Bertz

Passan and Rosenthal are likely near comatose from the past 2 weeks, and when they wake up just deluge us with signings

Thinking out loud, this would be fun - Sign Correa for ~$35M per - Take Eric Hosmer off the Padres hands for one of their top prospects (Robert Hassell?) and one of their young MLB pitchers (Chris Paddack or Ryan Weathers; Paddack likely requires us to send a little value their way in the deal but that's still preferable IMO) - Sign a LHH bat for super-sub duty, e.g. Brad Miller - Sign two setup caliber relievers, let's say Andrew Chafin and Chris Martin just to have names - Sign a swingman who would, if things work out right, be a pure reliever. I like Carlos Martinez here Payroll is ~$200M, though may change significantly depending on how you structure Correa's deal. Lineup: 2B - Madrigal LF - Happ DH - Schwindel SS - Correa C - Contreras 1B - Hosmer 3B - Wisdom CF - Hoerner (he'll be doing a lot of roaming) RF - Heyward BN - Gomes, Miller, Frazier, Hermosillo SP - Stroman, Hendricks, Paddack, Miley, Alzolay RP - Wick, Martin, Chafin, Martinez, Wieck, Effross, Steele, Thompson That team is solid, but obviously not much more than that. I do think that IF the team is good about self scouting, knowing if/when to pull the rip cord on the Wisdoms/Fraziers/Schwindels of the roster, they can be legitimately good. There's also Brennen Davis and Caleb Kilian lurking at Iowa. I think, given a significant infusion of talent in offseason 2.0 like above, there's a very good 25 man roster in the org. It's a matter though of figuring out what that looks like in May/June rather than taking until July/August.

We won't have a full accounting of the new CBA for possibly years (Brett found the revenue sharing penalties tied to repeat CBT offenders in 2019), but I think this is where we netted out with the new CBA. The Bad - Little changed systemically. Free agency works the same, arbitration works the same, the tanking and service time manipulation measures are marginal - Because of the above, there's almost no chance the egregiously cheap teams (Rays, Pirates, A's, Marlins) change their behavior one bit over the next five years - The new CBT tier ($60M over the first) seems destined to progress into a fairly hard cap, if it's not there already The Unknown (as of now) - We know the thresholds, but I don't believe we know the penalties for the CBT. I think I saw financially they were status quo, but what about the increases for repeat offenders? The draft penalties? Revenue sharing? The CBT served as a cap last go around because it was a death by a thousand cuts sort of deal, particularly for repeat offenders. If some of those other penalties got dropped, it'll function as more of a soft cap again - Did any revenue sharing changes make it to the final agreement? Even pretty late in the process the players offers all had a small ($20M) decrease - Obviously, are there any quirks none of the writers have found yet, any monkey paw sort of unintended consequence deals, etc. The Okay - Expanded playoffs. Expanding the playoffs is bad, but we knew inevitable. Keeping it to 12 instead of 14 was good. The structure seems solid? I've been going back and forth on whether I think it's okay that Division winner #3 and WC #1 are treated the same, but otherwise I think it's good - The CBT increases of $20M this year and another $14M over the life of the deal. They're substantial from last year to this year, but probably not enough during the deal itself The Good - While little changed systemically, the players did get the pre-arb bonus pool created, and introduced artificial ways to increase service time. Like the CBT has for the owners, these are things that could snowball if the players keep building on them in future agreements - Young players are getting paid a lot more. The league minimum is up ~30% this year, and will jump another 10% over the deal. I haven't seen details, but it sounds like minor leaguers on the 40 man got substantial raises as well. Possibly AAA players too (not sure if this was just someone poorly wording the 40 man player raise?)? And then of course the $50M bonus pool - I'm curious to see the reverberations of more money flowing to young players. Does this commensurately increase arb salaries? With more guaranteed money in hand, are we less likely to see team friendly extensions? - Manfred got more power to make rule changes faster. The game needs to evolve, and while it seems clear that the initial implementation of any rule from Manfred will be as ham-fisted as possible, changes are necessary. And the players have frankly been babies about a lot of this stuff - the anti-tanking measures of a draft lottery + bonus draft picks for small market teams who make the playoffs and/or finish over .500. While these measures aren't going to change how e.g. the Pirates operate, they might impact how small (but not tiny) markets like Cincy and KC operate? I'd guess they've also made it very unlikely we ever see a large market do a prolonged full scale teardown again like the Cubs, White Sox, or Astros - Similar vibe with the service time manipulation. The issue is not suddenly solved, not even close. But the calculus is now more complicated, particularly for mega prospects like Kris Bryant who compete for MVPs/Cys, and also for super polished prospects who will compete for the RoY - The players fought. After 2016, the MLBPA was rightly viewed as a joke. This led Manfred and the owners to habitually line step over the last five years. The players' modest win here won't make the owners cower in fear, but it should help keep their most egregious horsefeathers in check

