Transmogrified Tiger

Career 120 wRC+ against LHP, 145 last year and 135 since 2020. Now that I think of it, maybe it bodes worse for Wisdom staying in the org.

Not saying this makes it certain that Mervis is the 40 man casualty for Bellinger, but it is not good for Mervis' odds of making it to opening day on the 40 man roster.

I have been pretty steadfast that the LT line is not a hard limit, but now that we have Cody's deal clarified I don't think there's any chance of getting Montgomery or Snell. That would've required Cody taking a longer term deal at a lower AAV, IMO. Because while the LT line isn't a hard limit, and if you are going over it I do believe it makes sense to go more than a little over, I have my doubts they'd push into the 20M+ band, and the construction of the roster(especially after Bellinger's contract) leaves them vulnerable to the 3 time repeat payer penalty that I also think they'll try to avoid. Where I do think there's maybe a chance for a bigger splash now is at the deadline. By then you'll have a much better idea if Bellinger is opting out, and there's more impactful talent potentially available that doesn't necessarily require a longer commitment(gumming up the 3 year timeline) and/or doesn't risk the 3 year repeat issue due to their contract value.

That number also goes up if certain player incentives are hit, or if a split contract(e.g. Smith) gets added, or even a marginal salary gets added at the deadline. The LT line is not a hard limit for this team.

Not sure how different availability/pricing is for the game you're after, but it looks like Seatgeek will let you choose 8 or 9 as a quantity and they're MLB's official 'ticket marketplace'.

Let's go with a new thread here for visibility to start with. Happ at leadoff is potentially noteworthy here since he's had a stated preference to not be that guy even though he's a really good fit on this roster. Also for anyone like me who was wondering, Hudson is Joe Hudson, an NRI catcher.

Fun thought exercise! I think my protected list would be almost identical, I'd consider protecting Wesneski instead of Brown but otherwise it's interesting to see spelled out how quickly you run into 'just a guy' territory and not minding if someone was plucked. I also would be pretty annoyed if my expansion team took Arias. Considering there would be a minor league phase as well you can't waste picks on a guy in A ball that walks too many people and gives up too many runs while going less than 4 IP/GS. Have to impact the MLB roster with those picks, so the unprotected among Wesneski/Brown/Assad feels like the greatest value. Depending on other exposed lists I could also see the argument for Canario and mayybe Little.

My recollection was the big consternation was that Chapman's fastball velo was down due to how much he'd been working, but he was still at 97. That's still a heater you have to be geared up for which buys you margin for error on the slider. I can't remember the specifics but I think Montero mentioned something about the pitch selection that inning in the Cubs Con panel about 2016, but I'm blanking on what it was. Maybe that he wasn't locating the fastball, or that he saw someone really time it up once and so he thought 'that's enough of that', something in that vein? Related: I found a clip of the Kipnis foul ball, and I don't know if I ever realized that it was nowhere close to HR distance? Like it might not have even been a double if fair given the higher trajectory and time for Heyward to circle it. EDIT: Okay Heyward was off the line so an easy double, but funny how comparatively not-terrifying that is now

He almost seems like an avatar for the rise and fall of that era. Not weighed down by convention and pressing all the right buttons leads to success which then leads to complacency and a slow fade. More verbal stumbles in Maddon's case given he says more words to the media than anyone else, but otherwise in general the success was too recent so the signs to adapt get translated as bad luck or some other ill fortune.

Also Smith is only guaranteed 1.75m on a major league deal, the 3.5 represents a maximum with incentives. And that 1.75 would be pro-rated if he isn't called up right away, so he's a rounding error for luxury tax purposes even in the darkest fears people have about his playing time.

