General Offseason Priorities

[mul21]

Sweet.  We're getting Tucker. 🤣

[Stratos]

4 hours ago, squally1313 said:

Would you consider a team similar to the one on the field in the second half of last year? Because that team played at a 91 win pace. I don't like reducing sample sizes more than necessary, but this team with Productive PCA and Paredes instead of Morel (or really just...not having Morel), was a little different than opening day.

Thing is we said the same about the 2023 Cubs and their excellent hitting in the 2nd half.

Not that you're exactly saying this, but I'm also not going to assume that the PCA and Amaya are the guys we saw in the summer (especially in Aug when we were playing bad teams) while ignoring the rest of their year.  They may improve but we have no guarantees and we don't know by how much.  Its promising but players also get hot and cold all the time.

I think we have potential to hit a bit more HR but we're probably no better than average in HR/ISO and could be below average again.

[Tryptamine]

So, now that we know Cody is back, I'm kind of baffled as to what to do to address the offense in 2025. I know someone will say between platoons and injuries and whatever you could still bring in a big bat they'd see 400+PA, but I also don't believe there's a big bat out there who is going to sign here unless they're an every day player getting 550-600 PAs. So I guess I'll run with this scenario where Cody becomes the guy who covers CF one day, RF the next, 1B the day after, etc. etc. He's the CF insurance in case PCA sucks, he's the RF insurance in case Seiya gets his annual oblique issue and he's the 1B insurance in case Busch is 2nd half Busch instead of 1st half. So that means you have room in either RF or DH depending on where you want Seiya to be everyday. If you're ok with Seiya in RF  Alonso at 5/125 sounds pretty good as a DH, Santander could be a DH option and even kind of fake it in RF. I don't think either is likely and that the limits of the offensive upgrades will come via catcher, but it's possible I suppose. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

The optimistic case for the offense is:
 

• It was better than you think last year because Wrigley had an outlier park factor. An imperfect example since people are fixated on power: the Cubs were 11th in the NL in HR but 6th in HR away from home, better than the Brewers, Phillies, and Padres.
• Adding a catcher who can be a functional MLB hitter is an upgrade roughly equivalent to going from a Happ to a Soto
• You expect significant improvement over the Cubs numbers/2024 Morel from Paredes, and potentially improvement from their 2024 totals from PCA and Amaya(who will still play plenty with a C addition)
• You still add a good hitter to the group, and if money isn't enough to sway players antsy about having a clear path to 150 games, the trade market looks to be more robust than recent years.

[Bertz]

 

Jed does a lot of executive speak in this piece but directly calls out a matchup guy against lefties as a to-do

Quote

 

As the Cubs evaluate the reliever market, they aren’t satisfied with Little and Zastryzny as their two main options against left-handed hitters. The organizational need became clear after trading Mark Leiter Jr., their go-to reliever for lefties.

“We weren’t optimizing for individual matchups as much as we would have been, and you could feel it in the second half,” Hoyer said. “We oftentimes didn’t have the best matchup for a lefty, especially when Luke went out. So that is something that we’ll be actively looking for this offseason.”

 

 

[Stratos]

10 hours ago, Rex Buckingham said:

saw a projection on The Athletic (Tim Britton, I think) that Carson Kelly would get 2/14... how would we feel about that to split the catching duties with Amaya?

He's about a 1 WAR catcher (keeping in mind the reduced playing time for catchers).  He's ok.  Jansen has a better bat.

Per FG, 2.9 WAR was the median for what a team got out of their catcher position in 2024.  Cubs got -0.1 WAR haha

[Jason Ross]

Feels like this belong here. Sharma/Mooney posted an article on the Athletic today. There's not a lot there in specifics but two important takeaways. 

1, The article mentions that the Cubs "have a fairly clear idea of the position players who should be there for the Tokyo Series". 

2. "The Cubs are expected to aggressively pursue pitchers who would strengthen the top of their rotation and the back end of their bullpen".

Not that we didn't kind of know these things, it's nice to see the use of aggressive and that the Cubs are looking at the right places in the rotation and the BP.

They also mention the Cubs looking for lanes for their top prospects. Which I found interesting. Wonder if that's suggesting they'll go FA route? But could just be part of the article and that they will still make a big trade.

