Cubs offseason chit chat...

[LBiittner]

I'm interested in Clase from Cleveland. He's at around 2.5m for 24.

23 was a down year compared to his past performance.

Is Morel's bat enough to get the guardians attention? Do the Cubs need to add to him? 

I'm asking because the Cubs did pay quite a bit in futures for Busch. And I'm not informed on clevelands roster and minors makeup.

 

[Stratos]

2 hours ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Perhaps. But they did mention 1b, and I think we all know that if the Cubs bring in Bellinger, there will be a very good likelihood he'll have to move from CF to, probably, 1b when they do call up Pete Crow-Armstrong and that didn't seem to stop them mentioning Busch there specifically. 

I'd take it more at their word: that the Cubs really don't know what position Morel can play.

They also mentioned DH as possible for Morel.  Yeah they don't know, and that's fine.

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, LBiittner said:

I'm interested in Clase from Cleveland. He's at around 2.5m for 24.

23 was a down year compared to his past performance.

Is Morel's bat enough to get the guardians attention? Do the Cubs need to add to him? 

I'm asking because the Cubs did pay quite a bit in futures for Busch. And I'm not informed on clevelands roster and minors makeup.

 

Clase's on a super cheap contact, which can extend to five years with club options. His value is sky-high right now. Morel probably isn't enough, requiring you to likely add more prospect capital. Emmanuel Clase is awesome, but his value is quite prohibitive. 

[chopsx9]

20 hours ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Well, I think we need to remember, no one really plays 162 games any more. Bellinger, even if entirely healthy, is probably looking at 140 games. Then add in the batted ball data: Bellinger looks more like a 110-120 wRC+ hitter moving forward (Mike Petriello laid out a great case). I think Cody Bellinger at 3-3.5 fWAR is a really likely scenario moving forward. He will probably peak and valley outside of that: maybe a bit above 3.5 here, lower there...etc, but I wouldn't expect him to be much better unless the batted ball profile changes (and I don't think you can really predict that getting better right now).

You know who has really great batted ball data?  David Bote - how has that translated into career success?  Miguel Sano's hhr was 4th in MLB in 2021 in - you want guess how he performed in 2022.  Bellinger played a 130 games last year - after spending a month on the disabled list.  If he played in 150 that's 5 WARish.  That's not even close to a career high.  This isn't Mastrubuoni suddenly having a 4 war season out of the blue.  His 2 strike approach is clearly contributing to his BBD and deciding he can't replicate his production - when it is clearly in line with some previous years - seems awfully pre-mature.  Maybe the HHR is the mirage not the production.  There's always some chaff at the top of HHR charts

[CubinNY]

3 hours ago, Bertz said:

Yeah they were asked pretty point blank about Morel's position, twice, and mostly hemmed and hawed.  I would guess they try 3B in the spring but no one's especially confident in it working.

I'd guess one of two things for 3B:

1.  They like Madrigal as an everyday option more than the fans (not totally unreasonable) and also are comfortable with one of the other internal options during Madrigal's bi-annual IL trips.  Possibly even Busch given the talk about his versatility

2.  They plan to acquire an everyday, or at least everyday-ish, 3B option.  JD Davis maybe?  He has an 117 wRC+ against righties over the last 3 years.  Bonus is that he's a lowball hitter and should compliment Madrigal.  Giants seem like tbe favorites for Matt Chapman, and Davis is very superfluous from there

Can we stop with the Madrigal as an everyday player nonsense? Even if the Cubs wanted him to do it he can’t stay healthy. I’m hoping they trade him for a lottery ticket before the season starts. He’s not a 3rd baseman. He can’t slg. And most of all he can’t stay healthy. 

[chibears55]

3 hours ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Perhaps. But they did mention 1b, and I think we all know that if the Cubs bring in Bellinger, there will be a very good likelihood he'll have to move from CF to, probably, 1b when they do call up Pete Crow-Armstrong and that didn't seem to stop them mentioning Busch there specifically. 

I'd take it more at their word: that the Cubs really don't know what position Morel can play.

I still have a feeling Morel will be traded

[chibears55]

Very interesting that Swanson is the voice for Bellinger to return to the Cubs.

Hopefully both sides see this as a positive and Jed is willing and Bellinger is willing to meet half way and work out a deal that will satisfy both sides.

