squally1313

However, I never want to see Kyle Ryan again.

I'd rather give AB's to Rivas. Tomato/slightly less garbage tomato. Still plenty of season left, let him keep beating up AAA for a couple more weeks.

Guys. There are no better options.

Yeah, he wasn't. Tied for the NL lead in wins though, with a (very) outside chance at 20 wins in theory. Just let him pitch as much as he wants to the rest of the year. 13-4, 3.71 through early August is not a stretch He's 45th in the NL in pitching fWAR, has given up the third most HRs in the league, plays for a team that very publicly announced they wanted to be irrelevant the rest of the season, and per Fanduel is +15000, or 150/1, to win it. I think 'stretch' is being exceedingly generous.

Yeah, he wasn't. Tied for the NL lead in wins though, with a (very) outside chance at 20 wins in theory. Just let him pitch as much as he wants to the rest of the year.

It is a marginal step forward, but, man, I am not ready to get excited about a 26 year old making his debut.

I'm sure the real prospects will be up in September I think you're going to be disappointed. AAA was (on purpose) stocked with as many Ortegas/Wisdoms as possible. The actual prospects just aren't there yet. Maybe we'll see a few Brennan Davis ABs, but after that, and skipping over all the teenagers, you've got...Chris Morel batting .202 in AA? Miguel Amaya who hasn't played in 2 months? Cole Roederer hitting .230 in high A? We added a lot of hitters, but they still aren't close.

Yeah they need arms, especially arms they don't care about. Pretty much everyone is at or way above what threw last year and we've got 2 months left. 6 man rotation, let Azlolay close in September, be creative. Based on what we know about Jake, wouldn't be surprised to see him stumble into a decent start at Wrigley and then just say he's done.

Without quoting everyone, I've bet on the Cubs while sitting in the bleachers, so almost positive there's no block on that. Think Barstool even lets you bet on the next pitch result....generally the internet is so slow that you can't do anything, but believe it's allowed. Good call on it being just another attraction in the neighborhood. All the other iterations of bars in that spot I believe were exclusive to people with tickets during the games, but obviously this could be different. Still not sure why there's more of an attraction there than your standard sports bar (and the Cubs would want to pay to get the license for it), but who knows...maybe Draftkings is covering all that for advertising purposes. Vegas sportsbooks are fun for football weekends and March Madness just from the way all the TVs and odds are presented to you, plus the whole crowd atmosphere. But yeah, would never travel all the way out there just for that.

drunk fans who want to watch the games while they bet? That's why people still go to Vegas sportsbooks even though they can bet on their phones, or why people go to Cubs games at Wrigley even though they can watch the games at home. But you can watch the game while you bet...from your seat. If you want to watch all the games you bet on, there are roughly 98 sports bars in a four block radius that don't have a cover charge of a game ticket.

Am I being very out of touch in wondering what the target audience for this even is? Doesn't everyone in Illinois just bet on sports through their phone? Seems like a hell of an expense to get the license just for....an advertising opportunity? Obviously they can sell $14 beers and still be fine, but who is going to actually go and place bets there?

The baseball landscape has changed significantly since Theo took over. High velo relivers are all the rage and SP are not getting a thrid trip through the lineup. I really think their approach to pitching is maybe the thing that sunk it all post-2016. I mean, yeah, I get "horsefeathers pitchers" because of the especially inherent unreliable nature of trying to focus on developing them, but man, you just cannot bomb out THAT horsefeathering bad in terms of developing ANY pitchers, period. They had, what, Carl for a couple of years? It's brutal. And the high velocity/fireball thing seemed to really catch them off guard. Clearly I pay next to no attention to the minors, but with the relatively pitchers they were trying to develop, were any of them projected to be power arm-type guys? It felt like so much of their focus was on trying to develop or sign pitchers that weren't going to be able to blow anyone away. Yeah they went horsefeathers pitchers for a couple years, which made sense given how unreliable they were and how barren the system was on both sides of the ball. But then it seemed like they tried to course correct after, and speed up the timeline, by just grabbing a bunch of "guys who know how to pitch"....college arms that threw 90 mph but had a 5% chance of turning into Hendricks/Davies/etc, and in theory more quickly than the 17 year old walking everyone but throwing 96. Seems like the only real shortcut to pitching is just to pay for it, but who knows what focusing on actually developing high velocity arms would have cost us offensively (see Appel, Bryant).

It's been 4 games. He's been the same player all year though granted he was hitting by the time the Cubs traded him which was awesome because it probably landed them PCA. I mean, no, he hasn't been. That's the thing about trying to draw any conclusions from four horsefeathering games. He was a 2 fWAR player on his way to a 3 win season. And he's one of the few players in baseball where you from a business perspective look beyond his statistical production. I don't know what he's going to get, but a single series worth of baseball games isn't going to have any impact whatsoever.

It's been 4 games.

Theo is using the Cubs to run all his experiments on being anti-three true outcomes. Pick up Astudillo and a couple more Alec Mills and see what happens.

He went on the ultimate heater but yeah, he'd have good weeks with the Cubs where he'd homer once a game and then he'd have a few weeks where he'd hit .100 or so. It's fine if you have players behind him that are consistent but that was the problem with the Cubs. I think the issue every baseball fan has, regardless of what team they watch closest, is complaining about inconsistency as if it's a unique issue to their team. There's no one in the league who hits .300 every week/month. Schwarber put up one of the best 3 week stretches in offensive baseball history, and almost singlehandedly dragged them back into a playoff race, relegating that to 'eh, he was on a heater, won't happen again' is pretty dumb.

Hoerner hasn’t proven himself to be a star, but he has 1.5 fWAR in 360 MLB PAs and is having his best offensive season yet. Not much comparison to Rizzo, who had a .248 wOBA and negative WAR in his 150 PA as a Padre. Nico would have plenty of trade value if they went that route. Hoerner is 2 years older than Rizzo was when he was traded to the Cubs. He's not getting the Cubs anything in a trade with his resume to date. Yeah but he has also shown elite defense at second, teams know he can play short, and also looks capable of playing center or the corner spots in a pinch. That and the team control plus the aforementioned offense shown so far is plenty valuable.

No DeRozen I assume?

Well that pretty much puts an end to any talk on bringing those dudes back.

Good. Let them teach him how to be average there and then bring him back this offseason.

As someone who didn’t watch a lot of soccer until a couple years ago, this feels significantly rougher than Premier League/Euros/etc. Is that par for the course for USA/mexico?

Can we just agree to not post pictures like that? I’ll watch highlights when I’m good and ready.

You can win a lot of games with Nick Madrigal as the fifth/six best bat in your lineup. Having that locked up for dirt cheap, and ready to go opening day next season, is plenty valuable, and he’ll always be an attractive trade chip because every team in baseball thinks their lineup strikes out too much. You just have to, you know, fill out those top four spots. Here’s to hoping it’s Davis, KB, Contreras, and some top FA.

He also projects north of 2 WAR each of the next five years. I'm very okay getting immediate safe value to contrast all the teenagers with limitless potential we're getting in other deals. Unfortunately he was hurt his senior year of college, missed half the 'season' last year, and is out for the rest of this year. Going to be interesting having his profile of Theriot 2.0 (ie dumb fan favorite) mixed in with the KB-esque trait of always being banged up.

Of the three, my reasons for wanting to keep Javy were the most irrational. Go flip this dude, KB, and Davies for Joey Bart and whatever else and figure out a way to be fun next year. Fun fact: this kid's mom is the mom from Little Big League.