squally1313

He's equally terrible against all pitchers, so don't particularly care about what hand he is, unless he can trick some dumb manager to make a dumb reliever choice. Would have rather just given PJ Higgins (12.1% BB rate, .895 OPS in Iowa in 2019) a shot, but....whatever.

Rizzo turns 32 in August. ESPN's Free Agent tracker goes back to 2006, and I don't see a single 1B 32 or older getting a 4+ year deal. Pujols was 31 when he signed his huge deal, and Carlos Santana and Jose Abreu got 3 years at age 32, that's the entirety of 31+ year olds getting 3+ years at the position. I always get tripped up on baseball ages, and it gets down to splitting hairs, but Goldschmidt signed a deal with one year left in March 2019 before his (per FG) age 31 season, and the 5 year deal kicked in 2020 for his age 32 season. Definitely a good point that there aren't many, but that seems to be the most obvious comp to the current situation, and it came without any of the past performance vs team friendly contract, more meatbally nostalgia/leadership/community/etc. Rizzo isn't Goldschmidt (though FG likes him better this year), but there's a huge gap between 5/130 and 5/70. Split the difference, front load it (because who else are we even going to be paying next year), and call it a day.

Almost 35 year old Carlos Santana just signed a 2 year, 17m deal after throwing up a .699 OPS last year and garbage defense since forever. Probably conflating posters around here, but all the people who wanted Nico to slug .300 every day because our pitching staff was built around ground balls has no problem dumping Rizz to pay a revolving door of fringe DH types to Roger Dorn ground balls and picks at first for the next few years. To be totally honest I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is 3/60 or 4/80 insulting? We're talking about a guy with chronic back issues, who's on the back-9 of his career. A 3 year extension that runs through his age 35 season feels agreeable to me. Yeah it's insulting. How many 31 year olds are taking 3 year deals? Rizzo's chronic back issues have caused him to miss all of 41 games in the last 6 years. He put up the best OBP of his career in 2019 and then BABIPed .218 last year, 5th lowest in baseball, while putting up the same walk rate. If we had anybody sitting around who could hit, sure I could entertain spending a year to teach him first base. But look at the bench and the Iowa roster, we don't. So you spend half the Rizzo money for half the production, at best. I understand you're bumping up the AAV, but he's not going to want to go back on the market in a few years. Give him his 5 years, front load it and put in lofty team/performance options, and let him finish it out here.

Almost 35 year old Carlos Santana just signed a 2 year, 17m deal after throwing up a .699 OPS last year and garbage defense since forever. Probably conflating posters around here, but all the people who wanted Nico to slug .300 every day because our pitching staff was built around ground balls has no problem dumping Rizz to pay a revolving door of fringe DH types to Roger Dorn ground balls and picks at first for the next few years.

Unless I'm missing some obvious bat only dude in the minors who's ready to put up above average offensive numbers next year, pretty sure we're still going to be paying about $10m or so next year just to downgrade it anyways (Cubs projected for 3rd in fWAR at the position by FG this year, with all of it coming from Rizzo). Pay him.

Nico is better currently and in the future than Eric Sogard. In my opinion, David Bote is the best option for a starting second baseman. With him theoretically being competent defensively, there's less need for Nico to step in late game like there was last year with Kipnis. They get a day off every week for the first four weeks...I just don't see a lot of ABs for Hoerner in April if we're trying to win. If anyone in the infield gets even dinged up for a couple days, he should be on the next bus to Wrigley and into the starting line up. But getting him 100 ABs in April in Iowa is better than three or four starts and a marginal defensive replacement upgrade for a couple innings in the maybe 50% of games we'll be winning late in. I'm 100% with you here, but I will point out that Iowa is not starting before the first week of May(with rumors it could be later I think) so the reps Hoerner will be getting would be at the alt site in South Bend. Yeah good point, clicked on the wrong link that had an old schedule for Iowa. Still fine with it. Going with a four man bench makes me pretty confident that if Baez/Bryant/Bote went down for a few days they'd immediately make a move and not try to tough it out shorthanded, so think there's a good chance he's up before the 36 games or whatever the number is anyways.

It was, until that signing was Sogard and not a Wong, Hernandez, etc type. Nico’s spring and physical growth doesn’t mean nothing and when it’s him vs a horsefeathers ass player like Sogard the calculus changes. Nico is better currently and in the future than Eric Sogard. In my opinion, David Bote is the best option for a starting second baseman. With him theoretically being competent defensively, there's less need for Nico to step in late game like there was last year with Kipnis. They get a day off every week for the first four weeks...I just don't see a lot of ABs for Hoerner in April if we're trying to win. If anyone in the infield gets even dinged up for a couple days, he should be on the next bus to Wrigley and into the starting line up. But getting him 100 ABs in April in Iowa is better than three or four starts and a marginal defensive replacement upgrade for a couple innings in the maybe 50% of games we'll be winning late in.

Yeah this should be enough to keep us out of the lottery this year, so really the only way it could backfire is if the team blows up before 2022-2023 and/or the ping pong balls make that a really high pick (with a potential added wrinkle of the NBA re-allowing high school players into the draft). Carter still could develop, but don't think his ceiling is greater than Vucevic's present, so taking a shot with the current group (plus hopefully swapping Lauri for a PG) for a few years here.

Is it going too far to say that, if Azlolay wasn't granted that option, they would have attempted to put him through waivers or just cut him? Or they knew more about the ongoing Azlolay option issue and knew there was a good chance they'd get a favorable answer. It would take a miracle for Azlolay to ever be an opening day starter, or really even pitch 200 innings in a year for us. But he's definitely better than Shelby horsefeathering Miller. (and also Alec Mills sucks too, but people squint and see some version of Kyle Hendricks and he can eat up innings poorly, so...whatever).

