Bertz

I'd keep Adam, Megill, and Hermosillo for sure. Morgan, Rucker, Stewart, and Sampson I think would depend on how many guys they feel they need to add to protect from the Rule 5 draft. I'd like to keep all four, but not at the expense of actual prospects.

I’m not sure I follow the logic for this one. The argument seems to be “if you intentionally limit the pool of players you can add, you’re left with scraps that doom the season to failure if you don’t sign your targets”. But even if you set your sights higher, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able get more than the scraps if you miss because the players in between are still getting targeted in the meantime. If anything, aiming for the top the market likely has greater risk in that regard, because they’re likely to be longer negotiations, you can’t use playing time as a differentiator so less is in your control, and there’s the possibility that free agency is condensed into a much shorter window post-CBA negotiations. I’m also not sure I agree with how narrow this seems to be defining what counts as ‘intelligent’ spending. The implication seems to be any FA that can get more than 2 years is off limits. Not only does that not match past behavior(the 2013 Cubs gave Edwin Jackson 4 years without the “must be aggressive” messaging of 2021), but it’s very likely that depending on the post-CBA landscape, there’s more options in that bucket than there were in 2012-2014 thanks to the continued emphasis on suppressing FA spending from owners via the CBA. I do like Brett so this is a little mean, but when he does these sorts of stream-of-consciousness writeups you can see why he *used* to be a lawyer. He's anchored HARD on "no long term deals" and created this whole universe of possibilities that take that as gospel. And the only exception he's allowed for is basically if a star settles for a high AAV 3-4 year deal. But like you said, that's not necessarily what "spend intelligently" means. Let's say Jed makes five signings this offseason. CLEARLY it's not going to be five long term deals. We don't want to load up the books and be back where we were in like 2019. But do we really think it'd be out of bounds for one guy to get a 5+ year deal, and maybe another to get 3-4? I mean David Bote is literally the only money currently on the books beyond '23. A deal or two that stretch into that timeframe is not going to prematurely hamstring the team.

That's really cool, I don't know him but probably had classes with him (I was doing Stats at U of I at the same time).

Context for any BB/K wonkiness we might see

Separating out what we know about Jed's "doctrine" from what we know about Theo's is pretty tough unfortunately. They were generally good about presenting a united front throughout their time together. I think we can make some inferences, but what we *know* about Jed is very limited: - During his time in SD, he built up a great farm, but then came here before it was time to actually turn that into a competitive team - During Quintana trade talks, he wasn't really willing to trade Eloy (but we don't know if that means he didn't want to make the deal at all or would have preferred dealing Happ instead) - Getting Strop along with Arrieta was his idea - Overhauling player development two years ago was his doing - Over the past twelve months he's opted for higher upside further out prospects as opposed to more limited guys who can help sooner That's about it? I've always gotten the vibe that Jed has a very Cleveland/Tampa set of baseball sensibilities, while Theo was cut from more of the Dombrowski mold, and those complementary styles are what made them so successful together. But that's really extrapolating a lot from a little. I'd expect the bulk of moves this winter to be efficient. 1-2 year deals to vets. A prospect trade or two, but primarily involving guys who are part of the 40 Man roster crunch. BUT, you have two sort of meta variables that I think make at least one big contract likely. First, it's just not realistic to wait until you're "ready" to start trying. Getting, say, four of the top 10 FAs in one offseason is incredibly difficult. Jed I believe has himself referenced that before as well. The other is that it sounds like PTR doesn't have an appetite for a long rebuild. There was a Mooney article that said the pressure is on to get back to convention ASAP. Whether it's Wrigley itself, the neighborhood, or Marquee, I think PTR needs butts in seats. So you can't just make an entire offseason about efficiency, there's gotta be at least one splash to get people excited.

One of the most interesting things to me is that teams are afraid to sign more than one QO guy, when the costs come down with each successive player (since your first rounder is forever protected). I'd think logically you'd want to sign 3 or 4 at once, and then go a few years before doing it again. But maybe that runs into the real life issue of winning those consecutive bidding wars in one offseason? Or maybe the optics of wholly punting the middle rounds of a draft? For this Cubs team specifically, I can see it two ways. On the one hand the team has a ton of pretty good prospects, especially at the lower levels. If there was ever a team that could afford to punt rounds 2-4 of the draft it's this one. On the other hand, when you have a top 10 pick, part of the appeal is spending ~20% of the slot later in the draft. So you get your top 10 talent with your top 10 pick AND another top 30 talent with your second round (60ish) or third round (90ish) pick. Does that mean signing a QO guy is going to be verboten because of the opportunity afforded by our bonus pool? Or is it easy enough to shift those funds to round 11?

