hey Cubs world, 

I just got finished a rousing game of Company of Heroes and saw Justin Turner was scooped up by the Cubs. Nobody's mad at the deal, but some people are surprisingly PUMPED, as if this move was the "big difference". Also, I hear a lot of "good price"! 

Sorry guys, but for me, this is the equivalent of being pumped about Caleb Thielbar after missing on Tanner Scott. Sure, I like Theilbar as an interesting option. His only down year happened to be last year, however, and let me remind you we paid Michael Fulmer almost the same with similar confidence. There's a bit of good reason to be a healthy skeptic about this move. Many, in fact.

But before we dive into that, I must address a conversational issue I've encountered quite a bit about player value and use of cash. I really feel the need to get this rant off my chest and I think many people could use this information! I must warn the reader that this is a two part blog- I wont even get into the Turner Evaluation until the next piece. 

Some Principles of Roster Construction: Player Value

Sit down and relax- this may take a few minutes to cover. But it'll be a solid read, I promise you. 

Okay, let's start with WAR pricing and make sure we are all on the same page on this. 

As most every fan knows these days, Wins Above Replacement prediction is more of a solid, yet complex art than a highly laser-precise science. The most popular models for WAR are fairly predictive of reality, but its very clear that MLB clubs don't follow any simple WAR formulas as their "final answer". Each club management team has their own proprietary formulas that combine many factors, including the estimated brand value of the player and their impact on club revenues, which is ultimately even more important than WAR. Furthermore, presidents and GMs have discretion to break from these formulas. Each owner has a unique way of managing the total decision process of contracts.

My Motives: To Predict a Better Plan B 

That being said, let's get back to the basic purpose of a person like me having a blog about roster construction. Frankly, I'm a hobbyist, attempting to "compete" with managerial contract formulas for fun, and maybe eventually contributing something to the science of roster construction itself. Clearly, there's a lot of room for discretion in the industry, as some teams place wildly different valuations on the same players. Not all of that variation can be simply explained by factors such as the relative park-to-player fit, as that data is fairly well available and yet doesn't cover the whole story. Furthermore, if you gave the exact same 2024 end-year roster of the Cubs to various GMs, they would make different deals in the 2025 offseason.

Put simply, there are competing philosophies and strategies out there. Some sports writers can fairly guess which teams like what player just based on past year patterns. Much of my strategy is to look at GAPS between club management style, where I ask myself: "If I thought like the Padres, or maybe Phillies or Astros, what stats might drive changes in their philosophy for a different direction to the Cubs lineup? Why is this change of direction not being considered by Jed Hoyer, and do I think Jed is wrong?"" Now, I can't prove those teams would actually think like I think they will (say that three times fast), but I can find evidence for a plan B approach. I prefer to discuss/explore these plan B strategies, fully well knowing they aren't the most likely outcome for a Hoyer team. Furthermore, I am looking to more accurately guess a player's' true value and question the efficiency of how a budget is used. And there's a HUGELY IMPORTANT reason why nitpicking budget matters for winning a World Series if you're not one of the top 3 spending teams in the league! 

The Price of a Marginal Win is Non-Linear

Let me go over this before we get back to Justin Turner. A few more minutes, please! Danke.  

First, let's address this from the player side of wins as WAR. 

Its fairly obvious that high WAR players are exceedingly rare - in fact, they are exponentially rare according to a power law equation. Consider Sohei Ohtani - there's only one person in the world who is a threat to produce extremely high WAR both as a hitter and pitcher. Or a 5 tool player like Kyle Tucker -he's the best total package in Right Field in the MLB from 2021-2024, and there's only a couple players close at the same position. Obviously they will cost exponentially more money, but Ohtani is worth almost TWICE a Tucker. Thus, we can presume that WAR is not linearly increasing in price - when you get to players over 4 WAR, the bidding wars really take off, and a few teams are willing to drive the auction past the point of "WAR profit", with clear hope of recouping it instead in additional revenue.

As you move down to 3 or 2 WAR, players have fewer total "tools" and "microtools" . For example, a utility glove player has to do dozens of things right at each position. An example of microtools: its exponentially rare to find a utility glove player that is gold glove candidate level at multiple positions compared to one position. But again, these 3 and 2 WAR players are more common, and we expect maybe 4-8 million per WAR in market price, depending on position and contract length. Superstars can run over 10 Million per average projected WAR, like Juan Soto, who is being paid for 75 WAR @ 10 MM each (not counting inflation), even though odds are he falls short of 60 WAR over that contract.

