Bertz

Sports Illustrated is not the brand you grew up with https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolekraft/2024/01/21/mass-layoff-appears-to-be-the-end-of-sports-illustrated/ It's pure AI/content aggregation slop at this stage

I think this overstates Mountcastle's value a good bit. I think he's closer to being a non-tender than he is someone whose trade will hurt. I could see needing to open up 500 PAs for him as a condition of swooping in and signing him as a FA, but if we trade for him giving him basically the Patrick Wisdom playing time would make sense. IMO Mountcastle is the "Bellinger stays" lefty masher option, while we aim higher and for more of a complete 500+ PA option (Taylor Ward?) if/when Bellinger opts out.

There is essentially zero chance Paredes gets traded this winter. Going out and getting him in July was a signal that: A) They did not want to rely on internal options. Option really, as Shaw is the only guy even vaguely viable B) They did not want to be Bregman or bust this winter. And let's be real, the 3B market this winter is basically just Bregman and some bench players. Before anyone gets any wacky "Sign Bregman and then trade Paredes!" ideas, the timing is very unlikely to be viable. Bregman being a Boras client means the over under on his signing date is approximately MLK Day. Very tough to count on having post signing runway to work out a trade.

I'm not a hater but having lived through Trubisky I will say the not throwing to his left thing is at least a yellow flag.

I feel like the burden of proof is kind of on you here? I know you don't like his leg kick, but none of the actual scouts mind it given he's a fairly consensus top 50 prospect. And from a data perspective there aren't any red flags. The contact numbers at Iowa were a bit soft, but they're not especially problematic and given how little swing and miss he had before Iowa there's a good chance it's adjusting to a new level.

I think that's part of what I specifically like about Castro is it makes the Shaw stuff easier. With Castro able to play seemingly everywhere, the decision can be 100% about Shaw's readiness. In the dream scenario where all four of Swanson, Hoerner, Paredes, Shaw are healthy and performing it does put a squeeze on the veteran bench guys, but maybe you make a trade from there. To your point Tauchman and Castro have too much overlap at that point so trade one. Or if you want to get nuts for an in-season trade Paredes or Hoerner are at that point a bit expendable.

Garcia is very good, decent argument for most underrated player in the league, but he feels like overkill for the team's needs given what's at Iowa. If we didn't have Shaw and Triantos down there, do it. But I think we can settle for more pure bench types. Castro looks pretty ideal to me. Add him, a lefty masher 1B/DH type, and a catcher and you've suddenly got a pretty stellar bench. I know the fanbase is laser focused on "big bat" but as I look forward to this offseason I feel like given what we have in place both in Chicago and Iowa my preferred track is build up the bench and then pour the rest of the resources into the pitching staff.

A full MPH harder than any ball he hit at AAA. Wonder if he's feeling extra good after some time off.

#WeAreGood

Legitimately laughed out loud at this

So heading into the bye the Bears of course lost @Texans but went 4-1 in the winnable games. Combined with what Caleb looks like and you'd have to be a real sicko to not take this start to the season if it had been offered up in August.

There's an episode of Scrubs that always stuck with me. It's the first episode of Elizabeth Banks' arc. She plays a surgeon (I forget what kind). JD's patient that week needs that type of surgery, and Banks' character refuses to do it because it's too risky. Turns out she cynically avoids risky surgeries, because she needs to keep her stats up to earn promotions/fellowships/etc. Jed doesn't really make many bad moves. And even the ones he does make are piddling little things like $5M to Tucker Barnhart or $14M to Trey Mancini. The problem with Jed is very similar to the problem with that character on Scrubs: he's not been willing to take on risk or push past the threshold where his moves would begin to suffer any diminishing returns. The question is if Jed will forever be unwilling to stretch things, or if he has just not yet been willing. By Jed's own admission, they view the club as being in a very healthy place right now. The farm is strong, there is very little long term money tied up. Combine that with his own contractual situation and this winter should be pretty telling. Feels like we have hit "if not now, then when?"

You understand that both of these are linking to the same guy, right? And that the original guy was predicting Sugano to the Cubs, not reporting a rumor or claiming any sort of intent?

That broken play to Kmet was some young Aaron Rodgers horsefeathers. I can't believe we get this now.

There will continue to be hiccups but he is so god damned good

Anyone have an actual link to something having the Cubs being tied to Sugano, much less being favorites to sign him? As far as I can tell we just have "Jed visited Japan" and "It feels like a Jed move" and that's it?

So this whole conversation was just a "Chili's is the new golfcourse" deal?

"Don't worry, he was just bad because he was hurt" is not especially convincing. Especially at catcher, where history is riddled with Jonathan Lucroy types who go from star to schlub overnight because of injury. I would ultimately guess Sean Murphy is still a good player. I would not use our 4 win shortstop to try and find out.

Occams Razor is that there was never any intention from ownership to run a payroll high enough for the tax to matter.

For anyone so up in arms about this, what do you think being slightly over the tax does? What bad thing happens now that would not have happened if they were 280k under?

I saw something making the rounds last week about how baseball series would need to be ~70 games to as reliably move the better team forward as the NBA does (~80%).

The bullpen clock! This is something Ross got a lot of undeserved crap for. Like yeah he can see Cuas and Winkler are struggling too, but if you can get a guy like this going e.g. with Tyson Miller you can really see the value that funk can bring (not to mention he wasn't given a ton of better options to work woth). I think looking more forward I wouldn't be surprised if one of Hollowell or Paredes already have their name penciled into next year's pen. Both have that side-arm funk, and Hollowell especially was a monster at Iowa after he got claimed and you can easily convince yourself he just needed to get away from the Rockies. A comparably funky lefty getting added this winter wouldn't be the biggest surprise either.

So it is not this simple, but Murphy and Soler were combined half as valuable as Swanson this year while having a payroll hit of only $2M less.

Without getting into whether it's luck or some sort of skill that just happens to be especially mercurial (I tend strongly towards the former), you need A TON of evidence to be able to say someone's anomalous homerun per flyball rates are real. Like 500+ innings. In the vast majority of cases groundball rates are a sustainable skill, homerun rates on flyballs are very much not. Despite wrapping year 3, Wesneski is only 190 innings into his career. So just like Lance Lynn gave up an astronomical 44 dongs in 184 innings in '23 and came back fine in '24, our default assumption should still be be that Wesneski's issues are not permanent. And dongs aside, Wesneski's numbers are pretty solid. He misses bats, throws strikes, and keeps the ball on the ground. He's got a wide enough arsenal where he doesn't have a strong TTO penalty to his peripherals (though boy does he to his ERA). There's nothing crazy here, no "he's secretly a star" stuff, but league average starter or 8th inning guy both look very reasonable. Assuming Assad is the fifth starter next year, I'd have Wesneski in long relief and the guys who ended the year hurt opening at Iowa. But honestly I have more faith in Wesneski's dong problems being a mirage than I do in Assad being able to manage an ERA a run lower than his peripherals without inducing a bunch of soft contact, so I'd be totally down if spring training results swapped those roles.