[Tryptamine]

10 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Feels like this belong here. Sharma/Mooney posted an article on the Athletic today. There's not a lot there in specifics but two important takeaways. 

1, The article mentions that the Cubs "have a fairly clear idea of the position players who should be there for the Tokyo Series". 

2. "The Cubs are expected to aggressively pursue pitchers who would strengthen the top of their rotation and the back end of their bullpen".

Not that we didn't kind of know these things, it's nice to see the use of aggressive and that the Cubs are looking at the right places in the rotation and the BP.

They also mention the Cubs looking for lanes for their top prospects. Which I found interesting. Wonder if that's suggesting they'll go FA route? But could just be part of the article and that they will still make a big trade.

So more or less the expected route of address catcher, but nothing else on offense other than perhaps a platoon bat.

[Bertz]

3 minutes ago, 1908_Cubs said:

Feels like this belong here. Sharma/Mooney posted an article on the Athletic today. There's not a lot there in specifics but two important takeaways. 

1, The article mentions that the Cubs "have a fairly clear idea of the position players who should be there for the Tokyo Series". 

2. "The Cubs are expected to aggressively pursue pitchers who would strengthen the top of their rotation and the back end of their bullpen".

Not that we didn't kind of know these things, it's nice to see the use of aggressive and that the Cubs are looking at the right places in the rotation and the BP.

They also mention the Cubs looking for lanes for their top prospects. Which I found interesting. Wonder if that's suggesting they'll go FA route? But could just be part of the article and that they will still make a big trade.

They also mentioned that Bellinger in RF and Seiya at DG is probably where things end up, but it's not a lock.  Combined with what you noted about "lanes" I take that as flexibility is a factor on the position player side.  E.g. a guy like Mark Canha or Justin Turner over a guy like Carlos Santana.

On the pitching side, clearly Jed should go full 2011 Phillies and trade for Crochet AND sign Max Fried.

[chibears55]

2 hours ago, Tryptamine said:

So more or less the expected route of address catcher, but nothing else on offense other than perhaps a platoon bat.

That all he can do with the offense...

Happ and Suzuki have NTC and everyone else under contract and unlikely to be traded to add a real upgrade at their position. 

 

 

[We Got The Whole 9]

He needs to get aggressive with trades. We have 6 "top" prospects and a couple more already in AAA close to the Majors. So much ammo to trade it's crazy. Trade for the bat and sign the pitchers that are not attached to QO.  

 

Tucker

Snell

Robertson

[muntjack]

Man,  Crochet/Fried/Steele/Imanaga/Taiilon with more depth than I can remember......

[Stratos]

5 hours ago, Tryptamine said:

So more or less the expected route of address catcher, but nothing else on offense other than perhaps a platoon bat.

RHB OF bench bat makes sense for PCA and possibly Busch.  Belli has no issues vs LHP.  For Busch any bat could pinch hit and Belli can slide to 1B and Seiya or someone in the bench could play RF.  Same for PCA but Belli slides to CF.  Harder to take PCA out because of the glove though.

I wonder if they'll full platoon with Busch again, I assume they'll want a RHB just in case they do.

[thawv]

25 minutes ago, Stratos said:

RHB OF bench bat makes sense for PCA and possibly Busch.  Belli has no issues vs LHP.  For Busch any bat could pinch hit and Belli can slide to 1B and Seiya or someone in the bench could play RF.  Same for PCA but Belli slides to CF.  Harder to take PCA out because of the glove though.

I wonder if they'll full platoon with Busch again, I assume they'll want a RHB just in case they do.

But did they really "full platoon" with Busch?  I feel like he saw more than enough time against LHP.  Yes, they sat him quite often, but 100 PA's doesn't seem low for a full platoon.  Am I way off here? 

Edited November 5, 2024 by thawv

[Transmogrified Tiger]

10 minutes ago, thawv said:

But did they really "full platoon" with Busch?  I feel like he saw more than enough time against LHP.  Yes, they stat him quite often, but 100 PA's doesn't seem low for a full platoon.  Am I way off here? 

Busch got a little more leash as the year progressed, but they shielded him from LHP fairly heavily.  If Fangraphs' split tool is accurate, only 36 of those 100 PA came in the first 5 innings of games, which implies that most of those PA came against relievers, and that he only started a fraction of the time against LHSP.

