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squally1313

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Everything posted by squally1313

  1. squally1313
  2. squally1313
    ZIPs gave him a pretty rose projection and I default to ZIps, which was encouraging since the rest of them weren't good. Of course there's potential for improvement, but that doesn't come naturally with age, it comes with at bats. It's like expecting Ballesteros to develop into a good catcher while being our mostly full time DH. Taking at bats away from better players to optimize Matt Shaw's growth in an absolute win now year is doing the team a disservice. Beyond that, you're just keeping a very valuable asset on the bench in case of an extended injury. Worth noting that I'm all for Matt Shaw (re)learning how to play outfield, but, similar to Cam Smith, the standard expectations for offense are higher. A 100 wRC at 3B or 2B, where the league averages are 93 and 92 respectively, is very valuable. 100 wRC in left (100 wRC league average) or RF (102) is less appealing.
  3. squally1313
    Matt Shaw had a 93 wRC last year and very middling defensive metrics. Adam Frazier* had an 89 wRC last year and middling defensive metrics. Would you rather have a utility infielder with a bunch of team control and a 93 wRC or a utility infielder with an 89 wRC and a top 50 starting pitching prospect with a bunch of team control. * there's like 8 other names out there with an overall similar profile, so don't get fixated here.
  4. squally1313
    What year do you think it is where the Cubs still play this massive amount of day games. The least amount of games either Swanson or Hoerner has played in the last three years is 147. (waits for the goalposts to move to 'well maybe they should get more time off then')
  5. squally1313
    Why? He’s objectively worse than every starter in our lineup
  6. squally1313
    The second threshold, per the MLB website, is defined as a 12% surcharge. Do you know if that surcharge only applies to the dollars spent over the second threshold? Or if it applies to all the dollars spent above the first CBT line? Basically, if go $21m over the LT line, is the penalty $21m x 20% ($4.2m) plus $1m x 32% ($320k), $4.52m total? Or is it $21m x 32% ($6.72m)? I know it's not huge numbers either way, but conceptually I can see the second threshold being more of hard red line if it would vault them into additional tax on dollars already spent, vs just looking at the total salary + tax cost of any future decisions. Too much math on a Friday, sorry.
  7. squally1313
    The $227m seems high compared to FG. They've got $197m for guaranteed, non arb contracts and then $11.2m for the two arb contracts (Steele and Cabrera). But FG also has $4.5m for payments to players no longer on the team ($2.5m for Bellinger and $2m for Turner) compared to $2.5m on that snip. I think that gets you pretty close to the gap.
  8. squally1313
    I mean, maybe. Last year we had 9 guys with over 400 PAs. After that, no one had more than 200. Maybe we want to give our starters a little more rest. Or maybe it's more likely than not just probabilistically that one of Bregman/Swanson/Hoerner goes down with a serious injury. Not having Shaw around would make 2027 and beyond a little trickier. But I think you can recreate 2026-utility-Shaw, or close to it, pretty easily, and solve some other current and/or future problems in the process.
  9. squally1313
    Why is this a binary choice between a theoretical above replacement Matt Shaw and the 2025-only version of Vidal Brujan? There aren't any other options out there that can give us replacement level production? Like, no one would argue that the players signed to be bench players turned out well. But they were mostly all signed coming off of much better seasons (seasons that look like 2025 Matt Shaw). So either Hoyer is the worst GM ever at signing utility guys because he inevitably picks one on the brink of collapse, we've maybe just hit some bad luck (while ignoring Carson Kelly, McGuire...maybe he can only do catchers?), maybe there's a penalty to your production when going from getting every day PAs to being called on once a week or brought in cold in the late innings against top relievers (which would apply to Shaw too) We traded Caissie, which hurt our backup depth and starting options for 2027 offensively, to give us a 2026 and beyond starting pitcher, where we also have a few impending FAs. A Shaw trade would do the same, because right now our 2027 is three pitchers.
  10. squally1313
    This is just not how utility players work. Where is Shaw supposed to get significant PAs? This whole outfield experiment is theoretical at this point (and we have McCormick, Carlson, Alcantara there to fill the other bench spot and take backup OF PAs anyways), and he's worse than every single one of our starters, especially in the infield. This isn't so much to debate the talent level of Shaw, though 'came on strong in the second half' is doing a lot of lifting (is PCA going to be terrible this year?). It's that his role on the 2026 roster at this moment isn't important, can be filled by someone else for very cheap with minimal impact, and turning him into pitching is an avenue worth exploring. Berti and Castro both were better in 2024 (and Castro better pre-trade) than Shaw was in 2025. Maybe Hoyer is just cursed on picking up backups. Or maybe it's really hard to get like, 5 PAs a week and maintain the same level of success, and we should bake that into our expectations for Shaw-as-utility-guy going into this year.
  11. squally1313
    How do you think the concept of 'average' works
  12. squally1313
    Hopefully they also have Hoerner taking reps at second base
  13. squally1313
    He missed over a month with shoulder stiffness after the Giles collision, as far as I can tell did zero rehab in the minors, Baker was generous enough to give him one limited start at 79 pitches....and then had him throw back to back complete games right after that.
