Jason Ross

With Shamra saying the Cubs are doing a better job with the top-end of the market and the Cubs getting near(ish) a trade from Rogers... Bregman and Gore feel like it could be happening?

My gut feeling is "no". I think the return for Marte revolves too heavily around pitching and I don't think the Cubs have it for them unless they like, really love Ben Brown or something. Hoyer was talking about how the Cubs might add another swing starter, so maybe? But I think the Cubs don't really match up well here.

I get it, offense is fun. I think next year, it'll be more pitching focused.

I know we all want a big move (I do too), but we don't need to jump the shark; the Cubs won 92-games last year. Hoyer built a good team. We should probably give him more than a month into the off-season (when most of that month is just the league waiting anyways) before we get worried they will build a mid-80s win team.

Busy day in Orlando.

I think the Cubs would 100% be better with Bregman+Shaw+Nico rather than Bregman+Shaw+Nico's return. We aren't getting a four win player in a straight up swap with him. And yes, the Cubs can probably let multiple players walk. Shaw (as I outlined in a post above) isn't too far off from Hoerner now . Then you hope one of Caissie or Ballesteros is ready to take an OF spot or DH next year. And then you have money. The roster cliff is real and I'm a little concerned about it. But I don't think you're getting much of a controlled option for Nico Hoerner who's on his last year. The strip for landing a Nico trade last year was narrow, I think it's essentially non-existent this year unless you're just okay with actively getting a worse player back than Hoerner.

Well, I don't think it's necessarily so black-and-white for the Cubs. I'll admit up front that I'm not really on Team "Sign Bregman to 5+ years", but I'm going to try to look beyond my biases and figure out a Cubs' line of thinking here: Alex Bregman posted a 125 wRC+ at 3b last year at the 3b position which, league wide, was a 93 wRC+. It's a trash position offensively right now (it's behind catcher). We aren't seeing a decline in bat speed yet and he's been a consistently productive hitter with a plus-plus approach at the plate. Defensively he remains +. We know the team kind of struggled against LHP and he had a 139 wRC+ against them last year. You have Bregman, Shaw, Hoerner and Swanson who can all move around the lineup a little, giving each other some days off, maybe Shaw or Bregman can play some DH against LHH while you sit Caissie/Ballesteros (whichever you roll with). When it comes to 2027. you let Nico walk and you gift the position to Shaw. Shaw, right now, looks not too far off from Hoerner, if we're being honest with ourselves. He was a near plus-plus defender at 3b according to DRS, and a move to 2b you'd think he'd maintain a very plus defensive rating. His wRC+ after his return in May was 99. Compare that to Hoerner's last three years: he's a 105 wRC+. Assuming Shaw shows progress, they're probably not that far from each other. That's no shade on Hoerner either, I like him a lot! But if you needed to find a Hoerner replacement... That's probably your argument. You hope in this scenario that the Cubs have more money than expected and can sign Bregman, don't need to move off Hoerner immediately, and can still get a Michael King and improve the rotation.

They could, but I think, ultimately, you will end up under water. Nico is a 4 win player and you're not going to get 4 wins back for him. I don't think they can realistically move him and be better for it.

While true, depending on the 3b they sign, it will become more difficult to acquire the SP they truly need. If they do Bregman, which they are clearly interested in *some* form or fashion them 1 of 2 things will end up being true; 1. By signing Bregman to a near $30m AAV, they wont have enough money left to sign the impact SP they want because they have roughly $50m in total to spend 2. They actually have more money than reported on If it's number 2, sure, maybe you trade Nico Hoerner because you can just simply sign Michael King, and a bullpen, etc and you're fine! But in the event it is number 1, as much as I like Hoerner, what SP are you getting for one year of Hoerner? We did the same game last year when he had *2* years of control and we found it difficult to even really settle, as fans, as to whom that may be. It's harder at one year. If the Cubs don't have more than that $50m range and they sign a starting 3b, it's going to be hard to acquire a SP by money alone. And I don't really think they're going to be able to headline a Hoerner trade for impact SP either. That doesn't mean you have to trade Shaw, but it makes it all the more likely that Shaw becomes the odd man out because there are realistically only so many players they have that can headline that kind of a trade to begin with. Considering where the Cubs sit with their pitching staff they have to add something pretty good there.

My prediction is something along the lines of - One move, but probably not ground breaking - One really fun rumor that probably goes no where but makes for a good 4 hours - Cubs select a P in Rule 5 But beyond that, the ground work is laid for the big move that happens over the weekend through next Friday

This and in the comments make it very clear that from Matt's perspective and his sources, the Cubs wouldn't be trading for Strahm as they just are okay with doing the shoestring bullpen thing. Hoyer, as well, talked luke-warm about the high-end reliever market. I think we should expect the BP is mostly done from a "name" perspective and that the remainder very well may be a normal, Hoyer, BP. Maybe they cycle back, but I think the resources will be paid for starting pitching and hitting - however they decide to do that.

