Rynomites23

You have your hands full defending his .6 war, 52nd of war ranking, 12th on the cub and 7th among cub position players. Oh, and his defensive war of - 3.6. I’ll let you chew on that for a while. I could care less about yet another meaningless solo homer by one of the most overrated players in baseball.

One or a handful of at bats doesn’t change anything. His overall approach is to pull everything and to lift everything including when runners are in scoring position or when the pitch is outside or when there are eight guys right of second Schwarber: 40.9% Pull %, 41.8% fly ball %, 6.6% infield fly ball %, 48.4% total fly ball % Rizzo: 43.9% Pull %, 35.8% fly ball %, 9.8% infield fly ball %, 45.6% total fly ball % Before you move the goal posts to strike out rate, I assume you want to trash Rizzo's batted ball profile too? Clouding the issue with stat overload. I don’t have interest in breaking down further as the high level stats made the point clear enough. But i do have one observation- separating fly ball from pull is crap because it makes it look like you are separating in order to position your argument. Whether he turns on a fly ball or ground ball, they both fall under the same category of “pull” - right side of second

He doesn’t defeat the shift because he has no interest in doing so which fits in with the rest of the launch angle club. In Kyle’s case, he thinks 2b is the foul line. [bbvideo=560,315] [/bbvideo]One or a handful of at bats doesn’t change anything. His overall approach is to pull everything and to lift everything including when runners are in scoring position or when the pitch is outside or when there are eight guys right of second

That wasn’t the main point but nice try.

He doesn’t defeat the shift because he has no interest in doing so which fits in with the rest of the launch angle club. In Kyle’s case, he thinks 2b is the foul line. Here’s some fun facts to chew on. Schwarber has a war of .6 and that’s 12th on the cub and 7th among cub hitters. Brutal. Amongst of’s in mlb? 52nd. His defensive war is -3.4 so those that talk about what a great defender he is don’t know what they are talking about. Finally, remember Dan Vogelbach? His WAR is 1.8 and as of yesterday’s stats, had better numbers than schwarber in nearly every offensive category with 25 less at bats. 3 more hr’s, 8 more rbi, 17 more walks, 20 less whiffs, avg 20 pts higher, obp .388 vs .322, slug .523 vs .467, ops .912 vs .789. Salary? Vogelbach is making 558k, rizzo 5.8 mill (war 2.2 so slightly better than vog’s) and the strikeout king solo homer leadoff fraud makes 3.4 mill. Schwarber is one of the most overhyped and overrated cubs in recent history

Wow. I'm not asking for the Cubs to be worldbeaters at every position, or every OF spot. I think we all ideally want to think of the Cubs as being able to be lumped in with the likes of the Dodgers and the Yankees and Astros (and hell, the Twins). They explicitly stood pat as if they were all but a sure thing to be in that rarefied air again, but it was obvious the ENTIRE OF was a series of question marks at best. The best bet was Schwarber, and even that was, yet again, hinged largely on defensive value that was unlikely to be a consistent thing. How is it unrealistic or unfair to have wanted them to do whatever they could to try and upgrade just ONE of the OF spots to be a better shot of being more than average at best? This feels like it's gotten to the point where I'm basically wishing that the Cubs had 5 good hitters on the team instead of 4, and that's some kind of crazy unreasonable idea. It's been hashed out a ton but Schwarber was one of the best LF'ers in baseball last year regardless of defense. He was top 10 in Dongs, ISO, OBP, SLG, wOBA and tied for 11th in wRC+ and he was top 5-7 in a handful of those stats too. Do we want him to be more, yes, but he was still pretty good last year and made perfect sense to stand pat on him/LF. All you really need to know about schwarber is to review his WAR. It’s.6 and that’s 12th on the cubs (7th of the position players). He is 52nd overall in mlb so there are currently 51 players better than him in the majors his defensive war is - 3.4. You schwarber fans need a reality check

Hiring a mgr based on childhood allegiance should be the absolute lowest of low of any of the priorities Wat? When did I say that was something important or valuable? I take it you're not familiar with expressions in English? When someone says "... so that's something" that means it's usually not that important or worthy of much consideration. I was going to say "...so that's something (I guess)". It's a cool factoid, but nothing more and everyone knows that. Did you not read the rest of my post? Man, what a dumb statement (by you). I did read it. And not really a dumb statement by me because it’s a true statement. If you are defensive about your original statement then that’s on you. I could care less who the mgr grew up a fan of other than possibly pulling a philosophical bias or culture or something along those lines. Ironically, maddon grew up admiring the cards primarily. I wish the cub played as an organization more like the cards did through much of their history because not only were they a winning organization but one that consistently plugged and played their players and won with them. And they played “team baseball” instead of this hr or bust [expletive] that theo seems to love

