Bertz

Doing things just for the sake of doing things or "switching things up" is a tried and true way to make a bad decision.

I think building a bullpen of doom like you do here with Holmes and Hoffman is a fun end-around to some of the tough positions this offseason poses. Especially since our rotation is pretty innings-eater-y already, and Miller furthers that. Joc's interesting. On one hand I want that role to be a righty, on the other hand he's turned into a hell of a bat and should be grabbable on a 1 year deal like this. I don't love Lorenzen personally. I think if you're looking at SPs in that price range I'd look at guys who got successfully pitch labbed this past season but due to track record and durability still aren't going to make a ton of money. e.g. Matt Boyd, Spencer Turnbull, or Jakob Junis. With the young pitching we have, I'd prioritize 80-100 innings I feel really good about over 130-150 I don't.

I think the fans are the only ones with a problem with them. The players are clearly agreeing to these deals when they don't have to.

Nothing in here is worth starting a new topic for, but a couple things stood out to me: - Sharma and Mooney seemed pretty confident the team will make a trade of consequence. Not really any details on who, or even certainty it would be a SP. Sharma focused on the Mariners, and Mooney brought up Jordan Montgomery or one of the Twins SPs, but it all seemed spitbally - The team wasn't hot after Kikuchi. He's in the tier they're looking at but it sounded like they would basically "get around" to him. They also confirmed the rough level of investment the team is trying to make is $20-25M a year for 2-4 years. Sharma focused on Nate Eovaldi, but again it felt like putting pieces together and not reporting intent

The rotation is realistically the only place to add bulk wins. - The bench and bullpen, while both clearly needing to be addressed, do not offer the playing time required to rack up a lot of impact - Every starting spot on the roster (sans arguably catcher) is filled with a quality first division starter. So the team specific replacement level is quite high, and purchasing WAR doesn't really translate much into added wins So if the team half asses it with the rotation, say adding Walker Buehler and calling it a day, we're basically locked in to a mediocre offseason. That's not the end of the world, the team would probably be modest favorites to win the division and with the crew at Iowa probably have as much additional upside as any team in the league. But it would very much be a missed opportunity and fly in the face of the "90 win projection" comments from the end of the season.

Yes. Manaea, Severino, and Pivetta are three guys in the "upper middle class" Jed is reportedly eying who have a qualifying offer attached.

I think our assumption should be that the SP market, at least in FA, will be pretty picked over by the end of the winter meetings. Boras isn't dragging his feet like last year, as both Snell and Kikuchi are Boras guys. Burnes and Manaea are both Boras guys, but I believe everyone else of note is with CAA or smaller agencies. There's not going to be the artificial delay we saw last year, at least not on the pitching side of things. So Jed's got to either move in the next ~2 weeks, or be comfortable boxing himself into a corner where he has to make a trade. I would think the play, even if you're wanting to deal Bellinger still, would be to get your big SP in house and let a Bellinger trade hold up/dictate your subsequent moves. You can always trade for relief and bench help in the event you get left holding the bag, but there's only so much SP inventory every winter.

I am torn between loving Nate Eovaldi in isolation and hating an offseason where he's the headline move. I'd love some indication beyond wish casting around here that they're planning to both sign and trade for a starter. That still feels like the logical way to thread the needle between Jed/ownership's austerity impulses and the fans' desire for impact.

Case in point even Justin Steele was a guy who got 2nd round money

Echoing national reports, the local writers for The Athletic this morning indicated that the Cubs would be doing their offseason shopping in the "upper-middle" tier of the free agent market, trusting their pitching development to get the most out of their acquisition. Sharma and Mooney also indicated that the Qualifying Offer is a major factor of consideration in their targets, seemingly ruling out upper middle options like Nick Pivetta and Sean Manaea. Nate Eovaldi and Walker Buehler both get name checked as players who would fit the team's parameters, though it may also be that the Cubs instead turn to the trade market to do their shopping. View full rumor

Again I won't fault anyone for assuming the worst about the Ricketts, but payroll has always been a stones throw from the luxury tax with these exceptions: - When the team was very bad - When the last core was ascending circa 2014-2015 and the team had so many pre-arb stars they basically couldn't spend to the tax - 2021 coming off of COVID and with major short term attendance questions Maybe the Comcast carriage deal is looking rocky and that will be the team's excuse for austerity. Again never put anything past Tom. But trying to trade Bellinger IMO doesn't say anything like that, and cutting Tauchman definitely doesnt. He's got very little playing time after PCA started hitting, there'snot much reason to think that would have changed in 2025. I was surprised he didn't have a bit of trade value, but there was very little shot in my mind of him making it to opening day.

