bill hAll Star

When I say "insurance policy" I'm not saying Hamels or Happ. I'm talking about some veteran that is given to us for a bag of baseballs and fills some middle innings or something and is an option if we've got some injuries late in the year. I'm struggling to find an example at this point so maybe my example is even wrong, which I really didn't even expect to happen. Jason Hammel and the Royals pay off everything except we pay the $2 million buyout, I don't know. Maybe Stearns feels more comfortable with someone like that over Wilkerson if a few injuries occur. Anyway, I agree. It's probably just upgrade or bust.

No, not really.

We can absolutely match up with one of those names. Hell, for 1 game, it does risk some later game issues, but you could start Hader and work backwards. I agree with the general premise but one of those names is not like the others in the list of 3. Assuming you mean Quintana... My point on Quintana is that in 7 starts against the Brewers: 49 IP 4-1 0.92 ERA 0.73 WHIP Fair enough. I'm sure he has something on them, but that isn't something that I'm putting much stock in other than fan annoyance. Some of those games were in 2012 and 2015. In those 2 games, Braun played and nobody else that entered the game is currently on the team. So I mean sure, he has owned the Brewers in 4 or 5 recent games, but I still think that there is a little bit of circumstance involved there. We're getting real in the weeds here, but one of those games was a 43 degree day at Wrigley with the wind blowing in 20 MPH. Anyways, I'd rather face other ~4 FIP/xFIP pitchers I guess than Quintana knowing the recent history, but I'd still not be surprised if we knocked him around a bit in any upcoming matchup.

We can absolutely match up with one of those names. Hell, for 1 game, it does risk some later game issues, but you could start Hader and work backwards. I agree with the general premise but one of those names is not like the others in the list of 3.

Look, Machado is a really good player. Transcendent. It improves our division title odds. It improves our World Series odds. But not that much. I'd get behind it if they dealt for him, but we're kinda at the beginning of the window here. If we dealt for Machado and had an uncharacteristically bad month and either missed the playoffs completely or lost the Wild Card game (or even a first round loss) it would be just as depressing as it was exciting a few months earlier when the trade was made. On the other thread discussing the Sabathia trade, I was for it even though we probably lost long-term. There was the desperation of not doing anything in my life on this earth (when I was able to follow the team, at least). I've seen that and 2011 now and I don't want to get foolish for this one.

One thing with Arcia, it seems like a lot of shortstops are called up due to their defense (this is nothing new) but I have noticed many that have taken ~5 years or somewhere around age 27 (or later) to figure it out at the plate. That would put Arcia near the end of team control. Simmons, Andrus, Segura, Crawford have all blossomed after 5+ years and/or in their late 20s and I'm sure there are a handful more. Can we wait/risk it on Arcia? Probably should, but just the crappy nature of baseball since we won't be able to keep him if and when he finally does break out in a few years.

It would be foolish if we didn't at least try to take advantage of a bad GM/owner in such a manner. Well yeah, we can at least try. I think in the end that some sort of sense will be knocked into him and they'll do the smart thing and take the younger/higher upside prospects. Arcia could be construed as one, but you get what I'm saying otherwise.

I think I said it earlier: In life, I generally assume the best in people. I know that Peter Angelos does not like to rebuild and has been foolish with this in the past. However, I have to imagine that he cannot be stupid enough to try to trade for mostly MLB-ready guys and compete in 2019 or even 2020. I've misjudged stupid, rich guys before, though. Maybe he really would favor some of our MLB fringe guys.

Other than following a handful of writers on twitter, I don't pay attention to "the national media" and ESPN's takes for the most part...and it's great. I honestly couldn't care less about the big market bias if there is one. The Cubs have had "bad" years out of several of these starters and they're still only a game back. They are still a fairly well run organization even if they made the decision to try push their chips into the middle 2 years ago and then basically patch each hole the next 3-4 years and just pray it's enough to prop them up. It says more about the crappy/unfair financial disadvantage that we're at. I think they've been planning to go over the luxury tax threshold in 2019 regardless, but they will probably have a little bit of money to spend if they choose to. I'm not praising their actions...I do think that Chatwood can get back to "Chacin-esque" as a high walk 5-inning guy, but he's been on a pretty bad run here. It's true that his game is dependent on a good defense at this point, but I believe he was also known for being one of the better pitchers with RISP in previous years. His ERA basically just ballooned from a day where the ball was flying out at Wrigley this weekend. I'd rather have them sign bad contracts than not, but I also am not going to be raising another "they've got more bad contracts than we do" banner if they win another division title.

