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Cubswin11

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Everything posted by Cubswin11

  1. Cubswin11
    Is Kipnis still available? How about Dozier? Someone? or nah There's still several 2B in that similar 2nd division starter tier still available: - Brock Holt - Jason Kipnis - Scooter Gennett - Asdrubal Cabrera - Brad Miller - Joe Panik And that's just the lefties, since it sounds like they want someone to compliment Nico. So while I'm not too worried about 2B specifically, I do think it's hard to not be worried about FA more broadly. I’d prefer Holt or Cabrera of those names. We’ll probably just give Panik a split deal or something though.
  2. Cubswin11
    This is horsefeathering ridiculous, regardless of the outcome
  3. Cubswin11
  4. Cubswin11
    He throws a 95 MPH sinker, plus has a minor league option. I like how we are approaching these last 1-2 pen adds.
  5. Cubswin11
  6. Cubswin11
    I honestly can’t tell if that’s a serious post or an attempt at a joke
  7. Cubswin11
    Exactly, the CBA has been in place for 3 years, the consequences of spending from that perspective are not a surprise. So either we have to believe that Theo was confident that the team would be so good that they'd be fine just taking an offseason to trim payroll(even as late as *this June* when he committed 37 million to Kimbrel), or ownership pulled the rug out from under them. I strongly lean it was a kept in the dark/rug pulled out situation and/or business side horsefeathering up so bad with renovations and TV deal they didn’t or couldn’t keep money promises on future payrolls. I don’t believe he would’ve put himself in a spot to entirely sit out offseasons that included Manny, Bryce, Kershaw, Cole, Strasburg, Rendon, Arenado and some of these other clearly elite players.
  8. Cubswin11
  9. Cubswin11
    League-wide collusion except for the Yankees, who are some $50MM over the threshold. But then the Yankees have been a useful bogeyman for the small-market teams for nearly 30 years. And, if I remember correctly it will be their second year in a row. Red Sox on pace to go over three years in a row. These are the only two teams to exceed it more than one year running. Have the Dodgers or Giants gone over back to back or three times in recent history?
  10. Cubswin11
    My assumption is that there are more costs than we give credit for in running the team, so their break even point is probably well south of $300M. That being said there are two big caveats there: 1. They definitely pocketed a ton of money from 2012-2015, and haven't turned around and dipped back into that money. They'll point to the renovations but that leads to... 2. A lot of their costs are building up equity. So it's not *really* a loss even of it's not straight up liquid profit So ultimately. I don't *really* care about where that break even point is. Yeah there probably are more expenses than we know/give credit and the Cubs probably also have some of the higher expenses in MLB currently with the renovations, recentish purchase of the team, all the building/property acquisitions around the park and network. But like you said most of those costs are going towards assets gaining value/building equity. They get the interest, expense and depreciation write downs with doing all that too. They also got the BAMTECH money last year or the year before, did that minority share sell off a few years ago (forget what that money was used for) etc.
  11. Cubswin11
    250-300 should be more than doable during a contention window for them, imo, with the info we have on what we think they make. Obviously they could and can spend more but talking about where they could go in an individual season and still not lose money that seems like the range.
  12. Cubswin11
    The tl;dr is that going over the tax for the 2nd straight year is more like a ~25 million cost than a ~5 million cost, and doing so for a 3rd straight year is upwards of 50 million. I just got done reading that, definitely wasn’t aware the penalties could be that costly with those other rules. But as we’ve said if the goal is simply to get under, well we’re fucked this year but it still shouldn’t mean trading Bryant. Trade Q, Chatwood or even Schwarber.
  13. Cubswin11
    Thames was worth 2 wins last year, Smoak hasn’t been worth 2 wins the last two years combined. They’ve gotten pretty clearly worse replacing Moustakas, Grandal, Thames and whatever else on offense with Smoak, Sogard, Garcia, Urias and Healy and whatever that catcher is they added.
  14. Cubswin11
    I didn’t mean to compare him to Cozart who’s effectively a sunk cost, Heyward is better and has value but the prospect cost to move money was pretty steep on a deal with less $$. Even if we ate half the deal a team still is taking on $40+ mil. I agree he’s basically the player you said, defense sub, strong side platoon 1-2 win player but why would a team pay $40 mil for that when they could just sign a Jarrod Dyson, Pillar, etc type that’s available every offseason for a cheap 1 year deal? I get they’re also “buying” prospects as well and that’s all part of it but I think the prospects required to even lose half his money wouldn’t be worth giving up, I hope I’m wrong and it wouldn’t take as much. And yeah agree on the leadership thing, they seem to hold him in high regard there and it seems like Theo really values that for reasons...
  15. Cubswin11
    He’s owed 4/96 yet and has a partial no trade clause. I think it would be incredibly hard to move him. The prospects given up would be costly to save any money and we’d still likely have to throw in a decent chunk. The Angels just had to give up the 15th overall pick from last year to move and clear some of Cozart’s money and that was for 1 year and under $15 million. I think we’d be talking multiple of Hoerner, Amaya, Marquez, Adbert, Davis, etc to even be starting conversations and we’d still have to be throwing in 10s of millions or taking back a bad deal too.
