Bertz

I'm not the person who came up with this, I'm parroting others, but the one fun thing about Contreras to the Cards is that either A) Cardinals' pitching is about to go to hell or B) their pitching holds serve, which proves that the Molina intangibles devil magic is horsefeathers.

Assad would be in the minors. Sampson would probably be in the minors. Thompson would be the "swinger". Adbert would be a short inning guy as-is, but will probably be a multi-inning guy once they add veteran relievers. Yeah I think this is right. Sampson and Assad at Iowa, Alzolay and Thompson in the pen. Thompson will be a true long guy for like 3-4 inning stints, while Alzolay is more like a 2ish inning guy. After they sign the other starter and push Wesneski to Iowa as well, it'll be truly enviable depth. The bullpen depth isn't far behind either.

lol

Taillon is interesting. Good spin and command guy, which is a profile the Cubs have had success with. And unlike a lot of those guys Taillon actually has an above average fastball. What gives me pause is that the Yankees weren't able to bump him to the next level, and these dollars sort of imply a bit more production than he's generated the last two years. The Yankees are not the Dodgers/Guardians/Rays so that's not to say it's impossible there's more in the tanj, but the Yankees are one of the smart teams. Finances are interesting too. A lot more than you'd have expected for the "other" SP. Is that because he's the top guy, because the top guy will come via trade, or because indeed they're not beholden to the luxury tax?

This is what I'm nervous about. I like Swanson a lot, and I've been stumping for him. But he's not an impact bat, and so in my mind he was usually paired with a Bell or Abreu. Well those guys are obviously off the board now. There's lots of smoke around the Swanson/Bogaerts double whammy, and that would clearly address the issue, but unless/until both are in the fold I'm gonna be nervous. The second tier 1B/DH options (e.g. Matt Carpenter) work if we're getting a Correa, not a Swanson.

He's somehow just turned 30 despite being around forever, and there's some good stuff under the hood, but wowza

Baerga was first on Verlander....

I believe this would apply to the Cubs as well. If we haven't seen them yet by 12 it means they got a lottery pick

No reason to count on a turnaround. He's young enough and his struggles are so clearly tied to that specific injury that it's not hard to see a comeback, but there's no "a ha he was secretly really good last year!" under the hood. It's hard to grade this move until we see what else happens. If he's like the 4th biggest move we make I'll be ecstatic, but if the offseason ends up like Bellinger, Vazquez, Matt Carpenter and a bunch of pitching it is gonna be ugly next year.

Heyman is backing off but Susan Slusser is a total pro so her piping up probably confirms it

Heyman deleted his tweet because of the typo, here's the new one https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/1600254620613287936?t=0Rmrf4fDz397X3eVanE4UA&s=19 The NYC media is gonna be fun tonight Edit: Now this one's gone? Did Heyman pull a Nightengale and jump the gun?

I would be having a meltdown about this if we weren't getting so many indications that the purse strings are much looser than we thought. Depending on what ends up actually happening I still might.

Given all the smoke around Bogaerts, I'm trying to talk myself into liking him as a potential $200M lineup anchor, because his top line Statcast numbers were tepid in 2022, which is a big red flag for a bat-first guy. Up front, teams appear to not have one iota of worry, so presumably any issues I see on his Baseball Savant page have a rebuttal with more granular data. Also it's just one year out of a very consistent career, and a walk year to boot, so it might just be a weird one-off? Digging in, there's not a smoking gun. The one thing that is clear is that he was not as productive against fastballs: whiffing a little more, hitting a lot more of them on the ground, and with a lower average exit velocity. I can't find the data on it, but I also infer that he hit more of them the other way as well. His hard hit rate against FBs was still in line with norms though. Ironically, he saw the lowest proportions of fastballs in his career, and that number generally went down as the season went along. If he'd suddenly developed an inability to hit a good fastball, that's the sort of thing teams jump on, and fast. The only other thing I can find is that his hot streaks were significantly less hot in 2022 than normal. Which, I don't know if that's like a sign of age. I know with guys like Soriano, the hot streaks have gotten shorter, but I don't know if they ever got less hot. Again it's sort of an acknowledge it's not great but just shrug your shoulders sort of deal. Overall I think he's still way behind Correa and a little behind Swanson for me, but I'm not as scared about giving him big money as I would have been a week ago. Especially if he's paired with another 9 figure deal.

A little more AAV than he was expected to get but only two years. Definitely need Jed to pull down a shortstop now

If you want to believe the leaks from last night were not just PR cover from the team, Boras being nice to PTR is a pretty good sign

Wowza

I don't like spending money on RBs, but given that Poles is going to be living out the NFL version of Brewsters Millions this offseason he 100% needs to upgrade from Montgomery to Barkley or Jacobs. Especially with how bereft the WR market is.

So if a double shortstop offseason is on the table, presumably a shortstop + Rodon offseason is also on the table? I feel like that's the most obvious path towards supercharging this team.

The fun thing about the Murphy rumor is that Oakland has always been one of the few teams happy to take quantity over quality. Like 27 other teams would demand PCA, Wesneski, and change. Oakland is one of the few that might take a 4 or 5 for 1, they just wanna max out value. BTV says Alcantara, Caissie, Kilian, and Howard is a near perfect match, maybe throw in one of the hard throwing RP prospects for good measure?

Maybe the LT line isn't the payroll cap? I've been reticent to get my hopes up too much, but if you did 3 big contracts and keep everything else to one year deals, it's not that hard to drop below the tax line next year. For example let's say you sign Swanson ($25M), Bogaerts ($30M), and Senga ($16M), and trade for Murphy or Jansen, and handle the rest of the offseason with one year FA deals. Next year we have $40M rolling off in Hendricks and Heyward, plus another $10M in Happ. Another $25M for Stroman is probably 50/50ish, but to be conservative let's say he doesn't opt out. Because the Cubs have minimal arb players, there's still ~$50M to spend next winter if they want to reset their penalties. That's enough for a star and a couple modest relief/bench pieces. I've assumed Jed's too risk averse for this sort of course, but it not *that* crazy?

!!!!!!

Things finally cooking?