Hairyducked Idiot
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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
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It's not really "usurping" when he hasn't been able to wrest the job away from the likes of Trey Mancini. You can't usurp from someone who isn't in line for the crown.
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MLB players are really good and most prospects will fail.
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More or less what everyone else has said. The 2015-16 team was the culmination of a multi-year tank that built the most stacked farm system in modern history. Epstein spent years trading everything he inherited for prospects, diverting money to buy more prospects and sabotaging the MLB team to get even more prospects, and that was the culmination. I don't love the plan but he nailed the execution better than anyone ever has. This is merely an ordinarily good team with an ordinarily good farm system
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- jake arrieta
- jon lester
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Being the "4th best 1b prospect" is a bit of a mislead because it's at the bottom of the defensive spectrum. If you had any potential defensive value, you wouldn't be playing 1b in the minors. The MLB.com top 100 (which mervis does not appear on) contains 3 first basemen against 29 middle infielders.
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It's not so much that they're giving up on him, he's just not good enough to factor into offseason plans for the major league roster. He's just there, in AAA, and if we happen to have some injuries or something changes about his ability level, maybe he gets another shot. But another shot isn't something we need to create for him, he's just not good enough to warrant that.
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why would something good happen when something bad could happen instead?
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*Why* do we have to give him a chance? Major League playing time is an extremely valuable resource. Why does some sixth-round, overage guy who isn't particularly beloved by scouts deserve so much of it?
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LaHair did nothing but hit for awhile in AAA too. This isn't some new ad hoc rule I'm making up to be mean to Mervis. I've always been adamant that missing developing time for whatever reasons should count against a prospect, not for them. Age is historically an extremely predictive variable for prospects. Prospects who are too old for their level should have their performance looked at with extreme skepticism no matter how good the very good reason is. To make it pretty simple, start with the premise that most prospects fail. I need to see exceptionality in three areas to believe that a prospect is likely to be an exception to that rule: Scouting hype, age relative to league, and performance. Mervis has 1 of the 3, which makes him a prospect but no different from every other prospect. if he had zero he'd be organizational filler. Someone like PCA, on the other hand, checks all three boxes.
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Missing development time is a point against a prospect, not a point in their favor.
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We don't really have any better options.
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No one called him a bust. But you know what's longer than either "The list of superstars who struggled at first" and "the list of guys who came up swinging and never stopped." The list of prospects who never made it. A lot longer. I've been dismissive of LaHair 2.0 since before his cup of coffee. I'm not saying it's impossible that he someday becomes valuable. But I am saying that he got a lot of fan heat and hype from being a prospect who was there at the time fans were hungry for a prospect to be excited about, and I'm not entirely convinced the front office sees him with the same esteem. I just don't think he's a very good prospect, and I don't think the Cubs think he's a very good prsopect. We're not cutting him tomorrow, but we're not holding jobs open for him either, not even partially.
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So they're not the same age, and they're not in the same scouting esteem. I think that's more than enough to reject any semblance of the comp. Life's not fair and most prospects fail. When the question marks start piling up on prospects, they go even deeper into the "most prospects fail" pile. Mervis has a whole lot of them. If we *happen* to have a job open up at some point while he's around, and he seizes it, great. But he just doesn't seem like good enough of a prospect to save a spot for, and the Cubs sure seem to agree.
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I keep seeing Cubs fans bring up the Rizzo comp and it fascinates me. Do some people not think age matters when evaluating propsects?
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I think at this point they've had every opportunity to show they believe in Mervis as much as the fans do and declined. He's not a part of our starting plans going forward.
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I hate that. Never do statistical tiebreakers for in/out scenarios. Always extra game.
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We just don't have any better options. The pitching isn't exactly thin, but it's not exactly deep either.
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If we knew for sure that those two would pitch the rest of the season like that, then we wouldn't have anything to worry about. But I don't think that's likely.
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You're hardly the only one to assume Brown is next in line, but I don't get it. He can't throw strikes. At all. He's barely keeping his ERA below 5 at AAA because he's got 40 walks in 65 innings. Some prospects are "wow, as long as this guy keeps doing what he's doing at each level, he'll be in the majors" types. Like PCA. Some prospects are "well this guy sucks as he is, but the tools are there if he ever figures it out." Brown is that type. We can keep him around indefinitely waiting to see if he can get some semblance of command, and if he does he can be a star, but until he does I see no reason to give him MLB innings.
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Of the four you listed, he's 13th in one and 18th in another. He's outside the top 12 3 of the 5 lists you mentioned. That's not a consensus top 10 prospect.
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They closed a 7-game gap on the wild card spot in less than a month.
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Even Fangraphs' more Cubs-skeptic standard model now has them at 50.8% to make the playoffs.
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If we're eyeing top prospects to squeeze some value out of late, I wouldn't object to getting Horton some appearances.
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Strength of schedule really does not mean as much as people want it to mean.
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All that "how could we possibly expect to beat them" nuthugging after the first game just wasted.
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Steele is getting a *lot* of love this season from the meaningless distinction between ER and UER
