Backtobanks

The Rays literally just got two MLB ready guys in the Snell trade. Yeah, but the Rays don't have PTR as an owner and Hoyer a president.

What do you have against teenagers? After the embarrassing trade of Darvish, I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.

Tbf, that's not crazy far from what the people have been demanding for years now (though 18-20 is likely a little young for the league's agenda, don't want to undermine the NCAA!). I think it's pretty cool the Cubs have a couple guys you can squint and see making a ML debut at 20 (Howard, Preciado) Nobody was demanding that in the last 5 years. You must be getting paid by Ricketts to post all of this positive spin about this trade. As for squinting, I think most of us will have our eyes completely shut for the next few years. As for Contreras being shopped, somebody ought to tell Jed that Campusano wasn't part of the Darvish deal.

Play all of the 18-20 year olds. We'll have to when every team below AA is dissolved No, we'll just lose them to some other team in the draft.

Play all of the 18-20 year olds.

Two words: Scott Feldman. :beg: Yeah, Hoyer will trade him plus another player for Arrieta and Strope at the deadline.

Looks that way now, lots of risk being taken on by the Cubs, historically that's never played out well. I'd say there's a better than average chance none of these guys are Cubs in two years than any one of the prospects panning out to be a productive MLB'er. Prospects which are all, what, 4+ years away at best? Zach Davies? Weren't the Cubs one of the few teams against which slow, slower and slowest was effective? Remember when Bryant was being shopped and we couldn't get what we wanted for him. If I was a GM on a team that needed a 3B, I would be calling Jed with offers of 2 16-year-olds for Bryant plus cash.

For those of you pushing for a fire sale, what kind of shrewd deals do you think Hoyer can make on Rizzo, Bryant, Baez, etc. when this is all he could get for Darvish & Caratini? I will say that GMs should be lined up at Hoyer's door after this deal.

End of the rotation? Right now he's our #2 in the rotation.

If they were in the NL Central, they would win it by 20 games.

I think for 2021 he certainly will, plus it allows you to start Nico in AAA if you want. Or Nico can platoon with Cronenworth and backup Baez.

We can hope that MLB keeps the same plan as last year, so we only play Central Division teams. We could still have a decent "regular season" with very little competition except the Twins and White Sox. Of course the playoffs would really be ugly.

Twins, Angels, and Blue Jays I think make a ton of sense. Each has a strong farm, a need at the front of the rotation, and indications are they have at least one big money move in them. Twins especially, as they finished second for him in FA. Phillies and Yankees maybe if the right set of dominos fall this offseason? Maybe the Giants try to compete a year early? Of course, we don't know which teams are on his no-trade list, which might complicate things.

The Rockies got little-to-no production from C, 1B, and 2B last season. How about a Christmas trade: Rockies get Caratini + Bote + Underwood for Jon Gray + Mychal Givens + Cash ($3 million?)

An example of how corporations/companies think. Union Pacific railroad made $300 million one year and $250 million the next year. When they started negotiations with the union, they said that they would have to make cuts because they "lost" $50 million.

Hopefully the vaccine is available to players soon because the Cubs certainly won't be able to social distance at spring training with all of these signings.

The whole point of the Frasier/Musgrove trade was to get Musgrove, but seeing that the Pirates want to dump salary I added Frasier. If the Pirates want to switch names away from Bote/Mills toward prospects, that would be fine. Both Frasier and Musgrove would be great additions to filling 2 of the Cubs biggest holes at a reasonable price. Of course, "reasonable price" is relative to everything we have been discussing.

Our only hope is that they rearrange the schedule like last year so we only play other Central division teams.

I would still like to see a deal with the Pirates. Bote + Mills for Murgrove + Frasier. The Pirates save some money and the Cubs get a dependable 2B and SP.

Bold: Happ alone is projected to anywhere from $2.5-4.6 by MLBTR so I don't know where those numbers are coming from. For luxury tax purposes, Bote is $3 million by himself. So within the luxury tax, which the Ricketts have treated as at least a soft cap throughout, the Cubs are moving possibly as much as $15 million in those trades just between Contreras, Happ, and Bote You can play with the numbers all you want, but PTR isn't going to add $37 million to the payroll without getting rid of that much or more.

Just Contreras' salary? Did you miss Happ, Mills, and Bote? That's something like another $15 million, IIRC bringing the drop to like $70 million between finished contracts and cuts. Also tbf, you've also posted that Luis Arraez can hit leadoff for the Chicago Cubs and might be worth giving up Willson Contreras so like...we're all speculating here! Since we are speculating, *can they really* do better than going Rizzo/Baez/Lindor/Bryant in the IF and a ton of depth around that group? I definitely doubt there's a realistic move out there actually available to be made that would have the impact adding Lindor to the lineup would. There's your high contact leadoff hitter who also adds to or maintains skills the team already has (defense, power, baserunning, speed) 6 of those guys are the oldest, cheapest FAs - a bucket that includes multiple guys who've outright said money isn't their #1. How much, realistically, is Jed Lowrie going to sign for? Jason Castro? Same for all those pitchers, including two guys coming from overseas who aren't coming for the deluge of money 2020 MLB FA will throw at a couple 32-33 YO pitchers. Who in that bunch is realistically getting even as little as $5-6 million guaranteed? I expect any real signings the Cubs make to be spread out over a bunch of smaller signings rather than shooting for one "big" lower tier first division guy like Odorizzi or Bradley Jr. or even someone a notch above like Semien I don't know where you're getting your salary numbers for 2021. Happ + Bote + Mills is basically $3million (or less). I would expect Lester to get at least $5-6 million, Schwarber will probably get $5 million, the old guys and the overseas pitchers will all get in the $1-2 million range, Lindor is around $20 million, and Margot is around $3million. That's adding about $37 million while dumping about $11 million.

As I posted before (about not knowing the payroll situation), I don't think PTR is going to approve 7 FA signings plus adding Lindor's salary while only disposing of Contreras' salary. If the Cubs have that much money to spend, we can certainly do better than that.

Alcala + Arraez for Contreras? :barf: Luckily the Twins have Garver and Jeffers at C and aren't really a Contreras match Are we really that sold on Arraez's first 487 ML PAs across two seasons? I'm not. He finished the year ice cold and injured, doesn't play good defense/is only nominally a 2B, is a slow player who rocks a career .354 BABIP and extremely low power (his pro IsoSLG is .087 over almost 2500 PAs heading into his age 24 season), and also is pretty easily neutralized by breaking stuff (sub-.300 wOBA over 475 pitches between 2019-2020) As I said, those first 487 ML PA were as a 22 and 23 year old, which makes the numbers even more impressive. He doesn't strike out much and has an OBP of .390. The Cubs are looking for reducing strike outs and getting on base in a leadoff man, so we can put our best hitters back into spots where they can drive in runs. Maybe if we wait to see what he does in the next 2-3 years, we might have to give up a lot more to get him plus pay him a ton of money in arbitration. This is only speculation by Rosenthal, but it looks better than the speculation about Semien at $13million per year.

Alcala + Arraez for Contreras?

From MLBTR: Rosenthal still outlines a possibility of Minnesota moving someone like second baseman Luis Arraez in order to slide Jorge Polanco over to second base. Arraez plays 2B and has a slash line of .331/.390/.429/.819 over 2 seasons at 22 and 23 years old. Looks like he could solve the 2B and leadoff problems.