champaignchris

All it would take is for Tom Ricketts to say, "Yes."

Rivera is 5th all-time in Win Probability Added behind only Clemens, Lefty Grove, Maddux and Warren Spahn. WPA probably inflates relievers' value a bit, but still... And anyway, Rivera could have never pitched in the regular season at all and his 0.70 ERA over 141 IP in the post-season probably would have earned him a HoF spot.

I think the rosiest outcome for Chatwood would be pitching relatively effectively for a month of Spring training such that he’s a reasonable trade target for a team that loses a starting pitcher for the year in March.

Collusion requires some behind the scenes agreement. I don’t think there is that. It’s all right there in the CBA. The players got took at the negotiating table. The owners’s greed Is a given. The players’ representatives’ incompetence isn’t. I think the players are going to have to bite the bullet over the next couple years, but then they need to be way more militant next time around. If I were representing the owners, I’d be reading the tea leaves and beginning to work with the players’ union now.

That must be why Rizzo isn’t going. Too jealous of watching the KB and Harper bromance Not our fault he doesn’t have any friends that are good baseball players.

My general observations is that anyone who says they’re “from Chicago” doesn’t live within the city limits. Anyone who actually lives within the city limits will say they from “the (North/South/West) side of...” or actually specifies the neighborhood... Lincoln Park, Edgewater or whatever. There’s a similar dynamic in New York City where the actual city dwellers will specify the borough or neighborhood.

Did I miss Craig Kimbrell signing? Or are we just assuming there’s no possible way?

The front office having the rug pulled out from under them by ownership would make some sort of sense out of what we've seen (or not seen, rather) this off season. As has been said a number of times in this thread, there are several transactions the Cubs front office should obviously not have done if those transactions were going to prevent the team from pursuing Harper. And if Theo had the "all clear" to pursue Harper right up until early November, I can certainly see why ownership changing its mind at that late date would cause a rift. Is it time for the gorilla suit?

This offseason is so weird. Obviously not done yet, but we’re only about 5 weeks to Spring Training. So what’s really going on? I see three options... 1. The front office is blowing smoke up the media’s ass, and they sign Harper and/or make some other “go for it” moves in the last few weeks before the Spring; or 2. There was some serious miscommunication between ownership and the front office regarding payroll (or maybe ownership changed its mind) which caused the front office to make moves under the assumption they’d be able to go after Harper and are now finding out that ownership is putting on the brakes; or 3. Something got seriously fucked up and the Cubs actually are under some unexpected financial constraints. Because the combination of moves leading into the offseason, plus the relatively light cost of first year luxury tax penalties, plus the numerous opportunities that will be coming up in the next two years to slash payroll, plus the relatively light free agent pool in 2020 means that nothing else makes sense.

There’s an alternate universe where Steve Trout for Bob Tewksbury is considered one of the greatest trades in Cubs history.

yeah, he's a piece of horsefeathers but his defenses perform. worth a look There’s a Saints connection with Pace, but I don’t know if Pace would call that a plus or minus considering how Williams’ Saints tenure ended.

So he’ll be good after he leaves the Mets?

Seemed pretty obvious to me that the Bears wanted to play Philly in the playoffs. Otherwise......... I don’t think it had to do with Philly per se. More, beat the Vikings now so you don’t have to beat them later.

Not really. I think we saw this year why Washington never wanted to go all-in on Cousins. He’s merely a pretty good quarterback. And Minnesota dumped a crap ton of money into him. No matter who’s the next OC, Minnesota is still going to have to try to succeed with an unremarkable quarterback. The really interesting job opening to me is Cleveland. All that young talent, what looks like the next great quarterback, and all that cap room... they’re positioned for a four or five year run as a Super Bowl caliber team if they spend their money right and hire the right coach.

Ok. Sure. Why not.

Why? Absent an upcoming trade involving Monty or Q that makes no sense. And even then...

Does RFA really work out for players in other pro leagues. Arbitration is actually kind of nice in some ways, the problem is its so long and drug out after like a decade of control. RFA seemed to have worked out for Zach Lavine and Kyle Fuller just to name two recent local examples. RFA is basically just arbitration by a different means, where the market sets the price instead of an arbitrator. As you say, the bigger problem is that it doesn't happen until entering the player's fourth year of service time, which in many cases might not be until almost a decade after they sign their original deal.

Billy Beane doing Billy Beane things. That looks like a really solid trade for Oakland.

