Baseball

New World Order: 2020 White Sox Previews – Yasmani Grandal

By Adam Hess 1342 0

We kick off our 2020 White Sox world takeover season preview series with the most exciting and probably the most impactful free agent signing by the White Sox in any of our lifetimes, Yasmani Grandal. As the first major domino of this past offsesaon to fall by signing bright and early – before Thanksgiving, even – for a club record $73-million over 4 years, Grandal was the first of many signs this winter that the White Sox are serious about winning (or at least serious about looking like they’re serious about winning) in 2020 and also are being taken seriously by big name free agents. Let’s dig into what we can expect from him this year:

2019 Stats (w/ Brewers)

.246/.380/.468, 28 HR, 77 RBI

5.2 fWAR, 2.5 bWAR, 6.1 WARP

17.2 BB%, 22.0 K%

.361 wOBA, 121 wRC+ .848 OPS

1 DRS, 20.1 FRAA, 79th-percentile framing

Last Week on Nitro: Grandal fell prey to baseball’s greedy ass ownership slow offseason problem prior to 2019, with the primary issue being the qualifying offer that the Dodgers extended to him meaning any team that signed him would have to sacrifice a draft pick for his services. That is still one of the stupidest rules in sports, but it exists and is daunting enough to some teams that it truly does scare some suitors off. Despite reports of a multi-year offer coming from the Mets, Grandal viewed that offer as below his market value (and may not want have wanted to play for the Mets, which is wholly understandable) and decided to bet on himself with a 1-year deal worth $18.25-million in Milwaukee.

The bet paid off in spades, as Grandal proved to be one of the most valuable players in baseball according to any WAR metric worth a shit – clearly what I mean is that you should just outright ignore that bWAR number above, as baseball reference has a major problem with valuing defense in their WAR, especially for catchers. He isn’t the world’s best hitter, but he is easily one of the most disciplined in the game, and the walk rate and OBP scream out as evidence. Both were among career highs for him, but you can still expect them to be incredible, but we will more to that in a moment. Overall, Grandal’s 2019 season was another strong one with numbers that were largely consistent with his overall career, and that level of consistency is what should really have you excited.

TOO SWEET (WHOOP WHOOP): The issue with dreaming on Grandal’s offense is that he’s been so damn good and so damn consistent in his career, and is 31 years old, so it’s hard to imagine it getting much better at this point. The main weakness in Grandal’s numbers throughout his career has been his unimpressive batting average, which really only the giargidiniera-soaked masses will bitch about, but in an ideal world you’d see him raise that up from a .246 last year and .241 career to something a bit closer to .260 in 2020. A good place to start would be to work that K-rate down a bit, as even in today’s game and even with his walk numbers, a 22% there is something you’d like to see drop a bit. If he can bring the strikeouts down and the batting average up, that OBP could flirt with damn near .400, and that would be downright erotic.

The real area where Grandal will be a huge upgrade for the Sox, though, is behind the dish. As I detailed in my fully-tumescent write up after the signing, while James McCann had a fine season last year, he was the worst overall framer in the AL season, while Grandal was the best in the Majors according to some publications. So overnight, the Sox go from the worst zone manager in AL to the best. On top of that, he is a well documented elite game planner and has been around some of the best pitchers in the game. Where this is going to prove invaluable is with the likes of Michael Kopech and Dylan Cease, who have some well documented control issues. Helping them improve their approach, delivery, and then stealing strikes behind the dish should serve as a huge boon, and in a best case scenario takes Cease from a struggling rookie last year to approaching his ceiling very quickly.

On top of that, Lucas Giolito is looking to take another step forward and build off a dominant 2019, and Reynaldo Lopez needs to have a bounce back year like Giolito just had. And to add one more log to the fire, looking back at Dallas Keuchel‘s career working with good and bad framers, he is far and away better with good ones (big surprise there). With combination of high-ceiling guys and reliable rotation arms. Grandal receiving all of these guys and helping the Sox rotation improve could allow them to be one of the best in baseball, and that would result in a whole lot of wins.

YOU FUCKED UP! YOU FUCKED UP!: The worst case scenario for Grandal this year is that he goes the way of the Nick Swishers and Adam Dunns of the world, falling off a cliff completely after joining the White Sox. His walk rate falls below 10%, his strikeouts go way the hell up, and all of a sudden the guy can’t tell the strike zone from the seating section formerly known as the Chris Sale K-Zone. Meantime, his framing falls apart and as such the pitching staff sucks ass.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. Again, he’s been so consistent in his career it’s a bit difficult to go too far down the idea of either extreme happening, though it’s certainly possible. But given his career numbers, I think the biggest concern when it comes to 2020 being a potential disappointment from Grandal is injuries derailing him. *knocks on wood*

BAH GAWD THAT’S GRANDAL’S MUSIC: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Grandal’s consistency throughout his career has been so damn reliable that it’s hard to imagine this season being anything other than extremely similar to last year. I would expect a regression in the walk-rate and, as a result, the OBP, but his career tells both should stay around or above 13.5% and .350 respectively. Along with that he’s gonna hit more than 20 but less than 30 homers and a similar number of doubles. He’s even tossed in two triples in each of the last two years, though don’t bet your house on that.

