Hairyducked Idiot
-
Posts
39,504 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
46
Content Type
Profiles
Joomla Posts 1
Chicago Cubs Videos
Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits
2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking
News
2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
Guides & Resources
2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks
The Chicago Cubs Players Project
2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker
Blogs
Events
Forums
Store
Gallery
Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
-
Using the umbrella term to connect the Ian Stewart pickup to those two is one of the more egregious examples in the long-running trend to make "buy low" the most overrated concept in smart baseball fandom right now.
-
I figured none of it mattered, because he's a Cubs prospect so we just pick whichever one of slash lines/tools/peripherals made him look the best, chop the sample up to make him look even better, and then just ignored everything else.
-
Kyle likes to dance circles around people who are bending over backwards to make things look better for the Cubs than they actually are.
-
The cost was valuable MLB playing time, which is a lot more valuable than the piddly cash we threw around on these players.
-
I actually dunno about that. 28% in AAA projects to something borderline monstrous in the majors. I also don't know if I'd agree with that. He was an above-average AAA hitter. But incredibly productive? Meh. We've had three hitters promoted from that crazy hitters environment, and the big step backs of all three are beginning to make me believe that it's the league more than the players. And I'm going to need something more than "fun with arbitrary endpoints" to convince me that we should expect things to change. You're cherry picking your endpoint to find the story you want to tell, instead of just using the entire sample. We can split the sample a hundred different ways and come up with any story we want. You want to tell the "he's made an adjustment" story by picking out his last nine games. I'll say that he's back up to 37% in his last five games, so the adjustment must not have stuck.
-
That's a disingenuous comparison. DeJesus and Maholm's "low" were still solid players, and their highs were above-average starters. Ian Stewart's low was a sub-replacement player and his high was a barely average starter in part-time duty. You could pick up some terrible career organizational minor leaguer coming off his worst season, give him a starting job and say "see! It's buy-low, just like DeJesus and Maholm!" But it's not just like them.
-
Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-30-12
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Why do these guys love to hate Matt Szczur? Because he's 23 years old and putting up a .753 OPS in the minors? -
Fine. "Lapped the field" withdrawn. "Had a huge lead in the PCL" would have been more appropriate.
-
Yeah. The guy lapped the field in the PCL in strikeouts, then is striking out even more in the majors, but I'm just blowing it out of proportion. Yep, because that's exactly what I was talking about. Nobody--not one single person--has suggested that his strikeout spike isn't a concern. As I said before, and you apparently chose to ignore, there is an enormous difference between being concerned about his strikeout rate and projecting a MLB-record-setting sustained 40+% rate that has no precedent. "Lapped the field" doesn't help your case for not being hyperbolic, by the way. He's not actually going to get the record because if/when he strikes out at that rate, he'll eventually find himself out of the lineup, just like all the other people in the world who can't hit advanced pitching. He struck out 158 times in 107 PCL games before his promotion. The next closest player, according to B-R, has struck out 127 times in 134 games. Yeah, he lapped the field. You are saying it's crazy to project 240 Ks in 600 MLB plate appearances. He's got 197 in 562 PAs this season, a pace for 210/600. Seeing as how MLB pitching is just a little bit better than PCL pitching, I don't think the extra 30 are that crazy.
-
Yeah. The guy lapped the field in the PCL in strikeouts, then is striking out even more in the majors, but I'm just blowing it out of proportion.
-
Actually, I think the opposite needs that burden of proof. We have over 1600 PAs and about 500 at AAA of Jackson being one guy in terms of K-rate(compare to the "K-Rate stabilizes at 50 PAs" commentary on his MLB performance), and then in the most recent surge, that rate jumps 8-10%. So unless there's a compelling reason as to why he's all of a sudden getting figured out after all this time(especially after all that time in one level), I'm definitely more inclined to think of it as a bump in the road than a flaw he'll have extreme difficulty fixing. The compelling reason is that he faced a higher level of competition. He was an established 20-25% K-rate guy at AA and lower. The fact that it jumped significantly in AAA and again in the majors points to me to a flaw that more advanced pitching can regularly exploit. In layman's terms, he's a guy who can only hit hangers and take balls, and he's getting exposed by pitchers who can make non-hanging pitches inside the zone consistently.
-
And I don't see why people are having so much trouble seeing it. Brett Jackson K'd in 34% of his AAA plate appearances this season. The list of players who have done that and gone on to be successful hitters is very, very scant. He has since K'd in 40% of his MLB appearances, which I think is pretty in line with his AAA performance (MLB pitchers being better at exploiting holes than AAA pitchers and all). The list of players who can strike out at that level and still perform well at the MLB level is even slimmer than the AAA list. People want a high OBP, take-and-rake guy in the offense so badly, they are willing to ignore the fact that this specific take-and-rake player does not appear to have the skill set to hit MLB pitching at an acceptable level in the long term.
