squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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To clarify, are you saying that you wouldn't be happy with a season where he sets career highs in home runs, walks, OBP, and strikeouts? Or are you saying that you think the strikeout rate is sustainable and will continue to be a problem while all the good things he's doing aren't sustainable and will go back closer to career norms?
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Should we also ignore Suzuki's walks and strikeouts when determining how good he's doing, or is that just a Happ thing? I get the impression you're feeling piled on, which I'm not trying to do, Suzuki v Happ is a reasonable conversation to have. But this continued insistence that you aren't talking bad about him and then, often in the exact same sentence, criticizing his overall performance for the year, is very weird. If you want to ignore past performance, fine, I get it to a certain extent, but we're only 43 games into the year so the sample sizes are still a little wonky. Happ has been a more valuable player this year (as he was last year). If you want to focus on this cherrypicked sample size, in terms of overall performance FG has Suzuki listed at the top but they've both produced 0.4 fWAR. The defense matters, and when you're putting together future rosters/lineups, as long as Ballesteros is around, everyone else is likely going to have to play the field most days. Happ and Suzuki were born 6 days apart, if we're (correctly) worried about age related drop off we need to apply it to everyone, and to all facets of their games.
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Since the beginning of last year: Since 4/25/26:
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lol, he has an .859 OPS this month. Even this weird, 'let me exclude the rest of the year and start my sample size immediately after an 8 game hitting streak' stretch from 4/25 to now has him at a 122 wRC. It was frustrating, though not necessarily an indictment on him, when he was the best player in the lineup. He's the same guy now and he's realistically the 3rd or 4th best hitter and 4th or 5th best overall value guy. He's so far from the problem, the infatuation is bizarre.
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I want someone that can win a silver slugger, not a gold glove. Therefore, I propose we dump the guy on a 34 home run pace (second most LF home runs in baseball this year) (who also wins gold gloves). Other teams love him and do we really want to get into a bidding war with other teams? Instead, we should pivot to someone even better, who other teams, for some reason, would not want to get into a bidding war over. In my 'since 4/24' split, which is a very weird way to split up numbers and was almost assuredly done to make him look as bad as possible, the guy I want to dump has a .733 OPS/.339 wOBA. The guy I want, who makes $14m a year for the next 5 years and would cost entire MILB rosters, over that same stretch, has a .749 OPS/.335 wOBA and has, to use another relevant stat I cited, two non-solo home runs this year. The team, overall, is third in offensive fWAR and third in wRC. We are 11th in ERA and 22nd in pitching fWAR. The problems, to the extent a 27-16 team can have serious problems, are glaringly obvious.
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Also they are absolutely not our rivals.
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As much as I enjoy being able to take my kids to Sox Park (great food, great beer) for like $13 total and get a whole section/half a concourse to let them run around, Chicago as a city is a much, much more fun town when both baseball teams are good. They're never going to surpass us in popularity, I have a lot of Sox fan friends, we already broke the drought, all in all give me a good Sox team over whatever this garbage has been the last 5 years.
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Not sure why you left the first half of last year out since it was also the same lineup, or the first month of this year. Since the beginning of last year the Cubs have the 3rd highest wRC and the 2nd most offensive fWAR. If you want to stick with your overly pessimistic date range, from July 1 of last year till now we're 7th in wRC and 3rd in fWAR. The offense is good.
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1. ‘Where we were before Horton went down’ was also me still thinking we really needed a top end starter 2. Is the statement totally true? Wiggins and Steele were supposed to be the midseason reinforcements, and both have had significant setbacks. and that’s without even considering the injuries to Harvey, thielbar, etc in the bullpen that have elevated the important of having someone like Ben brown down there
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Is the following biased? Yes, of course it is, I would enjoy watching the team more if he wasn't on it, and what else should I be worried about besides my enjoyment. I don't know where you picked your starting point but I used August 1 as a best guess, and got 253 PAs. In that stretch, he has a .333 wOBA and a .307 xwOBA. The average RF in baseball this year has a .334 wOBA. So, generously, he's a league average bat for the position. Defensively he's grading out a little above average in the outfield (slash overall). For his career he's got a 97 wRC and is outperforming his xwOBA by 5 points. Do I think he's an overpay for 2-4 months of Freddy Peralta? Sure, probably, throw in Brooks Raley or Luke Weaver or whatever. I'd probably still lean towards overpackaging the glut of blocked prospects we have. The point about Shaw having no position but still being on pace for 500 PAs is valid, and I've become convinced there's plenty of PAs available for that 10th man if he can be versatile. Shaw is plenty valuable at that role. I don't think he's nearly as valuable as Starting Corner Outfielder.
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PCA now the second most valuable offensive player on the team, 22nd best offensive player in baseball. Just a defensive monster. Shota ninth in pitching value.