An all-timer from Nightengale.

Checks out. I'm not a massive fan of this; it'd behoove the team to get at least one more damn reliever you can count on in now, but it just feels like pissing in the wind. They built a good bullpen on the fly last year by essentially May 1st - so it is what it is, even if I don't love it.

To be pedantic, Ed Howard was also a 2020 pick. Is this the normal hit-and-miss-rate? No. It's pretty rare top-3 round picks flare out this bad this quickly. While most prospects don't make it, you're usually still holding out hope for one of them just a few years later. I would also remind everyone that the 2020 draft is a one-of-a-kind draft. Not only did teams cheap out and pay less scouts that year, teams had no spring baseball. Just go look at any MLB mock draft the year before the draft and compare it to the actual draft a year later; it's almost entirely different...a year of data changes these things massively. MLB teams didn't get that year. So yeah, it's a mess of a draft year.

Based on Matt's comments in his article, I would highly suggest it' not a reliever. This feels like the Cubs are going to get a SP and a hitter and one is coming FA and one is coming via trade. I don't think the Cubs care for trading for a reliever.

I find this clip of Bruce Levine very interesting. He names, very specifically three Boras clients: Tatsuya Imai, Alex Bregman and Zac Gallen. I think we've all at least come to terms that these are players the Cubs find interest in. He did not mention Michael King, though he is not a Boras client. What I think is so interesting about this is the discussion right before it, in that the Cubs are "between free agents and trades". And I think this is telling. My read: 1. It's Imai or Bregman as your FA or maybe Gallen 2. The Cubs plan to solve the opposite of their FA purchase the hitter or the SP via a trade It also seems to line up with a lot of our thinking here. The trade portion feels especially interesting since, while, we seem to be picking up on the smoke on the FA front (maybe because it's Boras to begin with) but nothing on the trade smoke. Is it Gore? Is it Cabrera? Who could the hitters be if that's the other way?

I choose to read this that the Chicago Cubs are 100% signing Imai and will not accept any discussion otherwise because I really like him.

Name one example of when three different people connected the Cubs to something and then it came out they never spoke once. In fact, I cannot remember a single time when that happened. Again, these rumors are not assumptions. Do you think Sharma and Mooney were just assuming when they wrote this: A reminder, an assumption is something "accepted to be true without proof". Yet, Sharma and Mooney are directly pointing to proof. They can't tell you who that is (that's how a source works!) but they run on reputation and that matters. Here is Bruce Levine. Is this an assumption? This is not an assumption. This is reporting. It might not happen! But this isn't fantasy land made up stuff. Bruce Levine, Pat Mooney, Sahdev Sharma are reporting from their sources. Some people have better sources than others. Some are more reputable, That doesn't make these assumptions.

I do not, in anyway, agree with "most rumors are assumptions". That's just not true. Most rumors (from people that are worthwhile) are coming from either a team source, or a player source. Neither are an "assumption". If you know someone in the Cubs org, and they say "hey we had Bregman in the other day, we talked contract" and Heyman reports it, that's not an assumption. Might players or teams have a reason to get information out? Sure! But none of this is an "assumption". Reporters do make assumptions, but they don't cite a "team source" when doing so. Romero, Sharma and Mooney and Levine have all used "sources" or "people familiar with..." - these are more than assumptions.

His numbers against fastballs over 94mph are poor, yes. It's also important to note that he hasn't faced many fastballs over 94mph, either, so the sample size and his practice against them are limited at best. NPB just doesn't have many velocity-throwers. It's also not an impossible fix. Michael Busch was someone who struggled against velocity and he had a .314 wOBA on fastballs over 95+mph last year which, while it isn't elite, is more than enough. We know lots of the metrics on Murakami, when he hits the ball, are elite. How much of this is mechanically induced versus anything is hard for me to speak on. You'd assume, if the Cubs were the team that spent $90m on him, that they believe it's a fixable thing. While I know that's an "appeal to authority" argument, I think there are teams you can appeal to (and I think the Cubs more or less fit into this territory) and teams you wouldn't (the Angels or the Nationals, as an example).

It's hard to say it's an assumption when you have people like Bruce Levine talking as if the Cubs are engaged in contract negotiations. And while we can hem and haw over how much we should be in the boat with Levine, it's coming from a bunch of different directions; both team-connected (like Sharma and Mooney) as well as people like Francys Ramirez. At some point it's not just guesswork. That doesn't mean it will happen or likely to happen or anything, but I think if all you're doing is chalking this up as "well, reporters are just making assumptions" then I don't think you're on the right track either.