https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/1502124192291983364?t=Q2NqCCcUMPo9P8ZGqsHE8A&s=19

This was expected but first time I've seen it mentioned

Do this please. Gut the old/expensive portion of the defense to build back the draft capital deficit. Go big on a WR and a LT to support Fields, and otherwise focus on efficiency and depth depth depth. You have this year to evaluate Fields, and assuming he looks good you're in great position to go all in next year.

The actual line from the article was: "There is still a month to go before the minor-league season starts, but there’s a chance we could see a pretty aggressive assignment for Crow-Armstrong." PCA had 24 AB as a pro. To skip a full-season level and jump him all the way to A+ would be VERY aggressive. To some degree, skipping short-season and going straight to Myrtle would still qualify as being relatively aggressive for a 24-AB pro. As a California kid, I wonder if they'd like to challenge him with some Midwest-league spring weather, just to experience it a little? Or if that's the last thing they'd want, for a post-injury guy, and where going up to the cold north and batting .135 for the first month could be kind of a confidence-killer? Those 24 ABs we're in full season ball though, and he looked great. I think Myrtle Beach has been the expectation. I definitely double taked when I saw the line, but the implication is certainly South Bend IMO.

Not now, NFL!

YOOOOOOOOOOO

There was a stray report a ~month back that this will happen, but I haven't seen it echoed. If it's true though, between this and deals where teams call players right at 7:01 (or whatever time) this weekend is gonna look like NFL free agency. Btw players are either voting or about to vote, and it sounds like this is gonna happen.

I'm on board with banning the shift, but it needs to be something clean/natural. If every player has "zones" or some horsefeathers I'm going to hate it. But 4 men on the dirt and/or two men on each side of second I think is a good sensible solution.

lol horsefeathering christ

Lots of great stuff here, but an implication that PCA might start out at South Bend is by far the most noteworthy.

It's tough, I want the players to do well but IMO they're going to lose money if they keep fighting. The owners and the players are currently $30M apart on the new bonus pool. Split the difference and that's another $15M per year. Times 5 years that's $75M. Do the same with the luxury tax. Not gonna bore everyone with the math, but let's split the player/owner differences for the LT by year, and assume 5 teams per year will increase their spending by exactly that amount. Basically the teams that either exceed the cap or come in just under it. That's $178M over the life of the CBA. So this is certainly a bit reductive, but ~$250M is the financial gap between the two deals right now. That's a lot of money! However, players are estimated to lose $20M per collective game lost. That's only 12-13 games. So if you're the players, and you break things off here, you better be damn sure at least one of these three things is true: - While a deal is not acceptable, you think an acceptable deal is coming before a dozen games are lost - You can not get the owners to move to not just just splitting the difference, but further - You can get back pay included in any future deal They've got much more info than us obviously, but man I'd be pessimistic on any of those possibilities. Or maybe the non-financial stuff is really that bad, though we've yet to hear anything to that effect. Edit:. Number above were for the previous player offer. They've now largely moves to the midpoints on the financial stuff already

A lot of cold water here. That said I'd be pretty surprised if this thing really gets blown up over non-financial items.

For purely selfish Cubs-centric reasons, an international draft was going to suck because we have one of the top guys, Fernando Cruz, in next year's class. So that's not a worry.

Obviously wring every last penny out of the owners you can, but kind of feels like the PA needs to settle tonight/tomorrow. Estimates are that the players lose ~$20M per game lost, and this is reasonably the last opportunity to get a full season in. Feels like holding out another two weeks and losing $200-$300M to get another couple percent on the CBT and the pre-arb pool would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. If there's some poison pill in the deal that obviously changes things (and wouldn't be a surprise), but we're now in that awkward zone where the deal is a little light but no longer worth losing games for.