Bertz

Legitimately more upset about this than any of the stuff that went down at the meetings. He should have come home.

There's an episode of Friends, one of my favorites, where Joey has to write a character reference letter for Monica and Chandler's adoption. Joey feels self conscious about his intelligence and his writing ability. So what he does is he writes the letter straight up, then gets a thesaurus and randomly replaces a bunch of words in the letter with big 'smart sounding' words, not realizing that not using them correctly just sounds silly and unnatural. Anyway, I don't know why I'm bringing this up right now.

Free agency this winter basically

My takeaways from the meetings: - Imai seems to be holding up their acquisition of a SP. Whether that's because Imai is their top choice (my guess) or because their actual targets don't want to move yet is TBD - The team is talking SP trade pretty heavily. This always made sense logically but IMO it's notable because the last few weeks we almost exclusively heard about FA targets. I suspect the pref list is Imai > Trade Option(s) > King > Gallen - The Bregman stuff feels real. And generally I think they're shopping for a higher caliber of bat than I expected. I suspect even if their SP add prices them out of Bregman they're still adding an 8 figure salary on offense, and it's the bullpen that will pay the price - None of the bats that have been rumored besides Bregman feel real. Based on the team's needs and type I suspect Okamoto is the fallback but there's a striking lack of clarity here - I'm going to be disappointed in how much gets added to the bullpen, the only question is of degree - The team made a very concerted effort to talk up Shaw after a string of 3B rumors. It genuinely seems to be more defending their guy (like when Jed reemed Nightengale over Morel a few winters ago) rather than a trade negotiation through the media. I suspect Craig gave away the game when he talked up Shaw's versatility

Also I'm not going to complain but some team should have popped Connor Noland. Not having minor league options obviously kills a lot of his appeal but looking at what teams like the White Sox and A's have on hand SP wise and I feel like Noland would lift a few teams' pitching staffs.

Would also indicate the plan with the bullpen is not as spartan as what Trueblood heard. If the plan is going into March with ~4 spots filled and then just throwing out a small army of relievers in ST to compete for the last four there's no reason not to take a live arm here and just cross your fingers and hope he learns to throw strikes in the next four months.

Yikes

Elite is a strong word but if the team signed Bregman they'd be looking at this lineup? Steamer projected wRC+ in parentheses. Hoerner (107) Busch (122) Suzuki (121) Ballesteros (108) Bregman (120) Happ (114) Kelly (100) PCA (108) Swanson (98) With Shaw (107) as the 10th man. There's not a 150 wRC+ monster anywhere but that's a lineup that will do some bludgeoning.

I've been pretty all in on Cabrera since July, so I hope this makes it across the finish line. I also assume the sudden cacaphony around Alex Bregman is tied to an increasing belief from the FO that they're going to address SP via trade. Bregman is not where I'd personally throw my cash after addressing SP on a shoestring, but it's hard to argue that something like Cabrera, Bregman, Keller isn't a significant infusion of talent this offseason.

I can't imagine in 2025 thinking pitchers, especially those in their mid 20's, are a cast die.

I think there's going to be less certainty than I'd like but I'm becoming less and less worried that Trueblood's article will come to pass.

He'd be an interesting conversation point for how to weight playoff performance, because by regular season performance I'm not even sure he would warrant making the ballot.

I don't have any specific names, but I think there's a good argument to pick a defensive minded infielder

Worth noting that the Nats are/were one of the handful of teams who haven't really properly modernized their pitching dev.

Two guys the Cubs added last offseason made the all star team and Kelly came damn close to making it three

Okay yeah consider that dam busted What a terrible 10 minutes for Mets fans lol

Hopefully the dam breaks now

Cubs batters last year took 6162 plate appearances. That is essentially 10 full time hitters plus a 2025 Justin Turner on top for good measure. The Cubs can, even in a world where we assume no lengthy injuries, sign an everyday 3B and still give two of the kids semi-everyday at bats (think what Shaw got last year). When you consider the inevitable injuries it's relatively safe to assume they can balance a third one.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6874240/2025/12/08/cubs-will-pursue-high-leverage-relief/ Thank god, Sahadev to the rescue Hell yeah, sing it Jed Uhhhh.... Alright alright back on track *sigh* I'll say this does not sound as spartan as Ryne Stanek and a bunch of NRIs. It DOES sound like Brad Keller or Pete Fairbanks and a bunch of NRIs, but I think Matt's source is probably a bit more bearish than where we're going to actually net out.

I think it's also fair to point out that Kantrovitz got hired in October of '19. So it wasn't just the generally disruptive force of COVID, it was that on top of doing it in a new org.

Yeah honestly the two easiest ways to reconcile what we're consistently hearing are: - Payroll is a little higher than we're expecting (nothing crazy...an extra 10-15 mil would do the trick) - The team has all these balls in the air but in the end one of their three needs is not actually going to get addressed in FA Hopefully if it is the latter case handle it via trade rather than just punting on it completely.

It feels somewhat clear that the team's FA pref list is Imai followed by King followed by Gallen. What isn't clear is what would it take to push them into the trade market as opposed to free agency. Especially because every bat we've heard about (sans a random Jo Adell nod over a month ago) has been to guys who will make a healthy salary. And the idea of signing both a FA bat and arm of substance from here undermines our assumptions about payroll.