Bertz

It's tough. I compared it earlier this winter to Mike Tauchman last winter. On a $/WAR basis it feels obvious, but you hope/expect that the roster moves towards a place where he's not a great fit.

The fact that we heard about the Shota and Kittredge decisions within a few hours of each other and more than a day later there is nothing on Rea is a bit weird, right? A sign he's also getting traded?

I am not 100% sure but I believe the Orioles are paying his buyout because of the timing. So it's a $1M savings instead of standard like $50k cash considerations. Not earth shattering but if you know you don't want him better now than in January

I certainly do not believe Tom Ricketts' spiel about every dollar of revenue going back into baseball operations. But the benefits to cable dying and Tom buying up the whole neighborhood is that there's now once again a fairly direct relationship between team quality and revenue. Ownership cutting payroll just for horsefeathers and gigggles is just not a thing that's gonna happen.

He did leave the door cracked But yeah this and Trueblood's article this morning have me very annoyed. I don't think the "wait out the market" gambit works with a roster this complete. Though I will say I suspect this means Shota's gone and we're getting two SP upgrades of substance. The details matter a lot but I think that's one of the clearest paths towards having this team be better on April 1st than it was on September 30th.

The Jed Hoyer offseason playbook of flexibility and hunting for good deals has been broadly successful. The problem is that flexibility needs to go two ways, you need flexibility on your roster in order to facilitate the flexibility with the market. Two years ago it worked out great where Jed had Boras cornered. Last year it kind of blew up in Jed's face. When he whiffed on Scott and Bregman there was nothing left on the market worth buying and he just had to eat ~$10M that probably could have done something fun in November or December. As the roster gets better, the odds of a 23/24 style windfall go down and the odds of a 24/25 style kerfuffle go up. This roster currently has few holes: one or two (depending on the Shota situation) rotation spots, most of a bullpen, and one or two bench guys. The top handful of free agent bats are good enough to force their way into our lineup, but that's it. So like maybe you can get a great deal in January, but if those available deals end up being for Josh Naylor, Gleyber Torres, and Trent Grisham it ends up being moot. On the SP front I know we had the Boras 4 situation, but generally great options don't just sit around forever. The one place where the team is thin enough to just add talent where you can and worry about the exact fit later? The bullpen. I don't want Jed to go all Dombrowski and spend a quarter billion before Thanksgiving, but I need him to be less passive. Saving $9M on Kittredge can't be for some January mystery box. It needs to be earmarked for something. Maybe it's Keller like you write here, maybe it's the difference between the Michael King tier of FA SPs and the Dylan Cease tier. Upgrading a 92 win team has to be a different process than upgrading a 72 win team.

After the way his season ended Shota wasn't going to get that nearly $60M team option. The choice became his player option vs. accepting the qualifying offer vs. the Cubs just letting him walk. The calculus from Shota's POV between the player option and taking the qualifying offer is really close Pros for the Option: - Nearly $10M more in guaranteed money - A choice of which of the next two offseasons to hit FA Pros of the QO: - Nearly 50% higher salary this year - Getting the QO out of the way. Guys can only be tagged once, and in the player option scenario the Cubs could still tag him with a QO and depress his market after the option years - The Cubs had some sort of team option after the player option. I don't quite understand this part, specifically the timing, but I believe this meant that if Shota really showed out, got Cy votes or something, his earning potential would have been capped because the Cubs would use their option So if the team wants to keep him it was always a coinflip on which avenue it would take. If the team doesn't tag him it generally means they have bigger plans (yay!) or they think he's cooked (boo!).

Legitimate shocker, wow

There was an Athletic article a couple weeks back with an interesting and relevant quote: It's a little tough to parse if the mention of Luzardo was Mooney bringing it up on his own or something Jed said just didn't want that part to be on the record. But the takeaway seems clear that Jed would like a do-over, not on the deadline but on the trade talks last winter. I expect Jed to be more aggressive than we're used to this winter, but still less aggressive than we want. For instance: - The team dumps Shota for a two SP winter. Aggressive! But the two SPs are Shane Bieber and Sandy Alcantara. Good, very legitimate improvements, but my socks are still firmly on my feet - The team signs Devin Williams. Aggressive! But the rest of the bullpen is kids or "let Tommy Hottovy cook" types that require a Greg Zumach Twitter thread to get us on board

I'll be curious to see what they do with Rea. It's similar where you can picking it up either way. On the positive side they're going to trade from the Assad/Wicks/Brown pool which will inherently be for something fun, or on the negative side he's going to hold down the 5th starter spot until Steele is ready. But I feel like declining it is closer to being an unambiguous sign they plan on doing something(s) fun with the rotation.

