Bertz

Now that Holland has signed, it looks like the Cubs' top picks are #24, #62, #77, #78, and #98, and they'll have just over $7.5 million in their bonus pools.

Was just a scenario I thought of today. The Packers have like 2 CBs on the whole roster right now, they might be especially desperate to make sure they get Ward or Fitzpatrick The idea still supposes Nelson is around at 11, which he likely wouldn’t be. Lots of talent at #11, but far better options at 8. Id really have to feel confident there was a 1a, 1b, 1c at 11 to give up 8. I mean, its only 3 spots, but the talent left on the board might be difference makers. Also why let GB get a top shelf DB? Now if only 2 qbs go before 8, I’d def consider trading down to someone looking for a qb Who would you anticipate falling back to at 11 if Nelson was taken before then, out of curiosity? Yeah, I think trading back if Nelson's on the board is a mistake. Nelson/Barkley/Chubb/Fitzpatrick are the top tier of non-QBs. Getting one of those guys at #8 is a gift, and I don't think recouping what is probably a 3rd rounder is worth it. Now, if one of the top 4 QBs is still on the board, I'd be all about trading down. At that point, unless something weird happened those top tier guys are all gone, so whether we're picking at #8 or #12 (Bills) or probably even #15 (Cardinals) we're picking from a similar tier of player. Plus, if a team is trading up to grab a QB they're more likely to pay above sticker price, so the reward for trading down is probably something more like a 2nd rounder.

Mel Kiper also has the Bears getting Nelson http://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2018/insider/story/_/id/22917443/nfl-mock-draft-2018-30-mel-kiper-first-round-pick-rankings-draft-order-32-picks I would guess it plays out more like Miller's scenario, but I think the larger point stands that the top 6 looks increasingly like it will be Barkley, Chubb, and the top 4 QBs.

-Happ & Schwarber both cut their strikeout rates to the low 20's and improve their defense to the point where they are 4+ win guys. - Zobrist is a trainwreck, so much so that we're considering releasing him after the year - The pitching staff is basically as good as in 2016, but less reliant on BABIP/soft contact voodoo - Heyward's bat rebounds to average, but he loses a step and his defense goes from other-worldly to merely good, so net he's still the ~2 win player from last year - One of Addy/Javy takes a big step forward, while the other takes a big step back. Combined with the Happ/Schwarber progress, we change our target next winter from Harper to Machado. - The Cards are right there with us on a 100 win pace up through the ASB, but during that first series back we totally pants them, 2008 in Milwaukee style, and they fade to around .500.

Really interested to see if those numbers end up accurate. If so good for him. Weird market this year though. An absolute nightmare for mediocre corner infielders with old player skills, but most other guys did pretty well. I expected more money for Jarrod Dyson and Lance Lynn, but mostly it's that Moustakas/Frazier/LoMo/Walker class that got horsefeathered hard.

I think he'll look for a longer deal with numerous opt outs. Say an opt out every 2 years. If he signs with the Cubs, I assume one of the opt outs would be in 2021. Yeah I think Boras tipped his hand with the JD Martinez contract. I expect something like this too. For the first 3-4 years it's a normal deal, but afterwords opt outs galore. I do sort of wonder if we might see the opposite though. Harper is the first chance at a $500 million contract, and likely the last one for a while. I could see 12/500 with just one opt out around his 30th birthday and maybe even some team friendly clauses as well. Breaking the 500 million and 40 per year ceilings would be huge for the players as a whole, even if Bryce might be leaving a little bit of lifetime earnings on the table.

Really? Anthony Bass is the guy they take? I think I'd prefer Eddie Butler for that last spot. It was the Athletic so I won't post it all here but the long and short of it is that Butler sucks despite his stuff because of his lack of deception or command, and Bass might be a guy who just needs to change his pitch mix (more sliders and more high fastballs) to be successful.

According to Sharma it looks like Anthony Bass is likely going to get the last spot in the bullpen now that Grimm is bad.

I think we're in a good spot, but not a great one. Barkley/Chubb/Nelson/Fitpatrick seems to be a pretty consensus first tier of non-QBs. If four QBs go ahead of us, which seems more likely than not, then we're guaranteed one of them. If only two or three QBs go ahead of us, then we'll likely have a good chance to trade back with Buffalo or Arizona. I'd feel way better if we had the 7th pick, but 8 should still be good.

I'd guess we draft an O-lineman with one of our top two picks. It's probably something like 50/50 (maybe higher?) that Nelson is there at 8. There's also a bunch of other guys that currently are slated for the end of the 1st round, and one or two of them are bound to slide to our 2nd round pick.

What's Kendall Wright's market gonna look like? Yeah this is where I'd expect them to go. Gives Trubisky a guy he already knows, and they have plenty of other places to reinvest the money saved. I'd also guess the odds of then taking a slot guy such as Christian Kirk with their 2nd rounder have gone up.

I agree. He was like our little secret in 2014 since the Cubs were awful. The best was that game against the Red Sox he almost threw a no-hitter. I mean the Red Sox had been battering this dude for years as a Oriole, now all the sudden he's dominating them. Yeah the Red Sox game is what I'm always going to remember from Jake. That was his coming out party. I missed the Dodgers no hitter and the WC game I always think of Schwarber's dong first.

