Buy or sell, where do you land? Let's talk hot stove.

[JBears79]

I'm team buy at this point. I think this team can still win the division. Get into the playoffs and anything can happen. I'd rather watch competitive baseball the rest of the year because I don't think we need to sell the farm to have a shot. Do I think this is a WS team, no, but baseball is weird sometimes.

[Andy]

37 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Cody Bellinger is a Scott Boras client.  I don't believe for half a second trading him changes his contract in 2024. 

Just for pedantry's sake, it very likely does. Without a qualifying offer attached to him - which he won't have if the Cubs trade him - teams can offer Bellinger money without worrying about losing a draft pick this offseason. The offers are likely to change accordingly.

[squally1313]

19 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Well, I think it's pretty unfair to reduce it, because I literally said at the end, that if the Cubs want to keep them this summer, than they can't half-ass it.  That alludes to the Cubs adding players between now and August 2nd who are going to help.  And, again, I've said it plenty now, I'm 100% of the belief that trading these two doesn't change 2024.  They're FAs.  I would agree, it'd be weird to talk 2024 and trade two of your best players, but only if they were contracted in 2024.  Bellinger and Stroman will be FAs (no way Stroman opts in barring injury, IMO).  If the Cubs were going to resign them midyear, well, they'd have resigned them by now more than likely.  If the Cubs still want to resign them, than they simply need to offer them the best contract in the offseason.  I doubt either holds a shred of animosity in the offseason over it.  

The Cubs are playing much better, but I think we need to remember that they have a long road to climb, and things are neither as good as they feel during great runs (conversely never as bad as they feel during poor runs).  The team is still largely what they've been all year; a roughly .500 team who has many flaws but who plays in a bad division.  They can't sit pat and expect to be more.  So either add a few players designed to legitimately make the playoffs realistic or sell the two FAs.  I can buy arguments on either side.  

That's mostly fair. I don't think the potential benefit to 2025 and beyond is worth throwing away the admittedly mediocre chance they have this season. To be clear, I'm definitely like, running a present value of future potential benefits when making that determination. Give me somewhat good baseball now over hopefully very good baseball in the future.

But also worth talking about the current state of the system, the plethora of prospects, and the crunch coming. You're not going to find many teams this offseason willing to trade impact MLB talent for minor leaguers. There's only like, 6 of them now. That might change come midseason, but it's not a guarantee, serious roster decisions will have to be made by then, and also that means unless you win free agency in a big way, you're probably looking at a team that's going to end up exactly where we are now. 

[Jason Ross]

1 minute ago, Andy said:

Just for pedantry's sake, it very likely does. Without a qualifying offer attached to him - which he won't have if the Cubs trade him - teams can offer Bellinger money without worrying about losing a draft pick this offseason. The offers are likely to change accordingly.

That I will agree with.  With that said, I'm not sure it will change it enough to meaningfully matter.  For example, Swanson captured a higher AAV than other SS and he was QO attached, and Turner and Bogaerts each got extremely huge contracts.  So while it may change a team or two who's interested, he will be a premium position player in a thin market for impact bats, and I doubt at the end of the day the contract Bellinger signs will be much/any different if he's QO attached or not.

[Jason Ross]

10 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

That's mostly fair. I don't think the potential benefit to 2025 and beyond is worth throwing away the admittedly mediocre chance they have this season. To be clear, I'm definitely like, running a present value of future potential benefits when making that determination. Give me somewhat good baseball now over hopefully very good baseball in the future.

But also worth talking about the current state of the system, the plethora of prospects, and the crunch coming. You're not going to find many teams this offseason willing to trade impact MLB talent for minor leaguers. There's only like, 6 of them now. That might change come midseason, but it's not a guarantee, serious roster decisions will have to be made by then, and also that means unless you win free agency in a big way, you're probably looking at a team that's going to end up exactly where we are now. 

The bold is where we likely differ.  I'll trade slightly better baseball today every day, and twice on Sunday if it means a lot better baseball in the relative near future.  But I'm not patient enough for that to be 2025, either if 2024 is another one of these mediocre, .500 type "maybe we can back into a playoff" type seasons.  

Regardless of this deadline the Chicago Cubs need to be committed to winning this offseason.  Whether or not ownership and the front office has the stomach for that, is an entirely different conversion.

Edited July 27, 2023 by 1908_Cubs

[champaignchris]

I don’t envy Hoyer. I know I’m nowhere near dispassionate enough to be making the decision.  I want good baseball NOW!  Damn the torpedoes. Sell all the prospects.  
 

when that doesn’t work, sign all the free agents in the off-season. 

[Tryptamine]

18 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

That I will agree with.  With that said, I'm not sure it will change it enough to meaningfully matter.  For example, Swanson captured a higher AAV than other SS and he was QO attached, and Turner and Bogaerts each got extremely huge contracts.  So while it may change a team or two who's interested, he will be a premium position player in a thin market for impact bats, and I doubt at the end of the day the contract Bellinger signs will be much/any different if he's QO attached or not.

