Bertz

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I'll say this. Espada is my preferred choice. In my mind, Alex Cora had the best resume you could possibly have for a manager job without already having manager experience, and it obviously worked out as well as you could hope. Espada has basically the same resume as Cora, minus the stint as a tv studio analyst. For Ross, we basically already know that he has the soft skills to succeed in the role, especially with our group of guys. Considering that most of a manager's job nowadays *is* the soft skills, that's a big plus. The other two parts of the job are handling the media and handling in game strategy. Ross's TV experience means that we certainly don't have to worry about his ability to handle the media. That basically just leaves the in game stuff, which is not that hard (though he'll inevitably flub something in embarrassing fashion, every rookie manager does). All that is to say that neither of the two is a bad choice, even though there will inevitably be histrionics either way.

Marte is a good player, but he's a tough fit on this team. He has a severe and consistent platoon split. Over the last three years, he has a 76 wRC+ against lefties, and a 121 against righties. For reference, Schwarber is at 85 and 120. He was also a really bad CF last year defensively. That doesn't mean you can't go after him, he's a good player, but you basically have to pair him with with a Kevin Pillar type. I feel like if you have to get a RH caddy and deal with so-so defense either way, I'd probably prefer shifting Heyward over and finding a full time RF.

Is it bad that I feel like the Astros and Yankees have gotten off way too light on this stuff and so I'm glad it's blowing up for at least one of them?

I've been playing around with payroll numbers this year, and while it sucks that things are tight for us they're also really tight for the Brewers and Cards. The Brewers are right around last year's payroll already, before adding anyone. They do have about a dozen players in arb, so they could scrounge up ~$10M if they non tender several guys, but they're probably at best looking at enough to re-sign Moustakas. It also sounded last year like they stretched to get up to $120M, so they might not have any room even if they do clear a little money. The Lorenzo Cain deal got them a division title and was totally worth it, but it's going to hurt badly the next three years. The Cards are currently $5-10M south of where they opened last year. They've previously indicated that they have a little bit more payroll wiggle room, but regardless I'd expect they don't have any more than the 20-30 available that we do. They can re-sign or replace Ozuna, but likely not much on top of that.

The Saints were 14th in defensive DVOA enteringthis week, so that's not it. Guys are allowed to have bad weeks, but Trubisky has played in 4 games this year and looked really bad in three of them. The other was against the horrid Redskins.

Yeah I’m guessing they either did a second interview/have had follow up stuff with Ross or spent more time with him in the first interview. Also wonder if Espada maybe only had a few hours in his initial interview because of the CS/travel so maybe a two part interview was already planned. Yeah I think it's probably something like this. Second interviews are generally to get the candidate a chance to talk with people they didn't speak with the first time. Ross might still go through one, but it also might be that, for example, Espada is going to do some meet and greet with Tom Ricketts whereas Tom already knows Ross well enough.

Now that NFL teams actually do trades, I honestly wonder if we see a fire sale. Like you could move Robinson, Burton. and a couple defensive backs prior to the deadline in a few weeks, and Mack over the offseason. Just start over clean. This year depended on Trubisky taking at least a modest step forward, instead it's been a substantial step backward.

A lot of big ideas in here, most of them good IMO

Based on the article on this in The Athletic this morning, the FO's POV on this is that they mostly had the right minds in the org already, but that they did not have the proper level of influence and authority to execute on the level of an org like the Astros: A lot more in the article on the folks themselves, highly recommend reading it all.

Not really. One, it's pretty clear he wants the Cubs job, so it may be that there's no point in interviewing him (at least until the Cubs job is filled by someone else). Two, 90% of a manager's job nowadays is the soft skills. It's entirely possible that given his relationship to our guys he would legit be valuable for us, but just another guy for any other team.

[tweet] [/tweet] Something I didn't notice upon first read. Considering that Scouting Director is the most historically prestigious title after GM it's no wonder that that's the one they're going to use to bring in someone notable from outside the org.

It's obviously impossible to judge any of these from the outside but Breslow at least has basically the perfect resume for his role. Him and Brian Bannister up in Boston were basically the OGs at this stuff from the team side of things.

