Report: Scout clocks Reds' pitching prospect Chapman at 105 mph
I'm sure you are as skeptical as I am. Still, Chapman looks to have a bright career ahead of him.
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With Strasburg flaming out his arm,
I would think they would want to work on his arm mechanics a lot to make sure he doesn’t go the way Stephen did.
Starlin Castro singles on a pop up to catcher Jason LaRue.
Ryan Theriot scores. Two out -Gameday 7/23/10
by Sandberg's evil twin on Aug 28, 2010 3:38 PM CDT reply actions
"Sidd Finch"
… was that imaginary Mets pitcher, a creation of writer George Plimpton as an April Fool’s joke for Sports Illustrated. It was 168 MPH, according to the article.
Here’s the original article from the SI Vault.
"You can observe a lot just by watching." ~ Yogi Berra
Syd Finch??
May have been in the 70’s…
by daily2b on Aug 28, 2010 9:33 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
I think Darryl Strawbery saw an imaginary pitcher once.
Then he rubbed his eyes and he was gone.
"One of the things I like about baseball is that between innings you can go to the restroom.'' ~Manny Acta.
wish
we would’ve invested in Chapman as opposed to Marlon Byrd
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 29, 2010 9:08 AM CDT reply actions
Me too
But Chapman cost almost twice as much. Not really a fair comparison.
by JSB on Aug 29, 2010 1:11 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
on total contract
chapman got $6 million a year, Byrd got $5 million a year
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 30, 2010 12:18 PM CDT up reply actions
Fair point
I still don’t understand why you are so desperate to hate on the Marlon Byrd contract. If the Cubs wanted to they could still get value for him. I have to think that the two players were almost totally unrelated.
by JSB on Aug 30, 2010 12:49 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
cause Byrd sucks
and he is a positive clubhouse presence…basically Hendry finally signed a FA for what they were worth so people have to be pissed about something
I Love Larry - Brick are you looking at random things around the room and saying that you love them - I Love Larry
Currently 34,839 on the Season Ticket Wait List - Expected age of being #0: 119
could the Cubs trade Byrd for Chapman?
No.
Are the Cubs contending this year? No.
Are the Cubs likely to contend in 2011? No.
By the time the Cubs may be able to contend in 2012, Byrd will be in the final year of his contract at age 35, making $6.5 Million (and likely not worth that amount)
The signing in a vacuum was fine, but decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. Having a reasonable understanding of the Cubs situation entering this season, showed that it made more sense to put long-term dollars into assets that could potentially align with the next window. Marlon Byrd didn’t fit that description.
Byrd’s a nice guy and he’s out-performing his contract YTD, but the signing made little sense for the Cubs unless they were willing to trade him if he was out-performing and cash in on the out-performance. The Cubs aren’t willing to do that, so the signing provides no real value to us outside of pushing the needle a couple games on a bad team
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 30, 2010 2:03 PM CDT up reply actions
I agree with most of your points here, I just don't see what Chapman has to do with Byrd
I just think your anger at the Byrd contract is a bit misplaced. I really don’t think signing Marlon Byrd was what prevented the Cubs from signing Aroldis Chapman. If anything, the John Grabow signing (which I know you hated, and I did as well) has more to do with Chapman, since Chapman could have been a bullpen arm next year when we will be paying Grabow $4.8 million. The Cubs had $140 million budgeted for the MLB club this year, I am not going to be angry that they actually filled a hole with an intelligent signing. There are plenty of other things for me to be mad about.
Chapman wasn’t expected to contribute to the MLB team in 2010, so his 2010 dollars would have been allocated to the development pot instead of the MLB salary pot. In fact, if you look at his contract for this year alone, the Cubs could easily have afforded it. Most of his bonus money is deferred big-time. He received $1.5 million on signing the contract and he will receive another $1 million in salary this year. The Cubs could have afforded that contract.
As far as allocation of dollars towards player development, I have been complaining about that all season long. I was pretty pissed at the way the Cubs conducted their draft. Maybe I am completely wrong, and Marlon Byrd’s money came from money that could have gone towards Chapman, but they seem unrelated to me.
http://cincinnati.com/blogs/reds/2010/01/12/chapman-contract-details/
Also
I think the way you want the Cubs to be run isn’t realistic. While to you the difference between 80 wins and 75 wins is completely meaningless, to the Cubs it isn’t. The Cubs need to at least pretend to put a competitive product on the field in order to sell tickets. Having Marlon Byrd instead of Sam Fuld out there, makes it look like the Cubs are attempting to contend.
The Cubs already had almost $140 million of sunk cost in payroll before the Byrd signing. It wouldn’t have made sense for Hendry to go to Ricketts and say that, based on the projections it doesn’t look like we are going to be contenders this year. The Cubs had too much invested to completely throw the season away. Signing Marlon Byrd was at least a low-cost signing that doesn’t really have a long-term effect on the Cubs future.
