Seems we’ve been talking about the Cubs more than usual this offseason. Which makes sense — the Cubs are really interesting right now. They’re really interesting right now, and it’s been a while since they’ve been interesting at all. It’s finally their turn. Of course we’re going to talk about them more than, say, the Mets or the Rangers. Sorry, Mets and Rangers.

Bullpens are all the rage in today’s MLB. Starting pitchers are being asked less and less to work deep into games, and so the importance of having multiple bullpen weapons to work the final few innings is at an all-time high. Used to be you’d hear about a team that “played eight inning games.” A team like the Yankees could let out a sigh of relief when they entered the ninth with a lead, because they had Mariano Rivera. Last year, we saw the emergence of the team that played six innings games, as the Royals let out their collective sigh of relief with a lead in the seventh inning as they watched Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland toy with hitters for three innings to close out games.

Everyone would like to have their own version of the Royals’ three-headed monster in the back of their bullpen, which brings us to the back end of the Cubs bullpen.
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Pretty often, we get accused of overvaluing young players and prospects. The line of thinking is that we don’t properly appreciate the chances of a player flaming out and failing to accomplish anything of consequence. Yet, I don’t think we’ve ever been accused of overvaluing Kris Bryant. Around Bryant, there’s developed a consensus. Kiley ranked him first among Cubs prospects, obviously. Keith Law ranked him first in baseball. ZiPS is in love with Bryant, projecting a .364 wOBA. And Steamer, too, projects a .364 wOBA, exceeding its projections for Adrian Beltre and Robinson Cano. The No. 1 ZiPS comp is Evan Longoria. Bryant has yet to play in the major leagues, but already he’s considered a huge reason why the 2015 Cubs ought to contend for a playoff spot. He probably won’t be on the team out of camp, but he should be locked in before Memorial Day.

What I don’t intend to do is try to convince you that Bryant is going to bust. I don’t think Bryant is going to bust. He is uncommonly good, and uncommonly powerful, with power to all fields that comes out of a shorter swing than you’d expect. Yet there is one thing about Bryant worth considering as hype continues to build. He’s not a perfect prospect; there’s no such thing as a perfect prospect. Every prospect has a flaw, and Bryant’s is enough to raise the eyebrows. Think of it this way: if Bryant were to disappoint, why might that be? It seems we could already have a sign.

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As I reported on twitter moments ago, MLB sent a memo to clubs detailing the new process for Cuban players to go from leaving the country to signing with an MLB team. The short version is that super prospect Yoan Moncada is eligible to sign now, after a maddening long delay.

For those new to this topic or if you just want a refresher, here’s a recap of my coverage of this Moncada saga from the start:

– October 3, 2014: Moncada is confirmed out of Cuba, but no one knows where he is.  We assume his whereabouts will become clear soon as he’s the most hyped prospect to leave the island in years. Here I first quote the common “teenage Puig that can play the infield and switch hit” comp and break down all the implications about who can sign him, who is likely to pony up the big bucks, game theory implications and more.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Chicago Cubs. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Chicago AL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington

Batters
“Why do you hate Jorge Soler?” is a reaction zero people expressed via Twitter on Thursday when the author shared the depth-chart image below by way of that same social-media platform. What certain respondents did note, however, is that they’d take the over on Soler’s 1.0 WAR projection. Which, one comment regarding that: due (presumably) to limited playing time in the past, ZiPS only forecasts Soler for 345 plate appearances in 2015. That’s 1.7 WAR per 600 plate appearances — a substantial figure, that, for a player who’s recorded just a half-season’s worth of games above High-A.

Conspicuous by his absence in that same depth-chart image below is third-base prospect Kris Bryant, who receives the club’s highest projected WAR here, according to ZiPS, and the second-highest by Steamer. Whether he’ll be part of the opening-day roster isn’t really a question ZiPS, being a computer model, is prepared to answer. There appears to be some evidence, however, that when he does appear in the majors, he (i.e. Bryant) will be among the club’s very best field players.

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The proposed renovation of Wrigley Field continues to keep Chicago-area lawyers busy. A week and a half after the owners of rooftops overlooking the stadium filed their second lawsuit against the city of Chicago – arguing that the city’s approval of the renovation was legally invalid – the owners of two rooftop businesses sued the team itself on Tuesday.   The new lawsuit asserts a variety of claims against the Cubs, including illegal monopolization, deceptive trade practices, defamation, and breach of contract.  A copy of the complaint is available here.

I discussed the history of the dispute between the rooftop owners and Cubs in a post last week.  In short, though, the rooftop owners contend that the team’s renovation plans – including two new scoreboards to be constructed in left and right field – will block their views into Wrigley Field.  Although property owners traditionally do not have any legal right to an unobstructed view – meaning that your neighbor can lawfully build a structure blocking your ocean view, for instance – in this case the Cubs and rooftop owners entered into an agreement back in 2004 giving the rooftops some limited rights to an unobstructed view into the stadium.

Despite this agreement, until yesterday the rooftop owners had focused their legal efforts on challenging the city’s approval of the Wrigley Field renovation.  This was due to contractual language in the rooftop owners’ 2004 agreement with the Cubs stating that “Any expansion of Wrigley Field approved by governmental authorities shall not be a violation of this Agreement.”