The newspaper used to be pretty conservative, but it has moved slightly to the left. It used to be that their political endorsements would be basically very Republican unless a Democrat was running unopposed. :lol: The Trib was traditionally mainstream, middle of the road, “chamber of commerce” Republican. They’ve been more anti-Democrat machine politics than pro-anything in particular for most of their history. In 2016, they endorsed Rubio in the Republican primary and then refused to endorse either candidate in the general. You can put them with the other “Never-Trump” Republicans that don’t really seem to have a home in American politics anymore.

I've been trying to think of a stat that's better than saves or WAR in terms of how to measure the value of relief pitchers and figured out that Win Probability Added might do the trick since, among other things, it takes leverage into account. Here's the top 10 relievers (made more appearances in relief than starting) in WPA all-time (rank among all pitchers in parens): 1. Rivera 56.59 (5) - Clemens, Grove, Maddux and Spahn are the only guys ahead of him! 2. Hoffman 34.15 (22) 3. Gossage 32.51 (29) 4. Eckersly 30.85 (31) 5. Wilhelm 30.84 (32) 6. Nathan 30.60 (34) 7. Wagner 30.07 (38) 8. Papelbon 28.31 (41) 9. F. Rodriguez 24.43 (56) 10. Kimbrell 24.33 (57) L. Smith 21.33 (78th), Sutter 18.25 (102nd) and Fingers 16.19 (125th) are the other HOF relievers. This tells me the following: 1. Mariano Rivera laps the field by pretty much any metric you want to use in measuring relievers. 2. My reservations about Hoffman are off-base. He belongs. 3. There aren't any big surprises on this list and probably aren't any old forgotten relievers who deserve re-consideration now that we understand the value of bullpens more.

The three top changes I’d make are: 1. Young talent is way, way too cheap. The MLB minimum should be tripled or even quadrupled. As it is now, that 30 year old shortstop might be better than that 23 year old shortstop, but he’s not 10 or 20 times better than the 23 year old. The artificially low starting salary deflates the value of veterans. 2. There should be an age-based aspect to free agency. As it is now, late bloomers like Tommy Pham and Josh Donaldson are absolutely screwed by the system, never getting the chance for an in-prime free agency payday despite putting up elite or near-elite numbers. So maybe a player can opt into free agency at 28 or 29 regardless of service time. 3. The draft penalties should be lessened for teams that sign free agents. The most recent CBA is better than the prior one in this regard, but it still should be reduced more. Teams in the middle-tier in terms of talent still have too many disincentives to signing free agents. They shouldn’t be made to choose whether to improve their team via the draft or via free agency. I’d limit draft penalties for free agent signings to teams in the top 8-ish in payroll, if I couldn’t eliminate them altogether. And a bonus fourth I’m less sure of is to maybe make draft picks tradable. If teams are going to tank, let them tank the horsefeathers out of the place and acquire a horsefeathers ton of draft picks. Maybe speed up the process. Make things a lot more fluid a la football.

This is my problem with putting them in the Hall. You can take any teams top 3 or 4 starters and you would have the same or better results than the best relievers. Anytime 100+ players are equal or better than you ... you're not a HOFer. Meh I doubt many teams have a 3 starter that just converts to as dominant as guys like Edwin Diaz, Britton, Chapman, Andrew Miller, Jansen and Kimbrel have been the last few years. There is a couple 3 starters with especially nasty stuff that might be able to touch that dominance as a reliever but there isnt one on every team. There have been a ton of #3 or #4-ish guys to switch to closer and have 5 or 6 years as dominating relievers. Wade Davis springs to mind. Jason Isringhausen is another. Andrew Miller from your post is another good example. Jansen or Chapman do what they’ve been doing for another 5 or so years and we can talk about the Hall of Fame.

Yeah, he started missing a lot of games starting in about 1987. It’s pretty common for outfielders who get a major portion of their value from speed to have a major fall off in production after age 30 and you see that in his rate stats. But maybe he could have had another half season or so of counting stats during his prime had he been playing for a team that didn’t use outdoor carpet over concrete as its playing surface. So maybe 100 more hits, 5 more HRs, 20 more steals, 2.5 more on his career WAR. Maybe another All Star appearance. Would that have gotten him to the Hall sooner? Don’t know. Wouldn’t have hurt. Dude still had an .880 OPS in 115 games/486 PAs for the Sox in 1993.

He’s played 179 games at SS in his career. Not well, mind you. So I suppose he could be a Javy back up on a short term basis.