Bertz

I've noticed in most of the early pictures out of camp the players wearing these Catapult vests. Sounds like it's tracking/monitoring equipment. Do we have a position player answer to like a Rapsodo now?

Yes, that's -1.6 WAR from the bullpen

Rea was certainly not the best tea leaf, but default assumption for payroll should essentially always be "a little under the luxury tax" unless or until there's something more concrete to override that assumption. Especially since none of the people who actually tend to know things have indicated anything inordinately bad about payroll to this point this winter.

It didn't come from anywhere he made it up.

Citation needed

Jed Hoyer appears intent on adding as much pitching depth to the Cubs as he possibly can. After adding Matt Festa and Colin Rea this week, Ken Rosenthal reports in The Athletic that the team has checked in with lefty reliever Brooks Raley. Raley, 36, started his career as a Cub before spending a few years in the KBO. Since he came back stateside in 2020 he has been one of the better lefty relievers in the league. The Cubs, even after adding Caleb Thielbar, are light on left-handed relievers. With Raley still rehabbing from surgery, he would be eligible to be put on the 60 Day injured list as soon as spring training opens. This would be a potentially savvy way for the team to stash another pitcher without eating a roster spot. View full rumor

The Cubs' pitching staff right now. Guys with asterisks have minor league options: SP - Steele, Shota, Taillon, Boyd, Rea CL - Hodge* SU - Pearson, Thielbar MR - Morgan*, Merryweather Matchup - T. Miller, Zastryzny LR - K. Thompson It's long been rumored the team will add a closer, so swapping that guy in for Zastryzny feels pretty easy. Beyond that, Keegan's roster spot is the only one that feels all that tenuous. But if you replace him with someone guaranteed a roster spot you don't have anywhere for a minor leaguer to break in unless there's a cut or an injury. This staff is too mid and Iowa has too much talent to be this inflexible.

https://www.theringer.com/2017/10/10/nfl/post-quarterback-jacksonville-jaguars-blake-bortles-denver-broncos-peyton-manning Now baseball is fundamentally different than football, and quarterback is fundamentally unique within football, but when we're talking about marginally improving your #9 starter this feels pretty apt. If we take this transaction at face value, IMO you're much more likely to lose wins through opportunity cost, whether via the dollars or via the roster spot, than you are to gain wins by improving the reliability you can expect that far down the depth chart.

He doesn't have minor league options so it's not actually that simple. Yeah when there's several injuries it's easy to see his spot on the roster, but what about when there's not? Cody Poteet is a guy of this ilk who has value because we can just leave him idling in Iowa. But Rea is very much in the way when things are going well. ZiPS projects Rea with an ERA+ of 90. 19 Cubs (not including likely Thielbar who missed the article cutoff) are currently projected better than that. Four of the depth starters in Assad, Brown, Wicks, and Poteet are projected better than that. Honestly the lack of options broadly is a roster issue. Porter Hodge and Eli Morgan are the only pitchers on the roster with options. The team will have to cut guys or abuse the IL to maneuver the roster in season. Neither is impossible, but it feels silly to do so for the sake of hoarding guys like Rea. Like I'm Mr. Positive but if there's not a subsequent trade or some unpublished injury news I can't even devil's advocate my way into this being a good idea.

Mooney, who is very much not a cheerleader for this front office, makes this sound like an addition rather than the addition.

One thing I'll say is I don't hate the contract in a vacuum. So if next week Javier Assad is a Padre and we find out Jordan Wicks elbow finally gave out, my attitude towards the deal will shift pretty drastically

Roster Resource is updated after this move and all the arb action yesterday and it has the Cubs at $198M, $43M under the LT. Let's say Tucker wins his arb case and the team wants ~$10M set aside for the TDL. That's $30M in usable money remaining if we treat the LT as the payroll target If Rea closes the book on the rotation and Jed's not going to go way out of character and sign Tanner Scott, it honestly gets a little tough to spend $30M. Kirby Yates, Jorge Polanco, and Mark Canha maybe? But you'd need to go absolutely top of the scale from here. There's gotta be a fun trade on the precipice or I really really don't like this.