Where I really want to focus my prediction is on the impact he will have with the pitchers. While I don’t necessarily think he will make the hugely sudden difference for Cease and Kopech to go from promising-but-inconsistent to downright dominant right away, I think we are gonna see big improvement from them, though Cease’s may be more recognizable given that he’s gonna be with the big club all year and Kopech won’t. Overall I think Grandal is going to help this rotation be one of the better units in the American League and maybe even the best in the Central. With his bat and defense, you can reasonably expect another season of Grandal being worth more than 4.5 fWAR, and I will happily take that.

Baseball

Never Should Have Been That Hard

By Sam Fels 1724 0

The leadoff spot for the Cubs has been an overhyped black hole for a few years now. It was never that hard, but the Cubs kept making it so. And they made it so by sticking hitters that are either bad altogether (Almora, Descalso, whatever other idiot you can think of) or were struggling at the time that only made it worse thanks to the attention it got (Schwarber, Heyward, Happ). It also didn’t help that Dexter Fowler is a distinctively cool and handsome man whom we all loved and quite frankly no one was going to compare. You can’t really have Dex’s swag in the leadoff spot if you never get on base.

Still, the recent trends in baseball have been to move your best hitter in the #2 spot, because they get more ABs over a season that way. So it stands to reason that if you put your best hitter in the leadoff spot, he’ll get just many ABs and perhaps even more. The Red Sox won 108 games with their best hitter in the #1 spot in 2018. The Dodgers are going to bat that same guy in their leadoff spot this year. It’s not that revolutionary of a move.

Now you may say, “Hey there Fels, you stupid weak baby, Kris Bryant isn’t Mookie Betts!” And I would say, check this out, chumley:

.284/.385/.516  139 wRC+

.301/.374/..519  135 wRC+

I’m not going to tell you which is which, because as you can see, it doesn’t really matter. You might say that Betts has four seasons of 20 steals or more where Bryant only has one with more than 10, but are we really going to worry about stolen bases at this point in our lives? We are not, dear reader. Especially given that Bryant is a great baserunner without the steals.

Sure, if you only have a couple big time hitters, you probably don’t want to waste one at the top of the lineup and hope he can just hit a bunch of solo home runs before the next three guys make outs. That’s not the case for the Cubs. If we take Kris Bryant out of the equation because he’s leading off now, there’s still Rizzo, Baez, Schwarber, Contreras behind him, and all of them have been run producers at various times in their careers. And again, if Happ can come good and Heyward is restricted to the #6 or #7 spot and never see a left-handed pitcher, the lineup extends.

The case for Bryant at leadoff is easy. One, he gets on base (cue gif of Moneyball scouting table and pointing at Pete). He had the second-highest OBP last year even with the injury problems at .382. His career-mark is .385. That’s better than Rizzo’s .373, in case you wanted to see Rizzo up there (which would have been fine with me as well). Second, he’s fast. Probably the second-fastest player on the team behind Baez. That doesn’t mean he’s stealing 30 bases or something, but you can see a lot of innings starting with no one out and 1st and 3rd after Rizzo singles. Or scoring from second for Baez or Schwarber. Third, it plunges the pitcher right into it. Not time to “find it.” You have to be ready from the off. There’s going to be a fair amount of leadoff walks here.

Mostly, it gets someone else out of the spotlight. I think Schwarber is a decent solution up there too, given his OBP skills, but we’ve seen that movie and it’s the question he has to answer all the time. Let him be in the middle, and his only concern is to smash the shit out of the ball. That’s all he should worry about. It’s all he should have worried about batting leadoff, but here we are. It doesn’t add something to Ian Happ’s burden of trying to cement himself in the majors for good. Same goes for Hoerner if he’s actually here.

Bryant won’t care about that. One, he just doesn’t care about any of it, probably because not much sticks in that beautiful head of his (and he will match Fowler for handsomeness in the leadoff spot, which apparently is important). And also he’s got a track record. And it’s something the rest of the team doesn’t have to worry about.

This was an easy decision, but it was at least a departure from Joe Maddon for David Ross, as the former kept trying to crowbar anyone else but the guy it made the most sense to put up there. Ross will face bigger hurdles than this, but at least he’s getting this one right by quite simply, not getting too cute about it. And too cute was Maddon’s mantra basically.

 

 

 

Baseball

Everyone Sure Is Angry

By Sam Fels 1631 0

Spring training used to be a time of relief and happiness. Even those of us stuck up in the north, under mud and snow (though not for much longer. Thank you Global Warming!) would gleefully check sports sites and Twitter just for a glimpse of the sunshine and players taking batting practice in it. There would be 743 stories per day about someone being in the best shape of his life (this will be roughly 10 less than the number about Seabrook come September. Prepare now). Soon games will be on TV, and you would have tuned in merely to watch the warmth. You’ll probably soon start swearing at your friends’ photos on FB from Arizona or Florida at some ballpark. This is a Sarah Spain Special (luv u, Sarah. It’s ok, we’re honestly friends. No, seriously, we are!).

These days however, the only thing coming out of every spring training site is a bunch of vitriol, angst, frustration, and veiled threats directed at one team, the Astros, or one man, Rob Manfred.