  16. Cubswin11
    Assuming Nick ends up costing in the 17 AAV range I’d just rather use that to add all of Souza, Akiyama and 1 of Holt or Cesar for about that if that money is there.
  17. Cubswin11
    He was 26/27 but slashed .269/.351/.449 in AAA last year with a 10% BB rate, 18% K rate, 11 dongs, 30 2Bs and 29 steals. AAAA guy basically but some speed and D, 160 steals and only 24 CS last 4 years. Steamer projects him for a 65 wRC+ this year, which is 1 better than Almora last year.
  18. Cubswin11
    I guess the reason for flipping or pivoting would be the lack of ANY development of pitching to date. I’m sure it was in the plan that by this point they’d have a real internal option or two for a SP role and some bullpen roles. The lack of that may have changed the equation a bit with needing so much pitching next year that he had to go against his core beliefs/how he would ideally prefer to build. With all the pitching holes needing to be filled next year it’s pretty hard to expect to really contend with internal options and the FA options and doing no adds through trade. That’s at least my stab at it as a reason why they’d suddenly pivot off of how they seemingly prefer to build things. My preference would be to just keep KB this year and try and maximize things but I can at least get the sentiment of the other idea here. I also like the idea of replacing Bryant's production at similar contractual cost one year later by signing Betts while also having acquired good, young arms and a good CFer. The Betts thing is huge to me, it’s impossible for us to know. But if doing whatever back checking they can do Theo and Co. feel like they can go all out to get him and he would come here that would make me feel a whole better with trading KB if we could feel reasonably certain Mookie is all part of this equation.
  19. Cubswin11
    That’s where I’m at, you at least can see how it works this year if you keep the core and move some margins around. Next year could be tough to really contend regardless if you keep the core or do trades this year with the pitching needs. Trading KB punts this year, effectively, and then leaves next year as a pretty big roll of the dice that one (or more) of these young pitching prospect is actually good and turns out and you’re able to add Mookie to be able to contend.
  20. Cubswin11
    I guess the reason for flipping or pivoting would be the lack of ANY development of pitching to date. I’m sure it was in the plan that by this point they’d have a real internal option or two for a SP role and some bullpen roles. The lack of that may have changed the equation a bit with needing so much pitching next year that he had to go against his core beliefs/how he would ideally prefer to build. With all the pitching holes needing to be filled next year it’s pretty hard to expect to really contend with internal options and the FA options and doing no adds through trade. That’s at least my stab at it as a reason why they’d suddenly pivot off of how they seemingly prefer to build things. My preference would be to just keep KB this year and try and maximize things but I can at least get the sentiment of the other idea here.
  21. Cubswin11
    I don’t think that’s a wrong way to look at things and there’s some hard truths in there. The pitching after this year is certainly a concern and the path laid out is definitely a path that needs to be looked at, at least as an exploratory plan (which I’m sure Theo and Co have) and if this is something being explored I’m sure a larger rebuild with trading guys off would be explored too. It obviously makes it easier if Mookie is gettable and a real target next year as KB’s star level replacement, the main thing I don’t like is that we’re getting pitching prospects as the main return for KB and they’re so coin flippy/can have timelines change drastically. But I get why that’s what you want for try and get for him since pitching of some type is such a need very soon (however it may be acquired). Also, more as a nitpicking I don’t see Rizzo getting 25 AAV on his next deal. I’d think he’s closer to 17-21 AAV but that’s not overly significant.
  22. Cubswin11
    Maybe it’s true, but hear me out, maybe Jesse is speculating his ass off again and trying to amplify a narrative (we obviously know they’re claiming they’re strapped for money but maybe not this much) and they decided to simply pass on Eric horsefeathering Sogard once his price got to $4.5 million since there’s plenty of MIF/contacty options still out there and Sogard has plenty of red flags like a 14 wRC+ in 2018.
  23. Cubswin11
    only in terms of hr's, and only by 3, and perhaps defensively. But he isn't an improvement over Nick unless he's drastically cheaper He was worth 3.8 WAR in 2017, Nick has never topped 3.0. And yes he will be drastically cheaper, that’s the appeal, and probably at least not all that much worse (if healthy). Especially since Nick is probably somewhere between a 1.5-2.5 win player most years moving forward and probably capped at 3.5 or so.
  24. Cubswin11
    I still see Steven Souza being a worthwhile gamble instead of jumping through hoops to get Nick. There’s risk coming off the knee injury but if you assume he’s healthy (he’s working out fully he claims) he had a better year than Castellanos ever had the last time he played a full season and handles lefties fine and fits the RHH OF add plus also has rated out well defensively. He also likely only costs a couple million for 1 year.
  25. Cubswin11
    I’m kinda happy there’s no money there if we’d just use it on Castellanos. Seems like it would really be forcing things to bring him back at the rumored dollars he wants in the 5/90 range. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will be a 2016 Dexter, 2019 Moustaskas situation and we get him late in FA for 1 year. The article basically says what we’ve heard. Gotta make a trade to clear money and Schwarber likely has to go because they don’t want a Schwarbs/Heyward/Nick OF full time. Which using resources to find a deal to clear money and a Schwarbs trade just to turn around and give Nicks 5/90 seems like a waste of time and energy for a sequence of moves that doesn’t make us better and adds a long term money commitment.
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