Bertz

This is a GD steal. I would have happily thrown him on the 3B pile for this money, though I suspect having a path to everyday SS at bats was his priority #1.

130 innings is my rough expectation for Horton as well, and it is not a lot. Justin Steele threw 120 in '22 and was a 5 and dive guy who missed the last month of the year. I think if the team is going to properly manage Horton's innings this year one of four things has to happen: 1. He has a very slow ramp up and doesn't come up until July or more likely August 2. He spends the last month or two of the season in the MLB pen 3. He gets Strasburg'd and shut down in August 4. He makes a sizable IL/DL stint I would guess #1 or #2 are the plan, I also think they're the best developmentally. So I think you're going to continually see the team he really conservative with him, e.g. starting him back at Tenn, to make sure the drumbeat to call him up doesn't get too loud too early.

I really want to see Franklin at Iowa so we can get Statcast data on him. I have a suspicion that the movement on his fastball is poor. I'm bad at a lot of the particulars of pitch design, but I know if you graph vertical and horizontal fastball movement there are there are certain dead zones where the combo gets murdered. This is actually what happened to Taillon in the first half of last year IIRC. I would not be surprised if that's Franklin's issue as well.

Tell me about it!

Weird how all these threads keep getting derailed in the same way by the same dufus. Oh well probably a coincidence.

Yeah Dom Smith's path to MLB is some Springfield Isotopes level of misfortune this spring. Peralta feels more possible if he's looking spry and Morel seems viable at 3B.

He has historically mashed righties, but didn't mash much of anything last year

The Mariners have long made a ton of sense roster-wise, but the thought was that they were crying poor because of the RSN issue. Maybe now that that's been resolved they're ready to play in the big boy waters? In that case seems pretty straightforward to game out: Cubs - Bellinger Mariners - Chapman Giants & Angels - Snell & Montgomery (TBD which one where) I'd be skeptical about the Yankees jumping in. Their payroll is $307M. I believe they'd literally have to pay a 110% tax on additional signings, meaning Snell at a $30M AAV would cost $63M in real dollars. George would have done that without battong an eye but Hal has not shown that level of commitment.

Yeah this feels right, especially with the two rehabbing pitchers off the market this AM.

Jefferson Rojas Haydn McGeary Michael Arias They also ran a list of guys their industry contacts picked, and Arias got a second mention and Drew Gray was named.

The one solitary good thing I'll say about Ricketts is that it does seem like he truly gives Jed a number and then stays the hell out of the way. The number is too low, I don't like what he's spending the rest of his time on, etc. But I'm glad he's not also an incompetent micromanager on top of it all like Arte Moreno.

I think Wicks is the favorite, but I do think Assad's chances are being understated by the fanbase. There's a funny thing that happens when a guy, particularly a pitcher, is lucky. Fans, even smart ones, often respond in one of two ways: 1. "Maybe he's an exception, and this is sustainable." More or less boils down to this 2. Deciding the guy is bad actually. There's a good bit of gambler's fallacy baked in here. But you'll often see "his FIP was a run higher than his ERA!" followed by a screed about how therefore he sucks. Blake Snell right now is a fantastic example of this. But there's a third path, if the ERA is lower than the FIP by a run, ask yourself: "So how would that FIP rank?" A LOT of baseball is luck, but lucky =/= bad. Going back to Blake Snell, he pitched like an All Star last year and got luck carried him to Cy Young caliber results. But don't ignore that first part about pitching like an All Star. Bringing this back to Assad, he pitched well, regardless of role, after he came back to MLB for good in June. His stint back in the rotation in August/September was particularly illuminating, as IMO even if you ignore the sparkling ERA he peripherally looked like a quality #4 starter. I think Wicks' prospect pedigree and Assad's early success as a swingman is ultimately going to lead to Jordan getting that #5 spot. But if I had to win a game right now Assad would pretty easily be my choice among the four contenders and so I don't think he's too much of a long shot to grab the spot for himself.

I think the best idea I've heard came from Meg Rowley. Not a deadline but a moratorium, let's call it from the end of the winter meetings to the arb deadline. It probably spurs some movement at the meetings, which is great, but doesn't hurt labor because you can juat pick things back up in January. I think too just having six weeks where you're not checking Twitter every day for moves would significantly help the average fan's disposition. Shutting things down for the holidays would also be a big win for all the folks who work in the game and can often be collateral damage to major changes.

I know he's dead to most of the fanbase already but I'm still extremely here for Jose Cuas. He basically transformed himself on the fly in August, a winter and ST to iron out kinks is going to make a big difference IMO

If you take what Morel did on offense and on the bases last year, pro-rate it to 600 PAs, and give him average defense at 3B, it comes out to just a hair under 4 WAR. I am sure Jed is not just hearing about this from Craig Counsell Chris Morel has been just that bad at 3B. He has 44 errors in 164 professional games at 3B. It's not just a Jimmy Rollins situation where he piled them up in rookie ball either, he has 15 in 55 games at AA and above. I don't have his winter league numbers from December handy but they were right in line with this as well. We've generally moved beyond errors and Fielding Percentage in analysis, but that is a catastrophically high number of errors. Patrick Wisdom, who has begun piling up errors the last two years and lost playing time as a result, has 25 in 166 games and the advanced metrics grade him as a -10 fielder. Extrapolate Morel out and you get a damn near -20 defender at 3B. The Adam Dunn of 3B. You can see why the team hasn't made the move that feels so obvious if you just focus on his bat. The glass half full is that Morel has been doing the super-utility thing since COVID. If he can actually focus on 3B he's not going to get all the way into the black, but maybe he can cleqn things up just enough to get somewhere in the -5 to -10 range? You'd still not let him on the field when Steele's pitching, but otherwise that's perfectly playable.

