General Offseason Priorities

[squally1313]

Even if you wanted to glean anything of substance from this (you shouldn't), given that he was, as far as I know, completely incapable of signing free agents or making trades during the actual press conference, would you prefer the message to the players currently employed by the team to be 'these guys are good, if they exceed expectations we'll probably be a playoff team' or 'this is a terrible roster and no amount of individual improvement is going to help'

[Rcal10]

32 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

He said this almost verbatim.

He never said anything about now being the time to leverage strengths to build a playoff team. He did say there were in a good position. But to me he leaning more into improvement from within. I know he isn’t going to play his hand. But there was just a lot of the same stuff as every year. Same narrative of building sustained success. The problem is they first need success in order to sustain it. I know it is just a press conference in October. I get it. But I also think Jed said exactly what he plans on doing. Not making a bold more, but rather make moves based on “intelligent spending”. 

[TarzanJoeWallis]

I understand that usually nothing of substance comes from these post season press conferences for a variety of good reasons. But I also feel like this regime—dating back to Theo’s start—has been pretty transparent and has signaled their general intentions for how they are going to approach an offseason. This felt like it was signaling a “stay the course” approach. That approach has led to an average team with no bad contracts (that Jed was sure to point out was a strength). That’s all I’m saying. Seemed like what we’ve been hearing for the past three years. 

[Bertz]

Re-reading Brett's notes, and third point that stands out:

Quote

There are two currencies – financial flexibility and young players. The latter are the most valuable currency. We’re healthy on both sides, though. Long-term books like really good. Young talent looks good and farm system. When it comes to trading young players, yes, that’s something you have to consider, but it has to make sense for the long-term, not just short-term gain. Young players have upside, they stay healthier, so we don’t want to get away from that. Busch and Shōta showed what younger players can do. We’ll consider deals.

Basically they're going to look at deals in the Ferris for Busch and Morel for Paredes mold if they trade some of their top prospects.  So think more Brent Rooker than Kyle Tucker.  More Mackenzie Gore than Framber Valdez.

[Cuzi]

Just now, TarzanJoeWallis said:

I understand that usually nothing of substance comes from these post season press conferences for a variety of good reasons. But I also feel like this regime—dating back to Theo’s start—has been pretty transparent and has signaled their general intentions for how they are going to approach an offseason. This felt like it was signaling a “stay the course” approach. That approach has led to an average team with no bad contracts (that Jed was sure to point out was a strength). That’s all I’m saying. Seemed like what we’ve been hearing for the past three years. 

Guess Jed forgot about the $20M or so he wrapped up in bad contracts to journeyman players.

Wonder which dumpster he's going to dive into to replace those "good contracts."

[Rcal10]

5 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Re-reading Brett's notes, and third point that stands out:

Basically they're going to look at deals in the Ferris for Busch and Morel for Paredes mold if they trade some of their top prospects.  So think more Brent Rooker than Kyle Tucker.  More Mackenzie Gore than Framber Valdez.

That would be fine with me. It also leave several Mariner pitchers as options as well. But, that sort of trade will cost more than trading for Tucker or Valdez. 

[Rcal10]

12 minutes ago, TarzanJoeWallis said:

I understand that usually nothing of substance comes from these post season press conferences for a variety of good reasons. But I also feel like this regime—dating back to Theo’s start—has been pretty transparent and has signaled their general intentions for how they are going to approach an offseason. This felt like it was signaling a “stay the course” approach. That approach has led to an average team with no bad contracts (that Jed was sure to point out was a strength). That’s all I’m saying. Seemed like what we’ve been hearing for the past three years. 

This is kind of my point of view as well. I am not bashing Jed and generally do not blame him for everything, like some people do. But I am also  it a Jed apologist. So I listened very open minded. And I came away with the same thoughts you have. 

[squally1313]

22 minutes ago, Cuzi said:

Guess Jed forgot about the $20M or so he wrapped up in bad contracts to journeyman players.

Wonder which dumpster he's going to dive into to replace those "good contracts."

What are our current bad contracts

[Cuzi]

7 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

What are our current bad contracts

Mancini, Gomes, Barnhart, remainder of Neris' deal, Bellinger was pretty bad value this year.

