champaignchris

To clarify, we never meant to impute any type of competence to Dave Roberts' managerial abilities. TT Inc apologizes for the error and the person responsible has been sacked. Did Roberts just Grady Little himself out of a job?

Football and basketball hide their minor leagues in the colleges. Given a choice between the two, the NCAA makes minor league baseball look humane and well thought out.

How much would a Jake Odorizzi/Wade Miley/Ivan Nova/Tanner Roark type really cost for a couple years? 2 years, $25MM? I’m frankly more concerned with Lester than I am with the Chatwood/Mills/Alzolay slot. Over the last three seasons he’s gone through stretches where he just didn’t have it. And with several years in a row now of declining results, I’m afraid the eye-test might be more predictive of Quintana’s next season than fWAR. There’s a bit of an Edwin Jackson c. 2014 thing going on here, where the stuff and the peripherals aren’t adding up to the expected results. At some point, you’re not getting BABIP’ed to death because of bad luck - You’re getting BABIP’ed to death because it’s easy to get hits off you. I think constructing the 2020 pitching staff around the assumption that Quintana and Lester - and Kimbrel for that matter - are all going to bounce back is a big mistake. I’d like to have someone else around who can get 150 innings just in case and then be a bridge to the future after Lester, Quintana and Chatwood are all gone after 2020.

What a horsefeathers city to be in to find out you’re canned. There’s a shot bar on Laclede’s Landing within stumbling distance to the casino. Seems as good a place as any.

Your current 2020 bullpen pitchers under contract... Kimbrel, Ryan, and Wick. Whichever of Chatwood or Mills that isn't starting. Probably picking up Phelps' option. Then about 250-ish combined innings from some assortment of Webster, Maples, Wieck, Underwood, Norwood and random other AAA guys I'm forgetting. Woof! Bare minimum the Cubs need two more capable relievers. Preferably one from each side of the mound, at least one of whom is a proven high leverage guy. Can the Cubs afford to spend any money on the relief staff this off-season with all the other needs to be filled? Can they afford not to?

Zobrist and Happ having lost years certainly hurt in this regard. Although you can certainly point out that the way Happ has been handled has been ridiculous and that the Cubs shouldn’t have been counting so much on a 38 year old middle infielder in the first place. We can go to the off-season threads and see plenty of people posting about the need for a center fielder and some middle infield depth. Descalso was supposed to the be the latter, and the Cubs basically ignored the need for the former. Overall, it shows that while the top end of the Cubs roster is as good as anyone’s the bottom end has eroded and can’t provide eniugh value over a 162 game schedule.

Betances was going to be the top free agent reliever on the market this off season until these injuries. Now, he might not even get a contract offer until he can show he's healthy.

A picture of Mel Hall and one of his victims at the victim's high school prom appeared in the Yankee's 1991 yearbook, per this story...https://www.sbnation.com/2014/7/15/5883593/the-many-crimes-of-mel-hall So, yeah.

“Caratini” sounds like a horrible drink at a vegan hipster gastropub.

They wish. Who is their Yelich? Paul [expletive] DeJonge? HA! Flaherty has a 0.85 ERA since the ASB. He’s their Yelich.

I would like to say that I will get no pleasure in the Cubs ending the Brewers’ season over the next ten days. I would like to say that I’m a bigger man than that. But I can’t. I’m a small, small, petty man. And I’m going to get great enjoyment out of this.

Per bWAR, it’s 6, 8, 19, 25, 30, 31. Same order. Cishek at 74th is the next on BR.

So, are Russell Martin and Brian McCann Hall of Famers? McCann, in particular, is a significantly better bat whose defense has not been as highly regarded absent those framing stats.