[Jason Ross]

12 minutes ago, chopsx9 said:

You know who has really great batted ball data?  David Bote - how has that translated into career success?  Miguel Sano's hhr was 4th in MLB in 2021 in - you want guess how he performed in 2022.  Bellinger played a 130 games last year - after spending a month on the disabled list.  If he played in 150 that's 5 WARish.  That's not even close to a career high.  This isn't Mastrubuoni suddenly having a 4 war season out of the blue.  His 2 strike approach is clearly contributing to his BBD and deciding he can't replicate his production - when it is clearly in line with some previous years - seems awfully pre-mature.  Maybe the HHR is the mirage not the production.  There's always some chaff at the top of HHR charts

When did David Bote have "great" batted ball data? Because he had pretty decent batted ball data in 2018 in which he posted good exit velocity, but had a bunch of worrisome things under the hood, like really bad barrel%, bad whiff and chase rates...you get the picture. He was awful in 2019, then had good data (similar to 2018) in 2020. He had some interesting batted ball data with processes that suggested he'd unlikely be able to turn his exit velcoties into anything meaningful. 

Secondly, had he played 150 games, he'd have finished around 4.7 fWAR. You're right, that's not his career high, but his career high isn't coming back. 2019 Bellinger and 2023 Bellinger are different beasts. Bellinger just isn't the 47 home run guy any more and there's little indication that's coming back. In 2019, Bellinger was 39th in the league in exit velocity...he was 213th last year. In 2019 he was 10th in barrels, in 2023 he was 143rd. There's really little reason to bring up the guy he was because we're signing the guy he's going to be. 

There's always some "chaff" but he's almost assuredly going to be unable to replicated a 135 wRC+ with the type of hits he's getting. He's not a bad player mind you and there's been some interesting changes in his approach. But he's far more likely going to be 10-20% better than average than 35%+ better than average. He's just incredibly unlikely fWAR 4.7 if he's going to keep this batted ball profile. And no, it's not premature. There's basically no one in the MLB capable of producing 135 wRC+ with his batted ball data. You know who had his batted ball data last year? Guys like Alex Verdugo. Now that's not saying Bellinger=Verdugo, but it's important to realize what kind of batted ball data we have on Bellinger from last year. 

I'd really recommend reading this article from Mike Petriello. Not only is Mike one of the absolute best in the business, he explains just what kind of a hitter he expects Bellinger to be. One of the points he mentions is that you might not care how Bellinger got to an OPS+ 133...but teams do. 

[Jason Ross]

15 minutes ago, chibears55 said:

Very interesting that Swanson is the voice for Bellinger to return to the Cubs.

Hopefully both sides see this as a positive and Jed is willing and Bellinger is willing to meet half way and work out a deal that will satisfy both sides.

Swanson probably isn't helping, though. Not only is it riling up the fan base (imagine if the Cubs don't sign Bellinger at this point the horsefeathers storm that social medias, reddit, twitter will be...) it's not helping the Cubs negotiating hand. All it's giving is Boras more of a reason to hold steady. I appreciate Swanson would like Cody Bellinger back on the team, but I'd rather they let the team take care of this and not calling for it so publicly. If there's a positive, it's that I'm not sure Hoyer really gives a horsefeathers what people think and he'll hold firm on his valuation.

[chopsx9]

14 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

When did David Bote have "great" batted ball data?

David Bote's career HHR rate is higher than Freddie Freeman's it just didn't/doesn't  translate into results in the majors.   Anybody clamoring for Bote's services?  I've read the Petriello article - Bellinger's 2 strike approach - logically - is going to drag down his HHR - BUT he's not swinging like that on every pitch.  Batters who strike out a lot can have misleading rates - see good ol' Matt Chapman at #2 in 2023 -  because the calculation only triggers when contact is made.  Conversely players who make a lot of contact can also have misleading rates.  You certainly think Freeman would have higher rates - he was 109th last year behind such luminaries as  DJ LeMahieu, Andy Ibanez and Mike Yastrzemski.  Interestingly Freeman makes a pretty decent amount of contact unlike Matt (hopefully never a Cub) Chapman.  I'll believe teams really care - which doesn't mean they should - when Bellinger is the last Boras Client standing.