You can argue the length doesn't make them bad deals, but Mancini and Barnhart were 2 terrible deals that he decided needed 2 years to sign.

[squally1313]

5 minutes ago, Cuzi said:

Mancini, Gomes, Barnhart, remainder of Neris' deal, Bellinger was pretty bad value this year.

You can argue the length doesn't make them bad deals, but Mancini and Barnhart were 2 terrible deals that he decided needed 2 years to sign.

Don't necessarily disagree with any of that. None of them were some huge problem, by your own math above they cost us all of like...one more Jameson Taillon. This doesn't seem to be a Cubs specific problem. Pick another team, I'm sure you could find $20m in bad deals. Brewers, as an obvious example, are on the hook to pay Rhys Hoskins $22m next year after he gave them all of 0.1 fWAR in 131 games this year. 

And, to get back to the question I asked, the only person you named that is still employed by the Cubs (maybe!) is Cody Bellinger. We have 7 non-arbitration guys under contract for next year. They were all in the top ten of team fWAR.

[Cuzi]

11 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Don't necessarily disagree with any of that. None of them were some huge problem, by your own math above they cost us all of like...one more Jameson Taillon. This doesn't seem to be a Cubs specific problem. Pick another team, I'm sure you could find $20m in bad deals. Brewers, as an obvious example, are on the hook to pay Rhys Hoskins $22m next year after he gave them all of 0.1 fWAR in 131 games this year. 

And, to get back to the question I asked, the only person you named that is still employed by the Cubs (maybe!) is Cody Bellinger. We have 7 non-arbitration guys under contract for next year. They were all in the top ten of team fWAR.

Every player I named is retained on the Cubs payroll for this season.

Bellinger being the only one with the possibility of remaining in 2025, and Jed is crossing his fingers he opts out, because if he doesn't virtually every position on the field, besides catcher is locked in.

[mul21]

19 minutes ago, Cuzi said:

Mancini, Gomes, Barnhart, remainder of Neris' deal, Bellinger was pretty bad value this year.

You can argue the length doesn't make them bad deals, but Mancini and Barnhart were 2 terrible deals that he decided needed 2 years to sign.

Cody underperformed his contract by somewhere between $5.5-10 million depending on what you use as your $/WAR calculation value.  Some of that is actual underperformance, some of that is injury, and a decent chunk of it is paying him as a CF and him playing 95 of his 130 games somewhere other than CF with 46 of those games being at 1B and DH.  He was -0.4 dWAR, which you wouldn't expect to be the case in CF for most of the season.

[squally1313]

1 minute ago, Cuzi said:

Every player I named is retained on the Cubs payroll for this season.

Bellinger being the only one with the possibility of remaining in 2025, and Jed is crossing his fingers he opts out, because if he doesn't virtually every position on the field, besides catcher is locked in.

Alright my bad, that's a semantics thing I think. The season is over, none of those guys, with the exception of maybe Bellinger, is getting paid or taking up a roster spot for the Cubs on a go forward basis. 

[Rcal10]

11 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Alright my bad, that's a semantics thing I think. The season is over, none of those guys, with the exception of maybe Bellinger, is getting paid or taking up a roster spot for the Cubs on a go forward basis. 

To your point, yes, moving forward they are in a good spot financially as well as in the minors. Even if Bellinger stays, his contract isn’t so bad it should hinder the team. The issue is figuring out where to add a bat and/or who to move. I just hope Jed is more aggressive this year than any year he has been in charge up until now. Being in good shape financially and with assets in the minors should allow him to be more aggressive this year. I am just worried he won’t be.

[squally1313]

6 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

The issue is figuring out where to add a bat and/or who to move.

I don't know, I just don't look at 'we have either $50m or $80m to spend this offseason but we don't have any obvious holes in our lineup to put a new player' as an 'issue'. I also still don't really know what the Aggressive Road Not Taken was last offseason. 

I don't know how it's going to play out. But there's 5.5 months till baseball still. 

[Tim]

11 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

I also still don't really know what the Aggressive Road Not Taken was last offseason. 

 

Just kidding. We probably would have had to pay him $800M to get him away from the Dodgers.

[Rcal10]

4 minutes ago, Tim said:

 

Just kidding. We probably would have had to pay him $800M to get him away from the Dodgers.

