Jason Ross

To be clear, I don't think the Cubs have an obsession with the bench - the bench by nature is more easily changed; bench players sign for a year, are cheaper...where as starting options cost significantly more in years and dollars. It's also sometimes easier early in the offseason to get Tyler Austin to sign than, say, Michael King or Tatsuya Imai. We'll see what happens. A good reminder; the Cubs biggest move last offseason happened December 13th and they almost signed their second biggest deal in February. So I think there's just some waiting involved. Not a stats major, just someone who likes baseball, so despite lacking plenty of care in math, I can find a way to force my way through it. I also have had many, many smart people teach me many, many things. I stand on the shoulder of giants, good sir. In all honesty, I often feel like a fraud - that's not me saying this for pity or anything - but because I feel that way, I force myself to learn more so that I don't feel that way. Consider it an internal push to ensure I keep learning. When you enjoy something, it's not work. Everything else is water under the bridge. Tomorrow matters far more than yesterday.

The Cubs scored the 5th most runs last year, and entered the offseason with the fifth highest-fWAR projection of position players while losing Kyle Tucker. It's hard to say the Cubs are not interested in sustainability when they're clearly sustaining their production based on fWAR projection systems. As teams add players, they will drop in fWAR projections, but their current projections put them as a top-10 team almost any year without adding anything and there is a bulk of the offseason to go. The Cubs reportedly have at least $40m left to spend, and they can't and won't spend it on 15 Tyler Austins. Beyond that, the Cubs' position players especially, have been with the team for a while. Hoerner and Happ were drafted by the organization and signed a second contract, Seiya Suzuki is entering year-5. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw, Miguel Amya, Michael Busch, Owen Caissie and Moises Ballesteros are all controlled for 4+ years. Dansby Swanson is three years into a seven year contract. The Cubs are sustainable. Would it be nice to see the Cubs add some impact talent? Sure thing. I think that's going to happen. I don't agree with you on Imai and the Giants, there's almost no smoke out there on it. The smoke has been billowing towards two teams all week, the Cubs and the Yankees and recent reports from the Yankees owned sports network tonight suggest the Yankees don't feel confident he'll end up there. Could the Giants play possum? Sure, let's not count it out, but beyond personal opinions, there's nothing suggesting the Giants are that into him here. In fact, Ken Rosenthal just a few days ago said that the team didn't seem prepared to sign at the top-of-the-market and Imai, at this point, probably is the top-of the market (or second behind Valdez). So let's see where it goes. Ultimately, none of this is really why the reasons behind what I was showcasing before on free agents aged 25-30; the Cubs are not looking for big spending when they fill out a bench. Will they break the mold this offseason and add Imai, or Bregman, or something like that? We'll see. As of now, I think the winds on Tatsuya Imai are blowing towards Chicago based on all publicly held information. So while I wouldn't buy an Imai jersey if I were you, I think getting a little hopeful there feels realistic.

I really like the Cubs chances if this is true. And I feel like we might be 48 hours or less to this wrapping up.

A bench signing is not about sustainability. Bench options, especially as roster rules have changed, are players that teams need to be able to "churn and burn" in many ways (much like the bullpen). They have small sample sizes, are relatively volatile, and have to have utility. With teams down to four bench spots, one of which is a catcher who likely provides no utility outside of "catcher", finding players who do a lot of things "okay" is the name of the game. Hoyer signs players like he has for the bench (Jon Berti, for example) because Berti could kind of play a lot of positions and could be okay at a lot of things. He was also easy to move on from - as the team did at the deadline, upgrading from Berti to Willi Castro. The Cubs made mistakes in this end by offering multiple years and phantom options to players like Trey Mancini and Tucker Barnhart prior. While that money wasn't a massive hamstring, they carried millions of dead money over because within 3-months it was obvious those were not working in their roles. The reason the Cubs signed Tyler Austin is because: 1. Has crushed LHP in Japan for a while and the Cubs are one of the teams who are the most ingrained into NPB baseball right now league wide. We can see this with their recent signings of Imanaga and Suzuki, they were involved heavily on Foster Griffen who signed with Washington, and have also attempted to sign young Japanese outfielders out of Japanese university to MiLB deals. This will be useful as the Cubs look to have Michael Busch (LHH) and one of Owen Caissie or Moises Ballesteros in the lineup (both are LHH). You need a LHP masher. The Cubs may have found that. 2. He's the exact type of "churn and burn" you need for the bench. If Tyler Austin is doing what you hope he does; awesome! But if he isn't, then you have to be able to move on relatively easily. At $1,250,000 the Cubs can designate him for assignment, can easily turn to an internal option like Johnathon Long, in a similar role without any dead-money into next year. He is also easily replaced next year with another version of Tyler Austin if he works out - much like how the Cubs have essentially swapped out Drew Pomeranz for Hoby Milner. This is how a modern bench is constructed. I'm not going to muddy this discussion jumping from topic to topic, however. Imai has little to do with this. This is just about the bench.

Here is a list of current MLB free agents aged 25-30. Which one of them is a utility player the Cubs could sign? You've got guy like Luis Urias who was worth .1 fWAR last year. Luis Rengifo who's been a classic compiler who has never gotten to 2 fWAR n any full season and last year was worth 0 fWAR. Nick Madrigal, everyone loves Nick. Willi Castro is about the only good version of this, and the Cubs traded for him and have let him go. Most of these are either: guys who are going to start somewhere or pretty limited players. These magical 25-30 year old free agent utility players just don't exist, man. Hoyer signs those 30+ free agents for those roles because that's who's available. If you want to build out a bench you can trade for the Vidal Brujans' of the world (he was awesome, wasn't he?) or you sign Scott Kingery or a Jon Berti, or you sign Tyler Austin. Those are your choices, generally. And to be clear, I'm not saying anything about evaluation or you saying it's bad...but the reason Hoyer signs those types is because that's what the market has available. I don't think Hoyer is specifically jazzed about older bench hitters or anything, it's just who's there.

