squally1313

I think primarily to your point it's money. Because of where their respective arb salaries are, a Javy extension likely looks something like 6/110, a KB one more like 8/240. Secondarily, more athletic guys have traditionally shown to age better. Aging curves have shifted wildly the last ~10 years though so admittedly I'm not sure how true that still is. If it's about money, to the extent that the FO is being forced into trading KB two years before he hits FA, that they can't see the Lester, Rizzo, etc deals coming off the books and make room for both of them....then we're probably screwed anyways. To the Blackhawks point, lock in the fan favorites and keep selling those jerseys.

I love Javy as much as the next guy on here, but it seems weird to me that a player so reliant on his athleticism and fast twitch muscles is always the assumed extension. I guess I get the calculus on KB at $35 a year vs Javy at $20ish plus whatever $15m gets you, but it seems a little bit like fan service, and if that's the case, might as well lock up Rizzo too. Maybe in 5 years we can be the baseball version of the Blackhawks.

I’m going to let them fill that last slot of the rotation before I sound all the alarms on 2021. Hopefully they find someone that can project out past this year to join Yu and Kyle. From there, you’re replacing Lester and Q. I think people seeing a 2020 contender out of the Cubs aren’t expecting much from Lester anyways, so don’t think it would change much to keep that slot as status quo. Q is a weird case, I’ve been a big defender around here, but I think there’s also a fairly large contingent that want to trade him because they think he’s overpriced at $12m. I know the FA market next year is thin. But you’re looking at $35-40m in salary coming off the books between Lester, Q, and Chatwood. Going to be hard to justify banking that money, but who knows, they’ve proved me wrong before. Weirdly I think Q's fate is tied to Javy. If the team is in line with Javy on an extension, they basically have to trade Q to make the money work (assuming they're keeping to the $208 "cap"). If not, it's more of a matter of being opportunistic. Lester probably depends more on his perfromance than outside factors IMO. He only counts $15M against the "cap" next year. And with at least one rotation spot to fill I think they keep him if he still projects well. Eh, Q is making so little money that I don't really see that from a purely financial standpoint. I mean, Chatwood is making more than he is in 2020. Obviously the return is less, but you could probably find someone to take that contract, even if you ended up having to attach a prospect with it. Even someone like Kimbrel, if they really need to make the money work. For Lester, he's projected for 2 fWAR in 2020. Probably somewhere around 1.5 in 2021. If we can't find someone out of the Rea, Mills, Cotton, etc group to give us something like that for 2021 as a 5th starter, we're probably screwed anyways.

That’s where I’m at, you at least can see how it works this year if you keep the core and move some margins around. Next year could be tough to really contend regardless if you keep the core or do trades this year with the pitching needs. Trading KB punts this year, effectively, and then leaves next year as a pretty big roll of the dice that one (or more) of these young pitching prospect is actually good and turns out and you’re able to add Mookie to be able to contend. I’m going to let them fill that last slot of the rotation before I sound all the alarms on 2021. Hopefully they find someone that can project out past this year to join Yu and Kyle. From there, you’re replacing Lester and Q. I think people seeing a 2020 contender out of the Cubs aren’t expecting much from Lester anyways, so don’t think it would change much to keep that slot as status quo. Q is a weird case, I’ve been a big defender around here, but I think there’s also a fairly large contingent that want to trade him because they think he’s overpriced at $12m. I know the FA market next year is thin. But you’re looking at $35-40m in salary coming off the books between Lester, Q, and Chatwood. Going to be hard to justify banking that money, but who knows, they’ve proved me wrong before.

I think the part no one wants to really focus on is that, given the current roster and farm system, there's really nothing you can do now where you could confidently point to 2021 and beyond and say that we'd be contenders. I hope otherwise, but I think it's looking like an inevitability after what would hopefully be 7 years of playoff contention and a clear lack of development at the minor league level.

While I have my own issues with the post, I appreciate the time you put into it. The issue from a Cubs perspective is that the idea seems to go against Theo's main strategy since he got here, which is that young hitting prospects give you a ton of surplus value, whereas pitching prospects are a crapshoot and most of them probably break anyways, so just pay for them when they establish themselves. I can't see that entirely flipping with a trade like this.