Really the QO only matters for mid tier free agents, it's almost a non factor for the guys like Bellinger who are looking at 150-200M pay days. 

[squally1313]

The Brewers just got Carlos Santana, a league average first baseman, for an 18 year old who wasn't on the Brewers Top 40 list back in December and has had 52 below average ABs in the Complex League since then. Go do those trades. 

[Tom Emanski]

The team's record is pretty bad against teams with winning records, so I'd probably be selling, but only if it can net us some top 50/top 100 prospects. 

[ILMindState]

6 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

The Brewers just got Carlos Santana, a league average first baseman, for an 18 year old who wasn't on the Brewers Top 40 list back in December and has had 52 below average ABs in the Complex League since then. Go do those trades. 

That trade wouldn't even improve the Cubs

[mul21]

3 minutes ago, ILMindState said:

That trade wouldn't even improve the Cubs

So a 0 WAR player isn't better than the black hole of Mancini, Mervis and Hosmer at a combined -1.8 bWAR to this point in the season?

[squally1313]

2 minutes ago, ILMindState said:

That trade wouldn't even improve the Cubs

I didn't say that exact trade, though it would certainly improve the team if it hastened the departure of Mancini. But the chance to replace Mancini, Mastro, Barnhart (and probably Wisdom) with 100ish wRC hitters at the expense of like...a few Chase Shrumpfs? Yes please.

[ILMindState]

14 minutes ago, mul21 said:

So a 0 WAR player isn't better than the black hole of Mancini, Mervis and Hosmer at a combined -1.8 bWAR to this point in the season?

That trade is the equivalent of playing Tauchman at CF and moving Belli to 1st.

[Rcal10]

17 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

I didn't say that exact trade, though it would certainly improve the team if it hastened the departure of Mancini. But the chance to replace Mancini, Mastro, Barnhart (and probably Wisdom) with 100ish wRC hitters at the expense of like...a few Chase Shrumpfs? Yes please.

The guy traded wasn’t listed because he was in their complex league. He is 18 and a large priced international guy. I think they signed him for over $1M. He isn’t Strumpf. 

[ILMindState]

18 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

I didn't say that exact trade, though it would certainly improve the team if it hastened the departure of Mancini. But the chance to replace Mancini, Mastro, Barnhart (and probably Wisdom) with 100ish wRC hitters at the expense of like...a few Chase Shrumpfs? Yes please.

Looking at the list of 1b, I don't think there's any 100ish wRC 1b available.  I'd rather just DFA Mancini and give Mervis a chance but unfortunately that's not happening.

[Hrubes20]

At the bare minimum, they should explore trades based around the Nelson Velasquezes of the world.  Is someone willing to fork over a solid reliever for this type of player?  What if they added Ryan Jensen and Yonathan Perlaza as well?  That would theoretically make the team more competitive in 2023 while helping out against the glut of "ok-but-likely-not-good" prospects that are going to be taking up 40 man spots.  

I selfishly would love to see them buy for 2023, but I understand it's likely not in the organization's best interests to do so.  At least not aggressively.

[Tryptamine]

7 minutes ago, Hrubes20 said:

At the bare minimum, they should explore trades based around the Nelson Velasquezes of the world.  Is someone willing to fork over a solid reliever for this type of player?  What if they added Ryan Jensen and Yonathan Perlaza as well?  That would theoretically make the team more competitive in 2023 while helping out against the glut of "ok-but-likely-not-good" prospects that are going to be taking up 40 man spots.  

I selfishly would love to see them buy for 2023, but I understand it's likely not in the organization's best interests to do so.  At least not aggressively.

They can be aggressive if it's multi year pieces, but yeah anyone like Eduardo Rodriguez, Josh Hader, etc. they have no business in being in on.

[Hrubes20]

21 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

They can be aggressive if it's multi year pieces, but yeah anyone like Eduardo Rodriguez, Josh Hader, etc. they have no business in being in on.

Agreed. Unless they can somehow be had for the Nelson Velasquez type prospects I reference in my other post.  But that isn't happening.  

[squally1313]

14 minutes ago, ILMindState said:

That trade is the equivalent of playing Tauchman at CF and moving Belli to 1st.

Tauchman has basically been Carlos Santana against righties, which is great. That hypothetical trade lets you move Belli back to CF (where he's very valuable!) at least against lefties, if not just more in general.

Obviously moot now, the bigger point being that there are dudes out there who shore up the bottom half of the major league roster in exchange for like, the 19th most valuable outfielder in our system. 

