squally1313

How would you react if someone said this sentence to you at a party

Woah, hey now, they left being able to say that they didn't overpay for anybody. It just turns out that every good player that signed was overpaid.

Very cool stuff, looking forward to it. King appears pretty good at it (14.1% since 2024, 14th out of 185 starters with 100 or more innings in that span). But so does, say, Joe Ryan. And if it's something we can teach, maybe you don't need someone already in that mold. As an aside, six pitchers who show up in the bottom/worst 21 spots of that list? Framber Valdez, Zac Gallen, Justin Steele, Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, MacKenzie Gore.

To your first point: I consider the defense an important and basically totally separate part of the overall quality of the team. They're going to, on the whole, raise the results of any pitcher, good or bad, over their expected results. That's a credit to Dansby, Nico, PCA, and the overall rest of the team there. It should absolutely be considered as part of a 'how good is the team' conversation, but I think it's somewhat in line with my point that like: between the defense, and Hottovy, and Zombro, we don't need elite pitching skill sets to get elite pitching results. Spending on semi-elite pitching, which, we're down to 4(?) names now, and not just more or less locking in as much offense as possible and avoiding either the tale of two halfs Shaw question or the 'it turns out everyone sucks in their first 400 PAs' question with Caissie or Ballesteros seems backwards when you could make one or more of those guys redundant and use them as currency to a much bigger group of pitchers (above average to semi-elite, not getting paid free agent money). I'll look forward to your article. Curious on if you think this is an org thing, ie something that can be taught, or if it's just the profile of the pitcher they've been targeting. Boyd has been good in his career at generating pop ups, Taillon was terrible in 2024, the Cubs as a team were like 21st in baseball in 2024. Don't want to jump it though. For the bullpen....I've stopped trying to figure out how to fix it. We've got an elite pitching development system and theoretically an elite manager to make those decisions. The rest is just sample size/sequencing noise.

Concerns with this are: 1. 'Buying up legitimate arms' - Per FG, the top 3 projected fWAR guys (and 7 of the top 10) are off the board already. You've got Suarez, Harvey, and Fairbanks, and after that you're real quickly getting into Justin Wilson/Drew Pomeranz (projected contract: 1 year, $4m)/Caleb Thielbar territory. And at that point, then you're just in pitch lab mode. Could they pitch lab it to a top 5 bullpen? Maybe, I guess. But that's development, not money. 2. The Cubs ended up 17th in rotation fWAR last year. And that's with Boyd, Horton, Shota, and Taillon making 101 of those starts (and combining for 7.6 fWAR). Rea gave you 27 starts and 1.6 fWAR, and the rest of the team gave you 34 starts and (roughly) 1.1 fWAR. For simplicities sake, let's just replace Rea's workload with Michael King. He's projected for 29 starts and a 2.8 fWAR. As far as I can tell, the other 4 are staying in the rotation. The 30-35 starts by your 6-10 SPs, I'll be generous and say that with Steele (a somewhat proven commodity) and Wiggins (very much not the case), we can make that 1.5 fWAR. So with this plan, we're talking about adding, rounding up, 2 wins to the rotation? Move from 17th to 11th? Couple that with a step down from Tucker to the kids, and you're, 'best case' scenario, treading water? Treading water on a 92 win team is far from the worst thing in the world, but And just to avoid the conversation of mixing prior year results with 2026 projections, projections show improvement from Shota and Taillon, and show regression from Boyd and Horton. It roughly balances out.

I hope so. I do think they are very good at identifying pitchers that they can work with and level up. And I do agree that the bullpen is generally a crapshoot and in a first luxury tax level reality, throwing elite level money at elite level guys is not the best use of resources. The games in April and May still count, and I'd like Jed to just wince and overpay for support come the summer, but for now, whatever. Ultimately I just want the money spent. They've earned the right to attack the middle ground of pitching production. Their ability to level up offensive production isn't quite at the same level to me. I know the offense was great last year, and I know it projects as above average now. Just...make it elite again.

so where does the money go in this case?

Someone tell me to stop, but…sign King or Imai and dip into the AAA pool to pick up another quality starter, then…how close does Justin Steele and a freeish Jameson Taillon get you?

lol I mean, sorry, at the risk of sounding too negative, but we can't simultaneously throw 'tried really hard for Alex Bregman last year!' and also 'they're more engaged at the top of the market than in prior years' in the 'look how good Jed is doing' pile.

Any chance we get in on this? On one hand, it's not a perfect positional fit for 2026 (and potentially past that, the metrics aren't great and he's definitely on the wrong side of the aging curve). On the other hand, he's an offensive monster who is probably your 1a or 1b hitter right off the bat so giving him 100 games at DH for a year is fine, he becomes the best backup middle infielder in history, and also has some experience in CF and so he lets you get a bat first/bat only bench guy (or worry less about how Ballesteros fits in the roster). And he's at $15m a year, so he's a steal. Emptying the farm for a 32 year old isn't on the surface a wise idea, but he's definitely a major difference maker for 2026.

