Bertz

I'm not a swing analysis guy but looks like Brett Gardner IMO

If this is the team, what is the point in trading for Hosmer? His bat would be a very slight nice to have for the bench, but the 'why' always has been and always will be the goodies that would come with him. You'd presumably be getting Robert Hassell or Luis Campusano, either one being our clear #2 prospect, and an MLB ready SP in either Chris Paddack or Ryan Weathers.

They're not out on Correa because they signed Villar, but they wouldn't have signed Villar unless they were pretty sure they were out on Correa. My guess is they're leaving the door open on a Hosmer deal, and probably looking for another SP (Brault seems destined for first man up from Iowa status) but this is the team.

So we're probably looking at this for the pen? CL - Wick SU - Robertson, Martin RH MR - Rotating cast of two of the Iowa crew LH MR - Wieck, TBD LR - Thompson Curious if they add a LH setup type, or if they're intending/expecting a SP add to bump Steele into the role

David Robertson is a very good get IMO. Excepr for 2019 right before he had TJ (when he was presumably already hurt) he's been fantastic for his entire career. The track record post surgery is limited, but looks back to normal?

This is an all time Bob tweet

YES!

I think the charitable interpretation is they didn't want to upgrade Mills' roster spot with a guy(like Greinke) who isn't much of a bullpen fit when Mills ideally isn't even making the rotation out of ST. With Adbert's injury and Mills seemingly certain of starting a non-trivial starts until summer, they can swap in Greinke, hopefully cheap enough to not damage any other pursuits, and then Mills can fight for long relief or they can risk waivers with him(and in April there's less chance of a claim). Yeah this is what I'm hoping too. Mills would also likely have to go the other way if we did a SP trade (e.g. Paddack).

Greinke or a comparable SP plus another reliever signing would bring payroll up to ~$170M. That's roughly where Opening Day payroll was last year. All indications are that there's still room beyond that, as the team repeatedly claimed payroll was so low last year because they were bearish on how quickly they'd have fans back in the ballpark. But I don't think there's really any good sense of whether the limit for payroll's closer to 180 or more like 200-something.

Greinke is literally the coolest dude in the league, and the projections actually still like him quite a bit. But horsefeathers there's gotta be a point of diminishing returns with all of these finesse guys. I assume this is bumping Mills from the rotation and not Steele?

Not according to this: Guessing Kaplan heard 5/$85 with a $15M posting fee, and instead of taking two seconds to clarify whether that was part of the 85 or on top of the 85 rushed to Twitter. Sounds right.

Bote is also lurking at some point, which if nothing else gives another infield body even if he doesn't solve any problems. Miller signed with Texas last night. I have to imagine this is the part where the Hosmer conversation becomes pretty serious if it ever was going to. He did? Dammit. And yeah, Bote is out til I believe June? That might actually be great timing, he doesn't crunch the roster in the early going, but if Wisdom implodes we've got a stopgap ready to fill in around the time you'd be cutting bait with him. I'm curious about Hosmer. The discussion was that the Padres needed to free the money for Suzuki and/or Nelson Cruz. Do they just go to the next bat on the list, or did they not find an acceptable contract dump offer, and now they're gonna focus on someone cheaper they can fit into the payroll without a trade?

Guessing $85M is the expenditure, with 15 to his Japanese team and 70 to Seiya himself

At this point, this is a rough guess at the lineup? 2B - Madrigal LF - Happ 1B - Schwindel C - Contreras RF - Suzuki 3B - Wisdom DH - Hoerner CF - Ortega SS - Simmons BN - Frazier, Hermosillo/Ramirez, Gomes, Heyward Hoerner's obviously not going to actually DH much if at all. But I think that's where he'd fit in the lineup, and he'll roam around the diamond pushing others to DH on any given day. That bench doesn't really make sense anymore with Suzuki in the fold, so I do imagine we see another bat or even two brought in. Probably left handed. Frazier has a minor league option left, though you do have to wonder if part of why he chose the Cubs was an understanding that he would make the team. Depending on how comfortable you are with Suzuki in CF, you could do without either of Hermosillo/Frazier at this point. And then obviously Heyward is expendable, it's really just a question of optics and/or team chemistry at this point. I've stumped for Brad Miller much of the offseason, and I think he's an even better fit now with Suzuki on board. If Jed's only swapping out one bench guy I'd want him to be the name. If we're getting two, maybe another utility IF type plus a power LH bat (e.g. Eddie Rosario)?

I think this is the big question. My understanding is he's in kind of that gray zone where he could probably pass in CF for a year or two but he'll be a RFer sooner rather than later. Given our roster, I would think he'd head straight to RF, but there's a reasonable argument the other way.

While I'm certainly glad PTR undid the velcro on his wallet, this isn't my favorite signing we could have made with this money. I'm a little worried about Japanese hitters currently. With the very large exception of Ohtani, it's been a really rough go the past 5-10 years. I sort of worry that's tied to the explosion of velocity in MLB. At the same time, aside from Ohtani I don't think there's been a guy this well thought of since Fukudome, so hopefully that's all? Also, more medium to longer term, I'm not sure RHH corner outfielder is something the org was hurting for, though that's a secondary concern as particularly in the outfield you don't turn down a good player in hand for prospects on the farm. On the other hand, he helps the roster a ton in the short term. Those ZiPS projections are the exact type of bat the lineup needs. He also makes the roster much less messy with platoons and such. I assume he's the full time RFer, which means we probably see a CF platoon with Ortega and the winner of a Ramirez/Hermosillo ST battle (with some Hoerner sprinkled in). And then come July or so Davis takes that spot full time. I wonder what this means for Heyward? They don't have to do anything, but by bringing in a full time RFer we might be at the point where it's time to cut bait? Or does he spend frequent time on the phantom IL and function as sort of a player-coach?

Non-Baerga confirmation

FWIW though I'm pretty sure Baerga is one of the guys this time yesterday saying Freeman was going to be a Jay

I think I like Mills more than most on this board, but I'm really hoping subsequent trades/signings lead to this not happening. I just don't like having four such similar guys in the same rotation. Yeah Miley's left handed and Stroman throws a bit harder, but the front four are all basically the same guy.

If you do want to feel a little better, a team like the Cubs with a lot of depth and very few guys locked into roles is going to be a bit underrated by the FG methodology. Reason being, the way it works is they fill out a depth chart, add up the WARs, account for strength of schedule, and voila. However, that doesn't account for how guys actually perform over the course of the year. Take Harold Ramirez and Michael Hermosillo. Those two guys are fighting for the same role on the team. If they both make the OD roster whoever performs better will quickly cannabilize playing time from the other. But on the depth charts, they're both locked into their set play time. When Dan Szymborski runs ZiPS directly, it does account for this and dynamically adjust playing time. It's not a huge lift, but he had the Cubs at 76 wins two weeks ago: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/projecting-a-12-team-playoff-structure/ It's a modest difference, but when 80% of your roster is playing time battles it adds up to a couple of wins. IMO it's probably a big part of why FG consistently underestimated the Brewers in 17/18/19.

To your earlier question, this is my preferred path forward if we (stupidly) avoid the shortstop market. Buy some players/prospects via a bad contract, fill out the team with some efficient one year deals and then roll into the season. The odds of the team being more than a 5/6 seed are vanishingly low, it would basically require a Giants-esque ability to successfully pull levers with the 2nd division types on the roster, but the team would be extremely well set up for 2023+ IMO.