Offseason rumors/discussion thread

TC in Mississippi said:

There re likely several things going on here 1) This sounds like a FO hire. Iopace worked for the Cubs so they know his philosophy and he's said to be closer to John Mallee than Chili Davis. We all figured that would be the general direction so no surprise 2) With Maddon going into a contract year it was always going to be tough to land a big name so you'd be left with an up and comer or a guy like Dave Magadan (who had been mentioned a lot) who hadn't worked in a bit 3) I'd pay attention to who tehy hire as the assistant hitting coach and their philosophies and specialties. In this case that might be important.

It's tough to look at a hitting coach on a bad team. There just isn't much talent there so the FO was obviously looking at other things.

https://www.cubsinsider.com/2018/10...oking-like-cubs-choice-for-hitting-coach-gig/

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poor guy is not even deserving of his own thread, I guess its one and done.

anotheridiot said:

poor guy is not even deserving of his own thread, I guess its one and done.

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Cubs just hired him...

anotheridiot said:

poor guy is not even deserving of his own thread, I guess its one and done.

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I'm not sure any hitting coach needs his own thread. Listen, Davis m ight have been an issue but more often than not hitting coaches aren't that important. Most of these guys have their own hitting coaches they use in the offseason and consult with during the season. The hitting coach is just a guy who acts as a supplemental advisor on a veteran club.

chibears55 said:

Cubs just hired him...

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Is there a waiting period for getting one's own thread?

beckdawg said:

Consider me underwhelmed. Ranges hit .249/.321/.423 for non-pitchers from 2016-2018 for a 93 wRC+ playing in an offensive oriented park.

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Meh...it's getting more and more apparent that these guys are just filling a slot. I doubt his presence will mean much of anything. The players need to perform. I mean Davis came from a team that scored almost 900 runs and hit over .280 on his watch......how did he work out here?

beckdawg said:

Maybe but it's not exactly like the guy is a slam dunk no doubt hire. And those numbers were with Beltre playing 366 and Andrus playing 402. Lucroy went there and got a hell of a lot worse. Mazara hasn't really progressed on his progress hype. I question the real impact a hitting coach has but even acknowledging that it doesn't seem like the rangers offense was pointed in the right direction.

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People considered Chili a slam dunk, no doubt hire. How did that work out?

beckdawg said:

So I started today wondering if the cubs FO is just worse than Houston's. I'll spare you a lengthy conversation about how deep into the rabbit hole I went but spoilers.... I'm not sure they are. One thing struck me as really interesting. Houston had 3! position players over 2 fWAR. Bregman was a huge 7.6 fWAR. Altuve was 4.8. And Springer was 2.9. Next highest is Correra at 1.6. Then I looked at their pitching... Verlander(6.8), Cole(6.3), Keuchel(3.6), Morton(3.1) and McCullers Jr.(2.5).

The reason this struck me as interesting was it feels like the cubs have a lot of shit wrong based on the way the season ended. But the cubs had 7! position players over 2 fWAR. Baez(5.4), Zobrist(3.6), Schwarber(3.2), Rizzo(2.9), Contreras(2.6), Bryant(2.3) and Heyward(2.0). And that's with Rizzo and Bryant having down years. Those two could easily match Bregman and Altuve. In terms of pitching, the cubs got 3.2 from hendricks, 1.6 from Lester(4.39 FIP really dinged him despite good results), 1.5 from Hamels, 1.4 from Q and 1.4 from Monty.

I think you can perhaps argue the Astros have a better starting staff than the cubs did but overall the difference in the teams statistically to me looks like bad luck vs good luck or at least meeting expectations. Cubs had the 5th most fWAR by position players with the dodgers being the only NL team better. FWAR didn't like their starters as they pitched better than their FIP but in terms of ERA, cubs finished 10th in starter ERA and 6th in the NL. Their bullpen ERA was second in the majors and 1st in the NL.

I guess what I'm getting at here is given how the season ended it's easy to think they need to retool a lot. And clearly there are situations the cubs hitters don't do well with. But they did all of what I listed above without a healthy Darvish and without their two best hitters having typical seasons. I mean that's legitimately about as bad as a season can go and they still won 95 games. If you add a Machado or Harper to this team.... christ...

