squally1313

Well the Dodgers are going to be there for the foreseeable future so maybe we should have kept the Caissie window open and not traded for Cabrera?

I mean, our starting pitching was hanging on by a thread going down the stretch and into the playoffs. I used that particular example to make a point, fair rebuttal on your end, nitpick that the rest of the pitchers gave up 1 run total so that's not necessarily a loss. But Shota in game 2 (and then very much not trusted again) is another example. We got to keep Wiggins for some unknown future value, and we missed out on 2-3 months of Cabrera (43 innings, 3.92 ERA) in a playoff year that ended in the NLDS. Plus whatever Hernandez and the other prospect might turn out to be. That's absolutely a tradeoff with positives and negatives. I like the trade, but I would have been fine with the original version back in July too.

I mean, did he get Cabrera now for a lot cheaper than Caissie/Wiggins 6 months ago? Yes. Did we lose game five of the NLDS and have Colin Rea be the losing pitcher because we had literally no other options? Also yes.

Rough math here: FG has us at $55m for next year which is basically Swanson and Maton plus benefits and all the other things. Using FG estimates, Bichette at $27m and Gallen at $22m brings you to $104m. Let's give Steele $8m, Assad $2.5m, Cabrera $5m, $119.5m. Amaya, Busch, PCA, and Palencia all hit arbitration....$15m total, plus minimum salaries for Horton and Shaw gets you to $135.5m. From there, with roughly $100m to spend, you're short a LF, a RF, a DH, one starter in the rotation (could be Wiggins but we need depth anyways), a bullpen beyond Palencia/Maton/Assad, and a bench. That all feels....fairly doable? And after that, there's not really a cliff in the foreseeable future. In the above scenario I already wrote off Kelly, Boyd, and Thielbar's mutual 2027 options, and so the only free agent after 2027 is Steele. Assad and Cabrera in 2028, Amaya/Busch in 2029, PCA/Palencia/Horton in 2030, Shaw in 2031. I'm still surprised the Cubs made one move, so making three more seems like really pushing it. But yeah, Taillon is a good dude and carried us for a little bit down the stretch there, but that spoke more to the lack of contribution literally anywhere else in the rotation more than him being some stud pitcher. Take your pick of the three bats, sell Taillon, go from there.

Fourth in wOBA, 5th in xwOBA last year, which is really to point out just how good he was last year and that we shouldn't expect much more of a jump. If they give him more PAs against LHPs, expect the pure outputs to probably go down, even if he's providing value by freeing up some flexibility on the bench (like, him even putting up a 115 wRC against LHPs would help the team a lot in terms of not needing to carry a platoon guy, but would almost certainly drag down his overall numbers). Kinda hoping to see his non-first baseman upbringing turn him into an elite defensive first baseman. He's already more than fine, but there's value to be gotten there.

A couple related thoughts: - Mentioned a couple times above, but if Jed wants to be somewhat indifferent between the Tucker/Bregman/Bichette group and wait to see who's market softens a little, a la Bellinger/Chapman/whoever the other 2 were, I'm mostly fine with that. Caveat being that....you need to actually sign the dude. - Re: Rojas. There's a decent chance in the above scenario that you have Nico/Dansby/Shaw/FA signing for your three infield spots for 2026, and Dansby/Shaw/FA signing for a few years after that. Maybe being the second piece in an Edward Cabrera trade isn't the best use of his value, but assuming Shaw isn't involved and we spend all this money we have lying around, likely might be set for a little while.

This Cam Smith? Who is now a corner outfielder apparently?

Very fair and correct.

Sure, a rotation from the middle of May on of Steele/Horton/Cabrera/Boyd/Shota is significantly better than what we had last year. But also feels like banking on health is probably a little optimistic. Last year it was Steele. This year...it could be no one! Or it could be Boyd, or Swanson, or PCA, or...who knows.

Haha I mean....I'd be a lot happier than I was a week ago. But...still have to land the plane. And also, to go back to pessimistic me, comparing 2025 Cubs to 2026 would basically be, ignoring the flotsam and calling the bullpen a net neutral, Tucker and his 4.5 fWAR out, Cabrera and Bichette in. Slight improvement, maybe?

I don't know how I would have felt about this in early November, but after 2 months of complaining, coming out of this and signing Bregman or Bichette while keeping Shaw and Ballesteros in the organization gives you a lot of fun possibilities. Happ LF Suzuki RF Busch 1B Bregman/Bichette 3B Ballesteros DH Swanson SS PCA CF Hoerner 2B Kelly C Then you have a bench of Shaw, Amaya, Alcantara (or a Castro or Tauchman) and a bat of some sort. Shaw can slot in against LHPs for Ballesteros or Busch (if you can teach someone to play first), spell Dansby and Nico, make the Nico extension conversation a lot easier, etc. Alcantara gets some spot duty whenever you want to move Suzuki to DH, backs up the rest of the outfield. Lot of fun possibilities.

On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, per Steamer while we wait for the rest of Zips to come out, there's not a top 50 pitcher in this group for 2026. Boyd is 51, Shota 66, Cabrera 74, Taillon 100, Horton 132, Steele 134 (in 83 innings), Rea 192 Back on the first hand, maintaining the elite defense that we have, whether with Shaw or with Bregman, will help all those guys play up. On the second hand, it would be fun to see what a truly elite pitcher could do behind that defense. On the first hand, finally, there really wasn't much of an option to get one of those, so the largely cost controlled depth paired with Zombro and Hottovy and gold gloves is fine, especially if (HUGE IF) we drop a big check on a bat here shortly.

