Hairyducked Idiot

Fringe prospect, don't care about him. Not a bad return for Jeff Baker, by any means, but don't care about him.

We're declaring him a bust because he's 24 and just struck out 217 times in 609 PAs in one season, most of it at AAA. If there are two things in Cubdom I have an unhealthy love for, it's Dave Sappelt and cheap platoons, but I just can't get myself behind that one. I can think of four reasons: 1) He's awful doesn't belong on an MLB roster 2) His wrist is still unlikely to be at full strength 3) He's got four years of service time now, so even as a cheap turnaround candidate, his long-term upside is limited. 4) Valbuena is an all-around better option.

I am like 55% sure the Cardinals won't come back from this.

Meh. Post-2011 Soto, Castillo, Clevenger looks like a better situation to me than Post-2012 Castillo/Clevenger. Agreed. Should be an incremental improvement, at least. Agreed. I'd call it a slight decline, sort of the reverse of Castro at SS. Well, exactly. This isn't about what we know in hindsight. It's about what we thought we had going into the offseason. I'm disappointed to call that a wash. DeJesus hasn't been quite as good as I hoped. I'd call the rotation about a wash, which is pretty impressive considering how much they traded away and Garza's injury/slightly disapponting season.

Cardinals were 20th in defensive efficiency and 19th in bullpen K% this year. Yep. They also brought up Trevor Rosenthal, Shelby Miller, Traded for Mujica and moved Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn to the bullpen. They've committed 2 errors in these playoffs. They have the best obp in the playoffs. 1 of those things (the most important) is reflective of the season, 1 of them is a not unexpected outcome due to roster moves and one you can call a fluke but it's not exactly breaking new baseball ground to have a team have lucky timing with their defensive competency. Never mind, Kyle. You're right. It keeps happening because it's all luck. 9 playoff berths in 13 seasons is just sheer luck. That's sound. 1) Errors for measuring defense. 2) Citing postseason results to prove that postseason results are not a SSS fluke 3) Moving the goalposts between regular-season performance and playoff performance.

We had a 3-WAR projection out of CF and nothing out of 1b. Now we have a 3.5 WAR projection out of 1b and nothing out of CF.

"This is how it's done in Southern Illinois" is never, ever a valid defense.

Okay, I actually find that very encouraging. Thank you.

Anthony Rizzo alone makes that statement ridiculous. The implosion of CF cancels out the improvement at 1b. And to think Marlon Byrd was looking to be such a long term solution. We're talking about how the team looks for the next season heading into the offseason. "Long-term" or not has nothing to do with it. The Cubs had nothing at 1b heading into 2012, but figured to have CF locked down. Byrd was being projected as ~3 wins in CF, and Jackson was thought to be MLB ready if anything happened. Now, heading into 2013, Rizzo projects to about 3.5 wins for 1b, but we have absolutely nothing in CF. It balanced out.

Anthony Rizzo alone makes that statement ridiculous. The implosion of CF cancels out the improvement at 1b.

Are we going to completely ignore the last four months of the season? Were the first two months deemed exhibitions retroactively or something? But fine. In the last four months, he threw 43 IP, struck out 59, walked 27, and gave up 3 HRs. That BB rate still makes him barely serviceable.

Cardinals were 20th in defensive efficiency and 19th in bullpen K% this year.

Zych is a guy I'm very interested in, too. It feels like there's enough here to have a chance to put together a decent pen, especially if we hedge our bets with some veterans slightly more reliable and costly than Manny Corpas. Just have to figure out why so many of our interesting young arms started walking the world once they got called up.

You know what my answer will be to that. Plus, if you take out April, he walked 15 and gave up 4 home runs in those 24 innings.

Our front office has done a great job at beginning to build up the minor league system. Okay, now that that's out of the way, thoughts on the bullpen for 2013? Going by net WPA, our bullpen cost us roughly 8 games compared to the league average pen, and was the third worst in MLB in the last five years. Here's who we have to choose from that might come back (2012 xFIP): Shawn Camp (4.08) - Just about the definition of an average reliever for his career, though he's lost a bit of velocity. His peripherals were actually a lot better than I expected. Unfortunately, we have no team control on him and he will be an FA this offseason. James Russell (4.35) - Not nearly as good as his ERA would suggest, but still a useful lefty to have in the pen. Plays better in the middle of the pen than at the end, imo. Carlos Marmol (4.39) - We're stuck with him unless someone's dumb enough to buy into the 3.25 ERA. Mop-up role only, imo, unless he miraculously regains his form. Michael Bowden (4.73) - Is there a little something there? My guess is he'll be doing the Iowa-Chicago shuffle all season as one of the replacement arms for injuries and ineffectiveness. Just can't seem to keep the ball in the zone or down consistently, walks too many and gives up too many fly balls. After that, we're into the mass of live young arms, and who knows what we have there. Guys who played at least some in Chicago this year: Alberto Cabrera - Put up nearly identical peripherals to Marmol this year, which is fascinating. Anyone have any idea why a guy would go from walking about 2 BB/9 IP in AA and AA to 7.5/9 in the majors? Has to be just nerves, right? I have high hopes that this guy can take a major step forward in 2013. Jaye Chapman - Maybe has potential as a sort of ROOGY type. Had extreme splits in the minors toward getting right-handers out Jeff Beliveau - Live arm, walked way too many Rafeal Dolis - Live arm, walked way too many, didn't strike anyone out. How does a guy with a 95 MPH fastball fail to miss bats at almost every level? Anyone else even remotely interesting? I don't see anyone else who appeared on this year's roster that I care about. Basically, it seems like we have half a good bullpen, and it's the back half. I'd like to see two more guys brought in that could fill out the top half, but the free agent market sucks for RPs. Maybe some of the guys we trade this offseason like Jackson or Vitters could bring a potentially useful piece.

Ha ha.

NFL is the sport where teams' abilities fluctuate the most over the length of the season. I'd love to see a study correlating teams' strength (DVOA?) over the final six games of the season with their playoff success.

The NFL is still pretty darn deterministic.

It would turn out something like Tom Haverford telling off the Eagleton P&R director. "Take this resume and shove it into your human resources slot!"

The Cardinals made the playoffs by two games while going 10-7 against a Cubs team that wasn't even trying. YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS THEO AND TOM! #12IN12 IS ON YOUR HEADS!

Oh shut up wishing aids upon ever player on the team is excessive. Kind of insane. What about just you and everyone you care about?

Offense! My cousin's husband is a Cubs fan and he is literally the most obnoxious person I know. Born in St. Louis. No idea why he is a Cubs fan. So reading your postseason thread, it looks like him, times 1000. He is loud, even and mostly, when wrong. He is aggressive. He is offensive. On GRB cubs fans are remarkably cool, intelligent and level headed. But day to day, they are like this thread. clinically insane. This sort of makes me want to inflict myself onto GRB and tell them it was your fault.

Offense!

#13in13

Would be the first NL teams to repeat since the Reds in 1975-6. It blows my mind that the Yankees won 3 in a row in the WC era.