Jason Ross

Tucker spent some nominal time there in 2019 as well.

One of the things that I keep thinking about in my head is how Bregman kind of challenges a lot of what we discuss on the board - that there's no such thing as a perfect signing at a perfect time, that you get good players when you can, and that we wished the Cubs would act more like a big market team. And by signing Bregman, you hit these concepts (mostly). Is he a perfect fit/signing? Not really with Hoerner/Shaw but you can certainly argue he's an upgrade in a way (especially offensively), so get the good player when you can. Is he a super market efficient upgrade over Hoerner? Not particularly, you can probably assume both will finish around the same fWAR level, even if maybe Bregman has some ceiling that Hoerner doesn't. A big market team going for 90+ wins assumes more financial risk and is less efficient. I know there's an aspect of this that isn't fully hitting the "act like a big market thing" - it seems likely the Cubs will send Hoerner out for (somewhat) of a financial reason, and the Cubs are seemingly hoping Bregman opts out instead of adding a piece who would be around for a bit...so it's not a perfect parallel, but it's been something swirling around my brain the last few days as I try to examine this from every direction I can.

Yeah, that can really go a few ways. Bob's got the scoop (and he can do that). Bob's just wrong (and he can do that). Or Boras is trying to get someone to pony up the night after Alonso took a 2-year contract and before Bregman has to take another opt-out laden contract.

Listen, I'm the guy who's usually in the corner arguing with people about why fWAR matters, but you're taking it to a point where I think you've kind of lost the point of things such as fWAR. fWAR does great for determining value, but evaluating holes, and who we should feel comfortable with has to go past a simple "add the WAR, my guy!" argument. The issue is a-few-fold: first, as teams approach 90 wins and beyond, wins get more expensive. It's harder to improve and find those places to improve. Using recent PECOTA and ZiPS projections, the Cubs are moving themselves into that 90 win territory. What that means is arguing over a win here or there...it does matter as it becomes harder and harder to find those upgrades. Secondly, by losing Taillon, and inserting Javier Assad, you're making your pretty likely making you pitching worse. Yes, Assad had a pretty good ERA, but his FIP approached the 5.00 marker, his xFIP was 4.61 and as the season wore on he was far more hittable (seeing opposing hitters make far better and more consistent loud contact off him) but saw his ERA raise to his xFIP region. Taillon was nearly a full point better in FIP, half a point better at xFIP and he didn't see any discernable difference in seasons as Assad did. I don't think it's a question that Taillon is not only heartier as a pitcher, but I'm far more confident in what he is. He reduces variance. Beyond that, dropping a SP in a rotation that feels thin as is, further reduces the depth behind him. If you want to say that the Cubs have a bit too much in the range past Taillon (call it in that "depth" range of Rea, Assad, Wicks, Brown, Birdsell, Horton) area? I'd probably be fine with dropping an arm in this tier. The issue is that Taillon is clearly a tier in terms of "what we can expect for 2025" above this crew in that i don't think it's a question as to really what we're going to get there. Beyond Taillon it becomes quite murky in just what you've got. Sure, maybe Wicks' reworks the slider, stays healthy and is that guy who looked like a potential #4, but I'm not very confident in that right now. Maybe Cade Horton or Brandon Birdsell have the juice to stick in an MLB rotation in 2025, but rookies offer larger variance than Jordan Wicks - you're playing with fire. If you're willing to make that gamble, more power to you. The way the Cubs have operated all offseason suggests not only do they not agree with your assessment of Taillon vs Assad (they've been collecting arms like they were Pokemon) it makes it pretty clear that while you may be willing to take that gamble, the Cubs are not realistically going to see this as an option. The mantra to Counsell early in the offseason was that they were going to increase the pitching depth. It doesn't feel like you can both say you're adding depth and then trade one of your most reliable starters 4 days before ST kicks off and have meant it.

The Cubs current issue is that they probably don't have a strong enough rotation. I like the Steele/Shota 1-2, but past that, you're looking at a rotation that has Mathew Boyd and his injury woes (though you can certainly argue that his recent TJS will improve this - it's yet to be seen over more than a sample size of a partial season and shouldn't be fully counted upon), Colin Rea (who new studies on his arsenal suggest maybe there's some under current that makes him undervalued, but at best it's an argument in its infancy in terms of relevancy) and then a bunch of question marks like Javier Assad, Jordan Wicks, and Ben Brown. Jameson Taillon is someone you can more or less count on to give you solid #4 innings. He also has a limited no-trade clause. Trading Taillon seems like a near non-starter currently. There's no better option you can point to internally unless you're just banking on a Jordan Wicks type (which I like, but let's be real, he didn't have a great season last year due to health and some pitch mix changes) or a Javier Assad type (who fell off mid-year in a way Rea did as well). Maybe in December with a full slate of FA's, but then you are kind of robbing Peter (telling Taillon) to pay Paul (signing a replacement). In a vacuum, I'm not married to Taillon, but the Cubs need to be more settled in the rotation to be considering an outgoing there for my tastes. That's far too risky.

