u/Sharp_Champion5006

I’m seeing a lot of posts and comments here freaking out about the possibility of trading CJ. On the one hand, I get it; he’s a great player and one of the most exciting things about this team in what have been some very unexciting years. Still, I think that everyone’s worries about it are really overblown.

First off, we need pitching depth desperately. with a solid rotation this is a playoff team, and we need to fix that asap.

Second, we’ve got a ton of middle infield depth coming up. Between Seaver King, Fitzgerald, Willits, and even maybe Fein/Cruz, there’s a really good chance we have another superstar shortstop in 3-5 years. So signing CJ to a long term deal doesnt make a ton of sense.

Lastly, this FO has seemed really good at making trades and developing the prospects from them.

To be clear, I love having CJ on the team and I don’t want to lose him for nothing. I would be thrilled to trade him if you offered every single prospect in the Dodgers organization. Between those two extremes is a plausible trade that we as fans should be happy with, and that’s not something to freak out about yet.

How is this possible?! I was looking through his savant page to try and figure out what’s changed. The obvious answer would be his plate discipline, but it turns out that’s completely hopeless—Wood, Abrahms, and Lile have all improved a lot, but in 97 plate appearances Kiebert has walked twice. Billy Beane is rolling in his grave.

There are some promising things:

-His strikeout, squared up percentage, and whiff rates were great last year and are still great now.
-His barrel percentage has tripled from 2.1% to 6.5%
-He’s lifting the ball slightly more, with a 36% launch angle sweet spot as opposed to a 31% from last year

-his bat speed is up to 67.1 mph from 66.1 mph

-last year, he had an abysmal -10 in fielding run value, in the fifth percentile for catchers. He’s now at +1, almost entirely because of his framing improvements.

-His woba of .315 is much better than his xwoba of .247, but he’s also pulling fly balls 37% of the time as opposed to 16% last year. Xwoba doesn’t account for that. He’s likely still due for some regression unless he can stop swinging at literally every pitch.

According to Spenser Nusbaum, we’re calling up Andrew Alvarez