squally1313

Is our starting third baseman next year? And I mean that in a world where we’re actually trying, as naively optimistic as that may be.

He's got 2 more years of control after this, so you have a little time to make sure his good stretches mostly continue to outweigh his bad stretches. But I think his bat plays a lot better in these future visions of Cubs lineups than it had the last couple years, and I could definitely see this time next year giving him 5-6 years.

Did he have some nagging injuries at the start of the season? Maybe he's healthy. Splits don't really bear that out. I mean, potentially, but then they must have resurfaced after May. Month OPS April .467 May .971 June .497 July .561 August .849 Really, for him, it's just about getting the ball in the air consistently. Month GB% April 59.1 May 37.8 June 52.0 July 55.3 August 38.3

God this is such Weird Baseball and it’d be awesome if it mattered at all. Like there was a long stretch there where the only question was ‘what bizarre way are we going to win this’. Now with these two teams, who knows/cares.

They aren’t super similar. Wisdom absolutely needs to cut down on the Ks, he’s pretty easily the worst in the majors with at least 250 PAs. But 21 home runs is something Bote never showed. We knew he had power, but it never translated to consistently putting the ball over the fence. Worst case, he whiffs his way out of baseball, best case we get a dime store Joey Gallo. Lol Rockies.

Pee Wiz is our best player

You should be able to edit the OP like any other post. When you do that, you can change the thread title as well. Davies G1 and Steele G2. Interesting that the games are back to back meaning the Cubs are foregoing a game worth of ticket revenue for this DH. I guess there goes any big FA signings this offseason. Duh, was looking for a separate option. Thanks. I'm also surprised they're going back to back. Maybe trying to win some goodwill from the fans? Do we know that's actually the case? I had tickets to today's game and it just says 1:20...I know I went to a White Sox DH a couple months ago that was definitely a back to back (4:20/7:05) and I thought I remembered the tickets looking different. Not planning on using them regardless, if anyone wants them.

Some pretty great reader emails in there, and then the top comment is fantastic.

Did Sand Valley/Mammoth over the weekend. My god. Have to make yourself not think about the price point too much, but what an incredible couple courses.

I don’t mind most of that besides the outfield still being a mess, especially with KB having to cover left field and also first base… For me get rid of the Happ/Trammell trade. And then you got to be pretty sure of yourself to give up that package for a starter with one year left. Give me (Corey) Seager and KB and figure it out from there.

The point is that we have a team with a bunch of holes to fill. I think we need to fill those holes first before upgrading positions that are already filled by players like Happ, Hoerner, Wisdom, etc. and then deciding if they need to be upgraded. The obvious holes to fill are 2 SP, 1B, LF, and the bullpen. It's not like we're going to be contending next year. those positions aren't "filled". happ sucks, wisdom likely sucks, and hoerner could very well suck. And also your idea is to sign KB to play left field (move him, make his bat less valuable) but somehow Wisdom, Happ, and Hoerner, who have all played multiple positions, are somehow locked in.

He was in the Epstein front office? Going to guess it was scandalous.

It was saying he had no other skill than the hitting. Hitting for average and power are typically considered different skills/tools in baseball. I didn't say hitting for average and we were talking about his potential as a 'lefty masher'. Think it's pretty obvious what I was talking about, but no, wasn't picturing him as the next Mark Grace.

To add to this, Schwindel has never hit more than 24 HRs in a single year (he has 22 now, but again, look at Oakland's AAA team). Of those 18 players in that list, only 3 of them hit less than 25 bombs. Yeah but he was hindered by his incredibly stupid name, those other guys had cool names that helped their power. Just change his name. It is a sharp little jab of depression that every time I have to go to his Fangraphs page to reconfirm that he does indeed suck, my autocomplete wants to give me Schwarber for those first few letters.

Because something will have to give. Here's the list of qualified seasons in the last 5 full years(2015-19) from players who have >20% K%, <7% BB%, >.200 IsoP, and a 110+ wRC: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2019&month=0&season1=2015&ind=1&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=73235&players=0&startdate=&enddate= 18 seasons, and the only repeats are Jose Abreu, Baez, and Castellanos. Schwindel either needs to be an extreme exception to the norm in terms of skills/profile, or his approach needs to change in one direction(more BB) or the other(fewer K), otherwise the odds are very good the power will come down with everything else as pitchers adjust. To add to this, Schwindel has never hit more than 24 HRs in a single year (he has 22 now, but again, look at Oakland's AAA team). Of those 18 players in that list, only 3 of them hit less than 25 bombs.

