Spring Training Moves/Transactions Thread

[Jason Ross]

2 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Soooooo Nick Pivetta to the Padres, and Jeff Passan wrote this yesterday 

Especially with Bregman sounding close, hold onto your butts?

Well now that's interesting. With King being less expensive than Cease, this feels even more unlikely that King is moved. And more likely that Cease is moved.

[BKHoo]

Bregman to the Red Sox. 

[squally1313]

4 hours ago, JD94 said:

Also, this isn’t MLB The Show. You can’t just say, “hey let’s go trade for a 3.5 WAR pitcher, then sign player x, and follow that up with signing player y.” If trading for a 3.5 WAR pitcher was on the table and Jed thought it was the right move, he would have done it already regardless of Bregman. The fact is, we have limited options. Teams aren’t just giving out 3.5 WAR proven SP. 

Turns out the whole 'Just give Bregman $30m/year and be done with it' is also something (a narrative, maybe?) that only exists in MLB The Show. 

[JD94]

26 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Turns out the whole 'Just give Bregman $30m/year and be done with it' is also something (a narrative, maybe?) that only exists in MLB The Show. 

To be fair, nobody expected a 4 WAR 31 year old to get paid like a 6 WAR 28 year old. All the reports indicated offers were coming in anywhere between $26-30M AAV. Most reports indicated he wanted a short term deal with opt outs (which were true obviously). Heyman listed the Cubs as favorites just hours ago. Based on the information we had, I’d say my post was very much not based from a fantasy land perspective and was actually quite reasonable. 
 

Paying one free agent (seemingly) fair market value vs making a hypothetical trade for a player that may or may not even be available and signing multiple free agents is much more MLB The Show. Yet it seems the latter is more likely to come to fruition at this point with Bregman off the table lol. 
 

I will say I do prefer Cease, Suarez (if need be), & Turner to Bregman. I just assumed Cease was basically off the table. I was just trying to be realistic. 

[JD94]

Cubs offered Bregman 4/120 as I think we all kind of imagined… or at least that’s what I assumed our offer was. 
 

He’s also going to play 2B for Boston 

[Stratos]

Time to buy some scraps.  I'm not expecting a Cease trade that's for sure.  Maybe they get Robertson but the pen is pretty full.  Bring on Justin Turner lol.

[Stratos]

1 minute ago, JD94 said:

Cubs offered Bregman 4/120 as I think we all kind of imagined… or at least that’s what I assumed our offer was. 

Pretty good guess.

[JD94]

Detroit offered 6/171 which is 28.5 AAV 

[Stratos]

1 minute ago, JD94 said:

Detroit offered 6/171 which is 28.5 AAV 

We had no chance, and i'm fine with it.

[Dfan25]

Yeah , I don’t see Cease happening . Could see Turner and Robertson . 

[Dfan25]

Cubs offer to Bregman had opt outs after the 2nd and 3rd year , not the 1st . 

[Stratos]

 

[Stratos]

7 minutes ago, Dfan25 said:

Cubs offer to Bregman had opt outs after the 2nd and 3rd year , not the 1st . 

Source?

[Stratos]

We won:

 

[17 Seconds]

getting another good SP will make or break this offseason for me. trading for one year of tucker isn't enough when there was/is tons of payroll flexibility.

 

[JD94]

6 hours ago, Dfan25 said:

Yeah , I don’t see Cease happening . Could see Turner and Robertson . 

Pretty sure that 2 days ago Rosenthal said the Padres could land Pivetta and then look to move Cease to cut some payroll. Well they got Pivetta last night. I think that’s where the Cease hope has picked back up from. I agree it seems unlikely, but if he’s being shopped, I expect us to be heavily involved. We obviously have the assets to get it done. Jed isn’t going to get fleeced to do it though. I’d bet we’d even be willing to take on Suarez to do it also considering it has been reported that we still haven’t closed the door on bringing in another reliever anyways. 

[BigbadB]

47 minutes ago, JD94 said:

Pretty sure that 2 days ago Rosenthal said the Padres could land Pivetta and then look to move Cease to cut some payroll. Well they got Pivetta last night. I think that’s where the Cease hope has picked back up from. I agree it seems unlikely, but if he’s being shopped, I expect us to be heavily involved. We obviously have the assets to get it done. Jed isn’t going to get fleeced to do it though. I’d bet we’d even be willing to take on Suarez to do it also considering it has been reported that we still haven’t closed the door on bringing in another reliever anyways. 

Yep. There is plenty of talent to make a trade work. They just have to stop asking for Shaw.

[JD94]

40 minutes ago, BigbadB said:

Yep. There is plenty of talent to make a trade work. They just have to stop asking for Shaw.

Yeah I have no idea what the Padres want. Like do they want strictly prospects? A package that involves Assad due to their lack of SP depth? Matt Shaw is off the table regardless, especially considering he’s literally our starting 3B. 
 

Preller needs to get real. If he wants to shed salary, he can drop close to $23M by sending us Cease and Suarez and we can send back a package that makes sense for them. Win-Win for both sides considering what the goal is for each team. He just has to be realistic here. 

