Crusader

Yeah, the off-season explained in one word is "depth", and that's from an organization that already had some nice talent in its minors.

I said something similar a while ago. Although ST performances can be outliers that aren't good predictive meters for things to come, Kilian was down right dominant during ST last year. He was averaging 98 or 99, and would occasionally hit 101 now and again even when throwing 3-4 innings in multiple starts, and he was doing so with an easy and repeatable throwing motion that didn't come off max effort. Furthermore, he was locating his pitches well, especially that overpowering fastball. He was just blowing people away. He previously didn't really have an out pitch, but his fastball started to become one, and it played well with the change of velocity with his slider making that pitch also more effective. Unfortunately, then he got hurt in his last ST start. https://x.com/WatchMarquee/status/1761142022943990036/video/1 According to his Triple A stats after he came back from the IL, it looks like he hit 99. 6 mph or so in one of his starts, but when he returned to MLB action and picked up a couple starts at the end of the year, he didn't seem to quite have the same velocity he had earlier in ST (he was only averaging 93.6 mph - the same velo he had in 2023), but it's also not as if it entirely disappeared, which isn't terrible after recovering from that injury. Even at 93.6 mph, Baseball Savant gave his FB a +1 in run value. If he shows up consistently throwing 4 or 5 mph harder, like he was in ST, you'd have to imagine he could be pretty effective. For me, he seems like our team's dark horse candidate on the pitching staff. If he comes back looking like the pitcher he was during ST last year, I think he can force his way into the starting rotation.

(1) back up 3b will be some combination of = berti, workman, and brujan (2) back up 1b = probably Tucker at this point (and Seiya will play RF) (3) 2b for a month if Nico is out = Berti/Brujan (4) Boyd is not a number 5. Dude can be like a top 35-40 pitcher. He's basically another number 2/3. Not sure we need a true number 1 if our rotation is just talented and we have lots of depth in case of injury. (5) A full season of PCA? Workman being a serviceable backup with good defense and LH power? A full season of Tucker, who was dominate coming off a shortened season with an injury? Amaya turning the corner and continuing off his hot 2nd half? A full season of Hodge? Nate Pearson continuing his hot 2nd half? Jack Kneely continuing to develop? There's lots of talent on the roster. Just depends how a lot of things go. It's definitely a more talented team than last year.

Well, there's probably a solid chance they trade him at the deadline for prospects instead.

He absolutely did. It's literally in writing, (he even admitted to it later regarding how skewed Tucker's WAR stats would be using the Turner formula and instead later uses a comparison to 1b whose athletic profile is way different than Tucker's, but okay, whatever you say. Dude is using terrible people for comps.

Bro, Tucker is 27 (total MLB stats 21-27). So comparing him to someone's stats from the ages of 29-38 means you're clearly not comprehending what's being written. As I said, if he wanted to show the two players are similar and have similar projection, he would have used stats from the same age based seasons to make that comparison (21-27). Not by comparing someone's prime to another's resurgence and then claim it's useful for projections. Super good reading comprehension, mul.

No, if you'd look you'd see that he was comparing Tucker's (age 21 - 27) stats to Justin Turner's (age 29-38) stats. It's right there in his post. "One of those is Turner from 29-38 and the other is Tucker." Stratos kind of hit that nail on the head about it being a cherry picked evaluation, and his response back was kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth. First, he said it was "inane" to suggest it was cherry picking. Then later admits to there being "survivor bias" as far as the players he was choosing for comparison. Stratos, in his evaluation, was trying to pick a medium projection factoring in regression, and 1908's response was comparing Tucker to people that have aged remarkably well barring injury. In essence, it's an average projection vs a best case projection. Furthermore, regarding his evaluation, he makes a conclusionary statement to the effect of Tucker showing no sign of injury history to impact projection, and this is coming right after a season, where as a 27 year old, Tucker only played in 78 games because of a bone bruise.

It’s really not. He used someone’s prime numbers vs another’s career numbers between players that play different positions. A more thoughtful post would have been prime numbers vs other prime numbers for projections. Even then it’s not a great comparison because productivity with aging is so greatly impacted with chronic injuries even between people with similar skill sets. That’s why players being productive near their 40s is so rare. Not only do they need a good skill set, but they need to age in a way where they avoid any nagging/chronic injuries, even the type that might not lead to IR time, and projecting that is a guessing game with a ton of risk involved with overly complicated team based intellectual property formulas to try to assess any of this. To do any projections without knowing both players underlying yearly medicals is silly.

