champaignchris

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?

Matt Kemp is really the only “bad money” the Dodgers have at this point. If they could shed his contract without taking on a worse one or degrading their MLB roster, they would have already. But Kemp was the bad contract they had to take in order to get rid of the rest of their bad contracts. But I believe McCullough on Darvish’s motivations. We’re at 6 weeks of the Cubs as the most serious bidder for Darvish’s services. If both sides wanted it, it would have happened by now. Darvish better be careful. He’s the Twins signing Alex Cobb or Lance Lynn away from seeing the bottom drop out of his contract offers.

It's fermented fish sauce. And is a vital ingredient for meat loaf, cocktail sauce, sloppy Joes, Bloody Marys, steak marinades... Basically all the good food has Worcestershire sauce in it.

When they’re paying Cain $16M during his year 35 season, do you think they’ll fondly look back on their 3rd place finish in 2018?

My take: If five of the Brewers’ position players have better seasons than they’ve ever had before, the Brewers might win more than 75 games!

Oh, and Rolen only getting 10% of the vote is a complete joke.

With Rivera and Halladay being the only new candidates that will enter the HoF discussion next year, I think E Martinez and Mussina make it in 2019. Then I’m guessing Bonds and Clemons finally make it in with Jeter in 2020.

They managed to put four guys into the Hall who deserved it - Vlad, Chipper, Thome and Trammel (with the Veterans’ Committee). Also letting two in who don’t deserve it (Hoffman and Morris) is better than the petulant “nobody gets in” thing that had been going on recently.

Makes me curious how active the Cubs will be on Andrew Miller next year. Seems like the best way to do the designated Eck-style closer is to also have the floating fireman the way the Indians and Yankees have recently. While Edwards, Cisheck, fixed Justin Wilson, and Strop are all nice pitchers, no one has done the floating fireman thing better than Miller over the last few years.

I have an unhealthy affinity for the Reds. Votto is, of course, an amazing player. Gennett, Suarez, Duvall and Schebler, if nothing else, at least knock the ball around that tiny little ballpark of theirs to keep things interesting. Raisel Iglesias throws 100 mph out of the pen. The question for them is if they can get any health at all from DeSciafani and Finnegan. If they can get full seasons from their decent young pitchers and have a serviceable starting staff, they'll be a fun team to watch... you know, for a 70-ish win team.

Villar and a bunch of prospects for Castro and Yellich? They have the minor league talent to pull that off?