Chicago Cubs Willing To Pay Luxury Tax in 2026

[thawv]

15 hours ago, BKHoo said:

Whatnp

What positions can Shaw play besides third?

He was drafted as a SS.  Played all 3 OF positions in college although not a lot.  Was moved to 3B and 2B in the minors.    Landed at 3B. 

[thawv]

13 hours ago, Stratos said:

 True they may keep Taillon.  And yeah they may limit innings/pitches, especially for Horton and Cabrera. They may ideally want Rea and Assad in the pen to pitch multiple innings even if someone in the rotation is hurt.  Gallen would make it six SP without those guys and without Brown/Wicks/Steele.

If they have around 8-9 guys who can start they have to assume a dew of them may be on the IL at any given time.  If they sign Gallen and by miracle all 6 main SP are healthy then Horton could go to the pen and throw multiple innings.

I can't imagine a 6 man rotation plus 2 long RP on the roster.  That leaves just 5 regular pen guys if Rea and Assad are just the long relief guys and spot starters.  

[thawv]

12 hours ago, BKHoo said:

He is THAT fast???!!!!

Yes, Shaw is faster than 90% of the league.  

[thawv]

10 hours ago, mk49 said:

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the Cubs can trade Rea this off season.  They can't trade Shota, who accepted the QO,

10 hours ago, mk49 said:

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the Cubs can trade Rea this off season.  They can't trade Shota, who accepted the QO, until June 15th.  Also, Jamo has 10 team no trade thing.

Personally, if they can afford Gallen, just pay more for Valdez.  I guess the Cubs think they can sign Gallen for about $16m AAV for 2 or 3 years.  If that's their budget, Valdez would be too much.

until June 15th.  Also, Jamo has 10 team no trade thing.

Personally, if they can afford Gallen, just pay more for Valdez.  I guess the Cubs think they can sign Gallen for about $16m AAV for 2 or 3 years.  If that's their budget, Valdez would be too much.

I think that if it's a 2 year deal, it's going to be in the low 20's.  If it's a 4 year deal, it could be in the upper teens.  Like 18-19 million. 

[Geographyhater8888]

1 hour ago, thawv said:

I can't imagine a 6 man rotation plus 2 long RP on the roster.  That leaves just 5 regular pen guys if Rea and Assad are just the long relief guys and spot starters.  

Not to mention Brown and Wicks. Why wait until late January to decide you’re willing to go over the LT when every high impact arm is off the market? I’d rather go over the tax for Devin Williams than Gallen or whoever they’re making an exception for. 

Edited January 20 by Geographyhater8888

[thawv]

48 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Not to mention Browns and Wicks. Why wait until late January to decide you’re willing to go over the LT when every high impact arm is off the market? I’d rather go over the tax for Devin Williams than Gallen or whoever they’re making an exception for. 

I agree.  There's really a log jam right now in the SP part of the roster.  If they add yet another SP, they need to start moving a guy or 2 for a good prospect(s).  I know the saying, "you can never have too much pitching," but where do they all play? 

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, thawv said:

I can't imagine a 6 man rotation plus 2 long RP on the roster.  That leaves just 5 regular pen guys if Rea and Assad are just the long relief guys and spot starters.  

I think we are going to have to shift how we view these arms and their role in the team. I don't think players fit into neat and nice boxes. Colin Rea might be a "reliever who can go longer" but I also don't think he's going to be limited to "long relief". Now, I don't think the Cubs will open with Assad and Rea in the bullpen regardless (Assad has options) of what happens, but relievers are having to fit multi-role situations now a days more and more. 

A 6-man rotation is already going to be new. We should expect most everything behind it to not follow convention. If you're running an extra SP, having guys who can go more in the BP is going to be required. There are less arms for that job now.

[CubUgly]

11 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

I don’t think any team did for an entire season. But teams did go to a 6 man rotation periodically during the year, last year. And then you have the Dodgers who just gave pitchers time off during the season. Maybe the Cubs wouldn’t go straight 6 man. Maybe they would skip a start by a pitcher. Maybe put a guy on the IL. Point is, if the Cubs did sign Gallen I don’t think they would trade Taillon. They would just have 6 starters. How they used them is anyone’s guess. 

