Backtobanks

The Cubs would get fleeced in that scenario. So you're saying Hoyer will jump on that deal?

Yup. They projected as a 75-80 win team, and the underlying #s (I.e. controlling for their horsefeathers 1-run game record) think that's exactly what they've been I think the projections for 75-80 wins were made by Cub fans. They were on a pace of 50-52 wins last year after the sell off and they're on a pace for 64 wins this year. As for their 1-run game record, that's what happens when you aren't a very good team.

Seems like he's been doing that to make fun of Anderson ever since Anderson (I'm assuming in jest) called himself the new Jackie Robinson during a dispute with MLB a couple years ago. Donaldson probably thinks that's very funny. In today's Tribune, Donaldson said that the two of them have been joking about it for the past two years. Maybe Donaldson is a racist or maybe not. Maybe Anderson is a jerk for comparing himself to a legend or maybe not.

Given the Cubs current situation, getting rid of Heyward adds minimal benefit both financially or talent wise. If you want to get rid of Contreras including Heyward only lessens the prospect in return and fattens the Ricketts' pockets. So you're saying we should keep Heyward because we don't want to fatten Rickett's pockets any more?

Buster Olney must be smoking something to report this: https://www.si.com/mlb/mets/news/mlb-insider-identifies-mets-trade-targets-says-steve-cohen-is-on-a-mission

Using MLB Trade Values, we would need to trade Alzolay, Triantos, Alcantra, Cassie, Crow-Armstrong, Davis, Hernandez, Hoerner, Kilian, Morel, Precidio, and Suzuki to balance out the trade.

What a crock of BS. If you want to get back to competing for the WS every year, you don't put a below-replacement level roster together for 2 1/2 years while keeping one eye on the future and hoping that at least 4-5 prospects become ML stars and your owner will decide to loosen the purse strings.

There were clear opportunities to upgrade in free agency. I honestly have no clue why the went after Suzuki and Stroman if they are choosing to surround them with replacements. The Cubs have 2 starting pitchers and Happ, Nico, Wilson and Suzuki. They are great at building a pen, but at some point their luck is going leave. They are intent on letting Wilson leave and the consensus seems to be to trade Happ. They have no stars to trade and teams seem to be coveting prospect. As you noted, the FA market isn’t great. The team is on the road to at least three more years of awful on top of last year and this year. Who else is to blame if not the Ricketts? The Cubs last rebuild felt like it took forever but it only took 3 years after Theo took over to build a contender. If you consider this year 1 - equivalent to 2012, lets look at what the Cubs had in assets by this point in the rebuild: -On the major league team they had 1 cornerstone piece in Anthony Rizzo and a 2015 bullpen arm in Travis Wood. -In the minors, only 2 of their top 40 prospects actually contributed to the 2015-2016 Cubs - Javy and Matt Szczur -They had the pieces that would eventually be traded for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, 1/2 of Addison Russell, Hendricks, Carl Edwards, Grimm and Neil Ramirez (probably missing some) -Farm system was ranked around 15-20 in baseball Curious to see how we compare with what we have right now. Obviously a bit hard to say because we don't know how guys like Davis will ultimately look in the majors and we have no idea what we can get for a lot of the veterans on the staff but it seems like we're in a similar position, maybe slightly better now. Definitely seems like another 2-3 years to get to the point of contention on the surface. You said yourself that that team had the pieces to trade for Arrieta, Strop, Fowler, Hendricks, Russell, Edwards, Grimm, etc. Where are the tradable pieces on this team? We are miles behind the situation in 2012 and we don't have Theo's competence to save us.

I thought that they might be borderline contenders in 2024, but this situation is so bad that it's starting to look like 2026 is a safer bet.

This team was on a pace to win 50 games over a full season after the trade deadline. Adding Suzuki and Stroman certainly helped, but I never thought they were anywhere near a 74 win team.

With all of the teams needing pitching help and signing and/or trading for pitchers with arm problems and lesser success, I can't believe someone wouldn't have traded for him. Taking a flyer on him because he can at least give innings and giving up something good for him are two very different things I think a team needing a #4 starter would have given us something "pretty good" (which is what I said). Now we're stuck with him and Heyward on the books for next year.

