Backtobanks

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.

That's been the rumor floating around for a long while now. I think it's unlikely at this point. He's coming off a rough season, but he typically hits well in the first half. So if he hits well through the trade deadline, teams may be willing to pay just as much for a half season of him as they are willing to pay right now based off last year's production. That said, there's no good reason the Cubs couldn't trade him right now. Sure, they want to sneak into the back of the playoff picture. But if we're being honest, the difference between Willson and Yan Gomes isn't that substantial. If the offer is sufficient, I see no reason they have to wait until the deadline to move him. A trade to the Padres could include Caratini as a throw-in.

What's disheartening is it's unclear if the system is comparable to where it was in the early 2000s, where a number of high profile players didn't pan out despite significant hype (Harvey, Pawelek, C-Patt/E-Patt, Pie, Cruz, etc.), or if it's comparable to the system in the early/mid-2010s, where it seemed like the Cubs hit on every high level position player draft pick and trade target. I mean, it sucks that this system really hasn't done a whole lot since the Happ callup, but that's where we are now. You can see the possibilities, for better and for worse. Its a good point, we really have no idea. We've made a lot of changes to scouting and development recently but no guarantee that's going to make things better. When the best player you drafted outside of the first round for over a decade is David Bote, you tend to lose faith in these things. 27 Cubs draft picks outside of the 1st round since 2012 have made it to the majors. 13 of them have negative WAR. Of the 14 that have positive WAR, only 2 of them have been worth 1+ wins in the majors: Bote (3.4) and Cease (3.0). Yikes. At least we can always look back at our record of developing pitching from our minor league system.

The Ricketts are probably calling to get the details at this minute. Don't the announcers just travel on the team charter? What added expense does it cost to put them on the road? Obviously lodging and per diem but that can't be that much. What am I missing? You answered your own question - lodging and per diem. These guys didn't become billionaires by "throwing money around".

You're disillusioned about the state of the farm? Is it not a very deep farm with very few high end pieces? This isn't some top 5 system or anything, and if you are a rich team that sucks you better have a high end farm system. Maybe disillusioned is a strong word, but when you have to hang your hat on the farm part of your organization, it should be better that what the Cubs have. We can also hang our hat on the Reds selling off players and hoping that some key players for the Brewers and Cardinals get injured.

Contreras was gone the day they signed Gomes. It's been a matter of when and not if.

Coors + he sort of had the yips at the end last year. Though that was probably just a shoulder injury rather than any scary mental issue. Here are the terms Haven’t we gotten over the concept of a Coors effect or is there a certain type of hitter that does not translate to playing for a team at sea level. We’ve seen several players now leave the Rockies and not see any sort of dramatic drop off in their numbers. Wait until KB hits .380 with 72 HR.

The Ricketts are probably calling to get the details at this minute.

Suzuki looks like a good solid ML player, but I think we ought to hold off on the Mike Trout comparisons for 2-3 years.