Recent comments

crunch 1 week 2 days ago (view)

m.busch out here bunting for a hit with the infielders back.

it worked.

Arizona Phil 1 week 2 days ago (view)

Cubs recall RHSP Hayden Wesneski and select RHRP Colten Brewer from AAA Iowa (Brewer was Iowa's closer), option Luke Little and Daniel Palencia to Iowa, and transfer Julian Merryweather to the 60-day IL.  

BTW, Brewer is out of minor league options in case that becomes an issue at some point.

Also, now that Merryweather has been transferred to the 60-day IL, he cannot be reinstated any earlier than June 5th. 

Dolorous Jon Lester 1 week 2 days ago (view)

Busch has been great so far, but the Dodgers are one of the orgs I’m always leery of trading with. They’re so savvy about their internal scouting.

videographer 1 week 2 days ago (view)

Here is an interesting thought:  There seems to be an assumption that the Cubs had to trade 2 prospects to get Busch with Almonte thrown in to even out the trade.  What if the initial trade was Ferris for Busch, but Hoyer wanted Almonte (a cheap RP) and Hope was the ask from the Dodgers.   This scenario makes the trade more complicated to ponder the future ramifications.  

Arizona Phil 1 week 2 days ago (view)

Zyhir Hope and Reggie Preciado were co-MVPs at Cubs AZ Instructs last fall, and every MLB organization had scouts at the AZ Instructs games so Hope was well-known to everybody (and was clearly a Cubs Top 30 prospect with a bullet). 

https://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-2023-arizona-instructional-league-s…

azbobbop 1 week 2 days ago (view)

I can’t speak to how many organizations had newfound interest in Zyhir Hope but I did talk to a Dodger scout who told that the Ddodgers always had their on him. 

I hardly think of my self as a “scout” but I saw a beautiful smooth left hand swing, easy power,  an aggressive base runner as in very limited action, a good defensive player. He certainly caught my attention, moreso than anyone else on the ACL team last year.

George Altman 1 week 2 days ago (view)

Ditto. The can DFA him when they activate Taillon.

crunch 1 week 2 days ago (view)

cade horton with his 2024 AA debut of 4ip 4h 0bb 4k, 1r/0er is followed up even better...

4ip 1h 1bb 5K, 0r/er

he's still on a pitch count restriction, btw.  he probably could have gone 6+ innings in both outings if he was off a leash.

crunch 1 week 2 days ago (view)

okay, officially done with hendricks as a starter.

dunno if counsell is there, but i'm there.

Bill 1 week 3 days ago (view)

That pretty well sums up the situation.  Epstein, the media and the fans became obsessed with the concept of a "window of opportunity" that had to be taken advantage of before it closed.  Thus the trade for Quintana, and the trade of Soler for crap.

The way to deal with a "window of opportunity" is not to sacrifice everything to win, but to extend that window.  Epstein knew that he was having his best players, Rizzo, Baez and Bryant in the same year, with Contreras the following year, at the same time that the pitching staff was growing elderly and on the verge of declining.  A responsible administration would have moved one of the ""core" two years earlier, and a second one the next year, in order to prevent the otherwise necessity of "tanking" when they left at the same time.  they had to know that there was no way they could have all been extended, and still leave room for growth.

Other than the Dodgers and the Yankees, no team can maintain a consistent level of production without a consistent flow of high ceiling, low cost controlled young players coming up from the farm.  We have lived through the errors of the past, and hopefully have learned enough from them to prevent a reoccurance of it in a few years.

TarzanJoeWallis 1 week 3 days ago (view)

I think it was pretty clear that practically all of “the core” was going to be gone after the 2021 season and that utterly gutting the farm system to chase a championship with the same guys year after year until they all departed wasn’t going to end well. That was talked about as early as 2017.

