Bertz

Maton's been *really* good the last year and a half, ironically since leaving the Rays. And he's done it across three orgs too so looks pretty persistent. I also remember there being a lot of smoke around the Cubs and him two winters ago for whatever that's worth. To me the two questions are: 1. This is the guy we decide to finally go multi-year on? A 32 year old who barely cracks 90 MPH? 2. How many Maton-caliber arms do we get this winter? I'm hoping the answer is at least two, ideally three. Jed quicklu knocking this out before Thanksgiving has me hopeful for the latter being the plan, which is nice.

At the back of the roster it's foolish to have too much confidence in any move since the margins between players are so small. But there's about a 200% chance Leiter gets brought back. Hell I'd try to get him back in the building before Thanksgiving.

Yeah anywhere but catcher his age would basically be disqualifying. At catcher it's still a big red flag.

Usually the SP market moves fastest. Like you should expect most of the major SP moves to be done shortly after winter meetings, with maybe 2-3 stragglers strategically holding out for teams left holding a bag when they miss on the hitters they want. That said I could see Schwarber signing soon. Like Naylor the vibes are overwhelmingly in favor of him re-signing. And Dombrowski doesn't mess around, I believe he got Nola done before Thanksgiving two years ago.

It's a little thing. buy I'd love to nab an optionable shortstop. Even if it's someone kind of crappy, Ezequiel Duran maybe? But the team does not have a capable AAA shortstop, and I don't really want to waste an entire bench spot on the outside chance Hoerner and Swanson get hurt at the same time. Plus if you address this now you can get someone younger with a little talent (like Duran) instead of whatever Paul Dejong type you can get in minor league free agency.

My goodness reading this made me so hyped I could run through a brick wall

For anyone hoping this would be substantial...it's not. A reader email question asked about the Cubs adding "someone like Rob Refsnyder" to pair with Owen Caissie. Ken was like "yeah that makes a lot of sense". Didn't feel rumor-y at all.

Has George Ofman been right about anything since Hendry was running the team?

I like Michael King. I like him a whole lot actually. But yeah as you get at he is an option that was attractive instead of Imanaga but is much less attractive along with Imanaga. In fact I'd say he's basically the dividing line between me being happy with our SP situation coming out of this winter and me being disappointed. The combination of ceiling (as you said a good #2) and risk is lower than this team should be aiming for it's big get. I would have been ecstatic to have King as "the other guy", but that role appears to be going to Shota now. I don't worry about the resource part of it so much. The Cubs have a bunch of guys on the Iowa/Chicago border and need to clear some of that depth out this winter via trade. Trading for a SP and signing a bat and some relievers in FA is the most straightforward approach, but vice versa should be easy enough. If the team does want to be aggressive and dump Taillon that would be exciting. Bellinger last year aside it doesn't feel like Jed's style, but a rotation of: TBD trade acquisition Boyd King Horton Shota Is fun as hell. It would also mitigate one of my least favorite parts of Shota's return, the idea of having 3/5s of ths rotation slated to be free agents a year from now.

I am not aware any major reservations on Alcantara's defense. PCA is really the only reason he's not viewed as a sure fire CFer. This is Longenhagen: And Callis And Kiley And like sure Kepley hasn't been slowed down yet but he played at the same level Alcantara finished at 19. Like if Kepley pulled a Cam Smith and raced to AA but didn't have a chance to continue proving himself because the calendar ran out sure we might be able to talk. But this is like saying your High School freshman acing algebra is a better student than your junior getting a B in calculus. It is completely ignoring the difficulty of the respective assignments.

Kevin Alcantara is just over 18 months older than Kepley, significantly more tooled up, and major league ready. What are we doing here?

Definitely does not make the Kittredge decision look better

It's a good question, but just about all of the indications we have are thankfully that it's a combo of bad luck and bad defense: - Except for '23 his peripherals are consistently stellar. This should generally be your north star. There are a small number of exceptions but when in doubt chase guys who do well in terms of strikeouts, walks, and homeruns - And unlike say Ben Brown it's not a situation where "yeah he struck out a ton of dudes but the guys who put it in play all smoked the ball". Cease has pretty normal hard hit and barrel rates. His Statcast xERA this year was 3.46, a run less than his actual ERA and ranking right in between Joe Ryan and Freddy Peralta - Cease has had a lot of bad defense behind him for his career, including this past year. The Padres as a whole ranked 20th, and Statcast estimates that Padres' fielders cost him specifically 5 runs. That's about a third of a run of ERA - That means the other two thirds of a run is sequencing. Luckily this appears to be noise. His peripherals are nearly identical with runners on vs bases empty (3.57 xFIP vs. 3.54). He got hit harder with runners on, but I have a hard time justifying him magically being more hittable without that showing up in degraded strikeout, groundball, or homerun rates There's some gray area when a guy's ERA doesn't match his peripherals, but all the usual suspects for cases where it turned out legit come up empty here.

In 2026 dollars there's not really a major difference between someone like Cease and someone like King. Sure Cease is going to get a contract roughly twice as large but it's going to get spread over roughly twice as many years.

FWIW with Shota locked into the other spot this is how I'd rank the SPs on the market, trying to combine impact + cost: Group 1: Cease / Cabrera / Gore Group 2: Imai / Ryan / Valdez / Pablo Lopez Group 3: King / Alcantara / Suarez Group 4: Bubic / Ponce / Gallen Broadly I'd be ecstatic for a Group 1 guy, happy with a Group 2 guy, disappointed in a Group 3 guy, and upset about a Group 4 guy. I like a lot of the Group 3 + 4 guys in isolation, but if we're punting on the position player side they just don't provide an appropriate level of oomf.

You never have any idea what you're talking about

Man Grayson Rodriguez's arm must be jn rough shape This probably takes Joe Adell off the market too which is a bit annoying

*MUCH* less down on the team than DVOA, though still indicates there's probably some good fortune in that 7-3 record.

8 open roster spots, presumably a 9th opening on Friday when McGuire gets non tendered. And most of our top trade chips are on the 40 already. Get ready for so. many. relievers.

You don't buy into a guy who lost three miles per hour off his fastball and then excelled with half his starts coming against the Nats, Pirates, and Marlins?

I mean if they viewed Shota accepting the offer as especially problematic they wouldn't have offered it in the first place. Shota declining his option put the ball squarely in their court, and this was probably at most a 60/40 decision in either direction. Maybe they messed up and he's busted, but the team certainly doesn't view it that way today. An extra second round pick is nice but it's not something you risk a round of russian roulette over. Generally I think this increases the chances that the other SP comes via trade. Cabrera who you and I both like, Gore, Ryan, etc. I doubt it kills the Cease conversation entirely, but it makes it a tighter squeeze. Cease + Shota at market rates either means payroll is higher than we think (yay!) or basically the rest of the shopping list has to be done via trade. That's not impossible, "the rest of the shopping" could be like Joe Adell and a couple relievers, but it does make me more bearish on Cease than I was this morning. I do agree it kills whatever small chance there was of a Tucker/Bregman.

I think teams have been more aggressive in offering the QO to borderline guys the last few years. Didn't two or three guys take it last year too? Nick Martinez was one for sure.

I think in a vacuum I want Shota on this contract, but ultimately it probably lowers the ceiling of the offseason which is disappointing.

FWIW in his article this morning Jeff Passan said it's likely that the Brewers would hold onto Woodruff or Peralta, likely not both. So this pleases me.