squally1313

1. 'Steele set to come back by June 15' - that was conjecture at best, he threw like 20 innings last year, and it was a major surgery. Should have been considered a bonus. 2. 'Wiggins on the doorstep' - Disagree. Should have been considered a bonus. 3. Fangraphs gave Steele 83 innings in the rotation this year...and still ranked us 20th in baseball in terms of starters production. I think we both agree there should have been more top end talent. But I think we gave them too much credit for figuring out how to stash 6 5th starters. In terms of the bullpen, which has been bad...I can squint and see a bullpen building theory where we throw stuff at a wall until we find a good mix by August-ish, and we go into the stretch run with a solid group, and the overall production is bad, but it's fine because the offense and rotation are good enough to carry us comfortably to a playoff spot. It's not great, I don't know why we didn't sign an elite guy if we were going over the luxury tax line. But trying to solve the modern bullpen seems impossible. There's too much talent on the offensive side of the organization, and not nearly enough on the pitching side. We took a step towards evening this up with Caissie for Cabrera, and then Horton exploded and we ended up right back in the same spot. You're going to have to overpay to fix in mid-season. They should do that.

The problem was, is, and will be the pitching. Offenses and players do not just wRC 115 every day. At the end of the (second) ten game win streak, we had a team 123 wRC. Do you know how many teams have performed better than that since Covid? One. One team, in one season, out of 180 different seasons. Since then, we've absolutely struggled, certainly to what we did through May 8 but also to probably our true talent level. But there's also a .247 BABIP (27th in the majors) and, relatedly, the biggest negative difference between our wOBA and our xwOBA. 19th in xwOBA isn't good, but it's a 10 game sample size, so...whatever. YTD, we're 4th in wOBA, 6th in xwOBA, 2nd in defensive value. In terms of star power, I understand the frustration, but going WS winner by WS winner and listing out # of all stars isn't exactly going to convince me. The Rangers had 4 all star starters in the lineup for 2023, wow, cool, two of them were Jonah Heim and Josh Jung. Ideally you develop elite level players. The closest we've gotten have done most of it in non-slugging ways (PCA, Nico). (In fact, there are 7 offensive players that have produced more fWAR since opening day last year. 6 of them are homegrown: Judge, Witt, Cal, Carroll, Ramirez, Perdomo. The 7th is Shohei). Beyond that, you find a ton of good players and you hope they stumble into very good years. Worth noting, by the way, that Jose Ramirez and Matt Olson were thrown out there multiple times. Jose Ramirez has a career 80 wRC in 190 playoffs PAs, Olson's wRC goes down 22 points. They're names, they sell jerseys, you remember the highlights. I have no problem with our current offensive approach (besides the fact that I probably would have gone Schwarber over Bregman). We needed pitching last year, we needed pitching in the offseason, we needed pitching on opening day, and we desperately need pitching at the moment. We have an offensive core that since the beginning of last year has put up the 2nd most fWAR in baseball. Our CF, 3B, SS, 2B, 1B, catcher all have 4+ years of control. We have Shaw, Ballesteros, Rojas, Alcantara, Ramirez (throw in Triantos and Long if you're feeling generous). All of their best positions are blocked, and none of them have shown the offensive ability to play a corner outfield or a DH role. We have zero pitching healthy reinforcements coming any time soon. We are currently the 24th best pitching staff by fWAR, we have the 15th best ERA with the 5th best BABIP. We will continue to outperform our underlying data/metrics because our defense is sweet and Wrigley has suppressed HRs. That should not stop us from improving the pitcher's performance. tl/dr: We need pitching.

We should probably see if Wiggins can pitch at all decently in AAA before we worry about his value to us or some other team. I’m not imagining the 5+ BB/9 rate right?

Unfortunately an RBI single does not help the ‘Ian Happ sucks if you ignore the home runs and the walks’ argument

Haha I mean, if you keep disregarding home runs, has anything really changed?

