Bertz

Feels like the plan is to get all of the little stuff either agreed to or to get it where the next concession will be the last one (e.g. owners suggest 5 team lottery, players suggest 6, next time it's conceded it's settled), and then do some horse trading with the CBT and Super 2 levels at the very end. My guess is we get one more walkout later this week, a weekend of the sky is falling discourse, and then this thing gets banged out mid next week.

These are going to be a couple of large lads by the time they get to Wrigley

Teams and players met twice today. Met for an hour, caucased for 3, met for another hour.

Not entirely clear if this is a misunderstanding or inside info

You never want to not have a first round pick but probably a comparatively good draft to not have a first round pick.

Yeah I was very worried about losing JD. This is incredible news. People are speculating on twitter that customer feedback may have saved him. Don't know how true it is but it does seem like Cubs fans appreciate him a lot more than people at Marquee. Didn't JD miss a little bit of time with a health issue? I kind of wonder if that was worse than we were ever made aware of. That would explain a lot of the weirdness around him last year.

Yeah I was very worried about losing JD. This is incredible news.

What's interesting to me is that there's several of those that mark an inflection point where who feels the pain more changes drastically. Right now it's almost all owners. They're losing revenue on ticket sales for spring training and the regular season, things like MLB.tv are losing subscribers, and the TV networks are all struggling to sell ad slots. That said, no actual inventory has been lost, so they can presume they'll make most of that money back if a deal comes together soon. Though we're only a few more days away from actual ST games being permanently lost, which while small would be permanent revenue. Once we hit March 1st and real games are at stake things flip. Players are inherently going to feel every lost game more than owners. Around April 1st there's a big financial cliff for the owners. Most of the local TV deals have ~140 game minimums, drop below that level, and there will be contractual clawbacks and such, and it'll be a huge financial loss. I do wonder how much heat the owners start taking from the TV networks prior to this. They aren't scared of the players but I'd believe they're scared of the real life Logan Roys of the world. After that, it goes back to being worse for the players until we hit the point where the playoffs are in jeopardy. I still tend to think this is just a game of brinkmanship. I doubt either side has much of an appetite to lose real games and real money. The owners think the players will crack in the next 2-3 weeks, and they're probably right. But if the players hold firm I imagine the owners will finally start negotiating, and part of the deal will include some scheduling gymnastics to make up for the lost games with double headers and such.

Yeah I'm pretty all in on this. Rule changes that increase the value of the starting pitcher help with basically all of MLB's non-economic ills. And given that teams have already gotten away from dedicated full time DHs, I don't see much in terms of negative unintended consequences.

Yeah I'm not sure how discouraged to be. The owners barely moved on the two most important issues. On the other hand, they did move on basically everything. And at this point on most of the smaller issues the deal is in a decent place. So if the plan was to clear the deck on most issues so they can just go back and forth on the CBT, this offer might actually be very productive. But if Manfred considers this like best and final then we're in for a long haul.

This is more connecting dots than a rumor with an actual Cubs connection, but I really hope it happens. Baseball Trade Values says that taking on Hosmer's contract would be worth something like Robert Hassell and Ryan Weathers. Add in a small piece from our side, like say Alec Mills, and it could be Hassell and Paddack. Like unless it prevents a run at Correa you've gotta something like that if its available.

well they did employ boddy as their pitching coordinator until this fall. Yeah I don't follow him on Twitter, but when he gets retweeted onto my TL it often seems to be stuff like this where he's not so subtly talking up his work with the Reds. There's absolutely nothing wrong with angling for another job, but he definitely has a vested interest/POV. No I think there's plenty of context that's missing (and like you said definitely not in a deceitful way). 1. Whether a team has a large number of pretty good arms vs. a smaller number of elite arms 2. How does this chart look for just SP? While there's definitely value to having a bunch of live arms hanging out in the AAA bullpen, most minor league relievers are fungible 3. Some accounting for Command/Control. Stockpiling a bunch of Burl Carraways isn't actually that impressive 4. Some accounting for age, like you said a 25 year old in A ball, even with very good stuff, is probably not much a guy

https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/1492242042721767424?t=nXjvskOGBfZKPNObPXx-Kg&s=19 Every NL Central team except the Reds is average or worse, which I find interesting. Especially since I tend to think of the Reds as the least smart of the NL Central clubs.

