Bertz

Matt Chapman was the 58th best position player in baseball last year, in between Manny Machado and Matt Chapman. Over the last three years he's 30th in between Alex Bregman and Fernando Tatis Jr.

Doubt it, I don't think they would have taken so much care to stay under last year if they weren't planning to exceed it this year. If we look back at 2015-2020, seems like Tom's orders are to not exceed the tax three years in a row. The Cubs, right this second, are about $50M under the tax, and while the math is a little fuzzy this far out the team looks about $70-80M under the tax in both 2025 and 2026. Then in 2027 A TON of money falls off. So I'm expecting a dip next year or the year after, but it wouldn't be crazy to think Jed's plan after failing to pull down Ohtani is staying under this year and then going over the two after before dipping under again in 27. That would retroactively make last offseason look wayyyyy worse as well.

Brett Taylor mentioned in a BN article this morning that it's a broader Twitter issue.

There's some buzz on Twitter about Yamamoto going to the Red Sox, but best I can tell it's just based on his Instagram follows?

Looking at some comparables that Fielding Percentage seems to correlate to something like -15 runs at 3B. Maybe a little less since he does have the athleticism to make some wow plays? But all told it's disastrous enough defensively that I think we'd probably be better off playing Madrigal there everyday. It'd really be best for all involved to find a trade. Let him go somewhere that needs a 2B and play everyday and make some money.

For reference that fielding percentage is just a smidge better than what Patrick Wisdom did last year

The article doesn't really get into the availability of Pete Alonso, which is what I was sniffing around for. But if they're willing to move him that wishlist lines up really well for Jed.

👀

He and his staff in Milwaukee took some of the crappiest defensive catchers in the league and routinely turned them into borderline gold glovers. He might view turning an athlete the caliber of Morel into a viable 3B as a project he could knock out in a weekend. And the urgency on the offensive side of the ball goes WAYYYYYY down if you can put Morel at 3rd.

I don't think Morel would have been in play at all. The equivalent from us is something more like Assad and Canario. Maybe even drop from Assad down to Wesneski.

I am starting to wonder if the not playing Morel at 3rd thing was a Ross decision and that Counsell is down to try it.

The team's 500Ish right now with 4 glaring holes at 1B, 3B, DH, and one SP. I think if Jed adds more than 10 WAR and fills at least 3 of those holes in the process that's right around a 90 win team I'll say as someone pretty vocally out on Bellinger and Chapman if Jed manages to play the market so that he pulls either down with a deal that's only 8 figures that'd be huge.

I've liked Imanaga all offseason. Pretty much every iteration of what I'd want to see involved him or Glasnow. So if Jed ends up with him as the main SP I'll be plenty happy about how that box is checked. The problem is that pretty much every iteration of an offseason I liked involved getting one of the monster bats available. With that ship having sailed feels like you ought to come down with Bieber and one of the lefties, and with how many teams are about to descend onto this part of the market after missing on Yamamoto why would we expect Jed to successfully pull down two of them?

Via Sharma and Mooney this AM

This also applies to pursuing Ohtani IMO.

Just seems weird to post a point while actively pointing out why it's a dumb point? Glasnow's not Livan Hernandez, he's not going to throw 230 innings, but you're dinging him for a global pandemic and coming back quickly from Tommy John surgery. I swear if he had dragged his feet and not pitched at all in '22 people would be way less worried about him. But they see those 6.2 innings and lose their horsefeathering minds. Justin Steele topped 170 innings last year after never crossing 120 in a season prior. Michael Lorenzen threw 150 innings after being a reliever for nearly a decade. Guy's mid career can add plenty of innings, this isn't some 20 year old following the Verducci 30 inning rule. If Glasnow had shoulder issues (or something shoulder-adjacent like Alzolay's recurring lat issues) there'd be reason to worry about him. But he's had three injuries in his career, two of them tied to his now surgically repaired elbow and one of them being non-arm related with his oblique. Pretending he's like Jacob deGrom or Rich Harden doesn't hold up to frankly any scrutiny.

Do...do you think he has a good chance of ending up back in the minors?

