Bertz

Fangraphs has it all now, but for guys who haven't made it to MLB yet you have to finagle your custom dashboard to get it all. I'm hoping they have something less jerry rigged when the season starts.

Belt would only be at danger of losing playing time if he played poorly or if he got injured (which based on the last few years is a when/how long rather than an if). The squeeze for PT would be primarily on Wisdom/Morel, and after that Busch and Madrigal.

There's enough room on the OD roster for both Bellinger and Belt. The starting 13 position players to open the year would be: Gomes, Busch, Hoerner, Swanson, Madrigal, Happ, Tauchman, Suzuki, Morel, Amaya, Wisdom, Bellinger, Belt And with Hoerner/Bellinger's positional versatility I think you've got good defensive coverage. There's definite redundancy with Busch/Morel/Wisdom, but let it work itself out. I'm very okay getting into "make some uncomfortable decisions" mode. All three guys have minor league options. And of course there will be injuries.

I agree the team can/should add one of Belt/JDM/Soler. Makes Morel a 10th man rather than having a dedicated spot, but that's fine. If he wants an everyday spot he can learn to field or hit like a no doubt everyday DH. Right now he does neither, and we shouldn't hold the team back on his regard. Earn it. I also think, if you do it this week, you insulate yourself from the Boras situation ending too badly. If Bellinger/Chapman are going to hold out til March you can't just wait for them. Signing e.g. Belt and missing out on the Boras guys makes this a bad offseason, missing out on the Boras guys and then having to go crawling to like Eddie Rosario or some horsefeathers for your "big bat" is catastrophic.

Most of the players are already down in AZ which means pictures are starting to hit Twitter And of course some uselessly far away action

I would guess it's less about specific names, and more about the financial footprint of a large deal. During the last run, it became very clear that the team is only allowed by Tom to exceed the luxury tax two years in a row. Maybe that's changed with Marquee launched, but we have not yet seen much reason to think so. Right now the team is ~$30M under the cap for 2024, ~$70M in '25, and '$65m in '26. A TON of money falls off in '27, so it should be easy to dip under them. So if Jed adds two of the Boras guys at $25M per this winter, you can see he either needs to have a very austere winter next year, or load up on one year deals next year and have the austerity winter in '26. If he only adds one long term contract this winter, he can add a long term contract next year while still dipping under the LT. I think that's why we're seeing this brinksmanship. If Jed can add one of the Boras guys this winter on a short deal it's a huge boon to the three year window. Now obviously it's silly that a large market team has to jump through these self imposed hoops but that's PTR.

I didn't realize how much Fangraphs hated Gomes' framing last year. He's never been a framing wizard but I feel like that's not something I noticed throughout the year. I would guess it escalated late in the year when the innings really started piling up? I mostly feel good about the catcher spot though. First off I do legitimately believe the Cubs that the soft factors are valuable. They went out and got Tucker Barnhart last year when Curt Casali and Roberto Perez, an offensive backup catcher and a more throwing/framing oriented defensive one, were both available for similar money or less. Other smart orgs like the Yankees, Astros, and Rays have also punted on paper catcher improvements over the last few years to run a Pitcher Whisperer behind the plate. At minimum I believe they believe it and they're not dumb or on an island for doing so. I like Amaya a lot too. He looks like an above average hitter, possibly in absolute terms and almost certainlty by catcher standards. He's already an above average framer as well. He was a bit noodle armed last year, but I think it's reasonable to think that improves another year out from his TJ surgery. I also think having a backup who is not just viable but good likely leads to better load management with Gomes. He's at an age where he can implode at any time, but giving him more rest maximizes the odds that we continue to get the best version of him. I'd like to see Gomes and Amaya at closer to a 50/50 split.

Going back to the Athletic article this AM, Junis might not have been a one-off. Lorenzen would be very cool if he's willing to be a swingman. I feel like most of the other options on the market I'd only want on a MiLB deal. Someone like Eric Lauer?