Finally
To say that Marlon Byrd is outperforming his contract YTD is the understatement of the year. He is likely to end up as a 5 WAR player this year. I realize it’s for a non-contender, but he still is paying for his entire contract in a single season.
As far as what he will be in 2012 (your target for contention), even with tremendous regression he could foreseeably be a 2 WAR player, and be worth his $6.5 million salary. Let’s say Jackson comes up to play CF. Byrd shifts over to RF where he will almost surely be a plus defender. You can rotate Colvin, Byrd and Soriano at the corner spots.
If Byrd puts up a 3 WAR next season and 2 WAR in 2012, the Cubs will have gotten 10 WAR for $16.5 million. Assuming the standard measurement of about $4.5 million/WAR, the Cubs will have gotten $45 million of production for $16.5 million.
i dont think 5 WAR over the next 2 years is realistic
much of his WAR is coming from his fielding and there’s 2 concerns i have with this:
1) his UZR this year is COMPLETELY out of whack with the rest of his career. Is it possible he’s become a +10 as opposed to a -5 (career rating including this year) at age 33??? I guess, but to me that screams outlier and thus unsustainable
2) he averaged 2.3 WAR a season the previous 3 years that encapsulated his 30-32 seasons
I’d say that’s a more reasonable base-line expectation, then throw in the likely regression as he gets further out on the age curve and I think we’re looking closer to 3.5-4.0 WAR over the next two seasons.
Yes that will still be marked as “profit” for the Cubs in terms of the signing, but in terms of the actual needle on the field and in the stands, it won’t be moved. Unless you can prove that the difference in 75-80 wins moves the needle significantly in terms of attendance.
Then you get into the fact that once the Cubs passed on the opportunity to sell high on him, they recoup no assets for him.
I get that people view the deal by reading fangraphs dollar column compared to salary column but that’s operating in a vacuum. It takes no account for opportunity cost and no account for the marginal win value for the Cubs.
In the end its a signing that has mild positive financial impact but comes with opportunity cost (in the roster spot to develop a player or target a FA and in the money to allocate to other areas, perhaps more development)
FInally, I don’t know why people have the opinion that the development budget is completely separate and independent of the ML payroll. This is silly. If the Cubs had a $90 million major league payroll, you think they’d spend the same way in the draft as they did this year?
Most businesses operate with an overall budget that gets decided from the top and then gets split out amongst departments by a manager. I find it hard to believe the Cubs have static separate budgets for ML Talent and Player Development and they have no impact on one another. That seems ridiculous.
Signing guys like Grabow and Byrd on the ML payroll certainly in some way has an impact on the amount of assets spent on development
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 8:19 AM CDT up reply actions
We are talking about a few different things here
(1) I have no problem if the Cubs trade him for value now.
(2) I understand the idea behind a marginal win. But, going into the season, the Cubs were projected anywhere from 76-83 wins. A 5 WAR player is surely worth the money that Byrd was signed for to a team in that situation that already has $140 million in committed payroll.
(3) I really do think that the developmental talent budget and MLB payroll budget are somewhat separate. There is a buget for both. Companies have a budget of what they want to spend on operating expenses and capital expenses. If they were able to cut operating expenses, that money wouldn’t automatically be spent on capital expenses. If the Cubs had really wanted Chapman they still could have gotten him even with the Marlon Byrd signing.
If the Cubs dropped to a $90 million payroll they aren’t going to spend $50 million in the draft and on FA signings. Similarly if the Cubs had not spent that $4.5 million Marlon Byrd it doesn’t seem likely to me that they would have spent all that money on a single international free agent or that they would have doubled the money they spent on the draft. Perhaps MLB payroll is an example of organizational strategy, but I simply don’t believe that there was a finite amount of dollars this off-season to be spent between MLB free agents and developmental free agents. If the Cubs truly operate that way, this organization is hopeless. The Yankees and Red Sox certainly don’t operate that way. If anything, I am not defending the organization, rather saying that signing Marlon Byrd should never be an excuse for passing on Aroldis Chapman.
the Cubs seem to operate up to a budget on ML payroll
they work towards a number every year and rarely leave wiggle room to expand resources into other areas. It seems every offseason since Hendry has been around (other than ‘07 when payroll was expanded) every last resource was used to get to the ceiling of the budget and leave a few dollars left over for trades at midseason. It’s why every offseason you see the Cubs trying to shed some salary to create room for another new signing. I think this inhibits there ability to think long-term because instead of the budget being viewed in rolling terms, its being viewed in single season increments
I think what happened this year is they worked up to their budget again leaving some incremental room for mid-season trades and then when attendance became an issue as the team fell out of contention they realized they may need to cut spending down on the draft in order to keep operating expenses in line.
