Jason Ross

Just some fun with numbers, you could conceivably get 2 SP's and Okmoto if you get wild. Imai ($24m) + King ($21m) + Okmoto ($16m) gets you to ~$61m. If you can find a home for Taillon where you save $14m of the $17m AAV) that gets you just under $50. I don't think it's likely, but you can start to get me very excited with that outcome.

It is starting to be interesting to see how connected to 3b the Cubs are. Specifically 3b. Bregman, Suarez, and Murakami. There does appear a bit of a trend. I won't speculate why, but it is interesting.

I'd be probably cool with that outcome - I'm a little more bearish than bullish on Okamoto (batted ball data just okay, requires super pull heavy output) but the Cubs hit on NPB players well and if they like him, well, I like him. I've come around on King as well.

I'd have a hard time with the Cubs going the Stanek route here. The Cubs just don't have a super-trust worthy bullpen right now, and Stanek hasn't been good for years. The one exception would be if the Cubs essentially put all of their money into two signings and made the offense and rotation so much better that you could forgive them going with Stanek as the only other important addition.

Former Cub, Michael Soroka signs with Arizona on 1-year,.

It doesn't "open up" other options, though. By using 3 players to supplement 2 positions you actively close options. There are only 26-roster spots. Your plan got the Cubs an extra 1/2 of a win, at an inflated price, and spent three roster spots to do so. It's just a bad plan. But hey, I guess the Cubs spent less money in LF, so point proven, right? Happ is actively providing surplus value. You don't need to spend $300m to understand how that's a good thing. His contract is floating value, not underwater. If it were below surplus value you'd have a point. Since it doesn't, you're just objectively wrong. Surplus value means it is a good way to spend money. You've spent less money to get more value.

Michael King, though, is the Cubs' type. He's a SP with upside (I.E, see 2023-2024) who has all of their pitch indicators they like, who won't require a 6+ year deal. They signed Jameson Taillon four years and $68m in 2022. If we use an inflation calculator, that's $75m in today's money. King isn't looking at much more. I don't think you have to be overly optimistic to think that Michael King is very doable. That's the Cubs' M.O.

More on Ford.

Jarrett has a tendency to come out a bit strong on things for my likes always, but this probably highlights the community in Ford's value: https://bsky.app/profile/seidler.bsky.social/post/3m7dxrrauw22e

I do wonder if this is an "MLB teams don't like Harry Ford as much as prospect rankings" do, because Seattle had to add another player in to Ford to get Ferrar. In Ferrar's defense, he was worth 1.4 fWAR last year, so he's pretty good but yeah, doesn't feel like Harry Ford had the value many suspected he did?

Real signs of decline have taken him from "Top-of-the-rotation" guy to more along the lines of "would start a playoff game, but you should really have one or two pitchers who are clearly better than him" status. He has had no pitch of his grade out above 100 on FanGraphs Stuff+ for two years running, his K% dropped 4% last year, his barrel rate is over 9.5 two of the last three years, hitters are pulling him more, his velocity on the fastball has been more up and down (he got it back up most of the way last year but it stayed down for longer at the start of the year than normal). Even on the back half of last year when he was better, his strikeout rate went down further, down to 20.3% or another 1% as he went more contact heavy. The Cubs already are the 21st best team in the league in strikeouts. And as much as I wish the Chicago Cubs were going to be the team who would buy more than one thing this offseason, they probably only have money for one $20-25m purchase. If it's Zac Gallen, a pitcher who's fastball has declined the most of any of his pitches, that's probably a problem for a team who threw more fastballs than almost anyone last year. He's a pretty good pitcher who isn't the right pitcher for the Cubs (on paper - I'll give the Cubs a bit of a benefit of the doubt if they do it, because they probably understand the internal plan better than I). You can make the same general argument for why Ranger Suarez isn't the right pitcher or the Cubs either. They need to be shooting a bit higher - even someone like Michael King (who does much of what the Cubs like) at the same AAV is probably a much better fit.