Shota literally just declined a deal for one year with an option at similar numbers.

I still think we should all keep in mind that the likely outcome here is still Shota sticks around on the qualifying offer.

Yeah it's annoying because this is both how a very good offseason would start and also how a very bad one would start. I'll also say IMO this does not point to the specific good offseason you want (big FA bat and trade for a cost controlled SP). I feel like in that scenario you lock in these solid but unspectacular pitchers on solid but unspectacular deals. If you do want a level set and a reminder that we don't really know what's coming I highly recommed revisiting the Matt Thaiss thread from last winter. The usual suspects were all *very* certain they knew what it meant and it's quite funny in retrospect.

I commented this on Trueblood's post this AM, but I would suspect letting Kittredge go is a sign they're planning to swim in deeper waters. If you wanted to build another bullpen on a shoestring you probably pick up this option and then make a handful of Caleb Thielbar and Eli Morgan type moves. Personally I would have kept Kittredge AND gone after e.g. a Devin Williams. But if you're shopping for two SPs maybe that's not doable....

I hope the team makes a big swing at a reliever this year. I'd honestly do Devin Williams if he doesn't get QO'd. The arguments against a big investment in relief are the year to year volatility inherent with relievers plus the opportunity cost of spending on relief instead of other positions (largeley tying back to point #1). Given that the team is fairly complete from the outset of the offseasin here, I don't think the latter point is as strong of a consideration as it might have been the past few years. There's only so much Jed can spend his money on, and the baseline at most positions on the roster is high enough that spending on the bullpen might honestly be the best bang for your buck play. I think Kittredge might be the canary in the coal mine for the team's intentions. The only reason I can think of for not wanting to pick up his option is if you're going to go for a bigger fish. If you wanted to scrimp on the bullpen you'd pick up the option and pair it with a handful of Caleb Thielbar/Eli Morgan type moves.

The Cubs were +45 wRAA (wOBA converted to runs basically) in April/May, 3rd in the league. Take out Tucker's 15 and they're still 5th. The Cubs were 4th in wRC+ in September with Tucker mostly AWOL. I do NOT think that the Cubs are a top 5 offense without Tucker, but this arbitrary endpoints nonsense is nonsense. Also, if we are going to play the arbitrary endpoints game, shouldn't you want Shota gone? He was an absolute wet fart down the stretch.

Really? "If you exclude the times they were really good they were slightly below average?" Why would anyone take that seriously?

bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

I don't expect them to give out multiple large FA pitching contracts. I said right there I would expect them to do one FA and one trade.

I figured it was overwhelming likely that Shota would stick around, and that it was roughly a coin flip as to whether it'd be via his player option or via accepting a qualifying offer. The latter is still probably how this ends, but I think clearly the odds of him leaving are higher than I expected. If the team doesn't give him a qualifying offer, to me it says one of three things. One fun, one boring, one sad. Fun - The team wants to go out and grab two impact starting pitchers. Right now the question is if they go the free agent or trade route, with an extra rotation spot you can do both Boring - The team *really* doesn't want to go into next winter with three starting pitchers slated for free agency. Shota's going to get replaced by someone roughly Shota caliber under control for multiple years. Say a Mitch Keller trade or Zac Gallen in free agency Sad - The team thinks Shota is cooked, and considers him turning down his player option a bullet dodged

He presumably gets the qualifying offer from here?

I'd be very excited about King as the second of two additions. Maybe Shota leaves and we do something like Joe Ryan and King? Maybe we do King and a bat? But yeah as much as I like King and you look at him and he's clearly Tommy Hottovy coded, a guy who missed three months with a shoulder injury and then was pretty bad from there on is not someone who can be your big offseason fish. Not at this part of the win curve.

Okay. I official forgive him for the approximately 75 false starts before the bye

I believe all the opt outs to this point have been exactly what was expected. Possible exception of Ha Seong Kim? Though he's not really relevant to us.

It's pretty much bottom of the scale contact ability. That's not an automatic no from me, but I would need to be morr desperate for help either at 3B or just broadly to add power to the lineup. What I will say is that while I'm an "absolutely the horsefeathers not" vote on Geno Suarez for similar reasons, Murakami at least had age on his side. At 25 he's still likely ascendant. It also is worth noting hat his ZiPS projection is very strong.