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Stratos

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Everything posted by Stratos

  1. Stratos
    I agree. Worth a shot forcing an error on a few throws rather than a routine one to 1B. Odds either way aren't great.
  2. Stratos
    Not having Leiter lost us the game there. Smyly is worse vs LHB, and Lopez is terrible vs LHB. Merryweather did very well vs LHB last year but he's just not himself yet. This is the pen Hoyer has left Counsell with. We also needed some cleaner fielding in this game or a better outing by Imanaga. If Counsell is lacking that much confidence in the pen that he thought sticking with Imanaga was the better bet then we have pen issues again. You can't score 8 runs and lose.
  3. Stratos
    At the moment, with this recent winning push, i'm just grateful i have a reason to actually watch the games and keep a sliver of hope even though there's only like a 6% playoff odds right now. This is exactly what Ricketts and the business wants and I'm a sucker in a way, but i've already bought my MLB.tv sub for the year so they aren't getting anything extra out of me...besides some Wrigley and on-air ad exposure.
  4. Stratos
    I think Belli is a bit better than the 115 wRC+. I'd expect more HR as his .ISO is well down this year. In the first half he seemed to pop-up a bunch of pitches balls he crushed last year. A catcher and full year of Paredes will go a long way compared to this year. Cubs have -0.4 fWAR out of 3B this season compared to 2.6 WAR last season, and -0.9 fWAR this year out of C compared to 1.5 WAR last year. That's about 5.5 wins difference so far. CF is also down by about 4 wins this season because PCA/Bellinger in 2024 is far less productive than Belli/Tauchman from last year. I think we could get 2 more wins out of CF next year. An effective pen for the first 3 months would also nab more wins. Soto would add about 3 wins over e.g. Happ, plus whatever we get if we trade one of our current OF. Maybe add 5-ish wins (?) if we kept all our OF. Given all the teams that will want Soto we might have maybe a 10% shot at landing him if we're serious about it.
  5. Stratos
    https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/08/cubs-pursued-logan-ohoppe-at-trade-deadline.html
  6. Stratos
    Since July 10th the Cubs are 7th in the MLB as a team in position player fWAR and 4th in ERA.
  7. Stratos
    One more win and the Cubs are at .500 They're now 3.5 games back in the wildcard and 3rd place in NL Central.
  8. Stratos
    Payroll and salary and value per dollar aren't imaginary. Imaginary is the fact that you pretend they don't exist simply because in your fantasies you don't want them to. The business of baseball is a reality, for better or worse. Complaining about it in 90% of your posts isn't going to change it, it's a giant waste of your time and energy and is irritating to read over and over again. It matters to a front office whether a player makes 20 million or 2 million because they don't run a charity or a social commune, they run a business with limited resources. Stop whining and deal with reality.
  9. Stratos
    Thanks. Just to be clear, when I said "Trading PCA for him would be insane based on his injury history" I meant that based on all the time Robert missed with injury it would be ridiculous to trade PCA for him. I didn't mean that it would be "insane" to trade for him only based on his injury history. 3 years of Robert for 5-6 more years of PCA at much cheaper salary is such a lopsided trade that Hoyer wouldn't even bother to consider.
  10. Stratos
    I assume you're still talking about Luis Robert Jr. I don't know his injury history but at 26 years old i would be skeptical he's toast. It definitely could partly be his environment, but I have no idea. Trading PCA for him would be insane based on his injury history though. Then if we look at cost and control there's no argument whatsoever who the most valuable player is.
  11. Stratos
    This was a terrible game to watch.
  12. Stratos
    I think PCA can improve on the BB rate a bit as he gets more comfortable in the league, but i agree with you, he's going to typically have a below-average BB rate.
  13. Stratos
    Dansby hitting 127 wRC+ since July 10, over 95 PA's. Getting more production from he, PCA, and catcher has been huge.
  14. Stratos
    I can't remember ever seeing that before.
  15. Stratos
    Great name for a stadium though.
