squally1313

Sounds good to me, but I'm not sure who we are trading for Betts, Lindor, and Arenado. Almora & Happ, duh. You know what, no one else has the balls to say it, so I'll be the one to step up: in this scenario, I would also make Bote AND Hoerner available.

Kris Bryant is a better baseball player than Nolan Arenado, and making a straight up trade makes the Cubs a worse baseball team. Having said that, this trade is significantly better than any other rumored Bryant deal, and if we have to go down that road, might as well end up with this solution.

Probably Bote, maybe Descalso or Bryant. You're probably shuffling someone in from Iowa if Baez is out more than 48 hours even with Hoerner. Eh, give me Hoerner, Descalso, Souza, Caratini, Scooter, and another guy who can handle corner outfield and ideally hit lefties. Hoerner is the de facto back up for Bryant, Baez, Bote, even Happ (Heyward to center, KB to right, Bote to third) and Schwarber (KB to left, Bote to third). Scooter gets a chance to beat out Bote for a starting job, Descalso gets a chance to be a pinch hitter or he gets dumped, Souza/Heyward stay in a strict platoon.

Why do people keep pretending there is strategy involved here? It's not rocket science by any means, but there is absolutely strategy when you are working with a 4-5 man bench, one of which typically being the backup catcher (and, as the Cubs love to do, another 1 or 2 nursing some sort of injury). I don't know a better way to search for these stats, but the NL had 4297 pinch hitting appearances, while the AL had 1366. That's 91 per AL team, so barely more than 1 every 2 games, vs 276 for NL teams.

Isn't Happ the RH CF option? Heyward is the CF back up, Souza/Bote/Hoerner is more than enough flexibility to cover days off for any of the outfield and 3B/SS/2B. The one thing I hadn't really thought about in the Horner MLBvAAA decision is that I don't know who is the backup SS in the event he starts the year in AAA.

Out of curiosity, would you be in favor of adding a DH for the catcher spot as well? Not to be flippant, but if catchers ever get to the point where their triple slash numbers all start with a .1, sure. Just wondering what the line is. What about just a second DH for every team's weakest offensive player? Outside of football, pretty much every sport involves making decisions where you have to sacrifice offense for defense in putting the best team out there. I like the strategy that comes with the pitcher spot. Being able to move it around in the line up, working with a limited amount of bench/bullpen options and figuring out the best way to maximize your limited chances at the plate. I don't think it puts the NL at an inherent disadvantage. There's an almost...free throw like quality to pitching to a pitcher. Just do your job and take the easy out. I'm aware none of these are great arguments, but given that there's like 3 effective full time DHs in baseball right now, I'd rather keep it as is with the strategy that comes with it. Games aren't going to suddenly become dong fests because all the NLs 1st guy off the bench gets 4 PAs a game now.

Pitchers don't suck at hitting because they don't work on it enough, they suck at it because hitting his hard and pitching gets better and better. Scrappy McJunkball could scratch out a hit or two against the scrubs that pitched in yesteryear, not because he put in the time and effort. Right, and pitchers are the only guys on the field who are there almost entirely for their extremely valuable contribution to run prevention. Just about everyone else advanced in the game because of what they can do for run scoring primarily. The dudes who have both the natural talent to hit MLB pitching well and pitch well to MLB hitters are beyond absurdly rare. Out of curiosity, would you be in favor of adding a DH for the catcher spot as well?

At this point any live body who makes it more likely that Almora doesn't make the roster is someone I want. I am no longer being rational about this.

It would make the end of the roster decisions a lot less important for me. Which, honestly, is probably a good thing at this point. Still like the starting pitcher/hybrid idea.

RIP Kobe. Holy horsefeathers.

It's not a traditional way to do it, but the hope is that you get top 5 production from 3B, SS, 1B, and catcher to make up for middle of the pack/slightly above average production in the rest of the line up (and these small additions hopefully minimize the chance of negative production). Combine that with your 3 #2 starters, and then whatever Lester and ??? can give you...

If Hoerner makes the team, especially with that bench, I can see him making the starting line up a good amount just in a psuedo-Zobrist role. If you keep Heyward/Souza in a straight platoon, I think Hoerner becomes the main 'backup' for Schwarber (Bryant to left), Happ (Heyward to center, Bryant to right), Bryant (Bote to third), Baez, and Bote. Even just giving those 5 guys 10-15 games off for the year gets you 50-75 starts. Although this implies a world where Almora doesn't exist, so it might be a little hopeful.

Bringing in a platoon partner for Heyward is a good idea. Bringing in someone that also has a chance to be a valuable full time player is a better idea. Good work. However, the defense is going to look pretty questionable when you're running out Schwarber/Happ/Souza, and my concern is that the remedy to that 'problem' is essentially putting Almora/Happ into the same platoon, and then you've basically just moved the problem you were trying to solve.

[tweet] [/tweet] With Willy/Rizz/Bote/KB/Javy/Schwarber/Happ/Heyward as your 8 starters, your bench looks like Caratini Hoerner Souza Descalso ...probably Almora, or else Garcia.

Lester probably thinks that with Rossy running the show, he can get to 200 innings next year and guarantee the option.

Yeah I unfortunately don't see too many places where the Cubs would blow that out of the water. The outfield in total lines up pretty closely, just give Schwarber the 2.4, Heyward the 1.3, and Happ (with Almora dragging him down) the 0.9. 13.8 from the infield should be mostly covered by Baez/Bryant/Rizzo, but hard to get too far above that with second base being some Bote/Hoerner combo. Steamer has Contreras at 1.3, so catcher lines up pretty close. No one on our team will approach Flaherty, and we only have four starters right now, even though all of them are better than their second best pitcher. I'll still take the Cubs as the favorite, but it's pretty close to a toss up where the rosters are now.

