Rob

Meh, Semien was probably always more of a long-term 2B and Seager a 3B. But they've got time to figure it out.

Chapman too, I imagine. Unless he already got moved when I wasn't looking.

The Rangers, who started this offseason in a similar position to us, have now committed more than $550M so far to rebuilding their team.

Semien never seems to stick at SS long...

We are literally floating a lower payroll this year than Tampa Bay or Oakland right now. JFC...

I prefer that style as well, but I don't think that incentivizes wins as much as making the less patient player lose his mind. I’m sure, but it still moves the needle somewhat. And absent making all tournaments go with Armageddon games, I don’t know what else to do.

I’m of the mindset it needs to be something like first to 5 wins. Get people to actually go for the jugular and take away the incentive for draws.

No, that's all very helpful. I had understood the third big advantage. But while I saw the knight having significant value, I undersold just how significant. And that's partly due to not thinking about the e5 pawn. And since I missed that pawn, I think you can guess how much I was lacking as to the importance of the pawn structure. That was all excellent and I think I've learned a lot. Thanks.

Fair enough. I know my grasp on positional play is weak, so it makes sense I'd underestimate that advantage. [Or I'm secretly as good as the supercomputers. Either one.]

That was a great example of a game that the engine evals may love the position but it was always going to be extremely difficult for a human to convert to a win against a high-level opponent. 12 more draws until the real world championship starts Yeah, that was a "Magnus position" if there ever was one. Nepo's advantage was never close to "huge." You two are undoubtedly better at chess than I am. What was I missing that made it look so close to you? I'm not a great chess player, but I'm capable of counting up point values. My read was that Nepo was +3, and aside from Magnus's knight squishing Nepo a bit and threatening a couple pawns, there wasn't a clear threat on the board for Magnus. The evals are saying that Nepo was up something like 1.5, which felt about right to me. Is there some other factor I should have been looking more closely at? Some key piece of a standard eval I was missing? I'd really like to learn.

The World Chess Championships are going on right now. Currently in the midst of game two, where the challenger and underdog, Ian Nepomniachtchi, is currently in the midst of trying to blow a huge advantage against Magnus Carlsen, who has held the world championship since 2013. After managing to trade his knights for a bishop and a rook while already up a pawn, he has somehow pissed away his whole advantage and brought the position back to even in most evaluations. Half an hour ago I thought he might win the championship. Now I think it's clear he's going to get blown out.

I have a hard time imagining he'd have much interest in a deal before the CBA is settled. The game has moved heavily away from paying older players for past performance and instead investing in young guys getting below-market. I have to imagine the players union is looking to increase the cost of young guys. Franco could be a big benefactor. Well, holy horsefeathers, he just signed for 12/225.I am shocked. It's not that it's a bad deal, per se. But waiting just a few months might have made a big impact on his bottom line. Though I concede he is better positioned to know what the union is thinking the eventual deal will look like.

I have a hard time imagining he'd have much interest in a deal before the CBA is settled. The game has moved heavily away from paying older players for past performance and instead investing in young guys getting below-market. I have to imagine the players union is looking to increase the cost of young guys. Franco could be a big benefactor.

Are we thinking about the same Alec Mills? Two turns through the lineup if you're lucky, has only cleared 100 IP at the ML level once, ERA should be the 4.50-5.00 range? Pitching lots of mediocre innings is worth something. I wont debate you there. Steve Trachsel, Jason Marquis, etc... Perfectly fine careers and a great guy to have in the #4 or #5 spot. But those guys had long track records of performing at that level while eating lots of innings. Mills averaged, what, four and a half innings per start? And there's no real indication as to how his arm will hold up trying to toss a full season's worth of pitches. I can't imagine any team valuing him for stability purposes unless your only other option is to try to bring back Rich Harden. I almost didn't use the word stability because I didn't want to give the impression I was considering Mills some mid-rotation workhorse in the Lackey/Hammel mold, but rather that he gives you more certainty than the player you're trading away in the upcoming year, and that could matter a lot to a team trying to compete now. In this case it's guys coming off major surgery, but for other teams it could be adding Mills to a deal for a SP prospect stalled at AAA/MLB to hedge against the loss of depth. I can kinda see what you're saying if I squint, but Mills' value (and his upside) seems just so marginal that I feel like most teams would honestly rather take a chance with a random quad A guy than give up anything of any value whatsoever for Mills.

