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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    lol
  2. Bertz
    I'm torn on Montgomery, and admittedly haven't thought about him since Rea. On the one hand, he seems like one of the most obvious bounce-back candidates in the league. The number of guys who have signed late, ate crap for a season, and then resumed their careers like. nothing happened is fairly lengthy. And with Montgomery especially, it's easy to draw a line from abbreviated spring training -> not at 100% physically -> velo drop -> poor performance. If Montgomery is throwing 93+ a few starts into the season it's pretty easy to say he's back. On the other hand, particularly after Rea I don't know that I want to burn yet more roster spots on projects. If Ben Brown or Cade Horton are striking out 35% of the batters they're facing at Iowa, and all of the Cubs' back end veteran types are pitching adequately, how many bullets do we have to sit around watching get wasted in Des Moine? Ultimately I guess I'd chalk it up to cost. If AZ eats enough salary that Jed can acquire Montgomery without having to skimp on the bench and bullpen options he wants, I'm probably up for it. If Montgomery though is the difference between Kirby Yates + Mark Canha vs. Paul Sewald + Conor Joe I'm going to have a fit.
  3. Bertz
    I saw someone the other day say $100K, but I thought I remembered it being wayyyy lower, like $10k or $20k. I'm not sure if that's something that changed last CBA?
  4. Bertz
    I would imagine Alonso signing will move the position player group along broadly. I'd also like to think given that we need a backup 1B it would help move things along for us finalizing the bench.
  5. Bertz
    Getting greedy, I wonder if there's an arbitrage opportunity here. Sell IFA funds to the Dodgers at a huge premium to help them get Sasaki over the line, and then buy back all/most of that IFA money at a discount from the Padres because the IFA market's fairly picked over at this point. My understanding is that the Padres in anticipation of Sasaki did not allocate their full allotment in LatAm, so I don't think it's as simple for using their IFA money as calling guys up and saying "We're back on."
  6. Bertz
  7. Bertz
    The Zombro/Tread stuff is a really interesting sub-plot to this offseason. Because he is so public-facing, there is real opportunity to tie his fingerprints back to specific transactions. For instance, Greg Z was able to tie back the Cody Poteet acquisition to a video Zombro posted shortly after: https://baseballtribune.substack.com/p/cody-poteet-a-gold-mine There's enough digital ink spilled from Zombro that when Ben Brown adds a new changeup or whatever we're going to know exactly how to assign that credit. It'll be interesting to look back a year from now.
  8. Bertz
    In the context of this conversation, how so?
  9. Bertz
    This is literally from the Rogers article you're referencing
  10. Bertz
    And so this is different from the situation I laid out because....?
  11. Bertz
    Were you in a coma last February?
  12. Bertz
    I wonder if this was the strategy behind signing Rea. Not necessarily Bregman specifically (I expect he will at worst be able to settle for Matt Chapman money from the Tigers), but just this sort of move broadly. Right now, the only absolute needs on the roster are backup at 1st and 3rd. There are other areas for obvious improvement, but that infield depth is all that they cannot live without. There's also, as discussed ad nauseum, about $30M we suspect Jed can play with (and this rumor would suggest that's not being funneled into a superpac somewhere). So is the plan to fill the absolute holes on the roster, and then in early February Jed flies to Orange County with $30M on his debit card and posts up outside of Boras Corp or CAA like this? There are a few guys on the market that the team simply cannot make work as a team fit, like Jurickson Profar. But through positional flexibility you can broadly make most remaining free agent position players work, and there's obvious room for pitching still.
  13. Bertz
    If Jed's willing to eat a qualifying offer, I wonder what Nick Pivetta could be had for. He's someone who it seemed like at the time probably ought to have accepted it, and now it seems like he *really* messed up by not taking it. If you offer him a good salary, could you get him for something especially team friendly like 1 year plus a club option?
  14. Bertz
    It really does not sound like things are far enough apart between Boras and the Tigers/BoSox for something like this to be at all likely.
  15. Bertz
    It feels like it could go either way, and really depends on what conversations between Roki and the Padres are like. If Roki's looped in and comfortable with the longer term view I do imagine Cease gets shown the door, but on the flip side he might view them trading their best pitcher right after he commits to be a slap in the face. I do expect that Preller has about 34 moves lined up and is going to go on a full-on transaction bender very shortly after Roki makes his decision. We're a good fit for several Padres so I wouldn't be surprised if we get caught up in that maelstrom.
  16. Bertz
    Teams and players have flexibility with how they handle extensions. So let's say you're going to sign Tucker to a 10 year deal, the Cubs and Tucker could choose whether to make that 2025-2034, or 2026-2035. The latter would leave more money to spend this year, while the former would reduce how much of Tucker's decline phase you're paying him for at the end of a deal.
  17. Bertz
    MLB Pipeline is probably closest to a source of truth IMO. Jim Callis has been the best at this stuff for approaching 20 years. That said he very much does his job via working the phones, while the guys at Fangraphs or BP are doing more actual scouting/analysis. I would generally recommend MLB as your primary and then choose a secondary between BP/FG/ESPN based on who you vibe with the most.
  18. Bertz
    One thing worth really driving home on that 3rd point is there's just such a long lead time before you can get a read on this stuff. The Cubs were kings of LatAm from 2011-2015, things fell apart more or less overnight, and we didn't really start feeling that something was up until 2018ish?
  19. Bertz
    This will get called sour grapes. but the Dodgers perpetually have these breakout performances in the extremely hitter friendly Low A California League. Their players annual pepper throughout top 100 lists and yet the best position player they've produced since COVID is Michael Busch.
  20. Bertz
    It's wild how people still have not figured out how to contextualize California League production.
  21. Bertz
    Probably a good place to post this I think there's a decent chance he gets smacked around by big league lefties (I know he hasn't had issues to this point), but essentially everything else is there already. One kind of weird thing is that ZiPS hates him. For a guy who is a data darling I expected the opposite and to need to go "woah woah woah pump the brakes buddy" to the projections. I am curious what the hell it sees that has it throwing up the red flag.
  22. Bertz
    With nearly 3 months til opening day you'd presume he can play 1B from jump. Then 3B by midseason?
  23. Bertz
    Via Sharma in his writeup of the team losing out on Sasaki. Not "the team is definitely going to add more starting pitching and here are some names to watch" but appears to back up Rea just being a depth move with or without winning the Sasaki lottery.
  24. Bertz
    How do you reconcile this decision being a referendum on the Cubs with the fact that two of the five best teams in the league were given the cold shoulder from jump. Why aren't the Mets with their Scrooge McDuck owner a finalist? My theory is that in the absence of financial incentives Sasaki is making his choice based on geography. But apparently I'm being obtuse.
  25. Bertz
    By this logic we're a better team than the Braves and Phillies
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