Bertz

I'd guess it's very unlikely Little opens the year in MLB. There's probably only going to be one truly open spot in the bullpen to be competed for in spring training, and if it goes to a lefty Hughes feels more likely. But like Little only had 8 appearances at Iowa, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for him to get more seasoning. Little looks to at a minimum be absolute death on lefties though. Last year he did not give up an XBH to a left hander his entire time in the minors. He did allow a double in MLB, but it was a groundball down the line from Jace Peterson. Across all levels lefties slugged .161 (!!!) against him. The walks are an issue, and what will decide if he's ultimately a closer or a middle reliever, though he doesn't completely lose the strike zone as much as you'd expect from a guy with a 15ish percent walk rate.

Yeah Phillies/Braves was fun, and both LCS series going 7 was fun, but pretty rough October from a viewability standpoint. Last year was great so not necessarily an indictment of the new format but it's in the back of my mind.

Jim Bowden is the joke of all jokes. HOWEVER, his contract predictions at the start of each offseason have a history of being shockingly solid. https://theathletic.com/5008102/2023/10/31/mlb-free-agents-2023-contract-team-predictions?source=user-shared-article He has Mitch Garver getting 2/$20M and Jeimer Candelario getting 2/$15. Brandon Belt isn't projected, but him not being a Top 40 FA is a clear sign he's not going to break the bank either. But those are 3 very solid 1B options slated to make "other bat" money. (I do expect that Candelario will make more than Bowden says) I think 3B if we don't bring back Candelario is where we're most likely to look in March and be like "Uhhhhh Jed I think that part of the roster could have used a bit more love." As an aside I love that we finally have all this young pitching and don't have to shop for rotation depth, but this would be a very good winter to be in the market for a back-end arm or two. Where was this in like 2019?

I'm curious to see how much longer the club let's Arias go as a starter. Luke Little and Daniel Palencia at roughly the same stage of development a year ago basically got til Memorial Day. Does Arias get more since the bullpen will (hopefully) be less of an acute need? Or is this roughly the point in development where a clear future reliever has learned all he can by starting?

Here's a pretty thorough look at the budget I did a few weeks ago. My guess is that the limitations on the budget are more tied to multi-year commitments than 2024 dollars specifically. Like I could see the team running a ~$270M payroll this year, but I can't see Jed putting himself into a situation where new multi-year commitments mean payroll is already like $230M for 2026. That's what happened to Theo and Jed in 2019, and it really feels like Jed's being over-cautious the last few years is very much a "never again" response to that.

Aesthetically I love guys with insane speed. Setting aesthetics aside though, I don't see the need for a RHH infielder who you can't confidently plan on being the everyday 3B? Like TT says, is he actually any better than Madrigal? He's gotten only very limited run in the outfield, but if you told me he was a strong defender out there too that'd change my mind.

This sucks. The Cubs fandom has a lot of good prospect writers at this point but Bryan was either at or damn near the top of the list.

Roster spots and playing time are a finite resource that you don't seem super keen on acknowledging

FWIW Jesse Rogers did an interview a week or so back and said he doesn't expect Jed to go nuts in FA but that he does expect significant trade activity. I'd imagine a lot of it is how terrible the FA class is. Yamamoto is literally the only impact FA without major warts.

This is the crux of things IMO. You want one or two impactful moves that significantly raise the talent level of the team this winter. Jed can probably cobble together ~1.5 WAR with internal options at each of 1B/DH/3B. So if he has the resources to add say 8 WAR this winter, you'd want as much of that concentrated into 1 big guy as possible. If you do 3 acquisitions at 2.8 WAR each, you're adding about 4 wins to the bottom line. But if you add a 5.5 WAR player (e.g. Soto) and a 2.5 WAR player (e.g. Garver or Polanco) you're actually netting 5 wins. I'm as guilty of playing Efficiency Olympics as anyone. But doing that has two potential purposes: line the owners pockets or free up resources for an expensive star acquisition. We certainly don't want to do the former so if you're going to hyper focus on efficiency the endgame has to include one of the latter

