squally1313

I'm probably going to quote myself here every time Kyle does even the slightest thing of note.... From Jun. 27th, when everyone was piling on him. *coughs loudly and pats self on back* It was some idiot named Rynomites with 27 total posts and then a bunch of us jumping in to defend Schwarber. But sure dude, here's some message board points.

The 100 mediocre AAA games came after two not unproductive ML seasons at 22 and 23 though so it's hard to put tons of value in that too. Not sure there's much of a relationship in year to year LD%, but that he kept hitting the ball hard is good stuff. Also also is a guy with 39 HRs the past two seasons who also hits the ball hard, far, and in the air really relying on the ball for power? He's surprisingly played more games in CF than any other position as a pro....Basically I don't think Happ being good is 100% certain but I do think there's so much more to be optimistic about than down over The two non unproductive MLB seasons, the second one worse than the first, basically get you a low 2 WAR player. He essentially went in the wrong direction for 1.9 years, and then went nuts for 8 games. They still count, but that’s really the only evidence we have that hes more than a 2.5 win player. Which has value, sure, butnext to the other two it starts to look a bit bland.

Yeah I mean, there's two options/conversations here: 1. You essentially throw out last year, take his MLB PAs from 2017 and 2018, slap it on 600 PAs, and he's a roughly 2-2.5 win player in center field. Not terrible, but it means you're looking at an outfield that's going to really struggle to top like, 10 WAR total if you lock in Schwarber and Heyward next to him. Only 5 teams put up more than 12 WAR with their OF last year and only 6 over 11. Is that really that bad or burdening to expect ~10 WAR? Sure we’d like more but with the IF we have, probably projects in the 18 range (5-6 KB, 3-4 Javy, 2-3 Nico/Bote 2B, 3-4 Rizzo 1B, 3-4 C Willy/Vic) I think we could be competitive with a ~10 WAR OF. I'm seeing different on FG, but I think their allocations are messed up when it comes to team production by position. No real problem with your infield numbers, and 28 oWAR would put us 6th in baseball for 2019, so all good. However, and I know I'm kinda changing the argument here, if you lock in a 2-2.5 WAR full time Ian Happ, you aren't getting to 10 wins with Heyward and Schwarber picking up the majority of the remaining PAs. KB might help push some value to the OF in total, but there's no way you can rely on those two for 7-8 wins...I think the over/under is about 5.

Well it ignores 100 games of mediocre at best AAA ABs, for one. Two, his LD% dropped significantly from 2017 and 2018, while his hard hit contact stayed about the same. He made contact more, and more of his fly balls left the park. The first is indisputably good, the second, given everything we know about the baseballs, is not something we necessarily want to rely on. He only played 126 innings in the outfield, and only about half of those in center, so not nearly enough to say anything about his defense.

That's a fair point, although I think it's also worth considering it an illustration of how few PA his MLB downturn was if 1 week essentially erased it. We do have ~900 PA before this year of him having an MLB quality bat(especially in CF), so I don't want us to overstate the risk. That is the risk though, Happ is a bit of a wild card, and he hasn't spent so much time in CF that we can be uber-confident in how to peg him defensively either. Yeah I mean, there's two options/conversations here: 1. You essentially throw out last year, take his MLB PAs from 2017 and 2018, slap it on 600 PAs, and he's a roughly 2-2.5 win player in center field. Not terrible, but it means you're looking at an outfield that's going to really struggle to top like, 10 WAR total if you lock in Schwarber and Heyward next to him. 2. You take last year as, if not close to the norm, a step forward. He's not going to OPS .897, but whatever he worked on eventually had a positive effect, and he can put up roughly a .250/.325/.500 slash line over the full year (admittedly a little optimistic, slugging wise). You basically have Brett Gardner, who put up a .251/.325/.503 slash line with slightly positive defensive value for 3.6 WAR. Awesome. The issue with someone like Happ, even if he ends up with these types of numbers, is that he seems the type to do it in streaks, and he's the kind of player that is the first to be blamed/turned on when things aren't going well. To put myself in David Ross' head, Happ hasn't "earned" the rope to ride out a few weeks for 40% K rates. So even if you're optimistic and think he can put up 3+ WAR in a full seasons worth of PAs, does he even get that chance?

Still a terrifyingly small sample size, but BR has him going HAM pretty much all of the last month: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=happia01&year=2019&t=b Or is that mostly masking that he sucked and that last week dragged up the previous 3-ish? To break it up even more, 9/01-9/21 was .216/.250/.405, so yes, pretty bad up until that last week.

Happ is such a weird dude to try and project. While the talking point was that he was sent to AAA to 'work on his swing', I don't think we can ignore the fact that he was down there for 99 games and essentially was really bad for pretty much all of it. And then after that, it took him going nuclear the last week of the year to get his 2019 MLB numbers looking pretty again...through 9/21, he had a .224/.300/.457 slash line. Obviously you can't ignore that last week, but we're basically talking about one week's worth of incredible baseball as the difference between a lost year and someone who should be our starting center fielder next year.

I was told to expect my renewal details in the mail at some point this week...interested to see what they do with the prices, if anything. I made sure to get my playoff money refunded rather than carried forward this time. Still leaning towards renewing, but...not a sure thing.