I want to join in on calling Manfred a total dope. But the thing is, the commissioner of just about every sport is supposed to be a dope. Baseball killed having a real commissioner when they knifed Fay Vincent in the back and installed one of their own as commish. Really, ever since then, the job of a commissioner has been to maximize the owners’ profits and nothing else. And that pretty much has gone from every sport. Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue (arguably) were actual commissioners. They gave way to the Ginger Doofus. David Stern to Adam Silver has been about as close to a clean transition as you can get, and both Silver and Stern have their issues. The NHL has always been run by an idiot, because it’s formed by idiots.

So Manfred is essentially unequipped to deal with this. His job is TV and internet deals and squeezing players for money. Any rule changes we’ve seen is only to cater to TV, or at least it is in their own mind. He doesn’t have any idea how to run the actual game, and whatever he handed down to the Astros is only meant to have the appearance of doing something. He doesn’t have any idea, because it’s not in the job description anymore.

Which sucks, and perhaps this will cause the players to try and change the Commissioner’s job or role in the next CBA. But I doubt it.

And I think we all get it It does feel light that the only people to really pay for this were a manager or the GM. Perhaps in a just world, world class nincompoop Jim Crane would have to give up the team even for just his inattentiveness. But as we discussed when this came down, what are the logistics of suspending the players? You could justify suspending every single one on that 2017 team, either for participating or not speaking up. Look at what’s happening to Man City with UEFA right now (suck it, Hess). But then would the Astros have to play a couple weeks, a month, half a season, the whole thing with their AAA team? Formulate a team from what’s left on the free agent scrapheap? Maybe these are questions they should have had to answer and not have the commissioner do it for them, but here we are.

As far as stripping them of the title or give the rings back…does that really matter? Are the Dodgers going to have a parade now then? Do they get rings? Would they really want them? Do they feel like they “won” now? It feels good to say in the moment, but it doesn’t really do anything. I still remember the Fab Five, perhaps my favorite basketball team of all-time (only other contender were the Glove-Reign Man Era Sonics), going to the Final Four, even if the history books say they didn’t.

Still, it’s hard to believe that every player is blindsided by this. There’s footage of a couple pitchers in 2017 looking quizzically or worse at the Houston dugout in 2017 when they heard the song of the garbage can. Players move on, players talk. Where was the outrage then? Feels like this is all making up for something now.

Maybe it’s the hinting at the buzzers that’s really pissing players off, because that’s perceived as way over the line. As I wrote back when this broke, I don’t think the Astros themselves think this is a huge deal. You can steal signs from second base. You can from the dugout if the catcher drops them too low. You can study a pitcher tipping his pitches. You can see where just stealing them from the centerfield camera would be considered not that far from those, at least by some players. Although if a pitcher catches you stealing signs from second base, your friend at the plate is likely to end up with a Rawlings in his spine. So maybe it’s more of a no-no than I think.

Maybe it’s just because it’s the Astros, whom everyone hated before this anyway. And they are the hilt of new baseball thinking, that they’re the smartest guys in the room and they know better than you. It’s why they can cut huge numbers of staff and scouts because they have a “system” that you can’t conceive of. It’s why they can taunt female reporters about Roberto Osuna because they’re not bogged down by “ethics” or “morals” and happily so.

This is what happens when the business-bred hedge fund bros that have taken over MLB front offices over the past couple decades realize their true form. Because there’s no out of bounds where they come from. Mostly because those in charge are the same as they are and are only going to help them, which is what Rob Manfred is, isn’t he? There are no consequences, and they have too much money to face them anyway. Everything is fair as long as you win.

Perhaps this is where the wave breaks and rolls back. I hope it is, because baseball seems pretty sour these days. I don’t know how much more sour it can get before even more people stop caring, including those like me who used to really care. Baseball may never admit it due to the amount of money still in the game, but it would not be so hard for it to go the way of horse racing and boxing as sports of yore. It should be a time of boom, given the drop in participation in football and those athletes needing to go somewhere. But baseball is unmatched in fucking that up royally.

Baseball

Long Journey To The Middle

By Sam Fels 1665 0

We discussed this on the Desipio Podcast, but I wanted to delve into it a little more. It’s the actual aim of this proposed playoff system in MLB.

First off, it has to be said again that this leaking out of the idea, the trial balloon as it were, is almost certainly an attempt to get people talking about anything else than the Astros, or Jim Crane, or the Red Sox or Cubs simply raising a white flag. While baseball did hand out some contracts this winter and had some stories other than that, nothing has been as big as the sign-stealing scandal or the Betts trade, and as excited as Dodgers fans might be to have Mookie Betts, the optics of it still stink. This is some Wag The Dog tactics by MLB, I’m sure of it.

And we also know the real reason that MLB wants to expand the playoffs is more television money for more playoff games. I don’t know where the saturation point is for that, where people stop caring about playoff games because the number of them don’t make them special anymore. The NBA and NHL would be examples of MLB being a long way off from that, though that’s always been basketball’s and hockey’s system and maybe the perception or feeling is different when you’re changing to get to that. I guess we’ll find out one day.

The cover reason is to give more teams something to play for throughout the season. That’s what they’ll tell you, though. I would argue that the real reason is to give more teams more reason to just aim for 86 wins instead of 95.

That’s why, in hockey and baseball, you see front offices always pumping the idea, “You just have to get in.” With the Nationals being defending champs, it would appear that a champion can be somewhat random. Except that’s the exception. Look at recent history:

2018 – Red Sox: 108 wins

2017 – Astros: 101 wins (legitimate or not)

2016 – Cubs: 103 wins

2015 – Royals: 95 wins

2014 – Giants: Wildcard winners

2013 – Red Sox: 97 wins

So two of the last seven were “outside the box,” as it were. More than a quarter of the time, but still hardly anything like a 50-50 shot.

