Alex Cobb (Part 1)

[TJseven7]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Well last year come playoff time their offense was anemic and their pen was a gas can strapped to a blow torch. Not saying that's a given to repeat but as I just said... peralta albers chacin hader knebel is a good playoff pen. Cain yelich braun shaw santana can slug with just about anyone.

[badger3034]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Thing is, if you have Suter as your #5, you're probably not even competing for a wild card spot. The bullpen is good, but the starting rotation is utter garbage outside of Chase and (kind of) Davies

[coolhandluke121]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Exactly. Darvish and Quintana in the NL is a huge upgrade. Montgomery goes from being their 3rd-best starter to their long reliever. It's easy to upgrade a bullpen, and I think they did enough there. I will concede that depth and injuries could derail them, but they're absolutely loaded. The Brewers were living on borrowed time when they were in first place in the central most of the year, and the Cubs made mincemeat of that race when they got Quintana and woke up from their doldrums. Maybe it was post-title complacency, but whatever it was, it was a total fluke.

[badger3034]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Exactly. Darvish and Quintana in the NL is a huge upgrade. Montgomery goes from being their 3rd-best starter to their long reliever. It's easy to upgrade a bullpen, and I think they did enough there. I will concede that depth and injuries could derail them, but they're absolutely loaded. The Brewers were living on borrowed time when they were in first place in the central most of the year, and the Cubs made mincemeat of that race when they got Quintana and woke up from their doldrums. Maybe it was post-title complacency, but whatever it was, it was a total fluke.

 

I think one could make the argument that the Brewers offense, as currently constructed, with Braun playing 1B everyday-ish, is as good if not possibly better than the Cubs offense. Only difference is the starting rotation. I'd argue the Brewers bullpen is better

[PaulLeoMolitor]

Can we just change the title of this thread to "How Great the Cubs Are"?

[badger3034]

Can we just change the title of this thread to "How Great the Cubs Are"?

 

I've been attempting to sneak pitching stuff into the thread, instead of just talking about the cubs. FTC

[Boomer5]

We aren't anywhere near the Cubs until we add someone big to the rotation as Cobb is a robin not a batman. Cain and Yelich help the offense that was 10th in the NL last year but we are also apparently losing Santana who was our best offensive player.

 

I'm expecting we sign Cobb and make a blockbuster for an Archer or a Fulmer.

[ThisIsMyCrew]

A Cobb signing and fulmer trade would make this forum go into a frenzy! I love it!

[brewcrewdue80]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Thing is, if you have Suter as your #5, you're probably not even competing for a wild card spot. The bullpen is good, but the starting rotation is utter garbage outside of Chase and (kind of) Davies

 

No its not utter garbage. Chacin is far from utter garbage. Woodruff is a top 100prospect SP, better than Davies was ever considered. Nelson wasnt garbage before 2017. While he likely comes back from his '17 I'd hope its what he was before 17 and not garbage.

You add Cobb it gives 5 solid pitchers&Nelson to work with.

Consider this squad garbage, what was your description for them heading in to last season? Generally speaking the Brewers have had garbage pitching for them. If you're going to call this rotation garbage, I have no clue how youve lived being a Brewer fan?

[coolhandluke121]

 

No its not utter garbage. Chacin is far from utter garbage. Woodruff is a top 100prospect SP, better than Davies was ever considered. Nelson wasnt garbage before 2017. While he likely comes back from his '17 I'd hope its what he was before 17 and not garbage.

You add Cobb it gives 5 solid pitchers&Nelson to work with.

Consider this squad garbage, what was your description for them heading in to last season? Generally speaking the Brewers have had garbage pitching for them. If you're going to call this rotation garbage, I have no clue how youve lived being a Brewer fan?

 

Agreed. I understand there will probably be some regression averaged across the roster, but it's kind of disrespectful to the humble, hard-working, slipped-through-the-cracks guys who just won you 86 games to go offer 8-figure salaries to people who might only be marginal upgrades at best.

 

It's like if you were regularly dating selfish, unreliable people who didn't have your best interests at heart and saw you as someone who would just give and give, and then you start dating good people who maybe aren't quite as flashy and everything starts going your way again, and what do you do the moment you get back on your feet? Go right back to the losers with a little better looks and/or status who will never do you as much good.

[JohnBriggs12]

We aren't anywhere near the Cubs until we add someone big to the rotation as Cobb is a robin not a batman. Cain and Yelich help the offense that was 10th in the NL last year but we are also apparently losing Santana who was our best offensive player.

 

I'm expecting we sign Cobb and make a blockbuster for an Archer or a Fulmer.