Good point Rcal, maybe the Cubs are considering imitating the Dodgers model of stockpiling starters, some of whom are injury prone and then magically it seems they all are ready for the playoffs and end up being their playoff relievers because their highly paid high leverage relievers like Scott and Yates crapped the bed and are unplayable in leverage in the post season.   

[Rcal10]

56 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Not to mention Browns and Wicks. Why wait until late January to decide you’re willing to go over the LT when every high impact arm is off the market? I’d rather go over the tax for Devin Williams than Gallen or whoever they’re making an exception for. 

Actually this is absolutely correct. If they were going to go over they should have spent on Williams instead of adding a pitcher to the rotation. That makes a lot of sense. They haven’t added Gallen yet, but now that you mention this, it leads me to believe they won’t be going that much over so probably won’t get Gallen. As you said, if they were to go $15M to $20M over they should have been there already. 

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, Jason Ross said:

I think we are going to have to shift how we view these arms and their role in the team. I don't think players fit into neat and nice boxes. Colin Rea might be a "reliever who can go longer" but I also don't think he's going to be limited to "long relief". Now, I don't think the Cubs will open with Assad and Rea in the bullpen regardless (Assad has options) of what happens, but relievers are having to fit multi-role situations now a days more and more. 

A 6-man rotation is already going to be new. We should expect most everything behind it to not follow convention. If you're running an extra SP, having guys who can go more in the BP is going to be required. There are less arms for that job now.

I suspect that the team is not going to run a full proper 6 man rotation, but instead pull every lever they can to get as many starts as possible on 5 days rest.  I think that distinction is a nuance that's hard to fit in a tweet, and frankly Levine's not a great writer at this point, hence him saying 6 man rotation

To your point the guys who are not slam dunk starters will end up filling in in a number of ways.  I'd expect at least two guys on the staff on any given day to be A) not one of the traditional 5 SPs and B) capable of giving you multiple innings.  Whether that's a sixth regular starter temporarily on the roster, a long reliever (able to go 3+ innings and face as many as 15ish batters) or let's call it a medium reliever (2 innings or 8-10 batters).

I know they had an extra roster spot to play with due to expanded rosters, but the September pitching staff is probably a good model.  They had Civale in long relief,  Soroka/Brown/Wicks in medium relief at various points of the month, and Assad making spot starts.  That was in addition to five tradtional SPs and 6 traditional short relievers.

[CubinNY]

Given the staff's injury risk, it's never a bad idea to have too many cooks. 

[Rcal10]

12 hours ago, Stratos said:

No I don't.  We know guys pitch worse on 3 vs 4 days.  I don't have the stats on 5 or 6 days rest.  Do you?

We could easily see even with a 5 man rotation about 5 days rest effectiveness when there's an off days between starts. 

No, I don’t either. But I am not suggesting one way or the other if it is a good idea based on keeping pitchers sharp. You indicated it is a lot to ask. How so? Don’t they do that in Japan? Even college baseball guys pitch usually once a week. I honestly don’t think it would be a straight 6 man rotation. If they got Gallen and had 6 starters, I could see them using it going thru a 10 game stretch in 10 days. But with days off, I would imagine CC would get creative. Skip a start, maybe send Horton down for a bit to limit innings. Any arm fatigue, instead of a pitcher pitching through it, but him on the IL. They have that luxury. I do believe Shota pitched better in 5 days rest. I can see it helping Boyd and Taillon too. These are not young pitchers. And, like I said, I can see CC using this to an advantage of limiting innings for the Cubs starters to hopefully be fresher and healthy for the playoffs. Also, when Steele does come back if all are healthy, it gives them an opportunity to trade one of them. And innings would still be limited. 

[CubinNY]

SP are creatures of habit; all a staff would need to do is develop a different habit. If I were a starter, I'd love a 6-man rotation, but a lot of these guys are brain dead neanderthals who want to be tough or whatever machoism you want to use.

