squally1313

Feel like you start to lose a little of the plot when you start talking about fWAR production from the DH spot with the built in defensive penalty, but still think it shows just what's required to stand out from primarily playing in that slot. In total, you had four players generate more than 3 fWAR from the DH spot, all of which had an wRC over 150. After that, Judge (in 56 games, lol), Trout, and Yelich put up between 2 and 3. Trout with a 134 wRC in 463 PAs, Yelich with a 122 in 560 PAs (and positive baserunning). Going off your general stat ranges, the comp that stands out is Yandy Diaz: 496 PAs, .283/.347/.451, 121 wRC, 19 HRs, 1.7 fWAR. Marcell Ozuna (114 wRC, 584 PAs, 1.2 fWAR) and Suzuki (109 wRC, 444 PAs, 0.9 fWAR) were much more walk heavy than BABIP heavy. Rooker and Polanco have too much power. I'm fine with them passing on Suarez, even at the one year contract he signed. I'd love if there was an option in the 1/$8m range that could hit RHPs well just to give Ballesteros 100 games behind the plate in Iowa. I just don't see a path to an elite bat in what he's done so far, so it's a pretty low ceiling if he doesn't have a position. Nathaniel Lowe kinda collapsed last year in a full time role (wRC by year: 143, 118, 123, 91), but most of that collapse was because he had to face LHPs (41 wRC against LHP vs 111 against RHPs). Winker has a career 128 wRC against RHP but might be cooked (94 wRC last year). Probably not a good option out there.

He signed a one year deal.

My concern is the opposite when it comes to Gallen. If you sign him to a 3/60 deal with opt outs and then salary dump Taillon, the upside scenario is he pitches well enough to earn himself a bigger contract next year and you've gotten what is likely a superior pitcher in 2026 for an extra $4m in salary (less whatever we pick up in a Taillon salary dump). The downside of Gallen is he keeps trending in the wrong direction or blows his elbow out and you're stuck paying $20m a year for 2027 and 2028 when we need to start worry about extensions guys currently under control.

The concern I have about being opportunistic and being the last team standing is that it could potentially hurt the Taillon trade market, and going into the year with Taillon as your 6th starter and past the second luxury tax tier seems like a less than ideal situation. But you also can't jump the gun on Taillon and risk being stuck with the Wicks/Brown/Assad carousel in the 5/6 slot.

Shaw and Alcantara (and Nico being able to play a quality SS) takes away your defensive needs. The starting lineup being full of good players (mostly) takes away your platoon needs. You're likely going to have two spots in the lineup, at least, occupied by guys (PCA, Busch, maybe Ballesteros) who range from Not Good to Very Bad against LHP. It's a luxury to have and I look forward to people souring on him after he gets 40 PAs in the first month and doesn't put up Aaron Judge numbers (see Garrett Cooper and his 118wRC in 41 PAs in 2024).

Zips projects out somewhere close to a full seasons worth of PAs in the initial run, and then eventually it gets run through a depth chart/playing time model to spit out like, projected standings and what not. More important to look at the projected rate stats, and then you can math your way to whatever number of PAs you want to get to projected output.

People: upset because masked, government sponsored groups who are going around and taking people off the street shot a person who was protesting these events and blamed it on the fact that the person was carrying a legally permitted handgun idiots: look at this extreme liberal vitriol

The Republican government has murdered two people in the last month for peacefully protesting and then shamelessly lied about the facts and circumstances of what happened and not a single person has faced any repercussions for their involvement in these events. but I’m sorry you feel uncomfortable on a message board

Very annoying full screen pop up that seemingly can’t be Xed out popping up every few pages

She drove 350 miles to drop her kid off at kindergarten? Like what the horsefeathers kinda news feed are you looking at here

What does a hypothetical person waving around a gun have to do with six guys beating the horsefeathers out of one person and then shooting him? Or are you saying he was waving it around while on all fours being punched in the face and tackled by six cops

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.

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.

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')

Why? He’s objectively worse than every starter in our lineup

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How do you think the concept of 'average' works

Hopefully they also have Hoerner taking reps at second base

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.

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.