It's pretty bereft of anything. "Targeting as an option" leaves a lot to your imagination. Beyond that line there is not a slice of anything other than breaking down his numbers and that a deal could be around the Kukuchi-Manea types as a starting point. But that's it'.

Not my source! Credit goes to someone else in the Cubs-sphere. I just got a game of telephone going on that suggests the Cubs aren't as interested as Nightengale is suggesting. It just leads back to someone who has a source and I just don't think it's that public.

Haha it's really not like that. I think calling this a source is incredibly loose and I don't want anyone here thinking I'm anything more than the resident dork who talks way too much about seam shifted wake. Its more of a game of telephone than anything. But I would trust this person a lot. I'm not sure if they've posted it somewhere more public which is the only reason I'm being slightly coy about it.

That much I have no information on sadly. But yeah, I do hope it's someone else they're interest in.

It isn't. In fact, people I trust (and to be clear again, no personal sources but this person does have them) are convinced they aren't signing him at all. I feel confident this is thoroughly debunked.

The Cubs appear poised to lose Kyle Tucker to free agency without a fight, and yet, the Cubs have a bigger hole to fill in their rotation than that left by their departing right fielder. Don't take my word for it, Jed Hoyer has been saying as much since November 11th at the general manager meetings in Las Vegas. More specifically than just pitching, what the Cubs truly need are strikeouts. The team has done a great job of getting the most out of what they have, finishing the season 10th in ERA (3.81) despite ranking 19th in fWAR. They have done this through a combination of an elite defense and Wrigley Field turning into a pitcher's haven. Still, their inability to strike out hitters and overpower them came back to bite them in the playoffs, as the team was clearly an arm or two short in the Milwaukee series. The fix is obvious: just add more strikeouts. In theory, this won't be a hard fix, as despite the excellent ERA, the team finished just 21st in strikeouts in 2025, so there's nowhere to really go but up. The problem is that while it's easy to identify the need to add swing-and-miss stuff to the pitching staff, almost every other organization in Major League Baseball is going to place the same importance on striking hitters out, making it an expensive endeavor. Thus far in the Jed Hoyer era, the Cubs have been far more value-focused than anything; a team consistently looking for a good deal and willing to wait out markets, rather than going and getting "their guy". This hasn't always been a bad thing; they've managed to build bullpens on a shoestring budget and have also found players like Matthew Boyd to round out their pitching, but it also means that acquiring known strikeout artists has proven to be difficult. If you were going to apply the same value-forward proposition to the 2025 free agent class, it'd be hard not to zero in on left-handed pitcher Ranger Suarez. The writers of DiamondCentric ranked the 30-year-old Suarez as our ninth-best player available, with a projected contract of five years and $110 million. While $110 million sounds rich on the surface, it's a much smaller projected number (and fewer years) than we have tied to remaining pitchers such as Framber Valdez and Tatsuya Imai (both are projected for six years and over $150 million in total dollars). The value begins to show itself when you take into account just how close Valdez and Suarez have been over the course of the last two seasons, and where we have the two projected in terms of free agent contracts: On the surface, it would seem, then, that signing Ranger Suarez to a five-year deal around a $22 million average annual value would be kind of a slam dunk, but I'm not so sure he's a good fit for what the Cubs need. In fact, he's a contract and a player I hope the Cubs stay far, far away from, despite a recent report from Mark Feinsand suggesting the Cubs are among the three most "serious" threats to sign him. It's not because I think Suarez is bad, but that going with the "value" option has been a bit of a bugaboo for the team in general, and has seemingly left them a player (or two) short in each of the last two seasons. Breaking from that mold (even just a little bit) feels like a necessary next step in climbing the MLB hierarchy. Even just beyond breaking an internal mold, I hold reservations on the pitcher himself. The first reason is that red flags are already popping up, with a backslide in velocity. As recently as 2023, the left-handed pitcher was averaging over 93mph on his fastball. Jump to last season, and he's bled two full mph off the pitch as he now sits at 