squally1313

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.

Not being able to offer opt outs in 2027 and also consistently needing to save room to annually rebuild the bullpen are problems, not features. I know we’ll sign gallen and get an article about how actually he’s perfect for the coaches but come on. You can do that and also sign the good players.

They went into the season with like $25m under the tax! You can credit the good decisions and also say that their unwillingness to overpay for good players is a problem. Oh we don’t want to give opt outs? Guess we should just check out from any major negotiation going forward. Would hate to be inefficient.

Come on man. Just be critical for once. It’s January and we have no one.

So anyways, can we talk about the disaster offseason potential situation yet, or are we still doing the guy in a hot dog costume about all the expiring contracts next year thing to justify why this is fine

My guess (could be wrong) is that this is yet another example of why no one should ever use ChatGPT

As for Webb or Fairbanks, why not both. Becomes a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy when you steer away from elite relievers because you have so many bullpen spots to fill each year because everyone you signed last year was on a one year contract. Real ‘we’re all trying to find the guy who did this’ situation. agree with your last point. Just…haven’t been up at that level in quite a while. Prices have been too high, for a year now, apparently.

I generally try to share your overall approach, and have certainly preached it in the past. And, even in the event that this offseason does end up being a disaster, I’m not going to roll forward my frustrations and say the team is garbage and whatever else like you heard so much during a 92 win season. This is frustrating to me because there’s just…such a solid base there. You’re going to get 17 wins from paying Nico, PCA, Shaw, Busch, and Horton like $15m. Good job by Jed, but just…finish the horsefeathers job. I find myself replying to you mostly because I like you and respect your thoughts, but it’s also just a little bit frustrating that (almost) every other signing seems to be met by you with ‘he’s actually not that good’ and/or ‘he’s actually not that good of a fit’. I know we can’t sign everyone. And I know free agent signings, by the general nature of a salary cap-less market, are generally going to come in on the high end. Pete Fairbanks, who hasn’t had an ERA over 3.60 since before Covid, signed a one year deal for the amount of money that we ‘have’ to hold back to pay 2 months of a hypothetical trade targets salary to avoid paying an extra 20% on like $6m. A slightly diminished fastball shape or whatever does not make him worse than Ethan Roberts.

If you’re going to promise me that the cubs are willing to commit as many dollars as possible to needle moving offensive and starting pitching talent, much of which requires multiple years of commitment, then yes, hottovy/zombie a bunch of reclamation projects to death and I’ll be more than happy to live with the early struggles to get there. I, candidly, don’t buy that that is the case right now. That type of talent tends to be old, want years/opt outs/deferred money/etc, and also tends to be ‘overpaid’ by the general consensus math on salary vs production. If you’re going to keep yourself in the short term commitment pool, but continually ignore the biggest needle movers in that pool (elite relievers)….what are we doing here? Yeah, Dylan cease or Kyle schwarber or Alex Bregman in 2031 is maybe scary for 2031 me. But 60% of your 2026 rotation being shota, Taillon, and gallen so that you can keep the books clear for…the 2031 version of those pitchers is scary right now.

Sure. But what was the ultimate post Tucker vision last offseason? What was the vision at the trade deadline? How did that work out? I mean, and I mean this as a compliment…you’re better than this. The April games matters, and going 18-13 during a run of elite offense and losing out on the division to a team that went nuclear for 6 weeks matters. 92 wins is great. The core of this team that he painstakingly put together is great. Doesn’t mean there aren’t very valid criticisms on his past moves/non moves, and very clear evidence this offseason is shaping up in similar ways.

You should start a different poll asking if we've had a successful 21st century. This one is about the 92 win team from 2025.

The immediate veer into gender affirming care is such a tell. This makes me uncomfortable and therefore I'm going to label an entire political party as nuts.

Hoyer ended up with a pile of unspent cash at the end of last offseason because there was no one left to sign and then acquired no one of real substance (please do not make me get into a semantics argument about kittredge) at the trade deadline. I liked the tucker trade as much as anyone, but when you go out in game 5 of the NLDS because drew pomeranz and Colin Rea gave up home runs in the first four innings while coming nowhere near the first luxury tax, it’s real hard for me to say he made the best, or even a good, use of his budget.