 

I think it's virtually certainty that they sign either Cobb or Arrieta. It's just a waiting game. I don't think we'll see a trade for a pitcher. They have solid options for the 5th spot until Nelson returns and it's looking more and more like that may be June. Santana could be traded for a 2B and a prospect or two if he's traded but the fact that the Rays couldn't find a taker for Dickerson says all you want to know about the corner OF market. It's a very weak market.

[bill hAll Star]

We aren't anywhere near the Cubs until we add someone big to the rotation as Cobb is a robin not a batman. Cain and Yelich help the offense that was 10th in the NL last year but we are also apparently losing Santana who was our best offensive player.

 

I'm expecting we sign Cobb and make a blockbuster for an Archer or a Fulmer.

 

I think it's virtually certainty that they sign either Cobb or Arrieta. It's just a waiting game. I don't think we'll see a trade for a pitcher. They have solid options for the 5th spot until Nelson returns and it's looking more and more like that may be June. Santana could be traded for a 2B and a prospect or two if he's traded but the fact that the Rays couldn't find a taker for Dickerson says all you want to know about the corner OF market. It's a very weak market.

 

But Santana is already a way better hitter than Dickerson.

[splitterpfj]

I agree, a free agent seems more likely than a trade right now, and if Nelson isn’t “right “ when he gets back, or if someone else breaks down, then they can trade for a pitcher.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Sign arrieta to a 4 yr deal at a rate he's happy and the brewers are comfortable with, then trade for madbum, hamels, archer, fulmer or stroman at the deadline

 

Arrieta

Anderson

Healthy nelson

Chacin

Davies

Woodruff

Deadline ace/burnes/renaissance Yo or Guerra

 

That's a pretty good pile of rotation options ...

[anglotiger]

Sign arrieta to a 4 yr deal at a rate he's happy with, then trade for madbum, hamels, archer, fulmer or stroman at the deadline

 

If you can get a true #1 like Stroman right now, not that I think that they can but just for the sake of debate, why wait? You lose half a season of quality starts and control and he may become harder to get at the deadline:

 

- The Jays may be in the thick of a division/WC race

- The competition may get stiffer as teams find themselves in the race but a pitcher short (due to injury or someone having a bad year)

- They might up the asking price as they think you're more desperate or more teams come sniffing around

- Some of your current commodities may decrease in value (that sword cuts both ways but it's still a risk)

 

If you really had a chance to get him now, and again I don't think that it could really happen, then I think you make the move.

 

Stroman and Cobb (I refuse to talk Arrieta in the Cobb thread) coming could alter the landscape in the NL...

[badger3034]

162 game season. As constructed it wouldnt be a surprise any and all 5 starters win 20games. Davies almost did it for Milw last year. Hes not better arguably than maybe Chatwood. Full season Darvish&Quintana with NL starts improves their stats I figured by .1-.18ERA. Easier pitcher outs makes pitching deeper more likely. Barring a bad injury anything below 100wins is terrible season for Cubs. They have Maddon coaching them thats a plus. I agree 110 is realistic. I'll guess 105-111 at this stage with health.

 

Brewers wont be competing with the Cubs for the Division w/o it all going right for them and something knocks the Cubs down.

That said, adding Cobb doesnt change the 162 game needle over the Cubs. It does improve the needle on 7game matchup vs them. Get in the playoffs and the Mighty Cubs can be beat. We'll be a tough team for them

 

Thing is, if you have Suter as your #5, you're probably not even competing for a wild card spot. The bullpen is good, but the starting rotation is utter garbage outside of Chase and (kind of) Davies

 

No its not utter garbage. Chacin is far from utter garbage. Woodruff is a top 100prospect SP, better than Davies was ever considered. Nelson wasnt garbage before 2017. While he likely comes back from his '17 I'd hope its what he was before 17 and not garbage.

You add Cobb it gives 5 solid pitchers&Nelson to work with.

Consider this squad garbage, what was your description for them heading in to last season? Generally speaking the Brewers have had garbage pitching for them. If you're going to call this rotation garbage, I have no clue how youve lived being a Brewer fan?

 

For what it's worth, I predicted the brewers to have 83 wins last season. I thought they were massively under rated, and could compete for a wild card spot, and I was right. However, the things that I thought would happen with their rotation, wasn't exactly correct. I thought Guerra was going to be solid, Peralta had a chance to redeem himself, and Garza was going to pitch for another contract, but I didn't expect him to be very good. You know what you have with your rotation this season. Cobb still hasn't signed anywhere, and we're no closer to signing him than the beginning of the off-season. Going into a season with your 5th starter being a spot starter who doesn't have very good stuff and can maybe make it 5 innings is pretty bad. Davies will start off slow like he always does, and woodruff will probably get shut down later in the season due to it being his first full year. You don't know what you're gonna get with Jimmy or when he's coming back. There's so many question marks around the starting rotation. That being said, I love their bullpen and their offsense is incredible. I don't get how you question my validity of being a brewer fan when I criticize a part of their team that I think is very weak.

