Transmogrified Tiger

My thought was that teams that lose 100 games tend to be willing to let their pitching go rather than risk them going kaboom before they're good again. That had me eying Gallen as well as the Marlins' front three. That makes sense, I definitely have looked over that Marlins rotation a couple times since they have the pattern of selling off arb pitchers. I do think this type of thing generally happens more to pitchers who have hit arb given the expense and declining trade value as FA approaches, but especially given that Gallen isn't some DeGrom/Scherzer monster, I could see him going for the right combination of upside and quantity from your trade asset buckets. More broadly, I really struggle with the idea of trades for pitchers in general because of this. They avoid the expense and age of the FA market, but knowing who could realistically be dealt is a big challenge(hence my gravitation to habitual sellers like the Florida teams), and I'm hesitant to deploy a bunch of new found farm system depth for one right off the bat.

This led me to discover that Gallen was #18 in the Fangraphs trade value list(just ahead of Brandon Woodruff), which 1) good grief Fangraphs, Dave Cameron does not work there anymore, and 2) does illustrate my question, which is why would the Diamondbacks trade him?

Let’s call this series of moves ‘the gang tries loan sharking’ Assumptions: - No huge CBA changes, in particular to the LT dynamic. DH is added - payroll can stay flat to 2021 - Extend Willson, 15M AAV - PTBNL-worthy stuff to San Diego for Hosmer and Gore - PTBNL-worthy stuff to LAA, LAA prospects to TB, Chirinos and Justin Upton to Cubs - Happ to KC for Lucius Fox - Sign Vince Velasquez or similar FA SP to a prove it deal, 1 year 8M plus team or mutual option - Sign Conforto, 4/60 - Grab a couple buy-low RP and a backup C, 7M total Contreras/FA Hosmer/Madrigal/Hoerner/Wisdom/Bote/Fox Conforto/Ortega/Deichmann/Upton/Heyward (Davis by EOY) The main downsides here are a lack of starpower and weakness at CF. Davis is the obvious solution, and in the meantime you hope that either Fox hits enough to let you flex Hoerner to CF, or you get a not-disastrous defensive performance from one of the other OF(helped by Wrigley’s shallow alleys). Alternatively, replace Ortega, Heyward, or Deichmann with a zero cost placeholder CF. Hendricks/Velasquez/Chirinos/Alzolay/AAAA (Gore + maybe Kilian by EOY) All the org arms + a couple FA off the pile This is where we’ve invested our chips, and if the gambles pan out you have an excellent rotation with depth to ensure the bullpen stays strong. This team should set up nicely to continue to improve in 2022 and in 2023, and Upton’s salary(and possibly Velasquez) drops after next year to give you a nice chunk of change to work with that doesn’t require backfilling big production.

For the rest of this season I don’t mind riding any hot streak that Schwindel has, and I’d be more than fine with him at Iowa next year, but between his age, lack of defensive value, and his Almorian plate discipline he doesn’t strike me as a guy who could be part of the next good Cub team.

What do you think the Padres' motivation is to get rid of Hosmer I'm just going by the multiple stories of the Padres trying to find a way to dump Hosmer. Right, did you read why the Padres wanted to dump Hosmer in those stories? Is that satisfied by trading him for Heyward?

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years. I almost said a low midmarket team but small market team sounded cooler and didnt think anyone would call me out on it. :D I just can't remember ever seeing a bad team become a good team in 2 years with ~80% of the team being acquired during the interim. Yes teams often bring up prospects, but how many current prospects do you see being a part of the 2023 team? What does the Cubs projected payroll look like after arb raises? $60m? I just can't see Jed spending $65-70m this offseason to get the payroll up to that $125-$130 level. Maybe I'm wrong, as that could be like 3-4 players these days. Let’s think about this in extremely broad terms. Unscientifically, to be a playoff team, the Cubs need 10 above average position players(w/2-3 stars), 4 above average SP(with 2 stars), and a decent or better bullpen. Right now I think you can say the 2022-2023 Cubs have a decent shot at having 5 or 6 of those position players in the org already(Contreras, Davis, Hoerner, Madrigal, 1-2 of Wisdom/Happ/Deichmann), 1-2 SP(Hendricks + the best of current AAAA options + Kilian), and can hope they have a good org philosophy and depth to be okay in the pen. That means they need 4-5 position players and 2-3 SP over 2 offseasons to reach that point for 2023. Also, take these definitions seriously but not literally. You can be above average and be the fat part of a platoon, or be a 2.3 WAR SP that you don’t want pitching twice in a playoff series. None of this is guaranteed, it’s meant to be illustrative of a non-trivial possibility. Now let’s layer on the payroll. A 2022 26 man roster of players currently under team control is likely to run around 75 million, the only arb eligibles that aren’t around the minimum/non-tender candidates are Willson and Happ. Even in the situation where we say ownership says “hey, until we see progress that a playoff team(or just not losing to the Brewers each game by 11 runs) is imminent, payroll needs to stay around 125 million”, you can see a path from here to there. Pay for a FA position player and SP you believe in, then do it again after the proof of concept in 2022. Have a player development and/or distressed asset win or 2(a la Valbuena or Montero). If you’re close, consider trading from prospect depth for a good piece(a la Chapman). A one year/post-prime free agent has a strong year(a la Jay or Hammel), maybe a prospect accelerates their timeline(Canario?). You can see how you can get close to that line of being a playoff caliber/contending team without having to jump payroll to 175 million. This isn’t meant to imply that the road is wide or that it’s easy or certain to get to that outcome, lots of stuff can go wrong even if you have a higher baseline of talent on the roster, as the last couple years have shown. But crucially, there’s not much opportunity cost to the approach here. Maybe you’d rather save scarce dollars for a bigger investment in fewer players, but that’s an evergreen problem and often solves itself through the inevitable ebbs and flows(e.g. Happ and Bote’s money disappears, a pop up prospect saves you money on bench players, etc).

