squally1313

I'd add Tucker to the list (and probably agree with everyone else that Soto isn't happening). Mostly agreed that the rest of the free agent bats don't do anything for me. Santander is another Happ/Suzuki, Alonso taking playing time away from Busch or Hoerner is dumb. I'd love to call a trade and extension for one of those guys as our big free agent deal but realistically I know Tucker or Vlad is going to hit free agency. I keep leaving myself with this weird problem of like 'well, we need to spend this money somewhere' like I'm Oscar trying to explain the budget surplus to Michael. The non-Soto free agent bats are just whatever, and the pitching options range from old to very old. Someone like Tucker or Vlad would take up a chunk just from arbitration, but most of the pitching trade targets (attractively) come with a bunch of team control. I liked that Luis Castillo idea?

We need to get to roughly 850 innings from starters next year. You've got Shota, Steele, Taillon, Assad, let's be aggressive and give them 150 a piece, whether or not we want to or should. Need another 250. Brown threw 55 innings this year. Wesneski threw 70. Wicks is going to end up around 70. Horton even less. I mean...Caleb Kilian? Brandon Birdsell? We're just going to hope on basically full year health from our top 4 guys and not even really be able to to push anyone back down to the pen to shore up that need? Go get a good starter.

But the original post was already baking in marginal improvements from having multiple top 100 prospects performing at AAA this year and being ready to take over for the Madrigals and Mastros of the world, and you claiming that wasn't enough to be a playoff caliber offense. We're 11th in offensive fWAR for the whole year and 6th since the ASB. In a 12 team playoff league, that's pretty definitionally a playoff caliber offense. Significant improvements are welcome, of course! But we're going to end up with a full year slightly above average offense and slightly below average pitching staff, and our near-MLB ready farm system is full of bats and very low on healthy pitching. It's pretty obvious to me which side needs more help.

Preseason projections for the Diamondbacks by wRC: Carroll 123 Marte 121 Walker 113 Pederson 113

Cubs: .243/.318/.397 Royals: .253/.310/.416 Cleveland: .238/.309/.395 Braves: .240/.306/.408 Second half numbers are even better. To be fair, there's a huge gap to the elites of the world. But there's a lot of argument for this being a playoff caliber offense right now.

In the second half, the Cubs have been: 6th in wRC/wOBA 1st in baserunning 5th in total offense 5th in defense 4th in offensive fWAR On the pitching side: 21st in K/9 16th in BB/9 20th in HR/9 16th in GB% 11th in ERA 19th in FIP 19th in xFIP 20th in fWAR

If you could count on any of Brown, Wicks, or Horton throwing 100 innings next year, I'd probably lean improving the offense. But realistically that's just not the case. A top 50ish starter, acquired from our surplus of bats, is a much neater upgrade than paying market value for the non-Soto's of the world. Don't count chickens, etc etc, but projecting just 3 fWAR a piece from Dansby/Nico/Happ/Suzuki/PCA, which is mostly conservative, gets you a baseline of 15 fWAR that would have put you 18th in the majors last year just from those 5. Then you factor in Busch, Paredes, maybe Bellinger, non-black hole production at catcher, and that's before the stable of top 100 bats knocking on the door. It's tough to get to an elite level, but it would be tough to get to an elite level without a Soto (or Tucker) level addition and it doesn't seem all the difficult to get to 25 (7th in baseball last year) with what we have. On the pitching side, give me Steele, Shota, and a Mariners starter to go with Taillon as your top four and let one or more of Brown/Wicks/Horton break out in limited stretches next year.

Psh who cares, wake me up when he passes boegarts

Eh, I see your point but counter-meatball is that it’s much more important for the long term cubs that Pearson gets that spot over smyly. Caissie for wisdom or mastro please

Did Detroit come out and say Skubal isn't going to be available or are we just thinking this recent run of good play is going to turn them into buyers in the offseason?

Lol, I remember looking at this series back in March when I made my Rockies over 60.5 bet and some part of me knew it would end up like this. Anyways, go....baseball.

Yeah I think I'm mostly with you on that last paragraph. Would say you definitely keep one of Caissie/Ballesteros for instant offense Shaw - while Nico and Dansby are still very much good and not bad, they're both not young and their just good performance (v 2023 elite performance) lets you mix Shaw in at second once or twice a week, third once a week, DH, etc. There's room for him that's kinda it? Horton maybe just to avoid selling low, but no real problem with dumping Alcantara and Triantos, maybe even Cam Smith in the right deal. Alcantara specifically needs to go kinda regardless, especially in a Cody opting-in world.

I think we're not really in an era where any GM is going to make 5-6 moves of consequence in a single offseason. I know that having Too Many Dudes isn't actually a problem, so I'll rephrase and say it's an opportunity that you could look at the organization as a whole and see at least 9 guys (Happ, PCA, Seiya, Busch, Nico, Dansby, Paredes, Shaw, Caissie) that are reasonably expected to be be valuable starters, either through raw production or production/salary, within a couple months of Opening Day 2025. 10 if Belli sticks around, 11 if you want stretch and include Triantos or Alcantara. We need an elite bat, it doesn't really matter which for purposes of this discussion. And there's no catcher in that mix, so Kelly, Amaya, whatever. So that's 11-13 dudes. Would it all work out through injury and weekly days off and prospects breaking? Probably. But should we stockpile that value on one side of the ball when pitching is suddenly looking pretty dire? You've got Steele and his sore arm and Shota as top 40ish pitchers in baseball, Taillon to eat innings, essentially lost years from Horton (34 IP), Wicks (62 IP), and Brown (55 IP), Assad (who knows), and then the Wesneskis/Kilians/Birdsells of the world. That's not enough starting pitching as is, and that's before even considering the luxury of turning any of them into shutdown relievers. I'm not particularly enamored by any of the starting pitching on the market. Use the money to increase the redundancy on the offensive side, and then Jed just has to make a call(s) to turn that into some pitching on the trade market.

