Bertz

I love this Polanco idea. Offensively he's not too dissimilar from Candelario, defensively you can get him in the lineup at 2nd or 3rd (and in a real pinch SS). His contract is two consecutive club options, whereas I think Candy might require a 3 or even 4 year deal. BBTV says it won't take much to get him, a prospect of consequence but nothing wild. Having an ability to get some quality LHH plate appearances in the infield somewhere besides 1B is a low key need. And currently the internal options on that front are just BJ Murray and Miles Mastrobuoni. I like both guys but hard to confidently count on either contributing in '24.

Yeah basically always take the under on a pitcher putting up a superstar level performance

Thankfully, the Cubs roster decisions are easy enough that they'll be based more on opening up spots for acquisition rather than finances. There are three buckets of players where you can make changes: Players with Option Decisions, Arbitration Eligible Players, and Pre-Arbitration players. The option decisions are pretty easy, Gomes and Hendricks are clearly worth picking up and Stroman is in control of his player option (and while maybe not the best thing its hardly a major problem). The mutual options for Boxberger and Bellinger are misleading. Mutual options are honestly just an accounting trick to defer money. They never get picked up because the odds of both sides being happy with the salary, and being happy enough to lock it in right at the start of the offseason, are basically nil. The arb guys are also thankfully not too heartburn inducing. Here is what MLB Trade Rumors projects everyone to make None of those salaries are all that onorous, so if Jed dumps anyone it will purely be about performance and the 40 man spot. But if Jed wants anyone's roster spot he can non-tender them in November no harm no foul. Lastly you have all the guys making league minimum. They can be dumped at basically any time. But because they make league minimum, the only reason to do so would be for those aforementioned 40 man roster spots. So speaking of the 40 man, by my count the team is currently at 46 players, and you probably want to get down to 35ish. There are 4 pending free agents in Bellinger, Boxberger, Canario, and Fulmer, which gets us to 42, and then Tyler Duffey and Shane Greene are extremely easy decisions to outright as well, which gets us to 40. From there Id expect another couple cuts, probably Jared Young and one or two of the injured relievers. And then trades will free up the last few spots (e.g. Brown, Alcantara, Canario). So all in all there's not really any painful decisions with the roster this winter. It's all about just adding talent.

AAV, and also likely further indication they expect Stroman to stick around. If you have Stroman and Hendricks both as pending FAs, you potentially need to replace 2 rotation spots, plus Smyly's swing role, next winter. The Cubs have enough promising kids that that might not be much of a problem, but it's still something you'd love to get ahead of if you can. And you definitely can't compound the issue by trading for a starter in their walk year, like a Glasnow or a Bieber, if you already have two guys walking out the door after the season.

This is obviously a "searching for silver linings" type of thought, but I do think there's merit there. Bringing in e.g. one of Seattle's top people would be a good way to identify other avenues for development.

I'm certainly open to arguments about certain guys being better equipped than others to handle the power pitching you see in the playoffs, but on a per plate appearance basis Morel and Wisdom outplayed Schwarber and Castellanos by a fair margin. Phillies Guys: 1391 PAs, 2.4 WAR, 76 Dongs, 114 wRC+ Cubs Guys: 731 PAs, 2.1 WAR, 49 Dongs, 115 wRC+ The Cubs have made some bad choices the last few years, but I'm pretty comfortable with those two not being around anymore.

Inducing soft contact isn't a very sticky skill for sure, but I think Hendricks has enough of a track record that we can feel relatively comfortable baking it into his projection. It's not a slam dunk given what he went through in '21/'22, but it feels reasonable to chalk that up to age/injury and think that post shoulder rehab (and with the accompanying velo boost) it's something he's regained. I'd expect Kyle to put up a relatively similar year to last year. Without context of the rest of the roster I think he's worth that $16M. That said, I agree that him plus Stroman on the roster is pretty messy, both for financial and future planning reasons. I think ideally we'd have a rotation spot dedicated to the kids so that we can give them runway to establish themselves. We also need a playoff caliber starter to pair with Steele. That's 6 starters, which isn't unreasonable and doesn't seem very likely My hope would be that Stroman just opts out. I don't think anyone actually buys that his 2nd half struggles were anything permanent, just like I don't think anyone actually bought that he had achieved a new level in the first half. You ding him some for durability sure, but he's more or less the same guy he's been for a while. Given what happened to Ohtani and Urias, I don't see why some team wouldn't give him ~3/$60. Even with his second half he's probably the #6 FA SP.

Had a chance to read Leighton's list this morning. Lot's of good stuff but good gracious this data on Caissie That is legitimate 80 grade power, and at 20/21 there might be more in the tank.

We all love Nick and Kyle, but The story of the Phillies is IMO around pitching and defense. The Phillies were 1st in pitching WAR this year by a hefty margin. That's thanks to their stellar top three in the rotation (Ranger Suarez is one of the most underrated pitchers in the league) and a deep bullpen. That sort of pitching setup makes it possible for them to just smother other teams in a short series. The Phillies also went into another gear when they were able to put Harper at 1B and get Schwarber out of the field. Harper's first game at 1B was 7/21. Heading into that game the Phillies were 52-44 (88 win pace), afterwards they went 38-28 (93 win pace). They and the Rangers are definitely poster children for getting stars when they're available, but let's please not pretend every player we like is a star. Harper, Realmuto and Wheeler are actual stars. Schwarber and Castellanos are just charismatic dudes who hit a lot of dongs. The difference between the Phillies and the Dodgers IMO is they pay for the legit stars and they use scouting/player development to efficiently stock their roster rather than paying "just a dudes".