I know it’s going to happen. I’m resigned to it. But does average bat, great glove get you in the Hall now for catchers? What’s the difference between Molina and Jason Kendall, AJ Pierzynski, Benito Santiago and a half a dozen other similar catchers who aren’t in the Hall and have no chance to? Are we lowering the bar to 30 career WAR and being a good teammate on a WS winning team? Even if we assume that Molina is one of the best half-dozen defensive catchers of all time (a point I’m not conceding), he doesn’t hit nearly as well as Bench, Pudge, or Carter did. Molina is much closer offensively to the non-HoF defensive greats like Sundberg and Boone, the difference being that Molina had a slightly longer stretch of offensive adequacy. I’d argue that Molina is not the best catcher of his generation. That’s Joe Mauer even when excluding the numbers he racked up when he was primarily a 1b. Or Buster Posey if you want to expand the definition of generation a bit. Molina is basically on the same level as Russell Martin, trading offense for defense. I’d argue that Molina is not even the best catcher in Cardinals history. That’s Ted Simmons, who belongs in the Hall way before Molina does. That said, I know Molina is going to the Hall because a bunch of sportswriters say so, without much beyond anecdotal support for their reasoning. I’ve got six or seven years to get over it. I’ll be fine.

They listened to Kato!!!

Like the one Heyward makes three times per game? Yeah. Heyward is Carlos Boozer-esque.

OPS rising in each of the last two months = “going in the wrong direction?”

David Wright was paid $115MM to play 211 MLB games from 2014 to 2018 and would still have another $27MM left over this season and next if he hadn’t finally given up the ghost and retired. Prince Fielder had $96MM left on his contract when he broke his neck. If he hadn't been forced to retire, that one would have gone down a lot like Howard’s did.

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At the risk of engaging, even if you ignore all the off-field stuff and the not knowing the signs despite being in the organization for five years stuff, Kemp is a better fit for this roster right now than Russell is. I’m somewhat curious to see if they bring him back after rosters expand, but unless there’s an injury or Zobrist doesn’t come back for some reason, I don’t really see the point.

By his own admission, Eck was a straight up drunk during most of his tenure with the Cubs. After the 86 season, he went to rehab and told Green he was now sober, but Green had already decided to dump him. The rest is, as they say, history. And those 80s Cubs had a real reputation for partying. I remember the ladies wearing their “I’d trade my hubby for a Cubbie” t-shirts. I think both some of the ladies and some of the players took those shirts literally. It sort of makes you wonder about the “food poisoning” epidemic that hit the team in 85. What was really going on?

That the Brewers are where they are with a pitching staff held together with chicken wire and masking tape makes me angrier that it should.

I definitely wasn't following the team back then (on account of being born two months before the trade), but based on the two links below, he was getting either internal or media criticism about being too heavy and it having an adverse impact on his knees. There's a quote in there about just requesting to be traded, not necessarily to Boston. http://archive.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/06/19/close_up_with_the_ultimate_closer/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070105194455/http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Lee_Smith_1957 I was only thirteen at the time, but my recollection was that it was a, “If you don’t like me, trade me,” more than any particular desire to be away from the Cubs. That was a spectacularly bad trade by the way. Neither pitcher acquired by the Cubs was still on the team by the end of 1989. The Cubs got Luis Salazar for Schiraldi. So I supposed that’s something. The Cubs had already traded away future HoF closer Dennis Eckersley away for nothing. They signed Goose Gossage to close in 1988. He was over the hill and awful. They traded away Jamie Moyer AND Rafael Palmeiro for Mitch Williams in 1989. He was pretty good in 1989 and then completely lost his horsefeathers in 1990 and was traded for table scraps. They signed Dave Smith to close in 1991. He was awful, posted a 6.00 ERA and lost his job before the year was half over. They went closer by committee in 1992, with predictable results. Finally, they signed Randy Myers to close in 1993 and he was ok for a few years. In those five seasons between the trade and signing Myers, fat Lee Smith with the bad knees pitched 385 innings with a 2.76 ERA and got 175 saves.

Batting your literally worst two regulars in OBP at the top of the lineup is exceedingly strange. I just don't get it. The Cubs are 2nd in the NL in OBP. It's not like Maddon doesn't have other options to bat there.

I would assume he’s going to start most games until Contreras gets back. It’ll be more interesting what happens when Contreras gets off the IL. As for this trade... I would have wanted something sexier than 60 or 70 games of a defense-first backup catcher for Montgomery. I’m really curious to see how Monty performs when given a consistent starting role.