ASB 2015. Then 2018 took a small step back, and 2019's ball really went insane

Do we actually know that this whole ball thing hurt the Cubs offense more than other teams? I know the general theory, that guys like Schwarber, Bryant, Baez hit longer home runs than the average player, but I'm wondering if that's a team wide thing, and if it's more selective memory (people remember the bombs and think every HR they hit is 440, while filtering out all the basket shots). It'd be nice if it was true, but seems...hopeful. I don't know where to find FB distance distribution by player, but it does show up in HR/FB rates: Here are league-wide HR/FB rates, with the percent increase over 2014 in parentheses 2014: 9.5% 2015: 11.4% (20% increase) 2016: 12.8% (35%) 2017: 13.7% (44%) 2018: 12.7% (34%) 2019: 15.3% (61%) Now here's where a few of our guys are since 2015: KB - 15.8, 18.8, 16.0, 11.2 (injury), 18.0 Schwarber - 24.2, 0 (injury), 24.0, 24.5, 24.1 Rizzo - 14.6, 16.2, 16.9, 13.6, 19.9 Javy - 6.3 (only 80 PAs), 12.7, 19.7, 24.3, 24.4 Willson - N/A (Minors), 23.5, 25.9, 9.3, 27.3 It really looks like it may have helped Rizzo, but those other guys just kept doing what they do. I think it makes intuitive sense too. A FB that would go 350 ft in normal conditions gains a substantial amount of HR probability with a 10% bouncier ball. But a ball that would normally go 400 ft gains very little (basically only balls hit to straightaway CF).

I do think a de-juiced ball would help the Cubs offense, which was basically the crux of my last foray into the Schwarber thread, but I don't think it specifically helps or hurts our pitching staff. Like Yu and Strop got burned by the juiced ball, but the team as a whole was middle of the pack in HR/FB.

Honestly, I think the complete opposite. Free agency has been particularly unkind to guys in their mid 30's lately, so Rendon's not going to want to sign a deal like that and hit FA again at 35. He is most likely going to geta contract that could be his last, 8-10 years in the 30 per year neighborhood. There's an outside chance he does something short at a crazy AAV, like 4/150, but until we actually see one I'm growing increasingly skeptical that the Dodgers are actually offering these.

Woah, did not realize Emily Waldon started writing for BA. Glad that she's going to be writing about more than just Tigers prospects now.

Super happy for Strasburg right now. Obviously beating the Cards is great, but I want to see what kind of chaos his opt out causes. Plus, I feel like his HOF case was not commensurate with how good of a career he's had, and these postseason heroics are realigning things more properly.

The MWL is a tough list to crack too because of the number of teams. Very good to hear on Thompson. A 3000 RPM curveball would be top 10 in the league. Hopefully he can continue to refine his consistency and efficiency because the stuff is there.

I wouldn't hate Kapler. He seems like a guy that will improve a lot in his second go around. Hell, I didn't hear too much negativity this past season beyond just general dissatisfaction with the Phillies.

He was a league average-ish starter before getting hurt. Plus his profile has some of the same markers as guys that have used data to optimize their pitch mix and turn into stars. Graveman has a sinker with really good velocity and a fairly mediocre spin rate that he throws more than 50% of the time. However, his four seamer has elite velocity (would have ranked 15th among and good spin (would have ranked 58th). His cutter and curveball both are high spin offerings as well. By changing his usage patterns there's hope he can unlock another level. Now obviously guys don't always come back right from TJ surgery. And Tyler Chatwood has shown us that spin rate does not equal success. BUT if you were scouring the league for the next Charlie Morton, Graveman would be near the top of your list. He's a good gamble at $3M, especially because he still has a minor league option, so we can let him hang out at Iowa until someone gets hurt. whats he ave (mph) on his 4 seamer? 94.7 MPH in 2018 before he went down for surgery. That would have ranked 15th in 2019, tied with Justin Verlander. In 2017 he was at 93.7, which would still be a top 30 velo, but more in line with Sonny Gray or Jose Berrios.

He was a league average-ish starter before getting hurt. Plus his profile has some of the same markers as guys that have used data to optimize their pitch mix and turn into stars. Graveman has a sinker with really good velocity and a fairly mediocre spin rate that he throws more than 50% of the time. However, his four seamer has elite velocity (would have ranked 15th among and good spin (would have ranked 58th). His cutter and curveball both are high spin offerings as well. By changing his usage patterns there's hope he can unlock another level. Now obviously guys don't always come back right from TJ surgery. And Tyler Chatwood has shown us that spin rate does not equal success. BUT if you were scouring the league for the next Charlie Morton, Graveman would be near the top of your list. He's a good gamble at $3M, especially because he still has a minor league option, so we can let him hang out at Iowa until someone gets hurt.

Keith Law on Brailyn. I think he had already said an abbreviated version of this in a chat within the last month, but still interesting.

How are you getting to $200 mil going in 2021 with just internal guys? Spotrac has us at $94 right now. That doesn’t include the minimum $10 on Lester but includes Descalo’s $3.5 team option so let’s call it $100 mil before arbitration. We don’t have $100 mil in arbitration going in to next year, do we? Seems like that number is closer to $50-60. Here you go. This says 208, but there's a few easy cuts there like Descalso and Kemp, plus realistically in any scenarios where Graveman is still on the team that $4.5 is a bargain. For arb cases, I gave guys a 50% raise each year. On a guy-by-huy basis there's some error, but on a team-wide level it ends up working really well. Like when I did this over the summer I already had us at ~$210, because I missed low on Schwarber by about as much as I missed high on Bryant and everyone else was close.