squally1313

Maybe. You seem to be definitively saying that we're done with this offseason. Those four guys are going to be playing somewhere this year. Most people here think that the Cubs are very clearly near or at the top of the list of teams that make sense for one of them to play for. They haven't signed anywhere yet.

My desire for Chapman has been more based on this hole in the budget than a particular desire for a guy like him. Think him and Bellinger are both above average but very much capped at 'below elite', especially offensively, and we already have 4 of those guys in the lineup locked up. That being said, if you want to map out a path for 'not elite offense but elite overall non-pitching performance', you probably can't do much better than three all world defensive infielders, an 80 grade centerfielder, and (for whatever this is worth), a multiple gold glove winning left fielder.

The correct answer is Matt Chapman starting 140 games, with Wisdom upgraded to a more legitimate veteran bat and Madrigal and Mastro competing for the backup infield spot or maybe there's room for both of them, who knows. That being said, the Cubs got the 11st most fWAR at third last year (2.7), and that's with Jeimer coming in and doing basically nothing there. Is it repeatable? A little tougher to thread that needle than, say, just signing the dude who has produced at a 3.5+ fWAR rate his entire career. But, as Bertz said, there are piecemeal options to hold the fort down for 3-6 months, just don't want to be doing that all over the place.

I mean, what else would you say in this situation? "Still plenty of time, we're 100% going to be adding at least one big name, mark that down as a guarantee, Scott Boras, do you hear me, I'm now legally bound to sign one of your players"? Who cares, it's a press conference.

I'm not basing anything off 19 PAs and however you want to extrapolate that sample size to fielding and running. He was obviously pressing. If you believe in the ability that is reflected in his minor league numbers, you could make the argument that assuring him the center field job is his for the entire season would alleviate a lot of those issues. I'm fine with the arguments about contact rate or whatever. He absolutely doesn't need more time in the minors to work on fielding or baserunning.

Why don't the prospects you're referring to seem to fit in the plans for the future? PCA is months, not years away. You sign Bellinger to an 8 year deal, or even a 4 year deal, you have Happ and Suzuki locked in through 2026, where in your standards does PCA get a sufficient opportunity to develop into a 'solid ML contributor'? If he's an unknown now, he's just going to stay an unknown. If Bellinger is a hedge against PCA not turning into a valuable MLB player, sure, fine. But if that's the case, then you trade PCA now, as a top 20 prospect, because the small increased value you'd get from him destroying AAA for a few months isn't at all worth the downside of him struggling.

It's all dependent on Bellinger signing, and even then I would probably make the argument that PCA should still be on the team. PCA should absolutely be starting over Tauchman if those are your two options. This eventually becomes a more philosophical conversation about how WAR translates to wins (but, in a way, aren't they all?), but looking at the defensive leaders in centerfield from last year, it seems exceedingly easy to accrue WAR, even with below average offensive production, with above average/elite defensive ability. Someone like Joey Wiemer from the Brewers last year is probably an example of PCA's bat being worse than any expectations (his ZIPs line is 246/308/408). Wiemer put up a 212/285/390 line in 362 PAs last year and his defense was still good enough to give him 1.2 fWAR. Even if that is maybe fractionally less than what Tauchman did or projects to give, I think you have to still give the nod to PCA just for future developmental purposes.

Man hopefully Counsell is an expert at telling these bums to save hits for the next game.

This is a weird bit

There isn't really a bat out there that we can afford in addition to Bellinger that would represent a third base upgrade. Belt is a better hitter than those two, brings a lefty into the mix, and wouldn't impact anything long term. But not going to die on that hill because it's probably not much of a difference.

Good point on the DH, give those to Busch or Morel depending on who you like more. Of those 5 full time guys, an outfield injury makes PCA full time, middle infield injury puts Morel at second full time, which is good from a flexibility standpoint for sure. I just don't know if the team loses much offensively by signing like, Gio Urshela to play the Morel role, or just have Mastro play it (and giving Busch more PAs), and then creating some value on the pitching side. But I've also become pretty convinced that the trades just aren't there right now, so who knows.

