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champaignchris

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Everything posted by champaignchris

  1. champaignchris
    Other than the Yankees, what AL competitor actually has DH at bats to give? The Mariners, for example, can’t exactly promise 600 plate appearances to Ohtani when they’ve got Nelson Cruz already in the DH slot. Other than the Yankees and Houston, I don’t see an AL team (that doesn’t completely suck) that could truthfully offer Ohtani more at bats than an NL team.
  2. champaignchris
    One small correction to a couple of the posts above... Tsuyoshi Wada signed with Baltimore out of the NPB. Got hurt. Never pitched in the Majors and then signed with the Cubs after the Orioles didn’t re-sign him.
  3. champaignchris
    You too can be the latest Hall of Fame caliber starting pitcher for the Mariners to never sniff a World Series ring. Sign now with the Mariners and you will automatically, immediately receive a bonus consisting of the same number of MLB championships as fellow Japanese legend and long time Mariner, Ichiro Suziki!!!
  4. champaignchris
    What will be the rule for Ohtani regarding arbitration and when he becomes a free agent? Is he stuck on three years Major League minimum and then three years of arbitration (or whatever the standard is for drafted players) absent an extension? Or could that timing be shortened by signing a one year contract? On one hand the difference between the Cubs’ $300k and another team’s $3M isn’t much in the grand scheme of baseball money, but if that $3M is the majority of what he’s going to earn for three years, that’s a pretty big number. Or is he just going to make so much gobsmacking money in endorsements that all of this is arguing about pocket change and pretty much irrelevant?
  5. champaignchris
    I guess you could go the other way in thinking on it... The Cubs are about 32 games better than the Cardinals over the last 2 1/2 seasons. Will Giancarlo Stanton make a big enough difference for the Cardinals? Or could taking on a lodestone of a contract and trading away prospects just as the Cubs' cost-controlled superstars enter their prime years be the exact type of thing we should be hoping the Cardinals do? Obviously, the question hinges on how much of the contract the Cards have to take on and how much they have to empty their system of prospects. I don't think it can be overstated how ugly Stanton's contract has the potential to be. He'll still be owed $180M five years from now after he turns 33!
  6. champaignchris
    I guess my last question then is how did the rest of Baseball allow for a CBA to get passed that virtually assured that the best International pitching prospect in a generation would be a New York Yankee? There isn’t this problem if they’d done something like phased in the cap over a three year period.
  7. champaignchris
    What about a sort of NBA-style sign and trade? Say Otani decides he wants to play for the Cubs. He signs a contract with the Twins for the max amount that he can and then the Twins trade him to the Cubs for whatever pre-agreed upon prospects. That would be possible (incredibly unlikely, but possible) under the CBA, right? The weird thing about this whole process is that it would benefit the League to get the best baseball players in the world to play in the MLB and this new CBA seems designed to limit that from happening until they turn 25 years old.
  8. champaignchris
    International signing money can be traded, right? Nothing stopping the Cubs (or anyone else) from trading for chunks of, say, Minnesota’s or Miami’s pool, right? It’s probably a new enough phenomena that there’s no real basis to figure out what that money is worth. No way of knowing how much an Ian Happ, for example, would be worth in international cap money.
  9. champaignchris
    Sucks. I was always a fan.
  10. champaignchris
    I should add that I think Melancon’s 4 years at $62 is a pretty good guess as to what kind of deal Davis might get, which would be a no brainer over taking the QO.
  11. champaignchris
    I believe $17.4 would make Davis the highest paid reliever in the Majors for the season. I believe Chapman is at $17.2 and Jansen’s contract is backloaded, making $10 this year before jumping up to $18 in 2019 and beyond. So it really depends on what offers he gets. If he’s getting offers like 3 years at $30, he’d quite likely end up ahead by taking the QO. Even if he has a bad year and “only” gets offers $6 or $8 a year in 2019, he’s probably better of. If in the other hand, he’s getting offers for 4 years at $60, then he takes that instead of the QO.
