squally1313

Which you can say all of the same for Arrieta, only Darvish just got done doing the good stuff whereas Jake has been trending away for four years now, with a more recent injury history. If we're just focusing on 2021 Zips, which is fine because I think it's the best of the options, I'll go back to my original point. Arrieta and Davies are projected to put up 3.0 fWAR in 267 innings, Darvish is 3.1 fWAR in 151. You can layer in Trevor Williams and his (encouraging) 1.4 fWAR in 140 innings, but I don't think it's fair to line Darvish up against all three, especially when Williams is getting paid less than Lester. Darvish has 140 innings (40 in 2018, 97 in the first half of 2019) of bad pitching where he fought injuries. Before that and especially after that, he's been a top 30 pitcher when he's pitched. And his bad first half of 2019 resulted in a lower ERA than what Jake just did. I don't think there is, or at least should be, much argument with Darvish's production on a per inning basis. I think deGrom, Cole, and Bieber are the only guys I'd for sure take over him right now. But Darvish has never been a paragon of health and durability, and now he's in his mid 30's. Add to that how brutal this season is expected to be from an injury standpoint, and I think the volume approach is probably the smart play. Taking three pitchers who project to ~3.5 WAR is probably better than having that tied up in one guy this season. And I think that's doubly true in the Cubs' case. The team lost three starters to FA, and PTR has decided to be as miserly as ever. While I get the point you're making with 267 vs. 150, this team needs those extra innings. The options were Yu's 150 and a HEAVY reliance on the Iowa crew, or the route that Jed took (which will still rely on Iowa more than we have in quite a while as it is). I think you're overestimating Darvish's injury tendencies and underestimating how often the general population of pitchers gets hurt in general. Yu made 31 starts in 2019 and 12 in 2020, so let's be generous and say he's made his last 43 starts in a row. 2018 was mostly a lost year, but there was a lot of criticism at the time over how the training staff handled the injury, how long it took to diagnose it correctly, etc. How far back are we including to knock him for injuries (while discounting how good he was back when he was healthy)? And Zach Davies, hailed as an innings eater, spent half the year on the DL, made 13 starts, and didn't make the postseason roster. Arrieta was shut down in August 2019 for bone spur surgery, and was shut down on 9/15 last year. Trevor Williams only made 26 starts in 2019. Things are going to happen, and they don't just happen to Yu.

Which you can say all of the same for Arrieta, only Darvish just got done doing the good stuff whereas Jake has been trending away for four years now, with a more recent injury history. If we're just focusing on 2021 Zips, which is fine because I think it's the best of the options, I'll go back to my original point. Arrieta and Davies are projected to put up 3.0 fWAR in 267 innings, Darvish is 3.1 fWAR in 151. You can layer in Trevor Williams and his (encouraging) 1.4 fWAR in 140 innings, but I don't think it's fair to line Darvish up against all three, especially when Williams is getting paid less than Lester. Darvish has 140 innings (40 in 2018, 97 in the first half of 2019) of bad pitching where he fought injuries. Before that and especially after that, he's been a top 30 pitcher when he's pitched. And his bad first half of 2019 resulted in a lower ERA than what Jake just did.

