Transmogrified Tiger

Messing with BBTV I got to Wesneski, Ballesteros, and Hernandez for Soto. That may not be a winning package and it depends on some level of optimism about Wesneski the SP, but I think it's in the range of what we might expect. It adds immediate MLB pitching help, the upside plays are likely to be further from the high minors/MLB, and there's multiple players who have nonzero paths to exceeding 3 WAR. It also doesn't touch the cream of the prospect crop for a 30 million dollar rental without defensive value.

I think there's probably a fair amount of consistency of opinion about Morel's offense. He's a good hitter, he has risk but also some upside above the standard he's set over 800+ PA. Then on the defense side it depends on if you think he can be playable at a position the team needs. Whether that answer is yes/no for the Cubs and his suitor determines if trading him makes sense. Cubs Yes/Suitor No: Don't trade him, he does things the Cubs want to add to the roster and they have defensive spots he could conceivably play if you're optimistic Cubs Yes/Suitor Yes: Probably don't trade him, if some team thinks he's a plus 2B and wants to pay a big price they think he's the next Jeff Kent or something, that's the only permutation that makes sense given the Cubs needs Cubs No/Suitor Yes: Here's where it makes sense to trade him. If the Cubs see a DH and someone else thinks he's a 3-4 win 2B on a pre-arb deal, you can likely make that work to everyone's benefit Cubs No/Suitor No: Don't trade him, the return for a positionless bat of that caliber won't be nothing, but given the roster needs it's better to have that bat than the return. Important to remember that across 29 other teams they'll have different Yes/No answers, but I think that's a decent summation of that dynamic.

Granderson had a really good point in the postgame that part of the reason Harris got to the ball was it was a no-doubles situation, and that if Harper had read the outfield prior he probably wouldn't have made such an aggressive turn. He may not have gotten back anyway with a perfect relay, but it was far from a perfect relay and he was out by a step.

Probably depends on how settled DH is. If Ohtani, Soto or some other addition of some consequence(JD Martinez? Santander?) is expected to play there most days then yes. If not and they've spent the money on Alonso and lots of pitching then Morel doesn't *need* to be a most days 3B to get playing time. Would they be passing the opportunity to cash in on his maximum value? Maybe, but that's not a goal in and of itself so if it gets you to the preferred outcome in building the 2024 roster that's okay.

This is Bowden so I'm putting very little stock into it, but it did at least raise my eyebrow how casually it assumed that Stroman was opting out: https://theathletic.com/4937185/2023/10/09/mlb-missed-playoffs-power-rankings-2024/?campaign=5888993&source=dailyemail

This is aiming for financial flexibility for financial flexibility's sake, making the team worse just to avoid having slightly inefficient contracts is not how teams should operate. I mean in this example we're eating some of Taillon's money just to try to inevitably need to pursue this year's version of Taillon because you need 3 SP after dumping him, Stroman, and Hendricks. Also, Happ just signed an extension and has an NTC, he's not going anywhere.

I think given their relative strengths it makes more sense to have Morel at 3B. Morel's arm plays better there, it's the position he has the most professional reps at, and the decreased reaction time may be a blessing for someone who sometimes struggles with routine plays(less thinking more reacting). Plus Nico's biggest strength is range and he has a middling arm, so while he'd be fine at 3rd you'd probably dull some of the benefit by having him get to a bunch of balls to his right that he then can't make the throw to get the runner.

It won't happen, but you could keep the existing format and solve a fair number of competitive problems if the wild card round was a double header with a winner take all game the next day if necessary. You restore the stakes where every day can lead to elimination, you emphasize depth and mirror the regular season better, and if you limit post-WC rest, then you sufficiently handicap those teams for the divisional round and better incentivize a top 2 record.

The age component is a pretty heavy consideration too. Bellinger (or Soto) + Yamamoto on long term deals is going to be easier to sell(both to ownership and to himself) than giving big deals to Nola + Alonso. Jed's 3+ year contracts have had final season ages of 31 (Suzuki), 33(Stroman), 34(Taillon), and 35(Swanson), so while it's clear he's gotten a bit more aggressive as the team gets closer to playoff caliber, I wouldn't be surprised if he was unwilling to go much past that age with big commitments.

Feels questionable to assume that both the tax line is a hard limit AND they'll use half of their available capacity on Hendricks and 2 relievers.

I think the other thing that will make a difference is how much of their spending is long term v. not. They are not going to add 3 different 5+ year contracts, it creates too much inflexibility going forward. But considering the number of options that are potentially only one year(Hendricks' option, Alonso, Soto, any short term FA), that isn't necessarily limiting. Especially if it's part of the reason they can exceed the tax line.

Tua with one of the worst throw decisions I've seen in a while turns into a 100+ yard pick 6

BBTV has Stroman slightly underwater on his contract, but I think his floor of production and not needing a long term commitment might edge things to the positive side of the ledger in the current environment. The bigger problem is the number of teams willing to pay 20+ million even for one year isn't an insanely long list, and finding a decent match to solve a problem outside of being a pure salary dump is even harder. Maybe something based around Stroman to Baltimore for Santander, or to the Phillies for Jeff Hoffman?

