Bertz

Good on Joe. If he's telling the truth I appreciate the honesty as opposed to Theo's nonsense "I don't want to tell people what to think" cop out. If he's lying then oh well, it makes the reveal that much more exciting and no one will be mad at him. I can't believe I'm writing this about Mr. "Oh should I have read that?" but he's handling the PR/messaging of this offseason way better than the FO.

Basically anytime someone says "Bryce":

What happens with this if someone gets hurt in spring training? You can no longer trade to fill that gap? Or let's say you finally sign your target, you can no longer trade away the extra pieces on your roster. The first part is tough. It's what makes doing anything like this unlikely. I like the idea of "too bad, grab your checkbook and sign a replacement" but that makes this harder to pass with ownership. Maybe carve out an "if you put a guy on the 60 Day DL" type of exemption, but anytime you start introducing exceptions you open it up for abuse. The second part is an issue by design. The idea being that if you hadn't waited until after the deadline to sign your dude you wouldn't be in this predicament.

Dave Dombrowski brought up the idea of an offseason deadline. I love that. It would probably just have to be for trades, because a FA deadline would be brutal for the players. But even just a trade deadline would still move FA along as well. You'd see most prominent FAs sign in the week or three after the trade deadline, and then most of the 1 year deal guys would still wait 'til February just like they do currently.

I'm not sure all of Chatwood's salary would disappear because it's unlikely somebody is going to pick it all up. That's why everybody was suggesting bad contract trades earlier. As for Russell, we gave him a new contract, so we're obligated to pay it. I agree Gonzalez would be a good fit if PTR would open his wallet. Teams are rational: if you are willing to give up $20m worth of prospects you can make $20m worth of dead money disappear. Chatwood would not be hard to dump, it's not like he's Heyward with $100m left on his deal. For Russell, you can cut players on non guaranteed contracts (e.g. arbitration eligible guys) and only pay 1/6th of their salary. The only catch is you have to do it by a certain date, I don't remember it off hand but it's in the middle of March. We did this with Justin Grimm last year.

I just realized that Marwin Gonzalez is still a FA, which totally caught be by surprise. Man he really fits this roster well. He gives us back that flexibility that we're starting to lose with Zobrist getting older and Baez hopefully being tasked more with regular everyday shortstop duties. And he lets us banish Russell to the Phantom Zone. I understand that he's probably not an option if we're going after Bryce, but if we're not then what the hell? A "we're poor" offseason is really not that hard to pull off: - Use prospects to send Chatwood and Duensing away. Cut Russell. Boom, there's $18m to play with - Sign Gonzalez to something approximating the Ben Zobrist contract - Use whatever money you still have available on relief help. Will Smith would be my ideal, and would you look at that him plus Gonzalez is almost exactlt that $18m we just saved This is the team 2b - Gonzalez 1b - Rizzo SS - Baez 3b - Bryant LF - Schwarber C - Contreras RF - Heyward CF - Happ BN - Zobrist, Almora, Descalso, Caratini SP - Yu, Cole, Kyle, Q, Jon RP - Morrow, Smith, Strop, Cishek, Carl, Monty, Kintzler, Iowa Shuttle That team is awesome. It's not the majestic dong party that Bryce would lead to, but it's really strong from top to bottom, with plenty of depth to handle a few injuries or disappointments (Looking at at you Happ and Almora). This is what causes me to think we're still trying for Bryce. There's a good argument that waiting out the relief market is the smart way to augment the bullpen on a budget. But the rest of the market? If we're not players in the Bryce sweepstakes, what is the incentive to not go ahead and finish building the rest of the team? Unless time doesn't matter because our offseason is going to be literally just Descalso and some $4m reliever? Which....man that's a dark offseason.

That would be a good tea leaf in the "we're actually going to add players" direction. Might mean we're not willing to do a bad contract swap, and instead want the money off the books. Or it could be just another log on the fire of this horsefeathering Max Bialystok offseason.

[tweet] [/tweet] Bryant meanwhile is projected at 12.4 but after this probably fairly ought to demand 15.

I believe he forfeits the money but the A's don't get any picks or anything.

If your town has a horsefeathering Casey's General Store, you're not in Chicagoland anymore. This is worse than when comedians say they're coming to Chicago but what they actually mean is the Zanies in St. Charles.

[tweet] [/tweet] Is this the tweet that finally necessitates a dedicated Grant Brisbee appreciation thread? I think it might be.

UPDATE: Trevor Bauer clearly got his ass slapped by his bosses over going after a teenager for days via Twitter; unleashes hilariously and patently untrue apology....TO THE WORLD: [tweet] [/tweet] The headline for Deadspin's update article is maybe the best thing they've ever done:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/somebody-go-get-will-smith/ If we're for real "can't even afford a middle reliever" poor, prospects + Duensing for Will Smith is too perfect. The money's nearly a wash, and Duensing would actually look pretty good in AT&T, so the Giants could probably turn around and flip him for another prospect in July. Smith would probably be the best lefty reliever we've had since Sean Marshall. Actually, the more I think about it, we could have $50m to play with and I still want this.

This is bad. Assuming this is instead of a big time SP and not in addition to one, it's roughly to be expected though. They'll also either re-sign Moustakas or grab a 2b as well. I'm really curious to see how Grandal does outside of LA though. BP basically had him as an MVP candidate when you include framing numbers, and I wonder if that will actually travel.

I think the idea here would be that those trades might either look different or not make sense at all depending on what Bryce chooses to do. For example, they might want to use prospects to dump Chatwood if they're getting Bryce, but prefer the fabled Chatwood/Russell Martin swap if they miss out on him. As for the poll question, I don't think they will get him, but I do think they're in on him and we will find out after the fact that they were all along. Basically I see Bryce getting his $400m, and we will find out after the fact that the Cubs offered like $350m. I think this "we're poor" stuff is some combination of a dumbass leverage nonsense around their salary dumps and the team not wanting to commit to having $30m available to spend in the event they do miss on Bryce.