Now, perhaps with an expansion of middling teams getting a shot, you’d see more and more upset winners. Sheer numbers would tell you that, especially when the system isn’t really weighted to the better teams other than the top one, and they still would have three rounds to negotiate to win the World Series.

This is just an expansion of the “just get in,” theory, which really is just a justification for not putting in the work and resources to build a truly great team. What really is the reward under that system to build a team capable of winning 100 games when winning 88 only requires you to play three more games, and quite possibly all at home? And if more teams under this system come from the clouds to win a World Series, it would only justify staying in the middle more.

The counter to this is that the old, four-divisions-four-playoff teams left too many teams out of it by July and hurt interest and attendance. And I realize we’re never going back to that. But the landscape is so different now. For one, baseball teams aren’t nearly as beholden to their attendance figures for profit as they were. There’s far more avenues pouring into their coiffeurs now. Do they really care if they aren’t drawing that well in August?

Hell, right now we can safely say that Seattle, San Francisco, Colorado, Texas, Miami, Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, Pittsburgh have exactly dick to play for. That’s nearly a third of the league. You might be able to put Arizona and Cleveland on this list before a couple months in the season are played. So what’s an unacceptable number of teams not playing for anything? Hasn’t it always been this way? Do we think things would change there with four more playoff spots available? Curious.

But really what they want is not to be held to such a high standard. If you only allowed division winners into the postseason, then everyone would have to aim to get to Dodgers or Yankees or Astros-level (fairly or not). In order to sell excitement to your fans, you’d have to threaten that you’d actually threaten those teams one day soon.

I don’t know that I completely buy the idea that fans won’t show for a team that’s not going to the postseason completely. A good marketing a team along with at least a vision shown by a front office that had demonstrated a desire is enough for most fans to enjoy a day out at the park. It’s still baseball in the summer, isn’t it?

But that would require more work than these assholes are willing to put in. Why pay for a 100-win team when it’s easier to rig the system so you only have to pay for a 86-win one?

They’re all Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom.

 

Baseball

There Is No Perfect Playoff System

By Sam Fels 1421 0

I, much like you, made that sound that comes when you surprisingly belch up some vomit and have to swallow it back down when I saw the proposal for a new playoff system in MLB. It’s been obvious for a while that Rob Manfred doesn’t even like baseball, or if he does he doesn’t have any clue on how to make it better and more attractive to a new generation. So we’ll just turn it into The Bachelor or something? Who fucking knows. The more I think about it the more baseball is headed the way of horse racing, and it’ll be me and a bunch of altacockers watching it praying we can make it back to the car before shitting ourselves before too long.

When stuff like this comes out, and it’s been this way for longer than I’d care to think about, we all just dismiss it as “cash grab.” Because we know that’s Manfred’s job, to make the owners more and more money. And more playoff games mean more ratings for TV networks which means better ad rates and you know how the whole cycle goes. I mean, at some point there are so many playoff games they cease to be unique anymore and maybe ratings would flatten out but I guess we’re a long way off from that.

I don’t know if I’m getting my anarchist clothing on and preparing my bow but it does feel like the more we dismiss and acquiesce the more the things we love are altered or mutated beyond recognition and we’re the only ones who suffer. And yet it feels like there’s little we can do other than stop watching and/or caring, and again, we’re the only ones who get punished in that scenario. The owners and Manfred are unlikely to notice we’re gone. I doubt there will be a baseball revolution/uprising anytime soon. If there is, I have a whole list of people I’d sentence to death by exile.

Playoff expansion is all about keeping more fans of more teams interested throughout a regular season that feels too long at times. It’s here that many have pointed out you wouldn’t have so many teams drawing flies and the generally lost and bewildered only if you didn’t have so many bottoming out in a “rebuild,” most of which never actually top out either. Perhaps the introduction of a salary floor not all that far from the luxury tax would keep more teams competitive for the playoff spots you already have cut out? I guess I shouldn’t sit on a hot stove waiting for that to happen, though it feels like that should be one of the first bullet points from the MLBPA in new CBA negotiations. I guess the best I can hope for there is that Tony Clark can spell “salary floor.”

None of this fixes what’s really wrong with baseball, and even the playoff system. And I don’t know that there’s a solution to any of it. From where I sit, here are the problems:

  1. Wildcards are being competed for by teams with wildly different schedules, which isn’t fair.
  2. Baseball doesn’t really lend itself greatly to playoffs?

I’ll deal with the first and see if I’m even capable of dealing with the second later. Right now, a system that would be as near as perfect as you could get would just be the three division winners. Because they would really only be competing against teams playing the same schedule, and hence we get a fair idea of who was the “best” out of that. There’s no sliding records or whatever. Everyone in the Central played everyone else in the Central 19 times, and everyone else in the NL six or seven. Sure, there’s a little variance with these “natural interleague rivals” but I’m not going to kick a fuss over one or two games.

But even that wouldn’t completely work, if you were to give a bye to the team with the best record. Because they’ll have achieved that record playing a wildly different schedule than the other two teams, so we don’t have any idea how they compare really. And the six or seven games they had against each other wouldn’t be enough of a sample.

