Bertz

Do you not see how circular your reasoning is? You start from this place of the CBT being a hard line, and spiral out from there. "Well he can't cross the line because it's the line!" But what if it's not the line? Doesn't all the behavior from the last 8 months start to make a lot more sense? You still haven't even attempted to answer why if this is *such* a big deal they didn't make an attempt to avoid it at the trade deadline. Do you not take that as evidence you should reconsider your priors?

TT has posted some variation of this before, but I can't find it so I'll paraphrase, probably poorly: Which of these scenarios is more likely? A) Last spring, famously conservative Jed Hoyer signed Cody Bellinger to a deal that put the team right on the razors edge of the luxury tax. He chose not to do a longer/lower AAV deal to ensure they stayed under for...reasons. At the trade deadline Jed added salary, all but ensuring that the team would be over the tax. He didn't trade away any additional salary (Smyly, Tauchman, etc.) because...hubris? Now the team is going to have a materially lower payroll in 2025 than they would have if the team had been able to sneak under the line B) Tom Ricketts is intent on keeping payroll within a stone's throw of the luxury tax (let's say within $10M?) in all but the most special of circumstances. As such even with repeater penalties, the tax bill is going to top out at ~$5M per year. Jed has already shown he will only sign QO free agents when they're impact players, so the extra draft penalties will either not come up at all, or be such a non factor if he does pony up for e.g. Max Fried.

Why are you so confident about this? Why do you think $56K in taxes on $280K in payroll is going to have major impacts on this year's planning? Do you really think that if they had snuck in at $280K under, they would have suddenly spent $10M more this coming year? What are you basing this on?

Yankees don't have a ton of money in their pen currently, but recent vintages with dominant bullpens have. Although those had Aroldis Chapman who did get that mega deal and goes against my point. This year's pen is built largely through trade. Holmes and Hill came via trade, Kahnle was a guy they traded for and resigned. Effross and Leiter obviously came via trade, neither is currently contributing which speaks to the need to take a lot of shots. I'll say too Luke Weaver got very little money, but he did get a guaranteed deal with an option for next year, that's not a deal that a lot of guys in his situation would get. Yankees thought he was more than just a lottery ticket, overpaid a bit, and now have their closer for next year locked up to an absurdly team friendly deal.

Emmanuel Clase and Edwin Diaz having disastrous postseasons feels pretty compelling as "don't sink a ton of resources into a reliever" evidence. That said the Yankees and Dodgers have plenty of resources in their pen, it's just more of a spread the wealth sort of deal.

There was a study a long time ago that said new ligaments tend to last about 7 years, but with how quickly medicine in this space advances I wouldn't put too much weight in that still being gospel.

I'm pretty strongly anti-Burnes. I've mentioned this before but he gives strong "2016 Jake Arrieta" vibes. That's not bad, in fact that's a very good pitcher! But the decline is precipitous and I have doubts he'll be the best FA starter in year one of his deal, much less beyond that. Add on thr expected contract and forget about it. If you want an ace I think the best bet is Max Fried. You have to wonder if the forearm bothering him each of the last two years is a warning sign that his elbow is going to pop, but if the doctors aren't worried about his elbow the resume is pretty unimpeachable IMO. If you want to take some risk Kikuchi looks like he has a chance to be the best guy in this class.

Me ranking Long 15th in the system a few weeks ago

I dunno, maybe some self awareness that the answer to "why didn't they trade Marcus Stroman for Jordan Westburg?" might be less "Jed didn't think of that" and instead be "the Orioles never put that on the table"?

https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2023/07/27/marcus-stromans-performance-blip-and-the-impact-it-has-on-the-cubs-trade-deadline-plans/ Also I suggest you catch up on the guys that got moved in the Lynn/Montgomery trades.

The opt in/opt out decision that limited upside on any acquisition, exacerbated downside, and probably had some effect in his trade value?

Marcus Stroman had an ERA of 9.00 starting with the London game through the deadline last year. It was practically all anyone could talk about.

"Go get a star! We're the Cubs we shouldn't have to settle for 'pretty good' players" "Okay which star do you have in mind?"

The problem is there are no trees. You want there to be trees, but who are these 3B who are A) better than Paredes and B) reasonably available? This isn't MLB the Show you can't just force the Guardians to take 5 C+ prospects for Jose Ramirez. Who is available as a 3B and Bregman is better than Paredes and will be available, but stumping for him while at the same time crapping on Paredes for coming from a ballpark that made his offense look better than it really is would be hilarious doublespeak.