  12. champaignchris
    Yeah unless we are eating all of Samardzija's and Melancon's contracts and throwing in money for Heyward on top of giving up some prospects (Alozay, Maples, Caritini, etc.) it doesn't make a ton of sense. They should just go sign Cain, Gomez, etc or trade for Stanton to fill the OF. Maybe Cueto opting in really horsefeathers up their plans/budget? Their outfield is so screwed, I would assume they’d still be in on Cain even after trading for Heyward.
  13. champaignchris
    I think Archer, Stroman and Nola are your complete list. I guess maybe Cole, too.
  14. champaignchris
    I would like Chacin as the #5 starter quite a bit, assuming someone else of higher caliber got picked up to be the Arrieta replacement. He would be a solid improvement over Lackey.
  15. champaignchris
    I was all in on the Heyward signing. I even made fun of my Cardinal fan friends during the 2015 playoffs by telling them how good Heyward was going to look in a Cubs uniform the next year. In retrospect, this is probably all my fault.
  16. champaignchris
    I don’t understand what the Reds have done with Cozart at all. He’s a plus fielder at shortstop with a career average bat who was having a break out season offensively. I heard no noise around him regarding trades. He was gimpy at the non-waiver deadline, but he’s absolutely the type that could have been moved during the waiver period. Now they don’t offer a QO for him and won’t even get a draft pick? Maybe there’s something i’m Not understanding here, but this seems like a master stroke in turning a decent asset into nothing.
  17. champaignchris
    And looking at that list... I have a really hard time seeing the Cubs paying Darvish for 6 years at $160 and then trading an MLB player for another starter, if instead they can sign Cobb for 4 years at $48 AND get Chatwood for 3 years at $20 or Jaime Garcia for 2 years at $16 or Chacin for 2 years at $14 without giving up any MLB players.
  18. champaignchris
    Yeah. The Cubs should be all over four more years of Jake. Hell, 4 years and a couple team options with reasonable buy outs wouldn't be bad. They just need to make sure they're not paying $25 million to a 38 year old who can't pitch. That said, I don't think it will happen. Someone will offer Arrieta 6 years. He'll take it. He's earned it. God bless him. I wish him success when he's not pitching against the Cubs.
  19. champaignchris
    Sure. When a player gets way overpaid and then keeps doing what he’s always done or has a fairly reasonable rate of decline due to age, getting pissed at the player doesn’t make much sense. Alfonso Soriano, for example. In Heyward’s case, there’s a pretty extreme regression coinciding exactly with signing the big contract and no age or injury related reasons to explain it. I think getting pissed at Heyward isn’t an extreme reaction. He’s been spared grief due to the team playing well and the fact that he’s a good guy that’s owned up to his (lack of) performance. That won’t last.
  20. champaignchris
    I’m not enthralled with Shark. At this point we know what to expect with him. 200 innings, league average ERA/FIP, 2 WAR. He’s a younger, less charming old John Lackey without the playoff clutch thing. (To the extent such a thing exists.) Trading Almora or Happ for him at 3 years/$59 million versus signing Lynn or Cobb at 4 years/$80 million is a no brainer to go the free agent route. Unless Lynn and Cobb are going to fetch way more than I think they will, trading for Shark only makes sense if Heyward is included in the deal. Add Almora/Happ and get a bullpen arm. Add whatever money and prospects to whichever side to balance out. If we’re going after a failed Giants closer, I’d rather Dyson over Melancon, contracts, age and etc. taken into account. But I think I’d ask about Hunter Strickland first.
  21. champaignchris
    That takes SF out of the QB hunt cone draft-time. He’s a FA after the end of this year. I’m sure the plan is to extend or franchise. But if he sucks out loud for the last half of the year, they could cut bait at no cost and draft a qb.
  22. champaignchris
    As part of the package that brings Stanton to the Cubs?
  23. champaignchris
    [Michael Scott gif]"That's what she said!"[/Michael Scott gif]
  24. champaignchris
    Is Mike Minor a viable candidate for a swing type of pick up? Become the Mike Montgomery if Montgomery starts full time.
  25. champaignchris
    No I think they’re sharpening their knives for Terry Francona. He’s a great coach, but pitching Bauer on short rest may have been a firable offense.
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