Bertz

I would imagine at the moment the battle for the fifth starter spot would be Rea and Miller fighting it out, with Abbott as someone they would hope is viable around midseason. I'm certain it won't come to that though. There'll be at least one veteran added, possibly more. I'm hoping that they use Rea exclusively out of the bullpen. He looked fantastic in short relief before they started yo-yoing him back and forth. There's clearly merit to taking a finesse guy and letting him air it out to the point he's touching 96. Especially since most of our other relief guys (save Kyle Ryan) are spin or velocity monsters with modest-at-best command. I also HATE the idea of bringing Lester back. There are three things a SP can give you: reliability, upside, and flexibility. Lester gives you reliability in terms of innings, but nothing else. His upside is gone at this point, and because of his status with the org he has a WAY longer leash than his current ability would dictate. It's a recipe for a 5.50 ERA in July still getting run out there every 5th day. My ideal would be to add at least two, ideally all three, of the following: - A super high upside veteran on a pillow deal. James Paxton, Corey Kluber, Garrett Richards, Chris Archer, etc. A guy who, while it's certainly not the mean outcome, could legitimately fill Darvish's hole in the rotation - Another pre-arb SP with minor league options. Spencer Howard as part of a Contreras deal would probably be my platonic ideal here? - A decently high floor SP on a Minor league deal. Wade Miley, Gio Gonzalez, and Anibal Sanchez have all paid off huge as MiLB signings in the last few years. Obviously if they're on a minor league deal they're not a guy you can count on, but someone more likely to give you 5+ IP/start and an ERA south of 5 than Tyson Miller is You open 2021 with this rotation: Hendricks James Paxton type Davies Alzolay Mills But this rotation is certainly not going to go 162. Paxton and Alzolay are severe injury risks, while Mills and Alzolay are significant performance risks. You run these top 5 guys out there, but between injuries, ineffectiveness, plus some planned stretches of utilizing a 6 man rotation, you will give plenty of starts to the Iowa guys. Likely enough to figure out which one (or hopefully two!) of the Iowa kids are ready to perform moving forward. I'd love to have 4 spots pretty well figured out going into next offseason. From there bring in another quality vet, and have Brailyn lurking as the injury/performance replacement.

If there is a guy that could be, Boog is probably it. Every time I've ever heard him call a game, he's had great rapport with whoever the color guy is, so I'm as excited for Boog and JD fun as I am for him actually calling games. Yeah to me the thing that makes this so exciting is how fun he is. There are announcers who are better (though not many), but not many who bring much color to the broadcast. Him and JD is going to be a horsefeathering blast.

Thank goodness for the Rams

Sounds like the national emergency clause in the CBA likely won't allow the owners to start the season late unless there are new lockdowns/restrictions. So if the league wants to start on May 1st like they've been floating, they've gotta make it worth it to the players.

I don't like that Miller is currently slated as the 5th or 6th starter, but I love that our Iowa SP depth is finally actually interesting

Mooney has an article on trading Contreras up in The Athletic that kind of echoes this point. Also mentions that the team is looking at Jason Castro to replace Caratini.

Is Brailyn's arm going to explode or will he just disappoint? I assume if he stays a starter he's a guy we can hope is in the rotation but we can't count on it? At least to start the year? Same with Davis in the outfield. I'd love for them to whoop ass in MiLB this season and make that prediction needlessly conservative though. I do also think the bullpen will be a strength regardless though. Too many fun arms are floating around at Tennessee or higher for them to not have 5-6 work out at any given time.

Davies? FA after this year, right? FG has him at 5+ years of service heading into this season.

I think it's making fun of Alec Baldwin's new wife

So the current rumors are that Contreras is getting shopped and that Baez and Rizzo extensions are pretty likely. Take that all together, and this would presumably be the team heading into 2022: SP - Hendricks, Alzolay, Mills, Colin Rea, Cory Abbott C - Amaya 1B - Rizzo 2B - Hoerner SS - Baez 3B - Bote LF - Ervin CF - Happ RF - Heyward Bullpen - TBD/Doesn't Matter That's.... bleak. Payroll's $110ish million though, so there's money to play with even if the plan is to stay comfortably south of the luxury tax for another year. Though for this to even be fixable via FA, you probably need 2021 to turn 4-5 of those question mark positions into places where you can count on at least solid production. That's a big ask, and why getting back MLB or near-MLB talent back for Contreras is so key.

I'm cool trading Willson, but IMO it has to go one of two ways: 1. This truly is a fire sale and you're going scorched earth. In that case Hendricks needs to go too. Happ probably as well (maybe he's young/controlled enough you don't *have* to?). Any of the guys in their walk years you can hang onto til the deadline if you'd like to gamble on them/your coaching 2. You have to get MLB or near MLB pieces back. If you're not going the fire sale route, you wanna do what you can to make this dip as short as possible. Darvish freed up money for next winter's FA bonanza, but did nothing to directy improve the '22 team. If you can fill a spot or (ideally) two on the '22 roster with a Willson trade, it starts being more likely that there are few enough cracks on the '22 roster that you can paper over them with cash The question with Contreras though is where. Phillies are an obvious destination if they miss on Realmuto. Angels and Nationals as well. That's....about it? Are the Indians willing to reinvest ~1/3rd of Lindor's salary? Maybe the Tigers or Marlins want to start adding guys a star a year early in anticipation of really going for it next winter?

he's a nancy boy soft tosser and he's not kyle hendricks what's there not to get His numbers are goodish so :dontknow: Devil's Advocate Post: 2020: Yu Darvish - 76 IP, 2.01 ERA Zach Davies - 69.1 IP, 2.73 ERA 2019-2020: Yu Darvish - 254.2 IP, 3.39 ERA Zach Davies - 229 IP, 3.30 ERA 2018-2020: Yu Darvish - 294.2 IP, 3.60 ERA Zach Davies - 295 IP, 3.60 ERA 2017-2020: Yu Darvish - 481.1 IP, 3.70 ERA Zach Davies - 486.1 IP, 3.74 ERA I don't actually think Davies is anywhere near as good as Darvish, but it's kinda remarkable how similar the top line results are for both guys.