Well one of those names is probably gone in this right? Either Taillon or a Wicks/Assad. Wiggins is fun. Wiggins threw 78 innings last year and 9 at AAA. I wouldn't put him in the 'kicking off the year' group. Give me Cabrera/Horton/Shota/Boyd/ST competition to start the year, with the loser being your long reliever and Brown being your 2 inning fireman.

I hope not. I'm back on the other end of the pendulum. Keep Wicks and Assad as your depth starters, go trade Taillon.

well then why didn't we do this in July then

Yeah maybe but that can't hold up a deal. His value as trade capital as a top 100 centerfielder prospect is way higher than his value as backup outfielder forever blocked by PCA. If they want him, go sign Willi Castro or Tauchman or whatever. Or teach Shaw to fake it.

Ballesteros on the surface (ie doing 30 seconds of reading on the Marlins Roster Resource page) doesn't seem like a good fit. A team like them should obviously be in the business of acquiring the most talent possible, but they have Joe Mack, a 23 year catching prospect with highly regarded defense who put up a 107 wRC with 18 HRs in 100 games in AAA last year, ranked top 40 league wide per FG. Meanwhile, Caissie, Alcantara, and Shaw all almost definitely make the opening day lineup next year.

Im also fairly tired of this whole ‘the cubs are uniquely approaching free agency with an eye towards this hypothetical lockout. None of the other big teams seem to be shying away from signing long term deals with elite players, but still, Clean Books.’ Like the mlb is going to force the dodgers to cut Ohtani or something.

Yeah I mean, it's not a salary cap league so obviously there's more complexity there. But, at a huge oversimplification, the 2025 Cubs were better than the 2023 Cubs because Michael Busch and PCA were a lot better than Christopher Morel, Nick Madrigal, and Patrick Wisdom. Dansby, Nico, Happ, Suzuki....those guys are essentially metronomes of above average performance. And having more Busch/PCAs, and also the Miguel Amayas and 2025 Matt Shaws of the world to avoid spending 10x those guys on Carson Kelly or Justin Turner or Colin Rea or whatever, keeps the bank account that much more open to overpay stars. Now that we have all those guys, we, in theory, have so much more room to aim high, and we just aren't. The fact that it's, at most, a one year crunch, makes it even more frustrating. Going into 2027 we have $55m committed and can pencil in Dansby, Maton, Steele, Assad, Amaya, Busch, PCA, Palencia, Horton, and Shaw just from the 26 man roster. That's what...24 wins right there? Before Ballesteros, Caissie, Wiggins, Alcantara, etc, and with $200m to spend after that. There's good players out there, and we're going to both need them and be able to afford them in a year. We should be flying past the luxury tax limit (Ricketts problem), and the fact that we've shown no signs of coming close to it (Hoyer problem, problem) is maddening.

This isn't basketball, or NFL quarterbacks or whatever. Mike Trout has one 90 win season in his career. They're good players making good player money. The surplus value doesn't or shouldn't come from the free agency market where you generally have to outbid 29 other teams. It comes from the players you develop, and we're (finally) getting that now.

The hate for Dansby, Happ, etc is so backwards. I know this is at risk of oversimplifying the concept of 'teams that win more games have better players', but here were the players under team control in 2023 and what they produced for the Cubs (fWAR, sorry, cover your eyes CubinNY) (spoilered for size): And here's 2025: Paying good, experienced players their approximate worth on the open market is fine business. The key is young, cheap talent. It's also a little bit paying top prices for elite talent, but the standard targets for complaints aren't the issue. It was the development of internal talent from 2018-2022ish that had to be backfilled by guys like Taillon and led to largely mediocre teams.

I think, maybe oversimplifying, not offering Shota a three year deal but then offering him a one year deal, limits your downside and limits your upside, both in terms of what Shota can do for your team, and in terms of what your team can do overall. And that is absolutely a Jed calling card, and he's, in practicing this, taken very, very incremental steps over the last 5ish years to get us to a very good base of a roster, and he remains, to this day, which is not the end of the offseason, seemingly entirely unwilling to risk increasing downside for the potential of increasing upside. And while there's a separate, more Ricketts focused conversation on whether it should have taken as long as it did to get to the 2025 success, that's in the past, the core is there, and I would really, really prefer him starting taking swings, ideally a year ago. And the justifications for not doing it are getting tiring. - We actually don't have as much money as we think because we had to totally overhaul the bullpen (again), because we've been unwilling to sign relievers to long term contracts (or develop them internally, Palencia maybe aside), and that's gotten us the 17th best fWAR bullpen and 11th best ERA bullpen in baseball over the last three years. - We can't start throwing in opt outs because we have this huge roster cliff because we gave bridge extensions to guys like Happ and Hoerner and we signed a mid tier guy like Taillon to a mid length contract instead of a top level guy to a lengthy contract. - We've built a very solid core of team controlled players through recent drafting skill and shrewd sell off trades during the aforementioned incremental steps of 2021-2024. Which is good, because besides them and Dansby, we have nothing to soften the blow of this roster cliff because we sat on $30m last offseason, then also didn't use it at the deadline, and seemingly made no real attempt to sign the elite guy they traded for. And yeah, maybe what they would have spent that money on would have sucked! We'll never know I guess.

Didn't we just get done talking about Imai with a one year opt out was a non-starter because there's too many guys we have to replace after next year already? Like, Shota was clearly battling injuries all year, there's maybe an identified fix, whatever. I think we should be careful about appealing to authority in these conversations because then ultimately this all becomes even more moot than it already is ('if Jed thinks Shota at 1/22 or Gallen at 3/60 or whatever is a good value, then obviously it was a good move'). But taking 40% of your day one offseason budget and throwing it at a one year guy you evidently don't think highly enough of to give him multiple years in a non-free agency setting, and then spending the rest of the offseason worrying about the roster cliff doesn't really line up to me.