Bertz
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Everything posted by Bertz
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Sleeping on it I think one thing the Cody news does is it basically cements SP as the most likely item to tick off via trade? When it looked like Cody was gone, I had roughly this budget in mind for the offseason: Position Players - $30-35M for 3 guys Starting Pitching - $20-25M for 1 guy Relief Pitching - $15-20M for 2 guys Obviously the ranges could shift based on specific prices and of course trades, but that was the rough outline in my mind to successfully execute the shopping list. With Bellinger in the fold, you've spent $27M and still need 3 guys on the position player side (a catcher, and infielder, and a righty bat). You can move some money around, cut some corners, but generally money is a bit tight. Probably about $10M shy of what I'd want to comfortably do all this shopping via FA? I think that means that the inevitable trade this winter, or at least one if there's multiple, needs to involve netting cost controlled talent. And I think SP is the most logical and direct place to do that without it feeling like a cost cutting move. For instance trading for Dylan Cease 100% fits this MO. Trading for Jesus Luzardo fits this MO. etc. You can absolutely save that $10M elsewhere. But likely requires A) doing it piecemeal with multiple moves or B) trading for a pre-arb closer which doesn't feel very Jed.
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Two things 1. There is a pretty large element of selection bias here. Tauchman generally only gets to face lesser lefties, which makes his numbers against them superficially solid (TT talked about this last page) 2. From a bench player, being split neutral is kind of bad actually. With an everyday starter you want someone who had a chance to produce, well, every day. From a bench player you want leveragable skills. And being solid at everything great at nothing limits situations where it makes sense to insert you. This is why Tauchman stopped playing in August. He doesn't have anything he does better than both PCA and Bellinger. Contact is his only above average skill and Bellinger's already great there
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Yeah dude Juan Soto and like Mark Canha is a total tomayto tomahto situation
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It's possible to acquire someone who can start during injury that isn't conversely useless when the roster is at full strength.
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Yeah I'd expect next year's bench to be: - Backup catcher - Backup Infielder - Ideally lefty but not mandatory) - Power bat - Being a righty pretty close to mandatory. Positionally they can be a bit agnostic with Bellinger in the fold - TBD - This is the spot the kids will break in, but coming out of camp it might be something weird like a 3rd catcher or a dedicated base stealer. Technically Tauchman could have this spot, but I think they'd prefer someone they're more comfortable cutting
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Mike Tauchman got less than 50 plate appearances in August and September combined. He's a nice player, so he obviously won't get non tendered, but on a roster with both Bellinger and PCA he's clearly pretty redundant.
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Don't get pissy with me because you work sloppy and wondered why your numbers didn't match up with everyone elses.
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You only have 23 players on the 26 man roster, and there's no chance in hell the team non tenders Tauchman.
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Player benefits, estimated at $17.5M. Salaries for guys on the 40 man but not the 26 man, which is another ~$2.5. There's also the pre-arb player bonus pool which is $1.7 per team. It's also smart to build in some buffer for guys going on the IL, which is what ultimately put the Cubs over this year.
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With Bellinger gone I had 80, and that included about $5M as buffer so you could call it 85 if you want to be super literal. Bellinger opting in cuts $27M, which brings us down to~$53M. Smart money is always to round down, hence $50. But you could maybe call it $55 with a Tauchman trade seemingly pretty inevitable?
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Apparently Gerrit Cole is opting out, which seems dumb. Also apparently expectation is the Yankees will exercise their options to add a 5th year at 36M to his original deal and retain him, which seems even dumber.
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Yeah I wonder if this greatly increases the odds of a trade for O'Hoppe or Langeliers. None of the bats we've been throwing around have seemed likely to out-produce Bellinger to a significant degree. They were guys who would get to that production differently (more dongs, less defense and contact). in a way that we feel fits the roster better. If you acquire a power hitting catcher though, you can still get to the same spot in the aggregate. 10 dongs at catcher and 30 in RF isn't any different than 20 and 20.
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The good: - Seiya is locked into DH, and next year's defense should be very good - We have a a very good replacement in CF if PCA backslides. We have a solid replacement at 1B if Busch backslides - Depending on your thoughts at catcher, the starting lineup is ready to go. The bench needs some love, but largely the team can just focus on pitching pitching pitching - Mike Tauchman’s a decent little trade chip now The Bad - It's now harder to add more dong to the lineup - Likely the guy who would have most directly replaced Cody in the lineup would have made less than $27M per year. So there's $5-10M to address other items that essentially just went poof - While I'm pretty okay with Cody on the 2025 team, I'm much less enthused about him being on the '26 squad. Feels like, especially with him not being a starting CF any more, odds of him playing out his whole contract are decent?