So 30-35 days from an agreement to regular season games, meaning the self imposed deadline to get a deal done without impacting the regular season is sometime in the last few days of February.

https://twitter.com/Kevin_Goldstein/status/1491806828673449987?t=Lw7Um5ar5CezHI6GiY1jZQ&s=19 Manfred being vaguely conciliatory today. Hopefully that's actually reflected in Saturday's offer. We are very close to the point where the league's obstinance will cost them money, so them finally getting off their asses now wouldn't be shocking.

I think I've mentioned him previously, but I really like Carlos Martinez for this team if he's cool being a reliever. He was a monster out of the pen for the Cardinals in '18 and '19, and while I'd hope it doesn't come to it he'd be an option as SP depth too.

I think, clearly, the Cubs #1 priority coming out of the break should be a shortstop. That said, they need a second bat as well, and it's a little less clear what that guy should look like. - Ideally he'd be left handed - Ideally he'd be a power bat - Ideally he'd be provide coverage defensively at 3B With Kyle Seager retiring, Brad Miller and Jonathan Villar are the best FAs who check all of those boxes. And both come with plenty of limitations. So whoever the Cubs get is not going to be a fantastic fit. Rizzo would be probably the best offensive option, and while he does zero for you at 3B, he's the best defensive 1B option as well. I think I'd prefer other guys' imperfect positional flexibility over Rizzo's heftier bat, but I get it if Jed disagrees. Like this is a fun lineup, and a very strong IF defense: 2B - Madrigal 1B - Rizzo C - Contreras SS - Correa LF - Happ DH - Schwindel 3B - Wisdom CF - Hoerner RF - Heyward/Ortega/Hermosillo/Frazier

There is literally nothing this team needs less than another second division starter type for the corner outfield/DH mix

Correct, this is an attempt to suck in people who don't want to pay for all of cable but would still like to pay a sizable fraction of that for basically one sports team. The only market for this would be within the Cubs' blackout zone as MLB.TV, as of now, barely costs any more than Marquee as proposed would by itself. I don't think the price is unreasonable. $108 for the six month regular season. I'd pay that if I didn't already have Marquee through my provider. The MLB one team package (for out of market) is $90. Yeah. I'm about to move and this plus Hulu is about $20 per month less than Comcast's middle tier package. I'll probably make the change if we get some more indication this will be available for this season.

As much as football sabermetrics are improving, I think it's still extremely hard to disentangle individual performance from line play, scheme, a head coach that likes to run it straight up the middle in every obvious running down, etc. And all of those factors have not been doing Montgomery any favors. That said, I don't think he is anything more than pretty good. It was silly to trade up for him and it would be even sillier to give him a meaningful second contract.

MLBPA has been fairly specific that they aren't trying to peg a specific percentage of revenues. I'm not sure if they think that's a good concession(unlimited growth potential for owners), they don't trust MLB not to manipulate revenues in bad faith, they don't think the size of the pot is the problem compared to the inequality/competitive concerns, or some combination of those reasons. That's true. They're not anchoring to 50% or anything like that specifically because of the murkiness around "baseball revenue." But I think if the chart below looked less ugly the MLBPA would mostly be amenable to continuing the status quo, even if there was occasional rancor around stuff like the BAMtech sale not being included.

Fergie is the best

I actually think the problem is not enough long term thinking. - 5 years ago the MLBPA was fat and happy. Willing to sell amateurs down the river for roomier bus rides and like a dedicated omelette chef or w/e. MLB decided to pull back on FA spend, and now have a full on labor crisis - Last year we got the weird bastardized 60 game season because small market owners were going to lose money on a per game basis with revenue sharing suspended. The league passed on two months of assuredly bonkers tv ratings, including far more young eyes than they'll ever reliably be able to reach again - They're losing brand favorability with every day this current spat goes on, even though they could make major concessions to the players and still be north of 50/50 in revenue moving forward - They've not really invested in youth outreach beyond RBI. They've also dragged their feet on in market streaming and lifting the archaic in market streaming rules. All opportunities to spend a little short term money and expand the audience. They have to their credit cozied up with the online sports books. Smart long term thinking would be to only take ~50% of "baseball revenue" to keep the MLBPA complacent while enjoying skyrocketing franchise values and continually expanding baseball adjacent revenue streams that the PA wouldn't get their fingers in. The PA would have essentially rubber stamped this CBA. Now they're fighting tooth and nail, and there's probably going to be enough left over acrimony for this to happen again in 5 years.