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Hairyducked Idiot

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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot

  1. Prediction: Castro improves his defense and adds some pop this year, becoming a more valuable player, but hits "only" .290 and becomes a scapegoat among fans and the media for some random defensive/baserunning "blunders" who try to run him out of town for not playing the new Cubs Way.
  2. 1). Symmetry 2). It's not and never has been symmetrical.
  3. Must have been the MLB date (for two teams) and not the Cubs' date. I got a few of the dates right. The Williston Herald always lived with that kind of accuracy, so NSBB can too.
  4. Having good players under long-term contract > having payroll flexibility > having mediocre or bad players signed to long-term contracts. We're making a transition from No. 3 to No. 2, and people are happy about that. That doesn't mean nobody wants to be in the first one.
  5. http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/510615/baseballstrasburgpitch_medium.gif
  6. There will be an investigation, OFAC and Epstein will be unable to agree on appropriate punishment, and it will be turned over to the commissioner's office, never to be heard from again.
  7. I had completely forgotten about him. [expletive] that guy, so hard.
  8. Actually, and I may very well be in the minority, but I think they'll end up better than last year. Granted, I don't think they're a .500 team, but I do see improvement happening. I could see 74-75 wins. I see 76-77 as a baseline projection. But with a few games of luck and a few games of breakout performances? I don't see why 81-81 is unattainable.
  9. Nothing I posted between October 2008 and Nov. 2011 counts.
  10. I can't think of a single Yankees contract I didn't like. When you have an unlimited budget, why not?
  11. I heard that division titles are handed out on the basis of whose fanbase gets the most excited during the offseason.
  12. There haven't been many teams that won the World Series because of a signing like that, either.
  13. That's all well and good, but can we stop pretending it's perfectly awesome to miss out on everybody and that everybody else is going to regret all their signings? This has happened with every single signing where the Cubs have been rumored to be among the leaders, but didn't get the guy. No. Because not one of those guys signed at a contract I feel like we missed out on. Players have different values to different teams. So far, every player we've "missed" out on was a bad value for the Cubs at that money, regardless of what the teams that did sign them think.
  14. Okay, so in the past some people possibly made some stupid comparisons. How on earth is that a relevant point today?
  15. If you look at numbers, the only real advantage Volstad has over Wells is age. So if you look at numbers, Volstad has the advantage in age. If you look at scouting and pedigree, Volstad has all the other advantages as well. What exactly is Wells' advantage?
  16. If Garza is dealt: Dempster/Wood/Maholm/Volstad/Samardzija If not Garza/Dempster/Wood/Maholm/Volstad with Samardzija getting a chance to overshoot Volstad. Wells is out in pretty much any scenario.
  17. Same thing they did with Pujols. Talked a big game and then put in a very tepid offer.
  18. In his case, does that mean that he'd be a free agent in 4 years or like Samardzjia where he'd still be under team control after it's up? It would kind of suck if we were paying him 7mil/year or whatever and he became a FA around the time he's ready for the big leagues. It's like Samardzija. But the problem is, that sets a fairly high baseline. We won't be able to pay him $500k or whatever in his pre-arb years. Which sucks. I'm not really sure I like this deal all that much. Unless Epstein and crew thought they saw something in the scouting process that made them think he's a lot better than the conventional wisdom.
  19. Downsides: injuries to the rotation and Castro, Soto repeating 2009/2011 levels of performance, less power on this year's team, LaHair being a 4A player and Rizzo regressing. I could easily see this team being worse than last year. Injuries to the rotation? After Garza we have like eight guys who are all 1.5 WAR pitchers. Soto repeating 2011 doesn't make us worse. It makes us even. I don't mean "downside" as in "whether or not we're worse than last year." I mean "ways we can be worse than we project going into the season." At almost every position, we are stacked with a handful of mediocrities. If one gets hurt, another can step in. Wells, Sappelt, Jackson, Rizzo and whoever backs up second and third probably project to be pretty even with the starters at those positions.
  20. Fair? Yes. But that's barely more AAV than Garza was asking for just for this season, so my guess is he'll want more.
  21. Unless we get a non-graduating haul for some of our vets, I don't see it for at least two years. We are graduating at the very least Jackson and Rizzo this year, and that's a lot to lose.
  22. There can't be a ton of difference from like 12 to 24 or whatever. The middle is always a big mass.
  23. I'm not sure where else to put this, but I was looking him up for a post over in BleacherNation.com's comments section, and holy *expletive* did Kevin Orie get BABIP-expletived. He broke in with the Cubs in 1997 and hit a decent 275/350/431 in 114 games. .304 BABIP, very reasonable. Then in 1998, he hit for basically the same peripherals. A little less power and a little less walks, but both well within the margin of ordinary variance. The problem was, he hit for a .237 BABIP, and that dragged his line down to 219/291/346. Add another 50-60 points across the board for normal BABIP, and he had another very respectable season. He gets dumped on the Marlins, who give him a half-hearted try, and he puts up a respectable showing in 77 games in 1999 (1.4 WAR). Then he disappears. If the hits fell like they should have for him in 1999, he probably stick with the Cubs and gets sprinkled with "proven major leaguer" pixie dust, earning millions and millions of dollars.
  24. Of course he could develop a lot more power as he matures, but a .101 ISOD as an 18 year old in the Midwest League isn't exactly slap-hitting. By comparison, Juan Pierre was 20 when he played in mid-A, and he put up a .070 ISOD. Campana was 23 and had .057 in 18 games.
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