So it's not a gimme. who said it was? in the nfl, a fg kicker should be very reliable from 41 yards out, from the left, center and right. its a dumb argument and only makes sense since he sucked and missed the fg

So what happens when those 110 mph gappers turn into 90mph fly balls when the ball is de-juiced? Then everyone else's 110 mph gappers turn into 90 mph fly balls and his value remains the same? I don't think you're making as profound a point as you think you are here. You're better than me at this, but I immediately tune out almost every time someone brings up the new ball/old ball thing in terms of roster design. Everyone plays with the same ball. It's like arguing what would happen if they made it 4 outs per inning instead of 3. Good players will remain good players.

Citing OBP in a five game sample as the reason for anything seems incredibly dumb, especially when they were 5th in the league in OBP for the season, and second in the NL.

George Springer having 227 postseason PAs is about as old as I've felt in a while. For context, Rizzo has 154.

I would gladly switch Caratini with Contreras in the trade proposal, but I doubt the Pirates would be interested. Going by what Epstein said about making a big change and figuring in our budget / mediocre farm system, one of our core players looks to be on the block. I can't see Rizzo or Baez being traded, which pretty much leaves Contreras or Bryant. Depending on the return, we would have a big downgrade at 3B or a lesser downgrade at catcher. Without trading one of the "core four", the best trade assets have very limited value on the trading block. When did he say this in regards to the roster? I don’t think he’s spoken any absolutes about it, it’s all been GM speak. The big change stuff, that was stated clearly/imminent at least, was more FO and coaching directed with changing things (and they already are on their way to doing it). Yeah seriously, and even if he did say that, who cares. You think Jed is going to come rushing in next February with some transcript and be like "remember when you said this", and Theo is going to just open up the trading block like on the Show and add Contreras real quick? He can bring back good value, and if there's a deal that provides a clear upgrade elsewhere that outweighs losing him, go for it. But also, that applies to everyone on the team.

Going to be great when fall out of the race by early September as Lester goes 4-18 and then they spend the last couple weeks hyping up David Ross: Player-Manager Day. Mostly kidding, because managers don't matter, but you know they'll try to pull that if they can.

Have they put out who is going to be throwing out first pitches and doing the ceremonial stuff for the games in DC? Also, the Nats would be a real interesting team to deal with the whole visiting the White House thing.

Sarcasm? Not really? We might be run by Machiavelian turds willing to win regardless of any kind of ethic, but at least we aren't telling female reporters "horsefeathers you lady! This wife beater kicks ass in all the right ways." I think that is a worthy distinction. No, we're just trading for them and picking up their options. Trust me, those actions speak way louder. Edit: Also, please reconcile these comments with your comments in the General Baseball chat.

At the risk of bringing in too much overlap from the Politics thread...100% agree on this take.

Not bad. Besides when I was actually watching the game, I don't think I could have told you the sequence of events that led to Michale McDonald or whatever his name is in the last AB. I think the whole Javy bunt strikeout rage probably blocked it from my memory, but good for JHey to contribute to the actual game, not just the locker room.

Yeah, on a positive lighter note, it'll be interesting to see if he can find creative ways to use Ohtani. On a much more important darker note, this Skaggs situation could turn into a huge mess. I'm guessing there's a good amount of work being done behind the scenes to keep this out of the headlines during the playoffs.

I think it’s generally accepted they were juiced for all of 2018 and 2019, they possibly were here for all of 2017 and if they weren’t they came in some time during the year. I'm going from hazy memory and selective interpreting the data, but my thinking is that launch angle focus is responsible for a general lift in HR rate, and the juiced ball added some on top of that in 2017 and 2019 in particular. I thought about launch angle as well, and then concluded that that would just lead to more fly balls, rather than an increase in HR/FB. But FB rate is actually lower in 2019 than it was in 2010, while HR/FB rate has almost always increased, so probably something to that. Worth pointing out that 2018 actually had a lower HR/FB rate than 2017.

I don't know the general consensus for when these new balls came into play. The HR rate has been steadily increasing over the last 10 years (with a couple blips) due to a variety of factors, but the biggest jump was from 2018 to 2019 (12.7% to 15.3%). If it's just this year, then Quintana's HR rate jumping three years ago doesn't really give me a lot of comfort. Hendricks isn't a huge concern given his overall performance. He talked about throwing up in the zone more often this year, and based on my limited knowledge, I would think that might lead to more fly balls/home runs, with the idea being that overall you get weaker contact. His HR/FB rate going down from 14.8% to 12% to 10.4% the last three years (potentially) backs that up. I agree that Darvish's spiked, though it went down in the second half if he puts it together. Not super concerned if he can continue the huge K/BB ratio...Verlander and Cole were both top 15 in HRs allowed this year and it didn't seem to bother them much.

Same argument, but in reverse. It's going to help starters on every team. Looking at the lack of a 'boost' for our main guys and attributing it to 'well they just hit no doubters regardless' and then just expecting a regression for everyone else except them is not really an approach I want anyone making decisions to take.

Yeah, but the question is whether this is a Cubs specific thing or not. It's nice to think that all of Schwarber's home runs are no doubters, but he also blew past his career high, and I remember a lot more opposite field shots from him this year (again, anecdotally). Something like average fly ball distance would be a good start, and maybe some Statcast expert can figure that out (I couldn't). The best would be if someone took one of those spray chart gifs and figured out a way to multiply all the distances by 1.1 or whatever, and then overlayed Wrigley, kinda like how we saw when Castellanos came over. But that's a whole project. Ultimately, I'm weary on thinking this will be some Cubs specific benefit if they go back to the old ball. Ignore it, everyone uses the same thing, figure out ways to make the team better.