Hairyducked Idiot
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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
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Replacement level catching and CF makes up about 30 runs of right off the top.
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Selig's not vetoing any trades. That's why he blustered so hard the last time Miami dumped, to try to intimidate them. Because he's not really going to stop them.
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And really, what I said was that we haven't had a *good* luck season since 2010 or 2008. That also leaves room for average luck seasons.
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No, they can't. Every team has some bad things happen. The Cubs have had an unusual concentration of them the last two years. Not historically unlucky or anything, they've just come out on the short end of the variation stick a few times. The Cardinals didn't have any such seasons last year. For the rest of the NL Central, the closest similar situations for 2012 I can find is maybe Stubbs, Morgan and Barmes. The Cubs certainly could have been better with better decisions, but the variance has unquestionably (among the sane) not swung their way since probably 2010, maybe 2008.
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You're trying to handwave away the things that have gone wrong by grouping them into this vague "everybody has bad stuff happen" misfortunes, but it's not working. None of which explains why two guys who had a .720 OPS the year before suddenly combined for under .600. The Cubs didn't get much out of either of those players. LaHair had an essentially replacement-level season and Samardzija's improvement was all in peripherals, not in actual runs allowed. They suffered both.
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It's easy to ignore because it's not true. The Cubs didn't have some crazy calamity befall the team. They put an awful product on the field and got awful results. The things that went wrong was the whole trying to be bad thing that made them worse than they would have been if they tried to be good. It's completely normal for guys like Marlon Byrd and Geovany Soto to simultaneously put up seriously sub-replacement seasons.
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Who is the #17 Prospect for the Cubs?
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
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I think it looks like a .500 team *after* you account for these things. With perfect health and nobody busting spontaneously, it's more like 86 wins. It's easy to ignore how awful things have gone for the Cubs the last two years and feel like that's normal. But it's not normal to have as many things go wrong as the Cubs have had the last few seasons.
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If we're going by ERA, Samardzija's improvement over last year should easily match anything we lose from Dempster. And the offense is definitely improved. Healthy catching and a CFer who doesn't completely forget how to hit is a 30-run improvement right off the top. It's not a good offense, but it's a better offense.
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Besides the obvious ones, I'll say: Torreyes at AA Bowden/Cabrera possibly as starters at AAA (maybe more curiosity than excitement)
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I just wasn't sure how to respond to it. If the draft is so different now that everything that came before is meaningless, then there's not much for us to go on. If anything, I suspect that the changes make the non-first picks even less important. You aren't going to have many useful talents slip when they cost a lot less to sign.
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Re: Projecting the 2013 Cubs
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I really can't wait until real projection systems start coming out. If you look at the players we are actually fielding, I can't shake the feeling that this team is really close to .500 as long as we don't gut it with trades. People don't seem excited enough about that fact. -
The same is true for free agents. I'm having trouble believing that prospects are so severely misvalued that we can just make a killing by trading our second-round picks after a year or two in the minors. But really, are prospects overvalued? By fans, sure. Especially Cubs fans right now. But look at what Arizona and Kansas City got for their prospects.
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Because the odds of them becoming a useful MLBer are inextricably tied to their trade value. Teams don't trade for prospects because they are shiny and cool. They trade for them because they have a chance to be major leaguers someday. Yes, a chance. But they don't actually have to become useful major leaguers to maintain value as a trade asset for multiple years before actually never being a useful major leaguer. That doesn't change the value of the pick or the player taken there. If you have a bond that has a 25% chance of being worth $100 and a 75% chance of being worth $0, and you sell it for $25, you haven't increased or decreased the expected value of the bond.
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Because the odds of them becoming a useful MLBer are inextricably tied to their trade value. Teams don't trade for prospects because they are shiny and cool. They trade for them because they have a chance to be major leaguers someday.
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Still not that impressed. A 1-in-5 chance at getting a 1-in4ish chance at a useful major leaguer. I'll just take the major leaguer, even if it costs me some money.
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A 25% chance to get a "top-120" prospect does not sound that impressive to me.
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Yes, but that value has to be considered in addition to the money you have to spend on that player you want in the first place. It's not the negligible value which you've described. It's pretty close to negligible.
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The value of the pick varies from year to year, sure, but it's still so small that it doesn't approach the value of a good MLB player that you want on your roster.
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For reference, in the history of the draft, only 3 No. 41 overall picks have produced at least 5 bWAR in the major leagues (and that's not exactly a high standard). Yes, in theory the prospect can have trade value before he hits the majors, but he could also bust out quickly. The average expected value should be the same no matter where into the future you project.
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Worrying that the best player available won't sign for something resembling the No. 2 overall pick money is a pretty baseless fear.
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I'm acting like the value is minuscule in comparison to the value of an MLB player you want.
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OK. Then shouldn't their trade value be roughly equivalent to the value of their "hit" status discounted by the odds of them hitting? Sure, there's always the chance to be better at scouting/development than the rest of the teams, but that's true with the free agents too. Otherwise, if 2nd-round picks are on average accruing significant trade value over the value of the pick itself, then that's a major market inefficiency.
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Kyle, the point isn't that the second rounder is likely to be a world beater. That doesn't mean at all though, that it couldn't be a major piece in a trade at some point. Hell, within a year of being drafted, before the guy even shows off his warts. It's not nearly as simple as just looking at stats in the majors. The second rounder that fails can still be a very valuable asset, before he fails. Examples?
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It shouldn't. Take the BPA with your first-round pick, take nine nearly irrelevant also-rans with the remaining slotted picks. OR Take BPA with your first-round pick, take nearly irrelevant eight also-rans with the remaining slotted picks. The strategy is pretty much the same regardless.