It'd be one thing if the rest of this roster was still 2016 Cub good, and we could ship KB off for prospects and a 12th vacation home for Ricketts and have the only impact be that we're now projected to win the division by 12 games instead of 15. But we're not really at that point right now. Trading KB does serious damage to what is a good chance to make the playoffs in 2020 and probably 2021. Whatever it may do to future rosters is much, much more hypothetical, and to me, much less important.

Why is this ‘fourth outfielder’ spot an absolutely necessary part of a 2020 roster to begin with? Don’t Happ and Heyward have plenty of experience there, with similarly mediocre defensive numbers? Didn’t Hoerner get some time out there in the minors last year, with plans for more going forward? Ignoring the other ridiculous roster arguments/hypotheticals, isn’t KB more than capable of playing a corner outfield spot? Doesn’t Tony Kemp still exist? What is this role that exists for Almora that can’t be suitably filled by multiple other solutions already on the roster, to say nothing of cheap FA/trade possibilities? I count 6 guys with outfield experience on the roster right now, 3 with at least some centerfield experience, all of which I consider more valuable than Almora.

I brought up the walk rate because I'm interested in putting people on the roster who are good at the concept of offense. He makes contact once more every one hundred times than the average MLB player. We've established that this contact is poor contact, and we've established that once he makes this poor contact, he is bad at the goal of beating the thrown ball to first base by running. Of course there are other ways to reach first base, but I felt it important to point out that he is also (very) bad at that too. In conclusion, Albert Almora, bad at offense. I appreciate you throwing in his career wRC prior to the debacle that was last season (sure, why wouldn't we leave that out). Should we do trend lines? Should we point out that the only time he put up over 100 wRC was when he hit .342 against lefties his rookie year? Do you think that's something he can do again? For that question, unfortunately, I'm going to ask you to remember that 2019 exists.

Yes....Ricketts wants the Cubs underneath the lux tax. That's what is driving this. Very frustrating. I agree with you, but not the post you quoted. Teams have decided to treat the luxury tax as a salary cap. I think Ricketts is doing what he’s told. By....who? Who do you think is in charge here?

Yes, we have firmly established that Almora makes an above average amount of contact. I understand now that that's established what's secretly really important for 2020 is the degree, but also no not really. Also let's outright ignore K rates 6-7% below league average because because! The 2019 Cubs had a ~74% contact rate good for 30th and ~24% K rate good for 19th You just read about the jumps maybe seconds before writing this post and they instantly became his "only marketable defensive skill at this point." This type of read and react analysis to his defensive metrics don't make it easier to buy your clearly sensationalized conclusions. Maybe DRS probably not but UZR was most definitely not meant to be read in a way that allowed for dramatic new conclusions each season. He reads like an average defensive CF by the metrics, considering the options average works I don't really think this part has anything to do with anything, we're so far from why Smith and Villar even got mentioned in the first place by not me, but two things: 1 - So the backup CFer and OFer putting up a single win for less than $2 million dollars is...something to be upset at? This whole time it seemed like we were arguing that this guy couldn't make a positive contribution at all, and at the end the turns out that there's just not enough WAR to sate the vultures? Booooooooo...Enough for what even? Are multi-WAR cheap bench OFers required to win? 2 - I get the feeling that, despite the first acknowledgement I've been talking about him as a non-starter this whole convo, everything previously mentioned was from the perspective of Almora the starter anyway. Heck, within this last bit he's *still* compared to the absolute best seasons either of those players had as starter We were ignoring the walk rate, so I felt comfortable ignoring the K rate too. When people walk, they get on base 100% of the time. Forgive me for not caring as much about a slow runner putting up a 1.88 GB/FB rate with a LD rate that has declined every year, but giving us an above average amount of...that. I've been hearing about his unbelievable defensive instincts since the day we drafted him. He's been advertised as this stud defensive center fielder, and that was supposed to cover his lack of power, speed, and plate discipline. Well it turns out he also doesn't hit the ball hard, and now we're arguing about whether or not he is an average defensive center fielder. Cool! I was asking you to give me a believable slash line, K/BB rate, whatever where he produces any sort of value in a back up job. We saw what he did last year. In 2018 he rode a .338 BABIP in 479 PAs to all of 1.1 fWAR. Tell me how he improves on that, and before you point to 2017 remember that he was heavily sheltered into facing a ton of LHPs, and we all know how that went last year.