I'm way out on keeping Bellinger unless something significant changes. IMO I agree with the guy in the Athletic article that said his bat looks like it should end up more in the 110-120 wRC+ range. That, combined with plus defense in CF and his age, is absolutely worth something like Dansby Swanson money. Maybe closer to $100M than $200M based on the elevated risk from his '21 and '22? But he's not slated to play CF here. PCA is ideally the guy. If not him ideally Alcantara. Alexander Canario is probably going to be viable out there for the next 2-3 years. There's certainly scenarios where Bellinger plays plenty of CF, but it's not A or even plan B. A wRC+ south of 120 is basically on the low end of acceptable. If you were paying Bellinger purely as a 1B you'd give him like Jose Abreu money? Paying more in case he ends up playing more CF than intended is fair, but do we really want to give him ~$100M extra as a CF insurance policy? Seems foolish. If something changes and CF opens up, for instance you turn PCA into Tarik Skubal or Logan Gilbert, lets totally talk Bellinger. Otherwise he's just got a lot more value to other clubs than he would here.

I actually really like this as an avenue for improvement that hasn't been talked up a ton yet. The Mariners have been floating since the deadline that they'd do a young SP/young Hitter swap. There's really two tiers of pitcher at play here. Gilbert and Kirby are immensely valuable, BBTV says something like PCA, Chris Morel, and Ben Brown for Gilbert is fair, and add another player of consequence (e.g. Owen Caissie) to bump up to Kirby. That is A LOT to give up, but then again they're young aces making the league minimum. Seattle has a second tier of starter available too. Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo are, again according to BBTV, worth roughly Morel + some filler. Either way, if you knock SP off the to-do list with a guy making the league minimum it really opens up financial options to do more or less anything you want in FA. I'm pretty clearly all in on Soto but this is a fun alternative. Ohtani + a Mariners starter is probably the single most impactful 1-2 punch of moves Jed could make this winter.

I'm generally of the mind to give prospects, who come in via IFA or High School a mulligan year either when they hit full season ball or when they take a crack at AA. Unfortunately for Hernandez. really all you can do is say "horsefeathers happens" and hope for the best next year. Like you pointed out there were some signs of life in the second half. And the wRC+ numbers on FG are league adjusted not park adjusted, so his wRC+ is probably in the 80's. But overall unfortunately we just have to hope for better. Given he was 19 it's imminently reasonable to expect better is coming, but we've gotta start seeing it more or less from the jump next year because he burned his mulligan.

First, where are you getting 2024 projections? Fangraphs doesn't have them up yet, unless you're looking at the 2024 ZiPS projections that were done prior to this season? Don't do that those are woefully out of date at this point. But we can math out this defense angle too. And spoiler alert, it still says the team is substantially improved adding Soto over basically any alternative (sans Ohtani) Juan Soto was 45 runs better than an average hitter last year. That's right around his three year average (46 runs). On defense, he was either -8 or -6 last year depending on your source. His 3 year average is -5 or -2 respectively, but we'll assume the worst and say what he did last year is the baseline. Oh and let's take it a step further and debit him for the extra time at DH Happ and Suzuki are going to have. Both guys are a couple runs above average, so let's say the defensive cost for Soto is a flat -10 runs. That means that net he's producing ~35 runs above average per year. Let's compare that to some alternatives: Christopher Morel - +10 runs of offense last year but scaling up to about +15 if he had played a full year. But keep in mind unless he magically figures out 3B no defensive value Pete Alonso - A +15 hitter last year, but closer to +25 over the lat 3. He's also a slight plus at 1B so let's just say +25 to have a nice round number Cody Bellinger - He's a +5 defender at either 1st or CF. He was a +24 hitter last year, but deep into the negative the two years before that Matt Chapman - A +5ish hitter and a +10ish defender. And I'd give him some extra credit given how thin 3B is both on the FA market and in the org currently So even if you look at defense Soto (or Ohtani, the math is all pretty similar for him) is easily the most impactful move the team can make this winter. He's not a perfect positional fit, far from it, but thanks to the depth on the roster and the fact that there's enough resources this offseason for a second bat that concern is pretty muted. The perfect move this offseason would have been Rafael Devers, but unfortunately he's a cautionary tale of "you can't just wait for the perfect time to add whoever you want."