If the FO office would have admitted that we were rebuilding instead of retooling, we could have gotten something pretty good for him during the off season. Well this is just made up nonsense, he was a mess last year. Kyle had two problems last year: he basically stopped being able to miss bats, and while he still was a soft contact guy a higher proportion of the hard contact he did allow was in the air. Combine those two factors and he got donged into oblivion. This year he's missing bats again, but his groundball rate is evaporating and he's giving up hard contact at a little more than a league average rate. IMO the former is more encouraging than the latter is discouraging, but not by a lot and I was already really worried about him coming into the year. With all of the teams needing pitching help and signing and/or trading for pitchers with arm problems and lesser success, I can't believe someone wouldn't have traded for him.

If the FO office would have admitted that we were rebuilding instead of retooling, we could have gotten something pretty good for him during the off season.

Hosmer + Campusano + Myers + Cash for Mills + Heyward + Ortega + Bote.

Cheap and history of arm injury, seems like a fit.

I'm calling [expletive] here. Yesterday the Ricketts were called out by a national media guy for fielding an inferior team on the cheap. This is a bogus story fed to friendly media by an ownership group who are about to field a 70 win team on $140M payroll with the 3rd highest ticket prices in baseball. If Boars didn't give Correa this information he would be subject to disbarment and civil litigation. Yeah, this sounds like something Trump, Fox News, and the Ricketts would "accidently" leak to the press.

We don't want to stockpile too many good players.

It wasn’t an “oof” of surprise, it was an “oof” of ESPN reinforcing the awfulness of the roster. Their rosters at AAA and AA aren't in great shape either. It's Davis and a bunch of relievers and not much else. But don't call it a rebuild. The sad part is that there were so many players available (trades and free agents) that could have made this team "decent", even without spending a ton of money.

I don’t think it’s “really, really bad.” Hendricks and Stroman should combine for 6+ WAR, he’s hurt but once Miley is healthy he’s probably good for 1-2 WAR, Mills/Smyly probably add another 1-2 WAR, then if we can get anything out of one of the young guys (Keegan, Kilian, Steele, etc) it’s a decent enough rotation. Not super high end/ceiling but there’s enough there for it to be middle of the pack like ~10 WAR 15thish in the league. Nothing to be excited about and they should’ve done more but I can see the rotation being decent enough and I have faith the bullpen will be plenty good. Setting aside the 6+ WAR prediction for Stroman/Hendricks (which I'm skeptical amount), the issue with the Miley/Smyly/Mills predictions is that the only way they put up that kind of production is just through volume. Their whole skill set is just 'mediocre when healthy'. There's almost no chance that one of them pops into some sort of top 30 starter in the league. And yes, I know Miley had his best year in 9 years last year and ended up at #30 for fWAR, but he's already hurt. To TTs point, sure, a couple of Hendricks/name your offensive dude might pop up to 3 WARish, and by June you might figure out which guys are 1.5 win guys and which guys are terrible, but I don't see any 4.5+ guys. If you could run the numbers and strip out the worthless players and throw a roster of 80% 1.5 guys and 20% 3-3.5 guys, great, that would be boringly effective in a crappy division. But you can't, and we'll basically just be doing the bullpen experiment everyone loves where by the end of the season we have terrible overall numbers but we've 'finally found a good mix'....but with the whole roster. Stroman and Hendricks combined have averaged below 4 WAR the last three years.

Maybe, Jed can find 2 or 3 players to put in the starting lineup.

Paddack, Hosmer, Campusano, and Gore for Bote, Mills, Ortega, and Strumpf. We pay all of Hosmer's contract.

Padres get Bote, Smith, Mills, Ortega Mets get Paddack, Pagan Cubs get Hosmer, Campusano, Gore, McNeil No money involved. Somebody has to help out poor Jed.

That trade makes no sense for the Mets, imo, even if they need pitching. Smith can play some OF at least. Hosmer is 1B/DH only and so is Alonso and then they got Cano, Davis, Canha, McNeil who all really can’t play a lot of (if any) positions positively and probably should be DH’s. Back2Banks this is your time to shine, bud! 3 team trade ideas needed! Padres get Bote, Smith, Mills, Ortega Mets get Paddack, Pagan Cubs get Hosmer, Campusano, Gore, McNeil No money involved.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nl-central-preview-who-will-play-spoiler-to-the-brewers/ Mind you, that doesn't include Bryant, Baez, and Rizzo all being shipped off at the deadline. After the trade deadline, they were playing at a rate that translated to about 52 wins over a 162 game schedule. That put them near the Orioles in incompetence.

horsefeathering Dodgers press all the right buttons all the time. Great trade for both teams.