Well the first three names you mentioned are homegrown. As is Judge and Ramirez. Dodgers are a unicorn. But I do think some of it is the grass is always greener, and some of it is that, offensively, our top producers tend to accumulate value on both sides of the ball, not by hitting 50 bombs. PCA and Hoerner are top 20 players since the beginning of last year, which is better than all the 'superstars' you can't count on the Dodgers and Braves besides Shohei and Matt Olson. Thankfully though, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the team collectively hits very well, including slugging. What they currently aren't doing well (if you look beyond a four game stretch) is pitching. Part of that is injuries, part of that is that they weren't really supposed to be all that good at it to begin with. That should be the main focus for this season and for next season. That could definitely mean deciding to reallocate resources away from giving Happ and/or Suzuki long term deals. But isolating it as the spot that needs to be fixed is weird and ignores the bigger problems.

First off: sixth in team slugging this year, third in team slugging since the beginning of last year. I don't see the 'obvious need' at all. There are absolutely ways to have the conversation of 'should we be signing a guy in his mid 30s to a multi year contract'. But if we're going to keep using language like 'serviceable'....let's find someone better then. Since the beginning of last year, amongst qualified outfielders, Happ is 17th in fWAR, 25th in slugging. Of the 16 players above him, I'll go ahead and remove the following: Judge/Tatis/Julio/Soto (untouchable), Tucker/Bellinger (expensive, recently signed deals), PCA (already here). Springer will be 37 next year, so assume he's out. Arozarena is a free agent but he's slugged 5 points higher than Happ since last year. That leaves Carroll, Buxton, Pages, Rafaela, Wood, Lankford, and Riley Greene as upgrades. With the exception of Buxton (2/$28m after this year), all of them have tons of affordable team control. So what's the plan, use all the farm assets on the offensive side when we might need 3 SPs next year? I really think, broadly, there's a struggle to accept just how depressed offensive numbers have gotten in the last ten years. As someone in my late 30s, my instinct is still to see a .775 OPS and not be impressed by it. Until you realize just how few players are actually performing at that level.

To clarify, are you saying that you wouldn't be happy with a season where he sets career highs in home runs, walks, OBP, and strikeouts? Or are you saying that you think the strikeout rate is sustainable and will continue to be a problem while all the good things he's doing aren't sustainable and will go back closer to career norms?

Should we also ignore Suzuki's walks and strikeouts when determining how good he's doing, or is that just a Happ thing? I get the impression you're feeling piled on, which I'm not trying to do, Suzuki v Happ is a reasonable conversation to have. But this continued insistence that you aren't talking bad about him and then, often in the exact same sentence, criticizing his overall performance for the year, is very weird. If you want to ignore past performance, fine, I get it to a certain extent, but we're only 43 games into the year so the sample sizes are still a little wonky. Happ has been a more valuable player this year (as he was last year). If you want to focus on this cherrypicked sample size, in terms of overall performance FG has Suzuki listed at the top but they've both produced 0.4 fWAR. The defense matters, and when you're putting together future rosters/lineups, as long as Ballesteros is around, everyone else is likely going to have to play the field most days. Happ and Suzuki were born 6 days apart, if we're (correctly) worried about age related drop off we need to apply it to everyone, and to all facets of their games.

Since the beginning of last year: Since 4/25/26:

lol, he has an .859 OPS this month. Even this weird, 'let me exclude the rest of the year and start my sample size immediately after an 8 game hitting streak' stretch from 4/25 to now has him at a 122 wRC. It was frustrating, though not necessarily an indictment on him, when he was the best player in the lineup. He's the same guy now and he's realistically the 3rd or 4th best hitter and 4th or 5th best overall value guy. He's so far from the problem, the infatuation is bizarre.

I want someone that can win a silver slugger, not a gold glove. Therefore, I propose we dump the guy on a 34 home run pace (second most LF home runs in baseball this year) (who also wins gold gloves). Other teams love him and do we really want to get into a bidding war with other teams? Instead, we should pivot to someone even better, who other teams, for some reason, would not want to get into a bidding war over. In my 'since 4/24' split, which is a very weird way to split up numbers and was almost assuredly done to make him look as bad as possible, the guy I want to dump has a .733 OPS/.339 wOBA. The guy I want, who makes $14m a year for the next 5 years and would cost entire MILB rosters, over that same stretch, has a .749 OPS/.335 wOBA and has, to use another relevant stat I cited, two non-solo home runs this year. The team, overall, is third in offensive fWAR and third in wRC. We are 11th in ERA and 22nd in pitching fWAR. The problems, to the extent a 27-16 team can have serious problems, are glaringly obvious.