Pretty sure Kyle got a lot of love for someone with a 5.92 ERA who was in the starting rotation... Certainly a lot more love than anyone else would have gotten putting up that performance.

Let's not pretend that PEDs were the only cheating Sammy did. He also had the whole corked bat thing as well. I can understand the Ricketts, prior to the apology, not wanting the Cubs associated with cheating and a lack of remorse or regret. Good for Sammy to have finally admitted it. It's nice we can see him participating in Cubs activities. Lots of good memories.

Apparently Go Cubs Go sounds eerily similar to "I will pay you above market value" in Japanese.

This just in. Sasaki was allegedly spotted signing Go Cubs Go after his meeting with Hoyer.

He can agree to a contract at anytime up until his deadline of January 23. He isn't considered a free agent because he’s only 23; consequently, teams are limited to signing him only with their international bonus money (used to sign amateur players/prospects) + a posting fee, which means he's basically fair game to every team and shouldn't be an impediment on any team from making any free agent signings, and then responding if they are able to sign Sasaki later with future roster adjustments.

Michael Busch at 3b seems less than desirable

So ... Now that the Cubs traded for Tucker, who plays 3B until Shaw is ready, and when do we think Shaw will be ready? Also, with the extra spot open on the 40 man from the Tucker trade, Cubs made the Carson Kelly signing official.

No, my argument is that the Cubs should open up their wallet and trade for and sign other all star level players all around their roster to reduce the risk of wasted resources if they’re essentially blowing their load on one player, who doesn’t even play a position, and he gets hurt, and even with their current budgeting there are better ways to allocate resources.

It’s both, which should be apparently obvious. Investing 51 million a year for 15 years into a single player that’s one injury away from being worthless that generates negative value defensively as a 26 year old is horsefeathers insane, and that’s further made worse by the budget the Cubs have given themselves to operate.

Ditto kiddo.

Because no matter how much I'd like them to be the Dodgers (and even the Dodgers weren't willing to pay that kind of money for Soto), the Ricketts are never going to do that? If they're going to stick to the salary cap, then there are other ways to better allocate resources. This horsefeathers isn't rocket science.

Then have your pick amongst the other 10 people that are better than Soto against LHP. Or pick someone slightly worse that probably wouldn't be super expensive like Yandy Diaz who put up +RC 165 against LHP, or maybe Carlos Santana (161). Or just sign Santana and Joc, both are free agents for similar production at half the price. Again, no one should be crying over not paying a single player on the team 51 million a year for 15 horsefeathers years like the Mets (who just got done paying Bobby Bonilla's contract and immediately entered into another long one) for a DH.

vs LHP (174) - Juan Soto was 11th last year for people with over 100 ABs - behind Aaron Judge, Heliot Ramos, Tyler O'Neil, Jose Ramirez, Yordan Alvarez, Ketel Marte, Zach Neto, Jose Iglesias, Jose Altuve, and David Fry. vs RHP (182) - Juan Soto was 4th for people with over 100 ABs - behind Aaron Judge, Ohtani, Kyle Tucker, Spending 2 minutes checking, you could basically replace his wRC+ from last year by trading for Ketel Marte vs LHP and Matt Walner vs RHP. And you wouldn't be paying them a combined average of 51 million a year for 15 years to not play a horsefeathers position.

You sound like MAGA supporter willing to believe anything the orange man says. If so, I've got some Trump bibles, digital trading cards, and assassination sneakers I could send your way. All for the low price of 51 million a year.

No, I'd actually say this statement is dumber than Jed's. That's an insane amount of money to pay for a DH... You could literally pay for 2 historically great players that mash LHP and RPH respectively, and then platoon them and still pay them less than what the Mets are paying Soto. All these people butthurt over missing out on a DH for the biggest contract in MLB history is just amusing. Now, imagine Soto getting hurt, or just aging where he loses some timing or reaction speed. Do you think the Ricketts family would invest more money into the team to make up the difference? I certainly don't think they would. They'd just cry poor. Like they did with Heyward but 3x worse.

The best DH in the Cubs' history? He'd make Suzuki look like a gold glover out there.

I feel like it depends on how they project him to recover. It seemed like Counsel was giving him the edge on being our 5th SP until he got injured. If he’s already broken though, then someone else gets a shot. He’s kind of the equivalent for SP to Ethen Roberts. Roberts looked nasty in ST that one year when he was bringing it 95 with that slider, and much less nasty this year when it was sitting closer to 92.