The fact that Chas is past his prime is pretty clear as day to me. He turns 30 in less than a month. There is a whole laundry list of fringey type players that had their best years from 26 to 28. I'm thinking guys like Jason Lane for the Astros. A guy like Jon Jay for the Cardinals. You get a few good years from them as a fringe guy in their prime then move on. I don't think it needs to be too complicated.
There’s a chance a 2026 rotation of Brown, McCullers, Arrighetti, Javier, and Blanco could be plenty good, and that ignores Garcia, Wesneski, all the prospects, and any potential deadline trade targets. It’s a slight bummer that all they’ll get for Framber is a 4th round pick, but definitely understandable that they’re not offering him an extension.
Again, you call McCormick's possibility of improving from his last 267 PA an "unsubstantiated bet" but discount Meyers' 2024 second half collapse in his last 271 PA and Meyers' need to improve from that. I personally have no idea where those projections come from. Meyers is 66 / 88 / 86 WRC+ in his last three seasons. He's 29 and has never approached 98 WRC+ since his rookie season. Not in the same ballpark. It doesn't add up. If I thought he would approach those #s, they would be much closer to the same level in my eyes. If you look at fangraphs it shows that Jake's been worth -14 runs on offense and 20.8 runs on defense, during his career, for a net of 6.8 runs. Chas has been worth 14.1 runs on offense and 11.4 runs on defense, for a net of 25.5 runs. Chas's "positional adjustment" has been -8.8 runs, while Jake has benefitted from a position adjustment of 4.1 runs. The positional adjustment has been calculated into the net defensive runs. There's a significant difference in projected fwar (or bwar) based on whether someone is projected to play CF or one of the corners.
But most of these GB% pitchers are in line with Dallas Keuchel and his 89mph fastball. Framber throws 95 and has been durable for his entire career. It's a very different arsenal. I do agree that any pitcher extension is risky (look at what happened with JV) but he's a better bet than those traditional GB guys.
My apologies. I posted my general feelings about many fans in a response to yours. So many people simply equate errors or no errors to good or bad defense. Or simply just look at hitting stats only. I think our differing opinions is regarding how important that defense is. In this case, it IS very similar to the Maldy/Diaz arguments. FTR, I always wanted Diaz but recognized that Dusty, Verlander, Pressly, etc are experienced baseball men who know more than I so maybe they know something I don't. Back to CF, the pitcher must also be considered. Let's say that Chas is expected to have a 105 and Meyers a 90 OPS+/wRC+: That may mean that Chas is the better choice when Framber, Brown, and McCullers pitch as they are extreme ground ball pitchers. But when Blanco, Arrighetti, Javier, etc pitch (and especially Hader) are pitching that gap will need to be much larger for Chas to be the better choice. According to Fangraphs the average of Chas' 8 projections is 100.5. Meyers' page was not showing hitting for some reason so I had to search by individual projections. I looked at all of them Fangraphs listed and 92 was the lowest. 8-9% is simply not enough of a difference to put Chas out there instead of Jake no matter who is pitching. Now obviously, once there is some real data for 2025 that trumps projections and a change may be needed.
You’re mistating what I said. I fully believe McCormick will be better than last season, and the projections support that. What I don’t believe is that there’s a high likelihood that he repeats his 2023 (or even 2021-2022) performance. I don’t think there’s a big difference in value between the 2 players. McCormick projects as an average everyday CF with some good offensive potential but a super duper low floor. Meyers projects as an average everyday CF with not much offensive upside but a pretty high floor. I don’t have any issue if somebody prefers McCormick to Meyers, but acting like it’s a no-brainer that McCormick is the superior player seems kind of silly.
On this subject one of the things that could excite me is stabilizing 2b and/or RF so a platoon isn't needed. That would give Melton a chance to earn an MLB spot. If he has a good 1/2 season in AAA. . . Bring him up to platoon w/ Jake or Chas in CF. He will see enough LHP late in games to hopefully develop into a potential everyday option in 2026. There may be some competition from Gomez and Sullivan and who knows who else by then too. It's looking more and more like they wasted all of Leon's value and just flushed his $4M bonus by not trading him.