Both Turnbull and Boyd could have more value to the Cubs than a team dead set on competing if you like their profile. Unfortunately the one thing the Tigers seem to have decent options for is LH OF with Baddoo and Grossman, so I'm not sure how direct a match there is in trade unless they want to exchange upside for immediacy/stability and trade for Mills. Are we thinking about the same Alec Mills? Two turns through the lineup if you're lucky, has only cleared 100 IP at the ML level once, ERA should be the 4.50-5.00 range? Pitching lots of mediocre innings is worth something. I wont debate you there. Steve Trachsel, Jason Marquis, etc... Perfectly fine careers and a great guy to have in the #4 or #5 spot. But those guys had long track records of performing at that level while eating lots of innings. Mills averaged, what, four and a half innings per start? And there's no real indication as to how his arm will hold up trying to toss a full season's worth of pitches. I can't imagine any team valuing him for stability purposes unless your only other option is to try to bring back Rich Harden.

Not a bad deal for the Tigers, honestly. His ERA sucked last year, but he was nearly a four win pitcher in 2019 and 2021 regardless. (And he missed 2020 due to COVID-induced heart problems, not arm issues). There's always risks with pitchers, but even if you think he's merely a 3.0 win guy now and subtract half a win per year, that's 10 wins for $77M. $7.7M per win would be fine anyways, but that's a fairly conservative projection. If you buy on him as a ~4.0 win guy, and you think he's a better bet for health and to stave off regression than normal, he could be worth significantly more than his contract. That said, if things are going that well for him after two years, I expect him to pull the trigger on his opt-out. He'd still only be 30 that offseason, and could net another sizeable payday.

Let's set aside the issue of WAR (bWAR vs fWAR), for the time being, he hasn't had a season like that in 10 years. Expecting a 35 year old to repeat those results is not a bet most would be willing to make. I'm not sure what people are thinking here. I suppose in the universe where the Cubs need warm bodies to make starts, he's a guy. Just looking at fWAR because I think its better for pitching (correct me if I'm wrong), but Miley has averaged 1.9 fWAR over his last 10 seasons. It's not the 2.9 WAR he had last year and you are right to be a little concerned about age regression but I'm not sure you are doing better in FA if you are looking at a relatively affordable starter with no long-term obligation. But you are saying to set aside WAR. I don't see anything in his numbers that jumps out as an extreme outlier last year. K/9 is actually lower than career average. His walk rate is lower than recent years but not a career low and not out of line with a majority of his career. BABIP is higher than it was in 2 of the previous 3 years, xERA, xFIP also are in line with several other years in his career. I think it was TT that said that if this was $10m of a $40m budget then yes its not a great move, but if its $10m of a $90m budget then I think its a smart move considering the number of holes the Cubs have to fill. My sabermetric knowledge is a bit dusty at this point (who has time for fun things anymore?), but defense-independent pitching statistics [as a bucket, not the old offshoots of DIPS in particular] were usually more predicative in value, with less variance year-to-year. So fWAR, thanks to its reliance on FIP, has long been my go-to when I'm trying to evaluate what a player's talent level really is. There is a vanishingly small number of pitchers who have shown abilities to outperform their components over large sample sizes. Matt Cain is a classic example. Kyle Hendricks is sometimes thought of as one. Prime Jake Arrieta was one as well. Last I checked in, there was still a lot of work going on in figuring out how those guys beat their peripherals so well, but it was thought to have a great deal with the ability to induce weak contact. But that seems to be a skill that may degrade, possibly quite quickly. One season Matt Cain just lost it. Same for Jake. Neither really got it back. But I digress. The long and short of it is that there are startlingly few such pitchers, and figuring out whether a particular pitcher currently outperforming their peripherals is doing so as a talent or by luck is a crapshoot. And it doesn't appear Wade Miley is such a pitcher at any rate. So yes, I believe you were correct in using fWAR.

