squally1313

Given that there’s a handful of guys who kill lefties available every year for a lottery prospect or a one year deal, plus the fact that Almora isn’t actually a good defensive player, there’s no need for even his 96 wRC against lefties to take up a roster spot. I hope for his sake he can prove he’s somehow more than that, just not for the Cubs.

Imagine looking at the Brewers and Cardinals roster and thinking the best case scenario with a KB/Baez/Hendricks (Rizzo/Contreras/Yu...) led team is "a mediocre team that hopefully somehow sneaks into the playoffs".

Well, do you think he ends up with more than 5 fWAR or less than 5 fWAR? That was the whole question.

Because the trend is worse than simply writing off 2019 and saying things are fine: He's never reached that 94 wRC number against RHP. To echo TT, it's just getting worse: 2016: 93 2017: 82 2018: 84 2019: 76 Once everyone realized he didn't have Gold Glove ability in CF, and that his lack of speed basically led to him looking like Jim Edmonds 5ish times a year, his ceiling essentially became the short end of a platoon. For me, that's literally the highest of hopes for him. And yet... 2016: 114 2017: 138 2018: 101 2019: 37 You'd think after 2018 where he was barely above league average against lefties, he'd have realized that his 'back was against the wall'. Instead he fell off a cliff. Given the lack of any reasonable upside, there's just no point in making an effort with him.

I appreciate the rest of your response, cutting it here so this page doesn't go on forever. Looking forward to seeing your KB trade ideas, because like people have been saying, I've yet to see one that I think makes the team better and gives them a better chance to make the playoffs. In terms of the above, obviously all these rumors are coming from somewhere. They aren't just bored down there, looking for something to do. I just don't believe that these rumors and potential reasons are coming strictly from a desire to improve the talent of the baseball team. I look at the organization openly talking about 'banking money' during years of poor performance, and very clearly creating this offensive core of players that would, due to the nature of player control, remain relatively underpaid relative to their performance and allow them to supplement that core with more expensive, established players, pitchers in particular (to mixed results). There's no way they conceived of this plan without realizing that eventually that sweet player control would run out, and those core players would be able to hit arbitration and eventually the open market, mostly at the same time. But we aren't at that point yet. If the plan was to leverage the team control and then bail as soon as there started to be a threat of these guys making serious money, well...that's a little depressing. Two years of Kris Bryant on this team, to me, is much more valuable than taking five years of control of Player X, adding up all those WARs, and claiming victory because they add up to more than what KB will most likely produce in 2020 and 2021. You want to talk me into a stud for stud deal, where we could get away from Boras and potential hard feelings for service time manipulation and commit to a long term deal? Let's have that discussion. But trading Kris Bryant for Max Fried doesn't come close to guaranteeing success down the road, and pretty clearly makes us worse next year, a year where we know we're going to be competitive and the value of every win is incredibly high. That's a clear downgrade in the near term, and the chance he turns into some 4-5 win player in 2022 in front of a roster that will either be super old or have a ton of other turnover required...what does that do for you? I don't mean to totally write off anything after 2021, but I don't really see a lot of reason for optimism at this point. Give me two more shots at October with this core, led by Bryant, and figure it out after that.

At the risk of oversimplifying this...I don't think there's a single person on this board who has anywhere close to the expertise required to work in a front office and effectively handle the breadth of job requirements that come with that type of position. Having said that, I don't think you necessarily need to have Theo's intelligence/experience/etc to look at Kris Bryant, and then look at the hypothetical packages offered for Kris Bryant, and decide which one is better in terms of putting the best baseball team on the field going forward. Theo almost definitely has insight into other factors (health, money, other potential transactions) that we don't, but boiling it down simply to 'well if we make a trade it's because Theo thinks it's good and so therefore it is good'....I mean, at that point just shut down the ability to comment in the 'Transactions' section, and just make announcements when things we happen that we can just believe are for the best.

