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Author Topic: Cubs in '12  (Read 203105 times)

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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10665 on: December 21, 2012, 08:28:35 am »
Quote from: ticohans on December 21, 2012, 06:20:50 am
Am I advocating a 5/100 contract for Bourn? Absolutely not. But I would love a 1 year deal at a higher AAV, and I would have no problem with a multiyear contract in the $13-15 AAV range. I think Bourn generates a lot of surplus value over that, especially as free agent contracts inflate with the influx of TV money into baseball.

So the Cubs lose a draft pick, for one year of a player in a season where they are not going to make the playoffs?

That simply does not seem to be a good idea to me, and would seem to be quite at odds with the long term plan the Theocracy seems to have.

I suspect that because of the loss of a draft pick, the Theocracy would actually turn down Bourne on a one year deal if he were to play for free.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10666 on: December 21, 2012, 08:30:44 am »
What destroyed the first 3 months of the season last year was the bull pen.  It was worse than terrible.  The greatest portion of the improvements so far have been in the pen.  The rotation changes have really just repaired the first four (Dempster/Samardzija/Garza/Maholm with Jackson/Samardzija/Garza/Feldman).  Baker, when he returns, is going to greatly upgrade the fifth starter.  The the bullpen is going to go from a disaster to a strength.  If they don't trade Marmol, his first 3 months are likely to be substantially better than last year's first three months.  When you add to that Fujisawa and Villaneuva to go along with Camp and Russel., that is light years ahead of last season.  And I am willing to bet anyone that Rondon will be substantially better than Lendy Castillo.  All this is before the ultimate return of Baker and Vizcaino.

Look at the number of games the pen blew for us in the first half of last season.  I think 10 is an understatement.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10667 on: December 21, 2012, 08:47:44 am »
Two other thoughts on Jackson:
1.  Pitching tends to wear guys down.  Jackson's been in his prime years.  Often when a pitcher has thrown a ton of pitches, as he has, the stuff deteriorates somewhat after a bunch of years.  Zambrano's stuff at 30 wasn't what it was at 24.  Garza was a durable workhorse, but then he wasn't.  So even if Jackson stays durable for all four years, that would be good and isn't safe; but even so his arm might not be quite as excellent. 

2.  There seems to be an explosion of contracts league-wide.  If contract inflation continues, contracts that look solid now might look like great-value deals soon, as inflation escalates.  Not long ago, $13/year would have been appropriate for aces only.  Now, Haren gets $13/1 with bad health and no recent excellence; Sanchez get $16-per; Dempster will be 36 and gets $13+ per; etc.  If Jackson can settle in and pitch well for the Cubs, perhaps get a little bit better somehow (HR-reduction, perhaps?), his contract which looks like fair value now might look like terrific value if inflation passes it by.  Good players on good-value-per-dollar contracts become excellent trade pieces.

3.  While age and wear might make it more likely that his performance will decline, there would seem to be a chance that he'll get better, too.  He had his worst HR-allowed last year in some years.  If that just naturally comes back down, his numbers could improve.  Strong Cub defense could help him.  Perhaps the Cub scouting and seemingly strong Cub coaching might be able to help him in some tiny ways to get a little bit better, a little more consistent.  Very hard to hit HR in Wrigley spring, so while pricey FA hitters routinely get off to bad starts, as a HR-allowing pitcher, he might be perfectly situated to get off to a good start.  Perhaps having a consistent pitching coach for more than a year might help him a little.  Perhaps a terrific defense could help him, too.  Pitching in Wrigley spring with a good defense, why not throw a lot of fastball strikes and let them hit them, or else get ahead in the count and kill them with the slider?  Obviously these last two years he's been bad in the post-season, but the non-contending Cubs might be a low-pressure environment that's good for him?  Perhaps he's poised to take that step from being a solid #4/#3 starter to becoming a solid #3/#2 starter, and with his per-year contract, with extended club control rather than being terminal, being younger, and without no-trade rights, is trade value will be much higher than Dempster's? 
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10668 on: December 21, 2012, 09:00:53 am »
Quote from: davep on December 21, 2012, 08:30:44 am
What destroyed the first 3 months of the season last year was the bull pen.

The bullpen was a HUGE problem.  But despite that, they were still just shy of 70 win pace before the mass trade-off in July.  So just replacing Dempster/Maholm, having Garza healthy, and letting Samardzija finish out September probably gets the 2013 team to about ~70 wins.  But they've done considerably more than that.

The Cubs were so terrible in 2012 that it's not a hard team to improve--there is a lot of low hanging fruit.  They got essentially nothing out of CF, 3B, and C (until Castillo took over).  Exactly one third of their games were started by the group of starters that included Volstad, (injured) Wells, Germano, Coleman, Rusin, Raley, and Berken.  The bullpen had only two pitchers (Camp and Russell) who had an fWAR above 0.2, but had 10 guys with negative fWAR coming out of the bullpen.  Just getting garden variety below average production out of most of these spots (as opposed to the black holes they were last year) will improve the team by 10 games.  And with the way the pitching staff has been rebuilt, they should get considerably more than that.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10669 on: December 21, 2012, 09:07:42 am »
Quote from: brjones on December 21, 2012, 09:00:53 am
The Cubs were so terrible in 2012 that it's not a hard team to improve--there is a lot of low hanging fruit.