I don’t think it’s hindsight to say they would have been better off from a sustainability standpoint trading some of those pieces for the best prospect packages available and introducing some of the kids. For example, I was hoping real time they would trade Schwarber during the 2016 offseason to an AL team as a DH when the DH was AL only. Fresh off being a WS hero he could have fetched quite a haul. But, alas, he was a member of the vaunted, untouchable “core”.

TarzanJoeWallis 1 week 3 days ago (view)

What would have surprised me is the Dodgers, who have traditionally been outstanding in evaluating and developing talent, giving away Busch for nothing. They obviously saw something in both of the guys. Perhaps one or both will be future superstars.

That said, the old cliche is that the level of competition increases ten fold for every level moved up. Ferris and Hope both have a long way to go. We’ll just have to wait and see.

For now, I’m watching Busch put the team on his shoulders while the presumed offensive star of the team flails and doesn’t seem to have a plan beyond “waiting for the numbers to even out”. 

I thought it was a good and fair trade at the time - a talented but surplus guy for the Dodgers that filled an immediate need for the Cubs in exchange for potential pieces of the Dodgers future - and I’m awfully glad Busch is a Cub.

First.Pitch.120 1 week 3 days ago (view)

Mostly agree, but I don’t think it was as much “unshakeable faith” as it was a series of unclear choices in the moment that have become obvious with hindsight.  

The upside outcome for the coming year for any player was always much higher than the return on selling. It was like Texas Hold’em purgatory of having 4 to an A-K led flush…  impossible to get away from. 


 

Dolorous Jon Lester 1 week 3 days ago (view)

He works quickly too so all that happened in probably like 4 minutes 

crunch 1 week 3 days ago (view)

as of now, zyhir hope is the dodgers #20 prospect on mlb.com (ferris #7).  he made 0 national "top 100" overall lists.  that may be a different story soon enough.

if hope is not in the team top-10 by year's end i would be shocked.

i don't know what happened between draft day and a couple months in arizona, but he got the attention of many organizations outside of the cubs when he showed up.

crunch 1 week 3 days ago (view)

...and he takes a comebacker off the knee on pitch 7.  out made, run scored.

pitch 9 is a 3 run homer.  amazing.

crunch 1 week 3 days ago (view)

wade miley (MIL) loads the bases on 5 pitches in the 1st.  that's a special kind of talent.

TarzanJoeWallis 1 week 3 days ago (view)

While the Chapman trade helped to cement a championship I honestly think that trade was made in a different era. Nobody trades their best prospects for rentals anymore.

The Quintana trade was a stinker from day one. It seemed to be a product of Theo’s unshakable faith in his 2016 “core” and the consistent and mistaken idea that they were always just one guy away from a return to WS glory. The mistake was repeated several times and I think that realization along with a general evolution in baseball thinking has helped to shape Jed and the way he operates today.

Bill 1 week 3 days ago (view)

I had mixed emotions when I heard of the trade, as I have with most trades that involve high potential prospects.  But that is because I hate to trade a high potential prospect for a veteran with only a few years control, and with a much lower potential than the prospects give away.  I hated the trade of Cease and Jiminez for Quinta, because I viewed Quintana as a decent, but not top pitcher, being traded for two very high-potential prospects.  I disliked the trade for Chapman, because a high-potential prospect was traded for a rental, although in this case, the fact that the rental was a top player greatly softened the blow.  The trade of Ferris and Hope for Busch seemed even at the time, to be a good one, even though they gave up one of my favorite prospects.  The return was a high-potential prospect with 6 years of control, at a time when he could be a difference maker on the team.

13 games hardly proves that it was a good trade, but at least it was a reasonable one, no matter how it turns out.  So far, so good.

crunch 1 week 3 days ago (view)

i was strongly happy about the deal, but words can barely describe how quickly zyhir hope went from "interesting youngster" to "high end prospect" when he showed up in arizona post-draft.

it may not have shown up in the team prospect numbered rankings, but the dodgers had their eyes on such a low level guy for a reason and the cubs knew what they gave up.