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Transmogrified Tiger

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  1. Transmogrified Tiger
    Not the more exotic trade I might dream of seeing, but I like Smyly and prefer him to most(maybe all?) the remaining FA options. When he was in discussions before the offseason the speculation was in the 1/8 to 2/14 range, wonder what it is now.
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    I mentioned earlier that I had written off Conforto since he's probably taking a get-right deal and he wouldn't want to come to a full OF, but if he's a possibility he might be the one player I want them to get the most for the rest of the offseason.
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think especially if you're cruising past the luxury tax it's a tough pill to swallow to sign Eovaldi, but I don't have a super high opinion of him though. The upside is there compared to your Smylys and Klubers, but I just don't think that HR rate is gonna stay low enough to be more than an averageish SP. For me, the biggest questions are 1) is the LT a hard limit now that you've banked Swanson? 2) can you trade for a C that's better than the remaining FA(Jansen, maybe Murphy, etc)? and 3) what type of arm can you get for Madrigal? 4) what AAV is gonna be needed to extend Hoerner now?
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think this is something worth thinking about when evaluating super long term deals, I've seen that sentiment on Twitter(comparing what an average FA salary was in 2009), and I'm curious what we think would drive revenues high enough that it would come to pass. The last decade saw an explosion in TV money to support that growth, but that pace seems to be decelerating, especially for local deals. I lack imagination so I won't say it's not possible(e.g. in 2030 everyone pays $100/month for MLB.VR), but I think it's worth thinking about the assumption that it absolutely will grow at the same pace.
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    The Cubs have now added the 4th most AAV in free agency(Mets, Yankees, Giants), and one of those(Yankees) spent most of their money keeping existing players.
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    I like Gallo enough as a target in the abstract, but him and Bellinger is probably a bridge too far with a similar risk profile. Another data point on what some of the other players of this tier might be getting though.
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    The thing that makes me pessimistic on this compared to the alternatives is I have a hard time seeing that deal work without a 3rd team unless the Jays are willing to ship off Jansen to beef up the farm system. Mayyybe there's a 'Conforto's ask is reasonable so we trade Happ and an arm for Jansen and sign Conforto' type permutation but that feels aggressively unlikely given the near radio silence on everything that's not the SS pursuit.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    There's more than a couple things I don't fully understand about the roster build at the moment, but maybe the thing I'm most curious about is what the plan is at catcher. The beat reporters seemed pretty adamant they were going to bring in a starting-caliber presence, but the lack of more than a whisper about anyone but Vazquez makes me curious if he was plan A, B, and C. The offensive bar is so low and Gomes' presence means they could take a chance on a pre-FA target that is maybe more speculative if they were confident in the defense, Reese McGuire to the Red Sox last year being a good example of this. Signing someone in the Barnhart/Hedges/Perez tier of players doesn't seem representative of their original intent, doubly so considering they aren't needing to compromise thanks to a huge SS contract. Maybe they think they can mold something out of Jorge Alfaro? He did hit .307/.360/.482 away from Petco last year, but he's not exactly a defensive stalwart so there's questions at both ends.
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    Considerably less than that. I've got right around $56. Yeah I got $56m from Sportrac which has their estimated luxury tax number at $176.8m compared to the $233m luxury tax threshold. https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-cubs/payroll/ To answer your first reply, how do you see $56m vanishing quickly without Swanson? Yeah Fangraphs has right around 55 too, I guess the disconnect that I can see is they have 14 million for pre-arb contracts(not including 40-man minor leaguers) and I'm not sure how they come to that considering they have 7 players in that bucket. Even doubling it for the likelihood of Estrada, Wesneski, Mastrobuoni, etc being major leaguers, there's only so many slots considering those minor leaguers + guaranteed + arb salaries.
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    By my count(and there isn't a true answer because of arb estimates and exactly how you count various benefits and such), it's somewhere between 65 and 70 million under.
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
    You can read this as coping, but Swanson is a clear level below the others so the appetite for super long term deals is probably not nearly as high even before setting aside that 3 of the teams willing to do so already found their man. As an example, Swanson just had a career high wRC+ that was worse than the career average of each of the other three. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more of a 6/160 or 7/175 type of deal. This market tends to make most guesses look foolish, though now I feel pretty good about my 12/360 anchor point for Correa from Sunday. Quoting myself here, but reading this Fangraphs article made me update my priors a little bit: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/why-are-teams-issuing-extremely-long-contracts/ TL;DR because interest rates are so high it's more in teams' interest to stretch contracts over more years on top of luxury tax implications. If that held then maybe it wouldn't be surprising to see a 9/190-200 type deal for Swanson, but I do still think on an AAV basis it'll be a clear step down from the other 3, and maybe even if it's not 8+ years too.