It blows my mind how many otherwise smart people have convinced themselves that not only is Ross bad, but that he's the problem. Yes, he bunts more often than I would, but this is ultimately not a pass/fail criteria and he does so in strategic spots where one run is very influential or there's a particularly heavy risk/downside of GIDP. This is not Dusty or Mike Matheny bunting the leadoff hitter to 2nd in the 1st or 3rd inning. Otherwise the complaints I've seen from folks repeatedly seem to be: Not playing PCA more even though MLB pitchers carved him up and Tauchman rebounded from his August slump(126 wRC+ with PCA on the roster). He was so anti-PCA that more than once he inserted him for Tauchman before the 7th inning, and he was used as a pinch runner even after multiple baserunning errors. A silly complaint on its face. Not playing Canario more even though he's a more marginal prospect. I wouldn't have minded Canario getting another start or two against LHP, but people treated his lack of playing time and a willful misinterpretation of a Ross quote as the return of Dusty's preference for Neifi and Macias. Tauchman had a 103 wRC+ with him on the roster(and didn't play against every LHP anyway), Wisdom was similarly league average while Canario was on the roster. These are the types of things you can disagree with without thinking the manager is holding the team back, they're coin flips. Overworking the rotation. This is a relatively new complaint, which is curious because Ross was consistent on his SP usage throughout the year. In April and May it was 5 IP/GS, in June with the rotation pitching excellently and Hendricks back it was 6, in July it was 5.2, August was 5, and in September it was (wait for it) 5 IP/GS (all of these numbers exclude openers). If Ross feels like he pushed SP too far, it's likely because he had to get innings from somewhere, and the team spent the better part of 3 months straight in must-win mode with no margin for error and an increasingly patchwork bullpen (more on this in a second). In fact, he's been pretty progressive with this at times, one of the first articles here second-guessing his bullpen usage was only a concern because he pulled Taillon before the end of the 3rd of a game in early May. Mismanaging the bullpen. This is a complaint of at least 28 MLB managers at all times, and while bullpen usage is obviously consequential, people treat it as a pass/fail test where they know the answers and that's just not remotely true. Ross got a bunch of flak from some people down the stretch for not pressing buttons that did not exist. The same fans that *howled* every time Alzolay, Leiter, or Merryweather were given more than one day's rest(if that) in June/July are the ones now saying that he should have had the foresight to rest them more. In the 2nd half the Cubs had 8 different relievers throw more than 20 innings, and aside from Merryweather(the only consistently healthy late inning option in that period), all of them were between 22 and 28 IP. Could he have added Luke Little to that circle of trust in late season desperation? Sure, and that wouldn't have been wrong even though Little has extreme control issues that make his usage in leverage situations fraught. Similarly, this is again a situation on the margins where 17 different factors converge in making the call and are not the sign of a manager asleep at the wheel or holding his team back. Ultimately, the Steelers analogy is actually perfect. It mistakes a personnel problem(the Steelers do not have a good player at the most important position on the field) as a coaching problem, and rolls that up with inevitable smaller disagreements on coaching decisions to come to a conclusion that a particular coach is the problem and must be fired. I said it earlier in the year and I still think it's true, I don't watch enough of other teams to get a concrete sense of their quality, but I highly doubt there are 10 managers better than Ross. He's not the problem whatsoever, and the energy spent on him is largely frustration about unavoidable outcomes/personnel failures. Sometimes you're not good enough and that's not the manager's fault.

Kershaw pulled after 6 runs and one out, leaving a runner at 2B. If that inherited runner scores his postseason ERA will cross 4.50.

So far the Astros are the only bye to win Game 1. Rangers and Phillies won close, and Kershaw has given up 5 runs to the Dbacks and gotten no outs

I almost typed 25+, I was less trying to say very specifically this is what the budget is, but more highlight the general dynamics as far as I can tell. I would love 2 very good bats and a very good SP out of the offseason(a good reliever too, but again cost is less of a concern with them). If you bring back Hendricks(who doesn't meet my criteria for that SP), then in order to go 3 for 3 on the wishlist one of them would need to be cheaper in AAV than the names we've been throwing around most often

I don't follow. The TL;DR of what I was getting at is that if you bring Hendricks back and don't lose Stroman, you likley can do 2 big AAVs(20M+) and probably one other cheap move to add a couple million(in this example, a reliever), but probably not much else. You could also do one Ohtani if you prefer, it wasn't a value judgment on one v. the other.

You can possibly do 2 AAVs of that size and a reliever of quality(lots of options across the cost spectrum), but if Hendricks and Stroman are back the problem is you probably can't do much else. Puts a lot of pressure on Morel, PCA, and the catchers.