[Rcal10]

If Morel can’t play 3rd(which it appears he can’t) and Busch is at 1st, there are a few options via trade but all come with some issues. Kim of SD if they want to dump some more salary, Polanco (but he hasn’t played much third), Lowe of Tampa(but he hasn’t played 3rd), JDDavis, Gleybor Torres, Bohm, Burger. I guess Moncada too, but with that salary I have to think a much bigger deal would have to be made for the Cubs to take Moncada and that salary. I’m sure some of these guys aren’t even available. Just looking at options. I guess you can add Bregman and Bichette if you want to go big. Several of the guys mentioned are either FA after this season or the next. Which works for the Cubs if they want to leave the position open for someone in the organization in a year or two. Much better options that Chapman for the next 4-6 years. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

On 1/12/2024 at 2:06 PM, Bertz said:

Do we think we get any interesting news from Cubs Convention this weekend?  Last year we found out about the Madrigal at 3B experiment, so my mind immediately goes towards clarity on what positions Busch and Morel are going to focus on.  

I know the thread has discussed this a bit as it happened, but these were my takeaways from attending Saturday only:
 

• I don't think we learned anything particularly decisive, except for 1) Fans really really want Bellinger back 2) Jed is still very mad at Bob Nightengale over the Morel trade stuff(maybe also at the Morel convention trade rumors, which is hilarious because he ranted about it in answering a question from Crawly, who started them) and 3) Pat Hughes will not tolerate the question "how many world series have you won", even from children
• Maybe it's because I rewatched Moneyball a few days ago, but the way that Jed and especially Carter basically ripped off Jonah Hill's "we're buying wins" terminology I thought was interesting.  When you combine this with the Counsell hire, I really do believe we need to rethink the more rigid lineup spots and roles we normally use to talk about offseason needs and holes.  They did talk a bit about not going too far out of balance(they used the example of all RHH lineups), but in general I think their approach is to add as much surplus value as they can and let Counsell figure out how it fits together(within reason)
• Speaking of Counsell, the only time I recall him calling out a specific player was Wesneski, as someone he had been very interested in from afar.  This was in the context of balancing reading all data/reports on the team vs. not letting that spoil his first hands on impression, so it might not be anything. But maybe a good reminder that if Wesneski were a trade target from another org we might be really intrigued by his 2022 success and repertoire, so the FO might be too for his 2024 role.
• Tauchman I thought had the most thoughtful answers to questions of any player I saw. The other players weren't necessarily cliche factories but I thought he had the most interesting answers and those that seemed to give the biggest peek behind the curtain.

[LBiittner]

37 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

If Morel can’t play 3rd(which it appears he can’t) and Busch is at 1st, there are a few options via trade but all come with some issues. Kim of SD if they want to dump some more salary, Polanco (but he hasn’t played much third), Lowe of Tampa(but he hasn’t played 3rd), JDDavis, Gleybor Torres, Bohm, Burger. I guess Moncada too, but with that salary I have to think a much bigger deal would have to be made for the Cubs to take Moncada and that salary. I’m sure some of these guys aren’t even available. Just looking at options. I guess you can add Bregman and Bichette if you want to go big. Several of the guys mentioned are either FA after this season or the next. Which works for the Cubs if they want to leave the position open for someone in the organization in a year or two. Much better options that Chapman for the next 4-6 years. 

Rcal, the 3rd baseman we open with might not be the guy we end the season with. We might very well open the season with a 3 headed Frankenstein @ 3rd. Then quite possibly somebody is fast tracked or someone towards the end of the season on an expiring contract is traded for, much like candelario in 23.

Personally, I'm more interested in getting that late inning man already from the get go.

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, chopsx9 said:

David Bote's career HHR rate is higher than Freddie Freeman's it just didn't/doesn't  translate into results in the majors.   Anybody clamoring for Bote's services?  I've read the Petriello article - Bellinger's 2 strike approach - logically - is going to drag down his HHR - BUT he's not swinging like that on every pitch.  Batters who strike out a lot can have misleading rates - see good ol' Matt Chapman at #2 in 2023 -  because the calculation only triggers when contact is made.  Conversely players who make a lot of contact can also have misleading rates.  You certainly think Freeman would have higher rates - he was 109th last year behind such luminaries as  DJ LeMahieu, Andy Ibanez and Mike Yastrzemski.  Interestingly Freeman makes a pretty decent amount of contact unlike Matt (hopefully never a Cub) Chapman.  I'll believe teams really care - which doesn't mean they should - when Bellinger is the last Boras Client standing.

So, you took all of that information and you boiled it down to...that? My very first sentence? That's a bit of a  poor faith argument on your part I very clearly explained how David Bote's exit velocity had plenty of process issues, as well as providing data from Mike Petriello on Bellinger. Yes, hitters who strike out less can have lower rates, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Cody's average exit velocity sucked. So did his max exit velocity. So did his HR distance. This isn't someone who just made a lot of contact and so his exit velocity was bad, it was that he made weak contact consistently regardless. His max exit velocity was 221st and his max HR distance was 124th. 

