Bertz

In a vacuum that's a nifty deal for Gibson. Outside of a vacuum though their offseason increasingly looks like it will end up being Sonny Gray, Gibson, Lynn, and whatever Tyler O'Neil brings back in trade. Not very inspiring when the Brewers are vulnerable and to this point the Cubs haven't done jack

Yeah I was just noodling with a Moncada/Cease trade and yeah it doesn't work with an Ohtani or Soto offseason. You end up having to do one of the following: - sign someone kind of sad like Garret Cooper or Donovan Solano to start at 1B - Trade away so much pitching depth that Drew Smyly is back to being like the 5th or 6th starter - Really take a sledgehammer to the farm system That said if Pete Alonso or Cody Bellinger are the big bat it might work since they make ~$10M less than Soto and ~$25M less than Ohtani

The Cubs have laid out how they develop pitchers. You work on velo, then you work on movement, then you work on command. That's the progression, in that order, under the Breslow school of pitcher dev. There's no way Wicks hasn't picked up a set of weighted balls prior to his 3rd offseason in the org. And at 24 and already pretty strong I don't think changes to conditioning are going to magically unlock another gear like they did for e.g. Assad. It'd be awesome, but unlike someone like Ferris It'd be foolish to assume it's coming.

That feels pretty fair, and BBTV thinks it's actually a slight overpay. I don't love Moncada but I'd do it to get Cease in the door. One additional benefit of dealing with the Sox, and this applies to the Angels too, is they're so bereft of talent you might be able to get away with a quantity over quality trade, as evidenced by the Bummer deal.

I think it was literally just someone on Twitter being like "wouldn't this be sweet?" rather than anything approaching a rumor. Bichette would probably cost Justin Steele, because with the Blue Jays right in contention it's not just a matter of matching value over a ~5 year horizon you've got to come pretty close on matching value in the immediate term as well.

Shoulders =/= elbows. It's probably at least a coinflip Woodruff's washed, and even if he's not do you want to burn ~$15M on what we're all hoping is a very competitive 2024? He would have been an absolutely perfect signing last year or the year prior, but I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze currently.

Unless you're comfortable with Sanchez or Garver's defense or Counsell really stumps for Caratini, this is not the winter to willingly back yourself into the catcher market. That said, the Marlins are bereft of bats enough that we can probably pretty easily make a deal without Amaya.

After Lynn, the Cards are $30M south of where they were last year, and I don't know that there's a ton of reason to expect them to exceed last year by much. My guess is they pull down Sonny Gray and then trade Tyler O'Neil or Dylan Carlson for a younger SP.

Yeah the groundballs and hopefully soft contact should hopefully stick around and mitigate some of this. There might be a bit of natural regression too. His contact rates against were 81.2% after his debut, there are several guys who ran season-long contact rates right in that range and had K-rates in the 20-22% neighborhood. That's still below average but not scary below average. MLB Pipeline, who last updated their stuff in early August, have Ben Brown at #5 in the system and #86 in the industry, while Wicks is #10 in the system and not in the top 100. I don't do Baseball America anymore but pretty sure I remember them being similar. And Stuff+ is very much designed to work well in small samples. 35 innings is not actually that small a sample for these metrics.

The thing is, we don't even have to just look forward. As recently as August 1st or so I think general consensus was Brown >> Wicks. The thing that concerns me about Wicks is the complete lack of swing and miss after his debut. He ran an 11.6% rate from that point on, which is approaching position players pitching levels of contact. And if you look at his Stuff+ numbers, they're pretty abysmal, which would back up those contact rates. There's an important caveat to that last point that public Stuff+ numbers are laughably bad at handling changeups, but even still there's a good chance that he's just forever going to be well below average on the K front. The number of guys who are good pitchers with a sub 20% K rate and sub 50% GB rate is very small. It's possible, but it's a tightrope walk. Miles Mikolas is probably the reasonable best case scenario (i.e. we're not ascribing soft contact superpowers to him) and look at how inconsistent his career has been.

As most Mooney articles go, this morning's was mostly a lot of words about nothing. But the above stood out to me. We've thought a lot about big trades, but I'm wondering now about stuff that might be better described as medium sized like Fowler and Montero.

As I start letting myself believe this might actually happen, some of the things you've laid out have been bouncing around my head, plus some related stuff: - Assuming that Ricketts do not allow extra budget under an Ohtani scenario, I agree that we see several subsequent trades. With Ohtani, you're basically paying for a pitcher and a hitter, but only getting one of those in 2024. On top of that, getting Ohtani in the door is likely predicated on assurances about how competitive the team around him will be - Because of Ohtani's place on the roster, Jed needs to hold tightly onto the cost controlled SPs. Given the need to shift to a 6 man rotation next year (plus the budget constraints this year), Wicks et al are more important than ever. Conversely, with DH locked up for the next decade Jed can be pretty liberal in dealing away prospects on the wrong side of the defensive spectrum. 1B is their only path to everyday at bats at Wrigley Field in the foreseeable future - Given Tom Ricketts actions circa 2019-2020, I have been operating under the assumption that Jed is not allowed to cross the luxury tax 3 years in a row, with a reset in 2026 seeming most likely. However, with Ohtani in tow payroll in 2026 would already be approximately $200M even with no other deals between now and then. I won't pretend to know Ricketts' 5 rear plan, but I'd expect Jed to be very judicious with multi-year contracts in between Ohtani and 2027 when a ton of guys roll off to free agency. This further points to multiple trades this winter The payroll stuff is what I keep coming back to. Based on our expectations for payroll, things get really tight really quick with Ohtani on board. Jed's otherwise been very reticent to back himself into a corner resource-wise. Is that just the cost of doing business for bringing in a player of Ohtani's caliber, or is Ricketts finally ready to quit with the alligator arms routine?

