squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 4-30-25
squally1313 replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Moises up all night last night stewing at the NSBB Minor League forum. "motherfucking James Loney??" -
I promise that if we continue playing at a 97 win pace, it won't matter whatsoever what the rest of the Central teams do.
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This pitcher is bad and the Pirates are bad against lefties and in general and we should win comfortably.
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Whatever he's done in the last week (beyond the obvious) has been huge. Feel like a week ago he had an xwOBA of like .300 and now it's up to .324 on FG and .343 on Savant. Still overperforming, but .340s is basically Ian Happ at the plate, before considering his all world defense and baserunning. LIke, Willy Adames put up a .342 wOBA and 4.8 fWAR, and Pete tripled his baserunning value and doubled his defensive value last year.
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Really the novel concept is just playing bad baseball teams. Not having to get through Carroll/Marte or Ohtani/Betts at the top of the order every time makes it easier to prevent runs, who knew.
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Our normal 8 hitter got moved to 4th and hit a home run. Our normal 5 hitter got moved to 8th and hit a home run. Our normal 3 and 7 hitters stayed in their spots and hit home runs. It doesn't matter.
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Andrew Heaney was the 13th best pitcher in baseball going into tonight.
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I'd love to see the evidence that Jonathan Long and his .472 BABIP is a better bench option than Justin Turner* *: The evidence has to include a sample size greater than 53 PAs because we're all adults here.
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Looks right over the heads of Carson Kelly, Matthew Boyd, etc to somehow bring up Trey Mancini and Jonathan Villar (released 34 months ago!) again.
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Going to try and continue not commenting on the actual batting order, but Turner not starting here is probably at least a little meaningful.
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Yeah fair, but that takes me back to my original point I guess. If he's projecting some hard cap future, he's obviously on a different page than Cohen, the Blue Jays owners, etc. If he's just going to keep spending stagnant or lower it on his own, then we have much bigger problems, but it also seems weird to seemingly sign off on the Bregman deal, especially with the existing 2026 commitments, but also still have some plan to gradually shrink payroll starting like...three years from now? Shifting gears to the other side of this particular situation, if you're Kyle Tucker, why are you possibly in a hurry right now? You've been in Chicago for all of a month, and the next contract you sign is almost certainly going to be your last one. Everyone here understands the appeal, but he's probably had like four Wrigley games where the temp has been above 50. Give him a little time.
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But in this scenario, that's not really a 'Ricketts is cheap' issue, right? It's either 'Ricketts is veering off from the other owners in terms of what he believes the business of baseball will look like in 3-5 years' or it's 'the concept of any team in baseball signing that magnitude of a deal is non-viable', which is tough to stand behind given the Soto deal, the Vlad Jr deal, etc. Like, yeah, sure, there could be caveats in there about grandfathered in contracts or whatever, but you'd think as everyone gears up for a labor negotiation the owners plan to present a united front, and these deals signed in the last 6 months tend to go the other way.
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I could be thinking about it totally wrong, but I keep going back to the idea that a future with Kyle Tucker and a future without Kyle Tucker doesn't really change Ricketts' annual salary spend. Giving him $40m a year is not the same thing as saying that we'll be $40m over the first luxury tax line for the life of the contract. There's a 2026 crunch (that can be avoided by essentially making the team worse), but really after that it's just allocating a large percentage of future spend (that he's likely going to spend anyways) to one player instead of two or three. Having said that, it's maybe just a bit awkward to have Hoyer sitting there, unsigned beyond this year, theoretically 'leading' the negotiations. If Ricketts is still on the fence in terms of Hoyer, that's maybe added motivation to keep the books clean for the next GM?
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Besides the series against Texas, every team the Cubs have played so far has been above average offensively (wRC > 100). The Pirates had a team 79 wRC. It's basically Oneil Cruz and the Infinite Sadness. They've given Tommy Pham 98 PAs to put up a .495 OPS. Hopefully the pitchers should mow them down.
