squally1313

There's one guy making the case for Almora on this roster, me, and nothing is based on Almora being the standard of good he's being held to to hold this very niche-y job. There's currently one FA CF who even kinda sorta fills Almora's role on the roster, and that's a 32 YO glove first CF who hasn't logged an OBP over .300 for half a decade while playing a ton of innings and games. The whole case for Pillar is that he's automatically better because of his 2015-2019 WAR totals. To log those WARs with his offense, Pillar had to get a ton of playing time while playing elite defense. His defense has been declining and the Cubs don't have starter PAs for the backup CF, that's why they're the backup CF. So right off the bat the deck would be stacked against Kevin Pillar succeeding here. From there, Kevin Pillar has earned the right to shop himself as a starter in FA to the end especially with multiple teams - Philly to start - with a worse CF situation and more competition free playing time Without Almora, and say the likeliest scenario plays out in which Kevin Pillar doesn't care to sign a contract where he has to compete with or back up Ian Happ for no money, the starting RF and starting 3B become the backup CFs. Pulling Bryant from 3B means now 2B and 3B are sharing players. Pulling Heyward from RF most likely means they done went and pulled Bryant from 3B which is bad OR Happ's got to cover for a struggling 2B situation which is also bad To further pound on that whole replacing him with a guy with a skill set that matches whatever hype: If we're flexible enough to buy that Brock Holt is a versatile defensive or good enough defensive 2B then we're flexible enough to buy that Almora can play CF better than all available options willing and able to take the same job for the same pay or worse To address your points in various order: 1. I don't care particularly care how many PAs it took Pillar to produce positive WAR, because it was positive. Cut his 645 PAs and his 1.5 fWAR from 2019 in half, and I'll even round down for you, that's 0.7 fWAR in 320ish PAs, a little less than what Almora got. That's a 1.5 win swing. I don't think anyone wanted to see what 2019 Almora would have produced with 600+ PAs. 2. Kevin Pillar declining from a very good defensive outfielder to a barely positive one in 2019, vs Almora who has never approached Pillar's defensive numbers, and would you look at that, also declined pretty significantly in 2019. Yeah, still Pillar. 3. I appreciate you spending thousands of words talking about how bad Pillar is, but then also arguing that he'll probably get a starting job elsewhere (on a contender, even), but sure, fine, let's say Philly or whoever signs him instead. As you acknowledge, we have players on the roster who can play center field. The nice thing about that is that instead of having tunnel vision on FA CFers who fills the "Almora role" (which, lol), you can look at backup/platoon players who can play the corner outfield, who can play third base, who can play second base. Your paragraph that starts with "Without Almora" is flawed because you imply that he's gone and Pillar isn't here, but we just...decided not to fill that roster spot? How about a corner outfielder who lets Heyward move to center a couple times a week? Or an infielder that can let Bryant move out there, given that Bote and Hoerner already exist, plus whoever?

You keep saying this, but dude has almost 800 ABs this past 2 seasons and probably will get as many ABs as he did this past season (339) which is about 150 too many IMO. That probably puts him in the top 30 for CFs in terms of ABs. What make you think that he won't be the starting CF this season? Theo/Ross/etc haven't convinced me this offseason that he's going to be on the bench and be the 4th/5th OF. They all love him and think there's more to him than what he has shown so far. Don't get me wrong. I hope he figured out how to play with his skillset ala Baez, but to me, he just sucks. Like NOTHING about his skillset tells you that he's going to bounce back in a big way or you see that there's potential that just needs to be unlocked somehow. Yeah I think it's hard to articulate this point without coming across as arrogant, but I think ultimately we're all in agreement that Almora is a bad baseball player (though we might disagree on his exact level of suckiness)...but I don't think David Ross sees it the same way. I'm pretty sure I just saw a Theo quote that was like "look at Ian Happ, he might get 500 plate appearances this year". That doesn't scream full time starter to me. If Albert Almora is on the roster on opening day, my concern is that he's going to be the guy starting against the high strike out pitchers, and he's going to be the guy who comes in in the 6th inning for 'defensive purposes'. Those are things people think that he's good at, but he's not. Replace him with a guy who's perceived skill set actually matches what he can provide, and you've improved the team already.

Yeah, but that was back when they weren't all stupid horsefeathering signings.

