Hairyducked Idiot

Bryant leads three different levels in HRs by the end of the year.

This is true of all professoinal gamblers, of which none are successful.

It really shouldn't be too much to ask once in awhile.

Bryant Baez Soler Schwarber Alcantara Almora Rivero Tseng Johnson Bruno

I know that half these guys are going to get hurt or suddenly lose all semblance of strikes, and whichever ones we put in high-leverage situations will magically have terrible results despite awesome peripherals. But today I'm imagining a 2015 bullpen that includes Rondon, Strop, Ramirez, Vizcaino, Rivero, Rosscup, Grimm, and it is exciting.

For serious? Baez is still No. 2 for me. Soler is unknown, Almora is Darwin Barney in CF, Schwarber isn't ubertalented and Alcantara just isn't sexy enough.

And to be fair, a lot of people (here as well) wrote off Arrieta before this season. Sure. Everybody knows that sometimes, once in awhile, baseball players do crazy things. That scrawny Junior Lake clone from the White Sox hit 66 home runs one year. But that doesn't mean you can't cut bad players. The player you replace them with is just as likely to do the magical transformation as the bad player is.

Age is more important.

Pitchers are different.

Sexytimes.

I am arguing against the notion that Barney is [expletive] blocking Olt. Olt had his chance to whip his [expletive] out and do something with it but he blew it. Barney's sucking has nothing to do with Olt's [expletive]. Not saying Olt is good at all, but it's possible for guys to blow it early in their careers and, you know, get better. Again, not saying Olt is that guy, but it happens. A lot. You know what happens even more often? Guys who aren't good enough wash out.

Given that neither Valbuena nor Olt are slouches in the field themselves, I'll take the entertainment value over this beyond marginal benefit to trade value. Valbuena at 2b is kinda slouchy. He's actually been better at 2B than he has been at 3B this year. UZRNG?

Given that neither Valbuena nor Olt are slouches in the field themselves, I'll take the entertainment value over this beyond marginal benefit to trade value. Valbuena at 2b is kinda slouchy.

Shut Arrieta down soon to save him for next year.

The pitching staff absolutely could keep it from being competitive. It's fine this year, but I see plenty of nosedive potential. Basically everything sucks for next year but the bullpen.

Now smooth out the BABIP and suddenly it's kinda ... deflating. MLB pitching is hard.

They can also just keep some of the cap hit in the trade.

None of which are in the rotation. And 2/3rds of which is at replacement level or worse. Insisting on factoring in returns we haven't gotten yet is equally silly, because most of the time we don't end up getting anything that addresses the problem we are discussing.

When I look at our pitching for 2015, it's a) Clearly way better than it's been going into any season in a long time. b) Not enough to make me feel unreservedly good about it. The bullpen has a lot of potential, but we're still counting on a lot of young guys with histories of bouts of wildness. And our management has proven pretty ineffective at deploying the pen in an optimal way the last few years. I can't believe we're *still* 28th in bullpen net WPA. But the rotation is what makes me uneasy. Travis Wood is reliably average, maybe a little better. Edwin Jackson is about the same, assuming his peripherals ever start showing up in his ERA. Jake Arrieta looks amazing through 45 innings, but that's 45 innings from a guy with a recent shoulder injury and who has only thrown 120+ innings in a season once, in 2012. Who knows what he'll look like by next April, let alone next August. Kyle Hendricks looks like he should be an OK starter, presuming his stuff can handle the AAA>MLB promotion. And that's pretty much it. (Wada is the LaHair of pitchers. He is not allowed in this discussion). Knowing that with pitching you need plenty of redundancy, that's probably the back half of your rotation filled. You still need the front half, and that's kind of the hard half to fill, and the front office just yesterday was on the radio talking about their disinterest in paying for pitchers who have been recently good. So basically, our 2015 rotation could be contending quality if: a) The front offices commits the resources to making it so next year and b) We don't get unlucky. And seeing as how being unlucky and the front office not bothering to put the resources in have pretty much been the two dominant themes of the Cubs' MLB fortunes the last three years, I think it's reasonable to be a bit uneasy. #$@$#@!, this would look so much better with Tanaka in the mix.

Remember when we couldn't project our 2013 and 2014 rotations without including the return from the Garza trade?

BABIP and K rate?

javybomb

That point is after guys like Bryant and Baez have established themselves as comfortably solid major leaguers. If they were going to make a move before that, they would have done it by now.

I made that happen.

Ugh we're going to lose now aren't we? Without a doubt.