caulfield12

Except good for years to come now has a defined three year shelf life for Moncada and Giolito, logically assuming next season’s just a .500ish year and sitting squarely on the periphery of wild card contention. The Cubs are currently in Year 5 of their window and still have at least two more years to go before everything falls apart. To make an analogy, it would be like Bryant and Lester both being free agents at the end of this year, essentially. Could the Cubs still contend in 2020 if they (theoretically) lost those two? Well, maybe...if Darvish is for real again.

Lifetime MLB totals Adam Engel -0.6 fWAR Charlie Tilson -0.8 fWAR Ryan Cordell -0.8 fWAR Trayce Thompson +0.4 fWAR

Scapegoat.

Where he would go on to have a Piranha-like (think Lew Ford) career and be celebrated for his New Trierness.

No reason not to play Reed and Collins everyday and see what they have...record doesn’t matter anymore, if it ever did.

One more month until we get into the heart of the dog days of August. Tough watch without Anderson and Jimenez.

He almost is as fast as Durham, but he just doesn’t like to steal bases. Not cool to play the game that way anymore, I guess. Robert probably ends up the same way, too much fear of injuries.

We need fastball hitters. Abreu’s increasingly losing bat speed. Collins would have to massively retool his swing, Reed has a long/extended swing as well. Jose did a good job to pull his hands in and at least make contact, but he’s not driving those mid 90’s and above fastballs in recent weeks. The one I remember was against Boston, but haven’t been following every game this year.

Without Anderson and Jimenez...and McCann tailing off, we probably have the most boring offense in baseball. Moncada and Abreu are the last two legit hitters remaining (for now.)

His last 15 games, McCann is down to a 563 OPS, 8/40 in the month of July. Prior to that, 966, 886, 863 over his first three months, pretty remarkable consistency. 2.0 fWAR, on pace for 3.2-3.5 but falling off now.

If Seattle wins by 4 or more tonight, we’re the third worst team in baseball by run differential but still likely to end up picking 6th-8th next June.

I miss the days when you’d come up some almost plausible optimistic burns the Sox would have to go on to catch the division leaders. Those days are long gone.

Getting outscored 3-1 after the ASB, 48-16...

27th In ERA, 29th in fielding, 23rd In OPS but probably end up getting passed by KC and StL by the end of the day (718 vs 717) to fall to 25th Actually 14th In batting average, highlighting the weakness of that measure But just 28th In runs scored...

Did they do SoxMath yet? That’s getting equally tiresome...

Not like last year. There are six really bad AL teams and then the Marlins.

Then you’re overpaying for the 2.3 fWAR (on pace for 4ish) version and not the 2016-18 version. https://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=15464&position=OF At some point, they maybe have to choose between him and Reyes because they both put too much defensive pressure on Margot or Myers in CF to cover ground and neither of those two guys have handled it well.

How much are we willing to pay Wheeler, Ryu, Odorizzi or Bumgarner? For once, we need to be like the Rays and get the equivalent of Charlie Morton’s performance...even if it costs $15 million/season. You simply can’t half ass it and throw that money at 2-3 Nova’s (literally “no go” in Spanish”) or Santana’s. Legit starters. For RF, beyond the obvious three candidates...Corey Dickerson can be purchased for pennies on the dollar from the Pirates and auditioned for the remainder of the season as he heads into free agency at age 30. Or Domingo Santana from the M’s, who has two more arbitration years. Option #3 is the Padres paying 1/2 the remaining $62.5 million on Wil Myers’ deal (goes through 2022 with $1 million buyout or $20 million for 2023). In fact, investing the money into another starter or bullpen help would be much more cost-effective than overpaying Castellanos, Ozuna or Puig.

Someone wrote he signed for $800,000. It was actually $700k.

Wheeler just went on the IL. That leaves Bumgarner, Ryu, Odorizzi, Strasburg if he opts out, Keuchel, Gibson and Hamels as Tier 2. Then another tier below with the likes of Wacha (one of the youngest), Wood, Porcello, Chacin, McHugh, Roark, etc.

All we need are five starters with WHIP’s from 1.1-1.3, roughly a 9.5 S09 average and the minor league pieces to add the equivalent of Justin Verlander at mid season. When’s the last time we were able to do that from outside the organization...adding at least two quality guys? Danks and Floyd over a decade ago? Because if you put all your trust in Giolito, Kopech, Cease (and Dunning/Rodon to a lesser extent), time and time it has been proven you will need to go 7-8 pitchers deep. Even if you lightly pencil in López, you’ll have a setback somewhere else. Looking back in retrospect, they were incredibly fortunate to get by with just four starters and El Duque/McCarthy in 2005.

We would all feel a lot more comfortable in that assessment knowing the final season numbers of McCann, Giolito, Lopez and Cease.

LaRussa and Leland and are too old, Francona won’t leave CLE until Lindor does...Scioscia is not the choice, either. If the Cubs flamed our and fired Maddon, I doubt JR would be willing to pay up for him, either. He’s undoubtedly more high valued by Binny’s Beverage Depot.

If McCann and Giolito can sustain their level of play...and it’s not the last guy in the bullpen if we trade two of high leverage relievers, it’s almost the entire bullpen, and that’s not as easy as one would think (see Sox problems finding a RFer or DH). If they’re suddenly going to open their wallets with a series of at least 2-3 $80-140 million contracts, sure. But if they do crash and end end up in the high 60’s for win count, one gets the feeling that will be the excuse to wait yet another year before pulling the trigger in free agency...playing it conservatively again because there are so many question marks in Kopech, Cease, Lopez, etc. Meanwhile, we have to go from the second worst defense to the opposite.

So basically we have the equivalent of C Lee to trade in Abreu...and are going to have the most fortuitous series of acquisitions in 15 years. Okay. Well, if Minnesota can supplement their young core, why not? Although the collective fwar or bwar of that group probably isn’t far off our current yearly total in 2019.