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You think the difference between Houston and Chicago is good luck/bad luck? C'mon man. Put the Astros against the Cubs in a playoff series and the Astros would kick our fucking asses to Timbuktu. And it's not because of luck. JFC!

beckdawg said:

Consider me underwhelmed. Ranges hit .249/.321/.423 for non-pitchers from 2016-2018 for a 93 wRC+ playing in an offensive oriented park.

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Was Texas loaded with talent?

kapooncha said:

You think the difference between Houston and Chicago is good luck/bad luck? C'mon man. Put the Astros against the Cubs in a playoff series and the Astros would kick our fucking asses to Timbuktu. And it's not because of luck. JFC!

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Are you playing for the Cubs? If not, the Astros aren't going to kick "your fucking ass".

Astros have the better pick for years. And was a tumble down effect from drafting. Now they missed on 2 draft picks but did better over all targeting major league quality talent.

The 2 biggest moves were in trades.

Theo has screwed up plenty. Winning 2016 has given him a free pass in general from the train wreck start. Drafting wise is questionable. Fist pick was on but the 2nd and on nothing has come out of it. So it really feels like their methods are lacking. Add to it the ones that do make it were from trades. Godley is a case in point here.

So over all they did some good things in modernization of the team and winning a ring. But there has been a fair share of failure mixed in.

I really think that they need to accept change in some form because failing in the draft over and over is unacceptable

CSF77 said:

Astros have the better pick for years. And was a tumble down effect from drafting. Now they missed on 2 draft picks but did better over all targeting major league quality talent.

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They missed on more than 2 draft picks. Appel and Aiken were pretty big whiffs going 1-1. Bryant want 2nd overall in the Appel draft. Aiken didn't even sign. They also took Delino DeShields, Jr. 8th overall in 2010. I'll spare you the lengthy dive i did into their draft but it's not that impressive given the number of high round picks they had.

CSF77 said:

Astros have the better pick for years. And was a tumble down effect from drafting. Now they missed on 2 draft picks but did better over all targeting major league quality talent.

The 2 biggest moves were in trades.

Theo has screwed up plenty. Winning 2016 has given him a free pass in general from the train wreck start. Drafting wise is questionable. Fist pick was on but the 2nd and on nothing has come out of it. So it really feels like their methods are lacking. Add to it the ones that do make it were from trades. Godley is a case in point here.

So over all they did some good things in modernization of the team and winning a ring. But there has been a fair share of failure mixed in.

I really think that they need to accept change in some form because failing in the draft over and over is unacceptable

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I think most criticism of Epstein can be summed up as, "Theo Epstein: Most overrated executive in MLB, except for all the others."

fatbeard said:

I think most criticism of Epstein can be summed up as, "Theo Epstein: Most overrated executive in MLB, except for all the others."

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Mixed bag more so.

He had short comings in Boston also. Great run that he bailed on. Team is still doing well.

I personally believe that he did what needed to be done. Got the front office running proper. The Rickett's got the infrastructure fixed.

Over all it is a far better situation than what they inherited. That doesn't change the fact that out side of the first pick there has been nothing to speak of as far as up welling talent. And the only talent that they had they traded. Godley etc.

So there has been far more miss than hit and that falls under evaluation of talent.

Curious what objective measurement are people using to call a "miss" on first round picks?

All of his first round picks that have worked through the system are currently contributing on the MLB roster.

Almora, almost made the ASG this year
Bryant, MVP
Schwarber, WS hero, 3 plus WAR player
Happ, still work in progress but still has time to be a hit.

Pierce Johnson and Paul Blackburn are the definite misses. So that seems to be a 66% hit rate. if we count supplemental first rounders, which is a stretch. So I see it as a 100% hit rate so far.

CSF77 said:

Mixed bag more so.

He had short comings in Boston also. Great run that he bailed on. Team is still doing well.

I personally believe that he did what needed to be done. Got the front office running proper. The Rickett's got the infrastructure fixed.

Over all it is a far better situation than what they inherited. That doesn't change the fact that out side of the first pick there has been nothing to speak of as far as up welling talent. And the only talent that they had they traded. Godley etc.

So there has been far more miss than hit and that falls under evaluation of talent.

