chopsx9

WGN is the short answer as to how I became a Cub fan. I grew up in the Bahamas and lived there until 1986 when we moved to Canada. I had very little awareness of Baseball. I sort of knew about Reggie Jackson, but I remember trying to pretend I knew more about Baseball than I did by saying the Astros were my favorite team because Jackson played for them when of course I was confusing them with the Angels. The Bahamas had a single TV station that didn't start broadcasting until 6pm. You could pick up TV stations from Miami with an antenna but the reception was often so bad that you all you could see was the visual equivalent of white noise. That changed in the early 80's when satellite dishes arrived on the island. These were big 15 foot dishes mounted somewhere in your back yard that you could illegally point at some unseen satellite and get access to crystal clear reception on 100s of channels. You had to go outside and hand crank the dish to point it at a different satellite for the first couple of years until we eventually got a motor that you could control from inside. Anyway at 11 years old Scooby Doo was one of my favorite shows which WGN had on every afternoon after school; EXCEPT starting in spring I'd get home and there would be no Scooby Gang just...baseball?...everyday?...why weren't they playing at night? So at some point in 1982 I stopped being annoyed at the baseball telecasts and started watching. I remember seeing Junior Kennedy, Jerry Morales, Gary Woods, and Bill Buckner. I remember the final broadcast of the season as Harry congratulated Steve Stone on his first year in broadcasting and offered him some constructive criticism. By 1983 and the arrival of Ron Cey I was hooked. I guess it was excellent timing as 1984 was right around the corner. My Dad retired in 1986 and we moved to Canada and there were some lean years as WGN was not available on cable in Canada until a few years later. Cubs have been constant since then. When I had an office job in Toronto my Supervisor often wondered why I'd take off a single day in early April every year. It was above his paygrade so I never told him and he never figured it out.

Seiya's injury is worse than expected and Cubs trade for Heyward in June! 🚪🏃‍♂️

Happ essentially repeats last years offensive numbers but adds 10-12 Hrs and maintains last years defensive profile.

In the spirit of the new board you should empharize with him more.

Is PCA's floor Kevin Kiermaierish? (who has more career fwar than Aramis) How much worse offensively is PCA than KK right now. I just don't think you put someone with that floor at 10.

that Cassie at-bat — 2-0, fouls a pitch, just off, then laced the next one HRs in his next at bat and threw out a runner at 3B yesterday. Making some noise.

I’m not sure there’s a good comp for someone having this much success this early and cratering this hard, in the first place! But yeah, to bounce back from that would be more or less unprecedented. My solace comes from the idea that we’ve seen a lot of unprecedented career paths happen these last several years, throughout the game. The combination of tech-driven training and development, better sports medicine, all of that has made things possible that weren’t possible for much of baseball history—or at least, that were much harder. And then again, maybe his career doesn’t just snap back to Hall of Fame track stuff, but he can get one great year of full force in. KB hasn’t *really* been the same since his injuries in 2018, right? But he had that excellent 2019, even so. Dave Parker started a 4 or year so slide at 28/29 (injury related as well if I remember) and had a really nice rebound at 34 and was decent enough for a few years more.

or just make the runner spin around 3 times in between each pitch.

I'm not quite as pessimistic on Morel as that stat implies, but this dynamic is the type of thing that drives me nuts about a lot of statcast/next-gen fan analysis. There are attributes that are objectively good but more of them doesn't necessarily mean better when you have to sacrifice other positive attributes to get there(or don't have the skill to avoid the sacrifice). It's tantamount to saying 'wow look at his slugging percentage' for a guy hitting .200/.240/.450 But that's the nature of stats in general especially when they are as granular as they are in baseball. They are so specific that no single stat tells you everything. That's what WAR tries - as flawed as it is - to do. I remember a post here about Javier Vasquez and the poster was wondering why his ERA wasn't more in line with his low WHIP. So sure, not allowing many hits is great but when a disproportionate amount of them are HRs it undermines the low whip. Who cares how hard you hit the ball if you are only connecting once a week.

