squally1313

No arguments that we can get him to 300 PAs if we wanted to. I'd just rather not....we've got like 10 years of PCA and Busch and I don't want to have to worry about finding handcuffs for them every year without a much bigger sample size that says they can't handle LHPs. Obviously you lose defense in a Busch for Turner swap, the knock on effects for him filling in for PCA (worse defense in center, worse defense in right) are similar. Again, fine signing him if we can't find anything better to do with the money. You're basically making Canario irrelevant if you're saying he hedges PCA and also Suzuki fills in to spell Turner and Happ, which I'm not going to lose sleep about, but in that case go get some pinch runner/defense only outfielder? But ultimately it's the timing/ordering of all these hypotheticals that is making me real hesitant. Turner at $8m means Bregman is off the table (or else a Nico trade is essentially a guarantee). I'm probably getting too caught up in these fading starting pitching hopes, I don't know. We don't know for sure that Turner is just sitting around waiting for us to offer him a contract, so these are all hypotheticals. Taking Suarez off the Padres hands seems like a good way to lower asking price for one of the starters, which is another $9m. Taking a larger contract (Haniger) could get us a starter elsewhere.

But which ABs in question? If we're stripping out defense and base running, we're basically just talking about pinch hitting right? He's not pinch hitting for Happ, Tucker, Suzuki, Swanson, Hoerner. If he becomes someone who has to take key PAs from Shaw, we probably have a problem bigger than a Justin Turner solution. For Busch and PCA, it's probably only against LHPs. Amaya or Kelly sure, but they're going to try to avoid using the backup catcher whenever possible. I think the theory beyond that is that injuries happen, which they do, and Turner theoretically slots into the lineup in case of an injury to Happ, PCA, Tucker, Suzuki, or Busch. I'd rather that just be Caissie. Overpay for Cease or King, overpay for a Marlins starter, overpay for a Mariners starter, sign Robertson, take Suarez off the Padres hands as a salary dump, sign one of the crappy starters (Corbin, Gibson, Flexen, Lynn, Quintana....whoever the pitch labs likes the best) to build redundancies in the rotation against injuries as a lot of the supporting cast barely pitched last year (and, in the case of Assad/Birdsell, are already dealing with things). If none of the above, or if we do one of those things and still can fit Turner and TDL space, then, yes, give me Turner.

And ZIPS (the most optimistic projection for Turner) gives him 1.0 fWAR in 478 PAs vs Berti getting 1.3 fWAR in 319. It's not an either/or situation, we can have both, but Turner is still little more than a 'use it (the money) or lose it' situation for me. He's basically there to start against Chris Sale and Blake Snell and then pinch hit for Michael Busch if they're able to get a LHRP against him? If we can't trust Canario and his .961 OPS against RHPs in AAA last year to do this for PCA (and maybe even Busch), then what is he even doing here? We currently have $30m to spend. Turner is a nice luxury if we still have this money this time next week, but there's better ways to spend this money.

Conceding the point on Busch potentially being Bad against LHPs but not sure if you want to totally take away that part of his development. Long term (or at least for the next two years) having a dedicated DH in Suzuki and a short side platoon first baseman on the roster makes you a little inflexible. The guys making up the bench on Opening Day, as presently constructed, are absolutely not great. But the league wide average on pinch hitting last year was an 83 wRC, so not sure I'd say it's uniquely a black hole as much as it is a league wide black hole. Further, outside of an injury to Amaya and maybe Nico or PCA, none of those guys would be named the starter in the event of a long term injury. The absolute maximized Cubs roster on Opening Day has a bench of like, Kelly, Caissie, Berti, and Ballesteros. but that's just not practical given the opportunities available. I think the next up first basemen in the system aren't Caissie/Long/Ballesteros but rather Happ and Tucker.

