Bertz

Zoomer Michael Wuertz

The Candelario move is weird because I had no interest in him at 3+ years or especially 4 years, but I also know there's a decent chance in two months I end up like "well horsefeathers I would have preferred that to ____". I still like Jorge Polanco as a guy from a similar archetype but with a little more oomph in the power/speed departments. He'son successive club options at a similar salary too which is super nice.

If they think Gleyber would take to 3rd Jed bringing him home and backfilling some of NYY's lost pitching would make a ton of sense all around.

This is a good article you probably should have back-pocketed for a less angsty day lol Morel's bat is the goods. One of the things you didn't mention here is the groundball rate. He made only modest gains in his contact numbers between years 1 and 2, but he did that while cutting his groundball rate substantially. If you want optimism about him improving his contact I think the fact that fixing his launch angle is successfully completed means there might be more bandwidth for those contact rates now. The defense is the sticky point. We've had this argument around here a good bit recently but feels like if the Cubs thought his 3B defense was fixable they probably would have had him focus on the position last winter like Madrigal did. That said if he can magically clean things up there he significantly improves the prospects of the 2024 team. His bat is okay for a 1B or DH, for a 3B it's clear cut 1st division starter material. I'm curious if he makes it to March in the org. He's not going for Soto obviously. The Glasnow thing never passed the sniff test and then Jed reamed Nightengale over it. And if Ohtani's not happening I don't know that Morel needs to be traded for a young SP. Plus with the two special bats out of reach I'm not sure there's a clear cut better DH option on the market. The guy who two weeks ago looked like a sure goner suddenly doesn't seem that way any more.

Rays might not be ready to pull the trigger (waiting for Cease or Yamamoto) or maybe Jed wants to get the official rejection on Ohtani (at $25M Glasnow is potentially an "instead of" rather than an "in addition to"). Or any number of things. We've seen stuff get held up without it necessarily being an issue. For instance there was a ton of smoke around Swanson last year and then it died down for a week because of his wedding, and then he signed during his honeymoon.

I would guess he means specifically at the meetings and the Hoskins/Glasnow discussions that have pretty clearly happened were last week. I don't think we have a lot of instances of Jed outright lying (he's more of a lie of omission type), and the Glasnow/Hoskins stuff has come from a lot of directions including some generally reliable ones.

Yeah but Amaya is way way more valuable than Higashioka. Tauchman is a little closer as a pre-FA guy in his 30's that you'd pencil in for ~1.5 WAR if he started every day But yeah there's not a perfect parallel for several of these guys. Like King has much better stuff than Assad but less starting experience and less team control.

We don't have perfect parallels for a lot of these guys but something more like Wicks, Assad, Wesneski, Thompson, and Tauchman? I probably still would have done it but that's a BIG bite out of the young pitching cache. I think it's probably an overpay which is why the Padres aren't waiting around for Ohtani to sign.

He visited LA on Friday, San Fran on Saturday, TBD on Sunday, and the Jay's FL facility on Monday. Given that Jed was late to the meetings pretty decent chance it was Sunday.

I mean you yourself have been saying it doesn't look like losing out on Ohtani is due to lack of effort? So it's hard to say right now but isn't the difference here just who looks like they're going to happen winding up with the guy based on softer factors? You also mention 4ish WAR being more good than great. Yamamoto projects to 3.7 next year. And he's tracking towards the 2nd largest contract for a pitcher ever. I think there's a "fine well if no Ohtani you must get the next best thing" and I think one of the things Friedman does that's helped keep that franchise so strong (and what Jed is trying to emulate) is not throw bad money after good.

Funny you mention the Dodgers, because they don't actually play in these waters that often. They jumped on Betts and Freeman, and appear to be doing their damndest for Ohtani, but otherwise they keep it short term. Like they passed on Harper, Machado's FA, all the SS's last year. They're very judicious with long term contracts and instead do a lot of trades, short term FA deals, and lean on their farm. Jed's clearly trying to do something similar, we'll see if he can pull it off.

