Bertz

Yeah I'm actually probably most worried about the arm. He apparently had great arm strength in the minors, so did his TJ temporarily reduce it or permanently reduce it.

That's what I'm wondering. Regarding Counsell, a lot of ink has been spilled about Brewers devil magic and what the implications are for the bullpen. One thing we have not probably talked about enough is Brewers devil magic and what that potentially means for Miguel Amaya. The bat already looks above average for a catcher, if he can take the sort of defensive leap that Omar Narvaez and William Contreras took their first years with the Brewers he's probably an impact player.

The more I come to grips with this being a no stars offseason, I do agree some variation of a Cleveland trade feels like a perfect fit. I tend to like door number 2, though I'd probably like to use Morel to defray the prospect cost (he's pretty comparable to Alcantara+Brown I'd reckon). I think my ideal offseason currently would be in the neighborhood of - Morel+ for Bieber/Naylor - Hoskins pillow contract - Trade for Jorge Polanco - Sign one of Imanaga/Montgomery/Snell Do something for the pen, with specifics TBD based on available budget. You've added a ton of talent yet the farm is mostly intact (if you use Morel neither trade will require a top 10 prospect) and there's little long term salary added. Unlike a lot of offseasons that avoid long term deals, you're not hitting a post-2024 wall because Naylor's in arb and Polanco has a club option, so you can easily choose to keep or dump either.

Snell is the pitching version of Matt Chapman. Even though he's objectively very good, he gets to his production in a way that's not ideal so he's not really anyone's first choice. I think he probably just hangs out until February and then gets one of the teams that got shouldered out of the other impact arms to give him what he wants. If a team wanted the best most unwatchable rotation possible they'd grab both him and Dylan Cease this winter.

Jeff Passan connected the Cubs to him a few weeks ago, but I don't think any of the local guys have corroborated that. A reunion with the Rangers has also been mentioned a bunch. I think Montgomery and Imanaga are tied very closely to Yamamoto. The Mets and maybe the Dodgers are only going to go big for a FA SP with Yamamoto, but the rest of his market teams plus a few others like the Cubs and Rangers seem likely to start moving onto the guys in the next tier as soon as that bidding has resolved. That does mean we're probably rooting for the Yankeees, Giants, or Red Sox to pull down Yamamoto. The Mets winning him reduces the supply of pitchers without reducing the demand for what's remaining.

https://theathletic.com/5146658/2023/12/19/sf-giants-shota-imanaga-free-agent Nice writeup on Imanaga from Grant Brisbee. Since the shopping lists for the Cubs and Giants overlap so much most of his free agent profiles this winter are actually pretty relevant for us

One thing fans are bad about that teams (mostly) aren't as guilty of is anchoring. Whether it's the draft or prospects or free agency fans will lock in on one or two or five guys and then it's a bit of an end of the world situation when the team doesn't come down with one of them. Sometimes that's fair. There is, barring someone wild being secretly on the trade market, simply no one that could have been acquired this year that comes close to the impact Ohtani and Soto will bring. But the player talent pool follows a bell curve. And the further you get down the list the less daylight there is between options. Once you pass or whiff on those top couple of options, guys just aren't that different. They likely have very different ways of getting to their production, and probably offer differing levels of risk, but with maybe a few edge case exceptions, 3 WAR is 3 WAR is 3 WAR. So you come to the Cubs. This team, while certainly needing help, only absolutely needs a 1B and one SP. It'd be nice to get a 3B, it'd be nice to add some LHH power, it'd be nice to add a fearsome late inning bullpen option or two. But they only have two absolute needs, and the middle infield is the only place you absolutely cannot add talent. So if Jed's plan is to add 10ish WAR this winter with ~$70M, he's got about 14 million ways to get there. And none of that is to say you should feel shame for being miffed when like the Mariners sign Rhys Hoskins. But do please keep in mind that right behind Rhys are Brandon Belt, Justin Turner, and Mitch Garver. Please at least wait for them to also get scooped up before jumping out the window.

