2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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When they had the all star game in SF in 07 the fan fest was a really cool experience. Didn't even bother trying to go the game or Derby
 
Not bad. Gettin rid of arrieta is great he had too many chances not just from us and strop has plenty of pitches and good speed if he can get consistent it's a good deal for both teams

Yea...we get a guy in Feldman who can help the rotation immediately. Cubs get two guys with electric stuff...and if they can figure out control, the trade will pay dividends down the road.

*Imagine if Strop gets the closer job after the Marmol disaster? :eek :lol
 
Well they're saying Marmol is probably heading to the Dodgers and there's no one else there once Gregg goes. I can see it.

Jay, I never said they don't help.
 
Pretty amazing that with all the info anout steroids the amount of ignorance ppl still have on the subject.

Anything that helps your muscles recover andgrow will increase your atrength and athletic ability. Does it make your swing more linear lol No. Will it turn warning track fly balls into home runs? YES.

will it allow pitchers to throw harder qith more torque for more innings yes

will it let baserunners run faster, yes.

Will it improve all of your quick twitch muscles, yes.

Will it shorten your reaction time, yes.


So yeah i see why people would say steroids ddont effect baseball players, I mean it was only rampantly used in the most offensove era in baseball history.


[/ends douche bag reply]

Nah...bein stronger won't help, being able to hit one-handed home runs like Mike Piazza or having forearms like Bag Pipes can't make you a good hitter. All that matters in hitting is having a linear swing.
 
Now you're just ingnoring what he said and being a smart ***.

He didn't say that was all that mattered. Osh isn't saying they don't help just that the effects are very overstated. Guys with ****** swings and crappy hand eye coordination aren't going to helped all that much by roids.

Yes, it'll help a pitcher with velocity and more stamina. Will it help them control and command their pitches better?

Yes, it'll help with a baserunners speed. Will it help them read a pitcher's delivery better and increase their baserunning ability?

Yea it'll help your quick twitch muscles and reaction time. But will it help your ability to put bat to ball with your swing? If you're a career ground ball hitter, will it elevate your swing and fly ball rate? All of the data and stats from MOST of these players who test positive say no.

So yes you're going to have guys like Piazza, Bonds, Sheff and Mac who benefit from the steroids. BUT they have the underlying ability to enhance the effects the steroids have on them. But for everyone one of those stars, there's 4 or 5 of Alex Cabrera or Ricky Bones or Mike Judd or Manny Alexander who never had the talent to excel once they started using.

I'm not saying it doesn't make players better. I'm saying it makes the players with underlying skills to excel at baseball better.

And don't throw Bagwell in there when he hasn't been named anywhere.
 
Of course you have to have a skill baseline in order for thr roids to be effective.

They dont turn bums into greats. They cant turn amateurs into pros.

There is no undervalueing what PEDs do for an elite athlete.

Use Barry Bonds as an example, one of the greatest players ever. Look at his numbers jump when he was introduced to Balco. You can not honestly evaluate his numbers and say peds effect.are.overrated

Its the same across the board in all sports.


The most common misconception is.that peds are the magic all star maker.

its a performance enhancer.not a performance producer.
 
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But we are talking about MLB players...these guys are already the best at the world in what they do. If you don't think there were massive payoffs in doing steroids for players I just don't know what to say. Obviously a scrub isn't going to all of a sudden become a HOF type talent but once again, if you make it to the MLB you are already prolly really technically sound at what you do. Bonds was already a HOF, one of the greatest players ever but with roids, he was the best hitter ever at an age when guys are supposed to be tailing off not reaching their prime.

What would happen if someone like Daniel Murphy (sticking to my Mets players for an example) could take steroids? He would go from a guy with warning track power to being able to hit 20+ home runs and pretty much change who he is as a hitter. So yes, it can change who you are as a baseball player.

And maybe Bagwell hasn't been linked directly per se but it sure as hell kept him from reaching the HOF during voting so I'm not the only one. The guy's name was BagPipes cause of his muscles and you're getting touchy about me having suspicion for him.

And I actually preferred baseball with roids, so I'm not even coming down on it per say.
 
I don't even know what we're arguing about then because it seems like all 3 of our posts are in agreement pretty much.

