Jump to content
Can Imanaga keep rolling against the Phils? Join our game thread! ×
North Side Baseball

squally1313

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    10,352

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    23

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by squally1313

  1. squally1313
    I'm aware I'm very much oversimplifying this, but it seems outrageous to take this entire week off and then start the WS on Friday night and all the football of the weekend. Admit defeat and figure out a way to have games mid-week as much as possible. Having said that, will be interesting to see the national interest here. You couldn't have scripted this better if you're running MLB. Just hoping it's a good, long series.
  2. squally1313
    Why would you take Tom Ricketts at his word on anything
  3. squally1313
    Soto is incredible
  4. squally1313
    No you called out stratos for saying Jed has done well on long term deals and then unilaterally decided that ‘long term’ meant 6 or more years, which conveniently excludes taillon, shota, and Suzuki (all good contracts!). In his post he obviously meant to include those guys and then you excluded them from the argument. Goalposts, etc. Which, after all that, meant in your world Jed has signed one ‘long term deal’, out of the 19 total during his tenure, which has thus far also gone very well. Good point though!
  5. squally1313
    There have been 19 contracts of 6 or more years handed out since Jed took over. He’s one of the 19. That’s by definition above average.
  6. squally1313
  7. squally1313
    Everyone in this thread back on August 1 in an alternate world: "the Cubs are 5 games back of a wild card spot and we essentially just signaled to the team that we are punting on this year to save Rickett's $100k????"
  8. squally1313
    I'm pretty capable of admiring an organization's approach to baseball without cheering for them, much less talking horsefeathers to hypothetical non-fans. Ohtani is great, but pretty tired/over most of the rest of the roster.
  9. squally1313
    Can we do a better link
  10. squally1313
    Cubs had a 24.5% chance of making the playoffs at the trading deadline last year. I don't know, seems pretty "risky" to hold onto the established starting pitcher and go for the small playoff chance rather than dump him for minor league talent! But that's just me.
  11. squally1313
    Look, if the lessons you took from the Theo regime were that we needed to make 'risky' moves like the Quintana deal or the Kimbrel signing, you are looking in all the wrong places. It'd be like watching a football team hit a 50 yard bomb for a TD and then take an excessive celebration penalty after and lamenting why your team doesn't do the excessive celebrating. Jed should, by way of emulating Theo: Identify minor league talent that can be acquired in trade and turn into elite talent. I think he's fine on that so far, but obviously there aren't any Rizzos or Arrietas around. Develop minor league talent into actual major league success. Maybe KB, Baez, and Schwarber were just better players than Wicks/Horton/Shaw/Smith, but at least some responsibility falls on the guy in charge of the organization. This also comes into play in the bullpen. Do a better job on the fringes of the roster so that you have Tommy La Stella and Chris Coghlan and not Hosmer and Madrigal. These (and more) are valid criticisms.
  12. squally1313
    Yep, you really nailed it with the 'you need to take risks to be successful, just look at the Jake Arrieta deal' argument.
  13. squally1313
    We talking trades in general? Our starting first baseman, center fielder, and third baseman next year were acquired in trades. Alcantara and Caissie were both acquired in trades. As were Wesneski and Kilian, though obviously diminishing returns there. If you want to argue that Theo did a better job selling major league players on bad teams for prospects than Jed has done so far....sure. Arrieta and Rizzo trades go down in history. But that is very much not 'risky' behavior and very much not what your original argument was. Or are we just ultimately settling on 'Theo is a better GM than Hoyer', because, man, really going out on a limb there.
  14. squally1313
    Yeah, all in trades where we were sending major league talent for minor league prospects. Is that the risky behavior you're looking for? Because Jed has done pretty good there (see: PCA).
  15. squally1313
    Was Theo more successful in his 10 year run as Chicago's GM than Hoyer has been in his 4 years? Of course, the flags flying in Wrigley show that. Did the Quintana trade or the Soler/Wade Davis trade or the Kimbrel signing have anything to do with that success? No. Your argument was that 'willing to take risks' correlated to success, and then showed a bunch of examples that didn't lead to success and arguably hamstrung the beginning of Jed's time. Theo signed Lester, Jed signed Swanson (first two years fWAR, 9.1 to 9.2). Theo signed Heyward, Jed has committed $100m to Bellinger. Maybe it's possible that the success that Theo had wasn't from trading prospects for big names, but from Rizzo, KB, Javy, Russell (acquired in a sell trade!), Hendricks, Arrieta, etc coming through the system and becoming elite players at cost controlled salaries, something that just stopped happening under Theo right around 2017.
  16. squally1313
    So the intention in your original post was to give a fair, even handed, comprehensive even, look at the things Theo did right and the things he did wrong? You meant to include the Kimbrel signing and Quintana trades as criticisms of Theo?
  17. squally1313
    Sure but he had player options, and if Belli at 2/60 is a 50/50 proposition after his 2024, Chapman at 2/36 after his would be pretty much a guarantee. So you'd be out Chapman (and presumably Paredes), but you have had about 4 more 'wins' in 2024 and also 6 months to decide if you wanted to come up with a(n ideally more palatable) extension, or you'd be sure you had $80m to spend this offseason.
  18. squally1313
    Well the currently locked up version of Chapman, agreed. The one year deal Chapman would be a lot easier than where we're at now (though I'm more down on Bellinger than I probably should be).
  19. squally1313
    ...having said that, signing Chapman instead of Bellinger would have been much better for 2024 and beyond 2024 purposes
  20. squally1313
    Yeah you know who would have looked nice on these last two Jed Hoyer teams that were competitive until September? Dylan Cease and his 8.2 fWAR over that time!
  21. squally1313
    Fair point, but those teams were out of the race by Memorial Day. In some aspects it's an all or nothing type job, in other aspects it's not our money and the last couple seasons have been much more enjoyable (and for longer) than the early Theo years. Like, I don't think anything about the money spent in early Theo years impacted the prime Theo years, and I don't think money spent thus far in Jed years impacts future Jed years.
  22. squally1313
    Fangraphs WAR: 3.4 BR WAR: 2.7
  23. squally1313
    Theo took over a team with serious flaws and started making big deals in years 4-6 of his tenure. He certainly wasn't putting together winning teams in 2012-2014. Hoyer just wrapped up his 4th year. Obviously Theo got the job done and Hoyer has yet to do it. But pointing to what are pretty objectively, in hindsight, bad deals (made after the World Series team) that hurt the team long term are not good arguments. Quintana won one playoff series when he was here. Kimbrel saw no playoff wins (and had a pretty big hand in costing us a playoff spot in 2019).
  24. squally1313
    Wait, are we supposed to be criticizing Hoyer because, in this hypothetical, he wouldn't have traded Eloy and Cease for Quintana? Or that he wouldn't have given Kimbrel $40m for 1.1 fWAR over essentially 2 years?
  25. squally1313
    I'm aware it's dumb to split hairs on WAR in October, but BaseballReference has him as either a 2.7 or a 2.8 WAR guy in 2024. fWAR, which I've always believed to be more predictive of future performance than bWAR, has him at 3.4 for 2024. So 2.5 is more pessimistic than any recent performance measured in any reasonable way.
×
×
  • Create New...