squally1313

All things being equal, Lindor > Bryant. Position scarcity, youth, zips projections, etc. Its not a huge gap, but it’s hard to argue the other way. When you factor moving Baez to a less valuable position, I think the difference becomes almost negligible. The difficulty in threading the needle in pulling off these two deals (again, anytime anyone wants to find a team that wants KB but not Lindor) for that minimal at best upgrade is not worth it to me.

I'm scared to ask after all the 'is KB broken' discussion but...did something happen to KB?

Well that's....interesting.

Kemp sucks, but he can also play a competent center field. Baez also played there a few times last year or the year before, and with Russell unfortunately looking alright, that could work too.

It's early, but I think you're missing a month here somewhere. Is the 1.162 supposed to be April?

Well it was pretty clear he wasn't playing at full strength last year. If your argument is that his first three months this year were some aberration/fluke based on this new normal, and then just August was actually what he really is...I guess. But I think it's much more reasonable that the 6 months off got him back to full strength, he probably played a little over his head in the first half, and then had a bad stretch in August. We'll see if it extends into September, but I'll take the over on .900.

So...you're saying he missed games last year, then Do me a solid and edit that bad boy to 102. It was early, and I had just run a lot to offset the Thai food buffet I am going to demolish this afternoon. I think his point was that when people do the "since (year)"...they usually are trying to show some extended run of time, not a whole one year of being hurt. The dude played in about every game when he got called up, and missed all of 17 games the next two years. ZIPs has him on track to miss 9 this year. If you really think that one slide permanently broke him, fine...sell before anyone else figures it out. But I'd wager he'll be our best hitter this September (because that's the safest bet pretty much every month).

No, it’s where we talk about how KB has missed games since then, obviously. And then you can play up your injury concerns there, and ignore whatever Lindor was dealing with. 29 PAs is like 7 games, generously.

Didn't Lindor miss a ton of time at the beginning of the year? KB has 29 more PAs.

Yeah I think if we're operating under the assumption that the FO isn't going to sign KB, they probably aren't going to sign Lindor either. I get that he's not a Boras guy, but I don't really know if we'd be able to see him as a long term contender in 2021 as pretty much everyone is coming off the books. And I don't know if building your team around two middle infielders on contracts into their mid/late 30s is really the best idea either. I get the concerns about his shoulder, but I'd be a lot less worried if he was still throwing up an OPS in the 800s. Yeah, it sucks he doesn't seem to be getting the juiced ball bonus that everyone else is (or...to your point, maybe he is and that's the concern). But he's still matching Lindor this year.

No, everything isn't fine. We've played most of the season with about a 20 man roster, which led to a lot of sub-replacement players getting ABs and innings. If you don't think Theo is capable of fixing the bottom half of the roster, but instead you want him to trade our best player for a handful of assets (to, again...where?), and then flip another handful of assets of roughly equal value to Cleveland...that doesn't line up. I buy that Lindor is a slightly better player than Bryant, and the ZIPS projections back that up too. But I think a that almost all of that disparity is that Lindor is projected to put up roughly similar numbers (which, he isn't this year, but I'll use them) at shortstop vs KB at third. Which is all well and good...but then you have to wonder what that does to Javy's numbers going forward. It can't be coincidence that Baez finally got top defensive metrics when he moved to SS full time. There's not a perfect comp in 2019, but his 11.7 offensive number coupled with the 3s and 4s he was putting up at second chops about a full win off his current 4.3 fWAR number. Getting away from the 'is the team doomed or not' debate, since I know we don't agree on that...has anyone come up with a remotely reasonable destination for KB in this scenario? And if anyone comes up with one, you also have to prove why that team wouldn't just trade for Lindor themselves. Lindor is probably a more valuable player going forward, but given that Cleveland has made it pretty obvious they want to trade him soon, I doubt it costs any more than it would take to get Bryant.

