TomtheBombadil wrote:Cubswin11 wrote:You know that’s not true and cherry picked the overall point and he was worth -.7 WAR. So yeah that’s not a 4th OF’er
Honestly, it sounds really true to me. After that sample sizes and groups shrink, but yeah if there's 90 jobs, another 60 spots to OF reserves, and he's 97th among all guys who got the most PAs then yeah...I don't know how that would read otherwise? What's the expected WAR of a 4th OF? So far -.7 isn't and a hypothetical 1 WAR from another poster wasn't enough so we're talking already an almoswt 2 WAR swing
An expected WAR of a 4th OF’er is a lot higher than negative horsefeathering point 7. 268 players logged innings in the OF last year, he ranked 252nd. 99 players logged CF innings, he was 93rd. 177th of 188 OF with at least 100 PAs, 63rd of 66 CF'ers who got min 100 PAs. 36 of 36 of CF with min 350 PAs. This isn’t that hard dude. Finding an upgrade over that isn’t hard nor is it a reason to stick with a guy because “he’s only a 4/5th OF’er.” He horsefeathering sucks.[/quote]
You yourself called his style of offense "high variance." He went from a .32something BABIP in 2018, including a very productive first half, to a .255 BABIP. Now he's stuck at .255? I already offered a link to his past xBABIP and he wasn't getting really lucky or anything when things were going better for him, so yeah almost by definition that's a bounce-back candidate
Players BABIP dependent are high variance, but Almora is more than BABIP dependent since his batted ball profile sucks so much. It’s hard to see the highs getting all that high again with his profile. It certainly isn’t worth giving him the ABs to pray it works out.
Ah yes, the infamous Jon Jay/Ian Happ/Jason Heyward starting CF hydra Almora was totally expected to back up...Very foolish of me to forget that Almora was definitely not expected to become the starting CF with a 40 YO Jon Jay, the starting RF, and a 22 YO rookie Ian Happ still taking starts at 2B (28 that year) all definitely in front of him...I see all the reason to penalize Almora for then getting alot of PAs and starts on the way to what was his most productive ML season...Bad Almora! Usurper!
Jay and Happ put up more WAR than him in 2017, Happ and Heyward put up more WAR than him in 2018 and 19. You can see how the plan was for him to be the RHH caddy to them with some expanded time but he failed miserably as he was allowed to play more and he’s sucked vs LHP for 1.5 years.
Still this master stroke of signing 2 30+ YO bad and/or injured OFers to at least 5x the 2020 salary of Almora is terrible. Alot of bad spending to get a totally certain 103 wRC+ out of a guy who hasn't posted a .300 OBP since 2017. That is not the kind of move the Cubs need to make until ST, hardly the kind of move they should be prioritizing in December
This is more an indictment on Almora being so bad than it is Pillar being good but he brings far greater certainty and won’t cost more than $4-6 million. These are the exact margin improvements we need over last year. Him and Akiyama at $9-12 million combined with a little Heyward/Happ is a positive WAR CF rotation. Almora has lowered the bar so low that Pillar is a clear upgrade. I don’t know how you can call Pillar bad then still want to play Almora or think there’s any redeeming factors to him. Pillar is only going to cost $2.5-3 million more than him.
