CubinNY

Sour grapes?

The lack of hearing about the Cubs in rumors (I know Stroman and a couple others we were mentioned amount 6-7 teams but for the most part its been quiet) means either they are likely not spending until after the lockout or all the stuff Jed and PTR said about a retool is BS. If its the latter why lie about it..to keep ST renewals high? I'm probably overreacting. The Cubs were probably not going to get a top FA and they hinted at that multiple times. The 1-3 year contract guys are mostly still out there, so perhaps the plan is still in place. It's just so horsefeathering quiet. It's so frustrating for me because there's a ton of middle ground between what the Rangers are doing (which is a lot of fun, but probably stupid) and pretending like 3+ year contracts are illegal. Like if the Cubs sign Trevor Story for $25M per year they'd have basically the same amount of money committed to 2024-2025 as the Brewers. Hardly backbreaking, even if he busts as bad as Heyward. Now there's plenty left in FA that we could still have the offseason I want, but to your point the silence is deafening. It does not seem like there's much fun waiting for us on the other side of the lockout, just nothing but a handful of Freddy Galvis and Kyle Seager types. Hopefully Jed just runs a really tight ship and we're all flipping out over nothing. I'd take Story on that deal. Just wait until they have their own TV network and own all the buildings on Sheffield and Waveland, then they will spend.

Didn't everyone already know this was going to be a crazy good offseason in terms of talent? Here are the Cubs with a ton of cash, no stars, and they sit on their hands because the timing isn't right or the price isn't right. I guess they can still bid on the dude from Japan.

Self-ownage at the highest level.

I have a feeling this could be similar to the 2014 rankings where TCU dropped from 3rd to 6th despite winning their last game soundly. The committee was reluctant to put Cincinnati anywhere near the top initially until teams started losing. During that time Cincinnati hasn’t played any legit good teams and has looked shaky in a few of them. I bet they are itching to move them out if they have an excuse too. A 1 loss Oklahoma State team coming off back to back wins over top 10-15 teams would give it a strong reason to leapfrog Ok St over Cincinnati even if both teams win and even if Cincinnati beats a fringe top 25 team in Houston. I guess we’ll see Cincinnati does not belong no matter what they do, neither does ND.

i totally expect them to shock everybody with a pathetic payroll this year and blame it on the weirdness of the offseason And they’re going to trade Willy for a trio of 19 year olds at the end February because they couldn’t go the extra year or couple of million. And people will be like it was the right call because the market was crazy!

No way this Alabama team should stand a chance against Georgia.

I feel so bad for Auburn

I love college football overtime.

OMG!

Worst I’ve seen Alabama look in a long time.

Please do not read any of my previous posts regarding OSU V. Michigan

I think that’s not what happened. Occam’s razor: the Bears are inept and the reporter got bad information from a high placed source.

That interception changed the complexion of the game. Michigan simply could not afford to make one mistake.

Just as I was typing “Michigan is looking good to start the game”, they throw an interception.

If they get Stroman, they better prioritize defense because they have a rotation of pitch to contact.

What an awful game.

Old rich people like comfort more than anything else.

Why didn't they do this in the summer?