We got a handful of pitchers who maybe, potentially will put up more WAR combined in way more innings than Darvish will do by himself, a Schwarber clone without the memories, a worse and older backup catcher, and 4 teenagers who won't sniff Wrigley until the few remaining good players we have are sold off or washed up. Yay. I'm not a huge fan of the specific players involved here, but to play devil's advocate, I think we've got a bit too much recency bias with how Darvish's production is being assumed. He was phenomenal last year, but consistency has never been his hallmark, and (relatedly), neither has pitch economy which will likely play a big factor in how much value he can accrue this year in particular. ZiPS has him at 3.1 fWAR in 151 IP this year, and while I don't think it's way off, I think it's closer to being optimistic than pessimistic. There's more than a few potential outcomes where Davies' durability plus a small tweak or Arrieta getting a second wind out of Philly lead to either of them outproducing Darvish(the biggest injury risk of the group) alone, never mind the rest of players Darvish's money may have been put towards. My biggest criticism of Hoyer's offseason so far has been the shape of the returns he's gotten and the players he's targeted. Some of it is more understandable than others, I can kinda see the approach to this season's pitching being a one off in terms of getting across the 2021 bridge where no one will be able to add maximum value and on the other side you have clarity about the position player core + the farm system in a full season. So even though I'd rather have had folks with more team control or a likely future beyond 2021 than Davies and Arrieta, I can live with it. Similar things could be said about Joc too, and my feelings that the Darvish return is appropriate value but should have been on average closer to MLB is still true. While his health has always been an issue, I don't think his consistency on the mound is really too big of a question. Yeah it's a little bit of recency bias to only look at second half 2019 and 2020, but I think it's also a little unfair to set the new cut off at 'beginning of 2018' when before that his fWAR/inning (to use a crude statistic) seemed really stable: 2012: 191.2 IP, 4.7 fWAR 2013: 209.2 IP, 4.6 fWAR 2014: 144.1 IP, 3.5 fWAR 2016: 100.1 IP, 2.8 fWAR 2017: 196.2 IP, 3.7 fWAR Yes, pitchers break, he's 34 years old (6 months younger than Jake), etc. But he also just put up 3 fWAR in 76 innings, and ZIPs seems to be projecting a lot less innings than the rest of the models. You can make an argument that no pitching performance should be assumed, but don't think you can do it just for Darvish, especially compared to someone like Arrieta who walks guys and will spend a lot of time with guys on base. Agreed entirely on 'closer to MLB'....biggest criticism of the offseason in total.

We got a handful of pitchers who maybe, potentially will put up more WAR combined in way more innings than Darvish will do by himself, a Schwarber clone without the memories, a worse and older backup catcher, and 4 teenagers who won't sniff Wrigley until the few remaining good players we have are sold off or washed up. Yay.

Will it though? I certainly don’t disagree that platoons aren’t bad, but I’m pretty sure in 2021 all MLB front offices can interpret analytics as simple as L/R splits. It’s not like they’re going to go “hey we shouldn’t give up too much for this Joc guy, he only has a .800 OPS” when his overall numbers are depressed by allowing him to face more lefties this year. Unless you think facing more lefties is going to psychologically affect his ability to hit righties. Conversely if Joc does better than expected against lefties, you might be able to get a little more as teams may not see him as a black hole vs lefties like they currently do. Works for Joc since he has a relatively low number of PA vs lefties (I think <400) in his career. If Heyward gets hot vs lefties, it’ll be meaningless and rightfully shrugged off as a small sample size. Yeah I'm probably not giving FOs (nearly) enough credit, but I do think there is some aspect of having to sell a move to your fan base, who aren't going to look much past the basic stats. Letting Pederson flail against LHPs to drag his average down near .200 (ie, what we're used to seeing from Schwarber/Happ) isn't going to help his trade value. Then the (overly basic) point of platoons keeping these players marginally more healthy (and thus able to be traded), though to be fair I wasn't really thinking about that when I made my original point.

I can't make any sense of this team right now, but big picture I'm still going with "Not good". Which, yes, is better than "historically bad". But there's just no way the power play stays anywhere near 36% (3rd in hockey), and while I think Lankinen has been a nice surprise and should probably get most of the starts, he's not going to walk into the league and become a top 10 goalie, so our 8th in team save percentage probably isn't going to last. The book is getting put together on him, will see if he can adjust. They just give up so many shots, every game, to every type of team. While I can squint and see the three offensively inclined young d-men (Beaudin, Boqvist, Mitchell) paired up with Keith/Murphy/de Haan to form a pretty effective group, you're also working against the standard development time for d-men (long), Murphy/de Haan's myriad health issues, and Keith's declining play/effort level. More excited about the future than I was, but don't see this all coming together this year.

Also, I would hope most other teams would be smarter than this, but if you are committing to a tear down, letting those 5-6 guys only hit against the pitchers they are good against will make them a lot easier/more attractive to trade in a few months. Not that I necessarily agree with going full nihilist on Jed putting together a post-Darvish roster.

Counterpoint: Nico Hoerner can do his best Ronny Cedeno impersonation for 162 games and fulfill 1/9th of the Rickett's obligations to field a lineup every game at the cheapest possible price.

