squally1313

ZIPs is done with everyone besides the Padres, so thought it'd be good to see where we stack up compared to the NL. This is me typing numbers from the graphic into excel and trying to note key pickups that weren't considered, almost definitely missing players and fat fingered numbers here and there, but.... Cubs: 48.6 (less Pressly) Reds: 32.6 Brewers: 42.8 Pirates: 36.1 Cardinals: 35.2 Braves: 53.1 (less Profar) Mets: 43.4 (less Minter) Phillies: 42.2 DBacks: 43.7 (less Burnes) Dodgers: 56.5 (less like 6 awesome players) It's basically Dodgers (huge gap), Braves (pretty good gap), and then us, with the Brewers/Mets/Dbacks/(small gap) Phillies a few wins behind. King or Cease would give us a couple more (4ish over Assad's 1.5ish). Ultimately not an elite team but certainly expectations should be to make the playoffs, realistically as the division winner.

Yeah, that's why he's available and we're talking about guys not on the opening day roster and not like, PCA.

Yeah give me either of the two starters. Suarez doesn't do a whole lot for me, Arraez less than nothing, but adding a top 10 RHP (2nd and 7th in RHP fWAR last year) to the Steele/Shota/Boyd dynamic would be pretty ideal.

I feel like the make up of the Cubs lineup (and projected AAA roster) somewhat minimizes the importance of a good bench. Not saying that it wouldn't be nice to have one, but the lineup is very consistent up and down, or said another way very much not a stars and scrubs set up. There really just aren't that many pinch hitting opportunities that are going to present themselves with our standard line up. Happ, Tucker, Suzuki, Hoerner, Dansby are all probably hitting no matter what. Busch maybe should be. That's 2/3rds of your lineup right there. Yeah, you want days off, but we get an outsized amount of those early on, and yeah, injuries happen, but when they do happen, none of these mentioned names are the preferred choice over Caissie or Alcantara or maybe even like, Triantos. I get we're somewhat maxed out on fringe bullpen options but signing Robertson and 'being forced' to eat a little cash to dump the bottom guy would be great, making a trade for a #2-#3 starter would be even better.

Spend the six weeks after the Tucker deal setting the narrative that Shaw is ready to be a day one starter and presumptive rookie of the year favorite sign bregman to much less dollars and years than the market was expecting he would get trade Shaw(maybe plus? Who knows, not important) to Seattle for one of their elite, cost controlled starters (I can never remember who is who) salary dump rea, taillon, whatever if you have to make it work …project to be a low 90s win team? not saying it’s my ideal plan, but…fun thought exercise

By 2024 ERA, and admittedly dropping the minimum innings down to 30 to include Boyd, we have the 9th, 18th, 27th, and 38th best starters. Those four are also all top 100 in xERA, Steele/Boyd/Shota roughly top 30. Very much cherry-picking good data here (projections aren’t as friendly), but there are a lot of bad rotations out there.

I mean, no. I’m generally willing to overlook the fact that I probably have different views than these guys because they are very good at a game I enjoy watching and should get paid handsomely for their efforts and etc etc etc. Insisting on a very arbitrary and outdated label is where the personality traits start to overlap with the ‘enjoying baseball’ part. But ultimately I’m aware this probably isn’t my best take and he should be free to use his NTC however he wants. I just think it’d be cool, for me, if he came to wrigley and pitched good for us.

You should go look at a lot of teams rotations.

It seems very dumb to cling to these labels in what baseball has become, and have really seen nothing about pressly that makes me think I’d like him as a person, this ‘demand’ to be closer especially. This isn’t leading to an arbitration where they still cling to old school stats for whatever reason, you would think an effective 60 innings would get him his payday regardless of those 60 were 8th innings or 9th innings. but he’s a good pitcher and worrying about personalities with professional athletes is pretty futile, and honestly this is where counsell earns his paycheck. I liked him coming out at the convention and saying plainly that Suzuki was going to DH a lot, need a similar approach here. Pressly would show up as one of the top 2ish pen options and should get the crucial roles until proven otherwise.

Then again if you normalize for PAs, the ZIPs projections has Bregman being half a win better than Shaw for the year, so maybe it makes more sense to use that money and give Flaherty 150 innings instead of Assad/Rea (or Robertson/Pressly 100 innings instead of Morgan/Thielbar. Honestly at this point for me they're all pretty incremental, outside of some huge trade I would just like to see the money spent and the roster maximized one way or another.

Because we have the money and we're at the part of win curve where incremental wins are most valuable and I'll take an almost guaranteed good player in 2025 over a maybe hopefully good player in 2029-2033

That seems pretty harsh for a guy who has been there 6 years and his worst ERA is 3.58. But I guess he was second in the league with 8 blown saves (dumb stat, Clay Holmes and David Robertson round out the top 3), so maybe he was involved in some particularly memorable losses.