Yeah someone on the roster/next man up list has to be able to do this, a handful of them have before, theoretically Shaw won't be spiking every throw over to first like Morel was, the opposing lineups are going to be stocked with RHBs....it's fine. If you don't think a starter or Bregman is going to happen and you need to spend the money somewhere, fine, bring on Turner, he's essentially the next man up for any injury to the four outfielders (PCA might be a stretch) and Busch, maybe he can be a second hitting coach. But it's not some glaring hole to me. As for the 40 year old FAs....eh. Cubs were linked to basically every free agent besides the ones at the top of the list, and they've shown a tendency to wait out the offseason, which I think they have in common with veteran free agents. You could put together a list of 35 year olds they were linked to (Eovaldi, Chafin, Canha, Boyd), a list of 30 year olds (Bregman, Bader, Polanco, Kelly, Moncada), etc.

Turner is fine in a professional hitter type sense but he's also 40 and has had over 500 PAs every year for the last four seasons so even if he's willing to take on a pretty limited role, there's plenty of obvious red flags (wOBA trend, xwOBA trend, moving from consistent ABs to mostly pinch hitting, etc). I think I....just don't care about the lack of a true backup first baseman all that much? Like, the whole Bregman sequence of events ends with our backup shortstop likely being....Vidal Brujan? A guy who hasn't played about AA? Berti, who didn't play it once in 2024? And that seems far more difficult to fix than just finding some 28 year old AAAA dude to keep it warm while you spend a week getting Happ, Tucker, Caissie, Ballesteros, Canario, whoever (back) up to speed. Just go get a starter.

lol because that happened that one time two years ago right

On one hand I want to make fun of people freaking out about early February injuries with no idea of the severity. On the other hand, that's our 6th and 7th starters and we're one more away from having to slot Jordan Wicks into the current top 5, so maybe go and get one of those Padres guys, thanks

I mean, they certainly could ask for more. He went to SD and put up a career high in IP and fWAR and a career low in FIP and xFIP. As free agent contracts get larger and larger, his arbitration number becomes more and more attractive. I'm personally fine overpaying in a non-Shaw way, but aware I'm being at least semi-impatient/irrational/not caring enough about the future. Right now I think I'm confident in a 'this team is better than they're getting credit for' way. Putting Cease at/near the top of the rotation turns us into a scary team.

Yeah my Samsung TV didn't have it as of last year. Probably the excuse I need to switch over to a Roku situation because the Samsung interface seemingly keeps getting slower. I had minimal problems with Air Play last year. Probably won't reactivate the channel until April though.

Yeah seriously. Anyways, my vote is to just have it automated by your team. Business has picked up, excitement should be higher going into the year, Bregman or not, but I think a consistent, generic first going up every morning would still let some form of the older traditions continue. You can still have a Mad Men gif winning streak, just has to develop in the responses as opposed to waiting for the thread creator to getting around to create the topic. Come playoffs...maybe a different opinion.

Wait, the Astros are out on Bregman because of a guy with 20 PAs above high A but we should get him and send the guy with the AAA wRC of 142 back to Iowa again? Serious teams don't make major league decisions based on a guy who just barely got to AA. He's the 59th ranked prospect in baseball, should we be keeping a spot warm for Triantos (73rd)?

Yeah exactly. No one can take on salary? Fine, find the most desperate team (ie the Padres) and fleece them (for Cease and/or King). Or, there are teams that can take on salary? Cool, they probably want a really good second baseman/shortstop at $12m a year and would happily toss some controlled names at the Padres to send King our way.

I mean I just threw out names. If the Mariners can't stomach a $12m 4 win player, fine, I guess. I'm sure some team could. If every team is supposedly looking to lose salary, either now or in a hypothetical future, then yes, trades seem very hard to accomplish.

I mean, those are nitty gritty details. Take on Haniger and a portion of his salary or whatever.

To be fair to chibears, he mentioned getting a third team involved in some sort of lose Hoerner/pick up King situation. Hoerner to Seattle, Ford to San Diego, King to the Cubs as a (very loose) framework.