From someone who put his feelings into words a lot better than me: And again, this is all horseshit, a word that’s becoming synonymous with everything Cubs right now. The Cubs aren’t trading Bryant because they think it improves anything, short-term or long. It’s because they don’t want to pay him what he will earn in two years, and they don’t even want to pay him what he will get this year in arbitration. It’s not a “strategy.” It’s simple greed. The new buildings are up, the luxury suites are in, and Ricketts doesn’t have to do much to watch the money flow in. So he’s not going to. https://faxesfromuncledale.com/my-brian-hurt-like-a-warehouse-it-had-no-room-to-spare/

We're going into year 6 of this run, and since 2015 we've won the 3rd most games in the league. There's no real path to becoming the 2016 Cubs in the next few years, and the only real hypothetical path to it in the next 3-5 years is by seriously hurting the 2020 and 2021 rosters. I'm not expecting 100 wins, or even 95+, but 90+ is pretty achievable with this core, and should be enough to let us roll the dice in the playoffs for a couple years.

Almora's career contact rate is 77.4%. The league average for contact in 2019 was 76.2%. Congrats on qualifying for the bare minimum of 'above average', and combining that with a terrible batted ball profile and below average speed. Truly, when your specialty is getting thrown out on a 6-3 by 7 steps, you want to make sure you're doing that at an above average rate. Thank god he gets good jumps, as that's about his only marketable defensive skill at this point and hopefully brings him up to average. He gets a foot and a half head start on a group of players that are all pretty clearly faster than him...cool? He's not a good defensive center fielder, as shown by pretty much every metric. Of those five players, Mallex Smith put up a 3.5 WAR and Villar put up a 2.0. They also put up 75 SBs between them (Almora has 4 in his career). Mallex Smith also put up a 118 wRC, so I'm starting to lose any sort of connection to Almora here. The other three players gave you 1400 PAs of -0.7 WAR. Yay! Seriously, put together a reasonable line in 300 or so PAs, since you at least admit he shouldn't be a starter, that would get you a single win.

It's easy enough to infer that Happ's not the one between the he and New Guy I'd be skeptical of with the bat ...is it?

Ian Happ has a career 112 wRC, so I’m not sure what you mean by some improbable break out to become an every day starter.

Inciarte is a career below average hitter relying heavily on his defense and speed who just suffered what I assume is a fairly serious leg injury (given that he only played 65 games) and just turned 29. You wouldn’t have to give me much odds to say Ian Happ is a more productive center fielder the next two years.

Given that there’s a handful of guys who kill lefties available every year for a lottery prospect or a one year deal, plus the fact that Almora isn’t actually a good defensive player, there’s no need for even his 96 wRC against lefties to take up a roster spot. I hope for his sake he can prove he’s somehow more than that, just not for the Cubs.

Imagine looking at the Brewers and Cardinals roster and thinking the best case scenario with a KB/Baez/Hendricks (Rizzo/Contreras/Yu...) led team is "a mediocre team that hopefully somehow sneaks into the playoffs".

Well, do you think he ends up with more than 5 fWAR or less than 5 fWAR? That was the whole question.

Because the trend is worse than simply writing off 2019 and saying things are fine: He's never reached that 94 wRC number against RHP. To echo TT, it's just getting worse: 2016: 93 2017: 82 2018: 84 2019: 76 Once everyone realized he didn't have Gold Glove ability in CF, and that his lack of speed basically led to him looking like Jim Edmonds 5ish times a year, his ceiling essentially became the short end of a platoon. For me, that's literally the highest of hopes for him. And yet... 2016: 114 2017: 138 2018: 101 2019: 37 You'd think after 2018 where he was barely above league average against lefties, he'd have realized that his 'back was against the wall'. Instead he fell off a cliff. Given the lack of any reasonable upside, there's just no point in making an effort with him.

