squally1313

ESPN Top 100 MLB players came out for us to get mad at: 22. PCA 55. Hoerner 61. Bregman 82. Swanson 86. Busch 92. Suzuki Can quibble with the numbers (and the fact that Suzuki made it over Happ), but otherwise I'll take having 6 guys on there.

Did I miss a discussion about Ernie Clement and Brice Turang making the USA team over Nico (or, honestly, Dansby)? I remember some correctly snarky comments when Nico got left off the top 100 players list. Turang isn't overly offensive, but Ernie Clement is a joke.

Opening day last year we had Carson Kelly, a guy with a 96 wRC in 2024, a guy with a 116 wRC in 2024, and Gage Workman Right now we're looking at Carson Kelly (but a year older), a guy with a 93 wRC last year, a guy with an 83 wRC last year, and either a 62 wRC (McCormick) or a 74 wRC (Carlson) 2024 performance. That's not to say it won't be better, but being a successful bench player is seemingly really hard.

Also lazy and didn't read the article, but I saw a couple tweets earlier about how the strikezone is determined on a per-batter basis by height/biometric data of the hitters, and doesn't adjust for hitters who may have an exaggerated crouch. My takeaway from that is that there are hitters who are used to getting balls called on pitches at the top of the zone might be in for a rude awakening.

High B, maybe a B+ I think they did a good job if you focus on the period of time from 11/1 to the middle of February. Which is technically the question. In hindsight the Kittredge situation doesn't make sense, and I don't love how the Shota situation played out. Going from Tucker to Bregman was clever and while I think we're probably a slightly better team with Shaw at third, Tucker in RF, Seiya at DH, and generic backup MIF on the bench than we are with Bregman 3B/Seiya RF/Ballesteros DH/Shaw Util, we also have an extra $25m or so annually to play with. We finally turned a blocked prospect into a pitcher, and we went after a very high upside guy that gives us a dice roll on a game one starter. In terms of the bullpen, whether it's 'fixed' remains to be seen, and it is very much a matter of cleaning up their own mess. Similar to the overarching concerns about the roster cliff. The system is depleted, but obviously they get credit for PCA, Shaw, Horton, Busch, etc. I think in a world where Ballesteros and Caissie were relatively viewed the same in terms of overall value, I probably would have opted to trade Ballesteros (or go get a DH bat and let him catch 120 games in Iowa). Ultimately, on the one hand I was calling for the big bat signing and the pitching trade, and we got that, but on the other hand I'm not sure we're better than what we were in November. Status quo for a 92 win team is fine, but the top end of the grading system is reserved for improvement.

The thumbnail to the youtube video being Bauer in a Dodgers uniform is so horsefeathers perfect. Dude hasn't pitched in the majors since 2021 and had a 4.51 ERA in Japan last year, but sure, keep leaning on the glory days you ghoulish loser.

Dumb, pedantic question: I was going through the FG payroll page trying to make a joke about how Palencia is screwed health wise because we surely aren't allowed to have this many reliever spots filled for a future team. I noticed we had quite a few guys on deals with a 2027 mutual options, which, from recollection, are almost never actually opted into (either the guy is good and wants more or he stinks and we bail). As an example, Hunter Harvey is getting $5m this year and has a mutual option for $8m next year. They list his AAV at $6m, and I believe the AAV number is what drives the luxury tax stuff, no? I can't follow the exact math, but I think ultimately my question is if/when these mutual options are voided in November, do they recalculate the luxury tax amounts to determine penalties/which threshold you crossed/etc?

If the Cubs have made a somewhat final decision that Ballesteros should see the field as little as possible, they should probably start seeing if other teams see differently and then see what they'd be willing to give up for him.

I don't think he's going to be a radically different catcher in July regardless, but I do think he'd be a better catcher with 60 Iowa games under his belt vs 60 innings with the Cubs. Get your point on, if my theory is the growing pains are inevitable, the first half of this year is a pretty safe spot for it. I just think the only way Ballesteros is a serious contributor to the team is if he's catching at least 50-60 games a year, and I can't really think of a player who stopped in game catching for an extended period of time and then went back to it down the road. The offense as a whole is probably fine regardless. And you're right, Nathanial Lowe isn't going to magically transform anything. I'd just like a (preferrably) lefty bat with a higher floor. Mostly because, and I know we conceptually differ here, I think you're damaging Ballesteros' long term prospects by not giving him maximum catching opps. But yeah, fine, reassess in the summer.