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years.

Yeah, there's the other big thing why past spending doesn't mean horsefeathers for me; the owners knew what was coming. I think the Cubs managing to sneak out a WS win under the Ricketts in 2016 will end up arguably being one of the worst aspects of being stuck with them owning the team probably forever. They renovated the stadium, they got their godforsaken TV channel, and they're set up to have their horsefeathers ass Wrigleyville Theme Park Emporium in perpetuity. They've horsefeathering lied for years now about what money would be available and how it would come back to the team. IMO, it's not even a matter of trying to guess about what they're going to do: they've been horsefeathering telling us with those dopey smiles on their faces over and over and over again. The Cubs increased payroll every year from 2015 to 2019 and increased their rank among MLB teams every year in that span but one(2017, where they held flat). In 2018, two years after the WS and after the Wrigleyville Theme Park Emporium was functionally complete, they raised payroll 10 million and paid top dollar for a long term deal for Darvish. The following year they pushed it higher and exceeded the LT after being under it since 2016. You see how there's at least some doubt about this idea that they just did what they needed to in order to get the target of the moment(world series, hype for the renovations) and now it's all gonna get slashed to the bone? And to make sure we don't lose the plot here, this is not an endorsement of ownership. The point here is that you have folks saying that ownership is not going to financially slam the door on a quick turnaround for 2022+, and others saying that those people are suckers. There's room for the Ricketts to be greedy slugs and for the team to have that flexibility. They can cut 25 million off this year's payroll and the Cubs could still have lots of flexibility to improve to a solid team next year, that's how low the payroll baseline is. That'd be a crummy thing for ownership to do and worth criticizing! Those two thoughts can coexist, especially since they very much have for several years running now in terms of team quality v. ownership investment.

Forgot about the 10/5. Was going to say he might move in a situation where we take an even worse contract (more years or more AAV). Do buyouts happen a lot in baseball? He's a great clubhouse presence and his defense is still solid (I think) so its not the worst thing in the world to have him as an extra OF on the roster as long as its clear he is not an everyday or even platoon starter for the next team that attempts to contend. I suggested Heyward for Hosmer with the necessary tweaking (prospects/cash). We're desperate to get rid of Heyward and the Padres are just as desperate to get rid of Hosmer. What do you think the Padres' motivation is to get rid of Hosmer

One is that it doesn't make much sense for them. They just invested a zillion dollars into Wrigleyville and the gameday experience, and while the Cubs have a high base of support there's a demonstrable difference in that potential revenue when the team is good or not good. Attendance has varied from 400k-600k/year depending on the relative badness or goodness of the team in the Ricketts era, and that's stated attendance which is going to underrate the real revenue impact of people who don't bother to use tickets when the team is bad, and further compounded by having so much revenue generated from Wrigleyville outside ticket sales. Moreover, this type of FUD is rarely specific or taken to its logical conclusion. If cost controls uber alles were the best profit maximizing lever to pull, then wouldn't the Ricketts want to drop the payroll to the bottom of the league? Even the most pessimistic folks don't seem to think(or say out loud) that the Cubs are about to become the Marlins, so they seem to intuitively understand there is a level of spending that is necessary for the overall moneymaking venture. But I rarely(ever?) hear what folks think or fear that level is, so it's impossible to speak to how likely that outcome is, or if accurate how damaging that would be to the original conversation about the Cubs' competitive timeline, which grinds that conversation to a halt.

