squally1313

Career 116 wRC against lefties. I think he's been left too high in the order lately too, but with Tucker out, kinda splitting hairs (Swanson? Turner?) if you're trying to keep staggering the lefties and righties. As for the Gore trade talk, my simple way of thinking about it is that teams like them need to win lopsided trades. 2.5 years of a pitcher at his peak brings a haul, and you are one arm injury away from essentially paying him to rehab until he hits FA. But trading one good pitcher in a relatively non competitive window for a chance at multiple guys giving you that same value (for basically the same amount of money) in one-two years is the narrow path to contention they have to consider. Baseball Trade Value is behind a paywall and only best as a starting point to begin with, but you can see trades proposed by other people and the Cubs/Gore one is Alcantara, Brown, Ballesteros, Hodge, and Rojas for Finnegan and Gore. So, significantly more than what was proposed above.

This is actually the first bad idea I've had in my 20 years here. Been a tough afternoon but I'll reflect and learn from it and come back stronger on the other end.

Hey now, those are season long stats. When you drill down to his most recent stretch of games, say like, since the middle of May, then you'll realize over that stretch he's only had a .982 OPS.

Pretend I never said that

Might be a week or so away from adding Giolito and Buehler to the "Essentially Free Innings Eaters" list

Yeah, I'm far from being the Savant/batted ball guy, but the little thing where you compare the metrics from 2024 to 2025 in terms of EV, barrel %, etc aren't pretty. Guessing/hoping that if you were to compare April/May 2024 to April/May 2025 you'd probably end up in a similar spot. .337 xwOBA is still fine, it's lower than any of his wOBA or xwOBA numbers from 2023 and 2024 but people age. The combo of underperformance AND the baserunning metrics flipping AND the fielding numbers being on pace for a pretty ghastly number adds up to a pretty grim year thus far. But, like Hoerner and Swanson, he's more than earned the right to have me expect him to come out of this with a hot streak or two the next couple months.

Spent a few minutes being worried about Happ this morning. The BB and K rates are fine, even improved a little (slightly worse in walks but significantly better in K rate). Slugging is obviously the problem, but was encouraged by the fact that at this point last year he was at .232/.335/.392/.323 wOBA/109 wRC (v .251/.342/.351/.313 wOBA/101 wRC with a .337 xwOBA this year). This is about the time last year he got hot (.250/.388/.525 the rest of June, .254/.348/.476 the rest of the year), so hoping he's still just a warm weather guy. But would like to see more slug even if it comes with a few more Ks.

In 2017, Trout injured his thumb sliding into second on May 27th, tearing a ligament, had surgery on 5/31, and was activated on 7/14, missing 39 games. He also hurt his calf jogging out a pop out in May 2021, and eventually was shut down for the year, but I guess the lesson there is....don't run to first?

That's important context on both sides. Gore and Hassell are great, but the Padres ended up with a year of Soto, Michael King, Drew Thorpe (who was in their trade to get Cease), and some other pieces. Weird trade, but still love the aggression.

do we have any proof this is the case?

Alcantara doesn't solve the current problem (the magnitude of that problem is obviously debated). Alcantara represents a...I don't want to say lottery ticket in the 18-year-old-in-low A sense, but a guy who, from 2021-2023 represents what would clearly be our best pitcher. If he's broke, you're out a reasonable price of prospects (but not nearly as much as someone like Gore, Sale, one of the DBacks pitchers, etc), and one more year at $11m. But there's a calculus where there's a correct price for the....1/3rd to 50% chance we get anything close to the pitcher he was because that's our October problem.

You guys aren't wrong and I'm tiring myself out from harping on the same line of attack, so I assume everyone else really hates it, but we're down the two pitchers who were, besides Taillon, injured the least last year, and we're planning on this scheduled out return from injury/trade/bullpen movement stuff while ignoring the main cause of all the headaches in the first place: Brown and Horton and Boyd are all limited this year not because they're young, but because they are pitchers and pitchers break, and they all got hurt last year, and injuries aren't just things that happen every other year. I'm not asking for Gore or a fixed Alcantara on June 2nd, but even a Trevor Williams/name a Colin Rea equivalent that could let us put Horton on the shelf for a month now would be nice.

Yeah that math checks out and makes me feel a little better. Issue is that that answer also probably applies to Brown (and that's before *gestures at Matt Boyd's entire history*). I don't really consider Assad as 'reinforcements' as much as 'another Colin Rea', but in theory we have a good amount of cushion by that point.

I think the organization was in a really bad spot when Hoyer over as the head of the front office. Benefit of hindsight, looking at the 2020 team and the top prospects rankings and knowing what we know of those players now, it wasn't pretty. Yes, Jed was around and played a part in the organization being where it was. But if we're going to ding him for that than we have to credit him for all the other success he was there for under Theo's tenure. Since Jed has taken over, he's been....fine. I don't think there was a magic turnaround path and I think every post the teardown you could point to clear, if a little incremental, improvements in the overall health of the organization. But I also recognize it's been 5 years, and that the Cubs have such a clear financial advantage over the rest of the division. It's tricky to put into words, but I kinda feel like going into this past offseason there was a path open to trying to be a mega team, or there was a path to just be the clear favorite in the division in the next couple years, and thus far we've chosen the second option. If we were to kick this thing into overdrive (and a Tucker/PCA extension, trade for a top pitcher type moves can still get us there), I'm more than willing to accept the slow, gradual build into what was an 85 win team with a top farm system heading into the 2024-2025 offseason. If the ultimate goal was just to win the division every year and roll the dice....am I happy we're here? Yes. Do I think it needed to take 5 years to get there? No.

You’ve got it backwards.

I feel like you implied earlier that if the cubs miss some benchmark by a game it will be because of that one decision. Possible I missed some sarcasm. Hyperfixtating on one pitch call, not even some sort of execution or outright mistake, when there were multiple other factors that led to that loss (the subsequent walk, the GW hit, Tucker not catching the ball in the first place, not executing with RISP in the 6th and the 9th) is very dumb, before even considering the factors that led to the other 65-70 losses, not to mention the components of all the wins. Baseball is great and dumb and fun because all nine innings count equally and no matter how high you’re winning expectancy gets, it’s never 100% until the game is over, and they play 162 games so weird fluky things are going to happen. It’s what keeps you watching.

1. It is a 162 game season. 2. The Marlins win expectancy after that pitch was 14%

I think my bigger point, and I guess I’m genuinely asking this, is like…have you followed Derek Hill’s career closely? Is this based on a deep dive of his metrics and scouting reports? Because my suspicion is that it’s based on watching like, at most a single digit handful of his at bats, or even just the two prior pitches. Which is fine, and totally normal, for a terrible baseball player on a terrible baseball team. But that is absolutely not how I want my Major League Baseball team with millions of dollars spent on scouting and analytics to operate! Like 30% of MLB pitchers can touch upper 90s these days, hitters flat out incapable of hitting that kind of speed simply don’t make the majors. His first AB of the year he pulled upper 90s from Skenes for a 110 EV double. I mean, the Rajai Davis home run is seared in everyone’s memories. It’s just not that simple.

But he Only Has Two Pitches and therefore he sucks because Starters Need Three Pitches

The obsession over this pitch is maybe the funniest running subplot on the board for me

Dansby

Let’s get two more

lol what a dumb sport

A 97 win team would exceed everyone’s wildest expectations. In your mind, how do they lose the other 65 games in a way that doesn’t trigger this kind of panic?