Bertz

Wow, Rosenthal with a rare Bob Nightengale blunder

They were ~$30M under the tax before this, so probably takes them out on George Springer

That's awesome, he's really well equipped for that role. Frankly he helped push a lot of the ideas that have led to the three true outcomes nature of the sport right now. Very few people are so well equipped to think through ALL of the implications of any proposed fixes.

So I was thinking about this trade some more, and given that the prospects are all *so* far away, what does the trade look like if we consider the guys we got back more like draft picks than prospects? I found a FG article from about two years ago talking about how to value draft picks: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-on-how-to-value-draft-picks/ Additionally, in Eric Longenhagen's write-up of the trade, he equates a few of the IFA guys to what they'd be as draft picks: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/scouting-the-cubs-return-for-yu-darvish/ - Preciado is the jewel of the trade, an immediate top 100 guy. Typically only the top ~10 picks in a draft immediately make the top 100. So let's value Reggie as if he's the #10 pick in the draft. Via the above article, that's $23.3M in surplus value - Longenhagen explicitly said that Yeisson Santana would go in the back of the 1st round in the draft. To be conservative, let's say he would have been pick #30. That's another $10.1M - Based on where draft picks fall off from 45s to 40s, Ismael Mena would be a top half of the second round guy. Again to be conservative, let's call him pick #45. $6.7M - Owen Caissie is an easy one. He was the 45th pick in the most recent draft, though his bonus was commensurate with #59. We'll go with the latter, though the difference isn't huge at this point. That's $4.8M Add it all up, and you get $44.9M in surplus value. Plus any value you ascribe to Davies. That's...a lot. Longenhagen is probably higher on the three Latin kids than I've seen anyone else, BUT he's also the only national guy to see them in person since March. He also seems to be lower than consensus on Caissie, so it's not all roses. You start to see why the Cubs made this specific trade. You're probably not getting $45M in prospects and Zach Davies if those prospects have already hit AA. If the options are maximizing value or proximity, this is probably a good version of leaning hard towards the former. Still though, I think this does/should push Jed more towards proximity in a subsequent Willson trade. We're literally at a point where there's not enough places to play all our fun teenage shortstops. Let's grab a few guys who make Iowa and Tenn less sad on the position player side.

There's probably a real and valid argument to drafting a quarterback being a crapshoot. So if you think the right processes are in place, and we simply rolled snake eyes with Trubisky, keeping Nagy and Pace around is the right call. But I am not at all convinced that the right processes are in place and we simply rolled snake eyes with Trubisky. Particularly in the last twelve months, there's been a lot of horsefeathers.

I really hope we end up with one of him, Paxton, or Richards.

They were connected to Bryant over the summer...

Braxton Garrett+ Edward Cabrera would be pretty much best case scenario for me. I don't think Max Meyer would be on the table. Playing around with the baseball trade simulator, some ideas of what we could expect: Garrett + Cabrera plus some filler Trevor Rogers + Jesus Sanchez plus some filler Max Meyer or JJ Bleday pretty much straight up Monte Harrison + Lewin Diaz + Jon Berti And these are all based on current projections. It's not entirely unreasonable to bump Willson up ~5 runs a year for defense. I think qualitatively people generally think his framing is "fixed." If you're pricing him as if he's not a negative on defense, stuff like Meyer + Harrison or Bleday + Rogers probably isn't unreasonable. Also, anecdotally, new GMs are typically more apt to view their prospects as the market does rather than through rose colored glasses, so working with Kim Ng *should* be easier. I'm really talking myself into the Marlins as a trade partner.

We've seen more and more teams add guys "a year early," so this wouldn't be that crazy. I also *really* want Trevor Rogers. Have Hottovy teach him the spike curve he's been teaching everyone and he's gonna absolutely shove.

I think this is going to be hard to use moving forward though. First, the commissioner will ax it if he thinks that's the sole reason for the structure. Second, it's rare you know that you're going to be well under the tax today while planning to be above it 3-4 years from now.

I'm not 100%, but I think this means he'll cost $0 against the luxury tax in year 4. Though the luxury tax mattering for the White Sox is pretty unlikely.

There's been talk that the Jays are having trouble getting guys to take their money because of how messy the early part of this season might be for international travel. With how limited money is this offseason they're clearly going to be able to get some guys, but it may be if they strike out on all the FA stars they plan to do a couple mid level guys plus Bryant.

Totally expected to find Hendricks in this article, but did not expect to see Alec Mills

I do generally expect the team to reinvest Darvish's salary. For any negatives you can lay at Jed and Theo's feet, it's been rare that they've flatly lied to us. So when Jed says this deal wasn't about money, while I don't think that's 100% true, I do think that means they didn't *need* to make this deal just for money. I'd guess that PTR's payroll allowance is at least nominally higher than the ~$170M payroll was at prior to the trade. That leaves enough room for a mid level guy (an outfielder probably), plus a few flyers for the bench and rotation. I think that's why we're seeing smoke about a KB trade being imminent. If you wanted to maximize return, now's not really the right time. You wait until later in the offseason when Ozuna and Springer are off the board, or maybe even til the deadline. But if you move KB now? You have time/funds to do 3 mid level guys in FA rather than just one. An outfielder, and infielder, and a SP? That or you're tearing it down to the studs.

Yeah, that sounds to me like he heard a Cubs deal is going down but got no details yet still wants some level of credit.

Oh great! I don't typically trust randos, but randos rarely commit to such specific timelines for things unprompted. I'd guess, given the rumors the past week or so, he's expecting Willson or KB to go somewhere?

Guessing it's this

Cubs Twitter is acting as if we should take this seriously :dontknow:

Woah I kind of did a "Sure Jan" yesterday because it was Nightengale, but Puma's legit connected on the Mets. It sounds like the Mets are going to stay under the tax, at least for this year. They're currently ~$35M under, so maybe they prefer Bryant + another few bench/pen guys + wiggle room at the deadline to just Springer? It's not unreasonable.

The splits question is an interesting one. It doesn't tie into this directly, but I thought this article from a few months back was interesting: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-southpaw-advantage/ By this same logic you'd *think* that guys with weird release points would do better than their raw stuff would indicate against opposite handed hitters. But in practice most of the funky guys I could come up with off the top of my head, e.g. Chad Bradford, were extremely vulnerable to opposite handed hitters. Is that a testament to how terrible their raw stuff is? Maybe it depends on arsenal? I think, anecdotally, the funkiest guys are sinker/slider types. Those pitches have the largest platoon splits. But if you have a guy whose game is tunneling the high fastball with the curveball, maybe a lower release point doesn't make them any more vulnerable to opposite handed hitters? So good news for Patterson, bad news for Miller?

McHugh would be the perfect incentive laden MiLB deal type

This is a very Cleveland trade. Gimenez as the headliner is kindaweak, but it still nets out pretty wellfrom a dollars/WAR standpoint. Cleveland are obsessed with the "portfolio approach."