2024 Bregman is both a little concerning about the drop off and also a good reminder of just how good he's been the rest of his career. The walk rate plummeted, he had been comfortably double digits every year dating back to 2018 and suddenly in 2024 it was 6.9%. Came without a drop in K rate, which was actually the highest it's been since 2020, but still very good (13.6%). All leading to a .331 wOBA, both the worst of his career and also maybe a little lucky (xwOBA of .319). Career best defensive contributions still got him over 4, but realistically a normal defensive year without a bounceback offensively you're looking at....Isaac Paredes but normal batted ball profile. Plenty valuable, but would be real weary of turning this guy into a long term fixture unless of course he was Tucker's best friend and would help there.

Wouldn't think so. But if all those deals were Santander-esque, maybe he's warming to 1/$25

I'm guessing/hoping the Cubs interest here doesn't go past a one year, one year with an option type situation. Doesn't make any sense that they'd commit long term money given where the rest of the team stands. Would probably push Shaw back down to Iowa, which is fine, only 35 games there in 2024, and let that play out until June or whatever and see where you find yourself.

Well he said he didn't want to go east or west, but I'm choosing to read those words as geographic directions rather than divisions. Worried he's going to want to stay close to home. Anyways, today is a good day to sign Robertson regardless.

Born in Dallas, raised in Irving, committed to Texas Tech, married to a former Cowboys cheerleader, 'avid outdoorsman and hunter'.....got a bad feeling about the Rangers.

Eh, on one year commitments, why not? Unless they think they can get a Tucker extension done that kicks in for 2024, leaving that much money on the table is a really bad look and this is an easy way to do it while keeping the 'clean books'. That and I think the higher end bat options are a little disincentivized to come to a team with 8.5 starting spots locked in. Bulk up on the back end guys who aren't blocked by anyone, go Amaya/Berti/Canario/....Canha? and be aggressive on upgrading those spots with the talent in AAA.

Seriously. Santander for 5 years makes zero sense for us, but getting that kind of bat for under $14m AAV is a bit of a steal.

Like, we can do this. Pull up FG, go back to 2014, sort by single season best offensive and defensive performances and then isolate the top one where the other value is neutral. On the defensive side, you have 2021 Nicky Lopez, the fifth best defensive season over that stretch who also put up a 104 wRC. 5.5 fWAR. On the offensive side, you have 2022 Aaron Judge, second best offensive season over that stretch, defensive value of -0.9. 11.1 fWAR. The relative weight of the contributions are already factored into the overall calculations.

If we lived in a world where the best defender in baseball (who is hypothetically an average bat) got run through the WAR calculations and came out with an 8 WAR calculation this would be a reasonable argument. But an all glove average hitting OF with a cannon arm doesn't get the same WAR value assigned to him as Juan Soto, so this argument doesn't make any sense.

We won 83 games last year? A six game improvement would be just fine?

There are several players ranked between 20-30 who will play at the major league level AND there are 7-8 players on the 40 man roster who will "NEVER" give the team any value. This is the most backwards roster ever!

The fact that we needed to go out in the market to plug those holes is the much more damning part of all of this, in my opinion. I pulled up the FG 2023 transaction tracker, sorted by first basemen signed. It's bleak. Jose Abreu is a famous disaster, Brandon Drury got 2/17 to produce 0.6 fWAR over 2 seasons, with much of his value coming from his versatility. Rizzo got 2/40 to give the Yankees 0.6 fWAR. Carpenter got 2/12 for -0.6. Jace Peterson, 2/10, 0 fWAR. Josh Bell, 2/33, 0.3 fWAR. Wil Myers got 1/8, put up -0.7 and is out of baseball. You end up with Carlos Santana (1/7, 1.5 fWAR in 2023) and Brandon Belt (1/9, 2.2 fWAR). But both of those guys were worse hitters, and older, than Trey Mancini in 2022 (Santana was also worse in 2021). Sure, we could have used those wins in a season we missed out on the playoffs by like 2 games or whatever. But I think my overall point is that when you're forced to go fishing in those waters, you're setting yourself up for a mistake. We had to go sign a first baseman (and it was dire enough we went and picked up Hosmer too), there were no good ones out there, you end up in the drecks of what I listed above. We had a year and a half from the Rizzo trade to find just any bat first guy in the system who you'd want to reward/challenge with major league ABs coming off a 74-88 2022 season, and....we didn't have it. It's gotten better. On Opening Day we'll most likely have 4 spots in the line up covered by guys making the league minimum, two of them coming off 2+ win seasons, another the favorite to win ROY. But the development was bleak for a long while there.