Jump to content
North Side Baseball

squally1313

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    11,046

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    27

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Chicago Cubs Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by squally1313

  1. squally1313
    To expand on the above, put together a quick schedule based on the FG roster resource page. Probably forgetting something, but I have us with a little under $90m to fill 5 main spots (2B, LF, RF, SP, SP). Spread it out, you're not going to get anything elite. But if any combination of Wiggins, Triantos, Alcantara, Rojas, Ramirez, etc can provide even adequate coverage, it really doesn't look that dire. Work below, let me know if there's any blatant mistakes.
  2. squally1313
    The cubs are going to have a lot of money next year with 6 lineup spots and 3 rotation spots filled by players already on the major league roster and only two of those guys are going to be making more than an arbitration deal. It’s two outfielders, a second baseman, and theoretically backend rotation pieces behind Horton Steele and Cabrera. And then the annual bullpen rebuild. They can’t all be marquee signings, but we don’t necessarily need to squirrel away league minimum guys for a rainy day.
  3. squally1313
    The fact that I would be happy to see Shaw out of Chicago for personal/moral reasons isn't irrelevant, but can be set to the side, largely, for conversations around trading him. There's the pro arguments around Shaw that he was an above average hitter in the second half of the year, improved defensively (even if some of the metrics don't like him), has positional flexibility, and has either 5 or 6 years of team control. There's the negative arguments that are largely summed up in Thusly Boned's Savant snip. But ultimately if there is/are a team/teams that value him in the first bucket, he's a very valuable asset. We are absolutely in a Win Now Year, and that very valuable asset doesn't have a starting spot. Yes, I know, there's room. But if you can turn Shaw into a main piece for say, a front line pitcher, or a RF that is clearly a better hitter than Ballesteros, and then backfill the role of 'utility infielder' with....Ramon Urias/Adam Frazier/etc etc...are we a better team in 2026? And is that improvement worth the likely long term damage to the organization? I think you could theoretically get a lot for him. And I tend to lean towards maximizing 2026 and figuring it out after that. Not that he can't help this team, but it's worth exploring.
  4. squally1313
    Better than our new centerpiece, almost as good as our overpaid shortstop
  5. squally1313
    But also, Shaw for Skubal isn't that far off, value wise. This doesn't make sense now, but if the wheels fall off in Detroit, where they are paying soon to be 30 years old Gleyber Torres $22m on a one year QO.... (and then, obviously, in that scenario, the Cubs would need a versatile backup that could play all over the field. I wonder if the Tigers have anyone they're dying to get rid of that could fit that bill (and who's 2027 salary, the last year of his deal, we could easily absorb once all our other deals expire)) Kidding. Mostly.
  6. squally1313
    I love this so much
  7. squally1313
    It's not just the other fan bases. Search Nico's name in the articles written about him on this site.
  8. squally1313
    As a counterpoint, he just sent (Canadian) Owen Caissie to the wasteland that is the Miami Marlins.
  9. squally1313
    This isn't really about Horton anymore, and fully aware that I started by referencing his K rate. but generally unless I really feel like doing a deep dive (and I usually don't) my thought process is that the WAR projections encompass all of those individual data points, good and bad, and spits out a high level summary. And I'm hesitant to cherry pick the underlying data because it sometimes comes off as having an agenda. Logan Webb has run elite GB rates his entire career, Horton was just barely above league average (and worse in his 47 AAA innings). So he's a good example if you're looking at one stat (K/9) but the comparison kinda falls apaprt when Webb's worst GB rate is better than what Horton has done at any level ever in his professional career.
  10. squally1313
    Certainly encouraging, especially if you ignore the .192 BABIP over that stretch. I watched his starts, and I'll get ahead of the advanced analysis that might be coming that's saying he's good/elite at producing bad contact (barrel rate is very good), by agreeing that his fastball is pretty special at getting the batted ball results he wants. Just pumping the brakes a little bit because if you're (not specifically you, the general you) going to lean into the projections, you should take the good ones with the bad.
  11. squally1313
    An unhealthy Tucker put up 4.6 fWAR last year. Ballesteros, if you give him 500 PAs, is projected for 1.1. Unless you buy into the whole 'Suzuki hits better when he fields' thing, which I don't, he's not a good enough defender to accrue much value there. The bench will be better with Shaw, probably, though he's projected for a 105 wRC and Justin Turner was projected for a 103 wRC last year, so...who knows. Horton is a big wild card. We all saw how good his results were last year. It's really tough to be a Good pitcher with that kind of strikeout rate.