The hardest part would be the sales pitch. For a team with aspirations of a World Series, it makes so much sense to limit regular-season innings. If they can do it without sacrificing quality, it's something they might want to try. 

[Thusly Boned]

1 hour ago, CubinNY said:

Given the staff's injury risk, it's never a bad idea to have too many cooks. 

Yeah, I think with the injury risks, Steele coming back from injury, and Shota and Boyd and getting gassed down the stretch last year, loading the rotation up is a wise move. Skip some Cabrera/Shota/Boyd starts here and there and spread the regular season innings around a bit and protect your best arms so they're good to go late in the year.

[macarthur31]

11 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Any arm fatigue, instead of a pitcher pitching through it, but him on the IL.

Craig Counsell has always espoused that pitchers are "out-getters."  This is in service to de-emphasizing the attachment to role designations like "closer", or "set up man."  And, while primarily this has been applied to the bullpen, as I'm tracking this "6-man rotation" conversation, I'm intuiting that this carrying over to the starting rotation.

While Hoyer and Counsell seem loathe to confirm they will deploy a 6-man rotation, @Rcal10has outlined how they will try to deliver the outcomes of a 6-man rotation - sharing the load of effective starter innings (assuming 162 games x 6 innings = 972) across 7 or 8 (Steele's return + Rea or Assad in that equation) candidates.  Injuries are inevitable, but perhaps there's a way to execute it to mitigate their risk?  And, as quote above - perhaps there are IL trips due to an abundance of caution (or perhaps intentional shelving - which would be difficult to discern, right?)

However, there is a high degree of difficulty in executing this, some of which includes the fact that players benefit from role clarity/certainty - not just mentally, but this also factors into their financial futures.  (I assume those that start more games, or have perceived durability will do better on the open market.).

It's not impossible to do - as traditional baseball is, there are innovations like the "closer" and the "opener"... but I intuit in the near term,  this is gonna be a very fluid/nuanced thing.

[Bertz]

19 minutes ago, macarthur31 said:

Craig Counsell has always espoused that pitchers are "out-getters."  This is in service to de-emphasizing the attachment to role designations like "closer", or "set up man."  And, while primarily this has been applied to the bullpen, as I'm tracking this "6-man rotation" conversation, I'm intuiting that this carrying over to the starting rotation.

While Hoyer and Counsell seem loathe to confirm they will deploy a 6-man rotation, @Rcal10has outlined how they will try to deliver the outcomes of a 6-man rotation - sharing the load of effective starter innings (assuming 162 games x 6 innings = 972) across 7 or 8 (Steele's return + Rea or Assad in that equation) candidates.  Injuries are inevitable, but perhaps there's a way to execute it to mitigate their risk?  And, as quote above - perhaps there are IL trips due to an abundance of caution (or perhaps intentional shelving - which would be difficult to discern, right?)

However, there is a high degree of difficulty in executing this, some of which includes the fact that players benefit from role clarity/certainty - not just mentally, but this also factors into their financial futures.  (I assume those that start more games, or have perceived durability will do better on the open market.).

It's not impossible to do - as traditional baseball is, there are innovations like the "closer" and the "opener"... but I intuit in the near term,  this is gonna be a very fluid/nuanced thing.

I'm always going to be mindful of soft factors after the way the wars around closer/reliever usage worked out 10-15 years ago. 

Back then there was this sabr backlash to traditional reliever usage.  "Oh you're using your closer in the 9th inning?  Like some sort of horsefeathering moron?"  But it turned out the traditional roles worked great.  Players hated the dynamic roles, it was hard to actually implement because of warmup times and rest schedules, and traditional closers still netted out with slightly average leverage than firemen.  This revolutionary idea that made sense on paper broke down in human trial.  Now closers come into the 8th if the middle of the order is due up and we're otherwise back roughly where we were in the aughts?

I have seen proposals for a pitching staffs with like eight 4 inning guys and five 1 inning guys and rotations that min-max rest and exposure blah blah and I don't think they're workable in practice.  However incremental changes like "you're a long reliever who is actually allowed to pitch in leverage" should be pretty doable.  And if you're lucky maybe in three years you've got enough pitchers who've drank the Craig Counsell koolaid to try something more exotic.