If they sign Belt, they're giving him the starts at first base against righties until proven otherwise. Which is fine, Busch isn't young but he has a ton of control and no major league success and this would almost definitely be a one year deal for Belt. You can believe Morel should be playing more third, but we have 2023 as pretty clear evidence that the organization doesn't trust his glove there. And they've already been talking up Busch at first. Busch and Morel are better hitters but not so clearly superior at this point to make up for their presumed defensive shortcomings. To TTs point, there's probably a handful of starts for them there, maybe during Imanaga starts or whatever, but not 100.

Fine, but I don't think there's nearly the flexibility you'd generally want in this type of situation. Worrying about where Ben Zobrist is going to play is a lot easier than worrying where Morel is going to play. Hopefully Counsell can work his magic, but it just seems like a jumble of mostly split neutral, defensively limited dudes without high ceilings. But you're convincing me on something like this: Happ: 125 LF, 25 DH Bellinger: 100 CF, 25 LF, 25 RF Seiya: 125 RF, 25 DH PCA: 50 CF Madrigal: 100 3B Wisdom: 50 3B Dansby: 150 SS Nico: 140 2B, 10 SS Belt: 100 1B Busch: 50 1B Morel: 75 DH, 10 2B Gomes/Amaya: 50/50 split I still think in a contending year where you sign guys like Belt and Belli for immediate contributions, you can find veterans to replace PCA and Morels role and use them to upgrade pitching as much as humanly possible. But also aware that's a short sighted decision and injuries/bad play happens.

All good points. Just ultimately feel like you're seriously capping the internal utility of some combination of three guys with a lot of current perceived value (Busch, PCA, Morel) for a pretty marginal benefit? Morel becomes like...the back up DH, PH off the bench? Which basically makes Wisdom useless until an inevitable Madrigal injury. PCA starts in AAA, his next step up is back up outfielder, his next step up is....forcing Bellinger to first and Busch to the bench? That's a lot of trade capital having to fight tooth and nail for ABs and then I look over and Jameson Taillon is our third starter.

Totally fine with making these guys force their way into the lineup, but I think I'd go a different path with the money supposedly available and areas of need. That offensive roster gets rid of your most defensively versatile bench piece, puts your top prospect back in AAA where his path to major league playing time is basically forcing Busch into the already crowded Belt/Morel DH thing, and leaves Canario, Alcantara, Caissie very blocked. Wisdom is probably the first to go in that scenario, but then you're potentially leaving yourself with three guys who they trust to play three (important) defensive positions.

How many guys can you have who you don't trust to play defense anywhere? Like, Nico and Dansby are getting 150+ starts in a world without injuries, and they're seemingly already writing off Busch playing anywhere besides first. Whether or not Morel and Busch would be marginal, bad, awful, etc at third is kinda splitting hairs when I think the big picture is that they've consistently prioritized defense and handing one of them the majority of the starts out of the gates would go totally against that. Barring a Chapman signing, I can't see them cutting bait on either Wisdom or Madrigal, given Madrigal's probably superior production but clear injury history. So on the bench/DH you've got Amaya, Wisdom, Belt (to pick one of the names), Morel and....one outfield backup? Feel like they come up a little short in terms of defensive coverage. Belt would be a nice luxury, but him and Busch on the same roster makes a position-less Morel kinda redundant (or it makes Busch redundant, but I can't imagine that they would flip him so quickly). Would want that signing to come with a rethinking of the bench.

It’s actually a pretty reliable way to predict ML success. Or do you think we should discard all minor league numbers?

The answer to this, in my opinion, is that's really hard to get people to believe that a GM would give up years of control in a quality, established major league player in a league where 14 teams make the playoffs and team control years are so cheap, unless they are completely blown away by the quality and/or quantity of the prospects offered, and no one wants to put together those kinds of trades here.

I feel like you always think I'm attacking you, and I'm not, but I do think you jump onto all these 'reports' as like, the Truth and then use that to fuel your disappoint/frustration when nothing happens (to Tim's point, across all of baseball). These guys have to fill column space/air time/tweets quotas/etc. It's maybe 20% info from reliable insiders and 80% speculation. It's really no different to me than Bertz and 1908 looking at the org as a whole and being like 'this current set up really lends itself to some trades'. Solid opinion, totally see where they're coming from. But it doesn't actually mean anything is coming. If there were quality players out with years of control on the market, there would be roughly 20 teams trying to put packages together for them, not just the Cubs.