  12. squally1313
    Tucker was pretty clearly playing through an injury for a good chunk of the year and put up the 20th best wOBA and 12th best xwOBA among players with at least 500 PAs and had one less walk than strikeout. Bregman's bat plays up in the field, 10 years is scary or whatever, etc etc.....but the dude is an elite hitter and his absence is going to a hurdle to overcome in terms of the concept of the 2026 Cubs being better than the 2025 Cubs.
  13. squally1313
    This is twice in two days now. Is this just a guy who clearly doesn't follow the Cubs closely at all or we resorting to AI in some weird SEO push?
  14. squally1313
    Probably spells the end of Nico after this year. And kinda makes me wish they had traded Moises and not Caissie. But those are 2027 problems. Go win 100 this year.
  15. squally1313
    No but Nico can so it’s fine
  16. squally1313
    My god. As usual, I’m an idiot.
  17. squally1313
    After one year, everyone can have the player if they pay what he's worth. So in this scenario, if you want Skubal on your team, you have two options: Option A: Trade for him now, and then sign him to his market value after the year. In that scenario you receive: his 2026 services, his 2027-2037 services. You give up: the players you give in the trade, the money required to beat all the other contract offers. Option B: You sign him as a free agent a year from now. You receive: his 2027-2037 services. You give up: the money required to beat all the other contract offers. The only difference between A and B is that in A you give up players and you get his 2026 performance. Wouldn't it follow that the value of the players you trade should be equal to solely the value of his 2026 performance?
  18. squally1313
    Those four, plus Shaw at pre-arb, Busch/PCA/Amaya all in their first arb year. Like 23 WAR for $30m?
  19. squally1313
    Yeah that's about what I was thinking. We don't really have a Paredes equivalent (honestly, Cabrera might be your closest comp in terms of established MLB talent with team control). But it's like...Shaw and someone worse than Cam Smith but still top 8ish....Rojas? or something like that.
  20. squally1313
    I wonder what the hypothetical Skubal package is. Given that the Tigers are contenders, it would probably have to be a huge overpay. But wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.
  21. squally1313
    No one really knows what the front office really cares about. Starting the season with just $6m of wiggle room is tighter than you would like when you start factoring in the amount of roster churn, potential roster bonuses, etc. (See 2024) If the directive is to avoid paying a significant amount of tax, then really the concern is getting into the multiple years in a row situation, where the tax percentages shoot up. Given that we were under last year and would surely expect to be under in 2027, this approach is probably fine because if a situation pops up where we have to $5m over, you're talking about it actually being $6m without a long term concern. If Ricketts is just using the luxury tax number (or some other number) as a strict, black line budget constraint, then it maybe ties Jed's hands a little bit more. Think we're all hoping it's some version of the first scenario, where the tax is minor enough that the first luxury tax number is more of a general target than a hard line.
  22. squally1313
    But that's moving the goalposts. The Blue Jays got 40 regular season innings from Bieber, another 18 in the playoffs, and then he resigned with them. Did any other contending team have the rotation problems that we were staring down? You can't say 'even now, people wouldn't be happy' when we don't know how that would have played out (and we'll never know). People seem pretty pumped by Cabrera being on the team now. Is Wiggins going to somehow get his walk rate under 4 BB/9 as he moves up the levels of competition?
  23. squally1313
    The Cubs had the 5th best wRC and third most offensive fWAR in July. Edit: And we're talking about literally one guy at this point.
  24. squally1313
    This is the level of detail I didn't want to get into. We didn't know how everyone else was going to progress or regress or get hurt on July 31. And saying we wouldn't have had the depth is an easy cop out. Who knows. Maybe the offense would have woken up. Or maybe they're going to go cold again this October and this trade now is dumb. Give yourself the best chance. We knew we had a playoff team at the deadline. We were at 97.1%. We didn't choose to make it meaningfully better. Retroactively calling the Dodgers some unbeatable buzzsaw (we were a half game better than they were on July 30th) and saying we knew the wheels would come off is a bad way of looking at it.
  25. squally1313
    Like, I don't want to get bogged down in specifics. We passed on making the 2025 team better and got a better deal on the guy who we didn't get to use for three months. You can buy the 2025 model the second it hits the dealership, or you can wait until someone else puts 10,000 miles on it and then buy it for $10k less. You saved some money, but you also went without a car for a while. There's trade offs.
×
×
  • Create New...