-
No, he wasn't anything remotely similar to that kind of pickup. David DeJesus was coming off a 2.2 fWAR season in which he was a bit BABIP-blipped, and had a career high of 4.4 fWAR. He had four consecutive seasons of 2.0 fWAR and 6 of his last 7 (1.9 in 2007 was the only time he missed that level). He has been who he always has been. Paul Maholm was coming off a 2.1 fWAR season and had a career high of 3.2 fWAR, and had four consecutive seasons over 2.0. He has been who he has always has been. Ian Stewart was coming off a -0.6 fWAR season in which he was BABIP screwed, awful and hurt. His career high is 1.5 fWAR. He proceeded to be awful and hurt. He has been who he always has been. David DeJesus and Paul Maholm were established MLB starting-quality players who the market undervalued. Ian Stewart is a player who was once thought to have some talent but has been bad almost his career. He's not remotely comparable to the former two.
-
I think there's a difference between having an opinion and being dogmatic. Of course there's a chance Jackson can figure everything out and be the guy we all want him to be. I just don't think it's likely. And I especially don't think the recent surge of optimism I've detected is warranted, because he's clearly got a combined case of Early Season Clevenger Syndrome (lol everything I touch turns into a double) with a mix of Tyler Colvinism (Hey look, I've got okay power but suddenly an insane HR/FB). What I'm objecting to in a broader sense than just Brett Jackson is the implication that stats have an ebb and flow over large samples, so that if there was a recent surge at the end of the sample, you should assume it would have gone down if the sample had gone on a little longer. He struck out X times in Y plate appearances. Unless you can point to a specific change like breaking his wrist or getting hit in the head or something, I'm not sure why being called up "in the middle of a slump" is relevant.
-
I'm not trying to troll you, I honestly don't get this thinking. Did the 6-8 week stretch not count or something? It happened. "K rate was in line with the rest of his career until he had a really bad two months" is technical equivalent of "K rate was not in line with the rest of his career." And even if we take out those weeks, there were concerns *before* that his K-rate might keep him from hitting in the majors. Even at the old rate.
-
What corner? The "Ian Stewart sucks at baseball, and any front office worth its salt should be able to do better if given two consecutive offseasons to try to find a third baseman?" If that's a corner, you didn't back me into it. I walked there on my own because it's where the truth is. Vitters is what he is. A fringe MLB hitter who *might* hit enough to stick at a premium position. The 33% K-rate is definitely disappointing at this point and doesn't make things look good for him in the future, but he's not been a .300 OPS quality hitter either. He really does have a .114 BABIP.
-
My bad. I should have said 34% instead of 35%. Otherwise, I don't get your fascination with parsing stats this way. He struck out 34% of the time in 467 PAs. That's the sample. Why would the fact that it took a late run to get there matter, statistically?
-
Vitters is getting BABIP-screwed.
-
We spent all this money on the best front office in baseball so that we could absolve them of trying to find good players if it looks like it might be kinda hard. What a turd of a response. If the FA market sucks and there's not a smart trade available, what do you want them to do for 3B next season? Find someone better than Ian Stewart. And if they can't, resign.
-
Logically, if he keeps not swinging at pitches out of the zone, pitchers are going to be forced to give him more hittable pitches. It's at least as likely that those hittable pitches are more frequently turned into extra base hits as it is he continues missing them 42% of the time. Again, though, you miss the point (on purpose?). Nobody's saying that his amazingly good stats will continue as advertised. What people are saying, though, is there's little chance of his would-be-a-MLB-record strikeout rate holding up long-term if he maintains his swing rate and plate discipline. Why not? He struck out at 35% in Iowa all year. Would a 5 pecentage point jump be that unthinkable?
-
We spent all this money on the best front office in baseball so that we could absolve them of trying to find good players if it looks like it might be kinda hard.
-
Yu Gi Oh is for pre-teens. I demand a Magic: The Gathering card.
-
He had six Ks in his last four games going into today. You can have a lot of fun with arbitrary endpoints, but it's not as if the Ks had stopped in his recent hot streak. He was just getting something out of almost every non-K, which is completely sustainable. Here we go again, with the "everything amazingly good is unsustainable, but everything amazingly bad is just business as usual" rhetoric. So which ones do you disagree with being unsustainable? Do you think Brett Jackson can continue to turn 18% of his balls in play into extra base hits, for example?
-
I'd pay $1.5 million to have him play for anyone else. I think it's worth seeing if surgery makes the early season Ian Stewart closer to being the current one (or perhaps, better than that). I think it's worth seeing what might happen if we try to use our starting spots on big market clubs on good players and not random scrapheap hopefuls.
-
He had six Ks in his last four games going into today. You can have a lot of fun with arbitrary endpoints, but it's not as if the Ks had stopped in his recent hot streak. He was just getting something out of almost every non-K, which is completely sustainable.