squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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This seems like backwards logic, no? These guys are considered ‘superstars’ or whatever in hindsight…because they went out and won a bunch of games or won very important games? It wasn’t like Boston slotted Xander bogaerts in the starting line up and on day one was like ‘perfect, we have our superstar, now we can compete’. If Michael Busch wins 85+ games for the next four years and continues to hit like he did last year, how is he any different? Same for the overall performances from PCA, Hoerner.
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And we don’t have multiple of them. What the hell jed
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1. I think, and I don't mean this in an overly critical way, there's a disconnect between what you expect an offense to look like/produce, and what the baseline is for an above average offense in 2026. League average slugging is below .400. It's just not the game any of us grew up with. 2. For the star category, since you acknowledged PCA, which is mostly defense driven...he's 8th in fWAR since 2025, right above Soto. Hoerner is 22nd. Busch is 39th. Bregman 44th. Happ 46th. Dansby 47th. Stars? No. But I think you'd be really hard pressed to find another group that can put 6 guys in the top 50. Actually I just did it, we're 2 higher than any other team (Yankees and Dodgers with 4). 6 teams have 2 guys in the top 20 (Judge/Bellinger, Witt/Garcia, Raleigh/Julio, Ohtani/Pages, Carroll/Perdomo, Soto/Lindor). Naming stars in hindsight is easy, you have the memories. Right now, we absolutely match up. 3. If Judge gets hurt, the Yankees go from a 95 win team to a 90 win team. 'Horrible' is an extreme over exaggeration. He also slugs 137 points lower in the playoffs. 4. No one has ever called Edward Cabrera a star and if they did they were very mistaken. We traded the 65th prospect in baseball for a starter with multiple years of control.
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Since the beginning of 2025, here is the list of Cubs players who have gotten at least 200 PAs and have been above average hitters (wRC>100), besides Kyle Tucker Busch (134) Happ (120) Suzuki (119) Kelly (115) Amaya (115) Ballesteros (115) PCA (108) Hoerner (107) Bregman (103) Here are the below average hitters with over 200 PAs: Dansby (95) Shaw (93) If you sort by PAs, 10 of the top 12 hitters are above average. This is all, as noted, completely setting aside how good defensively the group collectively is.
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The Cubs are 6th in runs this year. They are 6th in wOBA. They are 7th in xwOBA. They are 6th in wRC. Kyle Tucker has taken 7% of the Cubs PAs since the beginning of 2025. If you think his whopping 136 wRC in 7% of the plate appearances is propping up an otherwise bad offense, I don't really know what to tell you, math wise.
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The Cubs are third in baseball in runs scored since the beginning of last year. We have the 8th highest wRC with RISP. In high leverage situations it's 5th. You keep making up problems that just don't exist over an actually appropriate sample size.
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It is fWAR. Purely wRC: Catcher: 6th 1B: 8th 2B: 5th SS: 17th 3B: 24th LF: 6th CF; 7th RF: 3rd Total outfield: 2nd DH: 19th I find the baseballreference interface atrocious, so if there's even an option to pull down their version of pitching WAR, I have no idea how to do it. Cubs are 12th in ERA over that stretch (and have the 2nd lowest BABIP), so, to your point, they're getting some defensive benefit.
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Cubs ranking across baseball by position since the beginning of 2025: Catcher: 9th 1B: 6th 2B: 2nd SS: 13th 3B: 24th LF: 6th CF: 1st RF: 3rd OF Total: 2nd DH: 19th SP: 21st RP: 21st Overall pitching: 22nd
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But hey, maybe Greene can maintain his .430 BABIP, it would only be the highest BABIP in a non-COVID season since 2000 by 24 points.
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Ian Happ has been better than Riley Greene this year (and since the beginning of last year) how is that an efficient use of resources
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Boyd is way too fragile and we’re in way too rough of shape right now. This can be wicks last start, if he finds something, wonderful, we’d actually have a multi-inning reliever for the first time in like a month.
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We’re just throwing shota in the DFA pile (now that we decided Happ can begrudgingly stay, I guess he can have his spot?) huh? 4.40 ERA/FIP can’t be a back end of the rotation guy behind Boyd, brown, and a TOR acquisition?
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lol man, what a fascinating ballplayer
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The no sell from Bregman was a nice touch too
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Is there a specific rule against Ian Happ just punting that ball down the first base line there? (also, leadoff double, insurance run, terrible player)
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The cubs had a 14% chance to win the game going into the bottom of the 8th. We’ve had stretches where we could bury a pitcher in the bullpen for a couple weeks because our starters are going deep or we had guys who could soak up multiple innings. These are not those times. there are probably valid criticisms of why we seem to end up with a neris/pressly/maton type reliever every year (yes, I know it’s not apples to apples and I’m oversimplifying). But if you’ve got no one going deep and a bunch of one inning relievers, even your 8th best reliever is going to get run in at least somewhat competitive games. These discussion is probably more ‘is he a top 8 or 10 reliever in the system’. Hes been brutal, do we have better? Genuine question, I don’t know.
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Anecdotally, feel like the pre-cursor to Suzuki hot streaks are a bunch of scorched balls right at people (or LD singles)
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137 wRC
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There goes counsell leaving his starter in too long again.
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Yeah that tracks.
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134 wRC
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We really think the catcher is just going out there and shooting from the hip? Like there’s a scouting meeting with the pitcher and the catchers and the two catchers come away with two totally separate game plan and then the pitching coach is like ‘well, I guess flip a coin Craig’. the cubs don’t hit for like a week and the consensus is that the entire league, in unison, made adjustments against them, but also our catchers just go out there with totally different game plans that dramatically impact success.
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There are some structural advantages, namely defense, in place that would benefit all pitchers. There are some statistics in place that show a fair bit of luck (namely LOB%). I get that this 25-0 stat is the new hot thing to cite. We’ve gotten slightly above average results thus far and any reading of the metrics would say it’s likely to get worse. This is getting into dumb semantic territory. Javier Assad running an ERA well below his FIP meant that he got good results, but ultimately he didn’t invent clutch pitching, he just wasn’t a good pitcher who was getting good results. Apply that to the majority of the guys down there at the moment.
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Can you link to them specifically discussing catcher ERA? To me, David Ross somehow producing an above average offensive season at age 39 colors the discussion about his overall value, but the main value of David Ross was 'Jon Lester, who is an absolutely excellent pitcher in every sense, wanted David Ross as his catcher, and we were willing to put up with that in order to get Jon Lester, excellent pitcher'
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No, that's not how this works. The statistics there isolate (not perfectly, but better than any sort of eye test) the actual pitching performance. The actual Cubs pitchers don't get credit for the defense behind them. Better pitchers would have better expected numbers, and then they would also outperform them. Ben Brown and Colin Rea (who isn't good) aren't in the bullpen. You're layering in all these caveats and hypotheticals just to get to 'probably top 10'. They're including 0.6 fWAR from Ben Brown in that 0.0 total for the year too. Maton is a negative, Thornton is a negative, Rolison is a negative, Thielbar (5.7 BB/9) is a negative. That's half the pen! Go scroll through other contending teams bullpens and tell us ours is even close.