Pedantry first: I'm never 1000% confident about this stuff but I believe the real amount under the tax is less than that. The payment into the pre-arb bonus pool adds 1.7 million, and the pro-rated MLB minimums of various callups/IL replacements tacks on more too(JeffH mentioned a while back the assumption is roughly a 33 man roster of at least the min, and that matches closely to Roster Resource's calcs). On the other hand I'm fairly sure the buyouts do not matter, they're a part of the AAV in previous seasons. If Hendricks doesn't come back he is $0 towards the 2024 LT. From my napkin mathing, it would leave you around 26 million under the tax line if all 3 of Gomes, Stroman, and Hendricks are back on their original deals. That aside, I really wish I knew roughly where they were aiming to go payroll wise. I'd handicap it roughly like this: 20% chance they stay under the tax again. I would normally have this lower, but I'm conservative on it by nature, and Jed has called out how aggressive ownership was with payroll *last* offseason as if it's already at a high point. This would also ensure they don't get to the 50% overage rate since even if they go into it post-2024 they have so much money freed up after 2026 they'd be able to reset almost no matter what. 50% chance they go into the tax but stay within 20 million, including room for deadline moves. This gives them room to make substantive improvements but also allows room to grow above the tax prior to the 2025-2026 period where very little comes off the books. Yes, a lot does shake free next year, but that's also half of the planned rotation and a starting catcher, so counting all of that as found money doesn't seem like Jed's style. 25% chance they go into the tax above 20 million but less than 40 million. This is where Ricketts doesn't care about the specific overage on a team winning and filling Wrigley, and Jed sees Amaya/Horton/Wicks/Brown ready to backfill next year's freed up money and decides to go for it given the unusual amount of *young* talent potentially available(Bellinger, Yamamoto, Soto). He does this knowing 2026 gives a release valve that he'll either have an easy way back under the line or be fired anyway. 5% chance they exceed the 40 million overage. This is the 'F it, Ohtani pays for himself' outcome, and even then he's so valuable that you probably can get him and put a real good team together without hurting your draft pipeline in the process.

I don't think Colvin is a particularly great comparison. It's a different era, but even considering that Colvin's K rate wasn't as relatively high, and he hit for decent average in the minor leagues. In hindsight, Colvin's biggest problem is that he wasn't standout in any one area, and the rising quality in the high minors washed him out(though he did have two seasons and 800 PA of a 113 wRC+). That's not to say that you're wrong to worry (worrie?) about Caissie, the K rate is a big concern and his ability to make enough contact will likely be the difference in him making it as a big leaguer or not. He's unlikely to add any defensive value so the offensive bar is going to be very high. That said, the case for optimism with Caissie is three fold in my mind. He does the things you need to do to survive with a high K rate, namely hit the bejeezus out of the ball when you do hit it His age relative to level gives hope for further improvement/refinement even though he was an excellent hitter for AA regardless of age His K rate improved almost every month of the season, and especially after AA stopped using the pre-tacked ball. If they hadn't done that experiment it's possible his season K rate is 5% lower and OPS even higher and we view that risk in a different light

This comes into pretty sharp focus if you start listing it out with everyone healthy. You've got 8 spots, and they start to fill up quick: Alzolay - Lock Merryweather - Lock Cuas - Lock Smyly - Lock unless he somehow reclaims a rotation spot Leiter - Just shy of a lock but if he has the splitter in Mesa then without question Then for those final 3 spots you still have: Stretched out guys: You could quibble and call this Smyly, but Assad and Wesneski could go here Guys with past MLB success: Keegan, Hughes, possibly Heuer are all on the 40 man Young stuff-monsters: Palencia, Little At this point we're 11 names deep, and haven't mentioned Rucker, Brown, Estrada, Kilian, or the possibility of scrap heap pickups like Merryweather and Leiter were. That's not obscene depth given the demands on a modern pen, but it's a situation where one good reliever fixes things more than 2 hopeful acquisitions do.

They're related though, the fewer starts you need from the Smylys, Wesneskis, and Assads of the world, the more likely you are to get quality relief work from them and the pen as a whole. And going over the top with your rotation acquisition doesn't obviate the need/goal to add a reliever either. That money is typically not consequential enough to be a barrier if you really want it, and there's trade targets or even scrap heap pickups that can help, Merryweather was a January waiver claim. I'm also more optimistic that the premium velo in the system now(Palencia, Little, Brown in relief, etc) can be more impactful to 2024 than Horton(or Brown) can be to the MLB rotation in 2024.

I won't be too worked up if Hendricks is the only SP they "add", but I know you like your velo and that velo/stuff monster is something I think would go a long way to taking this from being a good team to a team that can win a division/in the playoffs. You could also interpret this as a statement of belief in Horton or their pitching dev more generally, and I think the general sentiment is probably more down on Taillon/Stroman than they will be in 12 months. But we saw this year how pitching depth issues have cascading effects, and ideally I'd like to reinforce from the top down. Plus I have my worries about how much to expect from a full season of Hendricks at age 34.