I think the "the team's not any better than last year" argument has some merit, but it's mostly missing the forest for the trees. Let's assume Jed adds Bellinger and another decent reliever, which looks like the modal outcome from here. On the one hand yeah in terms of players in and players out you retained Bellinger, replaced Stroman with a probably comparable SP, shuffled the bullpen, and added Busch to replace Hosmer/Mancini/Candelario. I'd call it improvement but it's nominal. But we're taking the rest of the team and treating it as static, which isn't reliable or fair for several reasons: - The team underperformed its peripherals by 8 (!!) games last year. I am of the mind that this is mostly luck, but to whatever extent its not you'd likely hang it on the manager, and the Cubs brought in the best manager in the league this winter. That 8 game gap should disappear. If we're anchoring off of a number it should be closer to 91 than 83 (although best practice is to not anchor off of last year at all, anchor off of projections) - Age on the roster is mostly a positive. Very few of the team's major contributors are old. Gomes, Hendricks, and Taillon are in their mid to late 30's, and everyone else of consequence was 29 or under last year. - The team improved over the course of the year last year. Morel wasn't up early. Neither was Amaya. Smyly was starting. Alzolay wasn't closing, etc. - The big one is that the dam is about to break with the kids coming up. PCA, Caissie, and Brown are potential impact guys who will open the year at Iowa. Canario, Murray, and Vazquez are solid prospects who will be there too. The meat of the farm is going to open at AA next year. You would put their ETA as early '25, but once you're that close it's not crazy to be in MLB by July or August of '24. So much in the same way the August '23 Cubs were much better than the April '23 Cubs, the same should be true in 2024 Like I'm not going pretend this offseason is awesome. But now that we know Ohtani was dead set on LAD, the only real option for really moving the needle was to immolate most of our young MLB pitching for Juan Soto. I would certainly have considered it, but at the same time if Jed ends up getting one of the Boras guys on a sweetheart deal, which looks increasingly likely, that's likely going to be a far better outcome.

Mooney this AM. I was lukewarm on Stanek as the primary late inning add. As a second addition I'd be much more on board. I'm surprised about Junis. I figured with Smyly and the crop of optionable SPs another long man wasn't really in the cards. Curious if that's viewed as a need or if they just liked him in particular.

There are many examples of highly productive players who suddenly and permanently stop producing. The error bars around minor leaguers and foreign players are of course wider, but the degree to which that's the case is much smaller than conventional wisdom would say.

They weren't playing in MLB but it's not like they were playing on Mars.

I think there's four things to consider with the projected standings before wringing your hands too much: 1. The basis for playing time is the Fangraphs/BP generalized depth charts. If the have something stupid not based in reality, like having Carlos Rodon slated to throw 157 innings, it can inflate/deflate a team's projected win total. The ZiPS standings Dan Szymborski runs account for the probability of random injury, but as far as I know not the probability of a guy getting passed on the depth chart. The daily updating standings on FG/BP are not dynamic at all 2. Like Rob said, teams with depth tend to outperform the FG odds, because they are better able to withstand injury/underperformance and also they're more likely to have legitimate talent at the bottom of the depth chart that breaks out and earns playing time 3. Projections are inherently conservative. Real life will have a much much higher spread between teams and away from .500 4. The offseason isn't over. Jed could get drunk tonight and add 8 wins to the team's bottom line with one really eventful phone call to Scott Boras. While that's exceedingly unlikely, adding another ~3 wins seems likely and closer to 5 not totally out of bounds

Not so fun fact, now that we have AAA Statcast data we can see exactly how bad some of these guys are. Chase Strumpf at Iowa last year had Nick Madrigal level power numbers and Patrick Wisdom level contact rates. He's patient and kept the ball off the ground but he is really, really bad.

Cubs fans on Tuesday: "Why can't we have a Bobby Witt Jr.?" Cubs fans on Friday: "Our 21 year old all-world defensive CF wasn't a finished product offensively. He's trash and we're better off trading him!"

Caissie and Shaw!

