Cubs offseason chit chat...

[JHBulls]

1 hour ago, ToolDRT said:

Who we thinking? Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Rangers, Red Sox? Maybe the Mets?

 

 

Maybe I am misremembering what I read 2-3 weeks ago but apparently the Mets are not going to spend a lot of money this winter after they spent half the leagues budget last winter. Although it would be crazy seeing a free spending owner not going after someone like Ohtani the only time he will probably be available (sans opt outs). 

[CubinNY]

The Mets are linked to Yamamoto and the other Japanese pitcher so they are planning on spending plenty. 
 

I don’t know their status on Ohtani.

Edited November 25, 2023 by CubinNY

[Tryptamine]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

I think this type of criticism misunderstands what BBTV is actually useful for.  Yes, you can get it to say any number of unrealistic trades are 'fair', and if you look at the user generated proposals it's clear people use the calculator to try to make various 4 for 1 'my trash for your star trades' that would never happen.  The utility of that site is that it's an objective *starting point* that isn't so far off how players actually get evaluated, so in thinking about a possibility it can be a very useful tool.  That doesn't mean its valuations are gospel, they acknowledge that up front and present them as a min/max/median, and even then there are places across thousands of players where it's not gonna be quite right(Trout being an extreme example).  But if you approach it with the thought of 'could a deal work to trade X to Team A or X for player Y, it's a perfectly good foundation where you also need to take into account the other team's needs and motivations.  Most people just skip over the second part and then other people get mistakenly irritated at BBTV for that.

 

 

 

 

Ok, here's something more realistic. Explain to me how BBTV believes 3 years of Freddy Peralta(64) is more valuable than 4 years of Justin Steele(59.4) when over 2022 and 2023 they've put up these numbers comparatively. 

Steele: 3.11 ERA, 3.09 FIP, 3.39 xFIP,  7.5fWAR,  9.30 K/9,  2.65 BB/9

Peralta: 3.77 ERA, 3.60 FIP, 3.50 xFIP, 5.0fWAR, 10.93 K.9, 2.99 BB/9

Peralta strikes out more people, that's all he does better. 

 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

9 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Ok, here's something more realistic. Explain to me how BBTV believes 3 years of Freddy Peralta(64) is more valuable than 4 years of Justin Steele(59.4) when over 2022 and 2023 they've put up these numbers comparatively. 

Steele: 3.11 ERA, 3.09 FIP, 3.39 xFIP,  7.5fWAR,  9.30 K/9,  2.65 BB/9

Peralta: 3.77 ERA, 3.60 FIP, 3.50 xFIP, 5.0fWAR, 10.93 K.9, 2.99 BB/9

Peralta strikes out more people, that's all he does better. 

 

They put the surplus value calculation right there.  They see Steele with 132.8 million in value for those 4 years(33 mil/year) at combined salaries of 73.4 million, and Peralta with 85.7 million in value for those 3 years (28 mil/year) but only 21.7 million in salary.   So they think Steele is a bit better a pitcher for those seasons(Steele being a year older probably inches them closer), but Peralta makes up for that due to having a low arb starting point while Steele is a super two who coming off his best season is setting a much higher arb baseline.

[CubinNY]

I think you treat those sites as rough estimates. I wouldn’t get too caught up in it. Pushing a model to its breaking point isn’t indicative of its usefulness or lack there of. 
 

However, I’m almost certain some here or elsewhere will use it as gospel. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by CubinNY

[Tryptamine]

Who knows if he actually has this info, but he has over 2000 followers, so maybe?

[thawv]

9 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Who knows if he actually has this info, but he has over 2000 followers, so maybe?

How do you know how many followers the has?

[ILMindState]

Sources within the Cubs organization have told me that Ohtani will only play for a team that has an American player. Will also give high preference to teams with Latinos as well. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by ILMindState

[Tryptamine]

Just now, thawv said:

How do you know how many followers the has?

Here, I got it to let me actually use the link this time

 

[CubinNY]

3 minutes ago, ILMindState said:

Sources within the Cubs organization have told me that Ohtani will only play for a team that has an American player. Will also give high preference to teams with Latinos as well. 

My sources tell me he will choose a team on the coast or middle of the country. 

[chibears55]

4 hours ago, Cuzi said:

Didn't Stroman have some of the lowest run support in the league when he was in Cy Young form this year? How many of his wins in the first 3 months of the season were because he was giving up 0-2 runs a start? How many of those games could have easily turned into a L because the pitcher was giving up 4 runs instead? Acting like the Cubs just need to find a .500 win rate pitcher to replace Stroman is disingenuous.

Not saying that per se, again, just saying to improve on what the TEAM'S record was in his 27 starts in 2024, they do just need someone who will start 27 or more games and the TEAM has a winning percentage of .487 or better in those starts to duplicate or improve on what they did in Stroman's starts last season. 

 

[Jason Ross]

51 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Who knows if he actually has this info, but he has over 2000 followers, so maybe?

A quick look of his followers and his podcast has me very convinced this is just a "throw a logical guess at the wall and then claim he has sources" thing. Nothing he posts outside of this suggests sources. His podcast has 800 followers. No important Cubs reporter followers. 

[JHBulls]

1 hour ago, Tryptamine said:

Who knows if he actually has this info, but he has over 2000 followers, so maybe?

My experience is that if you need to ask yourself “Who knows if he actually has this info”, the person typically has no info and is a random who has appeared out of nowhere. 

I will say, however, that any team that is going to make Shohei Ohtani an offer will need to offer north of $500 million. That is just logic. 

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, JHBulls said:

My experience is that if you need to ask yourself “Who knows if he actually has this info”, the person typically has no info and is a random who has appeared out of nowhere. 