Not picking on you, but I see stuff like this and I think people don't *really* understand how good of a hitter Soto is. It's like the Ron Swanson "give me all of the bacon and eggs you have" speech. I'm afraid what you heard is "Soto's a really good hitter", but that doesn't do it justice, he is a historically notable hitter. Soto's career wRC+ is 154. To put that in context a bit: - Only 5 times seasons this century has a Cub matched or exceeded that 154 mark: Sammy Sosa 3x, Derrek Lee in 2005, and Anthony Rizzo in 2014 - No, i did not forget Kris Bryant. His MVP season was "only" a 148 - Remember Nick Castellanos' absurd half season with us? He had a 152 wRC+ - Paul Goldschmidt is maybe the most notorious Cub killer of the last 15 years. He has a 157 wRC+ career against the Cubs - Miguel Cabrera's last great season was 2016. Through that season he had a career 153 wRC+ - Manny Ramirez had a career 153 wRC+ - Ronald Acuna has a career 143 wRC+. Mookie Betts 140. Bryce Harper 142. Those are the absolute stars of the game right now and there's very real daylight between what Soto and those guys do offensively Soto's a bit of a putz in the outfield (though let's not pretend like he's some Adam Dunn-esque disaster out there), but he is such an INCREDIBLE hitter and that it far more than makes up for it.

We do not have public 2024 projections currently, but when those come out Juan Soto will be a top 5 hitter in baseball. If that is not a "meaningful move" then what is? Speaking of things that are top 5, there's the Cubs farm system. They can afford to convert some 2028 WAR into 2024 WAR.

Ah, so you're one of those fans that only wants the team to add if they've got like a Braves-caliber roster. Got it.

Can't speak for everyone, but IMO there's two positives to dealing Morel instead of one of the prospects: - Morel does have a lot more value than any of our prospects besides PCA. So if you make a deal that centers around him, you're probably able to do something like e.g. Morel + Kilian + filler as opposed to an alternative of Caissie + Wicks or Alcantara + Brown (+ filler). There's some benefit to having more prospects of substance on hand even if ultimately we're spending the same capital either way - Morel's value to this roster, where 2B and both corner outfield spots are spoken for, is much lower than it would be on a team where one of those three spots is open. There's a bit of mutual benefit to dealing him somewhere where he can maximize his value

I like Naylor as a player, but I wonder if he's a bit too much of a tweener for what we're looking for this offseason. He'd be a pretty weak primary bat to acquire. His 2.5 WAR and 128 wRC+ marks last year were a career high, and a large part of that is he finally started hitting lefties. But platoon splits are famously fickle, you can't count on him holding onto all of those gains (just look at Ian Happ). And like you said, the trade cost won't be especially small, which IMO hurts his shine as a secondary acquisition. His salary kind of works against us here. He's probably not a very different player in terms of impact than e.g. Jorge Polanco, but the latter's salary will hold down the prospect cost. In terms of magnitude it's probably the difference between an Assad/Wicks/Brown and a Wesneski/Kilian. That's not necessarily a deal breaker, but would feel like a lot after making a deal for a Soto or a Glasnow or one of the Mariners starters. I'd probably rather have Mitch Garver or Brandon Belt in FA, or address another position (e.g. Polanco at 3B) which would allow you to feel more comfortable trying to just cobble it together at 1B.