To me I'm not worried about any pitching. Even if Jed pulls a last minute Snell/Montgomery, the age and injury history of the rotation means that if anyone deserves innings, they'll get innings. Maybe they come a few weeks later than we'd want but they're going to get their chances. Offensively there are two guys I am a bit worried about: Canario and to a lesser extent Wisdom. I brought up Canario in the mega thread a few days ago, but the tl;dr is that it's pretty hard to see him actually getting significant playing time short of a rash of injuries. Right now he'd be the 4th or 5th outfielder in the pecking order and behind Morel/Wisdom at DH. After the team adds another bat, that guy will either directly or indirectly knock him back a spot. Not only that, PCA and Caissie are not very far behind him on the development curve. I would expect something akin to Mastrobuoni's playing time last year. That would be fine except we're on his last option year. If we get to November and he's got ~250 MLB plate appearances and no minor league options, he's going to have to get sold off for pennies on the dollar. Especially since Canario seems relatively valuable at the moment this feels like more of a problem than typical back of the roster churn. Wisdom’s less of a prospect so it matters less, but I don't love how much overlap there is between him and Morel. And if we add Chapman he's suddenly completely redundant. Although the one thing about Wisdom is that if we are in the beginnings of a sinker/splitter Renaissance he will start getting far more advantageous matchup opportunities than he's gotten the previous two years. Maybe having Chapman, Morel, and Wisdom all in the same lineup a lot of days wouldn't be as unthinkable as it would have been last year.

Honestly if I'm one of the pitchers and I've come this far, I wait another two weeks and see which large market team had a pitcher come into camp injured. I wouldn't wait much longer than that though because then it impacts your season. The hitters don't really have a drop dead date until like early March? I do expect shortly a run on lesser players pretty soon. They'll want to get into camps before they start or at least very shortly after. And they don't have as much to gain by holding out.

Dodgers fans basically had the same criticisms of Friedman before this year. He hadn't overextended for a FA in his decade running the team. The glass half empty argument was that Betts fell into his lap, Freeman made a lot by 1B standards but not in absolute terms, and otherwise there'd been a ton of smoke but he'd never committed significant resources to a single player before. It was all short term FAs and trades with a couple medium sized extensions to Turner/Muncy/Taylor. This stuff is basically true until it's not. To Squally's point it'd be stupid to assume Jed will operate the same way when he enters an offseason with a team unequivocally ready to win team as he has when he's entered the last few offseasons with a team that has multiple major holes and question marks.

It's my favorite genre of Jed criticism. It's just so patently silly on it's face. Like do they think when Jed signed Dansby Swanson he initially offered $175M and Swanson immediately responded like this?

They have straight up said their payroll is going to be down from last year. Unless they manage some salary dump trade of Jansen/Yoshida (seems incrediblt tough to do on the eve of ST) they're not signing one of the big dogs. They probably can make a mid-sized signing like JDM though.

The numbers next to Alcantara through Ballesteros is where they would rank globally if he went beyond 100 names on his top 100. Feels criminally low on Gray and Murray and criminally high on Kilian but otherwise not much I'd more than quibble with.

People are going to think you're hot taking but I agree with this...at least for 2024. I think Tauchman & PCA is a better internal option in the immediate term than the group of guys fighting for time at 3B or #5 starter. I think also leading with a pitcher gives you the option to sign a Belt/JDM and cram a little more WAR onto the roster. Conversely I don't think it makes as much sense to sign a $10-15M pitcher like Lorenzen in the scenario where Jed pulls down one of the bats. I do still ultimately hope that we sign Bellinger of the four though. For me the arguments for Bellinger being the guy are: A) Age and profile. A 28 year old position player is a safer long term investment than a 31 year position player or literally any pitcher B) Soft factors. The team loves him, he works well with the coaches, etc. I think especially since it looks like these guys are all going to miss a chunk of ST this could matter particularly in the immediate term C) Lineup Diversity. Tying back to the Madrigal article yesterday, we've already got two players *very* similar to Chapman in the batter's box. Bellinger's flyball/contact/patience combo is generally rare generally and certainly not already redundant on the Cubs D) The possibility for a creative contract. With Bellinger's wild career arc, and his very young age, I think he's the most likely to do something like the Carlos Correa deal. If Bellinger proves last year wasn't a fluke he easily gets $250M+ next winter. If he takes a step back but is still productive (3+ WAR), he much more easily gets Dansby Swanson money as he'll have proven '21/'22 Bellinger isn't coming back and also shed the qualifying offer