squally1313

horsefeathers my life. Just imagine the first time a Cardinal gets a big strikeout of a Cub and seeing Willson hopping up from behind the plate and pumping his fist in celebration. I would be incredibly surprised if they sign him. Between what he's likely to get paid, the Arrenado and Goldschmidt contracts and the fiery personality, just doesn't seem like a great fit. And much like the McGwire replacement was always going to have enormous pressure to perform, just not being Molina will be enough of a knock against the next guy that it's probably not a great investment overall for them next year. On the other hand, Contreras has been more valuable this season than Molina has been in the last four seasons combined, so any sort of competency back there might be received well in a pleasantly surprised way.

That's weird. I would have expected all those draft position weirdos who complained about the winning streak to be happy about this. No sign of them for some reason.

While I wish I spent more time in the actual game threads than in here, these got pretty fun to follow the last few months and we all really appreciate the time you put into this.

Our quest to reach 150 passing yards in a single game is looking up! A couple of those games might not have 150 passing yards in total.

And I'm saying that using 31 innings of effective bullpen work as the reason to trash the idea of him being a cost controlled starter on a team that has like....1.5 of them at the moment is not a good idea.

He's thrown 31 innings as a reliever this year? Not sure if we can just mark him down for Josh Hader.

That's an interesting analogy.

This Sox run makes me appreciate the Cubs 2012-2020 era so much more. It's so easy to say we should have done more with the talent we had, but the Sox basically spent the same amount of time to put together this core and have 2 playoff wins to show for it (Cubs = 19).

An average starter is significantly more valuable than a high end reliever. You have to give Thompson a shot to start.

Those are not the same players. They don’t have to be the same to be similar. As a QOable upcoming next year FA there’ll be plenty of talk about how Devers is also Actually Not That Good too I can guarantee that there won't be any talk about him being 30 years old.

I get that you can't ignore all that sweet team control, but are we really going to let Chris 'I have a .616 OPS in the second half and +30% K rate for the year' Morel hold up any sort of plans to acquire all star level players?

Those are not the same players.

ALL IN Yeah can I be a naive, optimistic Cubs fan for a second and imagine these guys all starting their careers right when the Cubs had their (much too short) era of dominance and they want to get in on the ground floor of version 2.0. Terrible english there, but you get the point.

Mets are, as of like an hour ago, -425. Which is about as high as I've seen a baseball game.

Unfortunately.

Liverpool down 3-0 at half and it really should be 5.

So we are just picking and choosing now? He's a good hitter. Just because he has good peripherals now does not mean he will next year. See his performance in 2019 compared to 2020 and 2021. Or his performance in the first half this year to the second half of this year (somehow didn't quote that one!). I don't think he will remain the hitter that he is now. I could be wrong! But the rest of his career counts, as much as you pretend that it doesn't, and there's roughly 100,000 data points that make up a pretty reliable aging curve for baseball players. Of course there are outliers there (see Willson Contreras in 2022). But you generally want to assume the things that happen more often than not will happen in the future. Apologies for not offering a comprehensive alternative plan, but I don't think that's necessary to further my point of 'I don't want to commit to a long term contract to a catcher/DH in his 30s, even though it would be cool because he's sweet'.

We're one page off from you agreeing with the 2022 periphs being in line with the jump in/breakout performance this year. He's 30 now and is past days of league leading defensive workloads, so what's the hold up? Why didn't he collapse this year? This 115-118 / 30+ combo you're riding is already 0/1 on age 30 seasons! No idea the Baez/Pujols context or relevance :dontknow: I was simply saying that he wasn't BABIPing his way to this performance, which might have been misthinking it because the stats we were referring to were normalizing it. His underlying 2022 numbers are solid. You are not signing 2022 Willson Contreras. You are signing 2023-2026/2027 Willson Contreras and are trying everything you can to determine what that guy looks like. You could, on your end, look at his numbers this year, say this is legit, this is the kind of hitter he is now, let's go get him. In that mindset, you're probably also trying to talk Pujols out of retirement to give you something close to his 140 wRC this year, or if you're the Tigers GM you're trying to cut Baez or sell him for scraps because that 78 wRC is pretty unplayable going forward. Or, maybe, you can look at a slightly bigger picture. I'm going with option B personally. You do realize that 'he doesn't catch nearly as much anymore!' isn't helping your case the way you think it might be right? I guess that's what you were getting at earlier, that this shift away from catching is the key to the increased offense and therefore this switch is permanent and he can go from an above average offensive catcher at 115 wRC to an above average DH at 130? I just don't think he's going to be that kind of hitter going forward (and yes, again, I know he's that kind of hitter now, maybe*). *86 wRC since July 1. Which, I hate shortening sample sizes! But if we're going to continue to laser focus on the last 5 months, I'll point out the last 2. (And then you can point to 125 wRC since August 1. etc etc etc)

