Transmogrified Tiger

Strike that, reverse it

If you're talking about why adding up depth chart values doesn't add up similarly, I believe it's because the projected standings are still at least partially using Steamer, which is nearly as low on the Cubs as ZiPS is high.

I'm not overly jazzed about signing Bregman, and I'm borderline against it if it requires trading Nico, but also worth noting that ZiPS loves Shaw, so a straight forward comparison is gonna show minimal upside. But the error bars on that Shaw projection are large, so there's more value in the certainty of Bregman than it might appear.

A couple thoughts about this. Sprint speed only trends one way if you zoom out, but not absolutely. We could imagine an article written about Happ on this topic 4 years ago. His sprint speed had fallen from 28.8 to 27.1 over his career, and combined with already moving off the dirt and his uneven offensive output at the time, you could wonder if he was about to become a marginal DH. Instead his sprint speed bounced back to 27.7, 27.9, 27.7, and 27.9 last year at age 29, the T-2nd fastest of his career. Tucker's 2024 is not a very good comparison to his previous baseline. About a quarter of his plate appearances came after he returned from a leg injury, when clearly the priority would not be about maxing out his running speed at every opportunity. He DH'd for a week before resuming his spot in RF, which tells me the priority was getting his bat in the lineup for the pennant race moreso than ensuring he was 1000% athletically recovered. He also missed the three warmest months of the year with that injury, which I'm assuming are probably peak sprint speed league-wide. On top of the comparison, the actual value/impact lost from that sprint speed is unclear. Yes, as you note he did have his worst baserunning season, though again having a quarter of his PT come post-injury clouds the magnitude. 2024 was also an improvement on the previous year defensively by both OAA and UZR(which was a career high). His range value for UZR in particular was a career best on a rate basis, for as much as we can trust that tidbit. On the whole, I think the bigger speed/athletic related concern for Tucker is less that his sprint speed was X, it's that he had a significant leg injury and we need to see the proof of concept of what he looks like after that point.

Agree with this, in a vacuum I preferred more investment in the rotation, and while I think it will work out fine I think they've increased the variance on the offense by decreasing the length of the lineup's known quality(Tucker+Shaw vs Bellinger+Paredes). If they pull in a Cease/King that's a pretty clear A offseason, and I think they've done enough to be okay with playing wait and see for the deadline, but the risk is in the pitching staff. Hopefully injuries + park regression don't bite too hard.

I think there's room for nuance here. The Verducci effect is not a law of the universe, and especially with a post-prime pitcher(with plenty of full-seasons in his past) on a 2 year deal there isn't as much caution required. If all other indications are good, there's no reason to think that the Cubs are going to shut down Boyd to rest for an extended period. That said, they're a team with aspirations on making the playoffs, and there's reason to be uncertain if Boyd's effectiveness(moreso than his health in the 'is he injured?' sense) will last through a playoff run if you don't take any preventative measures. I don't think we have a concrete sense of how significant those measures will be, but we already know that for the back half of the rotation that Counsell likes to shuffle to give SP 5(or more) days rest when he can. We know that there will likely be depth in the pen or at Iowa eager to get a shot at some starts. And we know that as we hit the dog days of summer they'll likely have 3 starters who they'll lean on innings-wise which lessens any dependence on Boyd. With that in mind, I think the 'plan' for Boyd is likely to treat him like a college starter, get him ~25 starts by essentially having him go once a week. That would put him around 130 IP and have the runway to go another 20ish in the playoffs as needed. Whether that plan lives up to reality, whether because of Boyd's health/effectiveness or the health/effectiveness of the rest of the staff that changes the dependency on Boyd, we can't know today.

why is the whole league colluding to overstate the injury risk for Flaherty specifically, when the pitching market has been white hot all offseason

Since the pandemic season, see if you can pick out which is Flaherty and which is Boyd A: 4.04/3.97 ERA/FIP, 15.1% K-BB%, 9.8% HR/FB, 5.3 IP/GS B: 3.89/4.04 ERA/FIP, 17.2% K-BB%, 14.2% HR/FB, 5.4 IP/GS

I think they're looking a lot like Stearns' Brewers teams(elite back end pen, misfit pieces in the rotation), but with a better offense(once they likely get Alonso back), which you can take in either direction. If they can stitch together enough SP quality innings they'll be good, but that's also the type of thing that can go wrong in a hurry.

I wonder for relievers who don't really have much hope of an MLB deal how nuanced they can practically view the options. For one, they can only sign with clubs that offer them, and outside of counting the guaranteed deals, how good are they or agencies at being able to tell the difference between Jack Neely and the Reds option at #13 on the RP depth chart? Similar to how it ends up playing out in practice, it may be that teams just all appear as a blob of arms and you have to bet on yourself to rise above it.

this graphic might make it a little easier to conceptualize

I understand what you're getting at, but this is an arbitrary line to draw and ultimately not very helpful. I think you can make reasonable arguments that there are anywhere from 1 to 5 NL teams with a clearly better Game 1 starter than Steele. Getting into the minutiae of what you like more in a pitcher for what you put for that answer isn't all that useful for roster building. IMO a better way to think of this is to get starters good enough that you're fine with them starting multiple games in a playoff series. Steele and Shota both are clearly in this group, and ideally you'd have another that I don't think they have today.

