Bertz

He's batting 1.000 in his last 1 at bats though so actually I'm pretty sure he's our best player.

Nico Hoerner's a decent weekend from ending the season over 4 WAR. I really cannot see a situation where he gets traded this winter.

Wow, I thought he was gonna be a defensive replacement and maybe start Sunday, this is fun

There were a few days of MiLB season left so these numbers have probably shifted a bit, but Alcantara's not as raw as you might think.

One of the things that's ironic about this winter is that, sans context, it's actually a good time for Jed to hang out and let the winter come to him. The team is going to end up at about 83 wins this season, and before we have projections in hand I'd guess looks at about that same level heading into the winter. With ~$50M to spend, or ~$75M without Bellinger, it's pretty straightforward to sign a couple short term contracts and buy your way to 88-90 wins. An 88 win caliber big league club, an absolutely loaded Iowa roster, and only one long term contract on the books is actually kind of a sweet spot for a value/process oriented GM like Jed. But there is that context. The last two winters Jed has stopped a move or two short of a slam dunk offseason because he spent all his cash and, Busch/Ferris swap aside, refused to meaningfully dip into the farm. That plus the unfortunate shape of the playoff odds graphs the last two years make just coasting into '25 feel like a non-starter. I don't think e.g. the moral victory of exciting Cade Horton and Kevin Alcantara rookie campaigns will keep Jed employed if the team misses the playoffs by a game again. I will say I don't think an AJ Preller type offseason is totally necessary. I think a typical Jed offseason with one somewhat painful prospect trade on to of it feels like enough.

I know teams don't generally send their best and brightest pitching-wise but unless these guys have popped under the radar this year this is a particularly sad crop.

Cubs (Mesa): Moises Ballesteros, C/1B (No. 4/MLB No. 41) Benjamin Cowles, INF (No. 30) Grant Kipp, RHP Jonathon Long, 1B Shane Marshall, RHP Aaron Perry, RHP Vince Reilly, RHP Luis Rujano, RHP

Also, by far most importantly

The Phillies clearly joined the ranks of the pitching development enlightenment sometime in the '22 to '23 neighborhood. But you look at Taijuan Walker and it's basically like this meme But with like 12 of the scary dragons and then Walker on the right just putzing away

Probably going to see an absurd amount of noodling with those last few spots in the bullpen the rest of the week.

This is exceedingly unscientific, but I increasingly use the "circle of trust" mental model and think about relievers in three tiers: - Guys I trust implicitly - Guys I trust in favorable situations (e.g Tyson Miller against righties) - Upside/Developmental Opportunities There are of course pitchers who are straight up bad, but if you avoid multi-year contracts you're very unlikely to have an on-paper one heading into the season. An elite bullpen is generally going to be something like 3-3-2. I'd say the Cubs are currently something like 1-3-4 heading into next year, though there's a small army of guys in that third bucket, so you do feel like the second half bullpen is likely to be better than the first half. Add a top tier guy this winter and I think you can feel solid about next year's bullpen. Add guys to both upler tiers (the latter ideally being tough on lefties) and you can feel good about it. Dare to dream add two top tier guys and we should feel great about the pen.

Right, they are results that in small samples often do not properly reflect performance.

Hector Neris has a 3.92 ERA this year. Josh Hader had a 3.67. Emmanuel Clase last year blew 12 (!!!) saves despite a 3.22 ERA. There's just not as much rhyme or reason to bullpen performance as there should be. It's not total anarchy, but generally the best approach is to build up as reliable a top 3 or 4 as you can manage and then flank them with as many live arms (ideally optional) as you can. And with that top group there's a delicate balancing act between buying track record without locking yourself into long term money.

From my POV, I don't LOVE any FA SPs this winter. Of the SPs this year north of 100 IP, only 6 are top 20 in xFIP: Jack Flaherty (#7) Blake Snell (#8) Yusei Kikuchi (#12) Max Fried (#16) Nate Eovaldi (#20) Flaherty and Kikuchi each only pitched at an elite level for half of this season, and didn't have the most ironclad resumes coming into the year. Max Fried is a command over stuff guy, Blake Snell has major consistency issues, and Nate Eovaldi has a pretty long track record of modestly underperforming his peripherals (as does Kikuchi). There are several guys in this market who I like at #3 starter salaries like Jameson Taillon. But 9 figure guys? I would groan for a while and then I guess take Max Fried. If SP is the biggest addition this winter I agree it's ideally via trade.

I think it's less the room they'll have in November and more the room they have right now. It's not immensely valuable to keep stashing reliever that hit waivers, but it's also not immensely valuable to get Caissie 20 at bats or whatever. There's also a lot of personnel stuff we don't think of. Like I saw on Twitter yesterday Happ is damn close to a couple career highs, including homeruns. So it's easy for us to say "just shut it down for the year dude" but for him he'd like to get those 20 ABs and try and run into that last dong he needs.

I think on top of this, even if there is something to it that is not luck, the roster turns over fast enough to generally wash it out after a year. Obviously the team already swapped Ross for Counsell. And the bullpen, which I'd put 90% of the blame for this on, will have almost entirely turned over from the start of '23 to the start of '25.

I like Nate Eovaldi. Gives us that jolt of velocity we don't currently have, proven big game guy, and personally I am very "age is just a number" when it comes to pitchers. Fits very well as this generation's John Lackey IMO. He is a bit south of being a true impact arm. So I do think there's a bit higher baseline of what I want added to the offense if he's the SP add.

Are we getting the Phillies' hangover lineup tonight? Or does the fact that they could still technically lose the bye (plus the fact that it's a night game) keep this game more normal?

Dansby Swanson is 22nd in baseball in WAR since he signed. The two guys directly in front of him are Matt Olson and Kyle Tucker, the two guys directly behind him are Bryce Harper and Adley Rutchsman. Of his cohort of shortstops, he's half a win ahead of Trea Turner, two and a half wins ahead of Xander Bogaerts, and three wins ahead of Carlos Correa. It also feels pretty intellectually dishonest to spend 4 paragraphs on his one year decline in DRS and not note that Statcast says he's been the second best defensive shortstop in baseball this year?

This probably closes the book on whatever slim chances Kilian had of surviving roster crunch this fall

Hollowell is a fun little sidearmer the team added on waivers last month. He's been dominant at Iowa in SSS since coming over

One thing I'd like to see the team be sure to do that doesn't get talked about much is add a quality infielder. The starting infield is great, you'd probably project 12+ WAR just from the starters next year. Only ten teams did that this year, and a handful of those are just one guy doing all the heavy lifting (e.g. Bobby Witt earning 10 of the Royals 16 WAR). There's also great depth at Iowa. Shaw, Triantos, and Ballesteros are all super talented and not far off. Shaw especially is close enough if there was an injury during spring training next year I wouldn't be *that* worried about stepping in for a few weeks. But the bench, it's real bad. Wisdom’s a decent player with a limited skillset that doesn't fit this roster that well. Every other backup infielder in the org such as Mastro, Madrigal, Vazquez give no current indication they can hit a lick. The team could use that righty 1B to better shield Busch, and it *needs* someone capable of stepping in at 2B and 3B. Ideally that latter guy would be a lefty, though I'm not sure who that'd be as there aren't as many obvious options if we limit ourselves to lefties.

Apparently Counsell squashed the idea of of Caissie or any of the other hitter prospects coming up with the minor league season over. Not unreasonable, I assume they don't want to burn the 40 man spot early just to get him like two starts, but definitely annoying.