squally1313

Well for 2018, if trading TLS doesn't qualify then signing Descalso definitely doesn't qualify, at least in hindsight. Could probably just leave last offseason off the list, at least until Kimbrel. I think you'll see transactions continue to get pushed back. Even something like the potential Morrow signing, it was hinted that there have been good discussions but they want to wait until after 12/1 because of 40 man roster considerations.

This seems unnecessarily cruel to do this now with the game definitely over.

This could be awesome.

I'm late to this discussion on the Astros and how they got their pitching, but it seems a little disingenuous to point to Torres, Eloy, Cease, etc as big successes of our farm system, while not mentioning that the Astros went out and got Cole, Verlander, and Greinke using, you guessed it, prospects from their organization.

Of the Top 10 picks in Happ's draft, 6 of them either haven't made MLB or have provided negative bWAR in a brief amount of time. 5 for Schwarber's Top 10. That's the baseline, not whether the player was an especially good major leaguer. That's a little bit of an oversimplification, looking at Happ's draft. Yes, for where the Cubs were at the time it made sense to prioritize a more polished bat. But in those 6 you have Brendan Rogers and Kyle Tucker, both of which are much more valuable than Ian Happ.

The bigger feather in the cap for Schwarber and Happ is that both were considered substantial reaches on draft day, and McLeod's job is as much to get guys who don't need as much work as it is to improve the players they're able to get. It's a little hard to track down 2015 draft predictions/pre-draft rankings, but FG had Happ going 11th instead of to us at 9. Another one had him at 17th. We may be getting into two separate discussions here. I assume based on this that McLeod was in charge of the draft as well as development, and so he gets credit for making those picks instead of, to use those previews, Daz Cameron or Jon Harris. But that still doesn't change the facts on his development skills, and if he gets credit for picking the right hitters those times, he gets marked down for all the pitchers he ended up on that didn't pan out.

Sofa is going to do this better than me, but. The net contributions have been great, and have been incredibly top heavy. We drafted hitters with top 10 overall picks 5 years in a row, and all of them have contributed to our success, to obviously varying degrees. You can debate how much credit Jason McLeod should get for developing Kris Bryant, college player of the year, or the one year Kyle Schwarber spent in the minors before he made it to the pros (or the year and a half for Ian Happ). I would argue not a lot, but that's easy to say because they turned into actual players. Javy? Sure, it's clear a ton of work took place to get him where he is now, but it's also worth pointing out that he showed up to the majors an an incredibly raw player, and didn't really make a leap until he had about 300 games in the majors. Dylan Cease was the second piece in the Quintana deal, and was the 63rd ranked prospect in baseball when we traded him. Calling that a 'hit' is generous. As TT mentioned earlier, in hindsight it probably wasn't the best strategy to just pile up arms and play the odds you develop a few. But the fact remains that that was the direction we went in, and McLeod didn't deliver. A 63rd prospect and MAYBE a 7th inning guy in 4 years of drafting is not good.

Could arguably throw Chapman into that last group too. Character issues aside, he played a big part of getting us the title. But maybe you don't have to pay a ransom for the top reliever on the market in order to contend at that level.

Given that their draft strategy seemed to be that you should draft the best hitter first, and then just stockpile arms and hope you get a few good ones...is that a criticism of Theo in terms of their approach, given what you're saying about reliable starters being top picks?

I think it has something to do with the fact that the Bears teams that have achieved moderate success in the last 10-15 years have basically been modeled after the 85 Bears...top ranked defense, middling at best offense, and so the 85 team stays in the conversation. It's probably hurting the franchise more than it helps at this point, people continuing to believe that in modern football all you need is a good front 7.

That game was fun. I didn't make it past the first period but they packed a game's worth of action into 20 minutes. Sending down Boqvist until they can trade Gustafson makes sense since Colliton is trying to save his job and isn't going to care about developing players. It's a lose lose situation. Playing Seabrook over Boqvist makes the team worse, which doesn't help him trying to save his job. Benching Seabrook and risking losing the locker room also doesn't help him save his job. Then again, this whole thing could have been avoided if we didn't trade for Olli Maatta, who is bad and has a bad contract.

This whole rant is pretty unhinged, but the bolded might be my favorite. He's put up 13.8 WAR in the last three years, which is not a difficult thing to fact check. That's also missing 50ish games in 2018, and sure, I'll even ignore the damage the injuries did while he was playing. Seriously man, all these weird capitalizations is very Trump-y. Everything alright?

It's a minor league deal where it's implied that Morrow wants to pay the Cubs back for all the time and money they've invested in him. If that's the case, there is literally no downside to this, nor does it get in the way of any other move. Not suggesting otherwise, just making a joke. My bad...had seen some much more serious versions of those words in much worse parts of the internet.

You definitely don't want to know how many of those 41 home runs he hit at home vs how many he hit on the road, and if you find that out, you really won't want to know whether he played more games at home or on the road.

with ballsy moves like these, the Cubs are poised to reclaim their spot atop the NL Central. It's a minor league deal where it's implied that Morrow wants to pay the Cubs back for all the time and money they've invested in him. If that's the case, there is literally no downside to this, nor does it get in the way of any other move.