This is more or less my perfect world offseason. One of the things that's tough this winter is that if you look at Jed's resources, the play is probably one major trade and one major signing. But if you look at the top of the FA market the fits for this roster are Ohtani (who will cost as much as two big FAs), Yamamoto (as an import geography might be a problem), and Bellinger (comes with major statistical red flags). The trade market on the other hand is teaming with fits for this roster. But I just don't see Jed having the appetite to do two major trades, e.g. Alonso+Glasnow. I do think the age on Yamamoto and Soto is a differentiator like you say and would allow Jed to go out of his comfort zone. Otherwise, and there's some vibes from a recent Athletic article to back this up, I'm wondering if Jed's realistic plan is to build a monster offense and more or less let it ride with the internal pitching. Something like this: - Hold onto Stro - Trade for and hopefully extend Soto. Package includes Morel - Acquire two of those secondary bats (I like Garver and Polanco) - Sign David Robertson. It sounds like the reliever they want as much for veteran leadership as it is for the guy's production, so depending on payroll maybe Jed aims lower here to our chagrin You'd have a damn near Braves caliber position player group, more or less last year's pitching staff, and the team keeps the bulk of its powder dry. Feels very Jed.

Morel probably gets you most of the way to Soto if no money changes hands. BBTV actually thinks a 1 for 1 trade is basically fair, though I'd guess that's a bit light. But if you can get Soto for Morel, you probably don't have to part with any of Assad/Brown/Wicks, which would be ideal from a roster flexibility standpoint. Also all the specific reporting around Soto already makes me think this is going to happen pretty early in the offseason. I assume Preller wants to get it done so he can do his subsequent wheeling and dealing from there?

https://www.justbaseball.com/mlb/how-good-is-yoshinobu-yamamoto-a-dive-into-his-arsenal/

I'm not going to be torn up about Kantrovitz? Certainly not going to horsefeathers talk him, but IMO he's mostly just fine? - 2020 was a horsefeathering disaster. COVID hitting in your first year in a new org is absolutely a fair excuse, but it's going to end up as just a garbage draft. We're going to end up with Luke Little making an impact as a reliever approximately 4 years after the fact and nothing else. - 2021 looks pretty good. Wicks and Triantos are both borderline top 100 guys, though woth fairly limited ceiling, while Franklin and especially Gray have some potential to be guys still. That said look at that first round again. Colson Montgomery and Gavin Williams went immediately after Wicks, while Jackson Merrill and Carson Williams went like half a dozen picks later. Kantrovitz did well but let's not do backflips over this draft - 2022 again looks pretty good? On the one hand it's a HUGE feather in Dan's cap to pounce on Horton. On the other hand if he'd just gone chalk and taken Brooks Lee we wouldn't really be any worse off? What isn't up for debate is the later rounds. McGeary, Rujano, et al looks pretty inspired - 2023 is way too early to say. Matt Shaw's hot start was awesome, though a polished first round college bat should wreak havoc in A ball Like I'm certainly not rooting for him to take the Mets job, but if I were grading Kantrovitz I'd give him like a B+, and I'm not going to lose sleep over losing a B+ head of amateur scouting

This certainly isn't good news, but at the same time I'm not super worried about it? We got three years out of Breslow, so a lot of his processes and ideas and such should have matriculated through the org. He's a bright guy and I'm sure always learning, but I doubt at this point he has some "one weird trick" that's going out the door. There's also this, which IMO is a great point: Even if we pretend Breslow is the best pitch design guy in the league, there's probably value in bringing in someone from another smart org like Seattle or Tampa. Like for instance, the Cubs appear to be awesome at teaching/fixing sinkers, sliders, and cutters. But not so much curves and changeups. Adding a high level resource with expertise there on top of our sinker/slider factory might be the trick to reaching pitching Nirvana like the Rays. I will say, if Tommy Hottovy goes anywhere that's when I will be absolutely apoplectic. He is a guy who has the smarts necessary for a FO role AND ALSO can communicate these ideas in an actionable way to players AND ALSO can catch crap mid game and advise on on the fly adjustments. He's certainly the most valuable non-uniformed person in the org, and probably more valuable than most of our actual players. Early returns on Dustin Kelly are pretty glowing as well, but it'll take another year or two to be sure if he's on Tommy's level.