I would say too, the team was 6th in runs scored last year and 16th in runs allowed. I think the preferred aesthetic around here (including myself) is clearly for as much offense as possible. An offseason around Ohtani or Soto likely brings the team into "best non-Braves offense in the league" territory, but the opportunity cost probably means run-prevention has to stay roughly average. A Glasnow/Imanaga/two good-not-great bats type of offseason probably puts the team into the top 10 in both directions. I prefer the high octane offense as well, but I think a more pitching-heavy offseason is still a path to a really strong team.

https://twitter.com/jonmorosi/status/1732449035657609660?t=4A0bINWkXxPFE5i258Dsmw&s=19 More or less done it sounds like

Chicago's great but there's a world of difference between living in a somewhere as someone making like $50k a year and living somewhere making $50M a year. Chicago does not have anywhere near the same caliber of super-high-end amenities to cater to the ultra rich that New York, San Fran, or LA does. It also, if this matters to Shohei, does not really have much of a concentrated Japanese community. And of course our winters are awful. Like it's very reasonable that he looks at Chicago and goes "nah I'm good."

Yeah yesterday when Dave Roberts started blabbing it really started to feel like this was just about over. Teams probably submitted their formal offers when they did their in-person meetups. There'll be a day or three of Shohei sleeping on it and a day or three of additional haggling but it should be pretty close to done?

I'm not that worried about it unless Jed pulls down all of Glasnow, Hoskins, and Soto. When I looked at payroll at the start of the offseason, it looked like the team was $80-90M under for next year. And right now the team is slated to lose 34 year old Kyle Hendricks, 36 year old Yan Gomes, and 35 year old Drew Smyly. That's 5 WAR at 3 fairly low leverage spots on the roster. If you add Hoskins and Glasnow, that's ~6 more WAR at higher leverage spots. Now you're at 11 WAR total, and that's a bit tough to do in FA alone. But with the farm system (both via straight production and trades) does still feel very doable. Glasnow and Soto though...you're talking north of 15 WAR just to hold steady. That's suddenly a much tougher beast, and I think would likely require the team to stay above the LT or highly leverage the farm to make up. I would hope Jed would kick the can down the road and look at resetting in '26 or '27.

Based on the Sharma/Mooney latest this...does not look far off

I kind of wonder about that. They're waiting for the firm no from Ohtani's camp and then pull the trigger here

Leverage is always always always other teams. A GM could come out and say "our owner has decreed we absolutely must trade this player" and if at least two teams want that player at more or less market value there is zero loss of leverage. Conversely no amount of "we totally still want him we swear" matters if you're holding a distressed asset. Soto's amazing. The market's a little limited by his $30M+ salary but there will probably be 4-5 teams on him heavily. My guess is Preller's just asking for the moon hoping someone does something stupid before Ohtani signs and he has to buckle down and get serious.

Nah it sucks that it was the Reds but teams trying and still getting rewarded in the draft is a good thing

This has potential to be Bob's version of the Bowden "Ralph" debacle

A's and Royals got kind of boned. Plus this (which I believe also applies to tbe Royals) The anti-tanking portions of the new CBA looking like they might have a little teeth.

There's some plausible doubt to the idea that the Cubs don't believe Morel can play 3rd. He's been doing the super-sub thing basically since the pandemic hit. Maybe there is some specific thing (I've seen an arm-angle change) that can be fixed if the team wants to commit to him being a full time 3B. Mervis though, you really have to do some mental gymnastics to think the org has faith in him. The fanbase had to scream for him to be called up initially even as Hosmer and Mancini were floundering. After Mervis flopped initially, Jared Young got multiple callups, and Miles Mastrobuoni spent a long stint as the primary LHH pinch hitter. Mervis is already 25, if he was going to get a 2nd opportunity with the org it would have happened in the later part of the year.

I do wonder if we're close to this finally being over. All the entrants have had their meetings confirmed or mysterious absences from the winter meetings. Those presumably included formal offers, so it should just be Ohtani weighing those offers and maybe some goal-line haggling, right?