How marketable was Zach Davies at the deadline? You are smart enough to know that this game isn't played in certainties. Zach Davies had a range of outcomes from being worth nothing to being worth "x" -- x probably representing a couple prospects that might rank in the back end of our top 30, or maybe a post-hype sleeper guy. Davies had a terrible season and fell on the bad end of his range. You know who had almost the exact same range of possible outcomes? Scott Feldman, who had a great half-season and turned into Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop. Or Jason Hammel, whose great half-season (alongside Samardzija) helped net us Addison Russell. Or Paul Maholm, who had a mediocre half-season and turned into Arodys Vizcaino who turned into Tommy LaStella. Those guys worked out. Davies didn't work out. Neither did Clayton Richard, Dan Straily, or Chris Volstad, for that matter. The point I'm making is that even smart front offices will miss on these guys. But when you're looking at this group as a whole, we've gotten way more value from these sorts of guys than the money we've put in. So I'm content to let them keep making those gambles. The equation might be different if we had a Triple A roster brimming with bright young SP talent and we need to get them reps at the ML level. But we don't. Somebody needs to pitch the innings, and this is a good gamble -- regardless of whether any individual bet pays off.

Late to the party, but this is exactly the sort of move the Cubs should be making this offseason. He's almost certainly gone at the deadline, but he's a very solid bet to bring something of value back. And if he's performing like he did last year, that value could be sneakily high. I always like these gambles with starting pitching more than position players as a general rule, too. Essentially every team will need more SP heading into the deadline. But there's no guarantees that any contenders would need a 3B or a 2B or whatever other veteran presence you've "hit" on for the season. Or even if a handful of teams need them, there may be a glut of that position available on the market. SP just seem to go for more in general unless some pretty specific situations play out.

It's not "giving up", but it's admitting that you have pushed the idea of a competitive team back another year or two. Considering he only has one year left, 'or two' is not accurate. Or at least it's a different conversation where you can prove out a reasonable extension. In fairness, he strikes me as just the type of guy to take a qualifying offer. If he has a really good 2022 and looks like a decent bet for ~3 wins, I could see the Cubs extending that offer. It's not like they have a lot else to spend the money on right now, and they need to sell some jerseys. And if they do extend that offer, not a lot of teams will be lining up to lose a draft pick to sign a catcher over 30 to an expensive multi-year deal. So the odds he takes the ~19 mil or so would be pretty high. That said, the CBA will probably change how those work anyways.

Hoyer sounds a lot like our old pal Jim Hendry. I'm waiting for the, "compete within the division" quote. I mean, if the owners get the expanded playoffs they want, competing within the division honestly looks more and more like the "right" decision from their perspective.. If only the best teams are making the playoffs, then it makes sense to try to be the best team. But if half the league gets to play postseason baseball, the financial sweet spot is aiming just above the midpoint and hoping your team gets hot at the right time and you can ride that to a world series victory and that sweet, sweet, playoff money.

PTR is grinning from ear to ear while thinking of Schwindel, Madrigal, Hoerner, Wisdom, and Ortega in the daily lineup and Alzolay, Mills, Steele/Thompson in the rotation with a bullpen that has Wick, Heuer, Rodriguez, Morgan, and Maples all at or near the league minimum in salary. Do you really think the Cubs are going to have a payroll under $100 Million next year? Yeah, even when the Cubs were tanking we were still going out and signing mid-tier guys on short deals hoping to score when we flipped them. Paul Maholm and Reed Johnson ended up part of the Arodys Vizcaino deal which led to Tommy La Stella. Scott Feldman brought Arrieta and Strop. Jason Hammel helped bring in Addison Russell. We will be high on the list for mid-tier free agents. Injured or old but want to prove you still have something in the tank? Had a down year in your walk year before FA? We have a solid coaching staff, lots of time, and very low expectations. And if you do well you can get shipped to a contender at the deadline. I expect us to fish heavily from this pond. Bargains can be found.

Also, it goes without saying, but LAD sniping the Padres for Scherzer would be great for us. They’ll feel pressure to match the move. So will the Giants.

I imagine Scherzer is just waiting to see what options he will have to choose from and then picking his team.

Kevin Alcantara is rated on fangraphs as a 50 FV player. Vizcaino is rated as a 45. In our system that would place Alcantara as the 2nd or 3rd best player (approximately even with Preciado) and Vizcaino as somewhere in the 9-12 range. It's a really good return for a couple months of Rizzo, honestly. We got about as much for him as we did for Darvish.