What would it cost to get Ketel Marte?

I know AAA is either the dead ball era or mid 1990s Coors Field depending on where you’re playing, but 16 HRs in 460 PAs, a 16% walk rate and sub 20% K rate, and an .860 OPS with an over 400 OBP as a 22 YO trying AAA for the first time doesn’t seem too fake?

Is that really all it took to get Harry Ford

says who?

It is pertinent because we're comparing hypothetical 2026 production per dollar to what we got in 2025. Yeah, it would cost you more to retain Tucker's 2026 performance, but losing it is still a downgrade in terms of actual output. And you need to spend more money or trade capital to make up the difference. The actual equation is Caissie plus whatever they do with $16m vs Tucker and whoever/whoevers that $16m replaces. We didn't have a lot of black holes last year, so you're going to be losing some additional 2025 production on top of Tucker in this scenario.

Aggregating war from multiple spots to replace one guy is not a strategy you want to indulge in very often, and I think you’re going to struggle to find someone at $16m to pair with Caissie that matches tuckers production anyways.

1. Matt Shaw had a 130 wRC in the second half, but the related .354 wOBA was paired with a .309 xwOBA. Still above league average for 3B, but let's not pretend there isn't room for improvement here. 2. I don't think it's a lock that Caissie or Ballesteros will be better hitters than Shaw, as laid out by OO above, but that says more about Caissie and Ballesteros (negatively) than it does about Shaw (positively). Hitting at a young player in the majors is really hard. 3. Matt Shaw as a .309 wOBA third baseman still contributes a lot to a baseball team's success. The defense looks to be there (though the metrics aren't), the baserunning is good, it's a good package. We know that, other teams know that (and can see his team control). League average ish hitting infielder with good/elite defense and good/elite baserunning....sound familiar? I think his roster/starting spot represents, along with the DH/RF spot, a chance to steer away from the glove first value and towards just getting the best, MLB-ready bat possible, partly because I don't see Shaw, Caissie, or Ballesteros as high quality 2026 MLB hitters, and partially because those guys represent the best chance we have to supplement pitching outside of the free agent market that is already down the top starter and the top few relievers. 4. Matt Shaw sucks personally. Most of these guys do, and he sucks in a (to me) more acceptable way than like, Addison Russell or Aroldis Chapman suck. But he also sucks very publicly and so if he wants to go skip games for midterm rallies, I'd be fine with him doing it for another team.

Or rename it the offseason general discussion thread?

Farfetched attempt at staying on topic: Um, you know who would be cool for Shota to pitch to in the event that we needed an emergency third catcher? Willson Contreras! Anyways, reports are out that he's willing to waive his NTC. Two years, $35m left on his deal. .344 wOBA, .358 xwOBA, 124 wRC, 142 wRC against LHP, makes him the perfect Busch platoon/DH and frees up the AAA hitters to become trade bait as we watch the market sign all the free agent pitchers. Bring him home. (Separately, I vaguely understand the business model case against megathreads but feel like it definitely drives down overall activity here.)

I was scrolling pretty quick but pretty sure he was talking about Ben Brown (you know, it’s hard to tell sometimes without a general discussion thread, nudge nudge)

I thought the question was why Busch was worth less offensive runs than Tucker even though he had a higher wRC in essentially equivalent PAs. Could be wrong though.

Go sign a hitter, trade for a pitcher, and start telling Ben Brown, Javier Assad, and Jordan Wicks to see how hard they can throw in 20 pitch spurts. Or just sign Cease, I guess. But feel like I like the Imai option a little less than I did before Shota resigned, which sounds racist but really just more I want to avoid the uncertainty of a pitcher new to MLB now that we more definitively need a top end guy.

Baserunning, if you're looking at Fangraphs. 25 SBs for Tucker to Busch's 4 is the main driver I would assume, but know the metric goes into more depth than that.

If you combine Busch's 2023 and 2024 you end up with a 109 wRC which is about where I fall out for him. Plays up in a corner outfield spot though.

I can't see a scenario where we sign the top arm, and then sign a top bat that basically blocks the valuable group of Caissie/Ballesteros/Alcantara. It's too much money to throw at over 30 players. You can dump the money on pitching and turn Caissie/Ballesteros loose, or you can sign a top hitter and then use your blocked MLB ready hitters to pick up a pitcher. But can't see them committing $55m-$60m in free agency money and then still having to buy a bullpen. Having said that, I'd be thrilled. I'm feeling irrational enough at the moment to get a Schwarber or Alonso and then blow away the Tigers with Caissie/Ballesteros/Alcantara/Long....maybe even Shaw for Skubal.