I remain completely and entirely baffled by the idea of looking at our current roster, which could, on the whole, be generously described as 'just past their peak', seeing pretty much no high impact talent anywhere in our system, and looking at the contract situation where our entire line up is a free agent or up for a big raise in two years, and thinking the best path to success here is to replace our best player with someone who, if things go perfectly right, will peak in about 2023.

So is your argument here that this thread, 553 posts deep at the moment, along with the 2020 roster thread, 934 posts deep, just a bunch of group think morons chanting "No good Bryant trades"? Or is it possible that somewhere in those threads, apparently very difficult to find, are literally hundreds of other hypothetical offseason plans that people think would improve an 84 win team (90 by pythag) without trading our best player? Somehow we are the closed minded people not 'showing our work' here. On your side of the argument, I see two different options of what you are thinking. One, that there are baseball players that currently exist in the world where if you put them on our roster instead of Kris Bryant, the Cubs are a better team. Bryant for Mookie Betts makes our team better. Bryant for Trout and Ohtani makes our team way better. Fun! Also, completely useless in terms of productive conversation. Or there's the option that uses the rumored Kris Bryant trades that are out there, of which there are many, and sees an option or options in there that improve our team in the short term and/or the long term. If that's the option you're taking, please, as TT said, show your work, because I think that's where we fundamentally disagree on how to construct a successful Cubs roster. As a short aside, burying your head in the sand about pretty much every message Ricketts has sent regarding their willingness to spend money and sticking with the 'oh you think Theo is an idiot huh' argument is really dumb. There are clearly other factors at play, things none of us are happy with.

I was looking at his AAA slash line, .278/.356/.386, which wasn’t super inspiring, though to be fair I figured that was close to a full season of PAs, given that he only had 66 in the pros. Looking again, it was only 182 PAs, so I guess you could give his MLB appearance a little more weight.

We’re not comparing him to Almora as much as we’re comparing him to the other options out there, including the guy we have in house, Happ, who has considerably more promise and potential than ‘mid 30s Dollar store version of Zobrist without the versatility’ That’s fine, I do worry his addition keeps Happ from getting ABs. But there’s really no other options for CF in house. He should help make the roster deeper regardless by adding a quality player and again he’s the contact compliment guy they are looking for. If KB or Bote is traded more playing time for Happ opens up too. Especially in the hypothetical where we trade KB, but also in general, I’d much rather get comfortable with Heyward playing 40ish games in center and getting a reliable, platoon-y, on base heavy bat to play right. That could be KB if we pick up an infielder too. Basically, Schwarber/Happ/Heyward scares me enough offensively as is...I’d prefer to find a lefty killer to give us a boost.

Was it 100% Soto turning into a generational hitter? Or was some of it Robles putting up essentially below average hitting stats for two years in a row?

Our CF’ers hit .245/.316/.410 with a 87 wRC+ last year and also graded out poorly defensively. Throw in one of the worst players in the league over the last 2 years saw significant time there and Akiyama will take significant time from him, the bar ain’t exactly high to to give us more than we got last year. Plus he, presumably, brings the whole contact thing they want to add more of in the profile. We’re not comparing him to Almora as much as we’re comparing him to the other options out there, including the guy we have in house, Happ, who has considerably more promise and potential than ‘mid 30s Dollar store version of Zobrist without the versatility’

Yeah if other teams are inquiring about his availability, that doesn't signal to me that he has negative value. Teams don't usually ask what other teams would like to get rid of.

JMO that is just one way to look at it. Another is that Theo knows the Cubs will not be fixed with Bryant on the roster and need to move him. In that case, why be disagreeable? What if those teams don't want to give up players they have become attached to? Some info we know: Robles put up 2.5 fWAR/4 bWAR in 2019, is 5+ years younger than Bryant, and has at least double the years of precious sweet power and control an org can wield over him as leverages. Mathematically we can use this to figure that Robles is 25-40x more valuable than Bryant on paper I know you're mostly kidding towards the end (or at least I assume so), but until someone can give any sort of proof that we'll be remotely competitive 2022-2024 given the current roster/system/contract status/Ricketts being in charge, I'm going to continue to want them to prioritize the last couple years of this core before they all hit free agency and become super old and expensive. Bryant being a clearly better player in 2020 and 2021 is much more important to me than whatever arbitration affordable production someone like Robles can give you the few years after that.