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I'm sure people will be totally normal about this
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Jim Bowden's FA Contract predictions
Bertz replied to Transmogrified Tiger's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
I'll say I expect Cody to opt out, and I'd prefer he opts out, but I don't think it's *that* much of a problem if he stays. It keeps Seiya firmly planted at DH, and provides some redundancy at CF and 1B, and gives us a left contact bat in the lineup we wouldn't otherwise have unless we made the mistake of starting Tauchman every day. And we saw in the second half once catcher got resolved the lineup was banging, so while we should strive for upgrades keeping the gang together isn't the end of the world. $50M to address the bench and the pitching staff is a bit tight, so I'd prefer the $80M with one extra item on the to-door list, but it's marginal. -
I wouldn't be as quick to write off deals with the White Sox as much as deals with the NL Central. We've seen Kimbrel and Quintana in recent years, plus smaller deals like Tepera. Especially with just how far the Sox are out of contention the Cubs feel as likely of a Crochet suitor as anyone. And then generally, I think essentially any pitcher that might provide impact is fair game. Fairbanks making less than $5M is not expensive at all, and even Pressly at $14M with it only being one year I doubt Jed would bat an eye. Jed hates years, not dollars. On the SP front I actually think someone like Luzardo is a great fit. He has injury concerns sure, but A) the Cubs have pitching depth and B) he's slated to make a salary where you could acquire him as part of a two SP offseason.
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Yeah you probably have to offer up some of the available DH playing time, something like 60-70 games on the infield and another 60-70 at DH. Which obviously means the righty bat you add can't be someone expecting 140 starts. So essentially would you rather have Polanco and like Mark Canha, or a much better righty bat paired with like Cavan Biggio? Assuming in the latter scenario any of the QO guys are off the table, I probably go with Polanco?
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I don't know if they'd come somewhere with such a murky path to 2B playing time but Polanco or Moncada would be good buy low options to get that LHH infielder I've been pining for.
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They are not showing up on individual player pages but Steamer projections look like they're live on Fangraphs https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=17 It loos like all of the pending FAs have been cleared out (including Bellinger) and the Cubs are the #17 team in WAR as currently constituted. That is #1 in the division, though the Cardinals are right behind them by a fraction of a WAR. They rank 12th on the position player side, 22nd on the pitching front If you go player by player not a ton of surprises, and few things that kind of stand out though - Steamer has generally been pretty down on Dansby Swanson (while ZiPS has loved him), but 3.4 WAR feels pretty fair - Busch gets a fairly soft projection (1.9 WAR) as does Taillon (1.3) - Shaw gets a strong projection, the other prospects not so much. Generally these systems do not love rookies, so I think the Shaw piece is more of a surprise than the latter - Steamer likes several members of the bullpen, it does not love any of them (even Hodge). And generally reliever WAR tends to rack up exponentially as production improves All in all I don't think anything here is too far away from expectations. It paints the picture of a team that is a smidge north of .500 heading into a winter where they presumably have a lot of resources to throw around.
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For Bellinger specifically there's probably not much that can happen in the next three days to influence his decision. Harrison Bader is likely the only CF competition on the market, and the Cubs don't have any other interesting option QO decisions to make. However, there's no cost to waiting. So whether it be something silly like be Scott Boras viewing waiting as a power move, or wanting to just insulate yourself from something surprising (White Sox making Luis Robert a free agent?) or something we can't see (Yankees or Phillies expressing interest) there's a good chance he wants until closer to the deadline.
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Flip it around, if you're making a decision that could impact you to the tune of 10's of millions of dollars, why would you rush it?
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Lynn and Gibson are fairly perfect flip candidates on one year deals. Cards might be planning on being *real* bad next year
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I agree. I have, as recently as yesterday, poopooed sell trades for any of those guys (plus Taillon). But I do wonder if having $70M and 13.5 WAR (in 2024 production) slated to walk out the door all at the same time is something Jed wants to get ahead of? And even if he doesn't do anything about any of those guys, does having them all on hand make additional two year deals problematic? Like I've been stumping for Nate Eovaldi and Tyler O'neill. But is the prospect of having to replace Eovaldi and Taillon at the same time or O'neill, Happ, AND Suzuki at the same time make either of those a non-starter?
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Some general predictions/expectations I have before things kick off in earnest: - The Cubs sign a player to a 9 figure deal, probably a pitcher, probably Max Fried - The Cubs acquire someone who is unambiguously the closer. Jed spends an uncharacteristic (for him) amount on the guy. Not an insane package for e.g. Mason Miller, but something in line with the Brandon Morrow or Wade Davis acquisitions - There’s a trade for someone entering his walk year on a healthy salary, maybe two. An example would be Dylan Cease like Trueblood brought up - One of the 2nd tier rumor guys (Morosi, Heyman, Bob) lists us pretty high up on Soto at some point, we have two or three days of chaos before Rosenthal or Passan come in with some cold water and it never really gets hot again - On the position player side the over/under for players added is 3.5, but the over under for guys who would be the primary starter at their position is 0.5 - The team doesn't spend the full $80M it's got before hitting the LT. They'll say something about having money for the trade deadline, and there's maybe some truth to that, but the bigger reason will be they don't want to enter next offseason already up against the LT, and there's only so many walk year players you can add this winter