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I know they're on a limited time frame, but my issue here is like...you're going to need 10-12 innings from other relievers in this series. Palencia is likely only good for 1, Webb pitched Tuesday and Wednesday, Thornton pitched the last two games, Hollowell threw 49 pitches today (most of them bad). You took all the length from the pen and you're using it tomorrow, likely knocking them out for the rest of the series. If you're going to have to go get a Hollowell replacement, who inevitably sucks, just go get a guy who can suck for 5 innings instead of 2.
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When I had it done, the surgeon said he wouldn't really know until he got in there whether it was going to be repairable or not. In my set of circumstances, the conversation was framed as like 'we're going to try and repair it to avoid long term issues, but it's not like you're some professional athlete that needs everything working perfectly'. But the flip side of that for Boyd is that repairing him costs him at least half of one of his few years left.
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Rea is already the current 4th starter, so he can't be the 5th starter. They seemingly haven't been concerned with yanking Assad into whatever role we need, but that's probably because he's not good. Ben Brown is not stretched out, and also...maybe the best bullpen pitcher we have at the moment? If you make Assad a starter, you don't have any long relief guy, which means you have to hold back high leverage situations from Brown because you need him ready for a starter implosion. Ben Brown as a starter gets you 3-4 innings max for at least a couple times through the rotation, so you're essentially piggybacking Brown and Assad there, which means you've somewhat lost both from the pen. Thielbar doesn't replace what Brown or Assad gives you out of the bullpen. And that's because the fact that we've been losing a starter every 3 weeks now. Who is 7th and 8th on the depth chart?
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Was convinced the guy we DFAed was 'Caleb' Martin too. Going to chalk it up as 1/3rd being old, 1/3rd being these guys suck, and 1/3rd being the two hours I spent at Ceres yesterday.
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Jesse Rogers tweeted that it was a 'successful partial left knee menisectomy' and when I googled that word it said removal. When I had that surgery they repaired it, not removed it, and my (obviously not as intense or driven) rehab was like 6 months.
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Corbin Martin DFAed, so assume there's a fresh arm inbound.
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Went with the removal option per Jesse Rogers, which is the one that has a much shorter rehab time. Probably no activity for a month and then can get moving from there.
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Yeah, if you're trying to avoid 3 appearances in 4 days, you're down to Thornton, Assad, Palencia, and Martin. I don't know how they feel about using Assad as a high frequency reliever, Palencia is one inning max, and the other two guys are...Tyler Thornton and Corbin Martin. I guess Thornton is on batting practice duty if this goes sideways.
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Yeah Thielbar and the improbable reemergence of Harvey might help you avoid the concept of having to go with Ryan Rolison and Tyler Thornton in the 10th inning on back to back nights (not trying to get into some under the hood conversation here, just saying that was very, very much not the plan), but they aren't going to give you more than 4 innings a week. With the day off Monday, you maybe want to consider calling up a starter for this weekend, ideally as soon as tomorrow. That lets the remaining starters stay on normal rest (or more), and keeps Assad and Brown in their current roles which have become pretty crucial. There wouldn't be a need for another starter after that until next Saturday, which gives you through the off day Monday to figure out if you want to go get someone or move Brown or Assad into that spot.
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Yeah I don’t think there’s anyone available now that can also slot into a playoff top 3. But we probably need someone(s) to soak up some innings here. Wins trump everything else, but this particular winning streak has put some pretty unsustainable strain on the bullpen. Day off Monday, but then it’s straight into Braves/white Sox/brewers for 9 in a row. It’s probably wrong, but the CBS app has brown starting tomorrow and then Taillon Sunday on three days rest, so clearly they have no idea what’s going on. We could use a blowout or two here. Go get a bad pitcher now, then go get a good pitcher in July.
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Robbie Ray is the most boring pickup in the world but, given recent news, go get him now I guess.
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I am not at all a professional athlete but I tore my meniscus (playing with kids on the floor just like him, actually) when I was 32 and the doctor was basically like 'we won't know until we get in there whether we can fix it or just have to remove it. if we fix it, it's significantly more rehab. if we remove it, you'll be at essentially full strength in a month but will have long term issues'. They fixed it and I was going to rehab 3x a week for 6 months.
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Yeah I'm admittedly running into the same problems. A good amount of names that provide a lot more value in being a slightly above average innings eater during the year than they do in October. A few weeks ago I thought we needed to dip into that well to stabilize the rotation but credit to the front office to stacking pitchers of that type and to those pitchers (Rea especially) for stepping up. Skubal is almost a meme at this point, but if you're looking for upside you probably do need to explore the injured/rehabbing pitchers market. For better or for worse that's a constantly evolving group. You could also revamp the bullpen (for the second time this year) and lean on like, Ben Brown/Justin Steele/Wiggins as multiple inning weapons then supplement from there. But need to do something.
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Teams trading away top starters in July of a lost season don't need immediate contributors though, right? There are going to be expiring pitchers, they are going to be expensive, we are very, very good offensively (and very locked in to that group, contract wise), and we are very much lacking starting pitching. Overpay for someone. Hoarding all of Shaw/Ramirez/Rojas/Alcantara because we're scared one of them might, maybe, turn into cheap corner outfield production for another team is not good management of resources.