That’s my take. I think the two budgets have to be connected, not necessarily in a linear fashion (such as the example you suggest), but i think if we spent $125 million on payroll this year instead of $140, we almost certainly would have spent more in the draft.
Personally i’d be more concerned if the two budgets WERENT connected
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 11:46 AM CDT up reply actions
So you think the Cubs have serious cash flow issues?
Otherwise, I don’t see why the budgets couldn’t be completely separate.
Also, as a matter of principle I do think they should be separate. For a big-market club spending in the draft or in international free agency should be constant regardless of what is happening with the MLB team. Every year the team needs to be spending significant money on developmental players.
I think its a reasonable assumption
given the debt financing
I see what you mean in terms of the two budgets being separate, but why have them be static? Both budgets SHOULD be big enough to allow both significant ML payroll and significant spending in the draft and internationally.
But when the team is way out of contention why not cut some payroll and funnel excess resources into development? Conversely if the team is a legitimate world series contender and you need a midseason acquisition, why not take some excess funds (either from the following season’s payroll or from the development budget) and use it to acquire the piece needed?
Static budgeting just seems silly to me, whether it be on an annual basis or on a “separate buckets” basis. The two pools of money (in my opinion) should be overseen by the GM and resources should be shifted slightly in accordance with where the team is as a contender/rebuilder
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 1:16 PM CDT up reply actions
That's the Pittsburgh/Tampa Bay approach
We haven’t really seen the well-run big market clubs use that approach because they are always in contention and because it doesn’t seem like they have cash flow issues. If the Cubs really are having cash flow issues, the first priority should be to scale back payroll to where they have room to maneuver. The Cubs shouldn’t run their team like the Minnesota Twins. They should never be in a position where they can’t afford to spend an extra $3-4 million on player development.
I also just don’t think it is practical to completely scale back payroll in non-contending years for a big-market payroll like it is with a small-market club. In theory your idea makes a lot of sense. I just don’t know if it is feasible.
i'd argue
the number of times the Cubs have been “in contention” is not commensurate with their payroll. My point being the Cubs are a big market club who hasn’t “always been in contention”
And i’m not talking about scaling back as in going into the 90’s, i’m talking about scaling back (if the base is 140) into the 125-130 range
It’s not cutting things down in a big way, its just saying alright we dont have the pieces in place this year and they’re not available on the market so instead of spending long-term dollars on Marlon Byrd, lets go for a 1 yr deal with Rick Ankiel or Andres Torres or someone else and see what happens. Maybe we strike lightening, maybe we strike out, but who cares we weren’t likely to contend anyway. Then we take the excess funds saved (in this case like $7-8 million from Grabow/Byrd and roll that over to the next season’s payroll or pop it into the development/draft (depending on where you see the value at)
That type of approach would allow you the flexibility to tactically target FA acquisitions as save money for the elite players, while pumping excess funds on development
These mid-level periphery FA signings should only be made for teams that are contending where the marginal value of a win is higher.
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 2:39 PM CDT up reply actions
Except that the Free Agents might pay for themselves
Also, one thing that you seem to be ignoring is that you are only looking at players as adding wins, not at adding to attendance. If the Cubs sit on their hands and do nothing this winter, then they will probably average less than 30,000 next season. If they sign Adam Dunn, there is a good chance they average a lot more. Free agents can pay for themselves if they give the appearance of trying to contend. Now, I am not saying that Byrd by himself sells tickets, but scaling back payroll after a non-playoff year, certainly gives the appearance of not trying to win and would hurt ticket sales.
I think we are arguing in circles
I want the Cubs to pare payroll this off-season. I want them to spend more on development. I am favor in a long rebuild with a target of 2012 or 2013 for World Series contention.
But, I recognize that the economics aren’t necessarily that simple. Ricketts might not be able to afford two years of a ballpark with 12,000 seats empty and a payroll that has $120 million in sunk costs already. At this point, the most economically viable move might be for Ricketts to pump more into the team in order to be a fringe contender. In case that happens, I hope we see more Marlon Byrd signings than Kosuke Fukudome signings.
Byrd's WAR and UZR
I agree that his +10 UZR is probably unsustainable, but last year’s -8 is actually probably more out-of-whack with his career than this year’s number. His true talent is probably a league average CF and a plus corner OF. Byrd has been terriffic defensively this year (much better than I expected). I don’t think that a swing in defensive metrics automatically means that the metric is wrong. Players can have good years and bad years in the field.
2003 3.9
2004 -9.6
2005 5.3
2006 2.9
2007 2.2
2008 2.6
2009 -8.2
2010 10.2
Total 9.0
I realize he hasn’t played CF exclusively. The years he played primarily CF were 2003, 2004, 2009 and 2010. The years that have his biggest swings in UZR. I don’t expect him to be a plus 10 defender next year. I also do not expect him to -8. Somewhere between 2 and 3 seems likely. I think he also could maintain that or even improve upon that in 2012 in a corner spot.