Can't tell if serious or not - I run all of the prospect stuff!

Alonso to Mets - 2 years with opt out

Schmidt has 4.2 career fWAR, and I think even being bullish on him and what you could do, you're probably thinking he's a 3 win guy at the top (which he's never done yet) - Hoerner is probably a 4 win guy and done that three times now (virtually). He's a little older than Hoerner. He does have one extra year of control which levels it out a bit, but yeah, Hoerner's got added value here almost assuredly.

While I don't know if it's a 1-1 swap or anything, the Yankees are a team that: 1. Could probably use 2b 2. Has pitching 3. The Cubs have recent trade history with over the last few years. More than once. Clarke Schmidt could be a name?

It feels like the Cubs are sincerely that high on Matt Shaw. And I guess I get it - if you're high on him you probably see him like ZiPS does - a near immediate 2-2.5 fWAR type with numbers good enough that he could legitimately win a RoY. There's plenty of outcomes there, positive and negative, but you'd assume if the Cubs further move Hoerner for something that the answer to how the Cubs view Shaw is "very close to how ZiPS does" which would explain their process. I wouldn't mind the Cubs giving him a bit more time myself. But I also trust the Cubs internal modeling more than me.

Jed Hoyer rarely makes a trade I hate. So I'm hoping that we can kill two birds with one stone - we upgrade the lineup a bit and also find that SP we're hoping to get with two swift moves. No promises that it all turns out peaches, but that's my hope here.

Greenfield has some sources it would seem. Might be a busy night. Buckle up?

Worth pointing out...

I do not think there will be an accompanying Nico trade...at least not immediately...myself. Would guess that's much more likely in June/July than ST. But just a guess.

So a few notes just to keep track: - Jon Heyman thinks the Cubs have the best shot to land Alex Bregman - Matt Spiegel confirms Cubs have real offer on the table (more support for Matt) - Lisa, who Jeff Passan kind of tounge-in-cheek credited with Bellinger last year, who's a Twitter/X user also posted a Bregman/Cubs thing.

She's probably nothing but she did have some post about Bellinger signing last year. So maybe she's on it again.

The way I've looked at signing Bregman, I do think it essentially gives the Cubs three options moving forward if it happens: Option 1: Cubs keep Nico, thus leaving Shaw as injury protection and someone you allow to essentially function as Javier Baez in 2016 - This deepens the bench, gives you the best injury protection possible, while also helping limiting the variance from Matt Shaw's rookie season - This does make adding a SP at the deadline much harder if the Cubs are once again refusing to go over the LT. I do think a creative contract with Bregman will keep the Cubs under the LT, but it makes finding another SP who limits that exposure hard - In this situation, the Cubs probably feel comfortable with their young SP's. Some mix of Cade Horton, Ben Brown, Jordan Wicks or Brandon Birdsell have impressed them enough that they'd be comfortable with them adding to the rotation. Option 2: Cubs find a Nico-for-SP trade - This is a very narrow landing strip. But it probably allows the Cubs to be a unique trading partner that other teams cannot provide. The Cubs might be able to add prospects to help buy down the cost here, but I'd guess this is a situation with a more controlled and likely less expensive SP Option 3: Cubs trade Nico Hoerner for prospects. They then buy a rental SP. *could be a three-team-trade as well - This is situation that probably creates more moving parts, but seems do-able in some regards. 2b is going to be a position of need for a few contenders regardless - it's a thin position. You could even argue that the trade value you give up on control you can somewhat make up for by proving Hoerner's health. - This doesn't have to happen on July 31st but could realistically happen sometime early June or later.. It gives the Cubs a lot of run way. - You'd assume in this situation Matt Shaw is showing everything the Cubs would want, and it allows the Cubs to have Bregman/Hoerner as their 2b/3b during their super-hard-stretch at the start, while shifting Shaw in when things ease up a bit. I don't want to suggest any of these as perfect, but I can see where the Cubs would have options moving forward regarding the infield and Nico moving forward. There's risk involved, and you might end up swapping the ability to trade for a SP later for a Bregman thing now, too. I'll avoid getting into 2026 implications with this post as well - I think that's a different beast all together. Essentially, I'm trying to put my Jed-hat on and how he might be looking at things.