I think reasons 1, 2, and 3, for any Montgomery interest are mostly contingency for Bellinger falling through. They've positioned the roster such that they can get similar benefit from any of the Boras 4(as Bertz alludes to), so the FO has their preferences but know that coming down with one of them at their number is ultimately fine. However, I do think people have been a little quick to label the LT as a hard cap based on Ricketts comments. He's gone over it before, and while I was always skeptical of the early offseason possibility of going 20-40M over, I have no reason to think he wouldn't do it again in the right circumstance, and that circumstance is the most important part. In a world where the actual Cubs offer to Bellinger is like 6/135 or something, and where Montgomery is struggling to get an offer of even 3 years at his preferred number for whatever reason, a 1 year or 1 + player option that assumes health deal could very well be that circumstance and net them both while staying under the first LT penalty band. I put the odds of that at like 5% at best, but if you want optimism that's the path I could see.

I guess what I'm getting at is that in terms of the physical act, hitting live MLB caliber pitching has less margin for error than the physical acts of being a QB. Easier to get up to speed on reading coverages/learning playbooks from your couch/local workout facility than hitting Corbin Burnes' fastball, in other words.

I'm of two minds on this front. One is that every year we see guys who crush the ball in spring training and then go cold when the season starts, or vice versa. But the other is that hitting in particular is one of the most refined and unforgiving activities in sports, and being able to do it at the pro level well without game reps is gonna be more likely that they start slow. Maybe the duration of that slump is no different than the randomness of normal season ebbs and flows, but while I'm not gonna freak out about missed February at bats, I won't go as far to say that it's a pointless money grab and guys can walk into the MLB regular season without seeing MLB pitching in months.

Did you tell him you had to C it

I would maybe go as far to say that if you don't have an inner circle HOF QB(only Mahomes atm, but these have won 8 of the last 10 titles), then your main shot is building a super team around a decent/good QB, and that is verrry dependent on where that QB is on the payscale. It almost lends itself to the logical conclusion to *only* do a 2nd contract with an inner circle HOF QB or even to trade solid QBs a year early, because otherwise you have to tread such a thin line to make the rest of your team good enough to offset your competition who is on their Rookie deal. A non-1st rounder like Dak/Purdy/Hurts may not be super repeatable(though it is 10% of the league!), but probably better than the odds you can squeak through with good enough skill positions/defense while paying Kirk Cousins an Ohtani AAV.

Horton starting once per week from April and averaging 5 IP/GS would have him between 130-140 by end of season. He'll likely be shy of that 5 IP/GS mark in Iowa if last year is any indication, so if the target is roughly 130 IP then he's basically on track to do that without any adjustments in a minor league season. So with that baseline, how do we adjust for any MLB impact. As a reliever, this is done by default, pitching even only in September in relief would likely leave him with the bullets needed to be part of the MLB pen through any postseason run. As a starter, the first consideration is if he can still start 1x/week, Counsell + the existing depth would leave me optimistic that would be still possible, so then you need to account for any postseason impact. He's very unlikely to be a 2x/series starter, so you maybe skip him or delay him a few days once a month or so which gets you pretty close, assuming he's a 5 and dive starter this year at the MLB level(a fair assumption in a pennant race/postseason). There are other permutations, but they're of the type that you can't really plan workload around(Horton goes supernova on Iowa, injury ravaged MLB rotation). So to tl;dr it, if by the end of April Horton looks like a guy who is gonna force his way to the MLB rotation by the trade deadline(which means not only his performance but performance of the MLB rotation, Wesneski, Brown, etc), then you build in some break points over May and June to allow for the possibility of him starting postseason games. Otherwise I think you just kinda let him do his thing similar to last year, and consider him as a potential bullpen weapon for the stretch run/postseason if that's deemed prudent.

Gonna lock this for a few hours to slow down the nonsense. I think you've made pretty clear the contempt you have for the other side of your argument, and that's been made clear in the other direction by a number of people. What we're not gonna do is have a near daily cycle of provocation and response that derails and devolves the conversation. So you can either choose to ignore that nearly the whole community is not in your corner on this topic, or pick your battles more tactfully. The status quo can't continue, and considering this argument has been you v. dozens of others in good standing, that would have a predictable outcome if we have to take action to prevent it from continuing.