In the last week this guy has called for getting rid of 16 players from our 40 man roster as the first order of business this offseason, said he's never using WAR again to evaluate players, and mocked the idea that the Cubs have a whole 3.8% chance of making the playoffs. Good stuff.

When they came into town real early in April and he pitched against us I think in hindsight that will go down as the highlight of the year for me (though PCA in general is rising quickly). We came out in the second inning and made him throw like 87 pitchers and just grinded this supposed top prospect down to a pulp and I was all in on the whole 'we've got 8 guys who are going to give you good ABs'. So much for that.

Baseball Savant has his arm strength and arm value down a good amount from last year too, FWIW. Similar to your point, can't see someone at this stage in his career losing arm strength, but it's possible he made a few throws last year he didn't this year, be it accuracy, pure velocity, etc.

No one is saying it's the end all be all of anything. Of course it's an approximation. Any statistic that tries to estimate overall value is going to be an estimation. By all accounts, it's the best one we have. So why wouldn't we use it? I've yet to see anything better posed as a counter argument when talking about a player's value, and more often than not you end up seeing things like 'clutch' that have obviously been disproven.

lol

He had a 122 wRC in the first half

This is like 40% logical end of the roster churn, 40% cart before the horse over-reactionary moves, and 20% 'Actually Nico Hoerner isn't good' nonsense. Canario, Mervis, Madrigal, Mastro, Wingenter/Armstrong/Brewer: whatever, fine. Not totally sure who they are blocking, but send a message or whatever. Wisdom/Tauchmann. I hope we don't need them next year too! But we don't know, and I certainly don't want Matt Shaw taking the 4 PAs per week role that Wisdom has, or Caissie for Tauchmann. They're here, they're team controlled, there aren't actually better options here unless you want to stunt development of prospects. Bethancourt. If we sign a starting catcher, great, say thanks and bye. If we don't....well, guess we just need to find another Yan Gomes (which, in 2025, is just another way of saying 'Christian Bethancourt'). Can we wait and see, maybe? Merryweather/Almonte/Thompson/Roberts/Kilian: Who are these guys blocking? Why does this have to be phase one? We couldn't use another 6 months of offseason work, winter leagues, pitch lab time, etc? Nico: I've come around to being ok with trading him in the right series of moves. But man, 'he's not a bad player, but he's not currently a good one, either' is pretty absurd. 6th in fWAR amongst 2Bs this year, 5th since the beginning of last year. And we want to clear that spot for a 'loser' of another position battle? Ok!

I don't think Soto is completely unrealistic, especially in a world (my ideal world) where Bellinger opts out. There's a lot money coming off the books after 2026, and if you get Soto you can then make decisions as you go into 2025 on whether to push all your chips in the middle in the next two years with the Happ/Seiya/Hoerner group of guys or whether those guys start getting put out on the market in search of the next great Cubs team built around Soto, PCA, Steele, Shota, Horton, etc. But let's say that doesn't happen. Because it probably doesn't because everyone wants him and the Yankees, Dodgers, etc are more attractive options. We have somewhere between $50m and $75m (pending Belli) coming off the books and I obviously want them to spend it somewhere. I'm pretty over the 4/60, 5/80 deals. Maybe a starter because you always need more of those, but at that level you just aren't going to get enough surplus value over the kids sitting in AAA that can make league minimum. So basically: go trade for Tucker or Vlad (strong preference for Tucker), sign him to a long term extension immediately. From there, the following players are available in trades for starters (ideally with Seattle): Busch, Hoerner, Paredes, Caissie, Shaw, Alcantara, Triantos, Ballesteros, I guess Happ. Trade the prospects if you want to really push for 2025/2026, trade the major league guys if you want to go with some sort of hybrid approach.

Have a buddy who bet an unreasonable amount of money on swift receiving yards over 13.5. Looked like it could have gone either way but feel like there’s not really any motivation to go back and change it.

Rizzo's first game back at Wrigley

Yeah but it's also a length consideration right (TWSS). To Bertz' point above, he needs a contract two years from now. RIght now his future with the Cubs (obviously things being fluid) is largely as a corner outfielder/back up first baseman with two top 50 prospects having above average runs in AAA. And there's only one spot. He needs consistent PAs, and ideally consistent PAs at a defensive premium position he's still capable of playing, to maximize his overall career earnings. If he can't get them here....maybe 6/120 sounds better than 2/54 and a pretty uncertain future.

I was actually shocked he's only at 31st overall fWAR in the second half. Less PAs than most of the guys in front of him, but was hoping to throw him in the list of potential guys to end up in the top 10 of fWAR next year (which I don't think anyone else on our team comes close to reaching), but clearly not quite there yet. Kinda shows how much we've been missing that real top end talent to be this impressed by his performance and have it ultimately be, as an example, far less than half of the Witt/Judge/Vlad/Lindor levels of performance.