Bertz

Team Payroll pages are updated too including the MLB Trade Rumors arbitration projections. At the moment the Cubs are about $85M under the Luxury Tax. Cutting Reyes, Brault, and Ortega would free up another ~$7M. So for your mental accounting figure on essentially $90M in available funds as an upper limit, but in practicality closer to $80M after a Hoerner extension and setting aside some money for the trade deadline.

Looking over at ESPN, Justin Fields for his last 4 games has a 49.6 QBR. That would rank 19th in the league among current full season marks. His last 3 games he has a 54.6 QBR, which would rank 13th. We can't just wave off those first three games right now as that's nearly half his season. But the Giants game onward has felt like pretty normal young QB stuff. Hopefully as we get further from those early games it continues to become clear that those were the anomaly.

Relatedly Kyler Gordon was horrific the first few games but he's looked really good the last 3ish as well

Vince Vaughn pretty drunk tonight on the Manningcast?

I'm really happy with Justin in the first half tonight. Especially since the Pats were DVOA's #7 defense coming into the week. The INT doesn't chap me much since it was a tip, I think the fumbles (especially the first one) were greater sins.

Also Joe Davis is a phenomenal announcer. We need to get him a better partner.

I know it's an uphill battle to get baseball players as famous as football and basketball players but considering Bryce was already #1 in MLB does this postseason get him the rest of the way to being like football famous?

I'm tempted to say this series is over because you can't win three straight against the Phillies with Wheeler/Nola/Suarez going...but the Cubs just did that a month ago

CBP is LOUD after that Bryce double

Trade Quinn, Montgomery (if not re-signing him), Smith (if not re-signing him), Reiff, whoever. Even 1 of those trades gets you to the top right quadrant. Trade them all and get in the top right corner by yourself. #PolesLeague He didn't say one way or the other either, but I believe the draft numbers are based on current record. So given that the Bears project to end up with a top 5 pick but right this second would be in the 5-10 range, they'll naturally drift upwards (potentially significantly) as the season progresses.

Even if Senga's salary is more like $15M than the $20M we expected earlier in the year, this is tough to reconcile with some of the other rumors. TT mentioned a few days ago with Abreu, but the money starts piling up really quick. For example think about an offseason like this: Correa ($35M) Abreu ($18M) Senga ($15M) Hoerner (extension) ($10M) Smyly ($7M) Danny Jansen (trade) ($4M) A couple relievers ($5M) That's *right* up against the luxury tax. There's plenty of places to save a million here or a million there, so not to say it can't happen, but it just feels tighter and lower margin for error than I'd expect? Especially since Abreu, Senga, Smyly, and Hoerner have all been mentioned multiple times by multiple outlets. Those all feel a lot more specific and legitimate than like that stray Aaron Judge rumor. I guess where I'm going with all of this is I'm really starting to think Swanson is the target at short. Him at $25M makes all the other pieces fit so much more cleanly. He's likely looking at 5-6 years instead of 8-10. He's probably the best defender of the group. Jed had some random line about too many ground balls a month back and he's got the lowest rate there, etc.

Also Harpers reaction was priceless

Yeah I wouldn't worry about that. Superstars are going to get their years. Like Andrew Friedman essentially invented the "no long term contracts" philosophy and even he caved in and offered up 12 years when it was Mookie Betts on the line. My guess for how Jed's hatred of long term deal manifests this winter is A) only one or two deals longer than two years and B) he'll swap some AAV for extra years where he can (e.g. preferring 8/$280M over 10/$300M).

On the one hand he's a pretty blah defender and gonna be 36 and a RH hitter without elite power. On the other hand he was worth 3.9 WAR this year even while Statcast says he was a little unlucky, and he's supposedly a ++ clubhouse guy. I think a healthy AAV is almost a certainty, and the big question is whether he can find someone to give him a 3rd year (hopefully not us).