One way of thinking about Smith and Peralta I saw elsewhere that I think is useful is that they are short term injury and DFA insurance. At the start of the season you have a couple players who may not make the roster that you're comfortable calling up right away, but several others that are likely to be in the mix by Memorial Day whose development is best served by staying in Iowa. Looking at this year's prospect mix there's a couple left handed hitters in particular that qualify in Caissie and Murray Jr. If Happ or Tauchman or Busch have a calf strain in April, Smith/Peralta may be useful short term fill ins, and how well they do in Spring Training informs if they're filling in at Iowa or in Chicago instead of e.g. Mastrobuoni or Mervis. Speaking of Mervis, the other way you can think of this is as insurance if an addition has to bump an existing player off the 40 man. If Tauchman or Mervis look terrible in ST or there's multiple additions where they make the most sense to be the ones DFA'd, you don't want to be left in a situation where doing something that everyone wants(e.g. signing Bellinger) leaves you with a hole when the inevitable happens and someone gets hurt, or goes on short term leave. If those things don't come to fruition, it times up well where there's likely an opt out for Smith/Peralta around the time that the aforementioned prospects are more seriously in the MLB mix. A final point I'd make here is that we shouldn't be so reflexive to think that low cost org depth as a thing that blocks players or is just cheaping out on bad production, it's an avenue for talent acquisition that they should try to take advantage of. Tauchman(and before him Ortega, and before him Coghlan, and before him Valbuena) is a good example, sometimes a new org can unlock something and we shouldn't shy away from that just because the farm system is strong. The Dodgers always have great prospect depth and more money than they know what to do with, and they gave 800 PA to Heyward and Peralta himself last year, and have used this archetype to plug holes in the short term(e.g. Trayce Thompson) and the longer term(Muncy, Turner) over the years.

David Peralta is 36, can not play CF(and shouldn't play RF either), hasn't been better than 2023 Tauchman since 2018, has been a below average hitter 2 of 3 years including a worse-than-Madrigal 82 wRC+ in 2023, and ZiPS does not like him to be a materially better hitter in 2024 than Busch, Tauchman, PCA, or Mastrobuoni. Oh, and he's coming off hand/finger surgery in October. Which is all to say that while I don't have any issue with him on a MiLB deal, I am extremely skeptical that he has a fast-track to the MLB roster even if they don't add Bellinger.

For a certain percentage of people all news and rumors gets viewed through the lens that it is confirming their worst fears about the team.

Are they Top 5 in revenue? Post-covid they've been 9th, 11th, 9th in attendance, and their TV deal ranks ~8th by a recent estimate(for reference, LT payroll was roughly 10th). What else differentiates them up to that level?

#YouHaveToSerifIt

Not making a broader point other than illustrating what this looks like in practice for everyone else, but this statement appears to describe every team save for the Dodgers, Yankees, and (probably) the Mets.

I think we sometimes bog ourselves down in minutiae that doesn't make much difference when we talk about 'making offers' or 'formal offers' as you sometimes see in other situations. It seems pretty clear that in their discussions, the Cubs said we'd do a deal around X(maybe it's an overall value number, maybe it has years attached or a small range), and Boras said we're looking for a deal around Y and that those numbers are far enough apart that everyone can agree that it doesn't make sense to continue to discuss it until one party is willing to bridge that gap significantly. Based on the fact that Bellinger is still unsigned and there are no other suitors who have been discussed with much significance, it's likely going to have to be Boras coming back with a lower number. This might've happened already if Bellinger was willing to take a Correa-esque deal, but it wouldn't surprise me if he feels that's what he just did in 2023(his arb 3 salary was only 900k more than arb 2), and so while his deal might have an opt out, he's not prioritizing that and wants to max the total dollars on a longer deal. And so we wait until Boras finds the owner that's going to break the deadlock, or Bellinger gets antsy enough to say 'enough, I need to start my season'. Complicating this is that Boras appears to have 4 different situations where he's waiting on an injury or an increase in desperation to meet his number, and I just don't know if there's 4 of those out there, so which ones he "chooses"(if a team is interested in more than one) probably depends on player preference and some other Boras logic that we can similarly only speculate on.