Sure it's a gamble and inviting disaster to a degree, but so is signing vets and depending on them like Brach, Carl, Duensing, etc of years past. Of course I wasn't happy with it but the point was they were able to take unknowns and find something with 3 guys, I have faith they can do it again. My biggest gripe with the pen last year was they weren't aggressive with getting guys up sooner because they were stuck with bad vets without options. Wick should've been up much sooner. Joe also seemed to make the wrong mistakes often (no entirely his fault given the talent wasn't great but he managed the pen poorly). How wasn't Ryan all that great? ERA/FIP in the 3s, good GB rate (13th best GB rate of all qualified RPs), limited HR's, good enough K numbers, BB were a bit high but he's been better in that area before, he was really good vs lefties and adequate enough vs RHB to be able to face 1-2 in an outing with the new 3 batter rule. He also changed up his pitch mix a bit from previous years (more cutters and curves and cut back FB usage and essentially stopped throwing his change). As a guy who projects to be the 3rd to 6th best RP (depending on how things shake out) I think he's plenty solid. Wieck obviously was a small sample but the eye test and numbers say he was really good, again also changed his pitch mix once he came over. The difference is that with vets you have some level of expectation when being brought in. You don't know what to expect when bringing in untested, young pitchers. As you said, it's great if you discover one, but the risk is high if you're a contending team. Of course, we didn't have any choice with PTR crying about the LT. Do you really know what you're getting with veterans? Go ask the Cardinals how that worked for Andrew Miller, or the Mets after trading for Edwin Diaz (yes, not a veteran, but definitely established). Or look at how Kimbrel worked out in 2019. The difference with vets is if they hit a rough patch, or a rough year, or fall off a cliff entirely, there's nowhere to put them besides letting them continue to take up a valuable roster spot. The risk becomes high when you have to throw out a Brad Brach in the 5th inning of an 8-6 game because you couldn't send him down and there's no one else that's rested.

There is definitely enough depth and talent to put together a pretty effective 600-700 innings, it's just going to come down to how good Ross/Theo/etc is at putting the right guys in the right spots. Not really something I would trust Maddon with...we'll see how it goes for this year.

We need to come up with an acronym or something to just make it clear that you believe the idea of trading Kris Bryant is dumb, motivated by bad and selfish decisions, and should not happen. Against Trading Kris Bryant. ATKB.

Eh, if we're going to lose to the Cardinals, I'd much rather have it be someone like Arenado or Goldschmidt doing the damage.

Tomthewhatever lecturing the rest of us on what is or isn't a productive use of time in terms of Cubs discussions is absolutely amazing.

I saw an article talking about the sad state of our bench and they listed all the losers currently filling it out, and I started to be like 'wait, what about Happ? What about Bote??' And then I got extra sad.

$18.6 for KB.

The Brewers bullpen after Hader is a disaster, potentially salvaged by Knebel coming back from TJS in May. The Cardinals rotation is basically just Flaherty and the shrug emoji. I know I should be worried about the Reds a little, but I really couldn't tell you much about them at this point. This is a shell of the 2015/2016 rosters, but I think it's fair to say this team, as long as KB and Willson stay here, should be the favorites going into opening day.

What, Schwarber/Almora/and a Happ/Zobrist platoon doesn't do it for you?

Tough to compare whole decades because you're inevitably going to be thinking of a specific version of a player. I'm bored, so let's see how the best individual performances would line up. Using fWAR because I like the website better, even though I know it's probably not the best for this type of exercise. C: 2012 Posey (336/408/549, 10.1) vs 2008 McCann (301/373/523, 8.6) 1B: 2015 Votto (314/459/541, 7.3) vs 2003 Pujols (359/439/667, 9.5) 2B: 2011 Pedroia (307/387/474, 7.9) vs 2009 Zobrist (297/405/543, 8.7) SS: 2019 Bregman (296/423/592, 8.5) vs 2002 ARod (300/392/623, 10) 3B: 2015 Donaldson (297/371/568, 8.7) vs 2004 Beltre (334/388/629, 9.7) LF: 2013 Trout (323/432/557, 10.2) vs 2002 Bonds (370/582/799, 12.7, lol christ) CF: 2012 Trout (326/399/564, 10.1) vs 2004 Edmonds (301/418/643, 8.3) RF: 2018 Betts (346/438/640, 10.4) vs 2001 Sosa (328/437/737, 9.9) SP1: 2018 DeGrom (1.70/1.99/2.60, 9.0) vs 2001 Big Unit (2.49/2.13, 10.4) SP2: 2011 Halladay (2.35/2.20/2.71, 8.7) vs 2004 Big Unit (2.60/2.30, 9.6) non Randy alt: 2000 Pedro 1.74/2.17, 9.4 SP3: 2015 Kershaw (2.13/1.99/2.09, 8.6) vs 2000 Big Unit (2.64/2.53, 9.6) non Randy alt: 2002 Schilling 3.23/2.40, 9.3 RP1: 2019 Liam Hendriks (1.63/1.82/3.14, 3.8) vs 2003 Gagne (1.20/0.86, 4.7) RP2: 2018 Treinen (0.78/1.82/2.42, 3.6) vs vs 2004 Lidge (1.90/1.97, 3.7)

Definitely excited to see him move over, and it's great to see he's planning on focusing on the labor side. Will be interesting to see how objective the Athletic stays as they get bigger and bigger. Obviously there won't be a TV contract getting in the way. He's a pretty good twitter follow too for his views outside of baseball, even if he does get a little soapbox-y at times (and that's not mentioning the monthly live streams of him doing acoustic guitar covers).

