Transmogrified Tiger

In terms of deals that can get over the line, I would probably steer towards something like Caissie/Alcantara, Triantos, Wicks/Assad. If they'd rather bet on Hernandez as the third piece that could also work.

It's less that I think Crochet's spring performance was flukish, per se, it's that his rest of season usage plus lack of track record means there is no opportunity for one of the counterfactuals, which is that his stuff/results may not make it through 5-6 innings 25 times without a potentially large hit. To that end: Crochet's sOPS+ 1st time through the order was elite, 68. 2nd time through the order was slightly below league average, 102. That makes me hesitant to think an average scaling of his first to 2nd/3rd time through the order is going to hold true. This doesn't mean I think Crochet is bad or not useful to the Cubs, it's essentially a souped up version of the Boyd signing. But given that his cost would require him to be the biggest trade swing the team can make for 18-24+ months, and they only get him for 2 years, it's a very large gamble.

Crochet discussion here

Oh I’m very sure it was intentionally done to protect his arm, whether it was with an eye on a deadline trade or not. My concern is how much that shielded him from the situations that would have driven down his performance, even if his actual results had some bad luck. For half the season he was closer to peak Keegan Thompson in usage than a front of rotation starter, and that impacts how optimistic I am that his Spring performance is sustainable.

Watching Jed sink his tenure by misestimating a big pitching trade addition from the White Sox after Theo did a similar thing for inverted reasons would be some real East of Eden level irony. That oversells my confidence that Crochet is bad, but boy is that a huge gamble to take with your 'win or else' season. Crochet had 6ish weeks of lights out starting, then after that he stopped providing length. After June 30th, he never got more than 12 outs in an outing, and went from 41% of batters faced being the first time through the order to 59%. He also had results suffer with a number of objectively bad outings. Maybe he could've gone deeper with similar success as the early part of the season, but couldn't be allowed to given innings limits on his arm. And naturally the stuff and pedigree(to say nothing of Cubs pitching infrastructure vs. the White Sox) could give some optimism. But I would be really apprehensive about paying the steep cost it would take to get him.

Toronto probably needs to be a fair amount clear of the 2nd best offer to be the actual best offer in monetary terms. The Athletic did a pretty deep article on Canada's tax structure, that while it focuses a lot on bonuses(which don't have to be a big part of a Soto deal), it also points out that several Blue Jays are fighting the Canadian government over substantial tax increases in reassessments: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5647166/2024/07/23/nhl-canada-tax-dispute/

I honestly don't know on Alcantara, I've been operating on the assumption that this year was his last one and I rarely get in the weeds on the particulars of this stuff. Arizona Phil probably has a comment on a blog post at TCR where he details why Alcantara would get the 4th year, but searching for that isn't easy.

Arizona Phil is the gold standard on this stuff and he says Kilian has 1 left: https://www.thecubreporter.com/cubs-40-man-roster

Nico is a slightly above average hitter with elite baserunning(which combines to a good offensive package) and elite defense. Adding some more HR pop with acquisitions this offseason is a good idea in general, but for a few different reasons people have gotten a mistaken idea that the team needs to get rid of very valuable players in that pursuit, which is not true.

Welcome!

Contract crowdsourcing estimated Boyd would get 2/18. Of the estimates they made for SP that signed FA deals, they've been low by 3-4 million AAV on average. You don't have to love Boyd, but there's not much support for him getting significantly less than he did.

This is a good example of the spectrum of roster building, between quality and quantity of pitching innings. In a perfect world, you add players who give you both, but they are very expensive and if they get hurt like pitchers do, you're in significant trouble. You also can't go too far in either direction. If you get 6 SP who you expect to be excellent for 100 innings, you will have a lot of innings funneled to your bullpen, and managing the staff in October gets dicey. If you have 5 innings eaters who go 6 innings but have mediocre results, you'll either miss the playoffs or get beaten up by good offenses in that crucible. What Boyd appears to represent is a bet on his production over his durability. He's probably not going to exceed 5 innings much, and he may not make even 25 starts. But the plan is he's going to leave those starts in a much better place than if we had gotten Durable Joe The Innings Eater to get more outs but also give up more runs per inning. On a roster that already has several guys who you can expect to eat innings on a per start basis(Steele, Shota, Taillon), and a group of talented young pitchers who aren't ready for a full starter's workload(Brown, Horton, maybe Pearson, Assad), Boyd adds quality of innings that can combine with those other talented pitchers with durability concerns. And you pay Counsell record money to manage that balance to ensure you don't ask the bullpen to throw 30 innings a week.

Piecing together some things I wonder if you start to see a 'Dodgers-ification' of the pitching staff as a whole. Previously Jed tended to value length, but with a rotation that already has several guys with that quality and several younger arms who you aren't going to plug and play for 200 IP, plus a manager who you can trust to manage it, maybe they just try and get a bunch of guys who can be really good for 80-120 innings. This may also be part of the continued rumblings about Pearson starting, or possible interest in doing the Lopez/Hicks conversion with someone like Jeff Hoffman.