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Dexter Fowler played 959 innings in center field for the Astros in 2014, which is noteworthy mostly because he was traded to the Cubs on Monday, but also because of how poorly the defensive metrics rated him for those 959 innings. By Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) he was 20 runs below average and by Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) he was slightly worse.

Both metrics dinged Fowler for a poor arm, something that’s followed him for his entire career, but for the third time in his career, UZR gave his range horrible marks relative to other center fielders. DRS had previously been friendlier, but didn’t hold back in 2014 with respect to his range.

Fowler’s defense rates poorly by the leading defensive metrics with his career DRS and UZR per 1,000 innings sitting somewhere between -7 runs and -11 runs. Now this is almost exclusively in center field so Fowler gets a few of those runs back on the positional adjustment, but we’re basically talking about a bad center fielder who might be an average guy in a corner. This is all according to the metrics which, as plenty of people will remind you, are imperfect.

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Both the Astros and the Cubs are in the process of a long-term build, yes. And in third baseman Luis Valbuena, starting pitcher Dan Straily, and outfielder Dexter Fowler, they’re moving three players that average close to 28 years old. Not everything these teams do needs to be focused on the far-term, though. With the second wild card, this year can be as important as any other.

When the Astros today sent Fowler to the Cubs for Valbuena and Straily, both teams traded from current surpluses to fill current needs.

The Cubs have infielders. With Starlin Castro, Javier Baez, Arismendy Alcantara, Luis Valbuena, Kris Bryant, and Addison Russell, they had an infield twice over. Once you factor in bust rates, that’s probably a good way to go about things. Since some in the community think the six-foot-five Kris Bryant is headed to the corner outfield, and Alcantara was already playing in the outfield, they might be have been able to fill both the infield and outfield eventually.

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Earlier this off-season, the Chicago Cubs began work on their long-awaited renovations to Wrigley Field. The team launched phase one of the project in October, tearing down the stadium’s existing bleachers with the hope of rebuilding and expanding them in time for Opening Day. In addition, the $575 million project will eventually include new clubhouses, luxury suites, concession areas and signage throughout the stadium — as well as the construction of a nearby hotel and office-building complex.

Unless, that is, owners of the rooftops overlooking Wrigley Field get their way. These building owners have filed two lawsuits over the past four months — the first coming this past August, and the second on Thursday — in an attempt to stop the renovations. In particular, the rooftop owners fear that two new scoreboards to be constructed as part of the renovation project will block their views into the stadium, threatening the roughly $20 million in annual ticket revenue the rooftops currently generate.

In an interesting twist, though, rather than suing the Cubs, the building owners have instead sued the City of Chicago in the hopes of having the renovation halted. Understanding why the rooftop owners would sue the city, rather than the team, requires some knowledge of the lengthy history of the dispute.

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Earlier, I asked you to participate in an exercise projecting both next year’s Mookie Betts and next year’s Javier Baez. The idea is that Betts seems representative of a particularly safe prospect, while Baez represents something of a more volatile asset. I promised that I would analyze the results given a sufficient sample size of votes, and, such a sample size has already been achieved. Interestingly, as of right now, there have been three more votes in the Baez poll than in the identical Betts poll. The best possible conclusion is that three FanGraphs readers had their browsers lock up at a most unfortunate time. The worst possible conclusion is chilling indeed.

So I think it’s safe to move forward with a little analysis. Before getting there, I hope you understand that *I* understand that I didn’t conduct this exercise perfectly. Nevermind the wisdom of the exercise in the first place; all my words might’ve biased the voters to some degree. I could’ve written nothing, or I could’ve at least put the polls before the words. But, what’s done is done. Also understand that, while you’re going to see a measure of uncertainty, this is perceived uncertainty, and not actual uncertainty. We can’t know actual uncertainty. We’re just going to go ahead and pretend like what we think is a decent proxy for what actually is. Let’s see how the community feels about Mookie Betts and Javier Baez, for 2015.

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A number of people who are actually good at math have asked before why we don’t present measures of uncertainty, like error bars, when talking about WAR or projections. I’m not in charge of those things, myself, so I can’t give you the official answer, but, they’re difficult numbers to calculate, if they’re possible at all, and many people wouldn’t know how to understand them, and it’s unclear how much those measures would add to the picture anyway. Sometimes you’ll see projections presented in percentiles, like PECOTA, but generally speaking the percentiles can include almost any and all outcomes, so that doesn’t help much. There’s interest in seeing uncertainty, quantitated. It’s challenging, to do it in a meaningful way.

But I want to try something, again with your help. Last week, I ran a bunch of polls, and a few days ago I analyzed the information generated. Here I’d like to take a similar approach. Now, the post was inspired by the transcript of Dave’s Wednesday chat:

12:40
Comment From Curtis
Of all the prospects yet to debut in MLB, who has the highest bust probability in your eyes? Best chance to succeed?
12:41
Dave Cameron: Baez seems to have a very high chance of being nothing. Mookie Betts will be a solid player unless he dies.

Let’s think about Javier Baez and Mookie Betts. Let’s see what we can do to effectively crowdsource their uncertainties.

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