Honestly I think this is the way to go and don't have any qualms or think its cheap... except at shortstop. I know you mentioned it, but we HAVE to go for one of the big guys there. The team has publicly said Nico's not a real everyday shortstop, and for as much prospect capital as the Cubs have at the position its incredibly far away (Made might honestly be the closest real shortstop?). Like even above Marcus Stroman, I think we need to come down with one of the top four guys at short. Though I do think the ideal is one big position player and one big pitcher, and then a bunch of short term contracts. You don't want to lock the roster down too much too early, but you do want some real foundational pieces added this winter so that this time next year we're not just looking at essentially the current team a year older plus Brennen Davis. I think too, with the short term guys, I'd want some RH OF help and some LH IF help. If we're going to try to depth people to depth, which I'm totally aligned with, we'll want plenty of platoon/matchup options. So like I'm still noodling with specific names, but my ideal offseason is along the lines of: Marcus Semien Marcus Stroman Tommy Pham Andrew Heaney Brad Miller Robinson Chirinos Some salty vet reliever I feel like this bolsters the '22 team, doesn't block anyone from Iowa (though to be very clear, Brennen is the only one we should plan around), and doesn't lock up too much money for 2023 and beyond. It's certainly not the absolute best 2022 roster we could put out there, but do think it's a legitimately good team and keeps a lot of powder dry.

I'm terrified of re-signing Javy, but would love for him to get paid. If he can get big money to stay in NYC and hang out with Frankie Lindor that's ideal IMO. Of course, this assumes we go big game hunting at SS and sign someone fun like Marcus Semien and not someone depressing like the hollowed out husk of Andrelton Simmons.

If Amaya's arm hadn't exploded or if we weren't trying to compete next year I'd think trading Willson would make a lot of sense. But as is I don't know that the juice is be worth the squeeze.

The vibe I've seen from various insiders is that there's definitely going to be a shutdown, but it won't last long enough to affect any games or anything. My guess is it lasts about a month, because no one in this damn industry can do anything without a deadline. So whatever the magic date in January is where they need a deal before it starts affecting spring training games, they'll finalize a deal within 48 hours of that.

Ryan Jensen starting tomorrow night at...6:60??

lol

Yeah, this was the Sox best chance and they didn't get the job done. Kind of like the Cubs at the start of the run everyone talks about their bats but it's the pitching that really made the team special. Meanwhile Rodon is a FA, Lynn will be 35 next year, and Cease hasn't shown what he did this year before. They're going to slide Kopech in, and that will help, but this rotation is going to regress a lot. It'll still be quite good, but there's really no place to go but down from #1. Can the offense pick up the slack? You look at Robert, Eloy, and Vaughn and you probably think "Of Course!" but we all saw how assuming your guys will keep improving turns out. And even on this side of the ball, they have no 2B, and their 1B and C are starting to get pretty old. I assume they still are willing to spend resources to do some stuff this winter, though likely nothing huge. So at that point you'd expect a slightly worse team next year? But then you have to think about the rest of the division. It's been complete horsefeathers the last few years, but that might not still be the case next year. The Twins and Tigers are expected to be pretty active this winter. The Indians and Royals will likely make a few moves, and have some significant help coming from the farm imminently. So even if the Sox hold serve talent-wise, it's not going to be nearly as easy next year. They're not going to crash and burn, but they really needed to at least make some noise during these playoffs.

Wasn't there talk of some of Milwaukee's own 'home-cookin' hijinks' during the 2018 & 2019 seasons? I'm seem to recall Yelich's number being absurd at home, especially his power number those two seasons (22/14 & 27/17). Then the Astros got busted at the end of 2019 and remarkably, Yelich becomes worse, like horrible. Honestly I think it's as simple as his gruesome knee injury. I don't know how you give a guy 9 figures without seeing him play post injury, especially when you have him under control for so long already (IIRC it was 3 tears remaining at the time).