Losing him was a massive blow. I hope he’s the #1 choice to become the next manager when Joe is gone. I read his book on pitching philosophy and I really like Derek Johnson, but I'm not all-in on hiring him to be a manager. Great guy to be your pitching coach, but I'm just not sure about being a modern manager. He did say he grew up a Cubs fan so that's something. EDIT: I wanted Rocco Baldelli to be the next manager of the Cubs. There's no way that happens now, but I'm happy the Twins are doing well. I thought for sure an extension for Maddon was fait accompli. Hiring a mgr based on childhood allegiance should be the absolute lowest of low of any of the priorities

no Thanks for contributing absolutely nothing to this thread

That’s irrelevant to me because they don’t have our payroll or collection of players during that same timeframe. I’m just talking about the cub performance. I find the slow pitch softball approach to be a complete fail by theo

Not really. To have the second highest payroll in baseball and with this collection of talent with the resources they have, I find 1-3 heading for 1-4 a big underachievement. Especially when you consider the tinkering that will need to be done with the staff very soon on top of all the contracts coming due

You are going to need them because this collection of hitters does nothing in the playoffs offensively

Do I need to say it any slower for you?

No clue what you are talking about but that’s ok. If you feel the franchise that blows the most money wins, keep telling yourself that. You’d be wrong and miserable like the yankee fanbase that rarely wins anymore and is never happy although always blows the most money. Listening to wfan this morning and all their blowhards could talk about was adding harper or machado or both as a last piece of the puzzle. It never ends. It guarantees nothing and rarely results in anything but a bigger financial hole The yankees are good almost every year, wtf are you talking about Reading is a skill. Every response back failed to address the points i made. I’ll consider it simply the source and let you dorks carry on your business playing fantasy strat o matic in your mothers basement.

This is something I have found people with terrible, thoughtless, baseless, and immature opinions like to say. That last bit about spending being against the rules is not even an opinion and is factually incorrect. Same is true of the Harper/Yelich OBP takes Merry Christmas! No clue what you are talking about but that’s ok. If you feel the franchise that blows the most money wins, keep telling yourself that. You’d be wrong and miserable like the yankee fanbase that rarely wins anymore and is never happy although always blows the most money. Listening to wfan this morning and all their blowhards could talk about was adding harper or machado or both as a last piece of the puzzle. It never ends. It guarantees nothing and rarely results in anything but a bigger financial hole

I think it’s simply part of thinking like you are supposed to when you reach adulthood (maturity). Losing draft position and throwing money out the window somehow doesn’t seem write or sit well with me. I guess it’s my opinion at least. Nearly all teams stay under the tax annually so it is a prevailing opinion. If my team can’t get it done within the rules, I guess I don’t feel they deserve to win That's incredibly stupid nonsense. Rules? Maturity? That is your opinion and I have mine.

I think it’s simply part of thinking like you are supposed to when you reach adulthood (maturity). Losing draft position and throwing money out the window somehow doesn’t seem write or sit well with me. I guess it’s my opinion at least. Nearly all teams stay under the tax annually so it is a prevailing opinion. If my team can’t get it done within the rules, I guess I don’t feel they deserve to win

Were you supposed to? Do you study other org’s minors?

He's terrible. Couldn't even pitch at spacious Oakland. Did your battery run out on the last part....after he was hurt

Ew based on?

That’s the impressive part. Man, imagine going 1-7 with Harper, Bryant, Rizzo, Machado, Zobrist, Schwarber, Contreras... Harper and machado? Is that your strat o matic team?

Yes, because the core's horrible failure to hit only got us to 95 wins last season. There's no way a bat like Harper could push this team over the top. With where we are with the luxury tax, players coming due, etc...whether he would or wouldn’t is irrelevant. The biggest issue to me is that whenever there was a launch angle homer finally hit, it was a solo. Take finances off the table for just a moment, adding harper still leaves you with the same solo homer [expletive] unless you peg this overpaid and overcontracted player ahead of the more proven launch angle guys and hope he gets a bunch of walks

last four years: .460, .373, 413, .393 The .399 projection is probably conservative. Same exercise for Yelich: .366, .376, .369, .402 His .381 projection is probably a reasonable of a greater amount of history at lower performance vs more recent performance at a higher level. -------------- Harper is absolutely a better hitter (and a bit younger) than Yelich. The contract situation means that Yelich is certainly a better bargain. But let's not pretend that Harper is anything but a projected superstar for the first few years of his contract. The Cub plaiin and simply isn’t in a position to take on that kind of payroll commitment now and for that many yrs. plus, i hate being lopsided in payroll to a few guys. Prefer to spread around and keep from having so many holes. Theo miscalculated when he thought the group of young ones would all keep tracking. The danger lies now in trying to figure out which ones to commit to long term while re stocking your arms. I’m worried when the pitching starts falling off, that’s when real trouble begins

It would make zero sense to free up money by getting out of one horrendously bad contract just to run right into another one Are you talking about Melancon or Harper? I’m all for getting out of the albatross that is the Heyward contract, but have zero interest in the harper sweepstakes