Rojas, at an extremely young age for his level, showed really good walk, strikeout, and groundball numbers. Fans having some Kevin Made or Aramis Ademan ptsd is not unreasonable, but it feels like with Rojas we're sort of just waiting on his man strength to kick in and how much defensive value he loses in the process. But he seems to have the approach to be a big time dude.

There's a really tough line to walk with this team between continuing to add depth to a unit that got severely exposed last April/May and adding filler that blocks potential impact arms like Palencia. It's not too dissimilar from adding to the lineup actually. The current bullpen group is one or two arms short, depending on the quality of the first arm added. If you add one impact arm (Clay Holmes?), it feels like aside from the normal minor league free agents you can probably call it a day. If you skimp on that top guy, let's say you end up with Jose LeClerc because I saw someone on Twitter stumping for him, I think you *need* another arm beyond him. That has the knock on effect of making it tougher to incorporate a Palencia or a Neely.

So never count out the Ricketts finding ways to disappoint, but the linking of Bellinger trade rumors with "payroll is going down" feels reactionary. Anyone who's tried to game out this offseason (say with a certain website's handy payroll blueprint tool) can see things are really tight even with payroll being flat at the LT. If you want Jed to make substantial improvements this winter, which everyone seems to, the options are to free up money or expend a good bit of prospect capital. Bellinger is easily the most logical choice for the former. There's also the simple fact that money becomes less useful the deeper into FA we get into FA, so what Boob framed as desperation might be more like urgency.

Even if we take Bob's words at face value, which lol, it could as easily be urgency rather than the desperation it's being framed as. Every day that passes it's less useful to trade Bellinger. It would have been ideal before the non tender deadline to hold onto Tauchman. It'd be bordering on useless if you can't get a deal done until January.

I hate appeal to authority but I do think it's telling that the Angels nabbed him on a fairly reasonable contract and not a smart team. It says something about how sustainable what he did in Houston is viewed IMO.

I think you're overrating how much separation there is between these guys. I was a Kikuchi guy too but he's 34 and as recently as July wasn't viewed much differently than Nick Pivetta.

It's not impossible, like 1908 pointed out the Comcast deal is in flux right now, but this is most likely just Brett being a ninny. The team has, if payroll is flat, $55M to add a SP or two, completely remake the bench, and fix the bullpen. You start doing the math and it's tight. Of course you're going to e.g. avoid giving Corbin Burnes $30M, of course you're going to explore trades to address certain needs cheaply, etc.

Don't Like this. Though it being the Angels provides some reassurance about how much we're missing out.

I wouldn't be surprised if they added two RP from here, with the second being lower salary like I have above. While the group is light on options, it's also light on salary. Pearson at a $1.4M is projected as highest paid player currently. While no options obviously means you can't shuttle them up and down, cutting anyone who goes all Neris on us is still fairly painless unless it's Holmes. And yeah I'm not too worried about being too left handed. If the Cards still had prime Arenado and Goldschmidt I might reconsider, but as is I don't think having a rotation with 4 lefties is any worse than one with 4 righties.

My mind is on something like this currently - Sign Yusei Kikuchi 3/$60M - Sign Clay Holmes 2/$20M - Sign Danny Jansen 2/$16 - Sign Josh Rojas 1/$5 - Sign Randal Grichuk 1/$5 - Trade Kevin Alcantara and Javier Assad for Jesus Luzardo and Andrew Nardi Luzardo is a risk and coming off of a mostly lost year, but a year ago at this time was viewed as a #1 starter. It's the type of gamble you can only feel comfortable making because of the depth in front of him and behind him. If Luzardo rebounds, adding him and Kikuchi gives the team a real chance at a best in the league type rotation. Holmes gives us the legit closer we've lacked the last few years, while Nardi is merely a matchup lefty but one hell of one. On top of what's already in house the pen again looks like it has a chance to be a weapon. The depth looks great, there's a much better chance of this group surviving three guys going down at once than there was last year. The position players are all about adding depth and complimentary skills. Rojas is a mediocre lefty bat and strong defensive infielder. His role is subbing in for Paredes or Hoerner when we want the lineup to be more left handed and/or complimenting Shaw if someone on the infield goes on the IL. Grichuk has settled in as one of the best lefty mashers in the league. Jansen is far more talented than most backup catchers but has durability concerns preventing him from demanding starter level work. This lineup, particularly when you add in what's at Iowa, is ludicrously deep and should be as well equipped as anyone to survive the six month grind.

I'd guess he gets something like 2 years and $6M per year. His numbers are solid, and he's got plenty of late inning experience, which does have value. But the guys who get closer to 10M per year miss a lot more bats or generate a stupid number of groundballs. Like Neris was a disaster but he had a 30% strikeout rate the 3 years before coming here, Finnegan is at 23% the last three years.

Feels like we can mostly, though not totally, write this possibility off after the Tauchman news.