squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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The Chicago Cubs Could Go "All-In" At The Deadline
squally1313 replied to Matthew Lenz's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Happ the player is fine, he's essentially who he has always been and for that production his contract is very reasonable. Having said that, resigning Tucker probably puts you in a spot where Suzuki or Happ has to go if you want any cash left over to make meaningful improvements in other spots, and that's before considering a big money pitcher like Eovaldi coming in this offseason. A $45m CBA number puts you at $55m under the luxury tax...with only 9 players signed. Steele is making $6.5m this year and I don't think that number can go down, so there's 15 spots left for arbitration costs, piecing back together a bullpen (Pressly, Brasier, Thielbar, and Keller are all FAs), and adding at least one high quality starter, if not two. We'll see where the events of the next few weeks leave the farm system, but going from Suzuki or Happ to Caissie is probably the least painful way to find what is going to be a needed $20m. -
(Quietly) PCA for Skenes, who says no
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Giving up on relievers with a track record of success after a small amount of struggles and a blow up, April is back!
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I haven’t totally thought this through, but third division winner vs first wildcard is a much smaller deal than beating out the dodgers or the NL east champion for a bye right? Obviously a lot of baseball left, but dodgers look fairly human and injuries keep piling up.
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It would never happen, but a loan system in the majors would be pretty great. Sticking with the Royals, we get Maikel Garcia for two months, they get Matt Shaw for two months and a low level prospect as a sweetener.
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The most standard path to 3-3 is going 2-1 in Minneapolis (keeping the Twins on their above referenced pace) and then 1-2 at the Yankees, which should be the reasonable expectation against an over 500 team on the road. 57-39 at the turn, home against Boston and KC and then a trip down to the south side should make up for any ground we theoretically lose before heading up to Milwaukee (and then a soft landing after that, home against hopefully stripped Oriole and Reds rosters).
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He’s 9th among shortstops in defensive fWAR, which is noisy in sub 100 game sample, but just basic competency there goes a long way. League average hitter YTD in the outfield doesn’t get you very far, league average hitter with his shortstop defense basically puts you on par, value wise, with a normal Ian Happ year. Conforto has been bad (and seemingly very unlucky, xwOBA wise), but replacing a corner outfielder is 10x easier than finding a shortstop mid season.
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The injury replacements for arguably every full time starter are sitting at AAA for a reason.
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The cubs have the best run differential in baseball
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I looked up Mookie on FG and saw he was at 1.9 fWAR, which is comfortably a 3.5 pace even with no positive regression to his career norms, which is decidedly not average, much less below average. and then I went to league leaders and realized the closest player to him in fWAR this year is Dansby and now the comment makes way more sense
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I’ll put in a vote for anyone else. But no real interest in doing all of This Whole Thing again.
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Yes please
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Agreed. No idea how they haven't stumbled upon that accidentally. Edit: 544 30 HR seasons since 2005 (including the couple this year).
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Should have been benched, clearly has been a shell of himself since that happened.
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Here's another wild one. The most HRs hit by a Cub since COVID is....26 by Bellinger in 2023. So basically Suzuki will have the record for this decade by the weekend, and there's a realistic chance that this years Cubs team will have 5 guys with more home runs than any Cub from 2020-2024 (and none of them will be Ian Happ, the clear cumulative leader in that time).
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Also, giving everyone the largest benefits of the doubt, giving Eugenio Suarez two at bats against a lefty vs Matt Shaw being somehow The Fix is insane. We have like two starters! The offense is literally first in overall production, this isn’t a real problem.
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Stealing this from Matt Clapp on Twitter (isn't he someone here?) but Cubs position players are now #1 in offensive fWAR as a team. Pitching is 19th.
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Colin Rea since the middle of May has a 6.00 ERA. The point wasn't to actually try and figure out a number of games. The point was to say that Steele would have been worth 5 more wins in half a season is ludicrous, even before getting into how his spot in the rotation actually did in his absence.
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We’re 10-4 in Colin Rea’s starts this year, so maybe pump the brakes on the 5 more wins thing. good win, bats are picking up, getting some cushion back going into the ASB would be lovely.
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Three runs is an acceptable result for a half inning. The processes were bad. The results were still good.
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RIP cubs baserunning metrics
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Yeah. Bibee (tomorrow's starter) was a good pitcher last year (26th in fWAR, better than Shota as a comparison) but his strikeout rate is down from 9.7 to 7.8 this year, so hopefully that continues. Luis Ortiz (Thursday) is pretty mediocre in a 'worse metric version of Ben Brown but without the horrendous BABIP luck' way.
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Gavin Williams isn't very good and their offense is Bad. Don't let Ramirez go nuclear and it should be fairly easy to keep them in check. Per the FG starting lineup, they feature: a DH (batting second) with a lower OBP than Dansby and only 20 more points of slugging Carlos Santana batting cleanup with a lower OBP and SLG than Nico Hoerner Lane Thomas batting fifth with a .168/.250/.265 slash line Nolan Jones batting seventh with a .219/.305/.326 slash line (to be fair, vastly underperforming his xwOBA) Bo Naylor batting ninth with a .168/.272/.359 slash line
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Jackson Holliday maybe too? 208 PAs last year (Shaw is currently at 200) with a 62 wRC. This year he's at 104 wRC and underperforming his xwOBA by 24 points. To be fair, there are probably examples that go the other way. It's baseball, thousands have failed, thousands have succeeded. But he stands a reasonable chance of improving, and his baseline right now isn't fatal for the team success. Colin Rea, on the other hand, probably isn't going to suddenly improve. Horton and Brown and Boyd aren't going to magically generate a ton of stamina and long term arm strength that will make you comfortable about leaning on them for the next 4 months. I can't see a bullpen guy suddenly turning into a 12 K/9 monster. Sort those problems out first and see where you're at in a few weeks on the (very good) offensive side of things.