But that Burger paragraph is my earlier point. He’s got 5 years of team control. What possible motivation does anyone have to trade him, as a team that was trading for talent at the deadline last year. And I know, ‘just an example’. But, there’s like a handful of third basemen that represent a clear upgrade to our third base situation. You can go through all of them. There’s nothing there.

I think ultimately I have two main points: 1. These types of trades are rare and difficult to make. Of the 18 names you listed, only 3 got traded here in basically the middle of February, and all of them only had one year of control left. That's not a Hoyer problem, that's every team not trading for these dudes. The Burnes trade is a good example, one year of a (very good) starter for basically a Matt Shaw/Assad package. Would you do it? I can see the argument: makes us the favorite in the division for this year, every year is valuable, etc. But still doesn't put us anywhere close to the Dodgers or Braves, and a year from now we'd be down Shaw, Assad, and Burnes. 2. So if you accept that there just aren't trades happening for quality players with years of control, the only place to add that to your organization is the Boras four. All quality players, but really the only one with an 'elite' argument going forward is Snell, probably the guy we talk about the least on here. There's only so many times you can pay a market premium for non-elite talent before you hit a ceiling. You want a $65m outfield locked in where none of them are likely to exceed 4 WAR? Where you turn PCA, Alcantara, Caissie, etc into platoon guys or trade bait in the mold of Michael Busch, where everyone knew that the Dodgers didn't have a spot for him and we got to basically pick up a AAA top 100 dude for a single A top 100 dude? Like, ignore Ricketts and the luxury tax for a second and slot Bellinger, Chapman, and Montgomery into the roster on long term deals. That's a very solid, 88 win team. How does that team get better going forward? Where do we upgrade? Outside of unlimited budgets, it's almost impossible to become an elite team without your system turning out some studs. Jeopardizing that to turn 81 into 84 seems shortsighted.

Yeah and two other things for me: 1. Both in absolute value (as yearly FA salaries have gone up) and in perceptive value (FOs getting smarter, less attached to dumb ideals), the 6 years of cost suppressed control have never been considered more valuable. It’s really an absurd system and probably should be shortened. 2. Related: development systems have never been better, and these kids are, a lot of the time, getting to the majors as finished products. Carroll was the best player on a World Series team, rutschman, Henderson, KB, etc. These top prospects can contribute immediately, which reduces the desire for contending teams to want to sell them to fit a current contending window.

Internal improvement? You said yourself earlier, and I'll quote so I don't put words in your mouth, 'usually guys don’t come up and are great their first year'. These guys will get better. We've got a pretty large handful of guys who's 80% projection is significantly better performance, at significantly lower cost, than any of the Boras dudes out there or any of the names that have come up as trade targets. Of course they won't all work out. They especially all won't work out for the Cubs if you trade them away or block them with long term free agent signings. But, in my opinion, there's no path to dominance without developing elite, controlled talent. Again, what are these trades? What teams are shopping difference makers with years of control for outfielders in AA? Absolutely willing to entertain the conversation, but not going to do the work for you.

So in your scenario we traded for 2 first basemen and a third baseman, and still signed Imanaga after trading for Bieber. Assume with all these we'd be pretty comfortably into the luxury tax, which I think is pretty obviously not happening and not a Jed decision. Either way, here's my math on the 84 win number (FG has the Cubs as an 81 win team now, so the delta, plus I guess bench upgrades, got me to 84).

I was just pointing the several concrete examples we have on the roster of these prospects you want to cast off somehow managing to turn into quality major league basebal players (and generally low paid ones too!) This is why these conversations are so frustrating though. It's just endless bitching about Hoyer in the midst of a league wide slow offseason, and when pressed about what the 'you' (used here and from now on in the general sense) would do different, you either come up with terrible trade ideas or 'I'm not a GM so this is a waste of time'. If you aren't a GM and can't come up with better ideas but you feel confident that the guy who's job you don't know how to do is doing a terrible job, what are we even doing here?