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    I just saw that the Red Sox DFA'd Jeter Downs and they're a sneaky good fit for Madrigal. I wonder how close Madrigal for Houck gets you, considering they don't seem to have interest in making him a SP again and they certainly aren't relying on him for late innings given the addition of Jansen/Martin and his back surgery last fall.
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    There's some chatter on this a few pages back from yesterday. For my part, it's about maximizing your chances of a less likely star emerging.
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    Boxberger seems like a good fit to be 2023 Givens in terms of bullpen role. That dollar figure also means they should still be in the running for someone like May, Lugo, or Fulmer even if they aren't spending big on the pen. One of those guys, and maybe a little more depth on non-guaranteed deals or near the minimum(e.g. Giles, Reyes, Leone, maybe Britton) and I'll be satisfied with the pen assuming one more SP is coming.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    I forget who it was associated with, but what I saw was that there was a vote, but it was a coaches/support staff vote and not players.
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    I’m not gonna read too much into Jed trying to humor our least knowledgeable beat writer in casual conversation.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    To use Fangraphs' rankings for ease of use, the Cubs are 5th in overall value, 5th in number of 50 FV or greater prospects, and 9th in average value of ranked prospects. they're probably absurdly high on most of our farm, most notably they rate Cristian Hernandez/James Triantos/Owen Caissie top 100 prospects despite there being little to justify it i'd sincerely bet other respected evals that start to trickle in have us way more in the #12-18 range ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They're also arguably low on Mervis, Canario, Wicks, and Brown, and if we look at every organization we'll find highly rated prospects deserving of a lot of skepticism(failure is the game after all).
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    I'm skeptical of Swanson's offense, but it's worth noting the dynamic you're describing isn't really unique to him. The other 3 FA SS have a combined 12 seasons above 4 fWAR, and 9 of those seasons had BABIPs over .330. Swanson has a career .313 BABIP and .328 since the start of the pandemic, so it's not as if he's running Schwarberian BABIPs outside of his career year either.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    The farm system is most definitely better than average, whatever average even is. I’m the low guy on the mainstream coverage too, but it’s as deep and talented as anyone’s To use Fangraphs' rankings for ease of use, the Cubs are 5th in overall value, 5th in number of 50 FV or greater prospects, and 9th in average value of ranked prospects.
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    One other thing that could come into play with Swanson that didn't with the others is opt outs. Correa and Bogaerts were already exercising theirs so they maxed out on length, and Turner didn't prioritize it(probably because his value has little to go but down). By comparison, Swanson has an incentive as someone who only hit peak value in his contract year and who will still be Turner/Bogaerts aged after next year. I don't think he's signing a version of Correa's Twins deal, but would he sign 7/140-150 with an opt out after 2023? Maybe?
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    You can read this as coping, but Swanson is a clear level below the others so the appetite for super long term deals is probably not nearly as high even before setting aside that 3 of the teams willing to do so already found their man. As an example, Swanson just had a career high wRC+ that was worse than the career average of each of the other three. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more of a 6/160 or 7/175 type of deal. This market tends to make most guesses look foolish, though now I feel pretty good about my 12/360 anchor point for Correa from Sunday.
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    It's pretty public at this point that the Sox and Devers aren't particularly close to an extension, but their willingness to risk another Bogaerts v. risking another Betts is an open question. Also, whether Devers has interest in extending with any team before FA at this point, given the extravaganza he's seen over the last couple weeks.
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    This does some heavy lifting with Morel's value, but BBTV says Morel, Kilian, and Made is about there. Maybe they insist on Thompson over Kilian, or Made has to get upgraded to the Caissie/Triantos tier, or they must get Hernandez on top of an MLB piece. But as we've seen at the deadline for expiring deals, one year of a star doesn't go as far as it might feel.
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    One other trade situation worth monitoring is the Rays middle infield. Are they bearish on Lowe after his poor injury-hampered 2022? Are they willing to cut bait on Brujan's tools considering he's buried on the depth chart and they have multiple top 100 infielders getting close?
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