By the time you get down to 1 WAR, the free agent price falls as low as 2 MM/ WAR, or even lower if there's more 1 WAR players than there are positions of need in the league that year (usually RF, 1B, DH 1 WAR hitters are in very low demand and high supply, which explains why Mike Tauchman got ripped off by the White Sox on a sub 2MM contract, despite being a potential 1 .5 to 2.5 WAR range player). Thus, we should always remember that some mid-market teams have pre-arbitration stud players in the very pricey positions and can go cheap on abundant positions, and make that work out. This is partially why the Rays can be competitive- they usually drop long contracts on opportunistically available platers of most abundant roles, like glove-first 2nd baseman or SS, while big market teams pay through the nose to squeeze another WAR out of scarce positions like slugging catcher. 

Theoretically, it should NOT be possible for all 30 teams to fill all 26 roster roles with all desired tools and microtools because, first, there aren't enough multi-tool players in the world; second, because players compete in matchups by rank order or performance, not against absolute performance standards like in swimming, or track and field. The tenth best hitter has varying statistics year to year, and isn't always an elite hitter for the ages, but sometimes can be. Still, competing for a World Series, in a given year, the best estimate of victory is just to rank-order compare all tools on both squads in all 7 planned games, and you'll probably guess the series winner, if there's any sizable gap between the two teams. If they are close to evenly matched, small differences won't override random luck.  Still, every team will attempt to "right price" each player for their true on-field value and economize on contracts to stack up the most complete team possible - that should be obvious.   

Player Brands versus WAR

Teams have unique formulas for how much the player's total brand is worth, and some can therefore accidentally "overpay" the field value of the player compared to their true performance, but also overpay compared to the next highest bidder. The bidding process has some secretive aspects to it - teams don't always know how much the second highest bidder offered. Still, the over-the-tax-line spenders have a strong advantage bidding on superstars because those players will raise revenues in many ways, including the club brand value. Even beyond marketing, a legendary player can raise the equity value of the club- such as Ohtani raising the resale value of the Dodgers organization to a future buyer. Organization equity values are growing faster than their revenues in "goodwill", but only towards the top of sports leagues. Then, add broadcasting rights, and so on. Thus, an elite team has level on top of level on top of level of ways to recoup the contract costs of a superstar. Thus, a rich team may pay outrageous prices on WAR because there's hidden variables beyond WAR justifying those prices.   

Now, back to WAR. Suppose you're not one of "those organizations" and you have a hard spending cap, such as the Cub's current self imposed $240 million limit. This artificial limit also should limit your use of "revenue driven valuations" of a player. Put simply, the Cubs are refusing to sacrifice the profit they gain from Kyle Tucker jerseys to pay the guy more money. Its an "F U" to the player that their only value is what they do on the field. Cubs CANT value Tucker as high as a "Brand driven club" only because the Ricketts aren't betting on equity gains to the Cubs the way the Dodgers do - and the best guess as to why is the declining population of Illinois cant compete with the booming population of California. Otherwise, Hoyer would be allowed to pass the spending limits with "franchise brand players", knowing Kyle Tucker would pay for himself. So, mathematically speaking, the Cubs CANT spend a dime past what they think he's worth on the field. Why? Because if they do, then they are imposing an even TIGHTER cap on their budget for field play!

For example, if Tucker was worth $40 mm/year on the field, and the Cubs signed him for $45 million, then effectively they are reducing their "Field play budget" for player contracts from $240 million to $235 million. the other $5 million was spent on player brand, because they pull it from that account as opposed to pulling his salary from the "Brand" account! Unlike the other top 8 market size teams, The Cubs don't use any separate brand account to justify over-the-threshold spending, making it hard to match top bids!