That sounds about right +/- a spot or two on the comp picks (might still depend on where Cobb and Holland go since they are the only 2 FA left with QO's attached I believe). Really hoping we end with 1-2 solid prospects that pan out with the 5 picks in the top 100 and 4 in the top 80. I may have asked this already, but how much extra draft pool do the 2 QO picks net us? Based on last year's numbers, looks like about $1.5 million. https://www.mlb.com/news/2017-mlb-draft-bonus-pools-pick-values/c-223686792

His arm is going to explode from that splitter. I have to question the need to throw so many splitters, and by all accounts he threw a bunch, in an early season game against an OOC opponent. I get that he's showing off for scouts and all that, but damn dude, maybe ease up a little bit to ensure that you even have an arm by the time of the draft. I don't know if that holds true anymore. The conventional wisdom used to be that screwballs and splitters were really bad for your arm/shoulder, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore. I also remember hearing or reading that throwing too many curveballs at a young age is bad. I think they've proven throwing a curveball puts less stress on the UCL/elbow area than throwing a fastball. Ultimately, I think it really depends on the pitcher's mechanics, and you have to judge it on a case-by-case basis. In The Arm, Jeff Passan made it sound like the main driver of injury is thought to be velocity at this point. Then again, the Tommy John apocalypse that he predicted that drove him to write the book looks to have just been a two year blip so who knows. I think anything beyond "pitching is bad" is just theory.

I'd assume it would be like the Thursday night football games that Twitter/Amazon have had, where you could still watch on local tv.

I'm a big Landry fan, but I would have a hard time trading draft picks for the right to pay him big money. For the same money you could probably do Paul Richardson and Albert Wilson, plus whatever that draft pick gets you. The nice thing about having a smoldering crater where your WR core is supposed to be is that it's really easy to make substantial upgrades. I keep waffling on the best way to attack this offseason, but my current thought is to grab those two guys (both in the top 20 in DVOA last year) and instead throw our financial weight around with Norwell and the defense.

[tweet] [/tweet] Of the guys who were questionable to cut I assumed he was the most likely to stay. I probably would have kept him AND drafted Nelson at #8 but oh well.

Yeah, the Reds finishing 3rd in the division is one of my hot takes/bold predictions for this year. In June when Senzel is up they will have a playoff caliber group of position players, and I think their pitching staff is still well below average but will no longer be the tire fire it has been recently.

This signing is so weird. It requires you to make three pretty big assumptions. 1. He is legitimately good, and this being 'bad every other year' nonsense he's done for most of his career is done. 2. They're much further along than it looks like from the outside. In my opinion, buying a guy a year early is fine if you're convinced he's the right guy. But are the Padres only a year away? Their team is still a disaster and aren't most of their prospects slated more for 2019-2020? 3. There's very real value to Hosmer's intangibles, and that value will definitely transfer to a brand new clubhouse. I'm sympathetic to each of those three assumptions in isolation, but operating as if all three are true is a big leap of faith. If Hosmer was a shortstop maybe you just have to pull the trigger because they don't come around as often, but 1b are so plentiful in the game right now. I feel like it would have been better to sign LoMo and tried to get those intangibles elsewhere. Maybe something like Greg Holland + Miguel Montero?

Unfortunately I think Hendricks falling apart is the most likely by far. He's my favorite of our returning guys to watch pitch, but guys with well below average velocity are always walking a tightrope, and we saw him lose his velocity for much of last year already. When Hendricks goes bad, it's gonna happen really fast. Otherwise I took the optimistic Darvish/Lester/Chatwood scenarios. I don't think any of those is very unreasonable. If not for my general distrust of pitchers, I'd take the over on the expectations for all three of them heading into this year. For the hitters I expect a few of those to happen, but I have zero feel for which ones are actually most likely. Schwarber or Almora probably?

I assume in terms of roster composition Bryce would likely be a one for one swap with Heyward. How good Heyward is in 2018 determining how painful the process of getting him off the roster is. I can see two situations where it doesnt work like that though. First is if our rotation is in a bad place going into next year. Lets say one of our top guys needs TJ and Montgomery sucks as a fill in. I would think the FO probably needs to trade one of Schwarber/Happ/Almora for a starter at that point. The other scenario is if Heyward is good this year, but not quite good enough to opt out. Like let's say he's a 4 win guy, and shows every indication of that being who he is going forward. You want that guy starting in the outfield, even if he's got slightly negative contract value.

So the spreadsheet has us letting those guys go and replacing them with league minimum guys, and we're still over in 2020 because guys like Bryant and Russell and Hendricks are getting more expensive through arbitration. If we sign Harper, it's likely that we won't get under the tax for several years, probably not until the new CBA when (presumably) the limits have been significantly raised. The new TV deal is the silver bullet here. We'll see when we get the details, but it's likely that it will allow us to spend at or near the Yankees/Dodgers level. That means that we should be able to blow past the luxury tax number. At that point the "real" cap is likely $40 million above the tax, because at that point the tax is nearly dollar for dollar AND it starts hurting us in the draft.

I imagine that, even with perfect health from everyone, Montgomery starts 15 games or so. I'd guess the plan is 30 starts each for Quintana, Darvish, and Hendricks, 25 for Chatwood, and the full 32-33 for Lester (purely because he'll be a real crab ass if he doesnt get his 200 innings). I mainly wonder how they'll do it. Maybe open up the season with a 6 man rotation, cut down to 5 around Memorial day, and then bring it back in late August?

Here's the Cub's payroll outlook for the next few years with Darvish. I assume Gimenez will make more than the league minimum if he's in the majors, but haven't seen any details, otherwise 2018 should be pretty much locked in. To me the big takeaway is how well set up the team already is for 2019. Horsefeathers will happen for sure, but as of right now we'll be walking into an insanely loaded FA class with money to burn and no holes that need to be filled.