Yep, he was never coming here. Or anywhere beside LA for that matter. I have no issues with Jed from last year. I just think this year he needs to be aggressive. Minor league talent will never be valued higher than now. And they might have $89M to spend. I think Belli opts out. 

[Stratos]

4 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

After listening to Jed’s press conference I absolutely expect more of the same. Build a team projected to win 85 and hope for a few career years to get the ram ro 90+. 

Well the good thing is they have about 35m coming off the books that was more or less dead money this year.  35m can buy around 5 WAR or whatnot in upgrades.  If they spend it wisely they could be over 85 wins based on that alone.

We know they'll get more wins out of 3B next season, and almost certainly catcher as well (can't do any worse).  Literally anyone can pitch better than Hendricks did.  I anticipate better seasons from PCA and Bellinger and hopefully Brown/Wicks also.

I want them to stop spending several million AAV on replacement players.  They do it every winter.  They'll need another SP so they should either spend real money or assets on a quality SP or find another project off the scrapheap.  Same with catcher and the pen.

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Even if you wanted to glean anything of substance from this (you shouldn't), given that he was, as far as I know, completely incapable of signing free agents or making trades during the actual press conference, would you prefer the message to the players currently employed by the team to be 'these guys are good, if they exceed expectations we'll probably be a playoff team' or 'this is a terrible roster and no amount of individual improvement is going to help'

Exactly.  Jed said they haven't even started looking at the offseason yet because the season just ended, so he couldn't answer questions about their offseason plans because they don't have any yet.  He said that's what they'll be doing in Oct.

This was an end-of-season presser meant to talk about the season in summary.  The Cubs have lots of assets, good contracts, literally no dead money on the books, a healthy farm system etc.  What else is he going to say besides pointing that out?

[Stratos]

Interesting from the presser was Jed mentioning how Wrigley was a tough place to hit this year and suppressed their offensive numbers.  But that would also mean our pitchers got a boost.

Cubs were 4th in runs scored on the road, 26th at home.  Were 2nd in home ERA and 23rd in road ERA.

[TarzanJoeWallis]

1 hour ago, Stratos said:

Exactly.  Jed said they haven't even started looking at the offseason yet because the season just ended, so he couldn't answer questions about their offseason plans because they don't have any yet.  He said that's what they'll be doing in Oct.

This was an end-of-season presser meant to talk about the season in summary.  The Cubs have lots of assets, good contracts, literally no dead money on the books, a healthy farm system etc.  What else is he going to say besides pointing that out?

You really think they haven’t spoken at all about next season yet? You think every time someone starts discussing ideas for next season Jed says, “hey, shut it down! You know we don’t have those discussions until October!” If they have no idea about what they want to do next year until they have their off-season meetings, then things are worse than I thought. 

[Bertz]

10 minutes ago, TarzanJoeWallis said:

You really think they haven’t spoken at all about next season yet? You think every time someone starts discussing ideas for next season Jed says, “hey, shut it down! You know we don’t have those discussions until October!” If they have no idea about what they want to do next year until they have their off-season meetings, then things are worse than I thought. 

You're right it would be silly to take that literally.  But at the same time it'd be silly for the team to get too far down on any of of those convos before they know who will be on the team and who will be on the market.

Like the Bellinger decision for instance has huge implications on the offseason.  Both talent on hand and dollars available.

[LBiittner]

2 hours ago, squally1313 said:

I don't know, I just don't look at 'we have either $50m or $80m to spend this offseason but we don't have any obvious holes in our lineup to put a new player' as an 'issue'. I also still don't really know what the Aggressive Road Not Taken was last offseason. 

I don't know how it's going to play out. But there's 5.5 months till baseball still. 

But only 135 days til pitchers and catchers report. 

[Illiterate Scholar]

I'm not super surprised Hoyer seemed to indicate he expects Bellinger to opt out but interesting nonetheless. I've actually come around to hoping he doesn't, as I think he's likely to have a better overall 2025 than his replacement, whether that person is a RF or DH.

Edited October 2, 2024 by Illiterate Scholar

[Wilson A2000]

That was a brutal press conference by Jed. He doesn’t even know how to spin a bad season and he doesn’t know how to give real or fake hope.

Edited October 2, 2024 by Wilson A2000