupying my mind and affecting my play” type of stretch Splitting hairs given how important it is to us, but Happ's 33/2 K/BB ratio seems more concerning than anything else. To put up a below average line with a .400 BABIP is pretty hard to do.

Didn’t need the thread title to be phrased that way, thanks

He said the Cubs as an organization shouldn’t have budget constraints but they do. The Cubs as an organization don’t have budget constraints. The owners are being cheap and don’t want to spend. We’re not the A’s or the Rays. They have budget constraints. EDIT: Regardless, the Ricketts suck and I know we can all agree on that. While they don't have as much money as the other owners, let's not pretend that ANYONE who owns a professional sports team doesn't have enough money to pay anyone. They're all ridiculously rich. They just don't want to cut into their profit margin, just like every other rich bastard in this country. Yep. Oakland's owner was worth $2.2b in 2015. Rays owner, per google, is worth $800m. Everyone plays this game, ours just do it in a much more explicitly garbage way.

The Cubs don’t have budget constraints. They’re choosing not to spend money. There’s a big difference there. We’re splitting hairs right? Ownership directives is a budget constraint to me. I try to do whatever I can to remove them from the equation.

You understand the chances of Morel even getting to Wrigley would decrease significantly if Javy was still a Cub right? Sorry, I wasn't very clear. Javy is the most exciting player I've ever seen, he is our household's favorite player, he was integral to winning the WS and I wanted them to extend him. I like Morel. He's cool. Now it's Willson, who I also have strong feelings about. Yes, I might like watching Campusano or whoever in a couple of years but I'd rather stop logjamming guys at South Bend/Myrtle Beach and just go ahead and make another push with the last great player of the most legendary cubs team of all time. I will not stand for the Kyle Hendricks erasure. Look, the issue isn't that Campusano might manage to produce a cheaper WAR/$ over the next 5 years or whatever. I'm trying to make the best of a shitty situation. The Cubs as an organization and revenue producing company should not really have any budget constraints compared to the rest of the league. It's [expletive] that they do. But they do, and all indications are that they will. Signing a 30 year old catcher putting up career numbers in a walk year to a long term deal, serious money deal is going to, unfortunately, limit what we can do elsewhere. If we were fans of another team, I'd be all for trading for him and throwing him in the middle of a pennant race, but I wouldn't want to sign him to a 5 year deal. (but also, selfishly and three beers deep, go get a horsefeathering haul for him and then bring him back in December on some hometown discount)

You understand the chances of Morel even getting to Wrigley would decrease significantly if Javy was still a Cub right?

To play devils advocate: If the team wins, the fans will be there. We're now 6 years removed from the WS team. It sucks that it played out this way but, as a comparison, here are key members of the 2016 team that were on the roster in 2014: Rizzo (breakout season in 2014) Baez (hit .169, spent most of 2015 in the minors) Coghlan (traded from Oakland in 2016) Arrieta (breakout 2014) Hendricks (called up down the stretch, pitched great) Rondon Strop Grimm That's 8 guys (and stretching it a lot on Coghlan and Grimm) that were on the team just 2 years before the 2016 team. This is a bad team right now, it's been a bad team for a whole calendar year. Yes, a lot of that is self inflicted, which is garbage, but the fans (which are already showing up) will be selling the place out as soon as the record flips, regardless of the players on the field. Agreed, success (both individual and team) is always going to be the biggest driver. No one bemoaned losing the connection to the success of 2016 when Almora or Russell was kicked to the curb, or got contemplative about the business of baseball when they moved on from Quintana or Chatwood. People are dying to not look at Heyward in a Cubs uni anymore, it's always gonna come down to the belief that they can continue to be successful and play a part in the team continuing to be successful. That said, I think the front office(and I say front office because I believe the org's current state is about 90% front office driven and 10% ownership) really could stand to do what it takes to avoid this circumstance with *all* of the next round of players. Reward Nico with an extension that buys out some FA years, plant a flag on Morel with a longer term deal, or show faith in Steele or Thompson with guaranteed money. There's value in not being on the 6 year treadmill with every young player who lands at your feet, and while there is risk involved(e.g. no one is putting Bote's name on the roster in pen), it's a useful and ultimately small thing they can do to signal their intent even if the bigger statements of intent like large FA deals are (sometimes justifiably) not the best choice for the moment. Don't disagree on those points, but just to piggyback off your post my earlier one, I do think what we've seen the last couple years is at least a little bit a result of the path they decided to take back in the early 2010s, which was essentially purge the entire organization and start from the ground up. The end result of that being that you had a core that was largely the same age and the same contract status. The disappointment is that the 'waves and waves' just ended up being one pretty incredible first wave, and they weren't able to supplement enough (although you could argue that they were playing meaningful baseball in October for 5 out of 6 years from 2015-2020, so...). Looking at the current roster, I don't see that being the case in terms of how this turns into the next great Cubs team. There's talent at every level, there's money to be spent this offseason and the next one based on expiring contracts...they should be able to space this thing out a little bit better.

