squally1313

Dansby Swanson put up a .277/.329/.447, 6.6 fWAR line in his age 27 season, we signed him to a $25m/year deal, he's continued to be a very good player and gets endlessly horsefeathers on by 90% of this board. Willy Adams put up a .251/.331/..462, 4.8 fWAR line in his age 28 season and suddenly we want him to pay him $25m/year or more to replace the very good second baseman we already have.

At $25m-$30m a year to get 2 years older and 0.9 fWAR better (based solely on 2024, he was a worse hitter and overall player by a lot in 2023)? No thanks!

ok sounds good, just sign Pete Alonso and put him at second then

Eh. Everyone wants Soto but doesn't want the guy who hit like Soto last year. Outside of 2026 specifically, we have more than enough money for a long term Tucker extension. I know Jed's never done it, but he's had like 3 offseasons. Every time Lowe starts in the middle infield or third, he'd be taking the place of a better player. I'd be fine adding him, but 'Tucker is too pricey so instead how about Brandon Lowe and a reliever' is laughable.

I just don't see this huge step up in aggressiveness between trading for a quality starting second baseman on a cheap contract for two years vs an elite outfielder on a $16m contract for one year. Like, trading for Brandon Lowe is pretty aggressive already right? I don't even know if the prospect ask would be substantially different. I'm more interested in filling the first bat than I am the last bat, and if it means living and dying with Amaya and the 2024 veteran catcher du jour, so be it.

If we're playing the 'what would Jed do/not do based on my pre-conceived notions of how he operates a team', then Jed's quote, literally this week, about not expecting a 'ripple effect' from Hoerner's injury and how he expects a 'full recovery' would seem to rule out getting a substantial middle infielder. If we're playing 'how do we improve the team', give me the guy with the Juan Soto wRC last year (AKA the guy that out-performed anyone on our offense besides Swanson, fWAR-wise, in only 78 games). I don't know how you say he's too expensive and then talk about leaving $20m for another bench bat and a reliever in the Lowe path. I don't want to spend $20m on the 11th guy and a reliver. Tucker's projected arbitration salary is $16m. Worrying about costing too much in minor league assets (incrementally over getting two years of Brandon Lowe) and then also wanting to add Lowe AND another free agent bat to make it even more unlikely the minor league assets will see Wrigley in 2025 doesn't make sense to me either. Go get Tucker and make Caissie or Shaw or Alcantara or whatever your bench bat, elite offense acquired, salary problem solved. Shea Langeliers? He somehow added negative defensive value catching last year, and here's a blind slash line comparison. One of them is the guy we should be trading prospects for and what he did in 2024, and the other one is the career line of our backup third baseman who everyone has wanted taken out back and shot for the last 4 months. Player A: .209/.291/.459 Player B: .224/.288/.450

Do some creative thinking. They aren't paying big money to a guy to rotate in and out of the lineup. They're paying the league minimum for PCA to do it. Maybe he starts in center! Maybe he pushes Bellinger to left and gives Happ a day off! Maybe he pushes him to right and gives Tucker a day off! Maybe he pushes him to first and gives Busch a day off! Does that make it sound better?

Yeah I mean, there's a lot of ways to make improvements, but ultimately you have, by 2024 fWAR, the 18th ranked staff and the 12th ranked offense. And you have multiple holes on your staff and not so many in your offense. And you have a bunch of near-MLB offensive prospects and not so many pitching prospects. You don't have to take on a bunch of variance risk necessarily, but there should be some retooling going on.

Yeah that may be just terrible syntax on my part. My rant was more 'given make or break status for Hoyer and current major league roster construction, keeping the AAA guys 5th on their respective depth charts for the indefinite future seems like a waste'. I know there are degrees here, but if we're in anything resembling 'win now' mode, it seems to follow that you take the AAA bats with no imminent opening and turn them into immediate help. I think the maybe implicit reason not to is that this core isn't good enough to truly go All In and mortgage the future for a two year push. But if that's the case...what are we doing here in the meantime?

This is probably an overreaction, but I still just don't see the logic in this being a make or break year for Hoyer, with a fully established line up of PCA and a bunch of veterans all signed for 2+ years...and then just sitting on Caissie, Alcantara, Triantos to a degree with maybe a little to prove in AAA but very clearly no path forward in the next two years. There's not even a plan to work them into an overstocked rotation idea. And I'm not saying they're guarantees, or that they're going to make the team better from the jump, but....having them sit at AAA for months next year, best case hitting well but everyone understanding the built in adjustment period in the majors, worst case slumping or getting hurt and getting the 'AAAA players' label...it just seems like a waste of value they currently hold, and we need all the value we can get right now.

Good for him. Go get your 100th win back at home.

35 players appeared (not even started) in 155 games. Preferences aside, asking or expecting Happ/pca/bellinger/suzuki/busch to all make 150+ starts is incredibly unrealistic.

