squally1313

Yeah it maybe comes into play if they got creative and tried to take on bad contracts (Trout, King, Javy) to lessen the cost but even then, they were under the luxury tax last year and likely will be under next year so minimal risk of repeater penalties. You don't risk getting penalized in the draft unless you go $40m over, which is basically a mathematical impossibility at this point in the year.

Why are we now drawing a line in the sand on the next threshold of the luxury tax? It's like, at most, an extra $3m-$4m in tax payments? We have a ton of money coming off the books after this season and we'll almost assuredly drop down and reset the clock, so there's not really a repeater penalty situation.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, baseball played in the playoffs in October has the exact same rules and regulations as baseball played in the regular season and a lot of conversations/viewpoints around here seem to think it's some totally different game and I don't understand why. It would be great if, in addition to everything else Alcantara brings to the table, he also had a double digit K rate. If that were the case we would need to pay way more for him. But getting a guy with historically very good GB rates and putting him in front of this defense is a very good way to lean into the strength of this team.

The Cubs, vis a vis the Brewers, have: More runs More home runs A better walk rate A better on base percentage A better slugging percentage A better wOBA A better xwOBA A better wRC A vastly superior defense, which I know was not the thrust of your article

But surely you understand how insane it is to include players with a single digit amount of at bats in this metric that you largely just made up to support your narrative that the third to fifth best offensive team in baseball actually isn't good. Or do you think we should get credit for Justin Dean and James Triantos

lol that’s incredible

It’s a really bizarre choice to have a cubs website where your main writers go out of their way to talk about how bad the cubs are

8-7 loss seems about right. general managing malpractice.

I did wonder for a second if it was going to be a double, but only because it stopped rolling in no man’s land between center, right, and the second baseman

Well maybe the guy tomorrow will just have to pitch deep into the (checks the probable) Jesus horsefeathers Christ

Pedro has been good but that was a 72 MPH 19 hopper that found a hole nightnare scenario for Craig here, might have to waste 5 innings of high leverage arms chasing this win because our offense is so good

He’s 34 years old with a 6.81 FIP. Make him hottovys assistant or something

Sending out a race car with three wheels and then deciding not to put a fourth wheel on the car because we’re too far back in the race.

I get no one else is making trades but there aren’t a lot of contenders out there with the best offense in baseball and three starters who should absolutely not be in the rotation while needing to play like .650 ball if we want any chance at the bye so maybe go and make the market work for you.

Sure sucks that teams aren’t allowed to make meaningful trades until August

It’s a little bit of a double edged sword in that, if you assume they’re aren’t going to help you at all this year, it’s more arguable that you can look at the current pitching staff and conclude it’s completely helpless. So you want to at least picture them contributing at some point from a ‘should we go for it’ sense. But, they absolutely should not be looking at them as The Real Midseason Pickups. Trade for an elite starter and hope that brown/steele/cabrera can give you a pseudo bullpen game in the playoffs. If they don’t, that’s why they pay counsell and hottovy the big bucks.

Today is a good day to get a pitcher and/or multiple pitchers. So were the last 200 days. But today would be nice.

Not checking the math but assume it’s this

The Phillies have the 27th best offense in baseball. We have 46 points more OPS as a team. Why do we have to have a clearly superior offense and also equivalent pitching.

and less hitting ability.

I bought a knockoff Kane jersey back in like 2011. Which was still like $100, which was a lot of money back then for me, and I realized after I bought it that I had no earthly idea how to wash a jersey like that. The concept of dry cleaning was reserved for the one time a year I needed to wear a suit. And so that thing just accumulated beer and mustard stains for like 6 years until my now wife finally made me take it somewhere. A lot of it was permanent, but now it's almost part of the appeal. It's a dumb signing, probably, but I'm past the point in my Hawks fandom where I'm going to worry about crunching numbers. We get to watch him in a Hawks sweater for another couple years. Pretty cool.

How close are we to saying Shaw and Ramirez are pretty close to equal in value at present? They seem pretty interchangeable to me in terms of their value to the Cubs in the short and long term. Going to try and work out my confusion with the Mariners on the fly here. 23rd in total offensive fWAR, 27th in wOBA, 14th in xwOBA, 16th in wRC. Worst in baseball defensively (maybe will come back to this). But their lineup looks like this, which doesn't really seem bad or super fixable to me? : JP Crawford (107 wRC), 3B. Expiring deal, above average hitter against LHP and RHP Julio Rodriguez (114 wRC) - obviously not going anywhere Dominic Canzone (137 wRC) - DH, but that's plenty productive and seems sustainable Arozarena (141 wRC) - Maybe a little inflated but still very good (.352 xwOBA) Josh Naylor (99 wRC) - Bad for a first baseman but we don't have anything to help there and just signed a huge deal Raleigh (69 wRC) - Very bad, but it's Cal Raleigh. Don't think they're going to want Ballesteros or whatever Cole Young (103 wRC) - Seems fine for a second baseman Luke Raley (109 wRC) - Passable for a RF, underperforming his xwOBA by 30 points Colt Emerson (75 wRC) - Very bad, metrics are worse, was a top 15 prospect going into this year and signed a $95m deal already I guess in this scenario, you trade for Shaw or Ramirez, slide Crawford back to short, tell Emerson to try again next year? But really, their offense is bad because their stud catcher is OPSing .573, and there's not really a trade fix for that one.

That list put Hartshorn as a 1B, which is likely eventually but seems a little premature, no?

Yeah I would also like the second best hitter in baseball and a certified ace with 2.5 years of cheap control. Can we also get Misierowski while we're at it? We probably need more than one pitcher.

Greg Jones. The Brewers thought enough of him to pick him up before us, so he's probably going to be a complete stud for years to come in a Cubs jersey.