Given the news this morning that the Cubs will get to have 25% capacity at spring training games, I'm wondering if the updated budget numbers are based on them getting a heads up that they'll be able to have fans in Wrigley this year. I have two season tickets in the bleachers and haven't heard anything yet (and assume the bleachers especially will be a mess to figure out), but could see this being the case.

On the other hand they're moving on from the most blue lives matter guy on the team, which is cool. Also, he did some cool things but his legendary status is more theoretical than real. His Dad is a police chief and to the extent of my knowledge, he has a charity with events that raise money for first responders. I know there were a couple pictures with him wearing a cop hat over the last couple years, but I don't recall any dumb comments/statements. Not great, but if we're talking about the 'blue lives matter' in the way we normally talk about it around here, I would bet the biggest supporter just slotted into the Nationals rotation. And yes, what he did in October/November 2015 and 2016 was extremely awesome.

Both are on one year deals, so neither fan base needs to be too concerned about which body breaks down quicker. I was specifically responding to the rather weird assertion that going from Schwarber to Joc was bad because he might suck in LF next year. I never meant to imply that Pederson's defense was going to drag down his production any more than Schwarber's will. They have the exact same average and OBP, Schwarber gives you 10 more points of slugging. If I wanted to make an argument about defense, I'd say that whatever value Schwarber brings to left field it's tied into his arm, which I would think would stay more consistent vs speed. But I know nothing about Pederson's defense outside of his ratings. My argument of 'bad', which is really more annoying, is that I don't like replacing a Cubs legend after non-tendering him to essentially end up with the exact same production with maybe a million dollars of savings.

Yeah this was my point. Sure he's getting significantly less than Schwarbers Nats contract but the arbitration estimates for Kyle were right around this amount. And he might also suck in LF. His foot speed is dropping every year, he's always had bad grades on his reads and jumps. He should also be entirely unplayable vs LHP. If you're worrying about either of these guys sucking in LF, I'd be much more worry about Kyle Schwarber's body letting him down than Joc's. I understand your point from just a 'look at him' perspective, but outside of a pretty freak accident where he then proceeded to exceed everyone's expectations in terms of recovery, I can't really remember a single injury he's had, and he's shown an ability(?) to alter his body to try to fit his approach. Pederson seems to have been incredibly healthy in his career, so he probably still wins the comparison, but not as worried about Schwarber's health as I used to be.

Getting off subject here, but Hoerner vs Bote is a weird case of 'are we rebuilding' vs 'are we trying to make the playoffs'. Because I'll take Hoerner in 3-5 years, but I'd need to see a lot more than what I saw last year to give him the starting nod over Bote at second in a 'trying' year. Yeah you can play around with things a bit(Hoerner v. Bote, Joc v. Bote, Hoerner v. scrap heap LH 2B, Heyward v. Ervin against LHP), and obviously over a full season the playing time won't neatly reflect the baseline lineup. But I was encouraged that there's a strong baseline and that these decisions are mostly around who the 7th or 8th best hitter is in your 'normal' lineup. Having said this I fully expect Contreras to be traded for 3 shares of GME by Tuesday. Yeah wrong place for this discussion, just keep thinking about the best path for Hoerner. If this was still normal times, you bat him leadoff and put him at shortstop or centerfield in Iowa every day and hope he forces his way up (hopefully around the time Bote's BABIP turns around and his dirt cheap contract is suddenly super attractive). But now, who even knows what minor league baseball looks like. He needs the development time, but I think we started down the rebuild road and then watched the rest of the division follow us into mediocrity.

Bringing in Shark and Arrieta to do their try-hard, 'I expect some more effort around here' charade while allowing 4 runs on 5 hits (half of which won't be their fault) and 3 walks in 4 innings is about the best way to make me less excited about this team. But hey, at least then Ricketts will be able to set up a couple 'get your photo taken with a Cub' booths at his fundraisers.

Getting off subject here, but Hoerner vs Bote is a weird case of 'are we rebuilding' vs 'are we trying to make the playoffs'. Because I'll take Hoerner in 3-5 years, but I'd need to see a lot more than what I saw last year to give him the starting nod over Bote at second in a 'trying' year.