But Wil Myers is terrible.

It's obviously a much different game overall than when Blake came into the league, but Zion's ability to shoot is a big advantage that took Blake years to add to his game (he had 7 total three pointers in his rookie, 82 game season). Granted, everyone is shooting threes now, but Zion is a little different in that regard and gives him a wrinkle beyond "shorter Blake"

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28537918/mlb-plans-robot-umps-call-balls-strikes-spring-training-games Robot umps for spring training games

I think that's a false choice. It's not Almora vs the only centerfield option out there (if that's even true). It's also Almora vs a back up 3B/2B, or a corner outfield guy who maybe hits lefties really well. There are at least two, probably three guys on the roster who can spell Happ in center. I'll expand my point then. If we've only got a couple million to spend, I'd prioritize the bullpen instead of the bench at this point. Obviously, if we've got more to spend, then let's go nuts. Yeah, I can buy that argument, although at what point do you hit a point of diminishing returns by adding the 13th slightly above average pitcher to the bullpen rotation. There's more than just free agent options though...there's going to be roster crunches, players left without options, etc that you can go and scoop up for nothing (or maybe even Almora!) over the next month or so.

I think that's a false choice. It's not Almora vs the only centerfield option out there (if that's even true). It's also Almora vs a back up 3B/2B, or a corner outfield guy who maybe hits lefties really well. There are at least two, probably three guys on the roster who can spell Happ in center.

There's one guy making the case for Almora on this roster, me, and nothing is based on Almora being the standard of good he's being held to to hold this very niche-y job. There's currently one FA CF who even kinda sorta fills Almora's role on the roster, and that's a 32 YO glove first CF who hasn't logged an OBP over .300 for half a decade while playing a ton of innings and games. The whole case for Pillar is that he's automatically better because of his 2015-2019 WAR totals. To log those WARs with his offense, Pillar had to get a ton of playing time while playing elite defense. His defense has been declining and the Cubs don't have starter PAs for the backup CF, that's why they're the backup CF. So right off the bat the deck would be stacked against Kevin Pillar succeeding here. From there, Kevin Pillar has earned the right to shop himself as a starter in FA to the end especially with multiple teams - Philly to start - with a worse CF situation and more competition free playing time Without Almora, and say the likeliest scenario plays out in which Kevin Pillar doesn't care to sign a contract where he has to compete with or back up Ian Happ for no money, the starting RF and starting 3B become the backup CFs. Pulling Bryant from 3B means now 2B and 3B are sharing players. Pulling Heyward from RF most likely means they done went and pulled Bryant from 3B which is bad OR Happ's got to cover for a struggling 2B situation which is also bad To further pound on that whole replacing him with a guy with a skill set that matches whatever hype: If we're flexible enough to buy that Brock Holt is a versatile defensive or good enough defensive 2B then we're flexible enough to buy that Almora can play CF better than all available options willing and able to take the same job for the same pay or worse To address your points in various order: 1. I don't care particularly care how many PAs it took Pillar to produce positive WAR, because it was positive. Cut his 645 PAs and his 1.5 fWAR from 2019 in half, and I'll even round down for you, that's 0.7 fWAR in 320ish PAs, a little less than what Almora got. That's a 1.5 win swing. I don't think anyone wanted to see what 2019 Almora would have produced with 600+ PAs. 2. Kevin Pillar declining from a very good defensive outfielder to a barely positive one in 2019, vs Almora who has never approached Pillar's defensive numbers, and would you look at that, also declined pretty significantly in 2019. Yeah, still Pillar. 3. I appreciate you spending thousands of words talking about how bad Pillar is, but then also arguing that he'll probably get a starting job elsewhere (on a contender, even), but sure, fine, let's say Philly or whoever signs him instead. As you acknowledge, we have players on the roster who can play center field. The nice thing about that is that instead of having tunnel vision on FA CFers who fills the "Almora role" (which, lol), you can look at backup/platoon players who can play the corner outfield, who can play third base, who can play second base. Your paragraph that starts with "Without Almora" is flawed because you imply that he's gone and Pillar isn't here, but we just...decided not to fill that roster spot? How about a corner outfielder who lets Heyward move to center a couple times a week? Or an infielder that can let Bryant move out there, given that Bote and Hoerner already exist, plus whoever?

You keep saying this, but dude has almost 800 ABs this past 2 seasons and probably will get as many ABs as he did this past season (339) which is about 150 too many IMO. That probably puts him in the top 30 for CFs in terms of ABs. What make you think that he won't be the starting CF this season? Theo/Ross/etc haven't convinced me this offseason that he's going to be on the bench and be the 4th/5th OF. They all love him and think there's more to him than what he has shown so far. Don't get me wrong. I hope he figured out how to play with his skillset ala Baez, but to me, he just sucks. Like NOTHING about his skillset tells you that he's going to bounce back in a big way or you see that there's potential that just needs to be unlocked somehow. Yeah I think it's hard to articulate this point without coming across as arrogant, but I think ultimately we're all in agreement that Almora is a bad baseball player (though we might disagree on his exact level of suckiness)...but I don't think David Ross sees it the same way. I'm pretty sure I just saw a Theo quote that was like "look at Ian Happ, he might get 500 plate appearances this year". That doesn't scream full time starter to me. If Albert Almora is on the roster on opening day, my concern is that he's going to be the guy starting against the high strike out pitchers, and he's going to be the guy who comes in in the 6th inning for 'defensive purposes'. Those are things people think that he's good at, but he's not. Replace him with a guy who's perceived skill set actually matches what he can provide, and you've improved the team already.

Yeah, but that was back when they weren't all stupid horsefeathering signings.