champaignchris

So, the Cubs’ shenanigans are cheeky and fun, while other teams’ shenanigans are cruel and tragic. Which makes them not really shenanigans at all. Evil shenanigans.

Or the Yankees. Makes the Mets look like they really overpaid for Frazier.

I like living in a world where a Cubs season with 90 wins, a division title, and a League Championship Series appearance is considered a disappointment.

So you don’t think last year’s .368 babip is sustainable?

Diamondbacks and Brewers would work for Walker, too.

DeJong will make more money this year than Corey Seager, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa and Trea Turner combined. So, it was clearly a move they had to make. Maybe I give the Cards’ front office too much credit.

Addison Russell is 4 or 5 months younger. DeJong was a 4th round pick, never ranked as a top 100 prospect, and had a .780-ish OPS in his only full year of minor league play. Only 12 months ago, Diaz was as the Cardinals’ SS of the future and DeJong wasn’t on anyone’s radar. I’m fully prepared to be proven wrong about this, but I strongly suspect that DeJong doesn’t amount to much.

The Cardinals have so many regression candidates... basically, their entire lineup either significantly outperformed their career numbers last year or are getting old. Pham, Wong, Gyorko, Ozuna, and DeJong aren't all going to repeat what they did last year. Probably not close. This may be the year that Fowler (32), Carpenter (32), and Molina (36) start showing their age. They might be a very good offense. They also might completely fall off the table. They're low floor/high ceiling both on the mound and at the plate.

It’s amazing how this off-season continues to drag on with unsigned players. Using the powers granted to me by me, I’ve decided to apportion the remaining free agents in the way that makes the most sense so we can get on with the baseball season. Luccroy to Nats. Walker to D-Backs. Moustakas to Yankees. Arrieta to Twins. Cobb to Brewers. Lynn to Mariners. Holland to Angels. Was that so hard?

Since the Rays seem intent on trading anyone who got an extra base hit for them last year, any chance the Cubs can kick the tires on Ramos or Kiermeier? Kiermeier would probably be pretty pricey, but Ramos would be an upgrade at backup catcher and might not cost much more than money to get.

Chatwood is two years younger and when adjusted for park factors put up numbers not all that worse than Cobb in only 50 fewer innings. It’s really hard to look at those home/road splits and not think, “This guy might be rrrrrrrrilly good if they got him the Hell out of Denver.” (Cue Bob Seger... ...I probably just really dated myself.) I think Cobb will still sign for a bit more than Chatwood, but I won’t be too beat up over it if he doesn’t. Also remember no draft pick lost.

lol - he's going to suck. Yeah. There’s no way that doesn’t end badly.

I think Zobrist is as good as gone heading into 2019 regardless of whatever else is going on. The only real question is how much the Cubs have to pay for someone else to take him. Now, if Heyward can post a 760-770 OPS (career .756 even with the last two seasons), things could get interesting with him.

So, has it been long enough to retire the theory that everyone was waiting on Darvish and that after he signed there'd be a cascade of other signings? Maybe the new theory should be that everyone other than the Cubs and Brewers are colluding?

He's probably just fine having the National League version of the Yankees (the Dodgers) in another division. Makes winning the division more certain, but you still have to beat a damn good team to get to the WS.

Quoted when I meant to edit.

I need this explained to me. The Brewers just announced a policy where to purchase tickets for Brewers-Cubs series, the purchaser needs a valid Wisconsin address. It’s an effort to keep Cubs fans away from games.

I think you’re underestimating the possible entertainment value of the highest payroll in Brewers history struggling to a third place finish.

quoted when I meant to edit. oops.

The owners can all get together and decide they want to make a bargain with the players in the CBA that will reduce the amount the players will get paid. If players agree and sign off on the CBA, that's not collusion. That's just bargaining. The owners' side got together and made an offer to the players that the players accepted. If the owners are doing something outside of what's allowed in the CBA - as in 1987, when they came to an additional secret agreement among themselves that they wouldn't make offers to other teams' free agents - that's collusion. In this case, it looks to me like the owners are just playing within the rules. As shitty, one-sided, and slanted towards the owners as they may be. I'm not against the players getting theirs. I'm just amazed that none of them (or more precisely, their agents) saw this coming with the new CBA. They're doing the functional equivalent of agreeing to work for $8.00 an hour and then coming back to the boss a few days later and saying, "How dare you only pay me $8.00 an hour!"

I think there's a broader picture of a system in which good teams don't need to spend a ton on free agents (because they're already good) and bad teams are punished for doing so in draft picks and international signing restrictions. Bad teams have to choose between signing difference making free agents or drafting and signing amateurs, and recent history has shown the latter course to be the more effective long term in terms of wins and losses. Front offices aren't colluding. They're just making the best decisions they can based on the system as it exists. There are perverse incentives all over the place that make players over 29 who aren't the most elite of the elite have lower value than they probably should. All of these issues existed before the last CBA expired and look to have been exacerbated with the new CBA. The weird thing to me is not that the players are complaining. It's that the players completely rolled over on the new CBA without fighting on some of the very issues that are occurring right now. The time for the players to work on these things was 18 months ago. I'm not sure what the players want the owners to do about it now, unless they think they can get them to renegotiate the terms of the CBA with 4 years left on the one they just agreed to. I think their better bet is to fire Tony Clark and his team, live with the CBA for four years, and then get ready for a fight in 2021 or 2022.

This isn’t 1987 when Andre Dawson signed a contract for less than $500,000 a year. Darvish probably has at least two $100+ million contract offers that he can accept at any time. Players like Cobb and Holland and Hosmer were all offered $17M qualifying offers that they could have taken, earning them more money next year than they’re probably worth, but they turned it down because they thought they’d get more money. The Cubs would have signed Kris Bryant to an extension at any point in the last 48 months that would have probably earned him $50M+ over what he’s going to make in his arbitration years. MLB teams will pay good money for good players. We’ll see that next year when Kershaw and Harper will be vying to become the highest paid player in baseball history. What I see is less collusion and more players failing to adjust to to the market created by the new CBA and front offices’ realization that (to paraphrase Theo) the system as it stands punishes teams that win 75 games instead of 65 games.

Other than the Twins and Cubs, who is going to sign a high price starter? One of Arrieta, Darvish or Cobb isn’t going to have a spot at the price they think they deserve.

The players and agents bitching about no free agents being signed makes me wonder whether any of them read the most recent CBA that went into effect this year. That's the big change from '17 to '18 more than anything else.

Dumping two of those 3 to sign Darvish is pretty close to a wash as far as projected WAR is concerned. Would the Dodgers pay $10M more this year to pick up a half game in the standings at the best, not to mention the $60+M in additional liability over the next 3 or 4 seasons?