I mean, we could, but: Tucker is a significantly better hitter (same wRC as Soto in 2024) There's a little less flexibility in that rotation. In the OF/1B side of things, Bellinger makes things much easier. In this one, Lowe is an average second baseman at best, with bad arm strength per Savant. Hoerner is a worse SS than Swanson. Lowe or Busch at third is kinda a non-starter for me. Etc.

This has been rehashed a few times, but signing another outfielder at the level of Happ/Suzuki/Belli/PCA or (ideally) better means you have 6 guys (those 4, FA signing, Busch) for 5 spots (OFx3, DH, 1B), which is 135 starts a piece, in a world where injuries don't exist. I'm less intrigued by guys like Santander and Teoscar since they are basically unplayable in RF already which means you run into a more acute crunch. Tucker being mostly capable of both corner outfielders doesn't exacerbate the too many good players problem.

And just like that, we return to having a holdover from the World Series team.

I just don't think Alonso is good enough to pay that kind of money to fit into what we have going on. The best hitter on our roster is Suzuki. Alonso pushes him to right field and makes Bellinger the de facto first back up. There's value in the redundancy, but do we want to pay $25m a year to upgrade from Bellinger's bat to Alonso's bat while downgrading from Bellinger's glove to Suzuki's glove? I think if you're going to spend significant resources on a bat, it needs to be a catcher, paired with another move, or someone a step above the legion of 115-125 wRC/2.5-3.5 fWAR guys we already have. Like, if you're going to sign an Alonso or Santander and make it that much harder for the AAA guys to come up, why not just skip the Alonso/Santander signing and trade whatever of the AAA guys you need to get Vlad or Tucker?

That Adames projection projection is higher than the crowdsourced one but still should make people feel better about the Swanson contract. Burnes at $30m a year but not some monstrous length where you're paying him into his 40s is a pretty acceptable use of money for me if you can't think of anything else more creative to do. Ditto for Fried, let the real analytic nerds figure out which one is better (or, given last offseason, maybe it's just whoever is around the longest). Think I'm out on the Teoscar/Santander/Alonso group. They aren't good enough hitters to anchor an offense around, and Suzuki's presence, both as a superior hitter and a should-be DH level of defense, means you're giving back some of the offense right away. Does Carlos Santana and his 161 wRC against lefties do anything for us at 1/$9m?

Yeah I don't see a lot of attractive free agent offensive options (besides the one obvious one). Keep the lines open on Rooker, Tucker, Vlad, etc through a trade, and if so then you start to lean harder on turning the AAA bats into MLB pitching. But if you don't make a serious offensive upgrade, throw money at the rotation/bullpen, minimize the chances of giving significant PAs to offensive anchors, lean on above average production up and down the line up and hope for Caissie or Shaw to show they're elite.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2025-top-50-mlb-free-agents/ Here are the FG predictions. Haven't dug in yet, but I'm inclined to lean on these a little heavier than any of the other ones I've seen.

I think it's 3 things for me. In a perfect healthy world, there's one spot in the lineup where you could foresee the benefit of having Tauchman PH (catcher). And that's before we potentially try and upgrade that position. And that's also before the idea of getting a lefty masher, who further reduces that opportunity, or trading/for signing a true starter bat, which pushes a current starter to the bench to take those PH spots. In a regular injury world, you still have to gameplan out pretty pessimistic scenarios where you'd be like 'man, I really wish we had Mike Tauchman'. Suzuki could slide back into the outfield, Caissie is knocking on the door, Alcantara isn't far behind. He's still good, and has value for a team that needs a cheap 3rd/4th outfielder. We don't need those things, but we need other things. Trade him.

Agreed, while I'd prefer all the post-2026 FA guys here because I don't see any better options for 2025, it's a different decision process next offseason. Hopefully by then you've either brought in or can point to a couple of the Shaw/Caissie/Alcantara as solid/elite talent that lets you offload a Happ, Hoerner, Suzuki, etc for some cash relief.

Possibly, but you're still looking at that being the only money coming off the books vs the $50m we had this offseason and the much higher number after 2026, and that's before arbitration raises to Steele and Paredes.

There's an additional surcharge if we go more than $20m over, but not a terrible one (penalty percentage goes from 30% to 42%). Over $40m past the limit it starts to get pretty painful (think we move from 30% to 72%), but I don't think anyone thinks that is a realistic outcome here. Percentage goes from 30% to 50% if we cross the threshold again in 2026, and given the lack of expiring deals after 2025 (Swanson/Bellinger/Happ/Suzuki/Taillon/Imanaga/Hoerner are all signed through 2026), that's probably the real motivator in staying under this year and resetting. You'd probably expect them to fall back under after 2026.

Manning and Rodgers didn't win anything, but the Steelers, who haven't won a playoff game since 2016 (right around the ultimate decline of a, at least borderline, HOF QB, are 'winning without them'.