Bertz

Yeah this is 100% where I'm at. Josh Bell would still work for me, but there's a pretty steep dropoff after those two.

Don't love this. I don't think Abreu should have been part of a Cubs' Plan A, but he'd be a big part of a lot of Plan B scenarios

I think when looking at trade down scenarios, I'd probably go with one of two options at the more extreme end of things. 1. Move down only 1-2 spots. You don't gain a ton, for example the Bears gave up a 3rd, a 5th, and a next year 3rd when they traded up for Trubisky. But they are essentially free picks, as you are trading down while still essentially guaranteed the #1 non-QB on your board 2. Trade down 10+ spots, and add multiple future 1sts. Given the crazy amount of cap space the team has, I'd lean towards this scenario. Something like the Dolphins 49ers trade for Trey Lance. They moved down 9 spots, picked up a current year 3rd, and firsts in each of the next two years. This type of deal has a chance to be felt for half a decade I don't love the middle ground of 5ish spots, what right now looks like it would most likely be a Panthers trade. Feels like losing an opportunity at the most elite young players while not getting back a stupid amount of draft capital is a worst of all worlds scenario.

A collection of vaguely hot takes on the Cubs off-season, in increasing order of spiciness. 1. Extending Ian Happ is a very bad idea 2. Andrew Heaney is the ideal SP target 3. I'd rather have Brett Phillips in CF than Cody Bellinger 4. I probably prefer Dansby Swanson to Xander Bogaerts straight up, with rumored price tags accounted for I definitely do 5. I'm actually okay foregoing the SS market

It would make a lot of sense. If Jed were to take care of catcher and CF pretty quickly, he could take his time everywhere else. The Cubs only *need* a catcher, center fielder, and one SP. Everything else on the to-do list is optional. But if Jed can get the essentials taken care of by the end of the winter meetings, the rest of the off-season can be a simple matter of adding as many wins as possible with the resources available (which presumably/ideally includes a Turner or Correa).

Sharma and Mooney also name checked Andrew Heaney. I like seeing that as I think he's the guy I'm most out of step with the rest of the fanbase in being high on.

Good writeup on the CF market. It's really frustrating because there's a pretty big "Yeah but" for everyone available. Bellinger's probably broken offensively, while Kiermaier is hyper reliant on speed and just had a major lower body injury. And the trade options all have big questions about either fit or availability. The Dbacks are especially frustrating because at first glance it makes all the sense in the world. They have a stupid number of LHH outfielders and want to trade from that depth for pitching and RHH power. Perfect right? but you start looking at particulars and nobody except mayybe Alek Thomas lines up. Carroll and Varsho - Too good why would the Dbacks trade them Alek Thomas - I'll come back to him in a minute Pavin Smith - Very much not a CF Jake Mccarthy - Ststcast thinks what he did as a rookie was mostly luck Dominic Fletcher - Is he actually any better than say, Darius Hill? Alek Thomas makes some sense. He's a true CF, and his rough rookie year hasn't dissuaded the projections at all (3 WAR next year over a full season). He's going to cost quite a bit (have to assume Wesneski is the primary piece going the other way), and given the org's depth CF is a weird fit to spend a lot of trade capital. Plus Jed explicitly talked about getting more power znd fewer balls on the ground and Thomas would set that back significantly. I actually think elsewhere in the NL West might provide the most promise? Trent Grisham is probably more available than we think (the plan is for Tatis to play CF after his suspension). NaM has been stumping for Mike Yastrzemski on Twitter, which I scoffed at upon first hearing but might be actually be the best combo of productive and available.

Greg and Co. did their collective top prospects list. Good stuff. I think the thing that stands out to me is very aggressive rankings on several pitchers. Daniel Palencia and Porter Hodge are both about 5 spots higher than I expect to see generally, and Riley Thompson is probably more like 10. With those guys being pretty high it pushes others lower. I think Kevin Made gets a little bit of short shrift here. I'd also still take Kilian over several pitchers ahead of him, and Amaya probably 5ish spots higher as well. Those are all nitpicks though, really good stuff and I think it makes a great primer before the national outlets start putting stuff out.

Love Rogers. IMO he's the clearest change of scenery guy/pitch design guy since Gausman. I'm curious about the cost though. BTV says something like one of Davis/PCA/Morel and one of Kilian/Thompson. Seems really aggressive for a guy who was a mess last year. Mooney and Sharma tied the Cubs to Chris Bassitt snd Taijuan Walker this AM. Signing one of the 2nd tier SPs and trading for another with some upside would be a good approach to fixing the rotation IMO.

Suter was a total Cub killer so good to see. Though most of his damage was against the old core, I think the newer players have actually hit him around a bit.