Astros at home, 2017: .279/.340/.472 .812 OPS, 121 wRC Astros on road, 2017: .284/.351/.483, .834 OPS, 121 wRC

This isn’t directed to you specifically, but something I’ve been wondering about is if an electronic strike zone is maybe only two years away, are we all worrying too much about Wilson’s framing ability? Even if it were only two years away (which is wildly optimistic), we have Contreras under team control for three more years, and then you'd be looking at a 31 year old catcher entering free agency. Even if Contreras ends up riding out these three years with the Cubs, I'd have serious questions about bringing him back at age 31, regardless of what's going on with the zone. So basically, you'd be looking at maybe possibly one year of cheap Contreras and an electric zone. Not really worth factoring in the discussion.

I guess I'm not sure what type of value you're assigning to Hoerner, but if we're comparing him to Ian Happ and Kyle Schwarber, both of whom were top 10 picks and in theory more valuable/better players, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. And yes, I know, Kris Bryant, but he was in no way a reach. Basically I think people keep ignoring the Albert Almora sized elephant in the room when they look at Hoerner's (admittedly limited) numbers. I think Hoerner can be a poor mans version of a poor mans Zobrist, but I haven't really seen anything beyond that. Happ and Schwarber have combined for about 14 fWAR in just under 3000 PAs, that rate of production is more than fine with me as an outcome for Hoerner. Yes, there are some parallels to Almora, but 1) those are going to happen with any high contact player who isn't an Altuve-level talent, and that's where leaning on Hoerner's ability to adapt from being a high level college player plus ever-improving organizational instruction can give room for optimism. But there’s nothing to suggest Hoerner has the same level of talent. He was drafted later, his numbers aren’t nearly as good. He can play a very valuable position, but we already have a shortstop. Theo and Co get credit for him looking like a major leaguer, but he’s a clear step down from two guys who have been debated as future pieces of this team for the last year.

Not sure if this is supposed to be sarcastic. Not at all. It's not proof positive he's going to be a star, but their lack of misses at the top of drafts when drafting college hitters is a validation of their ability to get MLB caliber players from that cohort. I guess I'm not sure what type of value you're assigning to Hoerner, but if we're comparing him to Ian Happ and Kyle Schwarber, both of whom were top 10 picks and in theory more valuable/better players, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. And yes, I know, Kris Bryant, but he was in no way a reach. Basically I think people keep ignoring the Albert Almora sized elephant in the room when they look at Hoerner's (admittedly limited) numbers. I think Hoerner can be a poor mans version of a poor mans Zobrist, but I haven't really seen anything beyond that.

Why is this a good outcome? He's generally considered a top 50 prospect in baseball right now and a positive outcome would be using him to save a few million off the back of the roster....Yippee skippee Trent Giambrone and Vimael Machin can probably do the same thing and it's a way less sinister act by the org

If you need a reason to believe, he is a college bat that this front office drafted in the first round even when that wasn't his consensus value. Not sure if this is supposed to be sarcastic.

Bold: Agreed! Not sure how employing one, one with a wide enough set of demonstrated tools and skills that he could easily pass that floor in his prime, at a bare minimum salary at a position of need actually gets in the way of getting one Not bold: Still not a thing! No one is talking about cutting Ian Happ. The discussion, at least the one I thought I was part of, is whether we need to bring in an outfielder to be a starter, and let Happ be the new Zobrist, or whether we should roll with Schwarber/Happ/Heyward for 130 games. He's cheap and definitely brings value. 2.5 wins is absolutely not his floor. His floor is what he did for 100 games in AAA just this past year, but then against major league pitching. I get that it's a bad faith argument to selectively cut out 9/22-9/30, because that definitely counts. But on September 20th, we were looking at a guy who went from 1.9 WAR to 1.5 WAR to being a below average AAA hitter and then putting up a .217/.295/.426 slash line in the majors. There is nothing in there that comes close to 'major league starter'.

I think the team needs more than an "easy to see a 2.5 win player". If there was any reasonable hope of expecting more than 3-3.5 wins out of each corner outfielder, then you slot Happ in there, take your 2-2.5, and hope he turns a corner. Basically it's just frustrating that you have three outfielders that would all make amazing third outfielders, and definitely serviceable second outfielders. Counting on Happ to be anything more than that is relying a hell of a lot on 8 games.

Was it tongue in cheek when you tried to post evidence about why you were right? Just making sure I know which parts you were kidding about. I mean, yeah, not a big deal. The whole 'like I've been saying for months/years now...' goes well beyond you around here. But it was a weird brag on liking a player that's pretty well liked around these parts.

No, no, keep going. The coolest people around here are the ones that remember every half assed prediction they made 12 months prior, and will continue to shoehorn it into their messages later on when one of them kinda comes true. Everyone loves those posts.