91.2mph. The velocity bottomed out mid-season, around 89mph, between June and July, before jumping back up to the low-90s. Still, nothing suggests that 93mph is coming back without some serious intervention (whether medically or mechanically, I'm unsure). The decline in overall velocity hasn't been seen entirely in terms of his strikeout rates, as he has sat pretty neutral over the course of the last three seasons, with K%'s of 22%, 23.2%, and 23.2% over his last three campaigns, but the drop in velocity remains concerning. A pitcher who already does not generate much whiff and who does not add much in terms of extension is playing with fire. There will come a point at which a lowered velocity is going to catch up with a pitcher who's already hovering around league-average strikeout rates, and it doesn't feel like Suarez is too far from that as is. Not everything is terrible with Ranger Suarez, however. As noted in the chart above, he's shown an elite ability to limit contact, finishing last year in the 89th percentile or better for barrels, exit velocity, and hard hit rate. He gets a good deal of chase, too. In front of that elite defense, Suarez would probably look to be a pretty good pitcher at times! But does he really solve what the Cubs need right now? The answer is: not really, I really don't think so. The Cubs already have left-handed pitchers who use lower-velocity, deception, and movement to limit batted ball data, like Justin Steele, who will return from injury in the first-third of the 2026 season. They have another lower-velocity lefty in Shota Imanaga, and Jameson Taillon is essentially the right-handed version of a "limit-the-hitter to weak contact" type himself. Suarez's 23% rate is just a bit above league average for a starting pitcher, and his velocity is already below that of a league average starting pitcher (and even when we account just for left-handed ones). If the Cubs' biggest deficiencies in their rotation are strikeouts (21st) and they also lack some velocity (13th), then adding yet another pitcher like Ranger Suarez seems to be missing the point. Now is the time for a 92-win-Cubs team to stop worrying about surplus value in every single move. That isn't to say "ignore value entirely", but instead to suggest that a big-market team like the Chicago Cubs should occasionally get a little irrational about a guy they have to have. They've already missed on Dylan Cease, bowing out reportedly when the bidding got to $200 million, but just because they've missed on Cease shouldn't mean they need to give up on the pursuit of the almighty K. Tatsuya Imai projects to have a strong ability to strike out hitters in MLB. Other pitchers such as Michael King (27.6 K% since 2023), Joe Ryan (28.3 K% since 2023), Edward Cabrera (career 25.9 K%), and MaKenzie Gore (career 25.6 K%) remain available on the market in some fashion. There are likely other names that could become available or are available without even knowing, so these five shouldn't be the end of the discussion either. Ranger Suarez might not be a ticking time-bomb (though with the velocity decline, he might be, too), but he projects as a safer, more value-oriented signing that would improve the Cubs, but not likely in the way the team needs. The team needs to diversify a bit and become a little less reliant on great defense to make their pitchers look good; Nico Hoerner is an impending free agent in 2027, and Dansby Swanson took a bit of a step back last year - their defense isn't going to last forever. Dylan Cease on the contract he got would have looked very good at the top of the Cubs rotation with Cade Horton, but they cannot just allow that to be their one swing in terms of adding more whiff to their starting rotation group. They cannot simply rely on prospects to add what they need; Cade Horton looks like he'll help, and rookie Jaxon Wiggins may as well, but beyond those two, the cupboard is pretty barren in the system right now. So instead of using a ballpark and extracting every ounce of value, the Cubs should be looking to just "get a dude" for lack of better wording. Get a hoss, a stud, whatever you want to call him - bring in some strikeouts, even if it costs a little more. Sadly, Ranger Suarez, while a fine pitcher in his own right, falls short of that status in my mind. It isn't that he's a terrible pitcher; he's just not the right pitcher for the Cubs. What do you think of Ranger Suarez? Should the Cubs pursue the left-handed pitcher? Or are there other options for the Cubs that you'd rather have? Let us know in the comment section below! View full article

He's not. The Cubs are not signing him. I don't know what I'm supped to know here, but the Cubs aren't signing Gallen from what I've heard (just to be clear I don't have sources but know someone who knows some stuff)

Nightegale you Boob.

