Stratos

Ian Happ is the most skilled LF i've ever seen in my life. Throwing accuracy, getting rid of the ball quickly, cutting off angles. He's a walking clinic and deserves those Gold Gloves. Glad PCA gets to learn from him daily.

Rea, Taillon, and Cabrera have thrown a combined 250 IP with a 5.08 ERA, even with by far the best defense in MLB. They're killing this team. We need to trade for a SP. Even an average SP would be a big upgrade. Then hope Cabrera pitches better too and/or Brown gets healthy. I suspect with Brown that they rest him as as long as possible before the playoffs and at best give him several MLB starts in Sept to get him at 100% before the playoffs. Probably doesn't pay to bring him back before that and risk him not healing then needing to head back to the IL.

I think it's probably as simple as the Cubs just like Triantos better off the bench. Alcantara doesn't profile well off the bench except for the glove, which isn't really needed much on this team. Triantos is apparently a solid baserunner who can swipe a bag and can put the ball in play if they need a PH. Could be a decent bench guy for us going forward if he's not traded. Has some positional versatility also. Depends what happens this deadline but I could see Shaw mostly in the OF next year with Pedro and Triantos on the bench. They could sign a Conforto type and mix and match at the other corner OF/DH, with Mo in the mix at DH. I think they should trade Alcantara, there's not enough playing time for him here, he needs to play every day on some mediocre team. He's just a PCA backup really.

Solid prediction.

25 y/o hitting well in A and AA doesn't impress me. I'm really not sure what the Cubs or teams actually think of Ayers tool-wise, but odds are he's not good enough to worry much about if traded. He very likely doesn't turn into anyone much better than Amaya in overall value as an MLB player, so maybe 2.0 WAR as a full-timer and even less if playing just 81 games, maybe 2.5 WAR in a better year, and could easily do worse than Amaya. We have Amaya and Mo, so he's tradeable. Even a guy like Kelly cost only around 6m AAV on the free agent market, so you're not losing a ton. Poker analogy is the Cubs have a good hand this season, not a great hand not a mediocre hand, so push some good prospect chips in this deadline but don't go all-in. Anyone outside Shaw and Wiggins I wouldn't hesitate on, and even one of those guys could go in the right deal. I suspect the trade prices will be sky high again this year with so many teams still in the hunt.

Interesting. I wonder if they just want to display Triantos for trade bait, or they genuinely like Triantos better than Alcantara right now. I'm not sure a week of very limited playing time would change anything in trades through. They might like Triantos better for pinch-runner purposes. The bat might be more suitable for pinch-hitting as well with the bat-on-ball skills. Not easy to maintain a swing with long levers on the bench.

I don't know how much data minor league pitchers have against minor league hitters, but if MLB hitter data is superior then it may have exposed Mo's weaknesses and AAA pitchers now have that data too to use against him. Or maybe it's something mechanical. Who knows...

Yesterday the Cubs also signed a speedy INF/OF and put them in Iowa. Can't remember their name.

Yeah maybe it's time he moves to the pen, he could gain a couple ticks and actually be useful.

With the emergence of Pedro as an option that can hold his own, and frankly looks more comfortable at the plate than Shaw (which doesn't matter nearly as much as results), Shaw is expendable for this year. Pedro can cover 2b and 3b off the bench. Conforto can cover corner OF in case of injury, and Alcantara is another option and can also platoon vs LHP. The issue for me is 2027. We have to assume Happ and Suzuki could sign elsewhere and we could have 2 corner OF slots to fill. That said, corner OF is the easiest position on the field to fill. And desperate times call for desperate measures. This offense and defense is good enough to win it all with some significant pitching upgrades.

Would you trade Shaw, Pedro, or Rojas? As I've said before, Id trade Rojas because we could use the other 2 this year, and next year. I think teams would care if Shaw is healthy, but i don't think it's a deal breaker, especially on/near deadline day, and especially since the team getting him would likely be out of contention this year anyways. As long as they thought the medicals showed 100% healing was very likely. Cubs have traded/drafted for injured players before. Deals probably don't go down until closer to the deadline anyways, and yeah I'd wait a week on Shaw if I were a team and had that luxury because why not.

If Taillon does ok and gets locked in Assad could help the pen. Assad has been solid but not amazing. That said, it would be nice if after the trade deadline nether Taillon, Assad, nor Rea are in the rotation. Everyone else would have to be healthy though, which is a stretch. A trade for a SP makes the pen better too with Rea likely moving to relief. We're really missing a healthy Steele and Horton. If those guys were healthy Jed would have built a fine team and could concentrate on pen upgrades at the deadline. Oh well... Let's hope Brown is healthy and dealing by playoffs.