Thinking about this a little more. The Cubs' 40 man is currently at 38 after adding prospects. And based on a combination of reporting and inference, this is the shopping list for the winter: - An infielder (likely one if the shortstops) - A 1B/DH - A CF - A catcher - 2 SPs - 2 or 3 relievers That's 8 or 9 guys, meaning 6-7 spots will need to be freed up over the course of the winter. Let's call it 7. i think my plan would be: - Non tender Ortega today - Trade Madrigal - Cut Higgins while trying to get him to stay at Iowa - Cut Rivas, Uelmen, and Mckinstry as spots are needed - Really try to honestly evaluate Marquez and his odds of still ending up an impact guy. Last cut comes down to him vs. Rucker

Aren't Wick and Ortega the only guys slated to make more than the league min? Those are the only two I'd have any urgency about today. And I'd probably dump Ortega and keep Wick. The others can all be dealt with as space becomes needed in the off-season, but I would probably have Rivas, Uelmen, and Mckinstry at the front of the line to get cut.

I'm hoping we get to a better pace than we've seen the last 4-5 years. Moving all of the administrative deadlines up by a week or two definitely helps, though it's still very silly that the arb stuff all happens in January. It should be in November ahead of the arb deadline. Plus in that '18-'20 period you had about half the league either tanking or very worried about the luxury tax. Currently from eyeballing I think we might be closer to half as many teams? More active teams should lead to a less deliberate pace. The days of 90% of the off-season being done by New Years are probably over, but I'm hoping we can at least get comfortably north of 50% again?

Sharma is not super rumor-y so you have to imagine he's parroting what the Cubs are feeling internally here

Chase Strumpf, Cam Sanders, Kohl Franklin, Riley Thompson, Luis Devers Danis Correa is another guy in the Sanders mold at risk of getting nabbed. Can throw 100+ and just a phone call away at Iowa, but also has yet to really perform. I'm hopeful that we don't get ransacked too hard. Everyone seems to be in agreement that every team had a lot of tough decisions so the bar to be picked is much higher this year. But the quality and proximity of some of the unprotected names still makes me nervous.

Yeah this is probably a 1 for 1 swap with Mckinstry. I think I like Mckinstry better, but Mastro has minor league options and Steamer likes him quite a bit (2.6 WAR/600 PAs).

This is great to see. Teams were very aggressive in pushing top prospects to open the year in MLB, the Mariners got rewarded and the Orioles got burned for not joining in

Jeffrey Springs might make a lot of sense? Assuming both are under no illusion that what he did this year is his expected level of future performance? But a mid/back of the rotation arm under two years of control at arb prices might land right at the perfect intersection of reasonably available and reasonably priced. MLBTR projects a $3M salary, so you could do something like Senga and Springs and take care of the rotation for <$20M.

The Ray's have so much pitching at various expected performance levels it's hard to get a sense on who this could be for

The officiating woes are especially weird since these last two games were at Soldier Field. That's typically what HFA is is a thumb on the refereee scale I thought Fields was a little too run happy in the first half, but obviously another great game from him. Even the pick I'm not too worried about given that it was more from Justin trying to play hero ball rather than being fooled or making a bad read or whatever. It's still a problem but one I'm not nearly as worried whether they can fix.

I'm starting to eye Will Smith as one of the reliever adds. He had a pretty uninspired run in Atlanta, but after some changes to his pitch mix was really good after the trade to Houston. He didn't get any real leverage work (including not being used at all in the playoffs), but given his long history in late inning relief I take that more as them not trusting that his changes had fully taken yet moreso than thinking he didn't have it anymore. It probably doesn't hurt that Houston's bullpen was like 6-7 deep on legitimate late inning options, so they never really had to press their luck. At his worst Smith's still been rough on lefties. If you bet right he's a legitimate closer, if you're wrong he's still likely a solid lefty middle reliever.

Right off the bat he hits the ball in the air a ton. And he doesn't hit many popups either (which a lot extreme flyball hitters do) so it's not just that we'd be trading groundouts to 2nd for infield flys. If Statcast had been around a few years earlier Heyward would have been more obviously a ticking time bomb, Swanson doesn't have any such red flags. At a 5000 foot view though, it is a similar defense first profile though. He's a plus defensive shortstop, plus baserunner, and merely a pretty good hitter (109 wRC+ last three years). Mostly it's just going to be a substantially smaller financial commitment when you account for inflation. Swanson's going to get 5 or 6 years and 25 per. Heyward got similar AAV but 7 years ago, but Heyward's deal when signed was one of the 15 biggest ever. Swanson's gonna get outpaid by at least 5 guys just this winter alone.

Fangraphs has their 2023 projections out. Playing time projections are pretty silly at this phase of the offseason, but looking at guys on a normalized per 600 PAs basis there's some interesting (and mostly positive) stuff. https://www.fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&type=steamer600&team=17&lg=all&players= This turned into a wall of text, so breaking it up by group and using spoiler tags. The Lineup: The Rotation The bullpen Prospects (Position Players) Prospects (Pitchers)