Was just thinking something similar looking at Boyd more closely. The innings totals have been so low that it's simply impractical to think of him as a rotation stalwart, a full season of even the 5 and dive outings he's had in recent years would nearly double his IP high from the last half decade.

I'm not going to hold a candle for Boyd specifically(though him pitching at a 4 win pace last year is nice to dream on), but the broader point is that you're only signing 1 SP of real consequence, waiting on a guy or 2 you like marginally more that may take til Christmas or end up in a bidding war at 2 years and 8 million AAV more than you hoped isn't devoid of downside. As for forcing his hand on the trade, there are like 2 FA SP clearly better than a Bryce Miller, and lots of people had resigned themselves to not being contenders for their signature. It does make a couple of the higher AAV trade guys impractical without moving Bellinger. But again we can take that as a signal that Jed tied a hand behind his back just to get Boyd, or he's reacting to what may truly be available at a reasonable cost.

Jed only has so much control over sequencing of moves, some players sign quick or slow and some trades happen only after certain other moves happen. To that end, signing 2 SP better than Assad/Wicks was always going to be unlikely given non-Mets spending power and general market forces (teams will be more desperate for their first than your second). That said, this is a really risky bet on Boyd’s 2024 given the team’s status and amount to spend. I really hope it’s a signal of confidence in being able to get a trade over the line, because Boyd as the only SP of significance isn’t good enough.

Shaw was drafted less than 18 months ago and has 35 games at AAA, he's not going to spoil by spending a chunk of next season at Iowa, in fact it may ease his transition to see those advanced arsenals more first.

Use whatever descriptor you want, but in last year's offensive environment being an above average hitter with 30+ steals at an elite rate meant that only 2 players were clearly better offensively. Maybe the offensive environment reverts in a way that benefits others more than Nico(though he will see progress from Wrigley's likely reversion too), but that's the current reality. The moral of the story is that Nico gets systemically underrated because he only hits 1-2 HR a month instead of 2-3. He is very valuable at the plate.

An exhaustive list of 2B who were clearly better than Hoerner's established offensive norm last year: Ketel Marte Jose Altuve Matt Shaw is a great prospect, I'm very high on him. Assuming he is going to be an elite offensive 2B on day 1, never mind the massive defensive downgrade, is a mistake. Nico Hoerner is really, really good.

https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/qualifying-offer The Cubs will always lose their 2nd highest pick and 500k of international money for signing a QO FA. By going over the tax threshold, they also give up their 5th highest pick if they do so.

The value lost in the QO is not the 1 in 15 chance of drafting another Justin Steele, it's the pool money that impacts the rest of the class(including what you can offer your 1st round pick) on top of losing that pick. This is why with rare exception the best run teams(even those who spend significantly above the Cubs level) do not sign a QO FA unless they've also lost a QO FA to hedge.

1. Planned upgrades can make a big difference when replacing poor production. Non-Amaya catchers combined for a 45 wRC+, forty-five! Replacing them with a 85 wRC+(Jansen's career: 100, Kelly: 85, Higashioka: 81) is roughly equivalent to upgrading from 2024 Michael Busch to 2024 Freddie Freeman(to say nothing of Amaya improving on his own line). Similarly, 2024 Morel to Paredes' career/2024 wRC+ is roughly equivalent to upgrading from 2024 Ian Happ to 2024 Bryce Harper. To that end, the Cubs had largely closed any holes by midseason, they were 9th in wRC+ after the All-Star break. They've lost essentially nothing from that lineup and had little in the way of extreme over-performance. 2. The 'missing offense' is largely a function of Wrigley being an extreme pitcher's park last year. The Cubs were 24th in wRC+ at home and 6th on the road. As far as consistency goes, last year the Cubs did not go 3 straight road games without reaching 4+ runs. At home that happened EIGHT times. Thankfully there's little reason for this to continue, the renovations appear to have made Wrigley more pitcher friendly, but in the sense it went from a slight hitter's park to a neutral park, not one we'd expect to be at the bottom of park factors with regularity. This is a big part of why pitching is the focus, because the pitching staff will be harmed by that reversion to norms like the offense will be helped.

Jed may well fight Bob in the lobby of the Winter Meetings hotel

It doesn't really matter, Bellinger + Eovaldi/Flaherty costs less money than Conforto + Eovaldi/Flaherty/Castillo

It is a pretty good offense as is, but even setting that aside, if they trade him to free up the money, it's because they believe they can find a 1B/OF bat easier and/or less expensively than a good SP. That doesn't seem hard to imagine. To use names as an illustration, Michael Conforto will come cheaper than Eovaldi or Flaherty.