I would flip this, to be honest. There's people saying that the Cubs will have financial resources available that tanking for several seasons is not the likely/intended path that they'll go, and there's plenty of reason to believe this(historical payroll, paying to optimize prospect return this July, the fact that a certain level of spending is better for the team's revenue, etc). I in particular keep trying to point out that ownership having a tighter wallet than 2016-2019 and the Cubs having lots of money to accelerate the 're-tool' are not mutually exclusive ideas. Those voices are largely being countered by vague appeals to ownership's stinginess as their defining attribute or the insistence that ownership will require bottoming out payroll before spending again for reasons that aren't entirely clear(or supported by their history).

Not many teams have all their biggest stars FA line up either, which is partially a function of the org's starting point when Theo took over, partially a tribute to the core's sustained success(how many championship teams have 3 stars who you still want to keep 5 years later?), partially an indictment of the FO not extending any of them, and partially happenstance.

Yeah, until and unless the Cubs have a much deeper pool of outfielders at the major league level, there's no reason to release Heyward. Maybe there's an offseason trade to be worked out, but that's got to be bottom of the todo list given how much depth needs to be improved in many places.

The Ricketts-owned Cubs have carried a 105+ million payroll in 12 of their 13 seasons. In 2013 when they had no intention of competing they spent 37% of their 107 million payroll on free agents that offseason(plus extended Starlin). That 105 million mark would be 40 million lower than this year's opening day payroll(which itself was 30-60 million lower than the peak seasons), and would still offer them ~35 million to upgrade the roster. Claiming the team won't have financial resources to get better as soon as this offseason is aimless cynicism.

Given what you know about ownership... Ownership being conservative about one off losses in a pandemic and generally being unwilling to be repeat luxury tax offenders(among their many other unattractive qualities) is not the same as slashing payroll 100+ million from what it was in recent seasons. I don't have any love lost for them, but it'd be more helpful if we're talking about the team's options to be able to separate the distaste for them(very reasonable) with a caricature that they're running the team like Jeffrey Loria(citation needed). Maybe that conservatism does mean they aren't going to sign a mega deal for someone like Seager without seeing the CBA dust settle, and I'm basically expecting that payroll next year is not going to flirt with the current LT levels(for reasons both reasonable and not). But even with those caveats they'd still have pretty abundant resources to make the 2022 Cubs better.

ZiPS says 75 wins if you run the players under contract in 2022 for all teams. And the Cubs will have among the highest resources in both $ and trade capital to use to move that higher.

It hasn’t been decided yet. Since the plan is for it to expand to 48 teams with the 2026 tournament, the expectation is all 3 hosts will automatically qualify.

OK, my comment may have been a tad bit overzealous but it just doesn’t sound good over the radio. I think the Adames dong got him out of his groove and it took a few batters (and a visit from Hottovy) to get back into a good headspace. Fairly normal young pitcher stuff, just gotta see it get better with experience. I don't think this was a damagingly negative showing, but we also should be mindful that Steele is 26 and didn't look MLB caliber in the bat-missing department. Could be intentional to help with endurance/pitch economy, but also you hope that this ends up more of a bad outing for a pitcher with aspirations to start in 2022.

this is pretty good overall but i still kinda hate how uninspiring 1B/DH remains; have to think you can aim a little higher on potential there..with likely DH, Josh Bell becomes a good target or maybe Luke Voit Anthony Rizzo idk I don’t disagree, and this is partially by design. First base is a weird position, and your examples that you’re more comfortable with illustrate that well. Luke Voit was a AAAA nobody before getting sent to New York at 27, Josh Bell had a year where he looked like a franchise cornerstone, and across 2 orgs since then he’s been worth a total of 0.0 fWAR. Since we’re talking about taking a risk I think as long as you aren’t investing assets of significance(trade or $) in your favorite target, it doesn’t make a huge difference. The other thing you could do here is treat 1B as taken by Wisdom and go after a 3B, this mitigates the risk if WIsdom collapses(since 1B is easier to replace), but wastes Wisdom’s competence at 3B, and the 3B options aren’t exactly abundant either.

50 games of data showing him completely helpless at the plate should have him outside the top 10 in favor of guys who have shown literally anything at the most important aspect of the game what's the archetype here? who has far more whiffs than total bases but then suddenly puts it all together to become a passable player? like, is he playing through mono i think we don't want to admit this has all the early signs of a likely bust I think there’s room for the mitigating factors to play a part since he went an extremely long time(~18 months?) without competitive games and has been pushed aggressively when others in the past would’ve played short season(doesn’t exist) or rookie ball(org depth). That said, that hypothesis rests on Howard getting better as the year progresses and there isn’t much sign of that yet. Plus even if he was I certainly wouldn’t have him as high as 2nd given the org’s current prospect depth.