Comparing Bellinger to Freeman also goes off the rails pretty quickly. Yes, Freeman's average exit velocity was 92nd, but his barrel% was 15th in baseball, the guy found the barrel constantly. He literally doubled Bellinger's barrel total. ZiPS has Bellinger at a 108 wRC+ next year versus 143 for Freeman. While I think former seasons and injury years are dragging Bellinger down a bit, ZiPS takes into account batted ball data, too. There's a reason why ZiPs thinks Freeman is 43% better than average and Bellinger is...well 8%. Is ZiPS end-all-be-all? No. But it's a much better projection system than "well I just feel" and that feels like what you're doing with Bellinger. You want so badly for him just to be great that you've allowed that to be all you can see.

Teams should care. Clearly they do. If they didn't, Cody Bellinger, the 135 wRC+ player would have been signed. You sign a135 wRC+ CF'er to a $200m during the Winter Meetings if you truly believe he's 35% better than average. Not a single team has made him a priority for that amount to date. And before we get into the "Boras clients!" argument, Boras had a CF free agent already sign with a team (who could have used a 35% better than league average CF'er!)...Boras clients can be signed. 

I think Bellinger is a fine player. I also think he's likely a 3 or a 3.5 fWAR player moving forward unless he changes his batted ball profile. I'd be fine with the Cubs signing him to something like 6/$25m AAV or so. But we have to live in reality where his batted ball data matters when we talk about 2024 and beyond.

 

[Rcal10]

8 minutes ago, LBiittner said:

Rcal, the 3rd baseman we open with might not be the guy we end the season with. We might very well open the season with a 3 headed Frankenstein @ 3rd. Then quite possibly somebody is fast tracked or someone towards the end of the season on an expiring contract is traded for, much like candelario in 23.

Personally, I'm more interested in getting that late inning man already from the get go.

But you can do both. Most of those guys don’t cost a lot in terms of salary. I think they are going to get one pen arm. Why not a decent bat at 3rd too? I would much rather have a proven major leaguer starting the year at third than going with Madrigal/Mastroboni for half a year and hope a young guy is having a great year so they can bring him up to fill the position. They can do a 3rd base trade sign a late inning arm and sign Bellinger. 

Edited January 14, 2024 by Rcal10

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

So, you took all of that information and you boiled it down to...that? My very first sentence? That's a really poor faith argument. on your part I very clearly explained how David Bote's exit velocity had plenty of process issues, as well as providing data from Mike Petriello on Bellinger. Yes, hitters who strike out less can have lower rates, but it's not a hard and fast rule. Cody's average exit velocity sucked. So did his max exit velocity. So did his HR distance. This isn't someone who just made a lot of contact and so his exit velocity was bad, it was that he made weak contact consistently regardless. His max exit velocity was 221st and his max HR distance was 124th. 

Comparing Bellinger to Freeman also goes off the rails pretty quickly. Yes, Freeman's average exit velocity was 92nd, but his barrel% was 15th in baseball, the guy found the barrel constantly. He literally doubled Bellinger's barrel total. ZiPS has Bellinger at a 108 wRC+ next year versus 143 for Freeman. While I think former seasons and injury years are dragging Bellinger down a bit, ZiPS takes into account batted ball data, too. There's a reason why ZiPs thinks Freeman is 43% better than average and Bellinger is...well 8%. Is ZiPS end-all-be-all? No. But it's a much better projection system than "well I just feel" and that feels like what you're doing with Bellinger. You want so badly for him just to be great that you've allowed that to be all you can see.

Teams should care. Clearly they do. If they didn't, Cody Bellinger, the 135 wRC+ player would have been signed. You sign a135 wRC+ CF'er to a $200m during the Winter Meetings if you truly believe he's 35% better than average. Not a single team has made him a priority for that amount to date. And before we get into the "Boras clients!" argument, Boras had a CF free agent already sign with a team (who could have used a 35% better than league average CF'er!)...Boras clients can be signed. 

I think Bellinger is a fine player. I also think he's likely a 3 or a 3.5 fWAR player moving forward. I'd be fine with the Cubs signing him to something like 6/$25m AAV or so. But we have to live in reality where his batted ball data matters when we talk about 2024 and beyond.

