Bertz

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.

I'd imagine this will be like last night's Guardians moves and we see a Suarez flip in short order. They don't *have* to, but with how how tight money was for them this winter reportedly I would be a bit surprised if this was a luxury move to give them 6 fun starters.

Good god

That's a lot more than I expected Santana to get. After the Goldschmidt deal and all the talk about how frozen the 1B market was from Passan I kind of wondered if we would be able to steal Santana for like half of that.

Brad is smart and insightful and a good follow, particularly for MiLB stuff. But as far as I know just a guy. So either you're right it's just the poll and a poor time of year to use the eyes emoji or there's an implication that he knows something.

Does Brad have sources now or am I interpreting this incorrectly?

Wow, I kind of assumed that every team short of like the Rockies and White Sox were going to get a meeting with him and then the real contenders would get a second. The Phillies are a good team in a good city with great pitching dev. If they didn't even make the first cut that says something.

No. He's going to demand a team's full bonus pool because it's the least they can do, but he's going to make his decision off of soft factors. He knows he'll get paid primarily via endorsements the first few years over here.

I think a lot of it really is just a more grounded framing that's contrasted to how other pubs write up prospects. The few things that I would actually push back on: - His writeup doesn't IMO justify the grade on Cristian Hernandez, especially since he did start hitting this year and is still more than age appropriate - Feels like he gave Caissie and Ballesteros short shrift on age relative to league. Ballesteros is one of 4 hitters age 20 to get at least 100 PAs in AAA. The other three: Junior Caminero, Jackson Holiday, and Roman Anthony, all got ranked as top 10ish prospects in the sport. So he doesn't pull the ball as much as you like and he has some issues with the high fastball, but he's also a baby. It's a bit similar with Caissie. He's one of 15 hitters aged 21 or younger at AAA this year (and several of those are like Kevin Alcantara and came up in like August). So like yeah I understand his offensive numbers were more good than great but I have a sneaking suspicion that he'd have been ranked higher for doing a Barry Bonds impression at AA than getting appropriately challenged at AAA Overall though I'm a big fan of Longenhagen. Since he lives in AZ near Mesa I consider him the authority on any of the complex league kids. And then for older prospects I appreciate Eric's blend of scouting and stats. Very much the spiritual successor to what Keith Law was ~15 years ago.

With Bellinger and Tucker done not sure this has any reverberations for us but still good to see the position player market might get moving finally

Some of it is that Longenhagen just tends to have more of a glass-half-empty writing style ("here's what could go wrong" as opposed to "here's what could go right"), some of it is that yeah he just seems straight up lower on the group than over the summer. TBD if it's just him or if it's industry-wide.

I think for me the thing this reinforces is how soft the middle third of the pipeline is. And losing Cam Smith certainly doesn't help that. Iowa is stacked. You've got the meat of this list, plus young talent that doesn't technically qualify for the list like Wicks and Brown. Myrtle Beach and the Complex Leagues are a lot of fun. You have a solid wave of LatAm hitters plus the trio of fun high schoolers from last year's draft. Pitching looks a a bit weak on account of last year's draft being all bats, but there's some guys like Mule worth paying attention to. South Bend and Tenn though are real light though. Jefferson Rojas and YMMV on Jaxon Wiggins are the only top 10 guys in the system across those two levels. You've got some 10-20 guys in Mathis, Cristian Hernandez, and maybe a brief cameo from Jonny Long. But mostly the rosters are filled with non prospects or low ceiling tweeners like Brett Bateman. So to me I think one of two things probably needs to happen. Probably both actually, and I think Michael Busch is a good example to hold up. One is that I think we need to get comfortable with some guys just keeping warm at Iowa. Someone like Moises Ballesteros might just need to rack up ~1000 PAs at AAA before he gets a permanent spot in MLB. The big league team needs to maximize wins in the short term, but also needs some optionable depth down at Iowa. Even if he's running a 150 wRC+ "call him up" and "trade him" are not the only two options. The other is to explore a Michael Busch style trade from the other direction. Let's imagine a dream scenario where a Kyle Tucker extension gets done, PCA's bat proves legit, and every cup of coffee Caissie and Alcantara get over the next year goes well. Next winter really sets up for us to "trade back" with one of them and fill someone's near term outfield hole and pick up some impact talent further down the development ladder.