Has he lost weight? He's not skinny by any means but he looks like he's built like a Naylor brother now?

I think you're missing inflation. Pretty sure when Heyward signed it was one of the 10-15 biggest deals ever. Lester I believe was a top 10 pitcher contract at the time. Here's a list that I believe is up to date or at least good through last year's free agency: https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/league-info/highest-paid-players/ I've made this argument before last offseason, but one thing we should be careful of is conflating "never" and "not yet." Last year Andrew Friedman went full Steinbrenner, but prior to that he was very reticent to do top of market free agent deals. He signed Greinke to a top of market deal in 2013, and after that nothing until Mookie Betts in 2020 (technically an extension but spiritually fits with FA deals IMO). And in the nearly four years between Betts and Ohtani the only big deal he signed was Freddie Freeman, who got big money for a 1B but less money than Dansby Swanson. I do think Jed is exceedingly conservative and will remain so, but I do think if circumstances can greatly impact where a GM draws the lines.

92 current prospects on Fangraphs are rated as a 50 FV or better, 26 were IFAs (28.3%). In the earliest list they have on The Board, 2017, it appears to be 41 out of 133 (30.8%). I don't know if that 2.5% difference in makeup between draft IFA feels meaningul to me, but I will say nearly 40% fewer IFAs overall in those impact grades certainly does.

Just doubling up here. The Cubs played 12 of their first 17 games in August at home. They then played 15 of 21 on the road. Isaac had a 31 wRC+ in the first stretch, and a 127 in the second. Especially given that August Wrigley does not tend to play as pitcher friendly as it does at other times of year, do we think Paredes was cold and then got hot in late August because he left Wrigley? Or do we think he got hot and it just so happened to be when the team left Wrigley? I just don't see any reason to assume it's the former without WAY more data.

Home road splits are broadly misleading. Home road splits in a two month sample are barely more predictive than astrology or bone divination

To Kyle's point about Caleb playing like a vet already

Blaming a team for not having an Acuna or a Tatis level player is, frankly, silly. Those are pure lottery tickets, and it's especially clear when you see they got 6 figure deals instead of top of the market bonuses that even the teams had no idea. Further, very good IFA teams like the Yankees and Astros have not produced guys like that in my adulthood. To the topic broadly, it's clear that the team was extremely good at the IFA piece during the first half of Theo's tenure. Soler, Torres, Jimenez, Assad, Amaya, etc., etc. It's clear that something broke in approximately 2016, because the back half of the Theo tenure is bleak. I might be missing a reliever or something, but it looks like the only guys with even a chance at MLB time still are Kevin Made, Pablo Aliendo, and Richard Gallardo. Likely bit players even in the unlikely event they make it. And what's most notable. and needs to be kept in mind during these types of conversations, is we had ZERO idea st the time that the worm was turning. We were all riding high with Gleyber and Eloy and reports that guys were signing with us because Javy was so gosh darn popular. But things were broken and it took ~3 years for it to become obvious publicly. In that vein, the Jed era is too early to say. Sans those super duper mega stars like Acuna, you're usually looking minimum 4-5 years between signing and debut. We know the front office was largely overhauled in 2019. The IFA classes from '20 on still look pretty good, though everyone besides Ballesteros is in A ball or lower still. But Cristian Hernandez, Jefferson Rojas, Alfonsin Rosario, Pedro Ramirez, plus generally strong reports out of the complex leagues makes it feel like that LatAm pipeline is functioning properly again.

I've gotten up on this soapbox before, but fans have this silly tendency to assume any player who has been lucky is bad. And that's not true. Blake Snell is an example I like, in 2023 he pitched at an All Star level, got lucky on top of that, and won a Cy. But don't lose the pitching like an All Star part! Paredes was lucky to play in a home ballpark that was tailor made to his swing. HOWEVER, just because he was lucky to put up a 130 wRC+, does not make him bad when you remove him from those favorable conditions. On the road as a Ray he put up a 110! That would make him offensively the 10th best qualified 3B in the league last year. It also ignores that players universally hit better at home than on the road, so that floor is probably more like 115, which is what the Phillies got out of Alec Bohm this year. Like Squally said it is not the sexiest profile. That said 3B on a league level is pretty badly hurting for guys with sexy profiles, so it's not like there was some grand alternative to be had unless you have some kompramat on the Guardians or Red Sox leadership.