And of course, that wouldn’t be enough playoff teams to suit everyone. We’re not going back to four divisions and only the winners move on to the postseason, even if that makes the most sense.

I would say that expansion to 32 teams, which also seems inevitable somewhere around here, would allow for the opportunity for either eight divisions of four with only the winners moving on, or the truly revolutionary and close-to-my-heart tiered leagues of 16 teams with promotion and relegation. Fuck, in a vacuum, cutting the minor leagues loose and making them just lower league baseball could even add to this, where Des Moines and Charlotte could actually play their way into MLB II or whatever and compete with Pittsburgh and Detroit or whatever. But that’s about as galaxy-brained as it gets. Even though the Premier League’s popularity continues to grow and no one here is suggesting they change their ways.

But MLB won’t go for the eight-division look because someone will complain about the likelihood of one or two divisions being so much weaker than the others. This is what happened in the NHL. You’ll recall the current format was just supposed to be four divisions with no conferences, and four teams from each would make the playoff and then the four winners from there would be re-seeded for the semifinals. It sounded great, kept teams competing for things while playing the same schedule, and would have been at least unique. It was the players who balked, with the above reasoning. Which gave us this dumbass wildcard system.

What promotion/relegation fans are really trying to get at is keeping teams at every point in the standings competing for something. And I guess this is what this proposed MLB system takes a swipe at. Teams at the top are haggling over the bye, teams in the middle trying to get in. It doesn’t do anything for the bottom, which is the real problem, but I’ll let go of that dream. Right now, once the Dodgers get 10 games up on the Padres by what, May 1st, there really isn’t much for them to play for. Sure, the winner of the coin flip, which went excellently for them last year. But getting to miss a whole round probably has more advantage.

This always wades back into the meaning of the regular season, but that gets harder to define. When we had only four playoff teams, what did the regular season mean to teams in third through seventh? For every Braves-Giants ’92 epic, there were probably five pennant races that never actually developed as some 94-win team won by eight games and everyone knew it was over somewhere in August. Is that better? Maybe, I’m not sure either way.

If you’re like me and trying to figure out how to get the soccer model into American sports, essentially you need to keep in mind that along with avoiding relegation there’s “mid-card belts.” Like Champions League or Europa League places. As well as separate cup competitions. American sports simply don’t have these. Which is something the NBA is taking a look at, but the cup competitions don’t really work without the lower league teams competing. Now, let college teams and D-League teams take their shot and we might have something. Either way, it’s hard to juice the middle of the standings here. This is their attempt, as wrong as it may feel.

And really, we know that as dramatic as they can be, playoffs in baseball are weird. It’s kind of a different game than what we see in the regular season. Some sports lend themselves to that kind of thing or feel. I would say that hockey and basketball, but baseball and soccer don’t. It’s just the nature of the games. There’s no getting rid of them of course, but it’s not really the best way to determine a champion.

Baseball is all about how you negotiate so many damn games over six months and the accumulation of wins over that stretch. You can’t even use the same lineup every time, as you have to change pitchers. And then all of the sudden we flip a switch and one game matters over all, just over 0.5% of what you just played. It’s kind of injected drama and meaning.

Perhaps actual swift marketing men who loved the game could find a way to make the regular season more meaningful to people. Perhaps every sport could do more to make winning the regular season championship, the best test we have as flawed as it is, something to be celebrated. To separate it from the playoff champion. That’s beyond me, but until we do that, I don’t think anything is going to work perfectly.

This proposed system still sucks, though.

Baseball

Maybe It’s All Cole Hamels’s Fault

By Sam Fels 1727 0

With pitchers and catchers starting to trickle in to Mesa, or even the full set being there based on the pics flowing out, I’d like to start getting away from writing about luxury tax penalties and revenue sharing rebates and the like. The problem is its utterly impossible to do with the Cubs, because so much of what this season is gong to be has hinged and will hinge on that, and we’re still here.

I’ve spent the whole morning trying to reconcile these two pieces, one is Craig Edwards at Fangraphs today talking about how the Red Sox savings on trading Mookie Betts and David Price is really about just saving on payroll this year with the “savings” on penalties from taxes and revenue sharing not all that high. The other is from Brett Taylor a couple months back which set the Cubs world alight that really explained what was going on with the Cubs’ quest to get under the luxury tax this year. You probably read that one.

The conclusion of the latter was basically that the real punitive measures would arrive in 2021 if the Cubs didn’t get under the threshold this year, while Edwards is basically saying for a team like the Red Sox (and by extension the Cubs, because they come from the same neighborhood) the difference is basically negligible. There are a lot of variables, and mostly ones I can’t straighten out in my head.

Basically, what I can conclude from my addled brain is that it wasn’t so much actual payroll the Cubs have avoided the past two winters, but long-term commitments that would have left them with no choice but to be over the luxury tax this season and next. Perhaps if Bryce Harper or Manny Machado would have signed a one-year deal, they would have done that. Clearly, that was an impossibility. Which really means we can’t pass final judgement on what the Cubs are doing, though we can come pretty close, until we see what 2021 has in store. And that’s both if they manage to get under the tax this year or if they don’t.