If the Ricketts don't want us to complain, one very simple solution is to show us a top line budget. I think the issue isn't that the team isn't spending a lot, it's that we know revenues are rising substantially (because most of that info is public), while payroll, the primary driver of expense, is rising modestly in comparison. Non player costs are surely higher than ever before, but there's not really evidence that they're making up the whole difference. Servers and analysts and such are expensive to be sure, but we're talking a Daniel Descalso sized hole in the budget, not a Bryce Harper sized one. Several years ago Ricketts said that money coming in from baseball sources would go towards baseball ops. That doesn't appear to be happening. There's three possible explanations for what IS happening: 1. The Ricketts Family is pocketing a bunch of cash 2. Baseball revenue is being used on a non baseball ops expense (renovations or debt servicing most likely) 3. There is some legit baseball expense that we're all vastly understating (it would have to be revenue sharing, considering the magnitude). #3 is certainly possible, but #1 or #2 are far more likely. I will say I'm not going to complain about the changes to the neighborhood. The IO and Salt & Pepper are the only things that have gone that I would consider at all to be a loss. And I like Gallaghet Way enough that I'm fine with the trade off.

Under on the Brewers. I definitely agree with that, but didn't say it because some people around here get very sore about the whole dismissing the Brewers thing.

I don't see any that really stand out too much. I'd probably hit the under on the Twins and Rockies. Over on the Braves and Nats?

[tweet] [/tweet]

Marlin was legit connected. He called Javy Baez in like April of that year and Hayden Simpson ~a week before that disaster. That being said, he was clearly on the scouting/PD side of things and was not nearly as well connected after Theo took over (which makes sense, the Cubs under Hendry had only like a few dozen non uniformed employees). So if you want to comfort yourself you could say he doesn't know much more than the beat writers at this point when it comes to the major league operations. That being said, Epstein has played the last six months like a horsefeathering idiot if this is all true. The Kintzler trade goes from "fine whatever they don't all work out" to absolutely inexcusable. Tendering Russell somehow manages to get even worse. And I like Hamels and think he was worth $20m in a vacuum, but not in this scenario. Those three guys could have paid for Bryce in 2019 (not in AAV but $29m would be plenty in real dollars). Or, if you want to spread the money around that's Jesse Chavez, Jody Mercer, Kurt Suzuki, and Matt Harvey with money to spare. Instead we're likely looking at them trading Zobrist just so they can add some modest players at C and the OF (and hopefully SS). The glass half full (maybe "head in the sand") interpretation of this is still the same as it's been all winter. The team came into the winter with basically just enough money to add Bryce, $30ish million. Because of the respective performances of Hamels and Chatwood, retaining Cole and dumping salary elsewhere was viewed as a necessity. Because they are approaching teams trying to dump salary, and currently unwilling to engage agents on even modest FAs while they wait for Bryce everyone understandably infers that they're broke. And the team is not correcting them, because why would they? The longer the winter goes the less I believe this, but it's not wholly unreasonable.

Spotrac has the Bears at $19.5m in space, though they can cut Dion Sims and save another $6m, which I would assume is a virtual certainty. So they've realistically got $25.5m to spend. Like WF22 said: Massie, Callahan, and Amos are the FA's of note. I would guess they could technically resign all three, but more realistically keeping two and spreading the rest of the money on depth guys is probably the way to go. There are a few more veterans they could cut to save money: Robinson ($7m in dead money, $15m total salary, $8m in possible savings) Hicks ($4.5/$10.1/$5.6) Long ($3.5/$8.5/$5m) Trevathan ($1.25/$7.65/$6.4) I doubt any of them are worth cutting for the money saved. Long probably if we had more draft picks or didn't also need to replace Massie. Maybe Trevathan if you like Kwiatkowski and/or Iggy enough. Overall I think the roster's in pretty good shape.

From Rosenthal's latest article.

The team leading the league in QB pressures/hits being the 3rd worst passing defense is quite the paradox They were decimated by injuries early in the year, and are now at least vaguely healthy. Not at corner though. They already had a mediocre CB group to start the year, and then it got decimated. Cre'Von Leblanc is arguably their top guy, and he was waived by the damn Lions at midseason. If Mitch plays like he did last week, this *should* be a laugher.

Based on Theo's quotes yesterday, I still expect a decent amount of movement this offseason. I think that they're waiting on Bryce, and that if they don't get him there's not another big name coming through that door. I think we're looking at something like this: Plan A -Sign Bryce -Trade Zobrist for prospects and salary relief -Trade Chatwood+prospects to dump his salary -Sign a backup catcher and another reliever -Potentially move Happ for young pitching Plan B -Trade for a bat (David Peralta is the most obvious IMO) -Trade Chatwood, but not necessarily in a way that maximizes saving money in 2019 (e.g. for someone like Russell Martin or Dee Gordon) -Sign a backup catcher and another reliever To me the biggest question is Russell. I really hope they are planning to dump him, but I'm increasingly worried they won't. That being said, they're not painted into a corner yet, so I'm trying not to get too worked up. Adeiny Hechavarria, Jose Iglesias, and Freddy Galvis are all reasonable backup SS options available in FA. It's very possible that a month from now they can dump Russell and sign one of them for only a nominal raise (similar to the La Stella Descalso swap). Also, less realistic but an option I love is getting Ketel Marte from the Dbacks. He'd be relatively expensive in trade cost, but I like him a lot and he'd bring us back to the "too many shortstops" place we were a few years ago.