I will say, however, that any team that is going to make Shohei Ohtani an offer will need to offer north of $500 million. That is just logic. 

Do they have to be north of $500M? I would have said that before the injury. I am not sure that is the case now. I honestly think there has already been an offer or it will come before the winter meeting. I am not sure it will be over $500M. 

[PackLandVA]

59 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

My sources tell me he will choose a team on the coast or middle of the country. 

Sure. But which coast? You don't specify.

[thawv]

28 minutes ago, PackLandVA said:

Sure. But which coast? You don't specify.

He's being sarcastic because of all the crap being posted about Ohtani.  The cost or the middle of the country is the whole country.  Hahaha

[Rcal10]

31 minutes ago, thawv said:

He's being sarcastic because of all the crap being posted about Ohtani.  The cost or the middle of the country is the whole country.  Hahaha

I think the response was sarcastic too! 

[JHBulls]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

Do they have to be north of $500M? I would have said that before the injury. I am not sure that is the case now. I honestly think there has already been an offer or it will come before the winter meeting. I am not sure it will be over $500M. 

A team is basically buying two positions (have to wait for 2025 for one of them), but maybe the offer won’t necessarily be over $500 million. Shohei could be a surprise and prefer team fit, not biggest offer. Hopefully something will happen over the next 10 days. 

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

Do they have to be north of $500M? I would have said that before the injury. I am not sure that is the case now. I honestly think there has already been an offer or it will come before the winter meeting. I am not sure it will be over $500M. 

Eno Sarris laid a good case out for something in the $450M range

I do expect something north of $500M because of marketing and because $/WAR isn't quite linear, but I don't think it's a slam dunk.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Bertz

[thawv]

11 minutes ago, JHBulls said:

A team is basically buying two positions (have to wait for 2025 for one of them), but maybe the offer won’t necessarily be over $500 million. Shohei could be a surprise and prefer team fit, not biggest offer. Hopefully something will happen over the next 10 days. 

The question that's not being asked is, how long does Ohtani want to play for?  Does he want to play in to his mid 30's, or his early 40's?  We've heard he would take a short term deal with opt outs, and we've seen 12 year speculations.  But we don't have any idea.

This is not a prediction because I don't know the length of the deal, but if he was to do 8 years, I think that 384 million is realistic.  That's 48 million a year for a long term contract. 

 

[CubinNY]

4 minutes ago, thawv said:

The question that's not being asked is, how long does Ohtani want to play for?  Does he want to play in to his mid 30's, or his early 40's?  We've heard he would take a short term deal with opt outs, and we've seen 12 year speculations.  But we don't have any idea.

This is not a prediction because I don't know the length of the deal, but if he was to do 8 years, I think that 384 million is realistic.  That's 48 million a year for a long term contract. 

 

If he has opt outs the number of years are meaningless. I expect it will be a “creative” contract with multiple opt outs and team options/buyouts. 
 

I expect it will be well and away the richest contract at least on paper. Maybe a huge up front bonus and smaller AAV. Maybe a backloaded contract with huge AAVs after the team options. 

it will have protection for the team

it will have multiple opt out points for Ohtani. 
 

people will talk about like they do the Bonilla contract. 

[Rcal10]

8 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Eno Sarris laid a good case out for something in the $450M range

I do expect something north of $500M because of marketing and because $/WAR isn't quite linear, but I don't think it's a slam dunk.

That is my point. It might be north of $500M. I don’t think it is forgone conclusion that it will be, though. What is better,  8/$384, 10/$450 or 13/$500? He may only want to play 8 more years. No one really knows what he wants. It also could come down to how a contract is structured. I think opt out will be big in any deal he makes. I also think it won’t be all about money. So to assume it will take over $500M is not something I can do. 
 

 

[JHBulls]

17 minutes ago, thawv said:

The question that's not being asked is, how long does Ohtani want to play for?  Does he want to play in to his mid 30's, or his early 40's?  We've heard he would take a short term deal with opt outs, and we've seen 12 year speculations.  But we don't have any idea.

This is not a prediction because I don't know the length of the deal, but if he was to do 8 years, I think that 384 million is realistic.  That's 48 million a year for a long term contract. 

 

Shohei might have an idea of how long he wants to play for but we are still talking about a human being here. He might still be enjoying playing until his late 30s/early 40s or doing as much prep as he does being a two way player is just too exhausting and he wants to finish in 6-8 years from now to spend time with his family. 

He might go with a wait and see approach, sign for 12 years for the security and then retire after 8 years. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by JHBulls

[Rcal10]

3 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

If he has opt outs the number of years are meaningless. I expect it will be a “creative” contract with multiple opt outs and team options/buyouts. 
 

I expect it will be well and away the richest contract at least on paper. Maybe a huge up front bonus and smaller AAV. Maybe a backloaded contract with huge AAVs after the team options. 

it will have protection for the team

it will have multiple opt out points for Ohtani. 
 

people will talk about like they do the Bonilla contract. 

I agreed with you all the way until the Bonilla comment. I don’t expect anything like that. But I do think whoever gets him will have a portion of their fan base very critical of the deal. The “smart spending” people will not like it. 

[ToolDRT]

6 hours ago, JHBulls said:

Maybe I am misremembering what I read 2-3 weeks ago but apparently the Mets are not going to spend a lot of money this winter after they spent half the leagues budget last winter. Although it would be crazy seeing a free spending owner not going after someone like Ohtani the only time he will probably be available (sans opt outs). 

I remember Scherzer told reporters that one of the reasons he agreed to waive his ntc was because the Mets were “taking a step back” in 2024. But I did notice some rumblings on twitter within the last week of them maybe getting involved. I just can’t see them staying out of this. Having said that, I forgot to add the incumbent Angels in my team picks