Bertz

Yeah my two takeaways from this are: 1. We can say with some certainty that one of Workman/Brujan/Mastro will be on the OD roster 2. The team's backup 1B is someone not currently in the organization rather than like Tucker or Happ

Open the schools

Pretty sure the next time this guy is right about something will be the first but hey whatever it's slow at the moment

When a guy gets traded the AAV for his new team resets to the AAV of what's left on his deal at the time of his trade. This was added during the last CBA to prevent teams taking advantage with heavily backloaded deals.

If you wanted to really move the needle on this Cubs team trading for Pablo Lopez, one of Jax/Duran, and Willi Castro would make them *scary*. You'd have to gut the farm and I'd be nervous about retaining Tucker, but 2025 would be really sweet.

So Bregman is the last lock to get 9 figures left on the market, and he seems like he could sign any day now. Hopefully no huge dominoes hanging out at the top of the market means FA can keep humming along.

Figure they're certain to move one of their walk-year pitchers. They clearly want it to be Montgomery but Merrill Kelly in his walk year on a super cheap contract would make a lot of sense for us.

One of the few deals this winter where I said "that's it?" Curious to see if it's a hometown discount or if the other corner bats are about to have a rough time.

Well crap, looks like Keith slides to 1B, not 3B.

Do we think the Tigers would be down to do a young player swap with Jace Jung?

It most certainly was not 20th. It's tied for 40th right now and 26 of those deals started in 2017 or later: https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/league-info/highest-paid-players/ Like I said I'm nor going to do the work of figuring out who signed first between him and e.g. Greinke, but he signed early that offseason so he was something like 10th/11th/12th. In today's dollars that's a $300M-something contract.

When Jason Heyward's contract was signed it was around the 10thish biggest ever (I'm not going to do the work right now to find what order the contracts signed that winter got done). The 10thish biggest contract currently is Corey Seager's $325M.

The Athletic guys have been pretty matter of fact that they're going to spend it.

The one singular positive thing you can say about Tom Ricketts is that every indication is that he's hands off from day to day decisions. He gives Jed a payroll number, a number we all agree is too low, and then he lets Jed work. This is not an Arte Moreno or Jerry Reinsdorf deal. So there is little reason to believe the front office is flatly precluded from signing any sort of mega deal. What a mega deal must do though is fit within the team's preexisting budget. We know Tom isn't going to stretch payroll to be "what I originally gave you plus Kyle Tucker." If he were willing to do that Bryce Harper would be our 1st Baseman right now. Jed has twice in the last three months mentioned how clean the team's books are. So combined with the fact that you logically don't make a deal like this only wanting it to be 1 year, to me it feels obvious the team will try and extend/re-sign Tucker. Maybe they'll fail, Kyle's got agency here, but barring something unforeseen this isn't going to be a "don't let the door hit you in the way out" deal next November. Tucker's not going to get Marcus Stroman'd. I'll say too, and I've said this several times since the trade, but I think a canary in the coal mine for the prospects of Tucker being here long term is how much 2026 money Jed adds from here. The team as of right now is at about $185M going into next year. Tucker's going to take around $40M. So if you add a Jack Flaherty or Luis Castillo this winter, next year's club would already be at the luxury tax with a hypothetical Tucker extension. That does not feel like a position Jed would want to put himself in 10 months out, so I would read it as a bearish sign on how signable they think Tucker is. Ricketts could hypothetically be planning for a significant payroll spike next year, but back to the article that's not a scenario I would bet on.

My general pref list for the last SP spot 1. Trade for one of the Padres SPs 2. Sign Jeff Hoffman and convert him to a SP 3. Get creative in trade. Examples include Trueblood suggestions like Griffin Jax or Ryan Feltner 4. Get creative in FA, likely with one of the swing options. Someone like Spencer Turnbull or Jakob Junis. A little different from the first two names but maybe you get a good deal on Nick Pivetta because of the QO? 5. Pay market rate for Jack Flaherty 6. Trade for a Luis Castillo or Pablo Lopez or someone of that ilk I also think just punting on adding another SP and making sure you get all your priority bullpen and bench targets would live somewhere around #4. I go back and forth whether it'd slot in ahead of it or behind it.

After what Walker Buehler just got, if Jack Flaherty doesn't get 9 figures then you have to assume his shoulder is so messed up it looks like ground beef in there.

I really like this idea a lot. One of the benefits to a two SP offseason is it lets you be significantly more creative with both than I think you'd feel comfortable being with just one. And as you do a great job of laying out here, the pitch design work here looks like low hanging fruit most other organizations would have already plucked. And hell even if it's not, last year he was probably a #3 caliber starter and he's slated to make $2.6M this year with four years of control. With that amount of control, this is not just some short term addition, he becomes part of the big league team's core.

I think this year will be interesting. Most of the pitchers on that staff had amazing first halves with their "stop throwing fastballs" gambit and then cratered in the second half once the league figured it out.

There was a line in a Rosenthal article in the last two weeks or so that said the smoke around trading Hoerner was mainly because the team really wanted to open up a spot for Shaw.

Bo Bichette had a 71 wRC+ last year. Nick Madrigal had a 76 wRC+ as a Cub. Bo's probably one of the most likely bounce back candidates in the league for next year, but there's a good chance he's worse than Shaw and a great chance whatever convoluted series of trades brings him in and sends Seiya out makes the team worse. Ken Rosenthal brought this up in his article that mentioned Suzuki to the Dodgers, but there's just not a lot of good RHH bats to backfill Suzuki with. You're basically forced to sign one of Teoscar, Alonso, or Santander. But for this team to actually get better, not just different but better, you need one of those guys to sign a surprisingly small contract or you need Suzuki to bring back a surprisingly large return. Feels pretty unlikely, especially since the thing kicking off this rumor is Teoscar asking for the moon and the Dodgers sniffing around for alternatives.

Savvy little pair of moves from the Rangers essentially trading Lowe for Joc and Garcia

I'm curious if this crazy run on 1B happening right now helps or hurts the Cubs coming down with a good deal on a Mark Canha type

Most indications I've seen are that they want Andrew Painter to have that job. I expected something more fungible as his innings handcuff.