Compare/Contrast to this comment about the Yankees' rotation on MLBTR: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/11/yankees-offered-verlander-one-year-25mm-deal.html - It's probably fair to say the Cubs don't feel they need 5 "true" SPs. Rather Hoyer and many in the FO came up under a guy who talked about ideally coming into a season eight "starting pitchers" deep a decade before it really really became the thing to do winning or losing. The Yankees here have two "true" SPs entering 2022, like the Cubs, and I count 6 ML SPs mentioned in that blurb. They're still looking fro SP and it's not as if they've given up on guys like Deivi Garcia (if they have, maybe Cubs can pounce), Clarke Schmidt, Lucas Gil, whoever it may be - Both staffs are set up similarly with workloads up too. Hendricks and Cole are among the maybe the dozen or so ML pitchers built up to throw 200+ in 2022, Miley (no TJ but age 35 next year) and Montgomery (29 with a TJ) threw a similar amount of innings last year, and the four are the only four on either staff to make 30 starts last year...14 pitchers made starts for the Yankees, 12 for the Cubs in 2021 - For some reason I feel it's important to mention that nearly 400 (396!!) pitchers got a GS last year, only 32 SPs qualified for awards or however that qualified playing time stuff works, maybe 65 pitchers threw 100 innings, and the Cubs used 69 (not nice) players in 2021 - 2021 Taillon did make 29 starts for 144 innings and a couple f and r WAR, and I'd say the Cubs are looking for that guy in FA more than they're looking for an ace at this point unless someone falls into their lap. I'm on the Steven Matz bandwagon among the FAs for this pitcher - A case can be made that Alzolay can be made a 29-30 start, 2 WAR, 150 inning guy next year so they should aim higher but I say: outside of Scherzer, Gausman, Ray, Rodon, and Stroman that's not obviously available in FA, FA's about making sure you get that production, a good run through FA is about getting it for the best price (which is to say: skip on Gray), and it won't hurt if he is that guy - The upside on 2022 Lorenzen can be argued as anything from Severino (2022 workload limited by 27.2 IP between 2019-2021, multiple arm injuries IIRC including TJ, averaged 89 IP between 2015-2021) to German (98 mediocre but not not useful while cheap IP during 2021) as far as workload and potential impact - 2022 German and Taillon are a couple low ceiling, ideally cheap veteran SPs, don't throw so hard or have highlight reel work but can throw some innings in a pinch...I think the Cubs should kind of stick to their versatility schtick and go after guys who have started and relieved, big preference for two+ of Vince Velasquez, Daniel Norris, Martin Perez, Conner Greene, Jimmy Nelson... So a pitching staff that looks like... Hendricks (180-210 IP, sinker/changeup) Matz (150-180 IP, sinker/curveball) Miley (120-150, cutter/changeup) Alzolay (120-150, sinker/slider) Lorenzen (90-120, 4s/slider) Yates/Doolittle/Bradley (Cheap veteran FA closer please!) Wick Heuer Rodriguez Steele Velasquez Perez Greene on OD should be viable early on. Mostly those 3 guys on the bottom of the bullpen depth chart are there for early season flexibility, buying time and ideally being replaced by young arms like Thompson, Roberts, Marquez, Jensen, Abbott, whoever as the season rolls along. Wick and Heuer are doing the heavy lifting in the late innings early on, ideally Steele makes it a trio by June, Yates or Doolittle work mostly comfortable 9ths...I also like the idea of moving to a 6 man rotation in the late summer/early fall as a way to bring in Kilian and maybe get some extra rest to the starters - Obviously stay opportunistic for one of the aces in FA or a high upside young arm via trade. I'm not budging for any high trade priced Marlins SP but Trevor Rogers, don't really care to find two Kilians - big name prospects much preferred only so like a Gore or Lacy or maybe Whitley...Luzardo? I'm not not interested, guy still had 96 last year...Matt Manning? - Note the lack of Mills mentions: he's a big part of the big velocity problem, big due to the impact of the issue, so I would non-tender Alrighty, bless anyone and their descendants who reads this, double it for anyone who sees something coherent. I had options too, am absolutely insane ---- Interesting to note about Kris Bryant's time with the Giants: his K rate dropped, his hard hit% went up, GBs went down, he kept a nearly 11% BB rate, and he did this to all fields (big jump in batted balls going to the opposite field) Miley, a break out at age 33.

Fun fact from Bret via Patric Mooney- the Cubs have 7 players left from last year’s opening day roster.

He's destroying the AFL. I say give him a shot on the opening day roster. I'm not qualified to say that, but that's what I say.

Sharma also said he thinks the team needs to add 5 (?!) starting pitchers and that Steele has a better shot at being a SP than Alzolay or Mills. I'm starting to worry that spending too much time with Mooney is turning his brain into mush. Like, let's say Jed is as dour on next year's team as is portrayed here, and that he's planning to "probably assemble a group that could win 87 games next year if everything breaks right, which rarely happens." Not unreasonable. Let's say Jed has this huge boner for financial flexibility going forward. Less reasonable (Bote's literally the only money on the books past '23), but sadly pretty believable. Taking those as a given though, a lot of the other stuff Sharma and Mooney are putting out there make no sense. - You certainly wouldn't consider a Willson Contreras extension. He's a catcher, and not a super durable one, who's about to turn 30. That is not a guy you give extra money to now expecting him to still be generating surplus value in 2024 - You do not close the door so hard on Hoerner at shortstop. The durability is an issue, clearly, so you certainly bring in another shortstop. But you get a guy to put behind Hoerner, not in front of him. You want to give Hoerner every opportunity to be the guy, both because he's higher upside for this year and because he's cheap and team controlled for the next several - And biggest, by far, is that's not at all how you handle the rotation. If the team's dual goals are "2022 upside" and "future payroll flexibility" you definitely need to add a starter or two. Jon Gray or Yusei Kikuchi or Steven Matz make a ton of sense as they're likely to be mid-rotation types, but have a chance at being a lot more than that. But why the hell would you consider the guys a tier below? Dylan Bundy, Anthony Desclafani, Alex Wood, etc. are all good enough to warrant multi-year deals, but limited enough to limit their upside to "nice July flip candidate." Much like the Hoerner example, you're also blocking a rotation slot that can go to a Steele/Adbert/Thompson, guys who have higher present upside and who offer future financial gains if you successfully develop them. Adding those types of starters is something you do when you're trying to raise the floor on the current team, not something you do when your big moves on the position player side are Freddy Galvis and bringing Rizzo home Like I'm not deluded into thinking the team's only two options are "AJ Prefer on a bender" or full on tanking, but their vision for the offseason seems to be "let's take as many half measures as we can" when just about the only thing we can say about Jed's tenure at this point is that he's been trying like hell to avoid them. I like this post, but Adbert is a middle reliever who they’ve given starts to unless he can find a way to get lefties out or at least keep in the yard.

Brett posted some highlights of the Jed Hoyer interview on The Score. As predicted, he talked about Atlanta having the worst odds to win the WS and winning. He talked about just getting in "the tournament" and being competitive. They're going the Tribune route of looking like they want to win but not really trying.

Somebody tell me what I'm supposed to think about this?