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Resets the 'Number of Days Since the Last Article Trashing Our 4 Win Second Baseman Making $12m' counter to zero
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Twins still have a 40% chance of making the playoffs per FG. Zac Eflin is certainly not a sexy name but he put up 2.8 fWAR last year (and 4.9 the year before) and is on his last year of a deal that pays him $16m this year for Baltimore, who are already down to 15% playoff odds and would likely be the kind of team to prioritize a shorter reset/rebuild and near MLB ready prospects. Man, did I just advocate for a Zac Eflin trade in April. Logging off for the day.
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Yeah I didn't have a huge problem with any of the individual decisions that were made in the offseason but we ended up with a good not great roster and a $30m hole in the budget. I defend Jed and Co more than most around here, but that money kinda needs to be spent on an elite starting pitcher trade or a Tucker extension at this point. And it would have been simpler and better for the 2025 team to just get that money spent in the offseason and have a full season worth of $30m of talent.
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Cubs play the Pirates tomorrow, who are under .500. Every single team the Cubs have played so far this year is currently .500 or better. The Cubs played those 29 games at a 95 win pace.
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Cubs shut out a playoff contender to move to 16-10 in by far their hardest stretch of schedule. What should we talk about? everyone else: the best player on the team the last two years
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Yeah, you sort CFs since 1990 by best defensive season and you get some of the same names. I think ultimately the issue is like, he has a 145 wRC and so you want to throw out guys like Devon White. But he's also overperofmring his xwOBA by like 70 points, because pretty much everyone else in history with wRCs over 140 are a lot better at walking and not striking out. Corey Patterson if he never got hurt is kinda deflating, but maybe?
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Quick glance at FG says it's basically like, Paul DeJong and his 46 wRC, The Return of Miles Mastrobuoni, or....Gio Urshela? But the As are 2 games under .500 and have the White Sox this weekend, so can't picture that. You're just not going to convince me any of those guys are definitely going to be better going forward than Berti, or even Workman, Lopez, etc. Would they have been better than Workman? Sure, hard to be worse. But that's not the expectation for anyone going forward.
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Yeah Turner can't be the answer for consistent play at third base and he's going to need his bat to play in his mostly spot starts if the outfield options and Busch stay healthy. McMahon might be cooked and has two more years after this, seems like a big pill to swallow to cover a couple months even if he were playing well and not hitting .176. Really we shouldn't panic right now. We're shuffling through expendable journeymen because we have a top prospect that is very close to major league at AAA, and cumulatively as a team we've put up elite offensive production in a months worth of games. It's fine.
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Lot of potential comps mentioned in the article but I haven't really found one I love yet. Lorenzo Cain - maxed out at 16 HRs and 30 SBs, there's a very real chance PCA eclipses both of those this year, but Cain was much better at putting the ball in play/getting on base Kiermeyer - PCA is a better hitter and faster JBJ - PCA is a better defender and much faster Ellsbury - Just a different hitter and probably faster than PCA. Only had double digit HRs twice (including 32 in a 9.5 fWAR year), but career 13.7% K rate Granderson - Has more power and less speed/defense than PCA, really more of a power hitter with some stolen bases early in his career Sizemore - Wanted this one really bad but he had pretty consistent double digit walk rates. Pretty insane how short his run was, just four years with over 4 fWAR Andruw Jones - Better defender, better hitter.
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Dodgers (TBD) vs Cubs (Boyd): 4/23/25, 6:00pm
squally1313 replied to Brandon Glick's topic in Fred Hornkohl Game Thread Forum
Wait wait wait, you’re saying it’s a good thing to not optimize every single playing time decision for every single game? -
Appreciate all that. And I think ultimately we're agreed. Right now, if we needed to win one game/series, he can take Ethan Roberts job. Ideally in a month-six weeks, at his current progression pace, he's a Colin Rea upgrade (or, let's be honest, he's a replacement for an injured starter). Bigger picture, not directed at you, the team is 16-10 (16-8 in America, but they all count) against a historically hard schedule and the conversation at times is dedicated to making changes to the major league roster. Let them keep cooking.
