Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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misterManager
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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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I don't think we're favorites, but looking at Fangraphs projections and my gut, we are closer than any other 2nd place team in any division in baseball to their divisional leader, in our case Chicago. That's something to start with and considering where we were heading into 2016 and '17, I'm more or less happy that Mo has managed to keep from torpedoing either this coming year or the longterm.

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MrCrowesGarden
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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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I don’t know that I agree with that. The Cubs still are about 5 wins better... maybe that’s smaller than any other division lead (haven’t really looked,) but that’s not neck and neck either. Their best players are expected to hold or improve while ours are expected to regress. They’re a better team than they were just a couple days ago, but a middle reliever only adds so much. And I still think it’s disappointing that it’s Gregerson at the end of the rainbow as payroll goes down and profits go up. Neither the short nor long term have been torpedoed, I agree, but they haven’t been bolstered much either.

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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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MrCrowesGarden wrote:I just think we’re still far away from the Cubs no matter if the Cubs add or not. Basically as I said earlier hoping almost everything goes right for STL and everything goes wrong for CHC to win the division. They’re banking on a couple of ok to good prospects being excellent and... well, I don’t see it.
With their failure to land another offense of peice - And they were pretty clearly trying to with Donaldson - I am not sure what else they really could have done to make up the gap. The Grichuk trade right now is an admission that they’ve been trying to work out a deal with the Bluejays and they simply are not willing to give up Donaldson yet. So, there’s really no way to improve the offense more than we have.

The difference between getting Leone and Reed is fairly small. Not that Leone is likely to close for us. rather, we are highly likely to find someone from the current bullpen mix who could close just about as well as Russell. We are suddenly throwing some pretty decent stuff against the wall here.

It just comes down to starters. Most scouts seem to think that Mikolas will be pretty good. And the wildcard is Reyes, who could now make 10 or 15 start for us as our injury replacement since he probably wont end up in the bullpen. So, maybe Darvish, Archer, or Arrieta would have been better than Mikolas, but almost no one else would’ve been worth it, including Lynn. And if Reyes proves healthy and effective, then who knows?

So, no, we are not all that close to the Cubs. But the construction of this team isnt quite as bad as I thought it was a few weeks ago. Offensively I think we could be one of the best teams in the league,the more I look at it. If you think of the rotation with Reyes in there for half a season, and he will somehow find his way in there, I don’t feel nearly as bad about that either.
Last edited by Fat Strat on January 20 18, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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Who is Russell?

Also thinking that the opinions of Mikolas are more mixed than that. Some think he can be league average, others have him pegged for a 5.50 ERA.

I guess I’m just not a fan of the buckshot approach when you have the resources to get sniper bullets.

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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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Addison R (the pitcher, not the SS), I'm assuming?

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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Socnorb11 wrote:
Big Amoco Sign wrote: I hate Grichuk. And I don't like this trade at all.


:scratch:
Skip Big Amoco Sign’s posts, your life will be better off for it.

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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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MrCrowesGarden wrote:Who is Russell?

Also thinking that the opinions of Mikolas are more mixed than that. Some think he can be league average, others have him pegged for a 5.50 ERA.

I guess I’m just not a fan of the buckshot approach when you have the resources to get sniper bullets.
Reed, was thinking Cubs

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misterManager
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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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MrCrowesGarden wrote:I don’t know that I agree with that. The Cubs still are about 5 wins better... maybe that’s smaller than any other division lead (haven’t really looked,) but that’s not neck and neck either. Their best players are expected to hold or improve while ours are expected to regress. They’re a better team than they were just a couple days ago, but a middle reliever only adds so much. And I still think it’s disappointing that it’s Gregerson at the end of the rainbow as payroll goes down and profits go up. Neither the short nor long term have been torpedoed, I agree, but they haven’t been bolstered much either.
I think the Cubs have the rotation edge, we have the edge in lineup, and the pens are pushes going into the year. Ahead of adding Ozuna I would have said the lineups were pushes as well. I like that back of the napkin math at the end of the day. I guess I'm more looking at the additions for both teams, and I see us as playing the same smart game as Chicago but, to my biased eyes, doing it better. I wrote a long thing comparing their moves to ours this season but the shorter version is that I think we have matched them every time and we added someone in Ozuna that they have not (yet) come close to adding.

Here are Fangraphs' projected standings: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.a ... =Standings. Boston and New York are showing as tied for their division but otherwise there are double digits separating the other #1s and #2s, besides the NL Central.

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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

Post by MrCrowesGarden »

misterManager wrote:
MrCrowesGarden wrote:I don’t know that I agree with that. The Cubs still are about 5 wins better... maybe that’s smaller than any other division lead (haven’t really looked,) but that’s not neck and neck either. Their best players are expected to hold or improve while ours are expected to regress. They’re a better team than they were just a couple days ago, but a middle reliever only adds so much. And I still think it’s disappointing that it’s Gregerson at the end of the rainbow as payroll goes down and profits go up. Neither the short nor long term have been torpedoed, I agree, but they haven’t been bolstered much either.
I think the Cubs have the rotation edge, we have the edge in lineup, and the pens are pushes going into the year. Ahead of adding Ozuna I would have said the lineups were pushes as well. I like that back of the napkin math at the end of the day. I guess I'm more looking at the additions for both teams, and I see us as playing the same smart game as Chicago but, to my biased eyes, doing it better. I wrote a long thing comparing their moves to ours this season but the shorter version is that I think we have matched them every time and we added someone in Ozuna that they have not (yet) come close to adding.

Here are Fangraphs' projected standings: https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.a ... =Standings. Boston and New York are showing as tied for their division but otherwise there are double digits separating the other #1s and #2s, besides the NL Central.
According to VEB and Fangraphs, that’s the exact opposite of how it is:

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-c ... tions-2018

They note the Pham and Ozuna regression but also that the Cubs have several prime bounce back or improvement candidates in the lineup. Cardinals get the edge in rotation basically out of depth. The bullpen difference is negligible. But to save a click for everyone, the Cubs are by their math 4.6 wins better (this was written before the Leone trade, so maybe it’s down another couple of tenths.) . And it’s expected the Cubs will add another SP which maybe increases that gap by another win or two.

Basically the big thing is that they have Kris Bryant (and to a lesser extent Rizzo) and we don’t. I know there are those who will say that’s the only difference, but that’s a really big difference. One that’s hard bordering on impossible to make up with depth. There aren’t many ways to get that kind of player, and I don’t know that many or any want to get a player that caliber the way the Cubs did. That leaves trade and free agency. Maybe they’re going to go off script next year and offer Machado $400 million. They certainly could afford it.

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MinorLeagueGuy
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Re: Grichuk Traded to Blue Jays

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Didn't they get Rizzo when they fleeced the Padres?

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