Bryce’s 2015 was the highest wRC of the entire decade for any player, and its one where he put up a 19% walk rate. In what way is that even close to a realistic offensive season for Eloy, or really anyone not named Trout at this point.

I understand where this is coming from since we're not talking an insignificant sample size at the ML level. OTOH we're still talking the rookie year K rate of a 22 YO that owned an 18% K rate in the minors over almost 1800 PAs. It's a tough sell that he's now forever a 25+% K hitter when the vast majority of his pro career says otherwise He was "only" a 26% K guy in 2019, so no, not trying to claim that he's definitely a 25+% K guy forever, though I don't know how minor league rates typically translate to the pros. I'm just saying that it's really hard to put elite offensive numbers with significantly improved K-BB rates (somewhere in the low teens), and you're betting on either a significant improve in one or both of those rates, which you don't really see the potential for in his MILB numbers, or becoming one of the top two or three contact hitters in baseball (by that I mean, damage done when contact is made) just to get to somewhere in the 4 fWAR range.

Just a reminder that this guy hit .311/.359/.569 in the minors over almost 1800 PAs before graduating by 22. The lack of walks, he only topped doubled digit walk rates in 2017 at High A, will hurt him but guys like Nelson Cruz and JD Martinez have put together some really productive careers with similar issues The only time Nelson Cruz topped 3 wins, he either provided positive defensive value (2009 and 2010), or had a wRC of at least 137. I'm assuming you'd agree that we can throw out the possibility of option A. There were 19 guys in 2019 that put up a wRC of 137. Eloy had a K%-BB% of 20.6%. The only hitters with a wRC above 137 and that percentage above 10% were Cruz (4.3 fWAR), Alonso (4.8 fWAR), Austin Meadows (4 fWAR), and Moncada (5.7 fWAR). It's not just the walks, it's the strikeouts too, and it's really hard to improve both without it impacting your productivity on the balls you actually put in play. Yeah, I know he's a rookie, but I don't see how you can look at Austin Meadow's line and think Eloy has a realistic chance to improve upon that.

God I wonder how MLB legend Rougned Odor and his .271/.296/.502, 33 HR season got left off that list of current or future hall of famers. Must have been a totally innocent slip.

Are we not in the market for a starter?

...of his future?

The tl;dr is that going over the tax for the 2nd straight year is more like a ~25 million cost than a ~5 million cost, and doing so for a 3rd straight year is upwards of 50 million. "Putting it another way: The system in place makes it much cheaper for the Cubs to have a $207 million payroll in 2020 and then a $250 million payroll in 2021 than to have a $209 million payroll in 2020 and then a $211 million payroll in 2021. It’s an absurd extension of the way these penalties are structured, but it’s true."

I have no idea if any of this is accurate, but assuming it is, I found it pretty informative and pretty depressing on the motivations for the Cubs dropping payroll in 2020...though I guess the silver lining is that this article makes it seem like it would just be a one year dip. https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2019/12/19/why-the-chicago-cubs-are-likely-working-to-get-back-under-the-luxury-tax-in-2020/ No, this still does not mean we should trade Kris Bryant.

I think the roster/ownership situation makes being a top 5 team in 2021-2023ish incredibly unlikely, regardless of what current pieces we try to flip for future value. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be favored to win the division the next two years with just some minor moves. If a prospect we trade ends up turning into something, darn, I guess we'll only win 70 games in 2022 rather than 73. This doesn't really bother me too much...in 2015 I understood the fact that almost all of the core was up after 2021. After 5 years (2010-2014) of explicitly tanking, building a 7 year window of contention seemed great. Sure, it would have been nice to churn out prospects post Gleyber/Eloy. That was the way to turn an extended window into something like what the Dodgers have (7 years of 90+ wins, more undoubtedly coming). Didn't happen, and the FO should be dinged accordingly. But I think a lot of us saw this coming.

Wait, are we trading Bryant to some non-MLB entity? Is there an agreement to have no one offer him a contract in two years when his team control is up? Trading him now so that they don't have to look cheap for not paying him in 2 years. Also some nonsense about how they tried really hard to get him to sign an extension but they couldn't so they had to try to make the team better by trading their best player. Yeah that's the part I'm mad about to. But this whole league wide collusion thing...I assume the team that would trade for him is planning on paying him, right?

The owners, in collusion. But I don’t think Ricketts has a lot of pull among them as fairly recent member of the club. Ricketts was allowed to buy the team as long as he was willing to participate in their newest version of collusion, and he was willing. So he may not have much pull but that doesn't mean he has any desire to run afoul of the party line, anyway. Wait, are we trading Bryant to some non-MLB entity? Is there an agreement to have no one offer him a contract in two years when his team control is up?