Bertz

Mets still have SP depth, but you wonder if this pushes them over the edge on Cease.

I would guess the Iowa rotation looks quite a bit different than that to open the year. Brown and Horton seem almost certain to be there, and I suspect Assad's oblique injury combined with how stuffed the MLB bullpen is will push Assad to the Iowa rotation and have Rea open the year as the big league #5. Kilian I would think is done as a SP. and Noland got smacked around at Iowa a bit so dropping down to Tenn for a month or two isn't the end of the world for his development.

Baseballprospectus has the team at 90-91 wins Fangraphs Depth Charts (which is a combo of ZiPS and Steamer) has the team at 84-85 ZiPS only has the team at 86 I haven't dug into BPs numbers to know who it's particularly high/low on, but for those latter two if you presume the team is going to add Justin Turner and another reliever you can tack another win onto where they're at currently. If you want a reason to take the over I think it's because of how insanely talented Iowa is. But then again not sure guys are going to have the luxury of ~200 PAs of runway to get their feet under them before they figure things out like PCA got last year.

Matt Shaw - 13 Kevin Alcantara - 46 Cade Horton - 79 Jefferson Rojas - 80 Rojas got a grade bump since last month, but otherwise this is about what you'd expect based on his Cubs list. Cam Smith at #70, Hope and Ferris unranked.

FWIW ZiPS sees Caissie running BABIPs in the .340s and .350s the next few years. Low O-contact rates and plus power are generally a good combo for a sustainably high BABIP.

No Japan series (at least no playing the field) but good to go for domestic opening day is really starting to sound like the appropriate place to set expectations. Fingers crossed.

I'd expect one reliever not both. The bullpen's already nominally full, though the way the rumors have gone make you think they're pretty comfortable cutting Merryweather. Counsell's press conference on, I think Tuesday, talked about adding help at 1B and "not being afraid to add another reliever on an MLB contract." So between that and what's written by Trueblood and the Athletic Turner/Robertson is the best guess.

Citation?

Yeah the payroll stuff seems whatever. I actually rolled my eyes at Jed's attempt at retconning the Bellinger saga. I think payroll's legitimately down a smidge, I think Jed's just being his usual cagey self about what he can spend for leverage, and there's a bit of "well yeah of course an owner's going to be a big part of that convo" to the process stuff. Mooney just tonight reiterated the look to add a Turner/Canha type and said and that "the front office never stops looking for more pitching." So I'm not super worried that the wallet's literally empty. I think from an execution standpoint, the rotation is obviously a guy short. And Rea REALLY sticks out like a sore thumb. I don't understand committing that money, and maybe more importantly that roster spot, to someone whose value seems to be mostly not being bad in a wide variety of roles. That is a floor raising move you do when your pitching staff is paper thin. On this team it seems inevitable that he spends large chunks of the season just in the way. And if you're right that Jed is left holding a bag, then Rea could have very easily been Max Scherzer. There's pressure on the team to have either absolutely nailed the Boyd signing or have one of the young SPs step up in a big big way. Either are easy to envision, but jeez neither is something I'd want to count on in my walk year.

I'd love to see what quotes from him make you think that.

This is great. And I think it's worth noting that this is the extent of the impact, more or less turning a blue state into a red one tax wise. It's something with marginal value and not the "one weird trick for giving Shohei Ohtani $70M a year" that causes so much wailing and gnashing of teeth. (Also probably worth noting the Cubs deferred a bunch of Jason Heyward's deal....)

This is a little different from the playoff odds that live on FG every day. Dan Szymborski's system here actually does some accounting for depth, and it looks like that gave the Brewers a bit of a bump and accordingly knocked the Cubs down a peg.

If you think about it at the very top end a guy like Robertson might make $12M? That's 10% of what they were offering to commit to Bregman. And Turner's certainly going to make less than that. The semantics leave some wiggle room to disappoint, but this time yesterday our expectation if they didn't come down with Bregman was Turner and another reliever, and I don't think anything he said today contradicts that.

Yeah that definitely sounds like we can close the book on a big trade. Don't feel like it foregoes bench/bullpen moves though, especially with Counsell basically saying those were going to happen the day before yesterday.

It's very simple time value of money stuff. There's no advantage. It gives sticker shock, but it's very much above board. That's why every time when the actual terms of the deals come out they magically equate to a deal more or less in line with expectations.

Deferred money is not a competitive advantage lol

I think broadly at this level of player ownership is part of the convo. I think too with Jed being in his walk year guaranteeing ~$90M past his current contract involves some asking for permission.

- Check in one last time on Cease - Sign Turner and Robertson - Be open minded about options for that last bench spot Easy peasy. Then next month if the health situation is solid, you can consider some small deals to trade away some of the pitching depth that's not stashable at Iowa.

I didn't even think about how Bregman choosing Boston screws over the Cards until I saw this (Judge is a Brewers fan). Very nice little bonus.

The way the Athletic article about Turner was written, that sounded pretty far down the road. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a Cub tomorrow or Friday. The Pivetta thing likely means that Cease is close to getting dealt Hopefully the offseason can be done, from our perspective at least, by the weekend.

Chandler Rome is Houston's Athletic Writer, so that would seem to be that. And wowza, $40M per year!?

Given the ownership turmoil it seems very likely the Padres care more about real dollars than the cap. So Pivetta and Kings salaries being less than their cap hits is certainly a feature not a bug.