[thawv]

2 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Busch got a little more leash as the year progressed, but they shielded him from LHP fairly heavily.  If Fangraphs' split tool is accurate, only 36 of those 100 PA came in the first 5 innings of games, which implies that most of those PA came against relievers, and that he only started a fraction of the time against LHSP.

Well said.

[Bertz]

 

 

[We Got The Whole 9]

On to Tucker

[thawv]

17 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

On to Tucker

I didn't think we were looking for another starting OF'er after Belli didn't opt out.  Where are all these guys gonna play? 

 

Edited November 5, 2024 by thawv

[squally1313]

5 minutes ago, thawv said:

I didn't think we were looking for another starting OF'er after Belli didn't opt out.  Where are all these guys gonna play? 

 

This has been rehashed a few times, but signing another outfielder at the level of Happ/Suzuki/Belli/PCA or (ideally) better means you have 6 guys (those 4, FA signing, Busch) for 5 spots (OFx3, DH, 1B), which is 135 starts a piece, in a world where injuries don't exist. I'm less intrigued by guys like Santander and Teoscar since they are basically unplayable in RF already which means you run into a more acute crunch. Tucker being mostly capable of both corner outfielders doesn't exacerbate the too many good players problem. 

[Rcal10]

7 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

This has been rehashed a few times, but signing another outfielder at the level of Happ/Suzuki/Belli/PCA or (ideally) better means you have 6 guys (those 4, FA signing, Busch) for 5 spots (OFx3, DH, 1B), which is 135 starts a piece, in a world where injuries don't exist. I'm less intrigued by guys like Santander and Teoscar since they are basically unplayable in RF already which means you run into a more acute crunch. Tucker being mostly capable of both corner outfielders doesn't exacerbate the too many good players problem. 

Couldn’t they do this with someone like Lowe as well? It would be the infield moving around, but is there a world where that would be 9 guys for 8 positions? I imagine that would have to have Busch at 3rd or Lowe at 3rd every so often. But isn’t that also an option and a less costly one than Tucker? Besides that, Nico might miss some time, so there is an example of an injury that would allow more playing time. 
Doesn’t Lowe also give them a left handed bat we want for the infield? 

 

Edited November 5, 2024 by Rcal10

[squally1313]

7 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Couldn’t they do this with someone like Lowe as well? It would be the infield moving around, but is there a world where that would be 9 guys for 8 positions? I imagine that would have to have Busch at 3rd or Lowe at 3rd every so often. But isn’t that also an option and a less costly one than Tucker? Besides that, Nico might miss some time, so there is an example of an injury that would allow more playing time. 
Doesn’t Lowe also give them a left handed bat we want for the infield? 

 

I mean, we could, but:

• Tucker is a significantly better hitter (same wRC as Soto in 2024)
• There's a little less flexibility in that rotation. In the OF/1B side of things, Bellinger makes things much easier. In this one, Lowe is an average second baseman at best, with bad arm strength per Savant. Hoerner is a worse SS than Swanson. Lowe or Busch at third is kinda a non-starter for me. Etc. 

[Bertz]

I won't write it off completely, Jed not committing to Bellinger in right and Seiya at DH sowed a bit of doubt in my mind, but I'd be very surprised if they acquire a non-catcher you'd expect to be the everyday starter at one position.

Someone like a Taylor Ward or a Brandon Lowe that you can at least nominally pencil in across like 3-4 positions feels far more likely

[thawv]

54 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

This has been rehashed a few times, but signing another outfielder at the level of Happ/Suzuki/Belli/PCA or (ideally) better means you have 6 guys (those 4, FA signing, Busch) for 5 spots (OFx3, DH, 1B), which is 135 starts a piece, in a world where injuries don't exist. I'm less intrigued by guys like Santander and Teoscar since they are basically unplayable in RF already which means you run into a more acute crunch. Tucker being mostly capable of both corner outfielders doesn't exacerbate the too many good players problem. 

I'm more of a fan of 155-160 games for the every day starters.  I'd hate to see guys get 30 scheduled days off.  That's a ton of money on the bench daily.  I'd prefer to play the best 9 just about every day.  They get enough days off during the season.  

[BKHoo]

Where is all the Tucker talk coming from?