I'm not touchy about Bags, I just hate that he has the cloud because of the muscles when a guy like Frank Thomas speaks out on it like he's Palmeiro but never gets any shade tossed at him.
 
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If you take out the 73 HR year. His homerun numbers were constant

93: 46
94: 37
95: 33
96: 42
97: 40

After Balco


98: 37
99: 34
00: 49
01: 73
02: 46
03: 45
04: 45
 
Yea, his numbers were consistent cause people stopped pitching too him :lol

If they has pitched to him during those years his numbers would have been off the charts
 
lmao how old was Barry? jesus christ. I know ur a ******g giant fan and a bonds sack rider but be for real. What old guys have absolutely no decline in their numbers?

Great point. I Didnt even take into account his int. Walks. My god. Lmaoooo guys hang on at the end of their careers, he dominated.
 
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:lol captain save-a-Giant at it again.


And yea, let's just throw away the year where he hit 73 HRs and ifnore the fact that he was being walked 20% of the time and still put up 40+ HR every year.
 
DJ's:

Orioles Upgrade With Scott Feldman; Cubs Continue Stocking Up.

And the trade season is officially here. We have our first significant trade of the year on July 2nd, and the timing of this move is not a coincidence.

First, the details, per Keith Law.

Orioles acquire Scott Feldman and Tony Clevenger from the Cubs for Jake Arrietta, Pedro Strop, and int'l bonus slots.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) July 2, 2013


For the record, he meant Steve Clevenger, but he’s a throw-in in this deal, and it’s not like Baltimore is acquiring him to unseat Matt Wieters or anything. This deal is basically Feldman for two pitchers and, in a first for MLB, pool allocation money that will allow the Cubs to be more aggressive in international free agency. We’ll get to that part of the trade in a second. First, let’s start with what the Orioles are getting in Scott Feldman.

Over the winter, Feldman was one of my favorite undervalued free agent options. I wrote a piece comparing him to Brandon McCarthy, which in turn led to McCarthy noting that their similarities were due to his copying of Feldman’s transformation when they were in Texas together. Feldman has gone on to justify the faith that article placed in his skills, and is another recent example of the power of DIPS theory.

While Feldman’s results have made him a nifty trade piece for the Cubs, there’s really nothing different about him now than there was several months ago. His walk rate is hanging around 7% as always, his strikeout rate remains at around 18%, and he’s getting his normal share of ground balls. This is who Scott Feldman is, and has been for quite a while. Last year, though, his .318 BABIP led to a 5.09 ERA, while this year’s .255 BABIP has led to a 3.46 ERA.

You know the drill at this point; Feldman is better than his ERA suggested last year and not as good as his ERA suggests this year. Ignoring the year to year fluctuations in results show the new-and-improved Feldman to be roughly a league average starting pitcher. Since 2011, when he returned with the cut fastball as a new weapon and changed his approach to pitching, Feldman has thrown 247 innings and posted a 103/92/96 (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) line. Opposing hitters have posted a .304 wOBA against Feldman during that stretch.

While he’s never going to be mistaken for a front of the rotation ace, Feldman is a quality innings eater, the kind of guy that stabilizes a rotation and keeps contenders from disaster starts. He’s a +2 to +3 win pitcher over a full season, and since the Orioles have had to rely on replacement level arms in their rotation, they’ll get the full value of this upgrade, though getting him for half a season means that the upgrade is worth more in the range of +1 to +1.5 wins.

Those wins could be extremely valuable for the Orioles, however. The AL playoff race is a total dog fight, and that win could make a huge difference. Right now, our forecasted final standings have the Orioles finishing 87-75, one game ahead of the Rays in the race for the second wild card. These forecasts will certainly change as contenders load up over the next month, and the Orioles absolutely had to try to improve their roster to make a real run at a spot in October. Feldman is a significant upgrade over their internal rotation options, and even though he’s not going to be seen as a difference maker, the marginal value of the win he adds could easily be the difference between a playoff berth and sitting at home.

And that’s why the Cubs were able to extract a pretty nice package in return for a guy who was in moderate demand as a free agent over the winter. Jake Arrieta is the main part of this deal for the Cubs, as they’re basically repeating the bet they made with Feldman, just with a younger cost controlled arm this time. Arrieta’s career 5.46 ERA is pretty ugly, but his xFIP is a much more palatable 4.45, and his future projects to be better than his past.