It's a few things: - Signing bonuses aren't always linear. They're agreed to when kids are 14/15, and finalized at 16. Sometimes the $1M 14 year old develops a little better than the $3M one. So while the huge money kids are almost always still the top kids in the class, the order can get fudged a bit in that intervening period - When going from amateur to professional ball, you change to an almost entirely new ecosystem of scouts. That's how you get like Nico Hoerner going from being a 40th-ish ranked draft prospect to a top 100 overall guy after 6 weeks in short season ball - In this case specifically, the only place they've been seen since March was the instructional league in October. Longenhagen lives near there, so luckily he has actually seen 3/4 of these guys in the last few months. So while I typically value Keith Law's or Jim Callis' opinion more, I think Eric's opinion holds much more weight currently Isn't troublesome that they've got to be framed in a such a manner to put any positive spin on them? Doesn't it mean there's a long shot to none they'll amount to anything? Even the glass half full take on this trade is "these guys are nice but man are they far away." I'm not too worried about media spin or anything like that. Especially since we know Eric Longenhagen is the primary source on his own reports (at least for the 3 Latin kids). If a second-hand source like Jim Callis' or Keith Law was giving us positive spin, I'd be a lot more worried that the info was being colored by like Jason McLeod or someone else in the Cubs' FO.

It's a few things: - Signing bonuses aren't always linear. They're agreed to when kids are 14/15, and finalized at 16. Sometimes the $1M 14 year old develops a little better than the $3M one. So while the huge money kids are almost always still the top kids in the class, the order can get fudged a bit in that intervening period - When going from amateur to professional ball, you change to an almost entirely new ecosystem of scouts. That's how you get like Nico Hoerner going from being a 40th-ish ranked draft prospect to a top 100 overall guy after 6 weeks in short season ball - In this case specifically, the only place they've been seen since March was the instructional league in October. Longenhagen lives near there, so luckily he has actually seen 3/4 of these guys in the last few months. So while I typically value Keith Law's or Jim Callis' opinion more, I think Eric's opinion holds much more weight currently

It works both ways right? You can't say that them being in our top 10 is an indictment of our system and at the same time not acknowledge that not being in the Padres top 10 isn't an insult. This is precisely why some outlets have moved to the Future Value model, to make these comparisons more apples to apples.

The trade looks MUCH better in this light. Eric has Preciado as a Top 100 guy, better than Ed Howard. Yeisson Santana is a 45 FB guy, meaning he'd be in the top 10 in a typical system. Ismael Mena is on the 40/45 line, depending on how reports of whether he can stick in CF shake out. It's appalling how far away all these guys are, but it's looking more like the raw value is there at least.

At this point, I think the focus turns to putting yourself in the best possible position for the trade deadline 1. Hang on to all the walk-year guys. Bryant, Rizzo, Baez, Kimbrel...odds are one or two of these guys will resume being stars, and bring back far more in July than the lot of them would bring back right now 2. Pillow Contracts. Whether it's James Paxton, Kirby Yates, Corey Kluber, etc., there are several previously high-end pitchers looking to re-establish themselves. Use the saved Darvish money on a few of them, and build them back up with the magical pitching infrastructure. For example, MLBTR predicted $10M for Paxton and $5M for Yates. That'd cleanly work out to Paxton + Yates + Davies equalling Darvish's salary. Now you've got another shot or two at stars to deal at the deadline Unless the team wildly exceeds expectations, I think you have to sell come July. Being on pace for 88 wins and the division is not enough to deviate. You blew that option when you traded Darvish for teenagers. 2022 is pretty much a clean slate. Payroll right now would project at ~$80M. And next year's FA class is killer. You've got to put yourself in a position for that to matter.

It doesn't really make it okay, but between this trade, Ed Howard, and the last two IFA classes the Cubs now have a pretty absurd collection of teenagers. Like holy crap. But it's wild that this trade didn't have a better headliner. Like I'd have been pretty fine with Cronenworth or Morejon plus these four. But this is just so little near term value. This is not the "step back in 2021 to take two steps forward in 2022" deal that I was bracing for.

By MLB Pipeline, it's probably okay value. All 4 guys are 45 FB guys, meaning they'd be top 10 in a normal system (keep in mind the Padres have an incredibly deep system). Though you still have the whole quantity vs. quality argument. By FG's values though, there's not really any sort of justification. Two 45s, a 40, and a 35. If it'd been Cronenworth and these four guys I'd be slightly disappointed, but this is horsefeathering risky as hell. The Cubs must REALLY trust their scouts.

We still haven't seen Myers as part of the deal from any of the verified folks. Like he was inferred earlier, but hasn't been sourced.

Let's say this is right. This is the roster as it currently stands: SP - Hendricks, Davies, TBD, Alzolay, Mills C - Willson, TBD 1B - Rizzo 2B - Cronenworth, Bote SS - Baez, Vargas 3B - Bryant LF - Myers, Ervin CF - Happ, TBD RF - Heyward (I assume Nico starts at Iowa, and Vargas is just keeping his spot warm) Bullpen - Kimbrel + 7 guys Payroll would be roughly flat with where it was prior to non-tendering Schwarber. I'd REALLY hope Morejon is one of the prospects. There's probably enough money left over to address that open starter spot OR the two open bench spots, not both.