  16. Stratos
    They signed Neris at 35 years old and his results from 3 of the last 4 seasons were pretty average, and so was his xFIP last year. I don't think he's a bad pitcher but I don't think he's anything that special and his overall results (ERA and xFIP) this year are fairly in line with what he's done over the last several years. The guys you mentioned are fine, but they traded Bigge, Little is meh, and there's a decent chance they overpitched Adbert to more injuries last summer because most of the rest of the pen was weak. When is the last time the Cubs developed (and kept) a high quality late-inning reliever? I guess Adbert counts for one season? And if we look at the top 100 relievers in the MLB this season the Cubs have none of them. Sure relievers can be pretty random but that's not good.
  17. Stratos
    That's fine, but their philosophy has also failed this team badly in the first half of the last 2 seasons. My point is if they don't want to pay for a real closer in FA that's fine, but then trading a bunch of relief talent away just doesn't make much sense either. If they want to load the pen with random dudes they think are worth taking a gamble on then it may often take months to figure out who stinks and who doesn't, and by that time they've blown a bunch of leads in games.
  18. Stratos
    Cubs are always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
  19. Stratos
    Well you made the same argument last offseason and the offseason before and the exact same thing happened both years as I had warned. I get not wanting to spend 15m on a reliever, but they could also develop some young arms. They cut Estrada when he was going through some control issues and now he's a horse. They just traded Bigge and Leiter, and Effross before that. I get the logic of these decisions, but if they're going to keep putting such a low value on quality pen arms and trade most of the good ones away because Hoyer thinks they're "overvalued" they're going to end up with the type of pens they've had, which is mostly just a bunch of random dudes. Real talent is real talent. Pedro Strop, Mariano Rivera, Josh Hader etc is real talent and are going to be good far more than they're bad. Extreme examples but if Hoyer wants to rely on luck then they're relying on a pen with a coin flips chance of being effective rather than stacking higher odds in their favour by acquiring or developing/keeping talent, and the results speak for themselves.
  20. Stratos
    Yup same thing that happened last year. I don't think it would be so bad if we had some real quality late inning guys to anchor the pen and the annual randoms could slot in mostly in middle relief. As of right now the pen is mystery for next year. We have Merryweather, and probably Hodge who hopefully is solid, but then we have no idea what we get from guys like Neris, Miller, Almonte, Pearson, Wesneski etc. Should be June again until we figure it out.
  21. Stratos
    A bit of tangent but I see Cubs have a fairly easy schedule the rest of Aug, so could get interesting by the end of the month if Cubs play well. Mixed schedule in Sept, playing some chumps but also Dodgers, Yanks, Phillies. They might have to get hot in Sept. Good news for Sept is Cubs have 16 home games and only 10 on the road.
  22. Stratos
    Re: Paredes, Hoyer mentioned after the trade that they had been working on that deal for a while, I think he said for like a month before the deadline, and that there were a lot of teams bidding on him.
  23. Stratos
    Catcher is tough position to find guys that can hit obviously, and you usually are looking at 2 of them to find. Last year the league average for team totals at the catcher position was about 2.0 WAR and 92 wRC+. If they can find someone who is good that's great, but I'd be more than happy with something around league average output on our catching combo, or even a bit below average who are very solid defensively and working with pitchers. Someone like Gomes before this year was solid enough. I think there's something to be said about catchers with experience knowing the hitters/teams around the league and adding intangible value to the pitching staff. Catching prospects are notorious for flaming out offensively so i'm not all that keen in trading good prospects at other positions for them. if they trade real value for a catcher i'd like someone with a few years & results in the league.
  24. Stratos
    I like Boog but he's a know-it-all and Girardi is from the old school era, obviously not the same intensity of analytics guy Boog is. I think Boog just needs to chill a bit and stop fighting with the guy on every point, even if he's right most of the time. He doesn't need to always be right for his own ego.
  25. Stratos
    Originally it was "right forearm strain" LOL. We know that can be code for elbow. Thanks for the smoke and mirrors Cubs.
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