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Maddux was coming off 3 seasons of 5.1, 5.8, and 7 fWAR when he hit free agency at age 26. And, since he wasn't a high strikeout guy, I'll throw in that his bWAR in 92 was a Trout-ian 9.1. What really made letting him walk after 92 extra egregious, though, was the fact that he came back to the Cubs...

Maddon was shocked to discover Albert Almora wasn't the answer for leadoff......or much else of use, really. Was it Maddon making the best roster he could? Or was it Maddon making a “You put this crap on my roster” type of statement by leading off the position player with the worst OBP on the team?...

I love that the owners are able to create an artificial spending ceiling, but that's capitalism... Uhm... That's not capitalism. That's the opposite of capitalism. That's why baseball needs the Federal anti-trust exemption in order to get away with it. When Tech companies - Apple, Google, Intel and...

stitchface wrote:"I'm more just upset that we gave away a huge piece of our team," Snell said. "He was the swag of our team. He lifted a lot of our position players up with just his presence and made other guys more swaggy."

Do the statheads on this site prefer fSWAG or bSWAG?

Effingham is rough but it does have a big ass cross on the highway to remind you you're horsefeathers. Effingham also has a fantastic record store called America’s Groove. It’s in the middle of an otherwise abandoned shopping mall. It’s surreal it’s like you’re in the middle of a post-apocalyptic z...

Went to Parkland College. A Champaign kid!!!

I would much rather have Yu at his remaining 4 year $81MM contract than Wheeler at 5 and $118MM.

Bertz wrote:https://twitter.com/BleacherNation/statuses/1201984347097763840

I really liked Nick, though I question the dominoes that would need to fall for his fit on the team to not be very awkward

It would be adding a CF and trading Schwarber (or somehow Heyward) that would do it.

Cubs fans still tripping over themselves to defend this guy, even as he’s shown the door The Venn diagram of fans who defend Russell but hate Kaepernick must be close to a single circle I'm on a University of Illinois message board - cleverly disguising myself by using the exact same user name - an...

Abreu and Odorizzi accepted their QO’s. I believe everyone else declined theirs or will. I was a little surprised the Twins QO’d Odorizzi. He’s smart to take it. He’ll make more this year than he would have during the first year of any multi-year, and then he’ll be able to get more as a free agent ...

Quirky, swaggy Yu is the best Yu.

Banedon wrote:Some familiar names/faces here.

I had to check... Gutierrez, Harris and Ward were never actually Cubs teammates. I could have sworn otherwise.

I don’t like the idea of giving a general manager a second bite at the apple on drafting a franchise quarterback. He screwed it up the first time, he’ll screw it up again. So I don’t know where the great Bears quarterback comes from, but I don’t think it’s going to come from Pace via the draft. I d...

I didn’t realize that Nats-Astros was only the second expansion team vs expansion team World Series and that the first one was only as recent as Royals-Mets in 2015.

That seems pretty crazy but speaks to how little post-season success some of the expansion franchises have had.

I wonder if David Ross is the choice, why they haven’t announced it yet. Yesterday would have been the perfect day to do it with the playoff game postponed. It wouldn’t have overshadowed a game. I suppose it could just be a contract negotiation thing. But the longer this drags out, the more it looks...

My grandparents lived in Arizona my entire childhood until they passed while I was in college. We visited them every summer and often on X-Mas break. We went hiking all the time. My grandpa’s property backed up to a big stretch of state park and we’d go quartz hunting. He eventually had a whole gard...

I'm not very impressed with Roberts the tactician(although admittedly that's in the playoffs which are a slightly different animal), but if I'm going to live up to my words about caring the most about player development, I can't ignore that the Dodgers have been the absolute gold standard at it. Ye...

Also, how many of the players at AFL/Short-A are viable prospects? How many warm bodies are floating in the minors? No other sport (outside of hockey, which has its own convoluted system of Junior/Minor league teams) has so many tiers of prospects below the big leagues Football and basketball hide ...

How much would a Jake Odorizzi/Wade Miley/Ivan Nova/Tanner Roark type really cost for a couple years? 2 years, $25MM? I’m frankly more concerned with Lester than I am with the Chatwood/Mills/Alzolay slot. Over the last three seasons he’s gone through stretches where he just didn’t have it. And with ...

This is.... interesting. https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/cubs/ct-chicago-cubs-joe-maddon-theo-epstein-20190928-quhoehqcwjfdtd6fktgb5cyf2m-story.html What a horsefeathers city to be in to find out you’re canned. There’s a shot bar on Laclede’s Landing within stumbling distance to the casino. S...

Your current 2020 bullpen pitchers under contract... Kimbrel, Ryan, and Wick. Whichever of Chatwood or Mills that isn't starting. Probably picking up Phelps' option. Then about 250-ish combined innings from some assortment of Webster, Maples, Wieck, Underwood, Norwood and random other AAA guys I'm f...

Imagine what would have happened if the 650 PAs that went to Almora, Russell, and Descalso went to someone who didn’t subtract value offensively. If anyone’s curious, you won’t want to look up the wRC+ numbers of those guys. ETA: let's make it 725 PAs and add in Tony Kemp. Brutal. Zobrist and Happ ...

Betances was going to be the top free agent reliever on the market this off season until these injuries. Now, he might not even get a contract offer until he can show he's healthy.

I think there's zero chance that nobody in baseball knew what was up with Mel Hall, or at least heard rumors/gossip/etc.. A picture of Mel Hall and one of his victims at the victim's high school prom appeared in the Yankee's 1991 yearbook, per this story... https://www.sbnation.com/2014/7/15/588359...