Edited February 13, 2025 by JD94

[Rcal10]

I have no issue passing on Bregman at $40M annual. But now what? And who did we miss while we chased Bregman? My fear is they add a guy like JT to the bench and that is it. Shop closed. And I certainly hope that’s not the case. Maybe Turner or Canha cost $5M to $6M. That leaves them about $25M short of their imaginary budget line. So setting aside money for the deadline, roughly $18M they can spend. They need a rotation piece to slot ahead of Taillon. To me the fallback, if they didn’t get a rotation piece would probably be Robertson. And if they did get him they would still have money to spend. Just no one to spend it on. Cubs had a chance to have a great off season. I think in the end it will be a good off season with misses. Maybe for Tom it will be a great off season. They got better AND he saved $25M……It is a shame our big market owners act so small.

[Jason Ross]

12 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

I have no issue passing on Bregman at $40M annual. But now what? And who did we miss while we chased Bregman? My fear is they add a guy like JT to the bench and that is it. Shop closed. And I certainly hope that’s not the case. Maybe Turner or Canha cost $5M to $6M. That leaves them about $25M short of their imaginary budget line. So setting aside money for the deadline, roughly $18M they can spend. They need a rotation piece to slot ahead of Taillon. To me the fallback, if they didn’t get a rotation piece would probably be Robertson. And if they did get him they would still have money to spend. Just no one to spend it on. Cubs had a chance to have a great off season. I think in the end it will be a good off season with misses. Maybe for Tom it will be a great off season. They got better AND he saved $25M……It is a shame our big market owners act so small.

We have discussed this before, but I don't think the Cubs missed on anyone they cared about. The Cubs have never seemed to operate on a tunnel vision (I think evidence on this is their pursuit of Bregman to begin with - a creative an opportunistic concept and one they waited out), and if the Cubs felt like there was a can't miss addition, they would have pulled that trigger there. So regardless of if the Cubs liked someone Randall Grichuk, they didn't like them enough to make them a priority. That probably tells you all you need to know about how they feel about their other options. 

More likely, the Cubs have viable options for anyone that has signed for another team over the past week or two. It feels like a worry fans have more so than the Cubs. 

[Bertz]

- Check in one last time on Cease

- Sign Turner and Robertson

- Be open minded about options for that last bench spot 

Easy peasy.  Then next month if the health situation is solid, you can consider some small deals to trade away some of the pitching depth that's not stashable at Iowa.

[Rcal10]

39 minutes ago, Bertz said:

- Check in one last time on Cease

- Sign Turner and Robertson

- Be open minded about options for that last bench spot 

Easy peasy.  Then next month if the health situation is solid, you can consider some small deals to trade away some of the pitching depth that's not stashable at Iowa.

To me, this is ok. It is a minimum of what they should do, assuming Peller stays high on his ask. Robertson and Turner or Canha would be ok. Add Cease to that and it even a better result than had they signed Bregman(assuming they would have then had to trade Nico) In fact if someone like Dejong ended up the bench bat instead of JT or Canha, because he is cheaper, I would be ok with that if it allowed the Cubs enough budget to get Cease and Roberson or Saurez. 

[Rcal10]

Ok, we can all make points on if the Cubs should have gone further and got Bregman or if we are glad they didn’t. Fact is, that is over. So now what? I agree with Bertz on the most probable conclusion, if they do add. But what about trading for Arenado? What does he cost? I know Colorado is taking some of his contract. I also know he was very average last year. But he is 33, not 40. It could have just been a bad year. Those happen. Doesn’t mean he is washed up. Didn’t Goldy have an MVP best year of his career after 33 years old. Would they still have enough money to add Robertson if they added Arenado? I don’t think he would take a top end prospect to get. 

[CubinNY]

16 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Ok, we can all make points on if the Cubs should have gone further and got Bregman or if we are glad they didn’t. Fact is, that is over. So now what? I agree with Bertz on the most probable conclusion, if they do add. But what about trading for Arenado? What does he cost? I know Colorado is taking some of his contract. I also know he was very average last year. But he is 33, not 40. It could have just been a bad year. Those happen. Doesn’t mean he is washed up. Didn’t Goldy have an MVP best year of his career after 33 years old. Would they still have enough money to add Robertson if they added Arenado? I don’t think he would take a top end prospect to get. 

I'd rather give Shaw a long runway. I'd love Cease, but it's important to balance the need for a TOR pitcher and hope for the future. He'd cost a lot of prospects even if they could get SD to move off of Shaw. If you add the unlikelihood of resigning him it stings a little more. 

I don't know their plans, but, it still looks like they will play up to the next CBA and then clean the slate expecting a long work stoppage. If that is their plan, Cease makes a bit more sense. 

[KCCub]

Not sure where else to put this, but found it noteworthy -

 

"Thankful for Tom (Todd & Laura), spent a long time talking about the pursuit of him (Bregman). They were willing to sort of greenlight us pushing our budget".

Maybe I'm looking too much into those remarks, but there's some good and bad there potentially. The good is maybe Tom was willing to go over the Lux tax line. The bad is if that is true, maybe there was a world where Nico didn't need to be traded and we had a studly infield with a nice super util guy in Shaw, which makes missing out hurt more. 

Edited February 13, 2025 by KCCub