I guess, Castellanos aside, we're now handing out days off when you hit dongs. (Where the hell is everyone I'm bored as horsefeathers today)

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.237/.289/.456, 93 wRC, 0.2 fWAR in 384 PAs

How is this not a day game

But they aren't playing bad in the second half. 47-43 in the first half, 23-18 in the second half. Yeah, their RD suggest they've been getting lucky, but you've spent plenty of time trashing that metric, so can't point to that. They are a 90 win team that's been playing like a 90 win team for pretty much the entire year, once people stop focusing on individual series and almost blowing a 9 run lead they put up against one of the best pitchers in baseball. Look at the KB/Rizzo/Baez/Contreras combination in 2016 or even 2017, and then look at what they are doing now. That core, all still in their prime, is more than capable of being the best players on a championship team. They let Joe throw his favorite toy at the top of the order for half a season, they lost their starting second baseman for an entire year, and they generally screwed up the rest of the roster. Those things seem WAY easier to fix than "let's find some team who wants to give up the farm for two years of Bryant and then maybe $35m a year (which, no one has named any reasonable options here), and then flip some similar group of prospects to pick up a dude to play Baez's spot, have the same amount of control as Bryant, and also has been, per fWAR, statistically the most similar offensive player in baseball to Bryant this year." Like, if you're just making the meatball argument that this will 'shake up the team' and 'light a fire under their ass', then just go for it. What, the other three remaining players are supposed to see our best player get traded, and then decide to play better than what they are doing now? Fill out a full, competent 25 man roster with complementary players. As fun as it would be to see Baez and Lindor up the middle joking around with each other and turning a sweet DP once a week...it doesn't actually get you anywhere.

There's a weird disconnect for me. "This FO whiffed badly on filling out the bottom half of the roster and might suck, so this offseason, after probably making the playoffs for the 5th year in a row, I want them to pull off two massive deals, including getting fair value for the best player on the team, that will end with moving your second best player off his position."

Fun (and a little concerning) stat: Of the top 40* active leaders in pitcher fWAR, the Cubs have 6 of them on their staff. 7. Cole Hamels 51.4 8. Jon Lester 45.5 16. Jose Quintana 28 25. Yu Darvish 20.9 37. Kyle Hendricks 17.9 39. Craig Kimbrel 17.6 * I had to manually add Hamels because he didn't show up on the 'Active Roster' list, presumably because he's on paternity leave. So I assume there are probably a couple other ones missing (though Morrow did show up at 69th (nice), so who knows). Just noticed Sale at 44.4 is missing, so not sure how the list is being generated.

Yeah, but you're stuck with Rendon for his age 30-40 seasons lol And that’s after you somehow convince the Tampa bay Rays, of all horsefeathering teams, to take a two years left in arbitration Kris Bryant.

Thank god TT is on my side.

It's really surpring to me that he's only the 30th best pitcher in terms of fWAR in that stretch, at 1.1. Quintana is 13th at 1.7. Verlander is the one that is most confusing. I get all the home runs, but look at these two lines. Darvish: 62 IP, 11.32 K/9, 0.44 BB/9, 1.89 HR/9, .246 BABIP, 44.2% GB%, 23.6% HR/FB, 3.19/3.85/2.89 1.1 fWAR Verlander: 64.1 IP, 13.4 K/93, 1.12 BB/9, 1.40 HR/9, .268 BABIP, 32.9% GB%, 14.9% HR/FB, 2.38/2.71/2.76, 2.3 fWAR Verlander is better, but over twice as good?

Nothing to see here, just an MLB starter with like 9 pitches. Yu is a horsefeathering savage. I wonder how much difficult that makes the catcher's job. For a three or four pitch guy, once you decide between fastball and offspeed, your choices are pretty easy. Imagine having to go through 7 different breaking pitches and figuring out the best one based on the hitter's history, the pitch sequence, the strike zone, what Yu has been throwing better, etc.

What did he say? My bad. Len was talking about how the Cubs actually hit better with runners on (or maybe RISP), and JD was like, "well that might be a little misleading because when you have a few weak links in your lineup, a good pitcher will pitch around the good hitters and then take care of the weaker ones."

JD shading the hell out of all the trash we've trotted out at the bottom (and sometimes top) of the lineup.

During arguably the worst stretch of the Cubs season, we want to have a discussion on Yadi's HOF credentials? horsefeathers that. [bbvideo=560,315] [/bbvideo]