I keep sitting on the fence, but I come back to the final place of "Jed Hoyer doesn't do rash things". This is a team who has pined for flexibility and their ability to pivot. They also love to be opportunistic and patient. At times you can say to a fault. I can't always say I agree full heartedly with Hoyer, but everything they do has a logic behind it that you can eventually see. So I am trying to remain balanced in that I think the Cubs have l;ogic here. I think offensively, what plagued Bregman last year is both identifiable and probably pretty fixable. The Cubs have had recent successes in approach changes with Happ and Suzuki so I think you feel a little confident there. And while I wouldn't predict a five win season, I think a healthy Bregman probably settles in around four wins in his age-31 year even if the offensive production isn't a mirror of his previous best self. It's short of superstar, but probably north of "I'll opt out" if the contract can mostly convince him to do so. In terms of what it offers over Shaw, I'm a little less sure of it, but I think that can be used to argue both ways. What 2025 rookie Matt Shaw is can be a wide birth and this will help limit variance. If we're a little worried with the variance of the rotation depending on Boyd's health and Rea being decent enough (with the field not killing Shota Imanaga, for example) than Bregman will help swing that variance back into check offensively to a pretty decent degree. Even if he's just 2024 Bregman, that limits the outcomes. As @KCCubsaid, I think my biggest worry is how the Cubs continue to handle the rotation in 2025. The Cubs always seem open to new ideas and new paths forward (they pivoted from Christopher Morel mid season last year, for example) so the Cubs choosing to move Hoerner mid-year seems plausible, if not entirely obvious. But that's where I come back to "Jed Hoyer isn't rash" and assume there's a pivot/plan/something beyond "IDK, Bregman?". So it's why I am trying to sit with cautious optimism if they do sign Bregman. I'd have to appeal to authority a bit there, but I'd have to assume that much like we assume Tom Ricketts hasn't been replaced by a new, super-spendy doppleganger version, that Jed Hoyer probably isn't some super aggressive "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" VP of Ops, either. He's probably still Jed Hoyer and probably still has some things that could help him pull things off. And I've said it once before but I'll say it again...throwing logic out for a moment and just being a meatball...it'd be real horsefeathers fun to see the Cubs sign Alex Bregman this late in the offseason. I know that's a meatball take and I really try to remain logical most of the time, but there's a little part of me that finds this just fun. Like yeah, maybe just get Mark Canha and call it quits but like...Bregman is kind of cool.

My push back on this would be this; developing prospects takes time, and while the Cubs certainly didn't do this as often as we'd have liked during the previous developmental team captained by Jason McLeod, the Cubs have really only had three years (2021-2024) to develop later round talents. If there's a positive, it's that early signs suggest the Cubs are doing better in this regard. James Triantos and Owen Caissie are both second round picks. The Cubs drafted (and should be given credit to a degree) both Jackson Ferris and Zyhir Hope (2nd and 11th round picks respectively). They've also have players like Brandon Birdsell (5th round), Luke Little (5th round), Porter Hodge (13th round - under previous regime) who should play roles with the team. And it's this crew that was able to rework previous later round pick Justin Steele into something useful. I think we're seeing that the Cubs are doing much better in this regards currently.

I'm so glad someone asked! I did a deep dive on his offense for a friend elsewhere and I can report back on what I've got. So looking at Alex Bregman's 2024 season, we see a few interesting things. The first is that Alex Bregman remains elite at limiting his swing and miss while also eliminating his chase rate. In theory, swinging and missing very little and not chasing pitches should result in a high walk rate (something Bregman has done in the past). Where Bregman changed last year is in that his swing rate in general increased - around 4-5% in almost every situation you can imagine - in the zone and in chase. He also saw an uptick in chase contact rate of 5%. In a weird sense, he made too much contact, which both limited his good contact rate (hitting chase pitches results, generally, in poor contact) and his walk rate, because he put balls in play, thus limiting his ability to work deeper counts and earn walks. The only place Bregman swung less? Meatballs, strangely enough. Second half Bregman saw an increase in his power (and his pull rate) but a further decrease in his walks. So what's the solution? I think you have a hitter who is still seeing the ball well, and his ability to make bat to ball happen doesn't at all appear limited. What does seem to have taken a step up is his aggressiveness off the plate. If you can just get him to come back a bit inside of himself (his 2023 approach), then I think you're fine here.