His highest walk rate, at any level, ever (there's been a lot of levels) is 6.3%. The amount of hitting you have to do to overcome a lack of discipline/any other baseball skill is a lot, and asking that of a 29 year who has given 98 total MLB plate appearances and is on his fifth organization seems very dumb. There are ways to get less left handed than keeping this guy on the bench to hit a double twice a month. His carrying skill is slugging. I'm not sure why that keeps getting minimized/ignored. That sentence is talking about how much hitting (slugging) he has to do to make up for not having any other skills whatsoever. And is that actually a carrying skill? Seems like he's spent a lot of time in what used to be the PCL of AAA. Great, he slugged .630 for Oakland's AAA team. That was the fourth highest slugging in his own lineup. Then he did nothing in Iowa for 40 PAs and has put together 83 impressive PAs in Chicago. If your only path to being an MLB contributor is putting up elite slugging numbers, I'm going to need more than 83 PAs to override the rest of his career.

But Trey Mancini and his .319 OBP from first base does? There's other ways of doing this besides waiting for the next KB to come along, and we should explore those options because that doesn't happen very often. Brennan Davis is the best prospect we have, by a pretty considerable margin, and he's stroking out 28% of the time in AA, without KBs elite walk rate, power, or ability to play a premium position. Sitting around assuming him and a bunch of teenagers are all going to blossom into the next Cubs juggernaut is A. dumb and out of touch with reality, which is that prospects break, and B. the type of strategy that teams like the Pirates try to do because they have no other options. Madrigal and Hoerner are well on their way to becoming dirt cheap, productive major league baseball players. They will never be the three and four hitters of a division winning team, but they allow you to go find and pay for those types of hitters. Go get Correa or Seager, spend another $30m a year on a couple starters, and see where you're at. I'm all for sign top FAs and making this team competitive sooner rather than later, but Hoyer (and PTR) seems determined to take a 2-3 year timeout to wait for our top prospects before breaking the bank. PTR has already determined to put the money into the betting complex and his Hall of Fame honoring his family. He's learned from the master (Trump) to hide problems (the team) with smoke and mirrors so that nobody is looking at the problem. Please show your work. Hoyer has consistently said this is a retool, not a rebuild. If you think building a bar and adding some plaques to a hallway eats up the $60m or whatever they have coming off the books, not sure what to tell you. Draftkings is already paying them $10m a year over 10 years, so you maybe assume they're helping out here as well. If his goal was to hide the team being bad, don't think he's currently doing a very good job. You aren't grasping just how cheap this current roster is going to be. Even if the speculation is true and Ricketts are pushing a salary cap minimum of $100m in exchange for a $180m cap, and even if the Ricketts goal was to hit that minimum to the dollar (which, to be clear, would be outrageous), there's still like $30m to spend just to get there.

A slightly below league average hitter without any defensive value who only excels at hitting 15% of the pitchers should never be more than organization depth, especially given that at his age you can't really project any kind of development. I really believe one of the biggest contributors to his success right now is that other teams just haven't bothered to figure out how to pitch to him. That goes away the second you give him any sort of prominent role and/or the Cubs actually start posing any kind of challenge. Our "1B/DH mix" next year should be an every day first baseman and a revolving cast of starters at other positions getting days off. There's plenty of opportunity for a lefty masher on the bench. Whatever 1B we end up with is probably going to be LH. We know the outfield right now is heavily left handed. And with Hoerner/Bote/Wisdom's versatility we don't need to burn a bench spot on a super utility type. We can focus on having guys with leveragable skills to deploy, and early on Schwindel is showing the underlying skills of a legit lefty masher. His highest walk rate, at any level, ever (there's been a lot of levels) is 6.3%. The amount of hitting you have to do to overcome a lack of discipline/any other baseball skill is a lot, and asking that of a 29 year who has given 98 total MLB plate appearances and is on his fifth organization seems very dumb. There are ways to get less left handed than keeping this guy on the bench to hit a double twice a month.

A slightly below league average hitter without any defensive value who only excels at hitting 15% of the pitchers should never be more than organization depth, especially given that at his age you can't really project any kind of development. I really believe one of the biggest contributors to his success right now is that other teams just haven't bothered to figure out how to pitch to him. That goes away the second you give him any sort of prominent role and/or the Cubs actually start posing any kind of challenge. Our "1B/DH mix" next year should be an every day first baseman and a revolving cast of starters at other positions getting days off.

Nice strawman. But coming from the guy who swore Kimbrel would net very little in a mid-season trade, not shocking. It was a good trade, but Madrigal doesn't exactly qualify for your description of an "impact bat". But Trey Mancini and his .319 OBP from first base does? There's other ways of doing this besides waiting for the next KB to come along, and we should explore those options because that doesn't happen very often. Brennan Davis is the best prospect we have, by a pretty considerable margin, and he's stroking out 28% of the time in AA, without KBs elite walk rate, power, or ability to play a premium position. Sitting around assuming him and a bunch of teenagers are all going to blossom into the next Cubs juggernaut is A. dumb and out of touch with reality, which is that prospects break, and B. the type of strategy that teams like the Pirates try to do because they have no other options. Madrigal and Hoerner are well on their way to becoming dirt cheap, productive major league baseball players. They will never be the three and four hitters of a division winning team, but they allow you to go find and pay for those types of hitters. Go get Correa or Seager, spend another $30m a year on a couple starters, and see where you're at.