It may be true, but Boras has been burned a bunch recently from waiting these things out. Considering recent reports are that he's at a finalist stage, dragging this into the holiday season feels pretty unlikely at this point. Dylan Cease is represented by Scott Boras too. He was the first major domino to fall.

How do you find younger players, though? Should the Cubs be trading prospects for 29-year-old backups? They tried Gage Workman in the Rule 5 draft last year - that didn't work out. Free agents are generally players in their 30's. So, it makes sense that the team is finding those types; it's who you can find. It's a supply chain issue. In terms of being DFA'd, he's making only a bit more than minimum wage. Minimum salary in 2026 will be $760,000; it will be only the smallest amount above that of DFA'ing a league-minimum player. If he doesn't work out, and you want to go with Johnny Long, the price paid to make that swap isn't going to really make a major dent. It's a pretty painless player to move on from.

Just guessing, I kind of think this weekend is the time. We're getting the "finalists" talk and the smoke, then it died back down today. Feels like it's final pitch time and then decision day shortly after.

Well, it's kind of hard to put young guys on the bench. You can't sign young players in FA, and many times young players are given starters roles. Kingery is on an MiLB contract and isn't guaranteed to make the roster and Austin at $1.25m isn't so expensive he can't be DFA'd. They also right now project to have Amaya and Alcantara on the bench, two young players.

I mean, Austin had a 147 wRC+ in NPB. I'm not sure Austin will or won't hit at the MLB level at age-34 coming back over, but he absolutely smashed Japanese pitching for years so I don't think we know if he'll hit. Good news is at $1,250,000 for the year, the Cubs aren't beholden to Austin at all.

Yeah he murders LHP.

That's going to be a cheap contract. And I wonder if the Cubs have an indication they have a very large contract that is getting signed shortly...

I do quite like Imai. And think his low-arm-slot plays well into how the Cubs like to teach pitching. This is an article from Chris Langin, a former Driveline instructor. He specializes in NPB pitching. It's in Japanese but with the marvels of the internet, translation is easy as can be. His article is an excellent resource on what Imai can be at the MLB. Article can be found here.

I believe his comments were clarified as him not being expressly drawn to a team with Japanese players, not that Japanese players would disqualify a team.

Sir, I'll have you know that I'm pretty sure I did once a handful of years ago. Can't be quite certain.

Reports on Phillips is he only wants a one-year deal to re-hit the market and he'd be willing to wait maybe until the spring to sign. I'd be totally cool with him! But probably looking at like a David Robertson situation from last year where you're waiting into the season to sign him (he wants to be at a point where he can throw some to showcase per the reports). So I'd consider him like a bonus signing. Here for it, though.

Armstrong would be good, but he's going to likely come in around $8m+ I would think. Could be closer to $9m or $10m. He had a very good year. He's a little older, so it's probably 1 year as opposed to the two that Keller or Weaver got, but he's not much lower on the money-per-year totem either.

Unless I'm missing something, the reports on the Cubs and Correa is that the Cubs never made a formal offer to Correa. Where are you getting this? I don't think this is true.

In a vacuum, you're probably correct. But we don't live in a vacuum. Budgets, injuries, aging all are factors. I'll admit, I would have ranked Swanson fourth, and I'd have been wrong. We don't exactly know the processes by which the Cubs signed Swanson. Two things can be true at the same time, however; that the Cubs liked Swanson and he ended up being the cheapest but it also doesn't mean the Cubs liked Swanson, as many like to insensate, simply because he was the cheapest. There are plenty of other factors and we need to stop pretending we are in Hoyer's head here.

$22m which reads "reliever" to me on the contract, putting to rest the "maybe someone will convert him" thing (though it's not so low that it's all reliever). But yeah, come on down, Ryne Stanek (or someone)

I'll speak for others, but my assumption has always been that "Swanson was the cheapest, and Hoyer always does the cheapest option" is the criticism. Where I think this doesn't hold up is in how the players have aged, and how much better Swanson has been than even I thought at the time. I'll freely admit I admonished the signing and didn't love it and I've been taken to the woodshed and been super wrong about it (and I'm happy to be wrong). But it seems like the Cubs also had their pulse on these players and maybe it wasn't just "years and money" but "who's actually going to be better". Where the disconnect comes is that I think people like blaming Jed for the signing but then don't want to give him credit for Swanson's actual success because he's not a great hitter and that they feel like it was lucky or something, but considering how well the team has been when acquiring players, it feels like they should have the track record where they get that credit, and yet, don't. But you crushed it here. This is a great breakdown of the players and there's little doubt so far, Dansby's been right there at the top of the list in terms of successes.

This is more speculation than reporting, but there does seem to be a gathering smoke-storm on the Imai stuff. While I don't really think any of it is definitive, it does seem like we're winding this thing down.

We can't know anything. But I think it's probably important to remember that people like Jon Heyman run on reputation; that's what reporting is. It's why when Jeff Passan tweets something we respond differently than what our friend Fancys Romero tweets above. We also haven't had anyone refute that report. I don't think Heyman puts that out there unless he believes it's true to a high degree, and while Heyman can kind of be a shill for owners or Boras at times, he rarely just reports false horsefeathers. This isn't a Bob Nightengale thing, for example. Can we take this as a stone-cold-fact? Fine, there's some level of "I don't know..." to it. But there's also zero reason to believe that report isn't true, either.

Yeah, Romero was the guy who had us connected to Suarez the other day, too. My best hope here is that he's just reading tea leaves and guessing.