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OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Congrats to the Houston Cheaters on their win

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Empoleon8771 said:
The Cubs are a horrible team.

Good teams find a way to win and bad teams find a way to lose. The more I watch the Pirates, the more I realize they're not a truly "bad" team.
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The team last in run differential, 28th in runs scored, and 25th in ERA isn't truly "bad?"

The segment of this fan base that is so eager for them not to suck is adorable.

The Pirates are truly bad. The Cubs are even worse.
 
I think it's basically a toss up who is worse between us, the Cubs, and the Reds. All of the teams have major warts and I don't think the order at the end of the season is that easy to guess right now. We've been in a tailspin but it's been matched by the other two. If everything goes well, I think we have an ok shot to hang onto third place, but I don't think I'd bet on it.
 
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Cruz is going to put a good number of balls into the river.

He'll definitely need to learn how to reign in some of those ambitious decisions but I have no issue with that one in particular as it was damn close and usually an easy triple at AAA.

Not going to get overly excited as we've seem guys explode out of the gate, but you cannot deny Cruz has natural abilities that very, very, few posses.
 
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If Cruz can even just be passable defensively, he's going to be a monster SS.

Plus speed, plus plus power, plus plus plus arm strength....literally the only thing that will be a problem for him is if he can't field the position.
 
Making us watch guys accumulate a .540 OPS and lead the league in errors at SS this season while Cruz checked boxes is a bit annoying.

DJ Spinoza said:
I think it's basically a toss up who is worse between us, the Cubs, and the Reds. All of the teams have major warts and I don't think the order at the end of the season is that easy to guess right now. We've been in a tailspin but it's been matched by the other two. If everything goes well, I think we have an ok shot to hang onto third place, but I don't think I'd bet on it.
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Yeah it's being the skinniest kid at fat camp. There are 7 or 8 truly terrible teams in the majors - fortunate that 3 of them are in our division.
 
I'll say it right now, if the Pirates give Cruz a Hayes type of extension before the 2024 season starts, I'll buy season tickets for this team for the rest of my life.
 
Scandale du Jour said:
Fair enough, but I do not think Hayes has the same upside.
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Just to spitball -- arbitration still severely limits the kind of earnings that Cruz can get. Even if we assume he gets Bryant-like awards, he will have minimum salary for this year + 3 more, and then big-for-arbitration awards when he gets there for 3 years. On the other side of that, Cruz will be 30 and unlikely to get the enormous payday that guys get, because it's a decent bet that he's not a full time shortstop then.

I think if we just assume the maximum type of situation, where Cruz is a phenom for much of the remainder of the year, then the blueprint is something like what Wander Franco got: 11/182M. The caveat there is that Wander was barely 21 when he signed that, and Cruz will turn 24 this year, so a contract with that kind of length likely takes him through much of his career.

I have the same attitude that I had before we saw them pay up for Hayes: I'll believe anything like that when I see it. Obviously, tonight is just one very small sample of what the physical abilities are like, and we need to see it over a consistent stretch before we crown him anything. The one thing that gives me hope that the will might be there to sign him is that even with the highest years of Hayes' contract, the future salary continues to remain basically a blank slate. Assuming that we do the same service time manipulation to Davis and others next year, the earliest an arbitration surge of players would start to hit is something like 2026.
 
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Hayes really needs to be punted to the bottom half of the lineup. Once Marcano is back, he and Cruz should be 1-2. Until Hayes can provide more than .270/.700 he doesn't belong as a leadoff/table setter.
 
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