Also they are absolutely not our rivals.

As much as I enjoy being able to take my kids to Sox Park (great food, great beer) for like $13 total and get a whole section/half a concourse to let them run around, Chicago as a city is a much, much more fun town when both baseball teams are good. They're never going to surpass us in popularity, I have a lot of Sox fan friends, we already broke the drought, all in all give me a good Sox team over whatever this garbage has been the last 5 years.

Not sure why you left the first half of last year out since it was also the same lineup, or the first month of this year. Since the beginning of last year the Cubs have the 3rd highest wRC and the 2nd most offensive fWAR. If you want to stick with your overly pessimistic date range, from July 1 of last year till now we're 7th in wRC and 3rd in fWAR. The offense is good.

1. ‘Where we were before Horton went down’ was also me still thinking we really needed a top end starter 2. Is the statement totally true? Wiggins and Steele were supposed to be the midseason reinforcements, and both have had significant setbacks. and that’s without even considering the injuries to Harvey, thielbar, etc in the bullpen that have elevated the important of having someone like Ben brown down there

Is the following biased? Yes, of course it is, I would enjoy watching the team more if he wasn't on it, and what else should I be worried about besides my enjoyment. I don't know where you picked your starting point but I used August 1 as a best guess, and got 253 PAs. In that stretch, he has a .333 wOBA and a .307 xwOBA. The average RF in baseball this year has a .334 wOBA. So, generously, he's a league average bat for the position. Defensively he's grading out a little above average in the outfield (slash overall). For his career he's got a 97 wRC and is outperforming his xwOBA by 5 points. Do I think he's an overpay for 2-4 months of Freddy Peralta? Sure, probably, throw in Brooks Raley or Luke Weaver or whatever. I'd probably still lean towards overpackaging the glut of blocked prospects we have. The point about Shaw having no position but still being on pace for 500 PAs is valid, and I've become convinced there's plenty of PAs available for that 10th man if he can be versatile. Shaw is plenty valuable at that role. I don't think he's nearly as valuable as Starting Corner Outfielder.

PCA now the second most valuable offensive player on the team, 22nd best offensive player in baseball. Just a defensive monster. Shota ninth in pitching value.

I know they're on a limited time frame, but my issue here is like...you're going to need 10-12 innings from other relievers in this series. Palencia is likely only good for 1, Webb pitched Tuesday and Wednesday, Thornton pitched the last two games, Hollowell threw 49 pitches today (most of them bad). You took all the length from the pen and you're using it tomorrow, likely knocking them out for the rest of the series. If you're going to have to go get a Hollowell replacement, who inevitably sucks, just go get a guy who can suck for 5 innings instead of 2.

When I had it done, the surgeon said he wouldn't really know until he got in there whether it was going to be repairable or not. In my set of circumstances, the conversation was framed as like 'we're going to try and repair it to avoid long term issues, but it's not like you're some professional athlete that needs everything working perfectly'. But the flip side of that for Boyd is that repairing him costs him at least half of one of his few years left.

Rea is already the current 4th starter, so he can't be the 5th starter. They seemingly haven't been concerned with yanking Assad into whatever role we need, but that's probably because he's not good. Ben Brown is not stretched out, and also...maybe the best bullpen pitcher we have at the moment? If you make Assad a starter, you don't have any long relief guy, which means you have to hold back high leverage situations from Brown because you need him ready for a starter implosion. Ben Brown as a starter gets you 3-4 innings max for at least a couple times through the rotation, so you're essentially piggybacking Brown and Assad there, which means you've somewhat lost both from the pen. Thielbar doesn't replace what Brown or Assad gives you out of the bullpen. And that's because the fact that we've been losing a starter every 3 weeks now. Who is 7th and 8th on the depth chart?

Was convinced the guy we DFAed was 'Caleb' Martin too. Going to chalk it up as 1/3rd being old, 1/3rd being these guys suck, and 1/3rd being the two hours I spent at Ceres yesterday.

Jesse Rogers tweeted that it was a 'successful partial left knee menisectomy' and when I googled that word it said removal. When I had that surgery they repaired it, not removed it, and my (obviously not as intense or driven) rehab was like 6 months.

Corbin Martin DFAed, so assume there's a fresh arm inbound.