I think the big culprit here is that You are conflating Jed not putting every sordid detail of negotiations in the press with him not being active. Like c'mon now, players like Swanson or Stroman don't get $25M a year when only one team is bidding for them. Senga got basically the same money as Taillon (lower AAV but an extra year), so again I'm not sure how you're rationalizing that as losing a bidding war. Do you really think that Jed liked Senga way more but that last $7M was just a non starter? (not that it matters Senga reportedly loved the idea of pitching in the bright lights of NYC) And even if you're right, do you really think the markets for Bellinger/Chapman/Imanaga/Montgomery/etc. are especially robust? That much moreso than e.g. Swanson? After all no one has signed them yet. And none of them has had more than a couple of teams connected to them.

But like there's still plenty of inventory. People are conflating the date with it being late in the offseason and it very much is not. Let's take SP. This winter there were 7-8 guys you could reasonably consider impact types: Nola, Yamamoto, Imanaga, Eduardo Rodriguez, Sonny Gray, Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, and YMMV on whether Stroman belongs here There are also 6+ impact starters who have a decent amount of smoke around being available: Glasnow, Bieber, Burnes, Luzardo, Cease, Framber Valdez, several Mariners Even if half of those trade SPs aren't truly available, that's still quite a bit of inventory out there. And there's 4-5 teams who definitely still want impact SP help: Cubs, Giants, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers. (Mets seem like they are Yamamoto or bust). Like if Jed loses this game of musical chairs feel free to excoriate him. But the level of whining and moaning right now with more than half a dozen legit options on the board is wild.

Not gonna lie, most of this post after "Not Freaking Out" very much reads as Freaking out Also where did this "no bidding wars" thing come from? Setting aside Yamamoto, is anyone left on the market any bigger of a FA than Swanson, Suzuki, or Stroman? Like yeah, it's probably a mistake to next winter pencil Juan Soto or Alex Bregman onto the shopping list. But this weird revisionist history that Jed can only sign the Trey Mancini's and Tucker Barnarts of the world isn't grounded in reality.

I think you give Davis one last half season before you cut bait. Let's see if that second surgery can get him back to where he was two years ago. You don't have to hold on forever, but I'd give him until at least June before I start thinking about that. Kilian I think depends on other moves. Right now he's probably 9th on the SP depth chart? And that's before any more additions. I like him slightly better than whatever depth rando you can get on a minor league deal, but the 40 man spot is probably more valuable than that difference. If trade(s) deal a heavy blow to that depth and move him up to like 7th though, I do want the slight premium Kilian offers over the Matt Swarmers of the world. Rucker yeah jettison away. He's better than replacement level, but there are so many other arms ahead of him and right behind him that he's not goingnto get another meaningful chance here.

We can all be mad about Jed mostly foregoing the tippy top of the market, but all this "doesn't have a plan" stuff is more or less a temper tantrum because you want a move now. Players don't magically put up more wins if you buy them in December instead of January.

I'd expect Jed's being relatively active on the pitching front. There's a steep cliff after the top 4-5 guys remaining, and the roster barring any major trades has pretty enviable depth already. The pitching market is also clearly holding out for Yamamoto before it starts moving again. Fans are yelling for Jed to do something but he probably couldn't sign Imanaga or Montgomery this afternoon even if he wanted. On the position player side, unfortunately the play probably is to drag his feet. This winter from the jump had Ohtani/Soto, then a big gap to Bellinger/Chapman, then another gap before a bunch of 2-2.5 WAR guys. After Jed passed on Soto and lost on Ohtani playing the waiting game unfortunately became the smart play. Especially given the team needs 2-3 bats but can be fairly agnostic about where they play.

Oops yeah that was supposed to be Machado and Luis Arraez. But the Cubs don't *need* a big bat, they just need to improve. Most of us on a pure aesthetic level would prefer the bat, but for the most part wins are wins. I don't love Matt Chapman, but if Jed is sniffing that his market is weak I understand the interest. I think anything under $100M or so would be a very very good deal.

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.

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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.