That said, Arrieta is 27-years-old and his Triple-A numbers aren’t anything amazing, so while he was labeled a top prospect a few years back, there’s probably not quite as much upside here as you might think. He’s got a 94 mph fastball but a history of not really knowing how to command it particularly well, and he’s never missed as many bats as you might expect from a guy with his stuff. I wouldn’t be too shocked if he ended up in relief with the Cubs, though I’d imagine they’ll give him another chance to stick as a starter before making the conversion.

If Arrieta can make some improvements, there’s a chance he could turn into a quality rotation depth piece, and his service time means that he’ll be under team control for another three seasons after this one. He’s the kind of lottery ticket arm that rebuilding teams should be giving chances to, and he’d be a nice return for a rent-a-veteran just by himself. But, the Cubs didn’t just get Arrieta; they also got the ability to buy some better prospects for the future.

That’s why this deal was made on July 2nd. Today is the first day of the international signing period, where teams can officially sign the 16-year-old amateurs they’ve been scouting around the world for the last year. The most recent CBA implemented a new structure for these signings, however, giving teams varying amounts of pool allocations to sign players based on their prior season win-loss record. Basically, it’s a draft system just without the draft part, so players are free to sign with whichever team they choose, but the pool allocations serve to give losing teams more money to play with than winning teams.

In this deal, the Orioles sent two of their bonus pool allocations — three and four, to be exact — that combine to be worth $388,100, or about 20% of their total bonus pool. According to the fantastic work from Ben Badler at Baseball America, the Cubs have now raised their bonus pool from $4,557,200 to $4,945,300, giving them the largest spending pool of any team, barring future trades that move more money around. Badler forecasted both of the top two international prospects — Dominican OF Eloy Jimenez and Venezuelan SS Gleybor Torres — to sign with the Cubs, but he noted that they would need to trade for additional pool space in order to make it happen.

Well, the Cubs have done exactly that, and there is already a report out this morning that Torres has agreed to sign with the Cubs. Jimenez’s signing should follow in the not too distant future now that Chicago has enough money to sign both of their prize targets.

So, yes, the Cubs traded Scott Feldman for Jake Arrieta, but that was likely not the primary motivation for this deal from Chicago’s perspective. The value of the pool allocation should not be undersold as part of the trade, even though it will take third billing to Arrieta and Pedro Strop. I’m sure the Cubs are happy to have both of those arms in their organization, but this was a trade about the long term future in Chicago, and securing premium international talent in the process.

The Orioles needed a guy like Feldman, and they may very well not have been able to put that international pool money to the same use, so this trade makes sense for a team in win-now mode that didn’t have the space to pursue the top guys. Arrieta and Strop might end up performing well in Chicago, but the Orioles needed to upgrade, and they didn’t part with pieces that can’t be replaced. This is a smart upgrade for Dan Duquette, even if it won’t draw big headlines the way some other names would, and Feldman is a good fit for their team.

The Cubs, though, have to be thrilled with how this worked out. For the $3 million of Feldman’s 2013 salary that they ended up paying out, they got a half season of quality pitching, then turned that into an interesting young pitching prospect and nearly $400,000 in cash that they can use to sign a premium 16-year-old that could turn into a future franchise player. They bought a couple of lottery tickets who may never pan out, but turning a mid-level free agent into this kind of upside in just a few months time is how good organizations get rebuilt. Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and the rest of their front office are doing things the right way.

Update: The Cubs also just traded prospect Ronald Torreyes to the Astros for two of their bonus slots, raising their overall pool even more, and decreasing Houston’s at the same time. The Cubs now have far and away more money to spend than anyone else, and it seems pretty clear that Badler was correct when he noted that they were going to come away with the top prizes of this class.


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He had 46 home runs in 539 at bats as a 28 year old.

He had 45 home runs in 390 at bats as a 38 year old.
He hit 45 home runs in 373 at bats as a 39 year old.



You don't think that's a jump in power numbers?
 
Wow, Theo sold Feldman at a pretty low price. I know this has been a career year for him, but why trade for 27 year old Jake Arrieta whose ceiling is a #5 starter and another reliever who can't throw strikes? Maybe Strop will benefit from a change of scenery so he won't cry about O's fans booing him anymore, but Arrieta hasn't shown that he'll ever amount to anything.
 
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