Law's hangup on Paul Goldschmidt as a minor leaguer was also nebulous complaints about lack of bat speed. That's not to compare Mervis and Goldschmidt beyond that of course. I'm generally a Law fan, that said stuff like this is a pretty clear copout, as like Bryan mentioned these days there's data to confirm or deny these sorts of assertions. He's definitely fallen behind the times compared to guys like Eric Longenhagen, and the prospect Overton window has moved enough that he's clearly old school at this point.

I would set the bar VERY high for Fields to show enough that you don't just make the pick yourself. To the point that it's almost impossible to see a scenario where Fields has shown enough and the Bears are still picking high enough to get showered with draft picks. Like I know the Minnesota game was an example of a tank win where Fields was great but we still lost, but unless Eberfluss is able to dial up another half dozen of those it feels like a tough needle to thread.

FWIW, Football Outsiders has the Bears currently with the 4th highest odds of getting the #1 pick, but the 2nd highest odds of getting a Top 5 pick. So yeah I think to your point the tiebreakers at this point don't look to be doing the Bears any favors.

Yeah it's really tough to say. It feels like A aligns more generally with Jed's historical approach, while B seems to fit better with the recent rhetoric coming out of the org. I agree that just punting on established pitching seems unlikely. Jed clearly loves Hottovy and Breslow and believes they have the secret sauce, but even still I don't see Drew Smyly headlining the offseason from the pitching side. Like the Dodgers last winter, who knew they had something with both Heaney and Anderson, also signed Kershaw and Danny Duffy and kept David Price in the bullpen. I'm going back and forth about how skeptical to be of a big trade, specifically I'm wondering about Brennen Davis. PCA is clearly the golden boy of the org now, while Canario and Davis are two guys who feature the exact same profile and the exact same ETA as each other. If you think short term Canario and Davis are mostly redundant and medium-long term PCA is your guy, you could probably get quite a bit of pitching by cashing in Davis this winter without impacting the long outlook appreciably. Like eyeballing BTV, Davis is in the ballpark value-wise of guys like Lopez, Trevor Rogers, Brady Singer, Tarik Skubal, etc. And aside from Lopez you're getting at least three years of team control on any of those so it's not like that's a major mortgage the future move. I don't think Jed wants to piss away a bunch of prospect talent, but I do wonder if you're making him choose if he'd rather preserve financial flexibility.

Levine doubled down after his radio hit This is really interesting, because I I expect Abreu to get fairly significant money. Something like 2/$36M? Add in what's looking like an inevitable Hoerner extension and that's a big chunk of change committed before even talking about a SS or pitching help. If we take this Abreu pursuit as gospel, to me it says one of a few things: A) Jed's going to pass on the big name shortstops. We talked about this up thread but given where we expect payroll, if you're allocating $35M to a shortstop you have to pinch some pennies elsewhere to stay under the LT. $18M for a 1B would only exacerbate that, and likely mean you have to pinch pennies everywhere else. Given Jed's general attitude towards depth and minimizing downside risk, it would seem fairly unlikely unless... B) Jed's not planning to allocate much money to pitching. This doesn't necessarily mean the team is not going to add much pitching, it may instead be that the big piece is going to be a trade for a pre-FA arm like Pablo Lopez or Brady Singer as opposed to a big FA arm. For example you could do something like Lopez, Smyly, and a few relievers for a little north of $15M. Which if you're doing Abreu and a shortstop you might have to unless... C) The luxury tax isn't the cap on 2023 payroll. There's a good deal of money rolling off payroll after '23, and the cream of the farm system primarily has a '24 ETA. Maybe the plan is to go over the tax in '23 and dip back under in '24? Or maybe some of the fine print in the new CBA has substantially reduced the recidivism penalties for living above the LT?

Levine actually seems pretty connected at this point, so definitely not ignoring this, but I will say I expect the Cubs to be connected to essentially everybody. Everyone knows they've got money to burn, and they could plausibly fit anyone but a corner OF only player on the roster (hell even Happ getting dealt and opening up one of those spots isn't insane).