What’s also clear is that the Cubs real crime was going over the tax last year and having a mediocre season. Which is exacerbating the perception of the problem. Had the Cubs won the division last year (which they still should have) and then say taken the gift the Braves gave the Cardinals in Game 5 in the same fashion before getting brained by the Nats, the angst is probably a lot lower. But because of the way the season ended, the urgency of the fanbase to claw back what was lost or not achieved can’t be matched by the front office. Which is piling on top of 2018, which came down to bad sequencing. Again, having one good day against either the Brewers or Rockies then instead of two bad ones chances the perception. While no one would ever be happy with a “step back” at any point, perhaps you could stomach it just a touch easier if there were one or two more playoff series wins banked than the current five the Cubs have over the past five seasons.

Which makes you wonder what the Cubs would be doing now if they hadn’t exercised Hamels’s $20M option last year. Had they known he would go on the shelf for a month or more (not hard to forecast given his age) and then be gasoline when he came back, they clearly wouldn’t have. That doesn’t mean the Cubs would have simply lost $20M on their payroll, been under the tax, and not have to worry about third-straight-year penalties before a new CBA kicks in as they are now. There still would have been a hole in the rotation, and perhaps they would have just filled it with Chatwood, and probably been even worse than they were, at least in the stretch when Hamels was healthy.

But that’s the rub. They were kinda shit anyway, and now have to go through all these austerity measures without any recent glory to ease the pain. And you and I are left to identify what is the number on financial losses, or rebates gained really, that we can find acceptable for the Cubs to justify whatever it is they’re doing now. That’s impossible to do without seeing their books, which we’re never going to.

I heard Sahadev Sharma on the Effectively Wild podcast today say that ideally, at least to Theo, he would get to pull a Yankees 2016 and somewhat rebuild on the fly, flogging big pieces midseason in a down year to turn around quickly. Except that oversells what the Yankees got for Chapman and Miller. Yes, they got Gleyber, but he didn’t turn the Yankees around on his own. For Miller, they got Clint Frazier whom they barely use and Justus Sheffield whom they punted for James Paxton which worked out ok for 150 innings.

The major contributors to the Yankees were already in the system or there (Judge, Gardner, Sanchez, Tanaka) or acquired cheaply or on the market (Chapman again, Green, Ottavino, Happ, Urshela), and they didn’t even get anything from Stanton (whom they essentially just bought) or Severino (their product). It’s not that easy.

The Yankees ended up winning 84 games that year (sound familiar?), but they had much more ready to rise the following season. The Cubs don’t have an Aaron Judge in waiting to arrive next year to join whatever the haul might be for a midseason trade of Kimbrel or Quintana or Bryant. They have like, Brailyn Marquez. And what they do have that could blend in 2021 with whatever they get from whatever they throw overboard this July is only around for one or two years. It’s not long term like the Yankees were locked in for.

Basically, as we get ready to start this season, it’s clear that everyone’s to blame. Welcome to Cubs baseball.

Baseball

Hoping For An Opener, If It Even Matters

By Sam Fels 1598 0

There’s such a defeated feeling when talking about on-field matters with the Cubs. They don’t seem too interested in making the actual play on the field all that inspiring, so why should we feel all that inspired about it. Cubs Insider’s Evan Altman kind of nails it here, where the Cubs haven’t chosen any path this or last offseason and hence it’s hard to get excited about a team that’s sitting in the middle of the sidewalk like a tired and whiny toddler.

But you know, it’s better than talking about what size tomato I’d throw at Tom Ricketts these days, so I’m going to try again before we actually get to spring training, which is very close. I’ve gone over how the lineup could actually be good, even really good, if Ian Happ can be more what his numbers look like after his last week of the season than just being what he was before that last week. It’s not a great idea to have an entire team’s offensive fortunes hinge on a barely third-year player, but this is where we are.

The rotation…should at least be solid. Everyone hates Jose Quintana, which makes me empathize with him because hey, been there, but he’s a solid piece at worst. Darvish and Hendricks are good, if not better than that, and Lester is at least going to take the ball and sweat. But even with his contact-rates against starting to turn ugly, it’s hard to believe the Lester will go through another season with a .347 BABIP against. He should be, basically, fine, especially as a #4 starter.

So the Cubs have a hole at #5. And I’m fairly sure what they’re going to do is the very easy, uncreative, stuff Tyler Chatwood there and pray he doesn’t walk a marching band to first. But it doesn’t have to be this way, especially with teams most likely carrying 13 pitchers for the whole season with the rosters going to 26 now.

The Cubs should use that fifth day as an “opener” day, because it keeps some pitchers as available the rest of the schedule which the Cubs will need. I’m looking at the model for this, which is Tampa. Granted. Tampa has to use an opener and be creative in their usage because they might actually not be able to afford a whole rotation whereas the Cubs simply won’t afford one. But hey, again, here we are.

So last year, the Rays used Ryan Yarbrough, Yonny Chirinos, Jalen Beeks, as multi-use and multi-inning weapons out of the pen. The first two has more than 10 starts, and sometimes were just used as starters but sometimes just once through the lineup. Basically, what we’re looking for is two or three guys who can throw 100 innings, both from the bell and out of the pen. And the Cubs have these guys.