Deals I’d offer Framber in November: $27M/1yr $49M/2yrs $65M/3yrs $80M/4yrs $92M/5yrs $94M/6yrs I’d offer $2M/yr bonuses for CY, WS MVP, and 160ip on top of those guaranteed amounts. I fully understand that Framber is likely to blow those numbers away, but that’s all I’d be comfortable offering.
I actually am fine at math. But yeah- lots of lawyers that couldn’t do enough math or science to be doctors. I’m in mortgages and own 2 small businesses so lots of math
No need to apologize. I am enjoying the discussion. I don't dislike Jake. I acknowledge his value increased for fly ball pitchers. I also think they are similar in terms of "expected value". But Chas has a much higher range of possible outcomes from this season, to me. I'd like to see real data, like you said, from real 2025 MLB games, and assess accordingly. The 2021 - 2023 version of Chas is an above-average starter in CF and probably should see the majority of time in CF. The 2024 version is unplayable. I feel like we have enough similar outcomes over multiple seasons that I don't need to see Jake to know exactly what we're getting putting him out there.
I'm wasn't trying to misstate your position, please don't misstate mine. I'm not saying it's a no-brainer McCormick is superior. I'm just saying there's more variability in his possible outcomes and I'd like to see which one shows up. The 2021-2023 Chas is better than Jake, the 2024 version clearly is not. I don't think projections can possibly show us that. I'd like to see some sample size in the regular season so we can act accordingly.
Lol, I don't think anyone here bases anything off just counting errors. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say, we are all educated fans in here. Diaz was actually a much better defensive player than Maldy. That was a straight up case of Dusty being a prick. He did not want to give the position to the guy straw was traded for. Of course Verlander and co. weren’t gonna publicly cry about it and undermine Dusty. You gotta throw out Chas’ injury plagued season of less than 300 at bats last year. Looking at his career, last season he obviously wasn’t what he was before that. He got off to a slow start, got injured, and never really got back in the lineup full time after missing a month. Then when they were trying to get him ramped up at the end of the season for the playoffs he injured his hand. You have zero patience for chas but a long, long rope for Meyers.
I don’t recall too many balls sailing over Chas’ head that we all agreed would’ve been caught by Meyers.
So many stacked lineups across the league Story will be how pitchers settle into things Framber in a contract year Blanco coming off a career year Arrigheti and Brown building on breakout seasons (relatively) McCullers returning after a long break Will Hader Lidge it up Need multiple things to go right to make up for the WAR loss of Tucker + Breg
I didn’t mistate your position unless it changed after the original comment that I replied to (see below, quote “he’s 100% a better option for center than Meyers”). But sounds like you might not really feel that way now, in which case yeah there’s not much difference and like I said it’s reasonable to prefer McCormick over Meyers.
If you read that sentence again, it starts, "If Chas can hit again". By that I meant, if he returns to his form from any of the years 2021 - 2023. I don't know why you chose to leave that part out. I am not saying 2024 Chas was better. His return to form is, like we agree, uncertain. I'm hopeful, but I want to see real ABs against real MLB pitching in real games.
That’s fair. Main reason I assumed you were 100% in on McCormick was because you referenced his current ST ops, but it sounds more like you’re of the same mind as the rest of us, just slightly prefer Chas because of his offensive upside, which makes sense.
There is a non zero chance that the WAR loss of Tucker + Breg is compensated for by Walker and Paredez. Both Tucker and Bregman where unproductive or absent altogether for a few months last season. That makes it a little easier to replace them. Add turnover in the outfield and available second half pitching and this year looks to be an improvement over last year. I think Altuve adapting to left field and health on the pitching staff are the major concerns for 2025. It would not surprise me to see Altuve at DH and Alvarez in left field most of the time this year, and it would not be shocking to see a couple of starters go down before the break either. There is plenty to worry about this season.