I appreciate the rest of your response, cutting it here so this page doesn't go on forever. Looking forward to seeing your KB trade ideas, because like people have been saying, I've yet to see one that I think makes the team better and gives them a better chance to make the playoffs. In terms of the above, obviously all these rumors are coming from somewhere. They aren't just bored down there, looking for something to do. I just don't believe that these rumors and potential reasons are coming strictly from a desire to improve the talent of the baseball team. I look at the organization openly talking about 'banking money' during years of poor performance, and very clearly creating this offensive core of players that would, due to the nature of player control, remain relatively underpaid relative to their performance and allow them to supplement that core with more expensive, established players, pitchers in particular (to mixed results). There's no way they conceived of this plan without realizing that eventually that sweet player control would run out, and those core players would be able to hit arbitration and eventually the open market, mostly at the same time. But we aren't at that point yet. If the plan was to leverage the team control and then bail as soon as there started to be a threat of these guys making serious money, well...that's a little depressing. Two years of Kris Bryant on this team, to me, is much more valuable than taking five years of control of Player X, adding up all those WARs, and claiming victory because they add up to more than what KB will most likely produce in 2020 and 2021. You want to talk me into a stud for stud deal, where we could get away from Boras and potential hard feelings for service time manipulation and commit to a long term deal? Let's have that discussion. But trading Kris Bryant for Max Fried doesn't come close to guaranteeing success down the road, and pretty clearly makes us worse next year, a year where we know we're going to be competitive and the value of every win is incredibly high. That's a clear downgrade in the near term, and the chance he turns into some 4-5 win player in 2022 in front of a roster that will either be super old or have a ton of other turnover required...what does that do for you? I don't mean to totally write off anything after 2021, but I don't really see a lot of reason for optimism at this point. Give me two more shots at October with this core, led by Bryant, and figure it out after that.

At the risk of oversimplifying this...I don't think there's a single person on this board who has anywhere close to the expertise required to work in a front office and effectively handle the breadth of job requirements that come with that type of position. Having said that, I don't think you necessarily need to have Theo's intelligence/experience/etc to look at Kris Bryant, and then look at the hypothetical packages offered for Kris Bryant, and decide which one is better in terms of putting the best baseball team on the field going forward. Theo almost definitely has insight into other factors (health, money, other potential transactions) that we don't, but boiling it down simply to 'well if we make a trade it's because Theo thinks it's good and so therefore it is good'....I mean, at that point just shut down the ability to comment in the 'Transactions' section, and just make announcements when things we happen that we can just believe are for the best.

I remain completely and entirely baffled by the idea of looking at our current roster, which could, on the whole, be generously described as 'just past their peak', seeing pretty much no high impact talent anywhere in our system, and looking at the contract situation where our entire line up is a free agent or up for a big raise in two years, and thinking the best path to success here is to replace our best player with someone who, if things go perfectly right, will peak in about 2023.

So is your argument here that this thread, 553 posts deep at the moment, along with the 2020 roster thread, 934 posts deep, just a bunch of group think morons chanting "No good Bryant trades"? Or is it possible that somewhere in those threads, apparently very difficult to find, are literally hundreds of other hypothetical offseason plans that people think would improve an 84 win team (90 by pythag) without trading our best player? Somehow we are the closed minded people not 'showing our work' here. On your side of the argument, I see two different options of what you are thinking. One, that there are baseball players that currently exist in the world where if you put them on our roster instead of Kris Bryant, the Cubs are a better team. Bryant for Mookie Betts makes our team better. Bryant for Trout and Ohtani makes our team way better. Fun! Also, completely useless in terms of productive conversation. Or there's the option that uses the rumored Kris Bryant trades that are out there, of which there are many, and sees an option or options in there that improve our team in the short term and/or the long term. If that's the option you're taking, please, as TT said, show your work, because I think that's where we fundamentally disagree on how to construct a successful Cubs roster. As a short aside, burying your head in the sand about pretty much every message Ricketts has sent regarding their willingness to spend money and sticking with the 'oh you think Theo is an idiot huh' argument is really dumb. There are clearly other factors at play, things none of us are happy with.