[brewcrewdue80]

Badger, because you said the rotation is utter garbage. Your comment just now essentially is upset about #5's state. Yeah, that's an unknown. But generally for Milwaukee who what had Guerra Opening day Starter last year or was it Peralta? You often wonder what the Pitching rotation will be like after 1 or 2 names. Our best year in 2011 we had Chris Narveson as our #5. Randy Wolf with a 4.17ERA/4.85 Fip the season before as the #4 heading in to 2011.

 

2008 was Sheets and castoffs: Dave Bush, Manny Para, Jeff Suppan, and Seth McClung after Ben Sheets.

 

The things you notice about those seasons is most of the guys had 33GS in '11 and 30start avg in '08 not including CC.

 

We're heading in to the year with a staff that should be more consistent than those 2 seasons as constructed now, adding Cobb only makes it that much better, and we'd actually have depth to fill in for injuries.

 

Sorry I took it too fan personally? to have a fellow Brewer Fan call this staff utter trash.

[brewmann04]

it will be curious to see who the brewers add when the opening day starts.

[tmwiese55]

At this point I'm going to make the assumption taht we get one of the 3 remaining FA pitchers and I actually think it will be at a price tag that we're generally comfortable with. Feel like there just isn't enough teams chasing them and at some point they're just going to have to take the best they can get and one will end up with us. We'll see in the next few days.

 

One thing I think missed in this whole Cubs talk is that they're clearly the 3rd best team on paper in the NL. They're a clear step below WAS and LAD yet we're having a discussion about them as a possibly historically great team. I mean, what about Washington.

[DR28]

We're still hot on Cobb, deal could happen by end of next week.

 

I really want this to happen.

[superfly]

I don't like comparing Garza to Cobb as they are completely different pitchers. Garza compares better to Lynn, as both heavily rely on FB for success...and once the FB went for Garza he was toast. I see a similar pattern for Lynn. Cobb ideally is a changeup specialist, and hopefully he can get that pitch back as he notably struggled with it last year. He's another year removed from TJ and I suspect the changeup will be back. Changeup pitchers age much better than fastball pitchers.

Jeremy Hellickson has not aged very well for a changeup pitcher, and has struggled to come back from his injury in 2014; 2016 was decent, but 2015 and 2017... not so much. And he's only a year older than Cobb. I'm more concerned about Cobb's inability to stay healthy enough to start 30 games in a season during his physical prime than his pitch types, particularly on a 4-year deal.

 

I'd be OK with Cobb on a 2-year deal, but a four year deal no way.

 

For every Hellickson, there's a Hendricks or an Estrada or a Chase Anderson. There's one guy in the majors who's had success late in his career throwing a fastball as much as Lynn...and that's Bartolo Colon. From 2012 to 2017, the pitchers who threw 70% or more fastballs as a SP include Colon, Lynn, Masterson, Zach McCallister, Jarred Cosart, Juan Nicasio, Tyler Chatwood. Lynn and Colon are the only guys that are any good. Pitching that way simply isn't sustainable. That pitching style is not sustainable, while plenty of guys with great changeups pitch well into their mid 30s.

 

I'm convinced that Bartolo Colon is going to pitch into his 50's. Guy is unreal

[TJseven7]

I just hope he bats. Bartolo batting is a saving grace of no nl dh.

 

As far as being hot on cobb still... hes the 1 i want and I'm goid there. We also are wanting to see archer pitch this spring before upping our offer on him? I sure hope we don't pay anything close to whats rumored for Archer.

[DR28]

I just hope he bats. Bartolo batting is a saving grace of no nl dh.

 

As far as being hot on cobb still... hes the 1 i want and I'm goid there. We also are wanting to see archer pitch this spring before upping our offer on him? I sure hope we don't pay anything close to whats rumored for Archer.

 

I hope Archer looks like crap... We need to keep Burnes and Peralta.

 

Sign Cobb, keep Santana and see what happens.

 

Anderson

Cobb

Davies

Chacin

Woodruff

 

Cain

Yelich

Braun

Shaw

Santana

Pina

Arcia

Villar

[brewmann04]

i be very happy with Cobb and see where this rotaion goes

[olliegjw]

At this point I'm going to make the assumption taht we get one of the 3 remaining FA pitchers and I actually think it will be at a price tag that we're generally comfortable with. Feel like there just isn't enough teams chasing them and at some point they're just going to have to take the best they can get and one will end up with us. We'll see in the next few days.

 

One thing I think missed in this whole Cubs talk is that they're clearly the 3rd best team on paper in the NL. They're a clear step below WAS and LAD yet we're having a discussion about them as a possibly historically great team. I mean, what about Washington.

 

Washington may be 10 games better this year, just with their coaching change.