Contreras by wOBA: .368 (2019) .363 (2016) .362 (2017) .359 (2022) He's running a .273 BABIP in 2022 to go with that .362 xwOBA, ran .300+ BABIPs those other years Juan Soto has a .409 OBP, .387 wOBA, .415 xwOBA, a 150 wRC+....What's not completely studly about that? Are we wOBA fans now? Here I was going along with wRC, but sure, if it fits your argument, let’s switch over. Could we say that his best days are behind him? Or are we only interpreting certain stats certain ways. Do Javy please. Or how about pujols.

I think this is where a good portion of the schism lies. Contreras has a 132 wRC+, which, for catchers, is #1 in the NL and #2 in MLB behind Alejandro Kirk. If you are #1 in the league, that's elite, right? I don’t understand how this argument keeps coming up. We have more than 5 months of data to go on. Do whatever kind of weighted trend line you want, this is the best he’s ever performed. Are we just throwing out career performance now when projecting future ability? Is Soto just an above average player and not the complete stud hes been for the rest of his career? No, probably not! You good projecting Javy as an 80 wRC guy the rest of his career? I would love to sign 2022 Contreras to a long term deal. That’s not who you’re getting!

I mean, I understand that we can trade our good hitters for prospects and then use those prospects to bolster the roster, either via trade or by calling them up. I would simply argue that, as currently constructed, and considering how few good offensive catchers there are currently in MLB, that signing Willson Contreras to a reasonable contract, if possible, would be a smart move. If the dude demands 6 years, by all means, good luck and godspeed. If 3-4 years @ ~20/yr is possible, bring him back. It will go a long way toward lengthening that lineup. If my choices are: Turner @ 35/yr + Hoerner + Hedges or Hoerner + Madrigal + Contreras @ 20/yr, I'll take this one and use the $$$ toward the rotation or Bell or something <---- I'd take Turner over Madrigal + Contreras going forward, along with A. hoping they can find a catcher who actually produces value (unlike Hedges) for $5ish million and B. taking advantage of either the increased flexibility of having Turner/Hoerner/Madrigal up the middle or seeing if you can get something of value for Madrigals 4 more years of team control. Contreras is a good, if not elite offensive catcher. He's below average defensively, which in total puts him comfortably in the "above average but not elite" group of catchers. That's his current form....all reasonable expectations say that he will trend downwards. I don't know a good way of saying that a good offensive catcher is not close to the top of list of priorities, but it's where I am. You just need offense. Paying $20m/year to hope your above average catcher remains an above average catcher seems like not the best use of resources.

More broadly, the path from 56-75 to legitimate contender is not through a substitution and then another 1-2 FAs. One of the main reasons the lineup looks this bad is because instead of keeping (and potentially extending) good hitters, we traded them for prospects. Prospects that turned our system good, and can (hopefully!) either contribute to the Cubs sooner rather than later or be used to trade for players who can (again, hopefully!) help immediately. Throwing out that lineup without including any of the top prospects in the system or factoring in potential trades of those top prospects isn't quite a fair analysis. And ultimately, if those prospects stink and lose value, we're probably screwed whether or not you slot Contreras into that catching slot or not.

Well, we will have Happ for next year. I don't think that's all the money that's available, and doesn't seem like it would be a ton of money to upgrade a corner infield position. And then yes, you're relying on Davis et al to upgrade the other spots.