As far as his bat aging, I am not going to say that he won’t age at all, but I expect him to be between +105-110 (his 2007/2009 seasons) and +120-125 (2008/2010) the next two seasons. He turns 35 in late August of next season. So, let’s call them his age 33 and age 34 seasons. Considering how good of shape he keeps himself in and his work ethic, I don’t see him falling off a cliff. I would be happy with a +115 next year and a +110 in 2012.
Byrd in CF
I realize he hasn’t played CF exclusively. The years he played primarily CF were 2003, 2004, 2009 and 2010.
2004: -9.6
2009: -8.2
2010: 10.2
which do you think is the outlier?
I think your expectations on his bat are probably fine, a little optimistic to me, but probably in the ballpark. You’re not accounting for Byrd’s 120 RC this season being impacted by a .342 BABIP that is a bit elevated over his career norms and its come with a LD Rate below his career norms. I think 105-110 is more likely unless he starts walking again.
The problem with moving Byrd to a corner OF spot again is opportunity cost. That’s an easy area to find bigger bats than Byrd’s and even if Byrd makes up for the bat with slightly above average defense, we’re looking at a Kosuke Fukudome type level of production in RF (albeit at a lower cost). That’s fine if you have a big time offensive bat up the middle to help balance out the roster (thankfully we have one with Soto), but can be tough to build a title contender with Byrd as your starting RF. The opportunity cost comes in when shifting Byrd to RF you then need a CF replacement and its easier to find corner OFs than CF’s. So now we’re basically back to relying on Byrd as either a viable CF candidate or relying that Brett Jackson is ready to play in the next 1.5 years
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 11:54 AM CDT up reply actions
sorry forgot to note 2003
at 3.9, back when he was 26
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 11:55 AM CDT up reply actions
So he's had 2 good years and 2 bad years
At 24 and 25 he had a good year and then a bad year in CF, at 31 and 32 he had a bad year and then a good year. That combined with his other seasons where he has played significant innings in CF means his true talent is likely as a league average CF. When you consider he has an above average bat and he is only making $5 million annually, he is a great value for a premium position free agent.
On the BABIP, he posted a .363 in 2007 and a .330 in 2008. He has a career mark of .326. I think we will see Byrd regress a bit next year, but not to where he is league average. His HR/FB rate is in line with his career average and the other peripherals aren’t totally out of line with his post-2007 career numbers.
As far opportunity cost and moving him to a corner spot, the reason we are doing it is to free a spot for Brett Jackson. Between now and when Byrd is a free agent there are no elite in-their-prime RF bats available. Perhaps you can make an argument that Jayson Werth is elite, but considering his age and the likely length of his contract, I would rather pay Byrd 3 years/$15 million than whatever Werth gets this off-season. If you wanted to move Carl Crawford to RF, he still isn’t the middle-of-the order bat you were talking about and derives much of his value from defense.
Besides, if the Cubs were really intent on acquiring a FA OF, they could move Byrd and probably get value.
that plan hasn't worked out in the past
when the cubs “need” to move someone to clear room for someone else. They generally haven’t gotten value when they’ve made deals like this. it’s ended up being salary dumps (like the Marquis deal)
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 1:19 PM CDT up reply actions
Byrd is better than Marquis and costs less money
I think they could move him. You really don’t think another team would want him?
my point is
if they were to sign someone else and it was obvious they needed to move Byrd (as he’d be the 4th or 5th OF under contract) that erodes any trade value he has and the other teams would know this
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 2:44 PM CDT up reply actions
I disagree
If more than 1 team wants him, they can still unload him for value. Nobody wanted Marquis that was the problem.
For example, everyone knew the Mariners needed to move Cliff Lee before the deadline. They still were able to get value for him.
The question is whether Byrd is worth more than the remaining dollars on the contract. I believe he is and thus could be unloaded for value.
marlon byrd
is much closer to jason marquis than cliff lee
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 7:02 PM CDT up reply actions
so...
whats the calculation for “clocking” a pitch…
I Love Larry - Brick are you looking at random things around the room and saying that you love them - I Love Larry
Currently 34,839 on the Season Ticket Wait List - Expected age of being #0: 119
No doubt the kid throws very hard
but I doubt the radar gun is accurate.
I always turn to the sports section first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man's failures.
~Earl Warren
scout confirmed
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=tsn-166496
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by DartmouthCubsFan on Aug 31, 2010 8:07 AM CDT up reply actions
Was watching ESPN last night
They were saying that the scout replaced the batteries in the gun after the first 105 because he didn’t believe the reading. When the next pitch came back as 105 as well, he believed it.
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