You also get assets back if you don't sign them, plus a head start both in terms of time and cost in re-signing them. But yes, as Bertz alluded to, Plan A would not be letting both walk.

I'd imagine the NTC lowers Pressly's value further though.

Pressly is a good reliever, but he's also on 14 million and has an NTC. I would suspect the return here is very minimal or the Astros are taking on a chunk of the deal. Maybe both.

thread here

The new market efficiency is huge deferrals but making sure the player hears the pre-deferral number so they can't overcome the anchoring effect.

If there existed(and it were possible to be) a +60 defender with average offense, I think you might be surprised. Defensive measurement isn't perfect, but the difference you're describing is one of opportunity. The top 20ish hitters in the game create more runs of value than it's reasonable to expect one player could prevent defensively. Beyond that level, there's far less difference.

Good Berti is good at providing value. He hasn't played a pace below 2 fWAR/500 PA since 2021. He's an excellent baserunner and neatly fits in as a PR option He plays good defense at several spots, and importantly provides some defensive floor at 3B(unlike some other options who are maybe sexier with the bat) For his career he is split neutral, which helps him be useful as a fill in starter as well as PH depth Bad Berti turns 35 today and missed most of last season with injury, you can't be very certain of what you're getting The injury was actually 2 different leg injuries, which is not great for someone who you are hoping will add real value with speed Berti is not going to hit for power, which means he's not going to be a primary RHH PH(not the worst outcome w/ Kelly & Canario/Alcantara potentially on the bench) Ideally the remaining bench roles have a path to light platoon playing time against LHP due to the positions they play(hedging Busch and PCA), which means now a LHH bench option will be a bit imperfect in its role too.

I just keep thinking 'diminishing returns' when it comes to a 2nd reliever. It forces you to do something that in the abstract you don't want to do. Send Assad to Iowa, cut Merryweather, option Hodge/Brown/Morgan. You actually have to do 2 of those things(assuming the closer/1st reliever means Keegan is done), so even if injuries remove the need for another, you're still doing something suboptimal.

Do you see how painting Jed as overly conservative in his spending, to the point you say Tucker is "clearly not going to be here in 12 months" is at odds with also painting Jed as making a "last ditch attempt to save [his] ass" in trading for Tucker? Not that you can't make multiple types of mistakes, but the underlying behavior motivating those moves(overly conservative, reckless to save his job) are essentially the opposite. This is what I mean when I say that his flaws are whatever people want them to be in order to be mad at him, because at a minimum you are dramatically underselling the odds Tucker is in Chicago in 2026 and beyond. Nothing is guaranteed, but teams who earnestly try to keep top of market FA under the qualifying offer have a very good success rate, and Tucker getting to play on a good Cubs team undercuts some of the more common reasons it doesn't work out(an uncompetitive team, a tiny market, etc) But to the Tucker decision specifically, you never get the chance to make the perfect move, and that barometer of being a 'single move away from the world series' is arbitrary and counterproductive. The Cubs right now project as the 3rd best team in the NL and the clear favorite for their division. Every season matters, not making decisive moves while you have a core in place for the next couple years is frittering away the good things that have happened to get the team to this level, just because it's not a guaranteed long term deal or that the team doesn't project to be a 95 win monster doesn't mean that you can't make moves that prioritize next year more than the 2-3 years afterwards. I don't love every move Jed has made this offseason, in particular I was not without reservations in trading for Tucker because of the cost and what pressures it put on the rest of the offseason. Like Bertz, I think he's being a bit too risky with the rotation given Wrigley is likely to revert away from being an extreme pitcher's park. But I also can see how there's a path to things working out and tradeoffs from having gone a different way. If you honestly are thinking that Jed is a 'moron' and 'can't for the life of you see how anyone could see the point' in trading for Kyle Tucker, have a little more curiosity.

Jed is apparently always grossly incompetent in the exact way that lets some folks stay convinced he has no idea what he's doing, it's such an uninteresting and obviously contradictory way of looking at things. Jed is famously overly conservative, hoarding resources and being scared of big contracts, and obviously will never ever pay to keep Tucker despite a significant head start in the race to do so. Also Jed is reckless, making a historically bad overpay to mortgage the future just to save his job. I really don't understand the impulse to try to make up these caricatures, the nuance is not only more accurate but it's more interesting to try to understand and guess how it'll apply going forward.

I dunno, it makes sense to me. The game is similarly over whether they get 12 yards or 50, so force them into the lowest probability of a 1st down that you can, with a bonus for it being an incompletion in doing so.