Weren't we all generally in agreement like, last season that there almost inevitably will be a period of rough adjustment for even the best hitting prospects? Couldn't that be baked into these projections (in recent history there's been a large dropoff between AAA performance and initial MLB performance)? I wouldn't call it leaning heavily on projections, just....using them. Zips has him generating defensive value but that presumably comes from allocating him innings behind the plate, and how many of those is he going to get in a world with Amaya and Kelly. The ZIPS DC gives him the same offensive output and turns him into a full time DH and...he's worth 0.4 fWAR in 282 PAs. If Amaya or Kelly gets hurt, then there's a separate argument on whether Ballesteros is best prepared to fill in as the second catcher, getting 5 starts a week in Iowa or working with the Cubs coaches. But just going with a 100-105 wRC guy for the spot with a league average of 110 seems like a missed opportunity now that we're past the first threshold. Especially if you, like me, think Ballesteros' best path to ultimate value (ie being a major league viable catcher) comes from getting as many game reps as possible. I think we have enough of a cushion to let it all play out and reassess in June. But we have a really solid catching tandem as is and we have a high floor util guy theoretically capable of playing everywhere in the field. We (probably) don't have a guy on the bench who projects to be above average at hitting RHPs. That seems fixable.

Eh. Until told otherwise he has zero defensive value on the 2026 Cubs team, and besides Steamer there's not a single projection system that has him over a 105 wRC. Castellanos is washed, but it can't be hard to find or improve on that performance. Nathaniel Lowe and his 115 wRC against RHP in the last two years costs only money. If you still want to keep Ballesteros up in the majors to pick up the soft skills, then you dump the Austin guy and let Shaw take the short side of the DH platoon.

Corbin Carroll with a broken hamate bone pretty much locks in PCA as a starting outfielder for Team USA. Hopefully him and Buxton don't kill each other on a ball in the gap.

This tracks

Yeah clearly they valued what Turner brought to the table last year, but maybe that's just like...Bregman's job now. I kept squinting at Cutch's numbers trying to justify them, but ultimately you'd have to get a little meatball-y in the 'put him on a contender and hope he finds a fountain of youth for 6 months' way. .333 xwOBA last year wasn't terrible and just high level math probably works out to like...a 115 expected wRC against LHP. But the defense is totally gone, which means the in house options are probably just as good, cheaper, and already here.

Does McCutcheon have anything left in terms of being a short side platoon outfield bat? Would be awesome to bring him in if he would take that kind of role. The splits the last couple years aren't super encouraging but career 145 wRC vs LHP.

He's a poor man's Tony Gwynn in the sense that like, Scott Kingery is a poor man's Chase Utley. Gwynn had a 4.2% career K rate and 320 career steals. But yes, they're both thick, so sure.

You're probably right, but on the Vogelbach development path you'd be skipping the part where he mastered AAA. Vogelback putting up a 148 wRC and a .417 OBP is a step above Mo's 121/.385.

I'm not totally sold on the age thing just because I don't really know what the next step of Mo's offensive profile looks like. Nobody really bats .300 anymore (and he's not going to steal a bunch of infield hits). Going .270/.330/.440 is definitely more valuable than than .220/.340/.410 or whatever. But ultimately, if you rule out playing defense and hitting for power, there's not a lot of paths to real success.

The pitcher is one of two players that are, far and away, the key components of every single play that takes place while he is on the mound. The third baseman can't make the ball come to him and can't take more than 11% of the PAs in a game. And then, defensively, you're taking about differences between making (to use a bad metric) 98 plays out of 100 vs 96 plays out of hundred. It's been referenced above, but don't think of it as games, think of it as plate appearances.

This guy has a career 108 wRC with 1.9 fWAR total. Probably not fair to pick one (bad) comp, but....pretty similar profiles.

do you think that's really how it works

minus the switch hitting, minus the walk rate over 13% for the first dozen years of his career, minus the 8 years he hit more than 20 home runs. For the first ten years of Santana's career, he averaged 23 home runs with a .367 OBP, had at least 600 PAs every year after his rookie year, and eclipsed 3 fWAR twice, and never as a catcher. It's just...really, really hard to provide outsize value without elite power or any defensive contributions.

I think I'm more in the position of it just being an incredibly difficult position in general. Yes, there's a bunch of soft skills to pick up off the field. But like, you want to teach Matt Shaw right field at Wrigley, go have a jugs machine send him 1000 fly balls with different spins, launch angles, etc. That's going to be more meaningful than the 2-3 balls he might get a game. Whereas with catcher, I don't know how you replicate the dozens of daily opportunities to frame full effort pitching, and I don't know much you want to be taking your mostly full time DH onto the practice field and spiking 88 mph curveballs at him.

Can you do both though? If Ballesteros starts with the team in a DH role, and he hits to an above average wRC, he's never going to get the catching reps he needs. If he doesn't hit, well...that's a whole new and different problem. I don't have a good answer in terms of an actual player, but in the world where we're past the first luxury tax, feel like there's maybe a way to replicate DH production against RHPs for a handful of million dollars, which seems like treading water at the major league level but really the money is to take a shot at unlocking a very valuable catcher going forward.