It means Verlander's defense played much better behind him, and that he likely got a lot more luck in terms of batted ball profile than Lynn. Neither of those I would really give credit to Verlander for. Lynn gives up a lot more ground balls, which run a higher BABIP, but that's a huge disparity, and Verlander's fly ball tendencies led to a ton of dongs. Ok I get that and I agree that going forward you'd expect some normalization and if you're projecting for next season you'd tweek some numbers as a result. I guess I'm in the camp that if you're looking back,the numbers are what they are, and assessing value on what has already occurred based on what may or may not have been luck is a slippery slope. Looking forward - totally different. I also assume Verlander's BABIP can swing wildly from season to season because he allows comparatively few balls in play. Yeah the way I look at fWAR is like, if Verlander and Lynn went back and pitched 2019 again, replicating all the elements they can control and then making everything else equal, I think you'd see the production numbers end up being pretty similar, if not tilted towards Lynn. In this case, it's based mainly on HR rate, which removes the fielding element of it, but obviously doesn't remove the hitter element. I think generally bWAR is a more accurate representation of how performance translated to actual results, whereas fWAR tries to isolate individual performance, which for me makes it a better number to look at to predict future performance. Obviously in this exact comparison you'd look at more than just 2019.

I not sure I'm following why that's a negative for Verlander last season. It means Verlander's defense played much better behind him, and that he likely got a lot more luck in terms of batted ball profile than Lynn. Neither of those I would really give credit to Verlander for. Lynn gives up a lot more ground balls, which run a higher BABIP, but that's a huge disparity, and Verlander's fly ball tendencies led to a ton of dongs.

Oh well, then I guess we're stuck with our 5 WAR 3B. Okay, Victor Robles produced 4.1 bWAR and is legitimately great on defense. I'm not saying Robles is nearly the player KB is, but just going by WAR totals is dumb. Some people here tend to just look at WAR totals without doing any analysis and it's stupid. Are you going to tell me Lance Lynn is more valuable and a better pitcher than Justin Verlander next? Well I could tell you that Lance Lynn had a better year than Verlander in 2019 by the statistics that make up fWAR, and that calculation makes a lot of sense to me. Verlander's BABIP was over 100 points lower than Lynn's. Obviously no one expects that going forward, but that's what happened. Kris Bryant has basically tossed up a 5 win pace or better his entire career, so yes, he's a 5 WAR 3B. Robles is a lot harder to project.

Solid work by pretty much everyone on this page. Most I've enjoyed the Transaction section of this site in a while.

While I think you're being a little harsh on Q in general...no one is expecting him to be the ace of this staff, which is, statistically, the kind of pitcher he was when we acquired him. Maybe they didn't expressly expect him to become an "ace," but I think it's safe to say they expected more of a guy that they gave up what they gave up to get him. Yeah, that's fair, but really only if you look at 2018. He put up 2.1 fWAR in 84 innings after the trade in 2017, and 3.5 fWAR in 2019 is about what you'd expect on an age curve for someone like him. Obviously every game in 2018 ended up being crucial, but I think he gave us what we expected in 2017 and 2019.

I’d rather have Q. He gets horsefeathers on because of how much we gave up and the fact that he hasn’t quite lived up to expectations, but he’s also 25th in WAR among pitchers since joining the Cubs. There’s 20 Josh Lindbloms every year in free agency. Q is whatever. Kudos to him for tidying up his KBB so that fg would like him enough, but his run prevention is on a sharp decline. Despite moving to a more pitcher friendly park and having a better defense behind him he has accumulated less than half of the bwar with us than he did in the 3.5 seasons prior with the Sox. Before we got him he was excellent according to both systems. Now we are just grateful that one finds him to be good still.While I think you're being a little harsh on Q in general...no one is expecting him to be the ace of this staff, which is, statistically, the kind of pitcher he was when we acquired him. Maybe not the best pitcher in our rotation, but a pretty clear top 15-20 starter in baseball. He's not that anymore, but he is absolutely better than Josh(?) Lindblom, or most of the other names people throw out there when they talk about replacements after 'dumping his salary'.

