Bertz

I think my appetite for adding Pressly depends on A) How much money the team needs to add to Bellinger in the presumed Yankee deal and B) What SP trades Jed has been able to get some traction on. If the team has say $30M available right now before Kelly becomes official, and sends like $5M with Bellinger to cover his buyout, then we'd be looking at something like $38M coming in for Pressly, Tucker, and Kelly but $28M going out for Bellinger and Paredes. So ~$20M to do another SP, address that sad bench, and maybe add another reliever? That is tight but feels doable if you're addressing SP in trade. Something like Michael King ($8M), Josh Rojas ($4M), Holy Milner ($2M), and Carlos Santana ($6M)? If the SP trade market isn't looking workable, I lose interest in picking up Pressly. There are interesting SP you can get in that $5-6M range (Patrick Sandoval?) but interesting doesn't feel worth slotting ahead of the kids.

There's also sometimes banal reasons why these things drag on, like Swanson was on his honeymoon. Doesn't stop the Heyman's of the world from doing the horserace schtick.

Yeah I don't think this gets notably lengthy unless/until we hit Monday That said I think most of the prolonged will it/won't it sagas during the Theo/Hoyer era have eventually reached the finish line? Darvish, Swanson, Bellinger. I think trading KB to the Braves post grievance is the big one that never materialized.

Yeah in my Twitter app the last emoji was much more clearly the statue of liberty than it appears when I post it here.

Several of the BN guys follow him, but I don't know anything about him.

🤷‍♂️

Especially looking at how sad their Tucker-less outfield is Paredes + Smith would feel like a real wasted opportunity for them. One outfielder, one 3B, and one SP feels like it has to be what's going their way. And there's a ton of permutations to haggle through.

Marquee talking about this potential deal feels telling.

The Cubs' starting pitching depth right now, in rough order of how likely I think they'd get an April start Steele/Shota/Taillon/Boyd Assad/Brown/Wicks/Wesneski Horton/Birdsell Kilian/Noland Will Warren would likely slot in right behind Wesneski? No such thing as too much pitching, but after adding Warren this feels like a group you could deal two from, especially if another veteran SP were on the way. I dunno, feels like pretty strong tea leaves that they're still gonna address SP via trade after (presumably) adding Tucker.

Scouting the Fangraphs page but Warren feels very Wesneski-y. Whether he gets flipped directly or he backfills Wesneski or Assad TBD I guess.

One other thing feels obvious but I'm not seeing connected as dots is if by some chance Heyman is right you simply don't deal Bellinger. There is no reason to if Suzuki is gone. Bellinger's flexibility makes him an ideal 9th man, and by sending out Paredes and Suzuki you've jettisoned nearly the same $25M salary.

Busch is certainly a better defender but sometimes money overrides logic in these situations. The problem with Alonso is that he's a good hitter but not an elite one. The raw HR numbers and that outrageous rookie year give him a reputation no longer backed by the facts on the ground. He's very much an Ian Happ or Michael Busch caliber hitter at this point, and I'm not going to poo poo that but I'm also not going to pay 9 figures for it particularly given what's already on the roster.

Hardest of passes on Alonso. The team needs a RHH 1B, but there's no reason to give Alonso $25M a year.

The team was never going to blow its entire wad on doing both Tucker and Crochet. And the fact that the Red Sox aren't in on Tucker is a pretty good sign they're not planning to blow their whole farm on two guys either.

Breslow basically took over a team that was at the same point in the cycle as the Cubs. Breslow didn't have to get his hands dirty on a Boston rebuild because it was nearly done when he arrived. Giving him credit for not operating the 2025 Red Sox like Jed (and Breslow!) operated the 2022 Cubs is BADLY missing the forest for the trees.

One thing about this team that is not yet at the level of a concern but is a consideration is 2026 payroll. As currently structured, Bellinger has a likely opt out, Shota has an unlikely opt out, and no one else is slated to hit free agency. If the team trades for and extends Tucker, they basically need the rest of this offseason's acquisitions to be 1 year deals, otherwise next winter is going to REAL slow. Think like the 2019/2020 offseason. "We can't do anything unless we deal Taillon and Hoerner" will be the new "We can't do anything unless we deal KB". Adding Cease on top of Tucker accomplishes a few things. First off, he's straight up the best SP left on the market. Second, because he is a similar caliber of star on a one-year deal, he can serve as a hedge against Tucker leaving. Plan A would be to obviously extend Tucker, but if he is of a similar mind to Soto a year ago there's now an ability to pivot and throw ~$200M at locking down Cease instead. Either way you clear out some of the Iowa prospect depth, make this team downright scary in 2025 (and still looking good heading into '26), and have an extra draft pick heading your way after the season. Back to the premise of your article and less my tangentially related pontificaing, if you do choose to send Suzuki back to San Diego in a Cease deal it largely undoes everything I said above. The marginal increase in '26 salary from Suzuki to Cease is likely to be under $10M. So while I would MUCH prefer the version of a Cease deal built on prospects, there is some merit to the Suzuki path.

The just a rental stuff is not a Jed thing it's just standard hedge-y FO speak.

Not sure why the Yankees pursuing Tucker is written in past tense while everything else in the article is present. The Bellinger stuff seems most worth noting given Heyman's ties to Boras.

Juan Soto is getting brought up way too much into relation to Kyle Tucker. Kyle Tucker is tracking towards like Corey Seager money.

Olney has some sources, wonder if this is a sign he's hearing things too or if he's just reacting to the news

Well damn I mucked that post up from all angles didn't I. That said all of the guys in this situation like Betts, and Lindor have been late ST signings.

Oh sorry I read that as you being WAY over the top sarcastic. My bad!

Okay smarty pants, when's the last time a 9 figure extension got done in December?

At minimum you have to make a trade assuming it's for a year. No extension is realistically coming until March. We saw that with Lindor/Betts/etc.

Feels like this is gonna happen and Jed is in "don't wanna jinx it" mode