The Cubs currently have a clear top 4. They also an hour ago already had 8 depth starters: Ben Brown Javier Assad Cody Poteet Jordan Wicks Brandon Birdsell Cade Horton Connor Noland Caleb Kilian Colin Rea is better than most of these guys right this second (ZiPS has him behind the top 3 and tied with Wicks) but man does this not feel like an appropriate use of resources unless the 8 names above is about to be more like 5-6.

Don't like this. Possible explanations, in order of how much I don't like them - There's about to be a trade coming down that impacts the pitching depth, and Rea is backfilling e.g. Assad (I do potentially like this one) - All of the depth starters are technically optionable, so Rea is the long reliever and all of Assad, Brown, Wicks, Poteet will 100% open the year at Iowa - One of the guys we've been counting as SP depth is viewed as 100% a reliever, e.g. Brown - There's an injury we don't yet know about - This is the other SP we've been promised. Which would heavily imply that the payroll's indeed been cut

The Padres need to cut payroll, and seem to be pinning a lot of their offseason hopes on Sasaki. So depending on what Sasaki chooses, that might make someone like Dylan Cease or Michael King available. It seems like the remaining SP is the biggest item left on Jed's to-do list so one of those two guys coming available would be significant.

Might still need to wait for the Padres to get closure

I personally don't love it. He did great against lefties last year, but with his two primary pitches being east -> west I think he'd probably get eaten up by lefties if forced to sacrifice velocity and go through the order multiple times. Maybe a year from now if he's proven the strike throwing is permanent and the splitter becomes more than a ascent offering. We do have a pretty interesting relief conversion candidate in house though: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5917662/2024/11/13/mlb-relievers-converting-to-starters I probably wouldn't do it but it's worth considering.

Just wait til April. The haughty "90 wins huh" arguments from people unwilling to acknowledge strength of schedule are gonna be a blast.

No that's actually very fair. I think anecdotally, all of the spare parts guys they've brought in this year have had very obvious reasons why they could work out (Ben Heller throws 96 with movement, Pitching Bot wants to have Matt Festa's babies, etc.), while those guys from yesteryear felt more like projects. But that's anecdotal. Less anecdotally I think the projections are more pleased with this bullpen too. Like last year, when Dan Szymborski ran his ZiPS article the Cubs bullpen was projected for 2.9 WAR. This was pre-Neris, so he'd bring it up to 3.4. Of that 3.4, 60% was attributed to Alzolay, Merryweather, and Neris. This year, before Thielbar and presumably with one more big-ish signing out there to be had, ZiPS has the bullpen at 3.6 WAR. Hodge/Miller/Morgan, the current projected top 3 relievers combined for 45% of that WAR. So I think the depth being better isn't just our fan-induced bias (though I don't want to celebrate too much no longer having a reliever projected for star-level production).

I think the problem last year, almost as much as Alzolay/Merryweather/Neris all going bust right at the start of the year, was there not being anyone immediately ready to go at Iowa except Palencia. So when things were really bad in late April/early May they couldn't even re-arrange deck chairs and hope it'd help. This year it seems like the Iowa bullpen will be a unit where we can turn essentially immediately if things go wrong. Like I think this is roughly what we're tracking towards for an opening day AAA bullpen CL - Daniel Palencia Setup - Jack Neely, Luke Little Matchup Guys - Gavin Hollowell, Riley Martin Middle Relief - Ethan Roberts, whichever two veteran Zastryzny/Festa/Heller types they can convince to stick at Iowa That's a pretty solid crew of reserves. Palencia, Little, and Hollowell are each guys I'd feel comfortable giving the ball to in April. Neely's obviously got fun potential, and Roberts did quite well last year (mostly in garbage time to be fair). There's also to your point the young starters. Brown and Horton in particular would likely really eat out in the bullpen. Shifting back to the MLB bullpen, I do think a legitimate closer is absolutely necessary to tie things together. And I'm a bit wistful neither of Morgan or Thielbar are guys I have more immediate confidence in. I like the acquisitions, I see what they're going for, and they seem reasonably likely to work out. But I would have liked two "name brand" types this winter to overcorrect from last year. Unless they end up with a SP in the ~$25M range they had the resources to do so.

Happ's the last prominent player that I'm aware of and clearly the well wasn't poisoned. I'd prefer this wasn't going down this way but most likely it doesn't matter.

Based on what?