I don't think the Cubs will be connected to many. With $50m (or maybe a bit more) left to spend, they can only add either 1 big bat or 1 big arm via FA. The worrying over the offense, while it's fair to lament the loss of Tucker, is a bit overblown by fans. They were a top-5 offense last year overall and managed to be better down the stretch than people want to give credit to them. We shouldn't expect a top-5 offense losing Tucker, but it's probably going to be a top-10 unit next year as long as it gets just a bit of attention. Hoyer has also made it clear in interviews that the team is looking for pitching help. Ultimately, I wouldn't expect much connecting them to hitters for a while. It's probably a back burner thing. Even the Bregman thing feels like "well if we can't get, say, Imai, and Bregman is still around, maybe we try to get creative" versus "the Cubs put Bregman at the top of a wish list and are actively pursuing this route with vigor"

The team hasn't done anything of substance to handle their pitching. They need an impact SP and still a handful of BP arms, one of which you should be able to count on. Signing Bregman to, say $25m AAV will eat up half of what you have left and it'd be near impossible to acquire an impact SP and a BP on $25m. A trade would have to happen. Considering Shaw isn't a good enough hitter to be a DH, you wouldn't *have* to trade him...but he'd become the most odd-man-out.

Ian Happ was worth 2.8 fWAR and Matt Shaw was worth 1.5 fWAR. Alex Bregman was worth 3.5 fWAR and Tauchman was worth 1.4 fWAR. The difference between the two is ,5 fWAR but you're needing to add another $10m to Bregman, and another RHH platoon partner so you're spending $15m+ to get,,,what, one win? Not only are there far more efficient ways in terms of simple $$/fWAR (teams generally spend $8-$10m per win but the higher end of the scale is generally reserved for stacking wins, for example, a single player of 4 wins to 5 wins, as opposed to a one-off player of 1 win in total - these are cheaper) and stacking players in general, because your 3 players at an added $15 takes three roster spots as opposed to a simple two. Beyond that, the same issue crops up if you want to even just talk "Refnsnyder + Tauchman > Happ". Not only did Tauchman (1.5 fWAR) and Refsnyder (1.0 fWAR) in 2025 not equal Ian Happ's (2.8 fWAR) they did so eating up a second roster spot. They're cheaper, but when you begin hitting the ~90 win plateau, roster space becomes as important as fractional fWAR and the like. Really, the only thing this boils down to is Bregman was better than a rookie Matt Shaw, and duh, of course he was. But that doesn't have much to do with Ian Happ. Blame ownership for not spending more (I certainly do) but this isn't an Ian Happ issue. More importantly, Bregman has shown signs of decline in bat speed and while he didn't fall off a cliff, by the end of the season it was Matt Shaw (130 wRC+ post ASB) and Ian Happ (139 wRC+) who were far better down the stretch than Bregman (101 wRC+) and Tauchman (103 wRC+). Why is this important? Bregman and Tauchman both outhit their xwOBA by nearly .20 points here as Ian Happ under performed and Matt Shaw equaled it. Especially moving forward Happ and Shaw are the far better pair. So the two had a real cross-over point mid year and it's not shocking when we consider their xData. This crusade of "you don't have to pay a LF" is silly in general. LF had a 100 wRC+ league wide last year, this is below RF, 1b, and DH and SS was a 98 wRC+. It's basically a middle-road position offensively league wide. The Ian Happ hate is ridiculous. Happ is a good, albeit short of elite player, but he's been more than worth his contract, as a $61m contract asks you to be worth around something like 6 wins (on the high end of the scale) and 7.6 wins (on the low end of the war/$ scale). Happ has already been worth 6.4 wins and has not put up a season below 2.8 wins since the pandemic. Assuming he gets to at least 2.8 wins, he'll finish well above the 8 win mark. And yes, before we get back to the "LF shouldn't be paid argument" - fWAR is positionally adjusted. His contract has not been worth it, it's provided ample surplus value.

My assumption as of today is that he will fill a 4th OF role and somewhat of a a platoon situation with Pete Crow-Armstrong.