From what I recall, he joined Team Canada late and they named him their captain. He was the only player on team with any NHL experience. You're telling me he was better served playing down in every sense of the word vs spending a training camp with Patrick Kane and a roster full of NHL players? The head coach coaches Ottawa in the OHL. I hate Colliton, but, no, he wasn't missing out on 'high level coaching he wouldn't otherwise get'. The last three points are generic at best. Guessing there are plenty of opportunities of players either choosing or not being allowed to play in this, given, again, he was the only NHL player on the roster (none on Team USA either).

"Sorry for sending you to a tournament for children, by the time you'll be back we'll be in full on desperation mode so get ready for that, but hey, at least I can blame your (totally avoidable) injury for missing the playoffs again" Sending him to the tournament was probably the right thing to do. No it wasn't.

"Sorry for sending you to a tournament for children, by the time you'll be back we'll be in full on desperation mode so get ready for that, but hey, at least I can blame your (totally avoidable) injury for missing the playoffs again"

Adbert is 26 and not likely to make the team out of spring training. Are we still wishing and hoping on this guy? We're going to have to fill a lot of innings with a group of pitchers that missed 2/3rds of a year last year, if not more. Healthy, able arms, even if marginal, are going to help a lot.

Adbert is 26 and not likely to make the team out of spring training. Are we still wishing and hoping on this guy? We're going to have to fill a lot of innings with a group of pitchers that missed 2/3rds of a year last year, if not more. Healthy, able arms, even if marginal, are going to help a lot.

Haven't felt gross enough to dip deep into the bowels of the internet for further Toews info....no point in holding out hope there right?

As someone with 2 bleacher season tickets that typically splits them up amongst 8-10 people, was hoping for an announcement this week, but dreading trying to figure out how to handle some sort of equitable ticket allocation. That's if they even bother to figure out how to fill 20% of the bleachers.

Most athletes are bad, but this is currently one of the top posts on the soccer subreddit. Not a great look. https://twitter.com/KaraonTW/status/1366135755299553281

I was ready to dispute this, because I think it'll be a minor miracle if they pull double digit points out of those 9 games, but looking at the standings, not sure who else takes that spot. Checked Fanduel for playoff odds and they didn't have any, but I'd probably throw money on Nashville right now. Obviously they've fallen off a bunch from a few years ago, but their current place in the standings is after a lot of Florida/TB games, and I assume they'll have their turn with the bottom of the division soon.

I saw something that said they are 7-1-1 in their last 9, which seems fake but I can't recall them losing very much lately. I think they are 9-2-4 since they started out 0-3. I havent looked at the advanced stats though, so not sure if its a fluky 9-2-4. That said 4 of those wins were against the Wings who are terrible. Either way theyve been fun to watch It is, and they....kinda are? Better than expectations for sure, but the general strategy right now seems to be to keep it a very low scoring chance game and then ride out this very hot power play or settle for the coin flip in OT. Which...sure. But not going to last once they go back to playing the top of the division.

Parlayed over 2.5 on both games today because people have pretty much stopped pretending to work, but our nanny couldn't come so I'm on kid duty. Let's go goals.

I do think Yu is at elevated risk for injury, but even setting that aside you said yourself that ALL pitchers are at high risk for injury. If something happens to Zach Davies, you choose your favorite guy out of the Iowa rotation to replace him. If something happens to Yu Darvish, you choose your third, because the first two are already taking MLB starts. That's on PTR's penny pinching, but those were the realities Jed had to choose from. In a normal season, or with a better team, I take the quality and figure out the quantity later. But this team was thin already, and we're heading into a season that might be apocalyptic on the injury front. Totally get your point, but also think it's a false choice of Yu Darvish or all three of these pitchers. If you really think we couldn't have afforded Trevor William's $2.5m salary without dumping Darvish, sure. But most likely he was going to be here regardless, because those spots got opened up by letting Q and Lester walk.

For sure, I don't want the takeaway to be 'actually there's no difference between Darvish and Arrieta or Davies', if you need to put money on who will be the most productive then you should put all of it on Darvish. What I'm getting at is that because of the mitigating factors to Darvish's productivity(some of which exist for the others, like age for Arrieta or inconsistency for Williams/Davies), you're dragging down Darvish's likely standard to a level where variance can lead to one of those others matching or eclipsing him, and because you've distributed the risk in multiple players, that chance is non-trivial even if it's not the most likely. To try to say this in a more concise way, if Darvish had an incredible season in 2018 at age 31, you would be way more confident of him setting a higher standard than 3.1 fWAR in the following year because he wouldn't have the age or stamina concerns he has now. Since those concerns do exist for 2021, you create greater surface area for other players to match or exceed his productivity, especially when you have multiple players doing so for the same resources. I get the argument that if you throw 3 or 5 or whatever starters of the Davies/Jake quality level out there every 5 days, your odds of finding a 3 WAR performance plus the odds of Darvish getting hurt/somewhat randomly turning bad are...significant? But you're also increasing the odds of having a lot of poorly pitched innings while you figure out if any of these guys are actually any good. I'm ignoring the stamina issue because it's a blanket factor for every pitcher. Darvish can work deep into counts but he decided to stop walking people or allowing baserunners, so I'll take his 19 pitch 1-2-3s over Davies/Jake giving up a bunch of 1-0 line drive singles. Arrieta has fought injuries the last two years, Davies made every start in 2019 but didn't average 6 innings/start. If you're extra worried about stamina, I'll still take 150 innings from Darvish and 50 from....Tyson Miller? than 100 each from Jake and Davies.

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.