I think the chatter died down a bit with how the Padres structured the deal. The mutual option is probably never getting picked up, but it tends to help how payments are made to these guys (with there being now, a buyout that would be paid at the end of the season). The Padres situation with the ownership is messy, and you'd have to think that by finding a way to help delay how those payments are made, makes him a more attractive player to keep over Cease who will be paid out in the entirety of 2025 and 2025 alone. It probably doesn't entirely exclude King from being traded but I do think that it makes the Padres much more interested in moving Cease if they were to move one of them, especially with just kind of how messy the Padres are at the top.

I had discussed this elsewhere, though I'll consolidate my thoughts here, but I wonder if we're looking at a little bit of a "column A and a column B" situation with Bregman. We have heard words such as "flexibility" and "opportunistic" being used with how the Cubs operate, and I wonder if Bregman offers the Cubs flexibility and a version of being nimble (or if they see it that way). What I mean by that is that it allows the Cubs options - if they can get Bregman's AAV in under the LT, it gives the Cubs the chance to continue to allow themselves to explore, but not need to trade Hoerner. It could mean a swap for a pitcher later, or even prospects if they feel like Shaw is showing progress enough that the drop off isn't there. It could also offer them the flexibility to keep Hoerner being under the LT and let Shaw be the "Baez" type. And lastly it could offer the team flexibility in the injury department. A bit more of a long shot, but it could offer them the flexibility to deal Shaw (but with a Bregman deal heavily on opt outs and Hoerner being 2 years away from being lost, I do expect the team will want to keep him around as a replacement type for a position). It also gives the Cubs a bit of a safer floor with how they handle Matt Shaw - and lowers the variance. Jed spoke about how wins at higher levels That 90+ range) just cost more and this kind of exemplifies that in that regard. The Cubs are more than willing to patient, wait things out and they kind of operate on their own timeline in a way, and this might be a way to allow that to continue to happen throughout the season.

Yeah, on it's own it's a perfectly fine deal. I like Braiser in a vacuum. I do think there's an interesting bit on price/timing/etc as well. It seems unlikely that the Cubs are going to save $30m under the LT on the whole. Whether it's a Bregman play, saving for a trade of a SP and a bench bat, or even saving for a possible Tucker extension, I do think that most of that money is going somewhere. Should be a fun experiment to see where.

I think we have to look at this in one of two ways: 1. The Dodgers couldn't find a single taker on Braiser for his full salary, and thus, to get the Cubs to take him, offered to eat his contract down to $2.8m. While the Cubs liked this, it isn't because they're trying to save every penny they can. (I.E. Bregman). This was the best offer for the Dodgers. 2. The Cubs specifically targeted Braiser and his contract (over others like Robertson, Finnegan, etc) and maybe even bought down his salary even further on purpose (by adding better PTBL names, perhaps?) for a specific, money saving purposes (I.E. Bregman) The timing makes it seem like it could be connected to their pursuit of Bregman but maybe it's just the timing on Braiser alone.

Playing a Jed Hoyer aspect here, there are a few ways that I think we can look at this this; but the way that I think makes the most sense is in the concept of "opportunistic". The Cubs have this feeling that they like to jump on things that they feel, more or less, fall in their lap. They like shorter contracts, they like cheaper relievers, they like things they don't have to pay heavily for. It's easy to call this cheap or lazy, but the positive spin on it is patience and value. So how do we look at this in that lens? First, Bregman on a contract with opt outs creates opportunity - the Cubs get a four win player without having to commit to six or seven years. They can get the best years left and let someone else pay for him if he opts out - or conversely, trade him like Bellinger before the contract runs out. It creates opportunity for the team to consider moving NIco Hoerner before he becomes a free agent - either now (perhaps an injury in ST opens someone up) or at the deadline. So my guess is that the goal remains the same for the front office - it allows them to maintain flexibility, it allows them to pivot, and it allows them to capitalize when other things may or may not be available. I'd guess that's the goal. I don't think a Hoerner/Cease deal makes sense for either side (the Padres are looking to shed payroll) but a situation where the Cubs trade Hoerner for either another MLB player from a team who doesn't want to drop out of the playoff race in July or some sort of hybrid three team swap (Hoerner for prospects, Cubs trade for another SP) feels on the table at any point.