If I walked into a party where an established group of people had been hanging out all night (slash most of the last couple years/decades), and like, ten minutes after I showed up, I was like 'alright, now we're going to play a game, and I'm going to be in charge of the game, and I'm going to constantly tell people to stay within the rules of the game'....I wonder how that would go over.

I mean…this could be a horsefeathers disaster.

I would like to put in a request for the cubs to, in the future, make the big move first, and not do the weird, disappointing-compared-to-the-alternatives move where the best we can do is like ‘well, this must mean a big move is coming’

This isn't really directed at you but since you started talking about 'maybe they have enough money'. I feel like we've all been using that first luxury tax threshold as the number because it's an easy benchmark, but at this point I think it's more just....is Jed willing to get a little rash on actual needle moving players or not. We reset the luxury tax penalty last year, and even if we somehow add like $40m in 2027 money between now and March, that only puts us at, per FG, $95m for 2027 going into next offseason. I don't know about you guys, but the idea of Hoyer adding $140m in AAV next offseason, even setting aside the potential strike, is highly, highly unlikely. So you're at a 20% penalty on any overages with a near-zero chance of falling into the repeater penalty, which is just not a significant enough penalty. Hoyer just needs to spend as much money as he can.

Jed Hoyer is really good at certain things. He identifies players, particularly pitchers, that are undervalued, that can be improved internally, that play better in front of an elite defense, etc. I think the Swanson conversation is another component of that. It's probably too pro-Hoyer to say that he uniquely happened to identify that Swanson was going to age the best and also be the cheapest, but I think it's very plausible that he looked at all of them and saw far less of a difference between the players than other teams did, and was content waiting it out and getting the one for the least money. From what I can recall, it was pretty similar to the Bellinger signing with the rest of the Boras Four. The Ian Happ/draft pick complaint doesn't hold weight for me either. The only player drafted after Happ who has outperformed him career to date is Austin Riley, and that's by 0.1 bWAR. No one drafted after Matt Shaw has outperformed Matt Shaw. Ditto Cade Horton. It was really bad for a stretch at the end of Epstein and the beginning of Hoyer. It's much better now. That skill set would play well at a midmarket organization. Someone like the Cardinals, or the Twins. Guys like Shota or Boyd or even Taillon scream the type of pitchers who show up and beat us twice a year while we complain about losing to crap pitchers. That skill set should, in my head, play EXTREMELY well at an organization with a stated budget of the first luxury tax line. Because being that good at the work around the margins and the middle market should let him throw his financial weight around on the top end. And he just refuses to do so, to my rapidly growing frustration. If he wants to stand on his ability to sign non-elite pitchers that are going to outperform their contracts, then maybe be less worried about what 2030 Kyle Schwarber is going to look like, because 2026 Kyle Schwarber would look pretty horsefeathers amazing in front of Suzuki and Busch. And maybe this is more of a Ricketts thing ultimately. We'll never know, and I don't trust the media reports on how active/close they are as much as some other people here. But...come on, just do something stupid once and see how it plays out.

Hey man, I've mostly stayed away from whatever this all is, but I will say that the combination of stating opinions as if they were facts: And then being like 'come on, debate me bro' just comes off as very grating. Based on what I've read, you're a high school student who has been interested in baseball for....a year, two years? And yet you constantly make it seem like you understand the business/economic side of this better than the rest of us, and then wonder why no one wants to engage with you.

I know it's still mid December...but....

The issue with, thus far, missing out on anything of substance on both the rotation and the offense is that you can't then fix the rotation with the spare offensive parts because you don't have as many spares. I'm less worried about filling a top slot in the rotation if I have Caissie and Ballesteros sitting around with no defined role on the 2026 Cubs. When they both have key roles, you're basically creating new problems with any major trade. Go do something.

Or, to reverse it, Hoyer and team NOT talking to any above average free agent is pretty close to malpractice. It's one hotel complex and there's like 8 agencies total.