Ended up getting very much in my own head with this, so I’ll braindump a bunch(using spoilers for the detail if you just want to skim) about this iteration which I will probably trash within 48 hours. Assumptions - 26 man payroll could be as high as 165 million. - Qualifying offers will still exist and the Cubs will be open to sign one QO FA, but not multiples. - The goal is creating a team that can enter 2023 as a playoff contender - No one takes a huge step forward the rest of the season - The DH comes to the NL next year, no other significant changes to roster building(e.g. roster size, service time) With those parameters, I’d go about the offseason this way. - Extend Contreras: 15M AAV - Add a star: Sign Corey Seager, 30M AAV - Find a buy low 1B: Trade Bote for Evan White - Add a LH IF: Sign Brad Miller, 8M AAV - Add a RH OF: Trade for Wil Myers (13M AAV) - Add 2 playoff series SP: Sign Dylan Bundy 15M AAV, Trade for Yonny Chirinos, 2M AAV - Add RP depth: 1-3 relievers, total 5M AAV - Round out the roster: FA C, buy low position player What this leaves us with is a position player core that’s fairly amorphous due to the positional flexibility of several guys and the uncertainty of production from many. C Contreras + FA 1B Miller/White 2B Madrigal SS Seager 3B Wisdom LF Deichmann/Other CF Happ (Davis by end of year) RF Myers/Heyward DH Hoerner Hoerner is listed as the DH as a nod to his everyday nature without having a set position, I suspect he’ll be in the field most games. Davis serves as insurance/pressure by the end of the year to maintain some production when inevitably several guys in the group don’t pan out. The weakness of this group is in the OF probably, but I’m bullish relative to most on Deichmann/Happ, and that’s also the easiest place for that Other roster spot to make a good contribution, plus there’s more immediate help coming from the farm than on the IF. SP: Hendricks/Bundy/Chirinos/Alzolay/(Steele/Thompson/Mills) (Kilian by end of year) RP: Current cast of thousands + a couple FA I’m the least happy with this, but that’s the nature of pitching. I’m hopeful on the listed options and we did play it safe on the FA option which could mean there’s a better upgrade for the $, or if you want to spend more prospect capital in trade. On the whole, I think this team’s 2022 record wlll underrate their 2023 playoff readiness, they’ll drop some games in the sorting function of figuring out how many hits they have on all the unproven guys they’re trying out, but with a solid success rate they’ll be well equipped with money to spend to make an additional leap in 2023(and with a farm system hopefully ready for even more contributors and trade assets). Plus this roster doesn’t hit the 165M mark I originally set either, so there’s room both at midseason or if you prefer a more luxury option to go that route to further shore things up.

problem with hoerner is that he really hasn't done that much at the major league level. i think that tends to reduce a guy's trade value, kind of like how all the padres got for rizzo was andrew cashner because rizzo sucked ass in his first crack at the bigs. Hoerner hasn’t proven himself to be a star, but he has 1.5 fWAR in 360 MLB PAs and is having his best offensive season yet. Not much comparison to Rizzo, who had a .248 wOBA and negative WAR in his 150 PA as a Padre. Nico would have plenty of trade value if they went that route.

That bit about the CBA in Jed’s interview is sobering. Hopefully the indiactors are clear enough that they can confidently make some moves of significance beforehand, because even if the entire market is essentially on hold until the CBA is settled, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

The more that I try to game this out, the more that I think the front office’s belief in Hoerner is the key to this offseason. Jed’s statements make it pretty clear that Baez would have been traded regardless of the readiness of his replacement, so to me there’s 3 main paths that all seem reasonable today: - The FO sees Hoerner as a SS, he has experience with the position and his elite 2B defense gives optimism he will play fine there. - The FO doesn’t rate Hoerner as a first division starter due to his ceiling, injury history, etc, so there’s no qualms about Madrigal being added because they saw 2B needing a playoff caliber upgrade - The FO sees Hoerner as a modern utility man, adding more value than his raw productivity by being a capable player at several positions(2B, SS, CF, maybe LF) As it relates to this offseason, the first option collides with some best case scenarios because the best way to add starpower this offseason is with a SS. Some of those guys could flex to 3rd eventually and Hoerner could play CF in the interim(which functionally is the same as the third option), but that would be a weird way to plant a flag on Nico’s SS ability, and it makes for some awkward fits in maximizing the current roster, especially with R/L balance. The second option can be the cleanest because Nico would be a great piece to get an early arb asset like an SP, but that does seem like the least likely interpretation, and it doesn’t change the net number of good players on the roster.

I did. My main critiques would be a couple guys have the likely competition for their market undersold(Gray, Thor, Semien), I’m not a fan of Marte as a target, and Buxton being 1 year from FA is an additional problem to solve, plus Im not sure how beneficial it is to trade Heyward just to get 3-5 mil free. Oh, and the money situation after all the dust has settled is probably a bit dicey, but I didn’t do detailed math. I like the general thinking though and i think it serves as a good template where someone can fill in with their own moves they have fewer quibbles with. I’ll see if I can do a first pass of my own with some specifics, since criticism without alternatives is not terribly sporting.