squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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I'm pretty confident that we'll be the betting and projection favorite for the division on opening day. We have, based on the rankings that came out today, 5 prospects in the top 50, all of which are in the upper levels of the minor leagues. We currently have zero contracts outside of the dead money on the books this year that annoy me. The next three years are going to be just fine. There's no path to becoming the Dodgers or Braves in the short term, and there probably never was at any point this offseason. Bellinger and Chapman doesn't put us anywhere close.
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Let's pretend that's the case. What's your plan then? Fill the lineup with long term contracts of non-elite guys?
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But neither of these guys are that good. You don't worry about prospects when you discuss Juan Soto or Ohtani or Jose Ramirez or whatever. Chapman is projected as the 29th best offensive player, which seems generous, and Bellinger is projected for the 81st best, which seems pessimistic. Split the difference and these guys are the 50th or so best offensive players in baseball that would be locked in at over $20m a year. And we just took ourselves financially out of any elite talent hitting the market.
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No one treats them like gospel. They're a third party, unbiased projection that people, in my opinion, should prefer over gut instincts or biased/selective memory because on a large scale they will prove closer to being accurate than anything we have.
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The issue with signing both those guys to me is that that's essentially your team for the Dansby Swanson era (final name still to be determined), and there's no chance for me that it turns into a powerhouse. We lose the financial flexibility to pick up elite level talent, and we severely limit the opportunity for any of the offensive prospects to turn into elite talent for the Cubs. I'm generally pro the 2023 team, the current roster, and dealing with having too much talent when we get there. But when your offense through 2026 is Happ, Bellinger, Seiya, Chapman, Swanson, Hoerner, a catcher, a DH, and a first baseman/centerfielder, and you can't afford an elite talent to fill one of those slots, you have an offense without an elite bat and very little chance for one to develop.
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Compared to what? That link had Zips going 17-13 against the Vegas over/under lines, and said historically the average is 19-11. Further down he says the average error on OPS+ is 16 points, and ERA+ is 20. Which, to your point, is a pretty big swing. But....what else do we have to go on? I think compared to most, if not all projection systems, from gut feelings through deep statistical analyses, ZIPs is superior. If we just toss out all prediction models in general, what do we really have to use as support in these conversations? I think even the biggest ZIPS people here acknowledge the limitations. But, as one of those people, I think it's more fun to figure out the 'math' , for lack of a better term, of putting the best team together vs like, comparing personal biases about players.
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This is a small sample size all around, obviously, but using the stat RngR, defined as follows: RngR (range runs): The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. In 560 innings at third Madrigal had a RngR of 1.6, and in 180 innings of third base between 2022 and 2023, Morel had a -1.6 RngR. I don't pretend to know anything about defensive metrics, but going to assume higher is better. Obviously then you could pick at the idea of what 'vicinity' means, which brings me to my next point: For hitting, you have typically have thousands of data points and hundreds of thousands of data points to reference against. For fielding...for me, you kinda just got to trust that they know Morel's bat is clearly superior to Madrigal or Wisdom, they've seen him play defense in the system for like 7 years now, and they still refused to give him more than 5 games worth of time there. I spent years thinking defense was worthless in an era where Ks are up, walks are up, home runs are up. But eventually I just accepted the data, trusted that teams and sites like FG were valuing this stuff appropriately, and bought in.
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Do you want an 86 win team with a ton of flexibility and logical future openings for the farm system we've spent years building, or do you want an 89 win team where you have 6 of the 9 line up spots (the outfield, chapman, dansby, nico) locked in for the next three years at double digit salaries, with 5 of those players being very much on the wrong side of the aging curve? Basically, getting both probably makes us the 2024/2025 division favorite, but I think it greatly diminishes the chance of becoming a Braves/Dodgers type team with this group of players.
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We traded for the biggest bat at the deadline last year and just traded a pitcher in our top ten who was years away for the guy who will most likely be our starting first baseman. What he lacks in historic major league performance, he makes up for in team control, minimum salaries, and absolutely wrecking minor league pitching. There's been like, three trades this offseason with comparable or better prospects included (Soto, Sale/Grissom, maybe this Polanco trade). What you're looking for just doesn't really exist anywhere in baseball. The farm system is good, and deep, and all of those dudes I listed above are certainly capable of helping in 2024. I'm not sure how prospects ever 'prove themselves' in your world where you need established starters at every position on opening day.
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Hayden Wesneski for Hunter Harvey, who says no
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I'm kinda the resident Morel hater and if the MLB forced the Cubs to put up one player for an expansion draft, Hendricks or Morel, I would 100% want Hendricks gone.