An actual adult confirms

Top domestic SP option off the board

Bob Nightengale has the Dodgers going after Dylan Cease. He's pretty plugged into the White Sox, so while normally you look at what Bob says and think "opposite" there's probably something here. I don't think it says anything about Ohtani or anyone else though. The Dodgers need multiple veteran SPs.

Marquee is the reason I allow myself to believe Ricketts would okay this. For many years fans have been like "he'll pay for himself in attendance and jersey sales" about that year's star, and it's just not true. Apparel goes into a league-wide pot, and attendance really only moves with team-competitiveness. And in the RSN model revenue was locked in. But now that the Ricketts own Marquee, and with the DTC offering finally launched, there are actually legitimate externalities to be had from a star. And Ohtani is by a million miles the most popular baseball player in the world. One thing I wonder about relatedly is payroll. If you sign Ohtani, you probably have to make some pretty concrete assurances on the team that will be surrounding him. So I'd think you definitely need to run a payroll in the ~$260 range this season? And even that feels a little tight. And then dipping under the LT to reset penalties doesn't really look feasible until '27 when Happ/Seiya/Nico/Taillon come off the books. Approaching, much less exceeding, the 3rd LT level and running LT repeater penalties for a 3rd year are two things that were off limits for Theo and Jed circa 2019, so are they in play now. Does the launch of Marquee and/or the unique circumstances around Ohtani change that?

I saw a little smoke around Matt Chapman to the Giants. Considering they also very much need to set some funds aside for a frontline pitcher, if they're going down the road with Chapman that's a sign they might not feel great about their Ohtani pursuit? If Giants and Mariners are indeed out, it very much would feel like it's more or less Dodgers vs. Cubs.

Royals DFA'd Josh Staumont. He's pretty clearly the closest parallel to Merryweather amongst this year's DFA's

Hughes is the most surprising, but after they added Horn maybe it shouldn't be? Roberts is the most disappointing, he's a truly elite spin rate guy. That's a unique look that would have been awesome to have in the pen. I'm very surprised at how surprised everyone is they kept Wisdom. That said the fanbase showed its ass repeatedly this summer so everyone thinking he didn't merit ~$3M and a roster spot checks out I guess.

Seattle clearly has the in on signing Japanese players, but I do wonder if the specter of Ichiro and his legacy is actually a negative for the Japanese superstar class.

I kind of get the inkling today is going to be nuts. Deadlines spur action, and that absolutely nothing has happened yet this offseason makes me think there's some things that are mostly done but are depending on some action today to get finalized.

One thing with Brown I'm not sure how to interpret is that his walk rate didn't explode until AAA. Sure the hitters are better there, but his walk rate more or less doubled from High A and AA. Feels like the ABS is probably a big factor here. There's some control risk for sure, but I'm mostly not worried about Brown from a performance standpoint. What I am worried about are the injuries. He's 24 and hasn't eclipsed 104 innings in a season. That's not a death knell, Justin Steele was 26 the first time he crossed the 100 inning threshold, but it probably portends a future in relief. At a minimum it means we need to play games to give his arm a breather for the next two years. I hope Brown doesn't get traded, we could use more high octane stuff on the MLB club. But he's valuable and just far enough away you can't pencil him into any specific MLB expectations for 2024, so he makes sense as trade bait.

Is anyone getting super sketchy ads when they go to BleacherNation? Like full screen fake McAfee virus alerts and stuff? I'm getting them pretty regularly there but nowhere else, so I'm doubting it's on my end.

Amaya probably doesn't get talked about enough both because as you said he tailed off in the 2nd half and also because Gomes had such a strong season But I think he looks like a roughly league average hitter (like a 55 in the power and patience departments and a 45 in the hit tool), which is actually a boon at catcher. The defense was below average, but as 1908 has said there's some major extenuating circumstances. I'd believe a healthy offseason gets him back to being the plus defender he was reputed to be coming up, I'd also believe the litany of injuries more or less permanently knocked him down a peg. Last year Amaya came up in early May and caught 41 games. So roughly 30% of starts at catcher? I'd expect him and Gomes to be closer to 50/50 this year, and then Jed can decide heading into 2025 if Amaya is looking like the long term starter or the long term backup. If Amaya's a clear cut starting caliber catcher, and Ballesteros has done his part, folding him in slowly in '25 feels ideal. If Amaya's looking more fringy the Ballesteros stuff gets a little more complicated.

You get at it, but the problem with Candelario is he's a bit of a tweener. His offense is not good enough to be a first division starter at 1B. You watch him play defense at 3B and it's not a problem yet but I don't think anyone foresees him being there a ton longer. Similarly he's too good, particularly in a FA market this thin, to settle for a 1 or 2 year deal. But he's not good enough that anyone is going to be excited to hand him the 4 year deal he's probably going to get. He fits the current roster like a glove, so if Jed pulls the trigger I get it. But the fit will very quickly get awkward IMO. That'd be fine if I was more confident in short term impact but that's just not his game, his game is very much around providing a high floor.