squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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2019-20 Offseason Rumors/General Chit-Chat
squally1313 replied to Cubswin11's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
To repeat myself for the 87th time, Quintana was a top 30 pitcher by fWAR last year and is going to make about the same amount as Tyler Chatwood this year. -
Not sure if this was directed at me, but eliminating the last two rows of court side seats is still a pretty big blow to the bottom line.
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I’m not sure moving the fences back will help. Players are already hitting home runs into the second deck.
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I mean, we think we just disagree on his ability, and if we disagree on how to properly value players (bWAR vs fWAR), we probably aren't going to come to some sort of middle ground. If you're a FG guy, he was the 26th best pitcher in baseball last year. Over the last two years, he's the 29th best pitcher. The last three years, 24th. Some of that is health and just simply taking the ball every 5th day, but there's a lot of value in that if you're interested in avoiding the Chatwood spot starts or the random AAA fill ins. I don't think there's any way we improve that spot for 2020, outside of trading actual value elsewhere.
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Yeah, that's all of the core that have publicly complained about Colliton. I don't remember Kane saying anything specifically directed at Colliton, or anything past 'yeah, it hasn't been fun around here'. But Kane never really struck me as the type to care too much about coaching, and Colliton seems to letting Kane do whatever he wants, so not sure it means much.
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Yeah, that's why I brought it up. It's a nice microcosm of his career - periphs that hang in there to give the presentable or better FIP, an ERA above the FIP, and nothing in there to really believe some force of nature was working against him or anything to get the end result...I think there's worse ways to spend $10.5 million for sure but also don't think he is a slam dunk impact guy for 2020 who must be kept otherwise we're in a hole...More optimistic about Lester making the adjustments How in the world is having an ERA two runs higher than his FIP be representative of his, or anyone else's, career? A BABIP and a LOB% that would be the worst in baseball..you think that was all his doing? He just suddenly turned into the most hittable pitcher in baseball while also cutting down his HR/FB rate in a season with by far the most home runs of all time? Oh, and your Ted Lilly example... 2007: 3.8 fWAR, 4.1 bWAR 2008: 2.9 fWAR, 4.0 bWAR 2009: 3.7 fWAR, 5.0 bWAR
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Sure, he also wasn't that good anyway and has throw lot more innings where he didn't beat the FIP and why would that change when the very next year he didn't. It really might just be bad pitches and not bad sequencing...last year was the first year of his career with the four seam averaging below 92. If your LOB percentage spikes to a career low, it's making bad pitches at bad times. Everyone makes bad pitches, and if he was making a lot of them all the time, that percentage wouldn't have gone anywhere because he would have put a ton more guys on. Honestly, do you think he was better in 2018 or 2019?
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That's a 5.13/3.14/3.63 performance with a .360 BABIP and a 58.9 LOB%, both of which would be the worst in baseball over the course of the year. If that's what you think is sustainable, sure. But that's a lot of bad luck to me.
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fWAR is FIP based for pitchers so people treat it as the more predictive WAR, but that's just an assumption. Quintana's been pitching a while now and isn't a FIP beater so now sure it bodes well for him that he kinda sucks by the WAR built around RA/9 He had a lower ERA than FIP in 2018. Basically if I'm looking at his rate numbers for 2018 and 2019, especially knowing how the power environment exploded from 2018 to 2019 (1200 more home runs), it's hard for me to trust bWAR when it says Quintana had a better 2018 than 2019. He had bad sequencing luck and the third worst BABIP allowed among qualified pitchers (Lester first, by the way). I think he made steps in the right direction, not that he was going the other way.
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2019-20 Offseason Rumors/General Chit-Chat
squally1313 replied to Cubswin11's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
If I'm a White Sox fan, there better be some trades coming. They drafted a first baseman, Vaughn, 3rd overall like, a year ago, and he's close to being ready. And then you have Zack Collins, drafted 10th overall, who came up as a catcher but looks to be more of a Schwarber type, emergency only catcher. So now you have Abreu, Vaughn, Collins, James McCann, and Grandal, a 31 year old catcher, all under control for the next three years, and that's before looking at Eloy, who is a disaster in the outfield. -
I'm confused if you are describing the players you want or the actual players themselves. Like Contreras obviously isn't going to give you CF defense, and also I'm not sure anybody who can't hit RHP is going to give you 3-4+ WAR potential. But then the blurb next to Quintana is just a worse version of Quintana, and the ones next to KB and Schwarber are just descriptions of those players. I think Quintana's been more bWAR Quintana than fWAR Quintana as a Cub Well there's no point in getting involved with that type of conversation, but I've always been under the impression that bWAR focuses more on what actually happened, more results based, whereas fWAR is better suited for predicting future performance. For all the talk of the home run surge, his HR/9 went down from 2018 to 2019, and his BABIP shot up. Some of that is his batted ball profile, which didn't go in the right direction, to be far. His LOB% was the worst of his career too.
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Toews basically threw him under the bus after the game too. There's been rumors about Keith tuning this guy out for a while, and Seabrook obviously has his issues (although with him, who really cares at this point)...Toews coming out and saying something seems like another step in the wrong direction for Colliton.
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Any of the first three can bring back 2020 help, the last one is throwing the towel in on 2020-2021 so might as well get the prospects with the upsides That said I'd be happy for returns that reflect the players: Contreras - Someone cheap with a clear skill the 2020 Cubs can use, say CF defense, but clear flaw, say like hitting RHP, limiting their overall game but has 3-4+ WAR potential Quintana - Pitcher outside the injury nexus that can reasonably be expected to put up 1-2 WAR, 2-3 WAR if things go right, and stay healthy under a very team friendly deal in 2020 relative to available cap space when acquired (so possibly pre-arb or first arb) Schwarber - 2020-2021 peak season player under team friendly deal for both of those seasons Bryant - Perrenial MVP candidate in his mid-20s still under pre-FA deals for multiple seasons I'm confused if you are describing the players you want or the actual players themselves. Like Contreras obviously isn't going to give you CF defense, and also I'm not sure anybody who can't hit RHP is going to give you 3-4+ WAR potential. But then the blurb next to Quintana is just a worse version of Quintana, and the ones next to KB and Schwarber are just descriptions of those players.