[Stratos]

Cubs had a horrendous May.  They've fixed the major pen crisis since then and can easily add more pen arms at the deadline without giving up anyone significant.  They have a .565 win % since June 1, and the same record at the 100 game point as the Braves had in 2021 when they won the WS.  None of their key players are injured.  If this week keeps going well I think they need to be buyers.

If they keep playing at the same pace (.565 win %) they will end up with 84 wins, so they need to add some players at the deadline to improve and have a bit of luck to get into the playoffs, which will probably need about 86-88 wins to nab a spot.  The odds I imagine are probably less than a 50% chance for a playoff spot but it's hard to nerf a season for a couple of prospects.  Luckily they're competing against flawed teams like Brewers, Reds, Phillies etc for a spot.  They can win the division or one of the 3 wildcard spots and none of the 2nd place teams in the NL are powerhouses so the wildcard is also reachable if they keep playing well.

The Cubs have the 4th best run differential in the NL, the 5th most runs scored, so the offense isn't as bad as we think, they get on base and everyone in the lineup not a catcher runs well.  If Taillon is just normal 4.00 ERA Taillon and Smyly isn't a disaster these last 2 months or Wesneski or Brown etc can step up then we have a shot.  Before the deadline grab a lefty and righty pen arm to upgrade Kay & Rucker and a quality corner IF bat or any power bat at any position they can DH.  Someone like Candelario is solid and they need a piece like him who can hit RHP, could be extended another 3 years (if I were him I'd go FA though) but they may go for a 3B prospect trade longterm.

They other thing I like about this team is they're showing great competitiveness in big games this month both vs Brewers and the last series vs the W.Sox, they don't seem to fold like a lawnchair and turn into K-machines vs good pitching like the last group started doing.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Stratos

[Tim]

Quick rant:

An MLB GM/President shouldn't need these last four games to tell him whether to buy or sell. He should understand what he has in the organization, the state of the competition, and so forth already. I get that there's a potential swing in the standings from those four games, but the depth of the hole we're in is the only factor that's going to change between now and 8/2. And even that's not likely to change radically.

I really hope he's aggressively pursuing a strategy behind the scenes and just not signaling to the media which way he's going. Because this looks like wishy-washy indecision to me.

[squally1313]

6 minutes ago, Tim said:

Quick rant:

An MLB GM/President shouldn't need these last four games to tell him whether to buy or sell. He should understand what he has in the organization, the state of the competition, and so forth already. I get that there's a potential swing in the standings from those four games, but the depth of the hole we're in is the only factor that's going to change between now and 8/2. And even that's not likely to change radically.

I really hope he's aggressively pursuing a strategy behind the scenes and just not signaling to the media which way he's going. Because this looks like wishy-washy indecision to me.

I think he absolutely should have a analytical understanding of how the team is going to perform the rest of the year, with some standard deviation bars built in, etc. But I think being 4 games back and being 7 games back come Sunday night changes the math on 'can we make the playoffs' quite a bit. Ohtani is projected to be worth 3 wins the rest of the year, as an extreme example. 

[morrisjon]

Here's my question, how much value does just making the playoffs bring to a team? For Jordan's Bulls, losing to the Pistons was a valuable experience because they learned what it would take to beat a team like the Pistons. But I'm not sure that translates to MLB since we already play muti-game series and baseball is less about in-game adjustments. 

With some small moves and a little luck, sure we could make the playoffs but it would be at the expense of losing the value for Stroman, Bellinger, Leiter, etc. Is just making the playoffs worth that? 
 

[Tim]

1 minute ago, morrisjon said:

Here's my question, how much value does just making the playoffs bring to a team? For Jordan's Bulls, losing to the Pistons was a valuable experience because they learned what it would take to beat a team like the Pistons. But I'm not sure that translates to MLB since we already play muti-game series and baseball is less about in-game adjustments. 

With some small moves and a little luck, sure we could make the playoffs but it would be at the expense of losing the value for Stroman, Bellinger, Leiter, etc. Is just making the playoffs worth that? 
 

I'm not very big on "the will to win" or "knowing how to win" in baseball. There's probably some small amount of value there, but I don't know that it compares to improving the overall talent within the organization.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

15 minutes ago, morrisjon said:

Here's my question, how much value does just making the playoffs bring to a team? For Jordan's Bulls, losing to the Pistons was a valuable experience because they learned what it would take to beat a team like the Pistons. But I'm not sure that translates to MLB since we already play muti-game series and baseball is less about in-game adjustments. 

With some small moves and a little luck, sure we could make the playoffs but it would be at the expense of losing the value for Stroman, Bellinger, Leiter, etc. Is just making the playoffs worth that? 
 

Is the point of a team to maximize their chance at a future championship if the current year's chances aren't all that high? I'm all for efficiency and optimizing the value of a roster, and I don't think there's a singular right answer to that question, but I think it's worth asking 'why bother' if it's not possible to enjoy the potential playoff team's play without it needing to be a precursor to a future uber-team.