I haven't watched a full game since 2019. There's basically no more emotional investment into this team anymore. I still watch games all the time, but I understand the sentiment and I know several people who used to follow the Cubs very closely and have basically stopped watching them entirely over the past few years. There is risk involved in operating the team like an analytical sports simulation, which can be contradictory to maintaining a fan base over the long term. There is a point where the "smart" business move might not be the best thing for the long term health of the franchise. Do you really want to sever one of the last links to the 2016 championship team (Contreras), while creating yet another giant hole to fill? How can you expect to build a loyal fan base if the organization fails to reciprocate that loyalty to both the fans and players? Maybe this new rebuild works and we have another 3-4 year playoff run, but then what? Then it's time to trade Davis, PCA, Amaya, etc. and start over again. We can't expect the team to re-sign everyone all the time, but there are times when re-signing a player might be the right thing to do even though the computer says otherwise. Contreras is the exact type of player that the team should be looking to keep around and bridge the gap to the proverbial "next great Cubs team", yet somehow that idea has never seriously been entertained. It's one thing to rebuild and be smart about spending money, but this team shouldn't be operating like the Tampa Bay Rays. To play devils advocate: If the team wins, the fans will be there. We're now 6 years removed from the WS team. It sucks that it played out this way but, as a comparison, here are key members of the 2016 team that were on the roster in 2014: Rizzo (breakout season in 2014) Baez (hit .169, spent most of 2015 in the minors) Coghlan (traded from Oakland in 2016) Arrieta (breakout 2014) Hendricks (called up down the stretch, pitched great) Rondon Strop Grimm That's 8 guys (and stretching it a lot on Coghlan and Grimm) that were on the team just 2 years before the 2016 team. This is a bad team right now, it's been a bad team for a whole calendar year. Yes, a lot of that is self inflicted, which is garbage, but the fans (which are already showing up) will be selling the place out as soon as the record flips, regardless of the players on the field.

It would be really funny if he didn't get traded at this point.

Yeah I don't really disagree with anything you're saying but...I love Willson and Kyle Hendricks and kinda Happ (who has seemingly done great things for players behind the scenes) and I would enjoy loving Hoerner and Morel and Seiya and maybe even Steele/Thompson down the road, not to mention the 37 teenagers we have in the minors. I love Wrigley, even if it's in large part for nostalgic reasons at this point (the area around it is very tough, but once you make it in the bleachers...). I love baseball. I don't know. They suck. But most of what I like is probably eventually owned by someone shitty once you get far enough up the chain. See the Coachella owners making huge donations to pro life republicans. It's a terrible system and we should do what we can do improve it, but still think I should enjoy some of these things.

Is there any chance someone like the Rays or Indians makes the trade for Soto and then flips him for 80% of the prospect haul in the offseason?

He's got Sofa breathing down his neck in the race to 100k, can't slack off too much.