[Neuby]

Cubs are about 23M from the second luxury tax threshold. When Bob Nightingale prematurely reported Gallen signing with the Cubs he had the deal being 22M on average. 

[ILMindState]

I wouldn't be mad about signing Gallen but I feel like a lock down closer or another bat is a bigger need than a 6th starter.

[Bertz]

9 minutes ago, Neuby said:

Cubs are about 23M from the second luxury tax threshold. When Bob Nightingale prematurely reported Gallen signing with the Cubs he had the deal being 22M on average. 

I would guess there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 0% chance they cross that line.  And going into the season $1M under is for all practical purposes going over.

A Gallen signing almost certainly involves a Taillon trade.  Mayyybe Hoerner + Rea?

[macarthur31]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

However incremental changes like "you're a long reliever who is actually allowed to pitch in leverage" should be pretty doable.  And if you're lucky maybe in three years you've got enough pitchers who've drank the Craig Counsell koolaid to try something more exotic.

Counsell probably knew that Colin Rea would be on board based on their time together at the Brewers, and then it bore out last season that Rea handled that "break glass in case of long term injury" starter role quite well enough to come back for an encore in '26. 

Then, I'm reminded of when Mark Leiter acknowledged Javier Assad as "one of the best pitchers in baseball" back in 2023 because of his resilience in executing that swingman role.  (Granted, Assad was a newcomer at that time, so he was gonna take anything he could get.). 

Palencia executing the high leverage/fireman role in the playoffs after being in the closer role shows he has the ability flex.  Unsure if he is willing to do that over the course of a whole season, though. 

Nevertheless, these are the examples of the "kool-aid" drinking that is required to thrive - and it ain't for erry'body.

[chibears55]

I dont know, a small part of me still feels like Bellinger a possibility, I know the Yankees 5/160 and Mets 3-4 for either 45-50 per are coming in hot, but Belli is said to be looking for 7 years.

With Both Happ and Suzuki both in final years, they could secure an OFer for the next 6-7 years with Bellinger. 

They can keep Mo down to work on his catching.

Amaya/Kelly

Busch

Hoerner 

Swanson 

Bregman 

Happ

PCA

Bellinger 

Suzuki

 

Shaw

Austin or Andujar

Dean/Alcantara 

This would be a solid 13...

Edited January 21 by chibears55

[Stratos]

9 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

No, I don’t either. But I am not suggesting one way or the other if it is a good idea based on keeping pitchers sharp. You indicated it is a lot to ask. How so? Don’t they do that in Japan? Even college baseball guys pitch usually once a week. I honestly don’t think it would be a straight 6 man rotation. If they got Gallen and had 6 starters, I could see them using it going thru a 10 game stretch in 10 days. But with days off, I would imagine CC would get creative. Skip a start, maybe send Horton down for a bit to limit innings. Any arm fatigue, instead of a pitcher pitching through it, but him on the IL. They have that luxury. I do believe Shota pitched better in 5 days rest. I can see it helping Boyd and Taillon too. These are not young pitchers. And, like I said, I can see CC using this to an advantage of limiting innings for the Cubs starters to hopefully be fresher and healthy for the playoffs. Also, when Steele does come back if all are healthy, it gives them an opportunity to trade one of them. And innings would still be limited. 

You're right I have zero statistical evidence to suggest pitchers would lose sharpness with extra rest in a 6-man rotation.

I am therefore the first person in the history of this forum to admit I was wrong, hahaha.

[NorthsideAvenger]

Any chance that the Cubs interests in Gallen is simply Jed doing Boras a solid?

[chibears55]

7 minutes ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

Any chance that the Cubs interests in Gallen is simply Jed doing Boras a solid?

I think so unless Jed planning on trading Taillon or Imanaga, which would surprise me a bit.

[Rcal10]

15 minutes ago, Stratos said:

You're right I have zero statistical evidence to suggest pitchers would lose sharpness with extra rest in a 6-man rotation.

I am therefore the first person in the history of this forum to admit I was wrong, hahaha.

😅