Bertz

On his own merits I think Kikuchi is a fantastic buy-low candidate. As I've said enough so that everyone's probably sick of hearing it, I'm a firm believer that HR/FB rates are basically noise. That said adding Kikuchi to this roster is kind of quintupling down on this theory?

This is mostly strength of schedule thankfully. The Bears have played the #1, #2, #4, #5, and #7 offenses by DVOA already. Cincy and LV are a bit below average, while the Lions are the solely bad offense they've faced.

I like that they are getting some new blood into the org from outside that Boston tree associated with Theo. Each of these guys seem like good gets. I think Hawkins is the one that's least interesting to me of the three, but that is probably my own biases at play. Yeah, the new blood is very refreshing. Until Kantrovitz, basically every hire came either from under a Theo disciple or from Texas, which is a FO ultimately led by Jon Daniels but where several of the lieutenants were Theo guys. It shouldn't have taken until year 8 to start diversifying, but adding high level guys from Oakland, Cleveland, Houston, and Tampa in quick succession is probably about as effective a way to make up for lost time as possible.

These weren't quite final. They've changed a little bit since I posted this, though mostly in terms of playing time rather than performance. The two biggest seem to be a small offensive bump for Wisdom and they changed Alzolay from a swingman to a full time starter. The results are pretty solid, with them expecting him to be a bit better than league average starter.

Overmanaging + too many commercials + no pitch clock I don't understand people bitching about watching something they purport to enjoy being too long and boring. Baseball is like an opera and for a fan of the teams/game, the ups and downs and pauses make it that much more compelling. It's for the World Series where one mistake can make or break a season. Because nothing is happening in that extra time. We're not getting 4 hours of baseball, we're getting 2.5 hours of baseball spread over four hours. It's the sports equivalent of a Judd Apatow movie.

I got them at +120 when they were already up 10-7, that was fun (except for a few stressful minutes at the end there)

Yeah, I know no one's blown away by his secondaries, but it feels like pinpoint command of an above average fastball is a recipe for at least a mid rotation starter? Like who's the worst guy in the league who fits that mold, modern day Michael Wacha?

Kilian piggybacking with Jensen, and doing quite well!

Beyond parody

Absolutely peak Mets happening right now

Manfred shows how valuable it is to be extremely good at one specific thing. My understanding is he's a Jack Donaghy level negotiator. So because every five years that can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he's allowed to spend every other day of his life stepping on proverbial rakes.

I have a feeling I won't be on an island much longer with having Velazquez in my top 10

I don't know if they're finalized (they accidentally put up some prelim ones for a brief period last year), but Fangraphs put up the Steamer Projections for next year. The Good: - Already sees Brennen Davis as an above average hitter (.246/.320/.444 103 wRC+) - Happ, Contreras, Hoerner, and Madrigal all look like good everyday players - Schwindel, Hermosillo, and Ortega look like solid second-division types - SO. MANY. RELIEVERS. I literally found 15 relievers that project to a better than league average ERA, and I might have missed a few - They projected Justin Steele as a full time starter and he comes in with a 4.40 ERA - Caleb Kilian, and to a lesser extent Ryan Jensen and Anderson Espinoza, look project as ready to be MLBers right now - On the position player side, Miguel Amaya and Nelson Velazquez look closer than I would have thought The Bad - Kyle Hendricks projects to a 4.68 ERA, Alec Mills to a 4.89 - Patrick Wisdom projects to a .700 OPS - On the prospect side, it's not a fan of Strumpf or Morel or Deichman There's an obvious dearth of star power, but a lot more cromulence than I think you'd expect if you watched the team in August and September.

I was under the impression the Twins were trying to get right up off the mat, but if they want to get out of Donaldson's contract I'd love this. I was hoping for a LH guy to complement Wisdom/Schwindel, but Donaldson, even at his age, is still good

My eyes always glaze over when reading about the intensely administrative parts of the offseason, but I think we have to get down to 40 shortly after the World Series, and have to add any Type 5 picks by early December. I see a few pending FAs on the current 40 man (which I think explains Lobaton?), so I think we're at 43 once the offseason officially begins. I'd think you need to get down to ~35 for Rule 5 purposes by 12/1, which would mean you could keep 4 of Bryan's 12. You could also maybe sneak a few guys through waivers, and really keep 6-7, but those "extra" guys are obviously not guaranteed and probably guys without options (and likely position players). Are all the players off the covid list yet? I know we were over 50 guys on the 40 man roster at the end of the year. Yeah I think that happened a week or so ago. They cut Fargas and the other dudes they emergency called up the last weekend of the season. Although I do see that Giambrone is still on the roster. Him and Higgins are guys that aren't on Bryan's list that I think probably ought to be. I think you try and sneak them through waivers and don't lose many tears if it fails.

My eyes always glaze over when reading about the intensely administrative parts of the offseason, but I think we have to get down to 40 shortly after the World Series, and have to add any Type 5 picks by early December. I see a few pending FAs on the current 40 man (which I think explains Lobaton?), so I think we're at 43 once the offseason officially begins. I'd think you need to get down to ~35 for Rule 5 purposes by 12/1, which would mean you could keep 4 of Bryan's 12. You could also maybe sneak a few guys through waivers, and really keep 6-7, but those "extra" guys are obviously not guaranteed and probably guys without options (and likely position players).

Megill? Megill's stuff is pretty outrageous, honestly closer caliber. And his peripherals were good, so he was probably just been a victim of batted ball luck. Like I wouldn't give him the 8th inning right from the jump next, but he probably ought to be in the opening day pen and definitely should be at least kept in the org.

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.