While true, any improvement in 2013 is likely to be incidental to improving the team long term and not an actual goal in and of itself.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10670 on: December 21, 2012, 09:40:42 am »
Strong Cub defense could help him.

There's a sentence you don't read every day.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10671 on: December 21, 2012, 10:41:32 am »
Keith Law's analysis of the Edwin Jackson deal has just been posted on ESPN.  I haven't read it yet, but the first paragraph indicates he actually gets paid $11 million per year, and he got an $8 million signing bonus.  Had anyone mentioned that before?  If that's the case, the deal is even better.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10672 on: December 21, 2012, 10:43:08 am »
Given the current price of starting pitching in free agency, the annual salary of $11 million (excluding the $8 million he'll receive as a signing bonus) that Edwin Jackson got from the Chicago Cubs is reasonable, especially because he probably carries relatively little risk of either a significant dip in performance or of missing a significant chunk of time.

Jackson, 29, threw 183 innings in 2008 and has exceeded that total in each of the four seasons since, and has made 31 or more starts in all six seasons since he became a major league starter. He just posted the highest strikeout rate and second-lowest walk rate of his career, numbers he could pretty easily repeat, given his stuff and previous performance. He probably will never turn into the No. 1 or 2 starter that his raw stuff would indicate, but a pitcher who is worth roughly three wins above replacement every season with only minimal deviations from that number is still a valuable asset.

Signing a top free agent to a long-term deal isn't usually a great strategy for a 90-plus loss team, but there's merit to the Cubs' move here. Jackson's presence on the roster gives them more flexibility to potentially trade a starter, if not two, during the 2013 season.

Matt Garza likely would be an ex-Cub by now if he'd finished the 2012 season healthy, and he could move as early as spring training if he looks like his old self. If Scott Baker or Scott Feldman throw well in the first half of 2013, they would be ideal trade bait before the July 31 deadline, which is the best argument for signing them in the first place -- but now doing so won't leave the team with a skeleton crew rotation behind Jeff Samardzija in the final two months of the season.

Jackson also gives the Cubs a third starter for their 2014 rotation after Samardzija and Travis Wood, particularly critical because the Cubs didn't have a solid starting-pitching prospect above short-season ball this year; even an optimistic forecast on Pierce Johnson, the top college pitcher the Cubs drafted in 2012, wouldn't have him in the majors until mid-2014.

With next winter's free-agent market looking as if it'll be light on starting pitchers, signing Jackson now, even if it's for a year longer than I'd want to go on a pitcher of his caliber, makes some sense as insurance against entering the 2014 season with filler in three rotation spots. And if you must go four years, Jackson's history of durability and consistent performance should make you less queasy about it than you'd be with Kyle Lohse or Anibal Sanchez.

I'm more or less dismissing the possibility that Jackson improves from what he has been the past four years, but I suppose it's not impossible. He does have the big fastball and can hold that velocity deep into games, often hitting 97 mph to 98 mph on a few pitches toward the end of an outing, but his command, especially up in the zone, has always left a little to be desired and made him prone to hard contact, including home runs.

He misses bats with his slider, but gets beaten on his fastball too often to be more than a mid-rotation guy who eats a lot of innings, and I've long held that teams buy into him because they see the velocity and figure he can be fixed. The Cubs' deal with him pays him like he'll be as good as he's been, but no better; if there is another level for Jackson, that's potential upside for the Cubs. I just don't expect it, given how long he's been the pitcher we know him to be.

The Cubs also picked up swingman Carlos Villanueva on a pretty cheap two-year deal, paying him $10 million total for a term that probably will see him working both in the rotation and out of the bullpen. He adds to the starting pitching depth, which could make trading Garza and one of Baker or Feldman easier this season, but with the rotation full at the moment, Villanueva probably will head for the bullpen, an area of weakness for the 2012 team that's looking better now with this deal and with the signing of Kyuji Fujikawa.

The Cubs' offseason as a whole hasn't done anything to interfere with the rebuilding program in place; no one's been blocked, and they haven't lost any draft picks or prospects. They're focusing on cheap, short-term deals with players who have a lot of potential to produce surplus value, and the one exception, Jackson, was the safest remaining bet on the starting pitching market. It's the best path for a team that has money but is restricted by the new CBA from putting it into amateur talent acquisition.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10673 on: December 21, 2012, 10:57:31 am »
Thanks, JR.  That's a very favorable assessment.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10674 on: December 21, 2012, 01:35:58 pm »
The Rangers have claimed the recently DFA'd Jeff Beliveau.  Too bad.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10675 on: December 21, 2012, 01:43:40 pm »
Well the once fairly well regarded lefty relief prospect trio of Jeff Beliveau, John Gaub, and Scott Maine has officially resulted in no major league relievers for the Cubs.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10676 on: December 21, 2012, 02:22:59 pm »
Shockingly Gerardo Concepcion cleared waivers.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10677 on: December 21, 2012, 02:34:20 pm »
Glad the Cubs were willing to risk admitting a mistake with Concepcion instead of keeping him on the 40 man just because of his signing bonus.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10678 on: December 21, 2012, 02:39:12 pm »
Rosario did not clear waivers.  Still one more spot to clear.
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Re: Cubs in '12
« Reply #10679 on: December 21, 2012, 02:40:29 pm »
Rosario has had one adventurous offseason.
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