Yeah this was my point. Sure he's getting significantly less than Schwarbers Nats contract but the arbitration estimates for Kyle were right around this amount. And he might also suck in LF. His foot speed is dropping every year, he's always had bad grades on his reads and jumps. He should also be entirely unplayable vs LHP. If the Cubs knew they could have gotten Schwarber for $8m, and instead replaced him with Joc for close to the same money, don’t you think that says something about the FO’s assessment of Schwarber moving forward? Hate ownership, fine; but this FO is still very good and knows a guy like Schwarber as well as anyone. My take is that they just didn’t have a lot of faith that he’d be good in 2021. I mean, are they? Time will tell on this deal, but my issue with this kind of argument is that you could make it in response to virtually any transaction made and kinda eliminates the point of even discussing it. Maybe Jed just thought Darvish is going to suck. Of course they have access to information we don't and expertise we don't. From everything I can tell, these dudes are pretty much exactly the same.

God, I want to call out the word 'significantly' there, but....you're probably right. This all sucks. It is significant in terms of the payroll Jed is being allowed to spend. Jed isn't the problem here is the only point I'm making. Sure, re: Jed. And it's significant in terms of it being a large percentage of his allowed payroll. But the implication there for overall money available means we're screwed either way.

He's probably slightly better than Schwarber and he's getting significantly less money. It's a perfectly cromulent move all on its own. God, I want to call out the word 'significantly' there, but....you're probably right. This all sucks.

He's fine, whatever, I'm already resigned to paying attention to Javy/Happ/Kyle/Contreras/Rizzo and then seeing what former awesome Cub is coming to town. It's bothering me a lot how they went out and found essentially a Schwarber clone to save a rounding error on the books. Just...keep the Cubs legend who clearly wanted to stay here.

Appreciation for him has definitely increased lately for me. In 2015 it was Jake, and in 2016 Hendricks won the ERA title and had the NLCS start and pitched pretty well in game 7, and still the first thing I see when I think Lester game 7 is the ball bouncing off Ross' head. But looking at the dumpster pile of a rotation we have now, it's pretty incredible what he did those 2 years, every 5th day, while pretty clearly taking leadership of the team from day one. Gutting his way through the 2017 playoffs with a 1.88 ERA he in no way deserved, and then pulling out a vintage start in the one game playoff in 2018. Legend, and hope he finds his way back to the organization (and hopefully it's a post-Ricketts era).

Journalistic integrity prevents mention of children by name without parental permission. Was trying to think of a political dark money donation joke, but yours is a lot more succinct/better.

Or it lets them wait to see if the catching market develops in the regular season to flip romine or contreras without having to throw Amaya to the wolves. Ie our entire strategy from 2011-2014

Even setting aside those who don’t think the Cubs should remotely care about payroll, yes they absolutely should have done that. Reasonable people can disagree! I guess we can reevaluate whether it was worth it in 2031. How is your life as a cubs fan better without bryce on the team

Yeah, again, small sample size, but you've got Ian Mitchell and Adam Boqvist, supposedly the future of your defense, barely seeing the ice the last stretch of the 3rd period, and (I believe) not getting any ice time in overtime. Which, yes, it's game 4 of the regular season against Florida, but if you aren't going to give them that time, what are we even doing here. And then of course you have Duncan Keith allowing a cross ice pass that should have easily been broken up to set up the game winner and not looking anywhere close to upset about it. So you have an overmatched coach chasing a victory by giving ice time to veterans who clearly don't care over the youngsters who need crucial ice time if they're going to develop into anything. It's not a good situation and I'm not really sure what happens that will make it better. Trade Kane and Keith at the deadline for whatever you can get and force Colliton to live and (almost always) die with the kids.

Yeah I'll be happy to look back on this as an overreaction, but I don't think people have caught on to just how historically bad this season is going to be. Crawford and Lehner covered up a ton of flaws the last couple years, and even then all that got us was a 12th place finish in the conference. With Dach out for the season, Toews out indefinitely (and mysteriously), and Kane/Keith very likely totally checked out, especially in light of Colliton's extension, it's going to be very, very ugly. I'm usually not one to dwell on the meatball, 'play with passion' aspects of sports, but going to need to see even a semblance of a spark before I stop betting the other team puck line every game.