  14. squally1313
    April 25: Cubs at Colorado. The Cubs were up 7-1 after 6 innings, 8-1 after 7 innings, and 8-1 going into the bottom of the 8th. Prior not only pitched the 6th and 7th, he sent him out in the 8th, after having thrown 110 pitches, for one batter (which he walked). 116 pitches. May 12: Cubs at Milwaukee. The Cubs were up 9-4 after 4 and 10-4 after 5. Prior, having not pitched particularly well, threw 6 innings. 124 pitches. August 26: Cubs at St. Lous. Cubs were up 7-0 after 5, Prior gave up one run in 6th. He pitched 8 innings. 116 pitches. September 1: Cubs v St Louis. Cubs scored 6 runs in the 5th and 1 in the 6th, won the game 7-0. Prior pitched 8 innings. 131 pitches. This is solely focused on the 'win at all costs' idiocy, and doesn't even include things like his September pitch counts being 131, 129, 109, 124, 131, 133.
  15. squally1313
    Zambrano under Dusty Baker, four years, ages 22-25: 129 games started, 861 innings, 17.4 fWAR. Zambrano after Dusty Baker, six years, ages 26-31: 156 games started, 982 innings, 12.6 fWAR. Out of major league baseball at 31. He was 42nd in total innings for the 'half a decade' after Baker. But I guess because it took Dusty four years to do it as opposed to just a year, it's fine.
  16. squally1313
    I get it. A. We were all 12 years younger and probably more starry eyed B. Prior had a higher K/9 rate (10.4 v 9.2), and league wide the 2003 rate (6.4) was more than a strikeout less than the 2015 rate (7.7), so the frequency would have stood out even more. C. As you mentioned, Arrieta always had the feel of like, man, he's on a historic hot streak but the wheels have to come off at some point here right. Prior was the present and the future.
  17. squally1313
    I suppose we could start a thread about Josh Donaldson, Dylan Cease, Dontrelle Willis, Gleyber Torres, etc. But that's me playing devils advocate and I largely agree with you. Go trade Shaw for Skubal.
  18. squally1313
    Zips coming out for the Cubs tomorrow. To the surprise of probably very few, they love the offense, hate the pitching. Projects every single position (besides the DH spot) to be more valuable than any of our starting pitchers. But does have 6 starters putting up between 2.4 and 1.5 fWAR, which is encouraging enough I guess.
  19. squally1313
    Just to go back over the details here, he was shot on September 10th. We had a game that day and I'm like 99% sure he was a late scratch and only pinch hit. Busch was incidentally also not starting that day, but we were going against Sale so going to assume that was a baseball decision. The Cubs had an off day the next day to go from Atlanta back to Chicago. The (biggest air quotes possible) "memorial" wasn't until 9/21, 11 days after he was shot. As we all saw, it was very much a political rally. The Cubs, as mentioned earlier, had a day off after the shooting, and were also off the day after the memorial. The game that Shaw missed, we lost 1-0. I don't know man, these are the furthest things from normal people, but I find it really hard to believe that the only option for genuine friends and family to do funeral type things was a parade of Republican politicians speaking at a stadium 11 days after he died.
  20. squally1313
    He came up as a second baseman, so between that and Nico being able to cover shortstop, we're pretty much covered in terms of an injury to Bregman/Swanson/Nico. Counsell also spoke a couple times about trying him out in the outfield, which has precedence (Ian Happ, Javy Baez, Tatis, Oneil Cruz). Easier said than done, but you can see the path to a Zobrist like skill set defensively.
  21. squally1313
    I too am also incapable of seeing anything beyond what is six inches in front of my face
  22. squally1313
  23. squally1313
    Michael Busch went nuclear at the very end of the year, but all the games count, and he ended up 11th in wOBA and 10th in xwOBA. xwOBA wise, Happ was 30th, Suzuki was 34th, Swanson was 43rd. If Bregman would have qualified, he'd be in the low 60s. I remember having the same complaint about the lineup a couple years ago, but my high level opinion is that back then we had a bunch of 105 wRC guys, and now we have a bunch of 115-120 wRC guys, and that makes a huge difference. Savant thinks Swanson got really unlucky last year (12th worst luck in baseball). Happ also supposedly should have gotten much better results. The pitching I'm less enthused by. But the defense is very good, and if the bad luck we saw offensively last year is more of a structural Wrigley Field thing, then the pitching will play up too. I don't really love anyone in our rotation right now for a Game 1 (or a do or die game), but there's plenty of time to solve that problem.
  24. squally1313
    The Dodgers projections, as noted elsewhere, looked relatively mortal when they came out earlier this week. I think it's more that the cash keeps flying out the door, so whenever Freeman/Betts/Smith starts to lose a step they'll just blow everyone away for the next guy. As for Ohtani, not an expert here, are there arm injuries that would keep him out of the DH spot? It kinda blew my mind at the time, but he spent a whole year recovering from UCL surgery and DHed the whole time.
  25. squally1313
    Jon Berti, Willi Castro, and Justin Turner were all better hitters in 2024 than Matt Shaw was in 2025, so not sure why he's this automatic fix to this (completely overblown) bench problem. And even if he is, and even if we're somehow cursed to never find productive backups again, if the alternative is getting an immediate front line starter or a top pitching prospect, I'm still thinking really hard about the latter option.
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