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And eliminate like 2 rows of the most expensive seats in the building? Yeah, good luck with that.
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Both good points. I just don't really trust any of our starting options outside of Yu, Hendricks, and Quintana, and I'm not a big fan of getting rid of one of them when there is still at least one hole to fill. I think Segura's value would take a hit moving from short over to second, and I think that production can be almost replicated cheaply by internal options. If we're trading away someone like Quintana, I'd hope it clears up money to go after someone more attractive than Jean Segura.
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Segura is an interesting one. In a vacuum I think of several things I like, but in practice since he's not exactly a top of order bat and that contract is non-trivial, I wonder if he's only a good idea in certain contexts. For example, Q and Almora for Segura and say, Seranthony Dominguez, then use Bote to get a live armed SP to go with a volume rotation approach? I know Quintana only has a year left, but I don't see how how Segura at second over Bote/Hoerner, which to me seems marginal at best, makes up for the downgrade of whatever Bote gets you to Quintana plus Dominguez. I guess it depends on where you fall on the hypothetical spectrum of "let's retool and compete every year indefinitely" vs "pretty much all of our good players are hitting free agency and also old in two years, so let's take advantage"
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Any talk of the Cubs trading Contreras and paying Grandal what he wanted was only in the minds of some posters. With limited funds and many holes to fill, adding to a position of power wasn't going to happen. I'm with you on the limited funds thing, but diverging on the second point because the catcher position without Contreras is definitely not a position of power.
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But there's nothing to suggest Caratini is a good defensive catcher, right? He was a negative value defensively until 2019, and even then it's not overly impressive. I get that he's already on the roster, but any sort of platoon with Caratini getting 80+ starts isn't one centered around defense. Depending on which framing metric you want to trust, Caratini was between 5 and 15 runs better than Contreras as a framer last year. Statcorner: Caratini +9, Contreras +4 Fangraphs: Caratini +2, Contreras -9 Baseball Prospectus: Caratini +5, Contreras -10 EDIT: The BP number includes throwing and blocking, on framing alone it's Caratini +3, Contreras -9 I wasn't saying they were equal, I know Contreras is bad, but I don't think that gap really comes that close to making up the offensive gap. I definitely see the argument, I'm just betting on Contreras as an upper .800s OPS guy, and someone who can be taught to cut down on the throwing errors, taught to be more focused behind the plate, etc.
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That is not the whole idea, or really anywhere close to the whole idea. I mean that's a significant part of it. Obviously you need something significant in return for Contreras to make the whole idea worthwhile, but the fulcrum is that it's easier to replace Contreras's production with players who cost less to acquire than Contreras's return would. And the reason that's possible comes down to defense and potentially knock-on effects of better defense/defense-related aspects. But there's nothing to suggest Caratini is a good defensive catcher, right? He was a negative value defensively until 2019, and even then it's not overly impressive. I get that he's already on the roster, but any sort of platoon with Caratini getting 80+ starts isn't one centered around defense.
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The whole idea behind trading Contreras is built on the team being able to improve their defense and pitching around a better defensive catcher, usually a really cheap group of FAs. In the case of Chirinos he's going to cost more than $6.75 million he made last year already more than 2020 Contreras, isn't a slam dunk better framer or defender than Contreras, isn't as good a hitter, and is way older. Just seems like a sloppy way to replace Contreras That is not the whole idea, or really anywhere close to the whole idea.
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I don't know why. I'm really not sure there's any production drop off from Contreras to Caratini/Chirinos. OTOH trading Contreras to sign Chirinos is pretty pointless. Chirinos probably isn't a worthwhile upgrade on defense and his 2020 salary will probably be higher than Contreras' I mean, if you ignore what you would be receiving in return for Contreras, sure. Regardless of that, I'm still betting on Contreras vs a combination along those lines. Neither of those two really strike me as a dynamic starter, and I'm not aware of some big platoon splits that would lead into getting the best out of both of them.
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This pretty much eliminates any desire I have to trade Contreras.
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I was thinking it was weird he went with Detlef Schrempf, and not the more obvious Chicago reference in Toni Kukoc. So I went to his wikipedia, and he grew up in Seattle, so that makes sense. His baseball section is amazing though. The guy had a 13 year career, 1997-2009, pitched almost 1500 innings, had a 4.7 fWAR season, and his "Baseball Career" section starts with the following line: "In September of 2006, Rusch was diagnosed with a life-threatening blood clot in his lung and missed the rest of the 2006 season." From there it just covers his basically failed comeback attempts, and ends with him being DFAed in 2009.
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I get the Astros reference, but if they go back to a "regular" ball, there might be a bunch of hitters falling off a cliff next year. That is a much different thing.
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Yeah it concerns me that they seem to get outshot every game, and in many cases by a lot. But if the excelling goaltending is sustainable then they might be a playoff team. Saw an article today talking about this. Their PDO is the second highest in hockey...PDO is basically just shooting percentage plus save percentage, with the theory that it should normalize at about 1.000. Basically a BABIP concept. So obviously with that you'd expect the luck to turn around and them go back to being bad. The theory of the article was that this team was built to beat/outperform PDO. Elite goaltending duo, a handful of guys who generally shoot above the league average that account for most of their SOGs. Probably more hopeful than anything else, but an interesting concept.