Old friend

Pretty important context to any rumors around Bieber and Naylor. Cleveland might need to shed that ~$20M

I think I've seen some stuff from some of the pitch design guys on Twitter that Wacha's last two years are not as smoke and mirrors as they look at first blush. That said I don't understand what the point is unless he's backfilling for a chunk of pitching depth going out the door in trade. With Soto and Glasnow spoken for and Cleveland/Seattle looking more at bats I'm curious what that trade would be? Because if we have all of Assad/Wicks/Wesneski/Brown in hand still adding a mediocre veteran to block them seems needlessly conservative. And if Wacha's the #1 SP added this winter...woof.

It just feels like a lot to accommodate a what by most estimations looks like a good-not-great bat? I'm probably overstating how likely it is that one of PCA, Canario, Alcantara, etc. are a first division starter within the next 18 months. But even if you want to pick apart the internal options, it's just not that hard to find a CF on the market currently. Tyler O'neill, Manuel Margot, Cedric Mullins, Mike Yastrzemski, and Trent Grisham all hit the FA next offseason or the offseason after (and thus potentially the trade block before that). I'd prefer Bellinger to any of those guys, but not by enough to lock into 2027-2029 Bellinger. Mainly I think you're just more bullish on Bellinger's bat than I am. The juice is worth the squeeze for a ~125 wRC+ where it's just simply not for a ~110. The argument for the former isn't crazy. You've laid out some good points previously, and there's also the Isaac Paredes pulled flyballs stuff. But the totality of what I've seen has me expecting the latter.

Bellinger is a great fit for the 2024 Cubs, and maybe the 2025 Cubs too. Being able to jump between center and 1st is extremely valuable here in the short term where we have fun kids at both spots. If PCA is going all Corbin Carroll on the league Bellinger can play 1st, conversely if he struggles while Caissie is hitting 119 MPH nukes at 1B Bellinger can cover center. The problem is that while 2023 Cody Bellinger hit enough for you to happily play him anywhere, 2024 Cody Bellinger is probably going to have a bat that's fairly uninspired at 1B. To be a quality starter at 1B you need to be 20+% above average at the plate. Bellinger's bat going forward looks like it'll come in right there, probably a bit south of there. For as long as he's needed to regularly cover CF that's fine, but I don't want to give him Dansby Swanson money for what should hopefully only be a couple months of coverage. Even if you're bearish on PCA, CF isn't a situation like shortstop last year where if we don't grab a guy then we are resigning ourselves to it being a hole for a while. We have internal CF's behind PCA and the market's not totally barren over the next 15 months either. If Happ and Suzuki weren't locked down it'd be totally different. Bellinger moving to a corner is a bit of a waste but not enough to lose sleep over. But as it is, I just can't look at paying market price for Bellinger as a good idea unless PCA gets dealt. And I can't really get behind that unless Jed goes really big game hunting.

Even for folks that hate Jed, isn't his villain origin story Tom horsefeathering him and Theo back in 2019? I don't think any sort of "Jed's leaving money on the table that those benevolent Ricketsses are providing" passes the smell test at all. I do think we have to adjust our expectations downward on how many bidding wars Jed is going to win. Though like TT says I don't know that I'd say never. If Rafael Devers had hit FA or if Corey Seager had hit FA when the team was already in position to be a contender I think we might have seen Jed let his hair down. We know he was in on Ohtani beyond the Rangers and Red Sox, so obviously there are situations where he'll throw $400M plus at someone.

I'll say I don't care at all about vibes or mentality or any of that stuff. Also you don't get extra WAR for acquiring a guy in November vs. doing it in January. What I do care about is wins, and the options for adding a lot of them are quickly becoming limited. On the offensive side, this winter was always going to be either an awesome Soto/Ohtani party or something fairly boring. Hopefully someone like Alonso or Bregman is more available than we think, but much more likely we're probably looking at two bats in the 110-120 wRC+ range. That would be fine if Jed goes hard on the run prevention front. That's even getting tenuous though. Setting aside Yamamoto (and assuming the Glasnow trade goes through) there are four arms we're pretty certain are available that project to 3+ WAR: Snell, Montgomery, Imanaga, and Cease. Bieber has some durability questions but is probably at that level on a rate basis. Given that Jed whiffed on doing anything fun on offense, he kind of needs to pull down at least one, ideally two of these guys. Maybe the trade market is a lot more robust than we realize, but things do not look great right now.