Jon Lester

Paying $150+ million for a pitcher with 1600 career innings isn’t the safest of investments, but it sure is nice that the Cubs finally signed someone. After years of missing out on seemingly all of their big-name targets, I can’t have been the only person that was worried that the team simply didn’t have the TV revenue necessary to hang in the modern free agent market.

We know the Cubs were in on Masahiro Tanaka, Yu Darvish, Yoenis Cespedes, Anibal Sanchez, and Russell Martin, and it sure seemed like they should have been in on the likes of Shin-Soo Choo, Brian McCann, Melky Cabrera, and Jacoby Ellsbury. It’s not hard to talk yourself out of any or even all of those deals for the price, but at some point individual overpays just become market value, and teams can either afford to participate or they can’t. Glad to see the Cubs finally landing a big name, even if it’s still hard to shake the feeling that this is nothing more than a mid-market club, at least for the moment. I was getting really tired of the Rudy Jaramillo plan, redux.

Miguel Montero vs Russell Martin

After the Montero trade went down, lots of folks naturally made the comparison to Martin. It’s true that the two have been similar over the past three years (.254/.348/.386 for Montero vs. .241/.345/.402 for Martin), and both are very solid defensively. A few things to consider, though:

1. Montero has played his entire career in a very hitter friendly place, whereas Martin has mostly done the opposite.
2. Montero has struggled with lower-back issues in the past, and that’s not an issue that tends to just go away. Martin, on the other hand, has discovered the secret that has eluded mankind for all of history.
3. The most troubling thing about Montero to me is the Trevor Bauer saga. It’s pretty much inexcusable, in my opinion, to run a top pitching prospect out of town for what amounted to communication issues with his catcher. Granted, the Cubs don’t really have pitching prospects, but I’m not crazy about having an old-school catcher who has to be dragged kicking and screaming into listening to a different pitching philosophy.

Don’t get me wrong, I would still probably take Montero for the price, but I don’t think it’s a no-brainer.

Pitch Framing

So, the Cubs are finally on board with pitch framing. Does it seem odd to anyone else that it took this long? Between Welington Castillo, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, George Kottaras, Victor Martinez, Dioner Navarro et al. it sure seems like Epstein-led teams have out-and-out ignored this area ever since it was originally popularized. I initially assumed that they thought the advantage provided by good framers would fade as umpires became more aware of the phenomenon. Now I’m wondering if I was wrong about that.

Remember when on-base-percentage was all the rage, and the entire online community assumed that anyone could learn to take walks if they would just try really hard?* Pretty much no one believes that now, right? I mean, the Cubs and their blogosphere would be thrilled if Javier Baez improved to even a league-average walk rate. I don’t think anyone thinks he will ever be particularly good at drawing walks. Take my word for it, that never used to be the case. (Why can’t Corey Patterson walk like Jack Cust or Nick Johnson? He just needs the right coaching. It just makes sense; all he has to do is take more pitches.) We used to spend an inordinate amount of time wringing our hands about what Player X could be if we just got rid of Dusty Baker or Oneiri Fleita, or whichever team employee seemed to have his head furthest up his ass at a given moment.

Now I’m wondering if a similar transition has happened with framing. Granted, the “framing can be taught” crowd was never as loud as the “someone just needs to tell them how important walks are” contingent, but I have definitely heard such things from Dave Cameron, among others. Was Epstein part of the “teach-em-up” group? Has he conceded defeat?

*To his credit, as far back as I can remember, Tangotiger never bought in to that theory.

Elsewhere

• When the terms of the Giancarlo Stanton deal came out, I was shocked that he agreed to a structure which included heavy backloading after his opt-out. Stanton angrily complained about the Marlins’ tendency to tear it down to avoid paying players in the past. It seems to me that the same thing is likely to happen to him. They will put some effort into rebuilding, they will fail, and everyone will be traded. Stanton will get pissed and opt-out without ever really being paid by the team. That feels like a huge preamble to say: holy shit, how is this not getting more attention?

• The Friedman-Dodgers could be really scary. For a team that has already seen its payroll hit the stratosphere, that may sound odd, but I have always felt that no $200 million dollar roster should have as much flotsam as the Dodgers of recent vintage did. I don’t think that’s going to be the case moving forward. This offseason was the perfect time to sell high on Dee Gordon and Matt Kemp, the latter of whom is literally arthritic, and the Dodgers managed to coordinate a complicated series of moves to make it happen quickly. That team could be good for a long time.

• The Best Show is back.