He's OK, but he's another guy that will cost some prospect capital and is not a major upgrade over what we already have. He's somewhat of a lefty Chacin in production. He puts the ball on the ground more, but Chacin still does a better job of keeping the ball in the yard. If we're looking for someone, IMO, it's someone that's a one year stopgap either on par with (for insurance) or better than Chacin, Suter, Anderson, etc. I think it should be more in the realm of "better than." I could see adding another one of those arms, but with Burnes getting closer (yes, bullpen for now) and Davies maybe available later, we should be OK on starting pitching for the season with guys that can put up 5, maybe 6 solid innings before turning it over to Hader. Matz is a multiple year control guy, so that completely takes him off my list. He'll cost more due to that and I don't think we need to worry about acquiring pitching over the next few years. It's probably an ace or bust in a trade and I think we'll just stand pat or take a very cheap insurance policy starter to log some innings in August/September.

Pretty much where I'm at. It's not perfect, but we do have depth and can platoon in ways to try to mask matchup or defensive issues.

I wouldn't mind Solarte, though he's slightly redundant with Miller. Not a great defender and hits better from the left hand side of his switch hitting-ness. Not as drastic of splits, so he can play a bit more often against lefties.

I'm honestly interested in basically none of them given current ability and price. Maybe one of the shortstops. Miller is a better hitter than Lemahieu. Dozier - if the price is low. Scooter will cost too much Harrison - nah Asdrubal may break down I worry. I'd be interested for a low price. Starlin if they give him away. For the shortstops...maybe Jose Iglesias? The thing is, we probably want a defensive SS that isn't bad at offense. I'll just live with Saladino and sprinkle in Miller there with Arcia as the defensive guy later in the year potentially. Machado of course I'd love but he's too expensive. I'd be fairly interested in Eduardo Escobar but the price will be an interesting discussion.

That's somewhat true, though I think those fields slightly hinder HR more than they hinder average. Definitely a factor, though. Maybe not 60-80 point oceans in batting average splits, but still big for guys like Blackmon if they played more neutral road parks. Colorado Springs definitely does the job and I believe that the PCL is a basically universally good hitter's parks, though I don't know all of them. Player, year, H/A average split Orf, 2017, .353/.288 Orf, 2018, .333/.273 Phillips, 2017, .330/.277 Nottingham, 2018, .312/.278 Sogard, 2017, .313/.250 So maybe it's more of 50-60 points difference instead of the 70, sometimes 80 that guys see at Coors given the away games.

If he can't hit for power at Colorado Springs, I don't want him anywhere near the major league club. His value lies in his power, as he's never going to be a plus defender or table setter. Colorado Springs and, to an extent, Coors Field are not really the home run fields that they're made up to be. They're batting average and doubles/triples fields much more so. The fields are very large and cavernous so that the altitude does not make it so that there are 15 HR/game. Therefore, the ball still goes out of the park a little bit more than average, but BABIP and therefore batting average is insane because there is so much ground to cover for fielders. Plus, you have the whole thing with pitches not breaking as expected for pitchers so the ball is in play more. It's not that the altitude fields aren't good for HRs, but they are not the driving force behind what everyone's assumption of them is. For instance, take Charlie Blackmon: Home: 64 HR, .342 BA, 30 3B Away: 61 HR, .263 BA, 7 3B Random: Blackmon has played in 30 more away games than home games over his career so this is even more impressive, though maybe it does support the more HR theory a bit more. DJ LeMahieu (I'm lumping in the partial Cubs year here because I'm lazy): Home: 18 HR, .329 BA, 90 2B, 20 3B Away: 24 HR, .269 BA, 57 2B, 9 3B Some Rockies like Arenado do hit a bit more HR at home but part of that is because it's really hard to hit homers at Petco, AT&T, and Chavez Ravine.

Still gotta make a 25-man move Wilkerson went back down.

