Bertz

Have you seen this thing? https://www.mlb.com/cubs/schedule/2025/fullseason April is ROUGH, and the first two weeks of May aren't a lot better - The Cubs have 3 separate series against the Dodgers - 8 of the first 14 series are against teams Pecota and Fangraphs project to make the playoffs - 3 more of those 14 series are against teams projected over .500 - The Cubs only face two outright bad teams: the Pirates and A's, and both series are on the road. The Pirates have an off day before our series, so you have to presume they'll line things up to give us Paul Skenes and Jared Jones Even if this team is the goods and ends up winning 95 games, it's very possible they enter May under .500 and don't start pulling away from there until closer to Memorial Day. That said it's not totally doom and gloom. There are some silver linings even early in the year - After the Cubs leave New York on 5/11, it's nearly a month before they play another good team (YMMV on the Tigers, otherwise the Phillies on 6/9) - Because of the Japan series, the team has A TON of off days early on. Except May 1st, every Thursday until June is an off day, with a couple Mondays sprinkled in as well - Since the Cubs open in Arizona, they knock out a "west coast trip" without it actually being a lengthy trip

Only 3 SPs in MLBTR's top 50 free agents have signed for less than MLBTR predicted: - Max Scherzer was predicted at 1/$16M and got 1/$15M - Shinnosuke Ogasara was predicted at 2/$12M and got 2/$3.5 - Flaherty was predicted at 5/$115M and got 3/$35M (easily reachable 2/$45M) The rest got paid more, guys like Fried and Eovaldi and Buehler got a lot more. Flaherty's not old. He doesn't have a QO. This isn't a situation like Jordan Montgomery last winter where Boras sacrificed him to try and get Blake Snell paid. I think if you look at this situation critically for even a few moments your mind has to go to medicals.

I just listened to Sharma and Mooney's podcast from over the weekend. Not a ton there, but: - They sound pretty down on the likelihood of a Padres deal happening. They think Preller and Hoyer are just both guys who talk through everything, and it doesn't mean anything is likely or close. Never rule out Preller making a deal of course - Similarly they doubt Bregman happens. It just seems like he'll get $150M+ so why would he be put in a position to need a Bellinger deal from the Cubs - They also shut down Kenley Jansen. He's actually a guy the Cubs would probably be quite into, but he's very insistent on being *the* closer. He's 53 saves from 500 for his career. He's got a chance at passing Hoffman or Rivera if he continues to age gracefully. He's not going somewhere to be in the mix or to set up - Cubs weren't big on Estevez, aren't big on Finnegan, but the Robertson talk seems real - They didn't use the term "opportunistic" like they did in last week's article, but you could tell that's the vibe. Jed has some money to burn, very few other teams do still, and this is a time of year where you can get some deals

If you think Jack Flaherty barely getting more money than Matt Boyd says more about Boyd than it does about Flaherty, you've probably lost the plot.

ZiPS got folded into Fangraphs Depth charts yesterday, so we've got a quorum on public projections. We're waiting for Szymborski to do his run that dynamically alters playing time, but with the Cubs and Brewers both having plus depth I don't think that will alter the 2-way race very much. Steamer - Cubs 2 games better than Brewers ZiPS - 6 games Pecota - 10 games Steamer handles defense in a way that some might call conservative and others might call silly, which is probably why the gap is lowest there. And it makes sense? You look at these teams up and down by position and you take the Cubs everywhere except Catcher (where admittedly the gap is huge), the bullpen, and maybe left field. And if the Cubs' internals are anywhere between ZiPS and Pecota it probably colors how you want to handle the rest of this offseason. Raising the floor by grabbing David Robertson and your favorite RHH bench bat and waiting until July to make a big trade is probably pretty prudent.

Good lord how messed up is his back?

Fangraphs folded in ZiPS projections to all of their depth charts and projected standings. When they were just using Steamer, the Cubs were 2 games up on the Brewers and Cards. Now they're up 4 on the Brewers and almost 6 on the Cards.