Replacement level SP. Better to have than not i guess. There's like 20 teams over or around .500 and about 10 teams squarely out of the race. Going to be really tough to get good pitchers this deadline. I'm not getting my hopes up.

You understand that a floor raises payroll and player salaries on those affected teams right? You understand that e.g. a floor of 200m and a cap of 300m would make the players a lot more money, right?

It's rude to agree with the guy trolling me and condescendingly say you want to murder your cats while debating with me. No offense but I don't think you're in any position to criticize someone else for not conceding on points. I don't remember it ever happening in any debate we've ever had. You won't even concede that you were rude towards me. I think our last debate was fastballs low in the zone being more effective than high fastballs re: Imanaga. On your last post on that i gave you thumbs up because you showed the data and you were correct and I was wrong.

We just need some good pitchers IMO. I personally don't care if they're RHP or LHP. The pen is scary thin. Thankful Webb has become someone who can give us some Ks.

And i find it funny that a board full of Mamdani supporters are all of sudden free market capitalists defending the richest company buying everything up.

You took a lot of time to respond to me. Do you want me to read your reply and make a response? That's what grown adults do on a discussion forum. Or do you want to pile on the insults like some of these other members and continue making things toxic? That's what people like Donald Trump do when faced with opinions they don't like. Your choice.

You're an online bully who follows me around to every thread in order to harass and troll me. You add nothing constructive to any convo here i'm involved in except to make this site toxic. Later when I get some time I'm reporting you to the site owner. Any post by any user here who wants to lob insults at me will be reported to moderators. Posts in this thread have already been reported and removed.

Are you actually defending the ability of the Dodgers to buy rings? Just because the Yankees did it before doesn't make it any better. Nobody liked it back then either, besides Yanks fans of course. It turns the league into a joke. There's nothing wrong with dynasties. The best run teams with the best players should be the best teams, not the richest team buying up HOF players every offseason. The owners are terrible people, the greediest in my lifetime. You're right that they don't care about the game, I disdain them as much as anyone. I don't actively want the players to get "a bad deal", but I care a lot more about fans and the state of the game than player salaries. The players getting a good deal doesn't have anything to do with what's best for the game and for fans, so I don't why so many fans are so feverishly on the side of the players. If we're talking about minor leaguers being able to make a healthy liveable wage then yes of course I care about that, but if there's something that can be done (who knows what?) that can make the game more equitable and competitive for fans of all teams and it costs the owners money or it means i.e. Alex Bregman gets 150m instead of 180m I couldn't care less. People framing this as owner vs employee and therefore us working fellas should be on the side of players is ridiculous. The players aren't in solidarity with us, they're not actively fighting for me to get paid more at my job and aren't intervening in any of our contract negotiations at work, and certainly aren't fighting to keep ticket prices down or keep betting out of the game etc because that would cost them in the pocketbook. Players want what's in their best interests (mainly money) and have been perfectly willing to harm fans and the game to get it. In order to maximize their negotiation leverage the players went on strike in the middle of the 1994 season and it cancelled the World Series and there's no reason to think they wouldn't do it again today if it didn't cost them in the pocketbook. Many players used illegal steroids/PEDs and turned baseball records into a joke to help themselves get paid, they've cheated using sticky stuff and electronic sign stealing to try to get paid more. I'm certainly not going to let them use me as leverage in their contract negotiations. Owners and players are perfectly willing to tear down the game if it makes them more money, so fans should be in solidarity with other fans for the good of the game and their consumer-related interests.

He's clearly past his best-before date but I wouldn't say he's toxic. He just made a mistake post where his true opinions were revealed by accident, which many fans share. Jed would probably just laugh at it if he saw it.

Yes I'm making it up LOL. Ohtani, Tucker, Betts. Freeman, Yamamoto, Diaz etc signed with the Royals. The Pirates are buying rings. You're a man-child, grow up. I never said it was. Maybe they can. Nobody has offered evidence though, which I'd like to see. If it changes the way money is spent why isn't it required to be in the CBA? Show your work.

You can't fire Bruce Levine in the same way you couldn't fire Harry Caray. I mean you could, but who would want to? In fact i want to read his unhinged op-eds.

I dunno. Bruce and Craig have a clear Bromance that's entertaining to watch. A great pair. Anyways, Bruce doesn't have much to cover the next few days so he probably got into the wine for dinner and mixed up his technology. And if anyone doesn't love Bruce Levine there's something terribly wrong with you.