The part I can mostly suss out is that the Astros original deal was 6/$156m, and he's made $30m annually the last two years, so I think he at least miffed (offended?) by their offer being a pay decrease. Also saw something about him wanting to beat Devers in AAV, who is making $31.3m or so. There was an improved offer today, who knows what that means, in the same report it says it's still not good enough. Then there's also the matter of how much of it is deferred. If it's 6/$200 but paid out $10m at a time over the next 20 years, that's probably not going to do it either. I can't imagine the Cubs are offering AAV much higher than that Devers deal. Past that, even with a Hoerner tradea you still end up a little tight. But something like 4 years, $100m, with the actual cash split being $40m in year one and then $20m the next three years, gives him an attractive payday with the opt-out chance to go establish himself as the top AAV 3B next offseason.

1. When have you seen this play out 'too often'? 2. We all read the second paragraph of that tweet right? 3. Does the season start tomorrow?

Two points, one on each side: I agree with 1908 and KC that Hoerner is very undervalued by BBTV and we should ignore that. The projections for Schmidt as shown above show 108 innings pitched, and I'm not totally sure what drives that number, but I was under the impression it was some sort of dynamic playing time projection analysis where he is coming in as the 5th/6th starter in the current Yankees rotation and that's just what normal fringe starters usually get in terms of innings. He threw 96 total last year and 159 in 2023 so he's capable of more. Basically what I'm saying if he got traded to the White Sox tomorrow he'd be their opening day starter, I would imagine his innings would go up (to that 150 IP number, maybe), and I would then imagine his projected fWAR would increase because I can't imagine his rate stats would take too much of a hit, right? Said another way, the rate stats give every pitcher some miniscule amount of projected fWAR per inning, and then it gets multiplied by how much they think he's going to play, which is somewhat a factor of the roster he's on. But I might be thinking about that wrong.

Not to muddy the waters even further, but I feel like you want to weigh short term production/projections over the longer term ones. A. They're more reliable, and B. a win now is more valuable than a win 3 years from now. If I wanted to overcomplicate the math, I'd weigh 2025/2026/2027 as like 50/30/20.

Have to assume the medicals were real scary and appeal to authority on Flaherty, because using the money on him seems a lot easier than anything else we're currently discussing.

I would have guessed that the sample sizes are too small either way to make a definitive lean one way or another and you should just default to 'success' in the regular season translating to 'success' in the playoffs, especially on the offensive side of the ball. 'Success' being combined offensive and defensive contributions. Certainly could be wrong, but I think however you optimize your team for the regular season should be the way you approach the playoffs (setting aside differences in pitching approach because of the additional days off, etc).

FG has the 2026 at $112m in guaranteed contracts for 2026. In 2025 we're paying $27m to arb eligible players, call that $30m for 2026, and then they're estimating $11.4m in 2025 for 'for players not yet eligible for arbitration and other players with non-guaranteed contracts'. We can keep that consistent for 2026. Plus $2.5m for Bellinger, $2.5m for 40 man roster guys in the minors, plus $18m for benefits, plus $1.66m for the bonus pool, you're at $177.6m. I think the argument pre-supposes you're either paying Tucker ($40m) or replacing him in the aggregate with that kind of cash. Rea, Pressly, Brasier 'need' to be replaced as well. Honestly it's not as automatic as I thought it was going to be when I started typing it out, unless I'm missing something.

This doesn't actually hold up, right?

Yep. It's February 6th, you can't say that you want a 6-7 year deal AND that you want in excess of $30m/year. If it hasn't come yet, it's not coming. The long term offer (6/160) is presumably still on the table from Houston, or else you're looking at us and Boston I guess for the short term cash grabs. I know Detroit is out there but I must have missed the stories on them drastically increasing their budgets. They ended up at $121m for CBT purposes last year and are already at $156m for this year with the Flaherty signing (which, cash wise, is front loaded). Obviously all these teams can afford it, but that's a big leap.