Since we both agree the periphs back it up, what does it matter if it's a career year? Why/How is it bad to be a career 115 wRC+ hitter in nearly 3000 ML careers PAs (mostly at a position running a 88 wRC+ since he joined the league) before having what, again we both agree the periphs match up, a legitimate leap in performance coinciding with a dramatic change in usage and roster construction (more in line with a typical 2022 contender)? It feels worth pointing out this 131 wRC+ is not so far from the 27 point difference between his 115 and the position's 88 wRC+ since 2016. It's seems like not a total coincidence given the circumstance Stuff like career year and long term are noise. No one's having much trouble moving the back end of even a 115 wRC+ DH contract and if this whole deep farm thing is real that's not even a thing - FanGraphs' DEF has him at +13.9, DRS at +11 (including +8 in 2021 and a whopping -1 in 2022), he's +20 career in their SB metric, and combined is all of -9 in framing runs the past two seasons (-41 in his career) - Which position cheaply? Cubs DHs have a 110 wRC+ and that's with Contreras. Catcher? They've used 3 this year with Contreras on the roster and signed Gomes on a cheap, short deal. It's not unlikely they bring in someone cheap and low commit like Hedges or Barnhart in the offseason either - The DH is a full time position. Why is this is a bad thing for Cubs and Contreras? - Why is the 34th best hitter in baseball by wRC+ bad? These are not real things to worry about - It's not a lump sump contract. They can sign other stars and have plenty of room to do so! - The closest to a specific player mentioned here is Ohtani which...why would Willson Contreras be the reason they're *out* on Ohtani and not in? These elite players we all want on Cubs don't want to come to these lame, nobody filled rebuilds from a franchise who seemingly regularly tosses elite players aside because 30 - I don't have any idea what point you're trying to make on the wRC difference thing. His offensive production is very good for a catcher. He's going to catch less and less each year, and will spend more time at positions that produce better offense. -Anytime, ever, you want to at least acknowledge that players regress as they get older, even setting aside that's been a horsefeathering catcher for the last 15 years so throw some sort of multiplier on the number of innings he's accumulated, would be great. Taking a 30 year old, career 117 wRC hitter and just penciling in 115 wRC for the next 4 years is not how those things are done. -I've yet to find a way to sort catcher defense on FG that doesn't put him near the bottom of the list of catchers in terms of defensive value added. A mediocre, even 'bad' defensive catcher is still more valuable than say, an average defensive first baseman. But, again, he will give you less and less of that going forward. -Fill catcher cheaply, leave yourself some flexibility to see who becomes available, who develops, etc. I think there are better ways to spend your money. -Because you think he's the 34th best hitter in baseball going forward, and I don't. He's been the 51st best hitter in baseball the last three years, and he's 30. -We have no idea how much room they have. But we have a pretty good idea it's limited. Go find better players. Go trade for a young pitcher and sign him to an extension with Contreras money and pitch Ohtani on that. Or pick a shortstop. Or do like 7 other things instead.

No, it wouldn't. He has a .359 wOBA and .362 xwOBA, a .246 BA and a .253 xBA, a .471 SLG and a .460 xSLG(so still a .200+ IsoSLG)...while running a 131 wRC+. He's at 3.2 fWAR right now! His defense is also being mischaracterized or at least lacks nuance. He's got plenty of arm for the position, only ever really hurt the Cubs in 2018 while catching 1100+ innings (never close to that before or after, includes that month stretch with no dayoff and injured backups)...and again this in a MLB where any team competing is multiple impact players deep at the position...he's caught 591.1 inninigs coming into tonight for 2022 What even are they *supposed* to get for 4/80? A full time plus defensive catcher who projects to 126 wRC+? 3 WAR a season? 4? Would it be inefficient for the Deepest Farm System to fill in a team around Contreras? If it's deep how or why would or could One Man stopping it from happening? I could have made the Happ thing a separate post or not at all You know it's a career year, I know it's a career year, everyone else here knows it's a career year. I'm not saying it's not legit, the peripherals back it up. But it's absolutely above anything he's done before and it's pretty foolish to disregard the rest of his career (or even just 2020 and 2021, where he put up matching 110 wRCs after a 126 wRC in 2019) in any of these exercises, especially when we're debating the merits of a long term deal for a 30 year old. I'm not going to pretend to know all the nuances of defensive metrics, but he rates out as below average at best for catchers, and him moving to DH more doesn't help that. Fill the catching position cheaply, and without any long term commitments. If Amaya or your boy Hearn or whatever becomes a stud, great! If not, keep filling it cheaply. Giving a long term deal to someone who will most likely age into a DH role, and also in his best offensive performance of his career is the 34th best hitter in baseball by wRC doesn't seem like the best way to spend somewhere shy of $100m given the multiple black holes in the rotation, at the corner infield spots, etc. Or, looking at it differently, it's somewhere like 1/3rd to 1/2 of pick your absolute favorite player available in FA or stuck in Anaheim, all of which are players I'd much rather use that farm system to build around.