 

With teams knowing more and more and front offices getting smarter, maybe this is the year Boras doesn’t win a negotiation. If every organization is skeptical of Bellinger, Boras isn’t going to get the deal he wants. Which could work well for the Cubs. I agree there is reason to be skeptical of Bellinger. He will still be a good player(maybe even very good a few years), just not great. 

[LBiittner]

6 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

But you can do both. Most of those guys don’t cost a lot in terms of salary. I think they are going to get one pen arm. Why not a decent bat at 3rd too? 

Right now they might not be available short of an overpay. Right now rcal,  you're saying I'll take this guy but I'm not giving up much...

Edited January 14, 2024 by LBiittner

[Rcal10]

13 minutes ago, LBiittner said:

Right now they might not be available short of an overpay. Right now rcal,  you're saying I'll take this guy but I'm not giving up much...

I don’t follow. What do you think Polanco(as an example) costs? How about JD Davis? If you check surplus value of each of those guys on BBTV each is about the same as Assad. So why not one of those for third base? Do you think Assad for either of them is not realistic? Even if they had to add more, it shouldn’t be much more. Some of the others have more value. Cubs would have to add more. But I would rather start with a guy you can count on at 3rd instead of hoping they can put a bandaid on third for a few months and then hope a prospect earns the spot. 

Edited January 15, 2024 by Rcal10

[LBiittner]

23 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

I don’t follow. What do you think Polanco(as an example) costs? How about JD Davis? If you check surplus value of each of those guys on BBTV each is about the same as Assad. So why not one of those for third base? Do you think Assad for either of them is not realistic? Even if they had to add more, it shouldn’t be much more. Some of the others have more value. Cubs would have to add more. But I would rather start with a guy you can count on at 3rd instead of hoping they can put a bandaid on third for a few months and then hope a prospect earns the spot. 

I'd keep Assad. I don't like giving up good young pitching for a fringe upgrade

[LBiittner]

Just now, LBiittner said:

I'd keep Assad. I don't like giving up good young pitching for a fringe upgrade

Besides Polanco absolutely sucks at 3rd

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Maybe it's because I rewatched Moneyball a few days ago, but the way that Jed and especially Carter basically ripped off Jonah Hill's "we're buying wins" terminology I thought was interesting.  When you combine this with the Counsell hire, I really do believe we need to rethink the more rigid lineup spots and roles we normally use to talk about offseason needs and holes.  They did talk a bit about not going too far out of balance(they used the example of all RHH lineups), but in general I think their approach is to add as much surplus value as they can and let Counsell figure out how it fits together(within reason)

Counsell himself had a line like this at the winter meetings.  "Solving for wins" I think it was.

But yeah I definitely think we see more specialized lineups.  One thing the Brewers always did that stuck out to me was leaning hard on the platoon advantage.  I remember in '21 when against Alzolay essentially every flyball from a LHH was going over the fence he put like 7 lefties in the lineup.  They did the same thing to Wesneski this year.  

Ross was certainly not bad about playing the matchups, like I thought he did a great job of stuff deploying Wisdom for instance, but I agree that I expect it to be turned up to 11 this year.  It's ironic, the fans who most loudly clamored for Ross to go are the same ones who are going to throw the major temper tantrums when this happens.

[Stratos]

In Jed and Carter's Q&A at CubsCon Jed mentioned that a lot of FA and trade rumors are nonsense and some players the Cubs have been connected to they haven't even contacted their agent about, and says it's likely agents just name-dropping the Cubs for leverage because they're a large market team.

[Derwood]

20 minutes ago, Stratos said:

In Jed and Carter's Q&A at CubsCon Jed mentioned that a lot of FA and trade rumors are nonsense and some players the Cubs have been connected to they haven't even contacted their agent about, and says it's likely agents just name-dropping the Cubs for leverage because they're a large market team.

Sounds like reverse-jinx GM talk to me

[WhyCantWeWin]

5 minutes ago, TomtheBombadil said:

Here’s a guy for next year: Woo Jin An

https://www.sportsinfosolutions.com/2022/07/18/woo-jin-an-a-most-unusual-kbo-pitcher/

He’ll be 25 but the best KBO pitcher will be much cheaper than the best NPB pitcher the same age. I’d guess around the Senga deal, might break in as a closer or RP with SP potential 

He's a bully, that's a deal-breaker 

https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20230105002600315

[LBiittner]

4 minutes ago, WhyCantWeWin said:

He's a bully, that's a deal-breaker 

https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20230105002600315

I wouldn't touch him because of this. 4 victims that came forward.

No more Addison Russell's, no more Milton Bradley's, no more mel halls