I’ve bleated on about Chatwood, and the only way the Cubs could keep Adbert Alzolay healthy is to use him for no more than 100 innings. But using him as a simple one-inning guy also seems a waste. Duane Underwood Jr. is another candidate, as he threw 100 innings combined last year between Iowa and the Cubs, though he very well might be the definition of a “4A” guy. Alec Mills or one or two other punters the Cubs trot out in Mesa/out of their system might find success merely burning through a lineup once.

It would also be how you sequence this. Lester is unlikely to pile up six and seven-inning starts, so you might want to slot him between Darvish and Hendricks for the season (if you assume that Darvish is going to gobble up the innings, which you shouldn’t). That way your multi-inning pieces can get a couple days between Lester’s start and that fifth slot that is nebulous at this point. But they have enough to get through that fifth spot by just throwing shit to the wall.

The whole roster is going to need creative use to maximize what it is even to just get to July 31st and force the front office into some decisions. Heyward can’t play against lefties, but then really Schwarber shouldn’t either (though you can get away with it), so who the fuck is gonna play the outfield then? When do you use Bote? What happens if Hoerner isn’t ready? Now my head is spinning.

One of the (few) disappointments with Joe Maddon was that he was pretty straight-laced when it came to managing a pitching staff. Starters, then set-up guys, then closer. Sure, he didn’t have a problem shuffling the lineup and rotating guys in and out, and that’s cool. But it would kind of suck if the Cubs punted Maddon aside only to bring in Ross to be as boring, especially when they clearly have a hole they need to cover up.

Here’s hoping.

Baseball

The System Is Broken…But Maybe Only Locally?

By Sam Fels 1540 0

Someone always says it better than you. So let me allow The Ringer’s Michael Baumann do it for me…

This trade is a disgrace for the Red Sox and for the league. I don’t understand why the owner of such a prestigious ball club—a de facto public institution—would charge his baseball operations department with ridding the team of a once-in-a-generation player when he could keep that player and continue to rake in unspendable profits. It’s such a mind-bogglingly greedy and self-defeating move that I resent being made to try to understand it.

It’s been 100 seasons since the Red Sox sold their best player in such a transparent cash grab. If there’s any justice, they’ll have another 86 years to regret it.

You can copy and paste this when and if Tom Ricketts gets his way on Kris Bryant. Although with the Dodgers out of the market on Bryant now (you’d hope but the fact that they probably still have the pieces to do that if they wanted is frightening and depressing), the Braves really are the only team with the juice to even contemplate it and they don’t even need to. You can fuck right off with the Mets, Nationals, and Phillies. Ain’t gonna happen. Also seeing what the return for Betts was–one of the few players clearly better than Bryant–should show everyone just how stupid the idea of trading Bryant is.

Anyway, Baumann is right. The Red Sox have the most expensive ticket in baseball. Which they sell every single one of. Unlike the Cubs, they have a functional network of their own and have for years, with none of the silliness in distribution that the Dodgers have gone through. They are an institution not just in a city, but an entire region of the country. They practically own everything from central Connecticut north. Oh, and FSG just happen to own one of the richest soccer clubs in the world.

(Full disclosure, I profit personally, emotionally, if FSG is indeed sacrificing their baseball success for soccer success, and also when my Red Sox fans friends finally suffer for once. Now that’s out of the way…)

They do not suffer for cash. This is not a “can’t afford” Mookie Betts. This is a “won’t afford.”

Most of the offseason, you’ve seen me rant and rave here about the behavior of the Cubs and the Red Sox. Make no mistake, trading Mookie Betts is a baseball crime, especially when all you get back are a moody and possibly tool-ish young outfielder, and someone who probably projects as a Josh Hader-type reliever at best, and of course FINANCIAL FLEXIBILITY, which is going  on every jersey of every child from Quincy to Maine I’m sure (along with the #69, because that’s the sense of humor in New England).

Betts is just about the only player on the planet who can claim to inhabit the same atmosphere as Mike Trout. Mookie-types come around once a generation. You don’t peddle them simply because you can’t be bothered to pay their expense. You should dream of having the opportunity to pay that expense.

You’ve heard all this before. The system is clearly broken…though….everywhere?

It’s easy to point to Boston or the Cubs as proof that something is off when the richest teams are like, “Nah, I’m good.” And something is wrong when teams like Pittsburgh or Colorado or Florida or one or two others aren’t even trying, given what the industry’s profits are.

But would fans in Cincinnati think the system is broken right now? Or Philly (even though they’re going to win 82 games again because it’s law)? The Mets are just incompetent, not so much evil. Well, evil too but you get my meaning. Anaheim? The Rangers were after everyone too. Maybe those in Milwaukee would? On the Southside?

Certainly no one in LA would, but we’re years from their due date. The reason you hire a GM out of Tampa like Andrew Friedman or Chaim Bloom is not only are they exquisitely talented at spotting and producing talent, but they do it for cheap. They had to, and now the Dodgers and Red Sox are hoping they can do it with bigger budgets but without using all of the bigger budgets. Do we know what the Dodgers will do when the bills come due? Cory Seager is two years from free agency, and that’s what Gavin Lux is for. Mookie might walk, but who else do they have to pay? Bellinger is still four years from free agency. Buehler isn’t even into arbitation yet. Muncy is three years from free agency. And in the meantime, Justin Turner and Kenley Jansen come off the books to the tune of over $40M. The Dodgers may never have to spend serious money on payroll.