I thought this was an interesting read. I like the idea of visualizing reliever usage like this. It'll be interesting to watch Counsell with a hopefully effective bullpen this year. I tend to think from watching him with the Brewers he's a top right guy. Fans on the other hand tend to want more of that Marlins' strategy.

Looking through Jim Callis' feed I don't see him saying it anywhere, but they're usually not far behind the Top 100. I'd assume the next week or so.

My guess, assuming we're not getting a bunch of outright lies, is this is the state of play: - Something about the Astros offer sucks. Deferrals, a vesting option. something like that. Bregman wants to go back so decent chance this works still - The Tigers offer is decent. Probably on the low end of what Bregman would take, but he doesn't want to go to Detroit so he's hoping someone else steps up - Cubs are offering something Bellinger-esque - Red Sox are offering something stupid. 4/100 with no options or something like that. They're going to get a "we tried" out of this - Mets haven't seriously engaged, but are interested until Alonso inevitably re-signs And thus we wait for someone to step up or Bregman to take Detroit's money.

It's very funny to me that all of the local folks are like "yeah they want him but only on their terms don't get too excited, it's probably not gonna happen." At the same time all of the less...scrupulous...national writers are pushing this HARD.

I don't understand why these minor league guys keep signing here. From the team's POV, whatever. There's little to no cost and you have Spring Training to see if anybody makes some changes that pop off the page. From the player's POV, has no one looked at a depth chart? There is enough talk about the Cubs and free agent relievers that you can pencil in the Cubs adding another late inning option. Let's call it Robertson so I have a real name and not a placeholder. The Cubs' MLB bullpen will thus look like this heading into ST: CL - Pressly SU - Hodge*, Robertson, Pearson MR - Morgan*, Merryweather Matchup Guys - Miller, Thielbar Hodge and Morgan with the * are the only two guys with minor league options. Both look exceedingly unlikely to open the year in the minors. That's fine though, there are always injuries, right? But these are the guys already eying a spot at Iowa wanting to be that next man up. I have to separate them into three categories because there are so many: On the 40 man, no MiLB options: Keegan Thompson, Rob Zastryzny, On the 40 man, has MiLB options: Palencia, Little, Neely, Kilian, Hollowell Not on the 40 man: Phil Bickford, Trevor Richards, Brooks Kriske, Ben Heller, Brad Keller, Brandon Hughes Then you have the starters! If Assad or Brown or Horton come up sans injury it pushes Rea to the pen, which kills another spot. If you're a Brad Keller type and your career is hanging by a thread, I don't know why you wouldn't go to like the White Sox or something where you can actually count the number of guys you have to pass on the depth chart on your fingers. Or is this a compliment to Hottovy: these guys are coming here hoping to get fixed and go somewhere else in April?

Have to assume this is the Tigers and this saga is about over

I do want Cease dealt even if it's not here. The Cubs' April schedule is so damn brutal, and part of that is facing the Padres twice. Even though in an objective sense Cease going to the Mets is lateral for us, punting an extra hard game or two to later in the year would be nice.

He's not as good of a roster fit after Berti but I still would have liked.

Yeah I think I've been as guilty of insisting "the Cubs have got to trade something" as anybody over the last 6 months. But the Paredes trade opening up a full time spot for Shaw and finding out that Alcantara has another option year in 2026 kills much of that urgency. I would like the Cubs to make a big trade now. But spending the rest of the offseason funds on boring stuff and heading into the trade deadline with a tall stack of chips is A Okay.

