Bertz
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Everything posted by Bertz
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I'd expect position players to start flying off the board within 48 hours. Pitchers might hold off another week or two for Yamamoto
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I think the CBT number is based on the net present value of the contract in these situations
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Holy horsefeathers!
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I don't think that contract is a good idea, but I'd be more open to grabbing a guy of that caliber in trade than I've been in a long time. Let's say you trade for Clase and re-sign David Robertson. Run a bullpen out there of: CL - Clase SU - Adbert, Merryweather, Robertson MR - Leiter, Cuas, Smyly LR - Assad That's a lockdown group, has quality depth behind it in Iowa. and Jed's still got $50-60M to throw at the rest of the roster.
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Maton would be this year's Boxberger. He wouldn't necessarily work out that poorly, but he's a veteran 7th inning guy who just doesn't have the fastball for anything more. I think, despite how rough the bullpen was at the very end of the year, a depth signing like that doesn't make sense for this year's team, ss IMO we'rein need of qualityover quantity currently. We've currently got Alzolay, Merryweather, Smyly absolutely locked into spots. Leiter, Cuas, and a long reliever each seem likely. You'd probably also like a spot for Palencia and Little to compete for? So that only leaves one spot to fill externally, and you'd ideally like a legit late inning option. You could free up a second or third spot by dumping Leiter or only carrying one of Cuas/Little/Palencia to open the year, but again I'd hate to do that just for someone of Maton's ilk. I think some folks like Al saw the bullpen in September and thought "we need a bunch of reinforcements!" but IMO we're in a situation where one $10M arm would make a lot more impact than two $5M arms.
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That "we're in the endgame" gif has been getting a lot of mileage during the whole Ohtani saga. Is the tweet from the PA announcer going to be our "on your left"?
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So Morosi's officially relegated to Nightengale status at this point, right?
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This is basically the Jake Peavy saga but if all of MLB cared about it not just Cubs fans
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This is presumably going to be the physical, not sure if anything else needs to be done? Have to assume we have details by at absolute latest lunchtime tomorrow.
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The Dodgers rotation is a bunch of sophomores and rehabbers, they are competition on pitching regardless of what Ohtani does
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Passan retweeted this which I take as agreement
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If Ohtani truly signs this afternoon I would absolutely expect the dam to break and a bunch to immediately go down this weekend
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MLB Trade Rumors model, which is extremely accurate, has him getting a 40% raise even after his 1 WAR year last year. That's how the system works. Guys get substantial raises every year of the cycle barring more or less catastrophe.
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He's already projected at $20M for 2024, and rule of thumb is a ~50% raise each time through arb unless performance is pretty extreme in either direction. That's sort of the trap we fell into with KB, he got top of the scale arb salaries throughout his entire time here because of his monster first three years.
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Even with his down year, Vladito projects as the 5th best hitter in baseball next year by Steamer. They are not trading him to free up space for horsefeathering Spencer Horwitz lol
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Agreed. Any team that signed Ohtani was going to have to give assurances they were putting the best team around him. Like they might move some of the guys like Biggio or Jansen or Schneider who don't have an iron firm grip on a starting spot and now don't have DH as a fallback, but their existing stars are not going anywhere.
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If it is the Blue Jays, curious what they do in LF. They are really sad in the outfield behind Springer and Varsho, and I'd think Ohtani on top of their current payroll commitments would mostly tap them out. Something like Canario for Pearson and Biggio would make sense in both directions.
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This is one of the reasons I'm pretty okay with a host of 1 year deals. If Owen Caissie is slugging .600 at Iowa and Brandon Belt has a .600 OPS in MLB, you give it a month or so but you can probably swap them out in early/mid May. If Matt Shaw is OPSing 1.000 at Iowa and Matt Chapman is OPSing .600 in MLB, the team's going to give it til at least the ASB before they do anything drastic. On the pitching side, while I won't go as far as to say the durability questions around a guy like Glasnow are more feature than bug, I will say that you'd much much much rather have 100-150 stellar innings rather than 180 solid innings. This is very much a Pizza by Alfredo vs. Alfredo's Pizza Cafe situation. Last thing, and this is very much on a horizon longer than 6 months, but the ugly side to the "yay all our good prospects are in the upper minors" coin is that all our good prospects are in the upper minors. Myrtle Beach looks like it's going to be pretty weak next year. So I think the need to strengthen that weaker portion of the organizational talent pipeline gives Jed even more reason than normal to hold draft picks and not pay the tax for a Qualifying Offer FA. I'd pretty much have it as Ohtani or bust on that front?
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Post Ohtani, I'm really all in in one beefing the hell out of the pitching staff. Something like Glasnow, Imanaga, Robert Stephenson, and Tanner Scott. You'd be looking at a pitching staff of: SP - Steele, Glasnow, Imanaga, Hendricks, Taillon RP - Adbert, Scott, Stephenson, Merryweather, Leiter, Smyly, Cuas, Assad That is a fairly monstrous pitching staff, particularly when you think about how much talent is down at Iowa ready to step in for injury. Eyeballing it that would project to 18ish WAR, which would be 3rd on Fangraphs behind the Phillies and Braves. And between the youths and the conservative estimates on innings for Glasnow/Imanaga there's plenty of additional ceiling. The above is $55-60M, which might limit you to only one bat of consequence. So maybe swap Stephenson out for more of a Hunter Harvey type? But regardless I don't think it takes a ton to keep the offense flat-ish with last year, and there is more than enough quality pitching available to put together a staff that will absolutely embarrass any non-Braves lineup.
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Brett Taylor mentioned this on Twitter this morning but the like baseball version of the Overton window is way out of whack on Chapman. I don't really want him at the cost he's going to require, but he's still a really good player at a position where we ideally could use one. We bemoan that Madrigal had the glove for 3B but not the bat while Wisdom has the bat but no longer the glove. Chapman is more or less those two guys Frankensteined together. I tend to think Jed won't go for Chapman though. He has a pretty clear reticence to sign QO guys, and with Chapman's warts I don't think he's going to be one of the exceptions.
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The Cubs outperformed their BaseRuns expectation on offense by 0.15 runs per game. They underperformed their BaseRuns expectation on defense by....0.15 runs per game. So the team's a smidge better balanced than their RS/RA would indicate but it all mostly washes out.
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It's only ~25M in salary, so you'd still be able to do e.g. Glasnow and Hoskins on top of that