The Yordan Alvarez experience just reaffirms in my mind that we need to get Juan soto roster fit be damned

I think the other thing about the bullpen is for as highly visible as the meltdown was last year, it seems to be in a position to fix it fairly painlessly. I'd look to add two arms: one veteran in FA (ideally on a one year deal) and one via trade (ideally with MiLB options). For example, something like David Robertson in FA and a trade with Miami (who have a bullpen overloaded with lefties) for AJ Puk. CL - Alzolay* SU - Robertson SU - Merryweather MR - Cuas* MR - Puk* MR - Leiter LR - Smyly LR - Assad* Guys with a * have minor league options, so if things go sideways they can be sent to Iowa to clean things up. This scenario has the three stuff monsters (Palencia, Little, Estrada) plus the heroes of the 2022 bullpen (Thompson and Hughes) slated to open at Iowa. So there *should* be good reinforcements to keep the pen fresh throughout the year. Then again I thought the reinforcements going into last year were strong and we saw how hard and fast attrition can strike.

This sucks. It doesn't feel like she did a great job in Miami, but there's obvious resource limitations and it seems like the new ownership group, while way better than Loria, also sucks. It not long ago they pushed Jeter out too. It's hard to see her getting a bigger job (e.g Boston) since she didn't have smashing success with the Marlins. I kind of wonder if she needs to go be the Jed to someone's Theo (Stearns/Mets?) before she gets a shot to run a serious franchise.

I don't really see what any of the above has to do with modernization. You just wish the pen was better, and that's fine, but blaming a lack of modernization betrays a misunderstanding of the actual issues. The Cubs had the 4th hardest throwing bullpen in baseball this year, this isn't the soft tossing group of like 2019. They also have plenty of their own Hoffman-esque success stories, such as Merryweather. The issue is simply that there weren't a ton of resources allocated there last winter or this summer. Ross was playing a reliever or two short for most of the year. Like the team did some fun things to modernize Cuas' pitches, and I'm excited for him next year, but overhauling a guy's repertoire takes time and you don't really have time on August 1st. Cuas should have been the other guy, not the only guy. Or last winter, if they'd added a $10M arm like Kimbrel or David Robertson instead of a $5M arm like Fulmer, he likely doesn't have those prolonged struggles from the first 3rd of the season as he figures out his new pitches.

I like this idea a lot. Garver is very frequently my backup catcher in The Show. But more to real life, I've been thinking about what the rest of an offseason looks like if the big bat isn't a 1B (e.g. Soto or Ohtani), and Garver is a savvy "other bat" for such a scenario. He hits enough that he could be a cromulent starting 1B/DH. We know the Cubs love carrying 3 catchers. Garver would probably only start 20ish games behind the plate (this might be the deal breaker for him), but he'd get back there plenty often mid-game, and would find his name in the lineup most days at 1B/DH. I'd imagine he'd jump at starting ~130 games, even if in his perfect world he'd prefer more starts at catcher. Garver would also free up Wisdom to be traded. Patrick doesn't have immense value, but he should probably bring back a cost controlled setup man.

I'd sort of already chalked up the Brewers trading one of Burnes/Woodruff this winter. But this means they don't get the prospects or to reallocate the dollars. Pretty tough first test for the FO post-Stearns

Do we have confirmation on this? I asked about it a week or two back in the MiLB forum. It seems likely, and I would think Amaya might get one too, but don't have a great way to check (I usually just have to wait for AZ Phil to randomly drop nuggets like this). I do think, more to the point of the article, there are several pockets of depth where I'd expect a trade from in the next ~15 months. Most notably RHH outfielders in the upper minors, the SPs who could reasonably open next year in an ML rotation (Assad, Wicks, Brown, Wesneski), and the entire Tennessee infield from the end of the year.

Yeah the only way we can turn back the clock on innings is if we also turn the clock back on velocity. I love Kyle Hendricks but I don't want to go back to 87 being an average fastball.

Let's put a little finer point on this: - Juan Soto's bat the last three years is approximately 45 runs better than a league average bat over the course of a year - Over that same period, his glove is, depending on how you weight statcast vs. DRS, and whether you consider his positive 2021 germane, somewhere between -5 and -10 - Ian Happ's glove is between average and +5 in LF, again depending on how you weight which inputs - Ian Happ has 11 career games at 1B, and over 100 in the infield more generally. I think you'd expect Happ to be a better 1B, perhaps much better. Certainly in the near term Put it all together, and I think you'd expect the team to be flushing 5-10 runs down the toilet by playing Soto as an outfielder. But again let's return to that +45 bat. Pete Alonso's averaged +27 the last three years. Rhys Hoskins is not quite a +20 bat. Cody Bellinger was +24 this year (and I personally have my doubts that this is his true talent level). Soto's bat is so so so so good. If there are any necessary evils, like keeping a crappy defender at a more valuable position to make him happy in his walk year, it's totally worth it and better than most alternatives.

I doubt the team is going to pass on arguably the best hitter in baseball over it. Like the Astros let Yordan Alvarez play the field ~1/3rd of the time even though he's been a should-be DH since he was a teenager. You sometimes compromise to add otherworldly offense to the lineup.

Yeah more or less. Soto to 1B is cleaner but it is definitely a lot less likely. I'll hope for it but my expectation is going to be for Happ to move.

It's hard to say what the team's preference is around a 6 man rotation since prior to Assad and Wicks balling out to end the year they hadn't had a good 6th starter since Mike Montgomery. I'd expect next year them to do a 6 man coming out of ST. Hendricks and Stroman could use a bit of a breather, and Steele could REALLY use one. You've also got off days almost every week early on. I don't expect it to go much further than that though unless maybe the sign one of the Japanese starters.

Soto's bat is so good that you get him in the door and worry about the defensive stuff later. I'd guess the most likely play is Ian Happ to 1B. It's not ideal, but not close to problematic enough to poopoo the idea.