Nottingham is K-ing 5x more than walking. Projection systems have him basically matching Pina’s production. He is not ready and he isn’t a clear upgrade, but he is different, so there is that. Whether or not Nottingham is ready, I can assure you that you may as well throw any projections on Nottingham straight in the garbage. All those projections are generally worthless for young players. Nottingham is probably very close to a callup. At the same time, if we were talking with the Marlins about a Realmuto trade in which Nottingham is involved...we wouldn't want to send him up to MLB to potentially struggle and potentially hurt his value. Going to be an interesting month... Projections can be pretty spot on for guys coming up when you look at things like K/BB%, actually. The problem is Colorado Springs (and PCL). A guy that was hitting somewhere in the mid .200s most of his way through the minors and striking out 30% of the time in the higher levels is now a .308 hitter with a .410 BABIP at Colorado Springs all while still striking out a lot against AAA pitching...that means you can probably throw out the batting average numbers of Colorado Springs. He still is striking out a ton. And I think that's all fine for Nottingham. As a catcher, a low/mid .200 average with decent OBP for that and a good amount of power is totally fine. But I'll agree with the sentiment that he's not a huge upgrade from Pina (yet) with that.

CC replaced Miller twice this week for defensive purposes. Sogard replaced him. Yet Miller is way better than Sogard now? This just shows that their value is similar now. I don't think DS is using any of Miller's stats from his rookie year when looking at his current value. So for all those comparing entire careers from player to player, that is kind of like looking at Perez's SB numbers from 2016 and expecting some more of that soon. Given this whole Orf/Colorado Springs and now Miller argument, you really need to take a general look at BABIP and how batting average fluctuates in shorter samples of time and can wildly fluctuate in different environments. Given health and a guy not regressing, he'll hit the same average (unless he gets moved to Colorado) over the long haul in his career. A season or stretch can fluctuate here or there, but Miller was unreasonably unlucky in that .201 season. He's a .230-.245 hitter with a good OBP given his average with solid power for a middle IF. Defense, yes, it's average/below average.

Given the expectations, he needs to be batting at the bottom of the order if he starts, and that's OK. If we're giving him extra ABs over Yelich (if healthy), Cain (if healthy), Thames, Shaw, Aguilar, Braun, etc. we're doing it wrong.

The same reason that Ivan DeJesus was basically never called up last year. OK, I promise to everyone else on the thread that I will not perpetuate this one.

I've been "against" him in arguments given that I don't think he has the tools to be much of an MLB player and was overrated due to playing in the best hitting environment in probably all of baseball as an older prospect. All of that said, hope he does really well.

Ah, it's 2018 and we've got people using ONLY batting average and fielding percentage on a board of baseball nerds. Awesome. Eric Sogard is a better hitter than Adam Dunn.

The Twins somewhat do as well, but the Braves do for sure with Freeman, Inciarte (so-so hitter but can run), Markakis.

But it’s not “all-in” for this season. Depending on which pitcher you get youd have them for either two or three more years. Plus, you don’t get the benefit of hindsight. You have no idea if you’ll make the playoffs or in what capacity you do if you get him. You can’t say “well if we make the playoffs then I’d do it but if don’t then it wouldn’t”. Doesn’t work like that. The best way to win a one game playoff is to score more runs than the other team. Doesn’t matter how you do it. I’d prefer to have a dominant starter who gives me 7 solid innings as opposed to using up my two or three best bullpen arms in the first 5 innings because if the game is still tight in the 8th or 9th, or goes into extra innings, who are you going to rely on? Jacob Barnes? Taylor Williams? No thanks. I’m much rather take my chances with Degrom/Syndergaard for 7 followed by Hader, Jeffrey’s and Knebel. Yes you'd have deGrom in the future, but now you're adding $15 million in payroll all while still needing a 2B, maybe SS, pitching depth, etc. Also, say Davies, Guerra, and Yelich all have long-term injuries next year and deGrom is out a month. If you hadn't traded for deGrom, you have Yelich, Hiura, Aguilar, Shaw, Burnes, Peralta, etc. for 2020 and beyond to fall back on. After emptying the farm for deGrom...you might have one more shot in 2020 (maybe) before having a Marlins caliber roster. Obviously you could re-trade deGrom at that point and I'm not saying this is an exact science or nobody would ever go "all-in." I'd probably live with trading for deGrom as a fan. I'm just saying it can go very south as well.

I don't think it's very far off-base in this discussion. Knowing what you said about our shutdown bullpen and its effect on a playoff game or series is important in whether or not we trade for someone like deGrom.