This is probably (hopefully?) the biggest non-Boras thing to watch this spring, so we should give it it's own thread

I'm not super convinced what Counsell said means much, but I'd love to be wrong. Adding a full time 1B/DH on top of it would make me much more convinced it's something beyond "hey it's spring training why not try it?"

Yeah four years feels right. The Correa deal gets thrown around, by myself included, but he was a substantially better player. $35M per year AND an opt out after year one is a thing a 6 WAR player can ask for, but even the most optimistic folks agree Bellinger's not close to that guy anymore. Four years with early opt outs gets Bellinger into 9 figures on a more reasonable annual salary, and in the event he doesn't opt out makes it so he is set up to leave the winter after Happ and Seiya. Obviously in a scenario where he doesn't opt out he's not playing great, but still turning over an entire starting outfield in one winter is extremely dicey.

This from MLBTR is really good. It's framed as about Bellinger but it runs through every team and you can get a sense for where any of the Boras guys would end up. It mostly echoes what's been said here. Cubs and Angels could fit any of the Boras guys, Giants can fit one but Bellinger would seem like the least likely fit. Most of the other usual suspects are already running record high payrolls, and even if they did do a sneaky signing would probably grab a pitcher. The Dbacks get mentioned as a sneaky fit, and that's intriguing. They've got a bunch of money coming off the books next winter and a bunch of kids either just arrived or on the way to fill out their roster for cheap. So if they're willing to get luxury tax adjacent this winter coming off their World Series run that feels pretty viable.

Setting aside the bullpen stuff I already mentioned in the other thread: - I agree Wicks isn't a lock for the #5 starter, but I think Assad is the big challenger. Even if you give him zero credit for FIP-beating (not unreasonable), he had a 3.96 xFIP from 6/16 onward. He was at 4.26 during the period he was back in the rotation from 8/5 - 9/23. League average last year was 4.33. I'd put the 5th starter odds out of the gate at something like 40% Wicks, 30% Assad, 20% Wesneski, 10% Smyly or other - Agree with TT that Mastrobuoni's got a pretty easy path to getting the plurality of the playing time at 3B. His Statcast numbers at Iowa were extremely solid, and the more I play with AAA Statcast data the more it appears to translate very well to MLB - I harp on this a lot, but Wisdom and Morel are very redundant and it feels like there's a chance for something shocking to happen there. Like an 11th our trade or even Morel spending a bit of time at Iowa

I think the big determining factor will be how they view the "Failed Starters." Which one(s) are SP depth, which long relief, which optimized towards short relief? As you've written previously Smyly and Wesneski you don't have to squint very hard to see being very successful in short relief. Assad doesn't have the money pitch or two of those other two guys, but also was easily the most effective of the three in MLB last year, regardless of role. I expect Craig to carry only one long reliever, with one of Assad/Wesneski at Iowa in the rotation in case of injury, and one of Wesneski/Smyly to be tried out as a standard one inning reliever. I'm guessing long relief for Assad, Iowa rotation for Wesneski, and short relief for Smyly, but wouldn't be shocked in any direction. I also think there are two potential personnel moves that would shake things up a bit. First, and TT's written about this before, but I wonder if Leiter's name should be written more in pencil rather than pen a la Rowan Wick last spring. He is a batting practice pitcher if that splitter is not working, so I think he is very much needing to earn his roster spot this spring. I also think there's likely another addition on the way. There's been enough smoke around additional pitching depth, that in my mind it's gone from a possibility to an expectation. It is interesting that there's been smoke around both regular relief and additional swing men. But I suspect another setup type is more likely, let's say Ryne Stanek just to put a name to it Ultimately I'd guess we end up with this CL - Alzolay SU - Merryweather, Neris, Stanek MR - Smyly, Almonte, Leiter LR - Assad Iowa - Wesneski, Little, Cuas, Palencia, others I think swapping Wesneski in for Assad, cutting Leiter, foregoing the dedicated long relief spot, and foregoing the external acquisition, in that order, are the most likely deviations from the above. I think the Iowa guys, in the order I have them, are the most likely to backfill.

This is great, I would love to see the reaction of someone who knows our system but doesn't spend the time on this forum to a couple of the inclusions on the list of names to choose from. Also, I believe Palencia is graduated and needs to be removed?

https://theathletic.com/5270636/2024/02/16/cubs-2024-top-prospects-keith-law?source=user-shared-article Keith Law's list is predictably a bit bonkers 1. PCA 2. Shaw 3. Alcantara 4. Horton 5. Busch 6. Rojas 7. Triantos 8. Caissie 9. Wicks 10. Christian Franklin 11. Brown 12. Ballesteros 13. Gray 14. Pedro Ramirez 15. Wiggins 16. Kohl Franklin 17. Mervis 18. Arias 19. Murray 20. Canario