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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    Looks like every SP except Rea is a little better here than via Steamer, and that's a healthy bump for the bullpen too. But good lord does it love the lineup.
  2. Bertz
    Alex Bregman can play 2B
  3. Bertz
    All bets are off for 2031 but next winter is going to be all bark and no bite with the TV deals up in the air.
  4. Bertz
    Andujar is completely straightforward. The team is obviously fielding calls on Hoerner and Shaw and you have to have backup plan(s) ready in the case something comes together. He's a 3B, just barely, so he'd in essence back up each of Swanson/Hoerner/Bregman. You wouldn't feel comfortable with him getting extended time on the infield in case of an injury, but he could cover the 20-25 games those three would collectively miss over the course of an IL-free season. Gallen's more curious. I assume Gallen would essentially be "traded" for Taillon. Is Jed being uncharacteristically agressive given the team's spot on the win curve? Is this about heading off next winter's roster cliff? Is Jed simply chasing a good deal? Is this all BS being put out there because Boras' back is up against the wall? I suspect it's the Boras desperation thing with a splash of Jed always being down for a good deal. But regardless this is one of those times where you're glad to have a cold and dispassionate front office.
  5. Bertz
    I would guess there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 0% chance they cross that line. And going into the season $1M under is for all practical purposes going over. A Gallen signing almost certainly involves a Taillon trade. Mayyybe Hoerner + Rea?
  6. Bertz
    I'm always going to be mindful of soft factors after the way the wars around closer/reliever usage worked out 10-15 years ago. Back then there was this sabr backlash to traditional reliever usage. "Oh you're using your closer in the 9th inning? Like some sort of horsefeathering moron?" But it turned out the traditional roles worked great. Players hated the dynamic roles, it was hard to actually implement because of warmup times and rest schedules, and traditional closers still netted out with slightly average leverage than firemen. This revolutionary idea that made sense on paper broke down in human trial. Now closers come into the 8th if the middle of the order is due up and we're otherwise back roughly where we were in the aughts? I have seen proposals for a pitching staffs with like eight 4 inning guys and five 1 inning guys and rotations that min-max rest and exposure blah blah and I don't think they're workable in practice. However incremental changes like "you're a long reliever who is actually allowed to pitch in leverage" should be pretty doable. And if you're lucky maybe in three years you've got enough pitchers who've drank the Craig Counsell koolaid to try something more exotic.
  7. Bertz
    I suspect that the team is not going to run a full proper 6 man rotation, but instead pull every lever they can to get as many starts as possible on 5 days rest. I think that distinction is a nuance that's hard to fit in a tweet, and frankly Levine's not a great writer at this point, hence him saying 6 man rotation To your point the guys who are not slam dunk starters will end up filling in in a number of ways. I'd expect at least two guys on the staff on any given day to be A) not one of the traditional 5 SPs and B) capable of giving you multiple innings. Whether that's a sixth regular starter temporarily on the roster, a long reliever (able to go 3+ innings and face as many as 15ish batters) or let's call it a medium reliever (2 innings or 8-10 batters). I know they had an extra roster spot to play with due to expanded rosters, but the September pitching staff is probably a good model. They had Civale in long relief, Soroka/Brown/Wicks in medium relief at various points of the month, and Assad making spot starts. That was in addition to five tradtional SPs and 6 traditional short relievers.
  8. Bertz
    He played it regularly in summer ball apparently, via the Athletic this AM: Also I'm sure there are some examples people can dig up but it's kind of hard to be a bad OF with 90th percentile sprint speed.
  9. Bertz
    Seiya. It's really hard currently to find RHH outfielders who aren't either a defensive liability or the short side of a platoon.
  10. Bertz
    Yeah I'm never going to jump up and down over a minor league signing but I like this a lot.
  11. Bertz
    Turning multiple 2nd rounders into 4ths by the margin of like Hoby Milner is a disaster.
  12. Bertz
    Shaw's a better hitter than any backup CF you're going to find and Alcantara's a better fielder. And if by some misfortune neither guy can cover the position, we can go back to PCA starting against lefties and batting 9th until to your point they deal with it at the deadline. Boston Bateman was the best prospect the Padres gave up for Ramon Laureano (and Ryan O'Hearn) at this past deadline and Eric Longenhagen ranked him roughly on par with Ronny Cruz https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ranking-the-mlb-prospects-traded-at-the-2025-deadline/
  13. Bertz
    Jed mentioned something along the lines of continuing to look for depth. I'd guess they have another move or two in them even beyond the typical NRIs. Payroll right now is kind of in no man's land and IMO they need to bump it in one direction or another. The team is currently looking at having 3-4 qualifying offer guys next winter, and if you cross the LT the compensation you get back goes from end of the 2nd round to end of the 4th round. You can absolutely cannot just sneak over the LT by like two million. The Cubs crossing the LT by a couple hundred grand a few years ago was a nothing-burger, this would be a disaster. I think you can fit another short reliever onto the roster. Last year the Cubs added Brasier late when it looked like the pen was full. The fact is that you're not going to get through ST without injury. Speaking of injury, I wonder about targeting some guys coming off of injury who can be mid-year reinforcements. Michael Kopech? Jordan Montgomery? But especially knowing the team doesn't have a ton of appetite to go big at the deadline, you've gotta push payroll a little more before the season.
  14. Bertz
    Man those goalposts are getting quite the workout
  15. Bertz
    This. It's not an accident that Busch is catching like 2% of the heat Shaw is despite also being a fan of all the same nazi horsefeathers.
  16. Bertz
    With Steamer you can actually now do guys who by default have a mix of SP and RP outings as a pure SP or as a pure RP. And if you do that it's 6; Steele - 3.64 Boyd - 3.97 Cabrera - 3.97 Brown (as a SP) - 3.97 Wicks (as a SP) - 4.05 Shota - 4.12
  17. Bertz
    Pretty much any argument you'd make for Horton regressing (totally reasonable) has the flipside of implying positive regression for Ben Brown.
  18. Bertz
    Can you show your work on that last part?
  19. Bertz
  20. Bertz
    I think in terms of players in and players out it's a slight positive. Tucker's better than Bregman but not enough to cover Cabrera. Everything else is pretty flat. For the stuff in house, YMMV on whether the youths on the team will improve faster than the 30-somethings will decline. It feels like a tossup, that said the Cubs and the Brewers are the only NL contenders from last year where the ravages of aging are a question rather than an inevitability. Overall the Cubs are flat-ish from last year, but the NL's upper crust is broadly taking a step back and the Cubs are at least getting younger in the process.
  21. Bertz
    I think every move the Phillies have done in isolation this winter is somewhere in the vicinity of fine. But spending $75M in FA for the combo of Kyle Schwarber, JT Realmuto, Adolis Garcia, and Brad Keller is a disaster.
  22. Bertz
    The Phillies after losing the NLDS were all "we need to change things up we're getting stale etc. etc." and now they're running back the same team from last year but swapping Ranger Suarez and Matt Strahm for Adolis Garcia and Brad Keller. It's basically the crappy 2018/2019 offseason we dealt with except except somehow worse because we held onto Cole Hamels with a team option while the Phillies had to give Schwarber a contract that made ZiPS want to put a gun in its mouth.
  23. Bertz
    WOOF
  24. Bertz
    Yeah they don't have an obvious pivot from here. They have a good team and don't *need* to add anyone else but also looks like they're gonna be left holding a bag of ~$30M or go sign a Bellinger just out of principal.
  25. Bertz
    Gotta say if you're wanting to juice the trade value of a Horton or a Shaw this is just about best case scenario. Especially because smart money is probably on the Mets getting Valdez too.
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