The problem, obviously, is that MLB has a luxury tax but no luxury floor. As Joe Sheehan pointed out, on some level it’s probably fucking tiresome to FSG, or the Steinbrenners, or the Ricketts family to pay the tax and watch so many teams just pocket the cash. What’s the point? Would they feel differently if that cash had to be used on players for those teams? Or if those teams had to pay some penalty for not spending up to some level? Somehow I tend to doubt it.

Still, I’m a Cubs fan and I live here and that’s what matters to me most. And the Red Sox are in the similar situation. This isn’t about staying solvent. It’s just about the degree of profit they want to make. And until they open their books, there’s no reason to believe a word any of them say. There’s no reason to believe that a $250M or $300M payroll would cause John Henry or Tom Ricketts to make less money for themselves than you or I would see in 11 lifetimes.

But Henry can point to four parades over 15 years. In a city as championship drunk as Boston is, they probably will only sell a handful less tickets. They’ll get away with it. And that’s probably what’s more infuriating about it all.

Baseball

The F- You World Tour

By Sam Fels 1951 0

I’m not suggesting that Anthony Rizzo will keep a cardboard-cutout of a naked Tom Ricketts in the clubhouse next year, that the Cubs will slowly reveal with every win. And if they actually did that’s probably more of a morale killer which will end up with the 82-win season the front office and ownership seem so desperate to have to prove that this team’s window is over after just six seasons and they have to blow it all up–i.e. save money. But then again, I’m not in the business of predicting what Anthony Rizzo would do to entertain himself.

I mentioned it here in passing last week when talking about the Kris Bryant grievance being over, but when the Cubs make it to Mesa, Bryant trade or no, one thing that should be the focus for everyone covering them is just where this team is mentally. To me, I think it could be a fascinating study.

Because it could go one of two ways. What we do know is that the core of this team–Rizzo, Bryant, Baez, Contreras, Schwarber (yeah I’m including him so stuff it)– have spent the winter either hearing their names in trade rumors, or hearing their close friends’ names in rumors, having their offer to talk about extensions to stay here forever squashed, or being offered extensions that clearly weren’t up to acceptable standards. What we can say for sure is that these players, who y’know, won the most famous championship in town just slightly over three years ago, have spent the winter hearing that they’re pretty much not good enough and need to be reshaped if not totally rebuilt. You can throw Darvish, Hendricks, Lester on to this as well if you’d like.

While they could feel any way about it, you’d have to think they all think at the very least that’s pretty goddamn weird. They’ve basically been bus-tossed by an ownership and front office they were handpicked to justify not so long ago. They were the chosen ones, and really in what amounts to not much more than a blink of an eye, they’ve been told in various ways to shove off.

So where does that leave them this season? You can easily see where Rizzo, the unquestioned backbone of this team, closes ranks and keeps it about just the 26 guys in the clubhouse and a manager who’s still freshly out of said clubhouse, point out that their bosses have made it clear they only have two years or less together because they’ve totally given up on the idea of keeping them together because they’re cheap so they might as well make the most of it. So they play on in spite of their owner and F.O. and are in first come the trade deadline and really give no one any choice. And this team, as weirdly constructed as it is now, is more than capable of that.

And you can just as easily see this team thinking, “Well they don’t believe in us, they certainly don’t want to pay us, and in two seasons we’re pretty much all out of here anyway,” and go completely in the tank without the support of an entire organization pulling in the same direction. You can understand why they might feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them. And if only Baez feels like he’s going to get paid what he’s earned, just why would any of the rest of them sell out for this organization that is in the process of selling them out?

Both seem just as plausible.

If I had to guess though, and maybe this is where the hiring of Ross comes in, I would shade to the former. You can see Ross easily drumming up everyone to row in the same direction with middle fingers raised, even if they know it’s only for a limited time. This team scrapped together 95 wins two years ago with a battered team, had two bad days in a row and were called losers for it. They had a rough go of it last year because their management left them short of a bullpen and bench simply because, and now are being told they’re past it. That has to sting some pride, if nothing else.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what the relationship is between players and front office. I don’t think the players much care what goes on at the ownership level, as they wouldn’t see Tom Ricketts nearly as much as they do Theo and Jed. And it used to feel like that was all pretty harmonious. Certainly Theo has bosses that he can’t just outright disobey, but he also wasn’t brought here to do two rebuilds or to discard the players he unearthed simply because his bosses don’t want to pay them what they’re worth. And yet we haven’t heard a word of discord from them. Would the players now feel he doesn’t have their back? That he finds them just as disposable as the owner does?

Maybe Theo genuinely doesn’t care. Maybe he’s getting paid so handsomely, with his place in Cooperstown pretty much assured, and just enjoys it here so much he’ll go along with anything. Maybe the two years left on his contract means he’s already planning his exit and he’s not going to raise a fuss before the clock runs out. As media savvy as he is, if he were upset about having to claw at the team he built simply to please his greedy and idiotic ownership, you’d think something would have leaked out by now. Or maybe he draws enough water that he can just stall out until spring training. There’s a lot we don’t know.

Certainly leaves us fans in the middle too. I ask myself, and have been asked my friends who aren’t Cubs fans, how we all continue on like this. But it’s still an easy group of players to root for. They’re still very easy to like, if they remain here as is for this season. Hopefully they feel the same way, and do it for themselves. That feels like just about the only hope this season.