Yep. As a member of Team ‘why not go for it next year’…dropping 80%+ of your games for 2 months makes that path a little tougher to justify. Good to see signs of life from Happ, a couple pieces from the bullpen, etc.

I never expected the drop off between Rizzo and another 1B to be so obvious. It's not like I'm even watching a ton of the games either, but when I do he's usually botching a scoop or not covering enough ground to his right. Yeah we were spoiled with Rizzo, but I trust the advanced statistics enough to understand that it's not a very important position, and that you should be able to teach most anyone with any defensive skill how to be passable there and not hurt your team relative to the rest of the league. Which is why you go find some fat corner outfielder who can actually hit, not this dork taking advantage of pitchers going on cruise control with 8 run leads by the fourth inning every day.

He can't play defense, has a 16/3 K/BB ratio so far, and is outperforming his xwOBA by about 75 points going into today. He'll be 30 next year. Find an actual first baseman and keep this dude in the minors to the extent we even can in case of injury.

This is mostly bad. "Superstar" and "SS" are pretty obvious holes, right? How long do you want to wait to see if our prospect list turns out a superstar? Davis next year, and then....Ed Howard, all of 21 years old in 2023, currently getting owned in single A? The even younger Preciado/Hernandez/Caissie/Made group? And if those don't hit just press the reset button again? We have $38m in guaranteed salary next year, another $15m in arbitration for Willy, Ian, Ortega, Wieck, and then the league minimum for Mills, Wick, Heuer, Madrigal, Adbert, Hoerner, Steele, Wisdom, and whoever else. Call it, what, $60m? How does signing 34 year old Tommy Pham do anything in your plan as your top offensive move? Go get someone you know is good, gives you a shot of being good soon, and will still be good when those cheap prospects finally make it up. Then figure out how much money you have left and go from there. SS is not an obvious hole until you see what Hoerner can do. Signing a superstar SS for $30 million per year still leaves this team a 3rd place finisher waiting for 2024. Meanwhile, we have almost no pitching (besides Hendricks) and probably very little to count on for the next few years. As for Pham, I'm more than open to finding another RH LF that PTR can fit into his austerity budget. Also, I mentioned trading for Mancini/Voit to help the offense. I'm looking at many/most of these players as placeholders until 2024. As for your comment about the Preciadp/Hernandez/Caissie group not making it, Hoyer will be fired if they don't because this is where he has put all of his faith into. If you truly believe there's nothing we can do until 2024, why are we wasting money and prospects on dudes who will be 34, 33, and 32 on opening day 2024, and then spending 'big money' on Stroman (will be a month shy of 33) or Rodon (31)? You've got $80m coming off the books, you've got Heyward in 2 years, and you aren't scheduling any big paydays for your internal guys anytime remotely soon. Use the freed up cash, get the team to project to .500, and reassess next June on if you want to wait for the teenagers or use them to get big league talent.

This just made me sad thinking that Nico Hoerner is now a top 3 position player on this team. It was always nice that Willson was like the 5th best player, now he's the best? And for some reason, the Cubs website does not list Madrigal (assuming he's in this sad little group) on the IL. He's shown as in the minors. And the first thing everybody wants to do is sign a $30 million per year superstar SS instead of spending it to fill the obvious holes on this team. Next year (and probably the year after) this is a 3rd place team (at best) waiting for our next "core" of possible star players in 2024. I can't see PTR spending a ton of money until the team is ready to really be competitive. Spend big money on at least 1 SP (Stroman, Rodon, etc.), sign a RH LF (Pham), make a couple of trades (Mancini would be my 1st choice, but Voit would be cheaper at 1B and Merrill Kelly), keep Ortega and Schwindel for DH/bench, and keep Chirinos around for another year. By the 2022 offseason, reassess the ML team and the progress of the prospects in the minors to determine the plan of 2023 and 2024. This is mostly bad. "Superstar" and "SS" are pretty obvious holes, right? How long do you want to wait to see if our prospect list turns out a superstar? Davis next year, and then....Ed Howard, all of 21 years old in 2023, currently getting owned in single A? The even younger Preciado/Hernandez/Caissie/Made group? And if those don't hit just press the reset button again? We have $38m in guaranteed salary next year, another $15m in arbitration for Willy, Ian, Ortega, Wieck, and then the league minimum for Mills, Wick, Heuer, Madrigal, Adbert, Hoerner, Steele, Wisdom, and whoever else. Call it, what, $60m? How does signing 34 year old Tommy Pham do anything in your plan as your top offensive move? Go get someone you know is good, gives you a shot of being good soon, and will still be good when those cheap prospects finally make it up. Then figure out how much money you have left and go from there.