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squally1313

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Everything posted by squally1313

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. squally1313
    No but Nico can so it’s fine
  6. squally1313
    My god. As usual, I’m an idiot.
  7. 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?
  8. squally1313
    Those four, plus Shaw at pre-arb, Busch/PCA/Amaya all in their first arb year. Like 23 WAR for $30m?
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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?
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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?
  17. squally1313
    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.
  18. squally1313
    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.
  19. squally1313
    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.
  20. squally1313
    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.
  21. squally1313
    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.
  22. squally1313
    This Cam Smith? Who is now a corner outfielder apparently?
  23. squally1313
    Very fair and correct.
  24. squally1313
    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.
  25. squally1313
    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?
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