Moneyball at the Tax Line: Finding Undervalued Field Play, not Star Power
For this reason, the Cubs are forced to find wins from better, counterintuitive assessments of a player's near future worth than the other 29 teams, but especially counterintuitive formulas for future WAR compared to the top spenders. They MUST bid on DIFFERENT players often! They can't bid on OBVIOUS players often ! The Cubs rarely bite the bullet on bidding wars with conventional success formulas, and usually lose those bids (such as Bregman). To be unconventional is their only hope to "beat the market" on each marginal free agent and amass more Team WAR than their big market rivals. They must bet on upside potentials of players, or be opportunistic for evolving their plans as players pop up. If they had a separate budget for player brand to pull from, they would be able to get into conventional bidding wars and sometimes win conventional stars, like say the Red Sox, who are willing to win bids against the Yankees head-on sometimes. The Yankees can afford Cody Bellinger because he's a brand draw- his personality is beloved. beyond his field play, and the Red Sox can sell Bregman to their fans as the "missing piece to beat the Yankees". The Cubs HAD to move on and find the best unique deal on a superstar possible - Kyle Tucker.  

What if There's Better Counter-Intuitive Options?

Hoyer's biggest problem is being overly confident that he's got "the best formula in the majors" for building a Cubs team from counter-intuitive WAR pricing strategy. He's not doing enough scouting of other team strategies, in my book, and that's a huge problem. For example, has he really figured the Brewers out? No, clearly not, which is why he gave up and hired Counsell to help him out of his rut. He made some bad choices 2022 and 2023 with roster construction. Furthermore, there's some other teams that found amazing Moneyball player combos, such as perfect platoon players or styles of player in roles, which were always available to Hoyer in free agency but he simply didn't get right. He could have assembled Joc Pederson and Grichuk as a DH duo, or something similar, but he didnt. The Diamondbacks called that one correctly and had the best DH duo in MLB. There's quite a few clever moves that Cubs fans really should be aware of that Hoyer missed, and rival teams got right. Frankly, Hoyer's above average in roster construction, but He's never really struck me as a genius at it. I give the Braves, DBacks, and Astros more credit, just off the top of my head. 

What's Wrong with Justin Turner?

I'm going to leave you with a cliffhanger question, as this post is getting long. Part 2 will get into the answer of that question. But let me adress one more WAR principle: Stacked rosters are hard to improve - the better the team, the exponentially harder it is to improve it. Not only do you pay more for rare players, but your baseline is so high that there's no cheap buys to be found to bump your Win expectations up significantly. First, Even 1 additional win may cost you a full $10mm if you have no players in your starting lineup under 3 WAR, because you're forced to enter a bidding war to finish your roster with that "perfect fit player". Second, you have injuries to worry about. With each additional Team WAR a marginal injury is also that much more FINANCIALLY devastating; thus, having enough suitable 40 man players becomes an obsession. Notice Hoyer seemed more worried about his AAA roster this year than his MLB bullpen. That obsession is because of last year's failures and likely a key issue for getting Hoyer's own contract renewed next year by his boss!

1) So, the Cubs are a Team with a great roster that's hard to improve.    

2) But, they can't overpay, especially not based on star power. They must play "straight WAR" strategies. 

3) Depth is essential... but that Depth need be better than league average to keep a very high win total, not just "many warm bodies".  

4) The Cubs already had a tight 26 man roster entering 2025, with few places for obvious improvement.

5) Many fans were disappointed the Cubs didn't land enough high WAR arms - too many "solid, not All Star" pitchers and relievers. 

6) All that's left to work on was the bench, which was below average among big market teams for 5 years in a row. 

 7) DID THEY DO ENOUGH ON THE BENCH? Will Turner be a difference maker? Could they have afforded more, done better for the same money?

I'm claiming that the current Roster is quite good, with a ceiling of about 95 Wins, and 92.5 projected. However, Turner was "a wash, or worse" compared to other options, so he doesn't increase Cubs' ceiling at all. Furthermore, he BARELY raises the Cubs's floor of 92.5 Wins, because I think there's several different ways they could have ended up with a 97 Win projection - and I'm already being generous/optimistic about their current 26 man, compared to Pecota/Zips. 

I'm claiming that Hoyer did well with Berti, but the only reason we ended up with a $6 mm Turner is because he lost out on other moves while bidding on Bregman. He wagered he would WIN the Bregman bid and lost handily, or else he wouldn't have wound up with the last overpaid 1B/DH of the entire market at that price. not a bad signing, all things considered, but also a wrong turn in roster construction choices that could have been avoided if Hoyer was never serious about winning the Bregman bidding war in the first place. 

next article, I'l give many examples of better overall projected WAR for the buck, as well as better total WAR results, with toolsier, younger players that have more upside.