Yeah for the Cubs it's closer to 75 usually

Circling back to this. The Dylan Cease trade last year was for Drew Thorpe - A very good SP prospect at AA who made the back half of most of the offseason Top 100s Jairo Iriarte - A good SP prospect at AA for whom opinions diverged a bit more than Thorpe. Fangraphs 100'd him while MLB didn't for instance Samuel Zavala - A LatAm bonus baby who performed very well in Low A as an 18 year old Steve Wilson - A young RP with good stuff, a good ERA, and trash peripherals This isnt perfect, but the equivalent from us right now would be something like Horton, Birdsell, Jefferson Rojas, and Keegan Thompson? And that was for two years of Cease, not 1. So honestly, I'm not even sure a Caissie or Alcantara should be in bounds, especially if we're taking back Suarez. Assad, Wicks, and Preller's favorite non-Hodge reliever might be more appropriate. And he can address LF with the $$ he saves.

On the prospect depth piece, it's also worth noting the pre-arb players that don't show up on prospect lists 0-1 year service: PCA, Brown, Hodge 1-2 year service: Amaya, Busch. Wicks 2-3 years service: Assad That's on top of the 4 hitters (Alcantara, Cassie, Triantos, Ballesteros) at Iowa who've shown up on a Top 100 list over the last week. Plus Horton and Birdsell. Plus the complimentary bench/bullpen types. You don't want to recklessly burn through this list but you can comfortably dip into it 2-3 times over the next 12-18 months IMO.

Rental pitchers don't generally net anything close to that because of pitcher attrition. Hell just look at Cease specifically. Last spring two years of Dylan Cease didn't return a headliner anywhere near the caliber of Shaw, it certainly wouldn't now.

I'd consider Caissie a much better roster fit for the Padres than Alcantara - Jackson Merrill was great in CF last year so the coverage there is a pure nice to have - The Padres are also bad at whichever of 1B/DH Arraez isn't playing on a given day. Arraez may not be long for the org on top of that - When you look at their lineup it doesn't feel like it *needs* a lefty, but from last year the prominent departures in LF are Jurickson Profar (switch) and David Peralta (lefty) so you'd assume they'd prefer a lefty backfill. Especially since Eguy Rosario appears ready to step into a bigger role from the right hand side All that being said, in this situation I think you take the player you like more since a year from now those roster considerations may be wildly different. But in my mind's eye I see Caissie and two SPs, and the real haggling is over which SPs.

Sample sizes are obviously tiny, but Brown didn't have a TTO penalty last year. He also only faced three teams twice: two of those he pitched a strong game the second time and the 3rd, against the Reds, was his last game before his season ending injury (so it buddies the causation). I'm not going to make major declarations off of 55 innings, but I don't think we've seen anything from a performance standpoint that says he can't be a SP. If you want to throw in the towel early off of durability that's fine, but also IMO feels premature. The other thing is that he is CLEARLY our best young pitchers on a per inning basis right now. It's not close. Given the number of young SPs the Cubs have, and the Cubs market status allowing them to pay market rate for guys like Taillon and Boyd, you have to prioritize the potential star power of Brown (and Horton) when considering some sort of assett consolidation deal. Even if Brown and Assad for instance have the same expected value, a team in the Cubs' position should prioritize Brown's vastly superior 80th+ percentile outcomes.

Keith Law ranked the Cubs as having the #6 farm system, which IMO feels a bit rich. Law's rankings have always been focused on the top tier of the system though. So it is consistent for him to love the farm right now after having been comparatively light on it the past few years.

Didn't actually read the full Levine article until just now, so completely missed this I would love Jorge Polanco. You'd assume this means Moncada is still on the table as well. Also implies Brujan probably shouldn't be in too big a hurry to find a place to live in Chicago.

Bregman’s not much (any?) better than Hoerner. He's more offensively inclined but not really better. If you do the Nico/Bregman swap the benefits are - The lineup fits together way more nicely - You presumably get something substantial back for Hoerner - Nico is part of the "cliff" after 2026. Happ, Nico, Seiya, Taillon, and Boyd all hit FA. Not all of those guys are tough replacements, but there's something to be said about that much turnover all at once regardless of impact. Bregman would presumably be on a 3 year deal with an opt out after 1, so swapping him in for Nico smooths out some of that roster churn