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I don't really agree with this. To start with, they've hit home runs in IFA. And I'm not just talking about Gleyber and Eloy. Paredes was signed for like $600k and is now a top 50ish prospect. Ademan and Amaya from the 2015 class look good and there's another few names I expect to pop out from that class sooner or later. And sure you can say that's not the draft. But the draft is an entirely different animal. For one thing, the cubs don't get compensatory picks like st. louis does for no good reason. And in fact they've lost picks signing guys for the MLB team further reducing their chance of success.

Ultimately the draft is about how much slot money you have to spend. You look at the one draft where they were able to save money they pulled Schwarber, Cease and Steele out of that draft. 2012 I'll give them a pass on given it was their first year with the team and rules had just changed. 2013 they had to pay Bryant every bit of his slot. 2015 they gambled on Hudson and Wilson but they haven't developed yet. 2016 they didn't have a pick until the third round. And the past 2 years they've actually come away with a lot of interesting pitching in the mid rounds. And in terms of missing on Hudson/Wilson, frankly the only team that did really well at that potion of the draft was the Cardinals who hacked another teams draft evaluation. They pulled out Hicks/Bader/DeJong in those mid rounds but there's no one else in the first 10 rounds or so I feel like was even worth really talking about thus far.

To me the issue with drafting isn't just one year. You have to build a foundation before you can gamble. In 2012, they simply had no org depth in terms of pitching. Nothing amounted to anything. It's only after this past season where I feel like there's enough depth at all levels of the farm to feel comfortable with them being a bit more risky on higher upside guys. And that also pertains to the parent club because if you aren't deep there you're just trading away good stuff you do draft/sign in IFA. That largely was the problem early in the tenure. When you're having to trade for Ian Stewart because you have literally nothing better to plug in with ARam left that's a problem.

I feel like people view this on too short a timeline. 5 years is the bare minimum. That's how long it takes for your first year draft to reach the majors if they are HS players unless they turn out insanely good. And you're clearly going to miss on some picks. So, a more realistic timeline to talk about a farm system is 10 years IMO. Obviously not every GM is going to get that long but that's really the problem. I also don't think we should discount the fact that they haven't missed on any of their first picks and that's to an extent including Hatch who was a third round pick. The worst of those is probably Almora who was looking like a potential all star in the first half of the season. Hatch and Little might be worse eventually as they haven't amazed me yet but they still have time. Regardless, getting it right at the top of the draft is far more impactful than than missing some picks later.

JP Hochbaum said:

Curious what objective measurement are people using to call a "miss" on first round picks?

All of his first round picks that have worked through the system are currently contributing on the MLB roster.

Almora, almost made the ASG this year
Bryant, MVP
Schwarber, WS hero, 3 plus WAR player
Happ, still work in progress but still has time to be a hit.

Pierce Johnson and Paul Blackburn are the definite misses. So that seems to be a 66% hit rate. if we count supplemental first rounders, which is a stretch. So I see it as a 100% hit rate so far.

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Who said first round. I was looking at the body of the drafts where they targeted safe pitching prospects in general.

That said this year they gambled some with picks 2-4 so there is that bit and they don’t look like filler types. But Johnson etc has been the norm not the exception. All low ceiling types. Cease was the highest ceiling guy that they drafted. Traded him. So there is that. Godley broke out with Azi. Again another trade.

TC in Mississippi said:

I'm not sure any hitting coach needs his own thread. Listen, Davis m ight have been an issue but more often than not hitting coaches aren't that important. Most of these guys have their own hitting coaches they use in the offseason and consult with during the season. The hitting coach is just a guy who acts as a supplemental advisor on a veteran club.

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This is spot on. The days of a hitting coach being just a hire who puts a ball on the tee for a pro are gone, but they have to be really careful how they approach and help players.

CSF77 said:

Who said first round. I was looking at the body of the drafts where they targeted safe pitching prospects in general.

That said this year they gambled some with picks 2-4 so there is that bit and they don’t look like filler types. But Johnson etc has been the norm not the exception. All low ceiling types. Cease was the highest ceiling guy that they drafted. Traded him. So there is that. Godley broke out with Azi. Again another trade.

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So they have hit on pitching, they just aren't on the team anymore. That's kind of what is supposed to happen when trying to contend every year.

JP Hochbaum said:

So they have hit on pitching, they just aren't on the team anymore. That's kind of what is supposed to happen when trying to contend every year.

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Trading drafted players does not equal missing in the draft.

Brandon Hyde a finalist for the Toronto Managerial job, also interviewed with Rangers, Angels and Twins.