Hairyducked Idiot
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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
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BA's 2012 Carolina League Top 20 Prospects
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
I don't see a ton of upside in Villanueva. He just seems like a guy you keep around in case you don't find anyone better and he can possibly fill in 3b competently and cheaply for a few years. -
BA's 2012 Carolina League Top 20 Prospects
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Arizona thinks Trevor Bauer has an attitude problem and we've called inquiring. -
[completely unfair tangent that ignores the context] Yeah, we wouldn't want to waste our 3b on a guy coming off terrible seasons and with known injury problems. [/tangent]
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We'd rather just sit on a pile of money and give up prospects than actually use our last remaining financial advantage. Hope Boston enjoyed those World Series, because we're the ones paying for the aftermath right now.
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Going into the offseason, I thought we could have spent the money better elsewhere. But I'd known we were just going to hand 3b to Ian Stewart, pocket the savings, and Ramirez was going to get a fairly low deal, I would have been all over him.
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yea, turning a few million bucks into the organization's top pitching prospect (in a span of months) was definitely one of his bigger failures It was a fantastic success. But it's only point was to acquire a prospect for him. The fact that he occasionally helped the 2012 Cubs win was incidental.
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Not every player has to be "long-term awesome piece" or "hole."
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It's no less absurd than "They did pretty much everything right, just virtually all of their gambles turned out bad," which is also frequently pushed. They made the decision to do everything with the view that the 2012 season was worthless. The result was predictable and therefore intentional. Heck, even a guy like Maholm looks to me like he was acquired with the intent to flip.
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That is a great point, which both you and TT have made. Going by net WPA to account for leverage: James Russell was our best reliever at 0.47 WPA, 73rd in MLB. We had three other relievers with a positive WPA, Germano (0.14), Maholm (0.03 in one relief appearance) and Socolovich (0.04). We employed two pitchers with a neutral WPA, and 16 with a negative. Our net -6.49 WPA was 29th, the Brewers passed us on the last day of the season for 30th. (only 10 bullpens are negative, with an average of +1.72, which is interesting). The Cubs had the 3rd worst MLB bullpen by net WPA of the last five years.
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To which I'd counter that the remaining 93% of the innings failed to provide any positive value to counteract it.
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That's probably true. The only things it's relevant toward is: 1) If you think there's a chance it reflects poorly on Hoyer or Epstein's judgment. 2) As a baseline for how quickly the 2013 Cubs can improve 3) In concert with some of the other decisions in discussing whether 61-101 justifies the decision to tank, i.e. were we too bad to be redeemed going into last offseason.
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Sorry, but if we're cycling through that many relief pitchers, you should be able to find a few more replacement-level ones even to fill in the garbage innings. Using WAR is a matter of convenience. I'd be glad to entertain alternative methods.
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A heartfelt thank you from Peoria
Hairyducked Idiot replied to ChiefsVoice's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Good luck! I really enjoyed your work. -
I might add bringing Wood back and counting on him to the questionable list, but you are mostly correct, those were all good moves. Unfortunately, Marmol, Wood and Russell accounted for about 1/4th of our bullpen innings. They chose to fill the remaining 3/4ths with scrap filler, and they didn't even manage to pick any good scrap filler.
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That bullpen you just described is a puking pile of puke that pukes puke, unless those two vets are really, really good.
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That's a possible explanation, too. Though one with equally disturbing implications.
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I can't. I can only see that it perhaps has. It's a plausible explanation for why we fielded so many awful players, especially the bullpen. So, in other words, you were just saying things. I was going to make a comment on the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and that comment was a thing that I said.
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I can't. I can only see that it perhaps has. It's a plausible explanation for why we fielded so many awful players, especially the bullpen. Here's another explanation on the bullpen: the bullpen is a crap shoot. It's made up of the most volatile of players in MLB, pitchers who aren't solid and/or durable enough to be starters. The options are to either invest heavily in "more stable" relievers and hope you hit on more of the "sure things", or scrounge relievers from your (and other) system pitchers that aren't considered much of real prospects. Since the FO wasn't looking to go all in to win this year, they (wisely, IMO) chose option B, and it didn't work out this year. Didn't work out to the degree that it was the worst bullpen in baseball, 1.4 fWAR worse than No. 29 and 3.1 WAR worse than No. 27. That's an awful lot of volatility, all going in the same direction, to be attributed solely to variance. I can't say that's impossible for the franchise that has lost eight straight playoff games by multiple runs, but it seems a rather uncritical option to settle on so easily.
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*shrug* up to you. It's also the most important reason for optimism for 2013. We should be able to make gains very, very quickly just by fielding competent players.
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I can't. I can only see that it perhaps has. It's a plausible explanation for why we fielded so many awful players, especially the bullpen.
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Yes. The negative WAR players are my new doom boner. Expect to hear a lot about them in the upcoming offseason. Every 10 posts about them will waste about as much space as each instance of your sig.
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Have you seen how not-gritty he is? He doesn't play the game right way. He's not a gamer. He's more of a natural athlete, if you know what I mean.
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Yes. Markets change.
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It's about the process. The Cubs will need cheap players on the back half of their roster in the future, and this season they showed remarkably poor judgment in their ability to find such players.
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Executive Approval Poll - Post 2012 season
Hairyducked Idiot replied to Transmogrified Tiger's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I have to reluctantly vote yes because judged against a generic front office, they are doing a good job. I just wish we'd gotten the Theo Epstein who ran the Red Sox and not the one living out his fantasy rebuild.