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- shota imanaga
- jameson taillon
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Bored, putting off work, etc. An extremely pessimistic view of the 2025 roster is as follows: Offense (years of control remaining): Swanson (5), Nico (2), Happ (2), Seiya (2), Busch (4), either Bellinger (6?) and Wisdom (2)/Madrigal (2) or PCA (4) and Chapman (2?), Morel (4) as the DH, and either Amaya (2-3) or you need to find a catcher Pitching: Steele (3), Imanaga (4), Taillon (2), Wicks (4), Assad (4), and then Azlolay (2) and whoever else (a bunch) This is essentially the team I expect to field in a couple months, where I expect we'll be slight division favorites. Probably looking at roughly $50m in annual salary to add to this This exercise ignores, at league minimum salary and already in the upper levels of the minors: Horton, Shaw, Caissie, Alcantara, Ballesteros, Triantos, Brown, Murray.
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Signing solid, not spectacular players to long term, 9 figure deals is not the way to build a perennial division favorite. Trades can be made at any point. Given where the roster was at the end of the year, there was never a feasible path in a single offseason to turn this team into the clear favorites in the division for the next five years. But there were paths that could potentially decrease the chances of that happening. On Opening Day I expect us to be the division favorites in 2024, with a pretty consensus top 5 farm system, and my only real long term contractual concern on the books being whichever of these two we end up with. We'll have Smyly ($6m), Hendricks ($16m), and Barnhart/Mancini/Bote ($16m) coming off the books and no one of significance hitting free agency. Things are fine.
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1. Aware he’s never done it, because of how good he has consistently been at a premium position, but is it really outrageous to think that Chapman could handle first base in a pinch? 2. Kinda feel like you can’t make both the versatility argument AND the ‘well his WAR would have been even better’ argument. If they’re going to play him a bunch at first base, that makes him less valuable.
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Agreed that it doesn't seem likely given what we know about his tendencies (though that's limited data). I would argue that where the roster stands right now, 85ish wins, probably a coin flip to make the playoffs, is the perfect time to trade future value for immediate production.
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My kinda hot take is that neither of these guys are super exciting and I expect/hope that either would be the 5th best player in our lineup, total WAR wise, and my desire to get one of them is really only driven by the $30m-ish hole in the budget that I would strongly prefer not stay in Ricketts' pocket, and so give me Chapman because his contract structure is less likely to be used an excuse to not pay elite players down the road.
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Well those teams should try and add an impact corner infielder, and, if they are unsuccessful there, then they should consider Justin Turner.
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I get your point but we also thought Morel was enough for Soto and the Yankees package was a lot more valuable than that. If just morel for Bieber blows them away, then try to get naylor or prospect depth back too. Chapman to a multi year deal and Nico as the second baseman for the rest of the decade…I’m not going to put a ton of value on a .320 OBP guy who can only DH for the foreseeable future.
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Sign Chapman, trade morel+ for Bieber, if there’s anything left take your pick/the cheapest of belt/turner. Happ, PCA, Seiya, Chapman, Dansby, Nico, Busch, Yan, DH/bench is Amaya, belt/turner, canario, tauchman, wisdom/madrigal Steele, Bieber, imanaga, taillon, wicks, Hendricks adbert, neris, Assad, smyly, leiter, merryweather, almonte
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Cubs sign Hector Neris to 1yr /$9m with options
squally1313 replied to Jason Ross's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Agreed, I just don’t know if any of those names mentioned represent a significant upgrade to our in house bats. If you want to replace morel with belt/turner, and use morels team control and potential second base ability to bring in the type of pitching not available on the market right now, awesome. But it represents an extra step and we’re under three weeks from pitchers reporting. -
Cubs sign Hector Neris to 1yr /$9m with options
squally1313 replied to Jason Ross's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
The issue with a belt, turner, JD Martinez type player is that you already have Morel, Busch, potentially Wisdom, and Mervis down in AAA in the ‘can this guy play defense anywhere besides maybe first?’ group. Yeah, I’m sure a couple of those three outside options or the 3-4 we already have are going to give you a 120+ OPS, but how are you possibly going to construct a roster/bench and divvy up ABs to get to the correct option in a reasonably quick manner? Basically, to me, signing a veteran bat kinda necessitates a Busch or Morel for pitching trade, and while I’ve been annoyingly persistent on the ‘the offseason isn’t over’ train….it is late January. -
Besides Ohtani (plus more), there really wasn’t a likely path to becoming the ‘clear cut power of the NL central’ in this single offseason. Some of it was always going to have to come from within, and obviously still can. I’ll be pretty disappointed if they don’t spend the last $30m or so everyone has collectively agreed is ‘in the budget’, but I don’t think Chapman or bellinger are these huge difference makers, nor do I think there really were any realistic ones outside of shohei.
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Cubs sign Hector Neris to 1yr /$9m with options
squally1313 replied to Jason Ross's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
There’s always this guy:
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