This is my favorite of the KB trade proposals I've seen, and by favorite I mean I still hate it and it's an incredibly dumb idea.

My goodness this is a freaking frustrating conversation. No kidding that was the design. The topic of conversation was about an extension for Rizzo, and ways to get one that doesn't leave you shelling out big for an old done dude. My opinion is the easiest way to extend him "cheaply" is by throwing a little extra money his way now. Show him some love for more than living up to his contract and providing you a ton of profit. And then maybe he'd sign something feasible. If you make him play out this deal then he's got more incentive to try and get the best deal he can get next time around. If you don't want to keep him at all, fine, let him walk. Personally, I'd trade him. I’m firmly on the “trade Rizzo” bandwagon, both because i think its best for us long-term and I think its what this FO will eventually decide on. But I get laughed out of every place I bring it up at. His contract makes him ultra-valuable, and with two years of control left, this is where his value will most likely peak. First base is the easiest position to fill, and we have in house options available in Schwarber, Bryant, Contreras, and Vic....not that I’m endorsing moving any of those players to 1st base, just that doing so is a legitimate option. In a hypothetical world where we trade Rizzo for a SP to slot in between Yu and Kyle, move Schwarber to 1st and sign Castellanos using Rizzo’s money, I think we’re much better off than if we had kept Rizzo. Thats assuming you think Schwarber can move to 1st. Maybe you don’t think that, thats OK, theres still like 50 different options. The only thing I havent figured out is who is likely to interested in Rizzo, and what SP we could realistically get in a trade for him This logic doesn't really hold up. I understand that most professional baseball players can at least fake first base, and I'll even set aside the fact that Rizzo is a very good defensive first baseman. But just because Schwarber or Caratini can play first base does not mean that putting them there isn't a clear downgrade. Rizzo is a career 132 wRC hitter, 141 last year, projected for 135 in 2020. The only player from your list that's even topped 130 is Bryant, and Rizzo has outhit him the last two years. Setting aside a potential Contreras trade, swapping Rizzo and Caratini in the line up one way or another is a clear downgrade. Moving Schwarber without a replacement is the same thing. Your Castellanos idea means we get worse defensively at two positions, still end up with a worse line up, and, well, sorry....you are out of your mind if you think we're getting anything close to a pitcher with the ability of Hendricks or Darvish.

He's not wrong. The Cubs are a big market team so, the only reason to trade the best player who is in his prime and still two years from free agency is... I don't really know the reason. Well, someone came up with a potential reason earlier. If the Cubs feel that he is past peak and will begin to decline, there could be a strong argument to trade him now. You have to be *really* sure that the shoulder or whatever is going to create a steeper decline phase than normal (or something like that), but there can be scenarios where it makes sense to trade him. I personally don't feel it is likely that scenario is playing out in real life, but logical hypotheticals do exist. This isn't a rebuttal as much as it is a genuine question, but do you think situations like that actually occur, where the Cubs would have pretty definitive insight into a presumably injury driven decline, but other teams wouldn't be aware of it?

I mean, to be fair, all they are saying is that those 921 players are overpaid given their contributions. No one is pretending to use these amounts as a guide for free agency, but I think it's definitely fair to say that Rizzo's contributions were worth around the numbers they say, which would then make him underpaid. If I'm Theo, I offer him like...5 years, $80m, throw a couple options on there at the end if you want. It's probably a little too much, but I'm being sentimental and I could also make an argument about it being a good business decision, if not a good baseball decision.

he's still probably significantly underpaid at 16.5 for the next two years. he was worth almost double that 2 of the last 3 years. Rizzo never has, and never will, be worth 33 million a year in the real world. 16.5m is good value for a 4 WAR 1B, but not a severe underpayment. Abreu just got $16.67m a year after two years putting up 3.1 WAR combined.