We Got The Whole 9

I'm sure i'm not alone here, but my 3 sports idols growing up were Jordan, Payton, and Ryno. Payton's death leveled me. This is a really tough one to beat but some have! Really hard news to swallow 😥 Feeling my own mortality way too much lately...

I hope they didn't need to see that to see that.

Good players are not sitting because the owners are crying poor. They are sitting because their demands are not in line with reality. Blame analytics if anything.

There's absolutely no way a team is going to give him an 8 year deal. Jed will go with Tauchman and PCA unless he dramatically drops his price.

Why? The players and (some) agents need to wise up. Front offices are just using more pertinent data than ever before and they understand a player's potential worth better than the players do. They are projecting future production while the players and agents are going by the resume. Front Offices are also more apt to look at alternative trade options and internal options vs what's on the market, and unless it's a major upgrade, they're not gonna break the bank and their principles to chase a win. It's up to the players and (some) agents to adapt. This is the new norm.

Does/do Waldron and co. know Eberflus?

LHB who can mash LHP are a rare commodity these days. This would be huge if his game translates like that.

But Orange County tho

If you pared off a 1st and a 2nd I would still do that deal easy

You came in hot. Receipts are kept.

Sign who? If you want to argue that they should have traded for Chapman before the Yankees did, I won't disagree. But failing that, who would you have signed that you think would have closed games in the playoffs for them?

Ah, so what about 2017 and 2018? Soler gave the Royals 30 games in 2017 and was so bad he almost accrued -1 war in that short time. In 2018 he gave them 60 games and barely provided a half of a win in value. When they signed Heyward, RF was taken, and it was a decision between Soler and Schwarber for who would get LF. They chose Soler. He was valuable enough to get one year of a top-end closer. That was a good use of resources IMO. You can't just cherry-pick the one good season he had. You would have had to have lived with the 2 seasons of horsefeathers before it.

Chapman was so good he earned an 85M contract. Jorge Soler had nowhere to play on the Cubs because of the colossal blunder of the Jason Heyward contract.

Who? Strop and Rondon pitched 4 combined innings in the WS.

I would really not be opposed to Urshela for like 2-3M

I don't see it for Mervis, which is interesting.

It sucks that we didn't get Suter. I think it would have been awesome to have them both, have some game where Kyle pitches 5 and Suter cleans up the rest and at the end of the shutout the average fb would be like 87 and that would be higher than the average EV against them. Great article! From my own personal observation, for a couple years there it had seemed as if Kyle was trying to enforce "high heat" and got his ass handed to him quite a bit.

To be fair, I don't believe he said the Cubs are in the 4th or 5th inning; just that the offseason is. And he's right. Now, I think they will end up with Bellinger and another RP, but it would not surprise me if they don't make a move for a 3B. As much as you want ol boy from MIN, he's been a sub-2 win player for 2 straight truncated years and you have to ask, how much more value would he provide over what we would put out there from our own roster? We all want awesome offense at every position but value is value and Hoyer understands that. The difference might be negligible or just not enough to prompt a move. If they don't get Chapman, I bet they stand still for 2024. Possibly they revisit the situation at the TDL for a short term answer, but I don't think they have nearly the impetus to improve that position as you hope that they would. The organization might also be really high on Murray for all we know. He has had a steady linear progression and has a teriffic approach with visibly burgeoning power. He should probably be getting more industry respect TBH.

Again I understand that pitchers can improve shape, get velo bumps, and the like. But at the end of the day we are not yet able to say if they are viable offerings. 3 of his pitches were hammered, posting 400 wobas in the SSS. Having the kitchen sink repertoire and cerebral approach is great, but it actually wouldn't surprise me if sooner or later his mix is trimmed and more centered on 3-4 that are getting the most favorable results. His aptitude is high but if it were so easy to turn middling stuff into highly graded offerings then everybody would be doing it. There's enough good pitchers that have had to scrap certain pitches because they just never reached the desired effectiveness. It ain't that easy. It shouldn't be that surprising that a LHP one year removed from a HS that is a baseball factory and sits mid-90s with 2 breaking balls that project well, actually gets higher praise than the 3 year college LHSP who tops at 94 and gets by on guile, command, and deception rather than pure stuff. We see this a lot don't we? The 19 year old will get a lot more grace with the control and command and the college guy will be treated as if the ceiling is already within reach. To go back to your previous question: yeah if he got a velo bump and sat 95, touching 97-98, he would be higher up on boards. Without question. But the 4 seam was hammered to a 93 EV and the cutter that he is adding on the fly still obviously needs a lot of work as MLB hitters tattooed that one as well, albeit in a very SSS (although all of his pitch# are SSS as we know). All this did is affirm to the scouts that see him as a 3-5 that he will need a lot to go right and for some obvious changes that will be necessary to grab hold in order for him to reach higher levels. I say all of this and I am still a fan of Jordan Wicks. I just think it's easy to see why he gets bypassed on some of these things. I think he will have a long, solid career though.

I don't think that last part is true. Should you be able to improve the shape and movement somewhat easily? Perhaps. Can you improve it to the point where it becomes a viable weapon is the question and I don't think it's that easy. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think any of his other pitches showed much in terms of stuff+. Only the slider graded above 100. So you ask how many more does he need? It can be argued to be multiple TBH. The think with Wicks is that I don't think any of us would be that high on his potential if he weren't a Cub. There are several reasons to believe he will have a decent career. We're gonna have to use the boring descriptors like he's a bulldog and he just knows how to pitch. But I think that if he doesn't improve the shapes significantly then his ceiling is capped and he doesn't have TORP potential. Having the aptitude to pick up new pitches and have a deep repertoire is great. But it's still 5 pitches that weren't above average according to their characteristics. MLB hitters have their way with those pitches.

Another potentially dominant secondary pitch.

Mancini and Hosmer don't count?

Speaking of Ramirez, Ben Clemens just posted a fascinating article on him https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jose-ramirez-is-a-marvel/ The man is so damn good almost across the board, except, apparently, he struggles vs sweepers from opposite-handed pitchers and has a noodle at 3B. Yet despite the noodle he is comfortably in the top 10 3B in pretty much every defensive category. More evidence that arm strength is not as necessary as we are trained to believe. Fast throws are empty calories.

You underrate the offense because you don't follow every team as closely as you do the Cubs

Only a few of you don't seem to grasp how good they were mostly because they had a lot of games where they scored a ton of runs as if that should be a knock against them or something