When I was 21 and training for a marathon, I got down to 135 as a 6 footer, and I was gaunt. I'm 6ft - the left half of my body weighs more than 115 lbs...of course I remain undrafted.

Counterpoint: His actual nickname is "Mash" We need to make the "Mash" moniker go away. "Never Nervous" Matt Mervis The guy you want up in the biggest of big moments. Mash Mervis! It's like Crash Davis...but different.

Javy got votes for best amateur ever as well! How about best Minor Leaguer that never made it? I guess you'd need to determine what "never made it" means? Played in less than 100 career ML games?

Correa at 6/$200 is a really good deal. We'll see, said the Zen Master. https://tenor.com/view/peg-leg-double-trip-fall-spongebob-squarepants-gif-10895268

Turner Swanson not interested in the other two - prior to Correa's physicals. Just feel he's not quite as good as advertised and the contract would end up being problem. Feel Bogaerts is on the way down. Turner's elite speed was the draw for me. Swanson I felt was the safest in that you wouldn't have to overpay as much as the others. Obviously time will reveal all.

The guy that put up a near unprecedented season and a halfish pitching stretch? That would be cool. Two would be even cooler.

That's substantially more than I expected him to get. I wanted him, but if my options are him or something like Belt + Mancini give me the latter every day. Yeah I thought the same thing. I wonder if the Giants essentially said tell us what you want because we absolutely have to sign you. Was he likely to get a 2 year contract from anyone else?

How in the world does Escobar have negative value?? He makes only $10 mil this year and is expiring. He can play multiple positions and is average to plusish at them. He’s put up 2.3, 2.6, -.5 (COVID year), 2.9 and 3.5 WAR last 5 years. He’s projected for 1-2 WAR this year with average defense but power and can fit in to the lineup in multiple roles. He’s not going to take a lot to get, probably one of the pitchers who can be a SP/RP/Swing type this year and maybe a little extra lotto ticket type. But don’t see Bote having any value to them. MLBTV has him at -2 trade value. It's almost like MLBTV's numbers are just made up. :-k

So I take it you don't think Morel can get better then. Morel can get better because he's young, which is why his trade value is high and he might be of interest to the Blue Jays. Meanwhile we get a solid catcher that's controlled for 3 more years. Blue Jays are desperately searching for a LH hitter - they don't have any interest in Morel for Jansen. Happ, maybe, but he only has 1YR left so I doubt they would do that. They just traded Teoscar Hernandez for a reliever to free up space and money for a LHH.

I'd have preferred Turner by a fair bit but I'm just fine in "missing" out on Correa. Doesn't matter - we won't know till we know. Could the Cubs have signed a worse player than Heyward when they did? What was the acceptance rate on that signing? 102%? It's not like they resigned Andrelton Simmons - now that's a defensive first player.

Never going to happen, Hoyer didn't overpay for Correa, why in the hell would he overpay for a lesser player in Swanson? Have to make certain to save all those funds to do nothing but, hey, look on the bright side won't have to worry about dead money, trying to move a big contract in 2032. Because he can overpay for the lesser player and spend over 100 million less?

...and the improbable march to the HOF begins.

I'd wondered earlier if they would dangle Tatis for a potential Ohtani trade.

I heard it suggested somewhere that the extra couple years are to get the AAV down. If a player wants $250M, he knows he's unlikely to get another deal at 38 or 40 regardless. So stretch it over 11 years instead of 8. Yea at a certain point the years on these deals are just window dressing. And at least a lower AAV lowers the annual amount towards the tax cap right? It's like its semi-deferred and if he's still useful over the last few years its a bonus. What if he retires? They're off the hook right?

That may go down as the most befuddling turn of events in my Cubs-fan life. It was like for one year, with one guy, we somehow got a hold of the pixie dust ourselves for once. The Rat says "Never Forget!"