Bertz

I'd be surprised if it's not Boyd-Shota-Taillon. I think Rea has a good argument for a start, his full season numbers aren't that different from Taillon (or Shoa for that matter) and he's probably the hottest SP on the staff. But I think his versatility works against him a bit. You know Rea can come out of the bullpen without issue, you can't say the same about the others.

I don't think this is really true anymore. It used to be extremely true, but the only good players they've developed and graduated in the last 5 years are Andy Pages and Michael Busch. And they're not finding Max Muncy and Justin Turner types anymore either. They've quietly turned into a throw money at the problem team. And that's fine, the league could use a west coast Yankees, but let's be real that this isn't the same Dodgers org as it was in like 2018.

The Cubs do a great job with pitching given the resources they allocate to it. People get like apoplectic about e.g. Hector Neris but when you stack everything up they're definitely in the black. The question is really whether they're allocating enough resources. Now that the roster is fairly complete, this winter will be interesting to see how much gets thrown at the pitching staff. Does Jed either A) forgo Tucker to throw a bunch of dollars at it or B) finally throw a couple of the Iowa bats at the problem.

I actually really like the Reds chances in the wildcard round. I'm actually planning to throw a little money at them. Hunter Greene is as good as anyone. Win his start and then you just need to squeak out one more. I'd be surprised if they make it past the NLDS, and shocked if they take down any of the other teams in a 7 game series, but they're scary in the wildcard round IMO.

I pretty explicitly didn't

The best way to think about this is that any MLB team likely needs 7-8 starters over the course of a season, and if you have eyes in seriously competing you probably wanna bump that closer to 10. Even if you think Wiggins is MLB ready *right now*, for pure roster management reasons they just can't operate in a way that gives him a direct path to MLB. I'd expect the pitching depth to look something like this heading into ST - 4 veteran locks: Likely Boyd, Shota, Taillon, and a TBD new acquisition - 1 optionable near lock: Cade Horton - 1 Justin Steele recovering from injury - 1 veteran swingman. This is probably Rea but maybe the team makes a swap - 2-3 optionable depth types. This is likely some combo of Assad/Brown/Wicks. I could see one getting moved or shifted to short relief but at least two will enter camp stretched out - Wiggins and to a lesser extent Sanders as off the 40 man prospect depth The season is long, and pitching depth erodes quickly. Like this year the Cubs at damn near any given time had 2-3 starters on the IL and Brown/Wicks didn't perform like we'd have liked. Wiggins is fun and we all want to see him ASAP, but the inherent cost to giving him an easy avenue to make the team early next year is leaving yourself dangerously vulnerable to attrition.

The Astros are out of the playoffs, first time since 2016. End of an era? The roster is not in terrible shape, but I think there's definitely more downside than upside there. Very much a team that needs to successfully thread the needle this offseason. Feels very ~2019 Cubs.

I wonder who would start a game three for the Padres. Darvish is sadly pretty clearly washed at this point, and King has been a mess since coming off the IL. King is going tonight, so I assume if he looks good they roll the dice that he's fixed, and if not they go bullpen game? Maybe throw Yu if the wind is blowing in and you think that can help mitigate the dongs?

Obviously steals are a little cheaper these days than they've been historically but this is still really cool

I'm guessing he's done for the year, and they are using the IL to get another warm body up here for tomorrow. I'd guess they're hoping none of the leverage guys have to pitch and they can have some combo of Wicks, Civale, and Assad take tomorrow's game to the house.

Yeah Padres also don't have any LH starting pitching. So the situation where you might go like Turner->Busch->Santana over the course of a game doesn't exist. I think the WC bench is backup catcher (probably McGuire), Castro, Turner, and Mo.

I think this is right. We're currently looking at a pretty stellar slate: Dodgers vs. Mets Cubs vs Padres Cleveland vs Detroit Yankees vs Red Sox In this scenario it's pretty obvious how it'llget scheduled. The AL Central battle is the early window, Cubs in the afternoon, Yankees/Sox prime time, Dodgers late. I think if Yankees/Red Sox gets broken up but Dodgers/Mets doesn't that has a chance to slide into prime time? Then the Yankees would get the afternoon slot and Cubs/Padres would be late.

Tongue mostly in cheek but Colin Rea has 29 strikeouts and one walk over his last 4 outings to go along with a 1.48 ERA. The flipside to pretty much any argument for removing Shota from the post-season rotation implies Rea should slide in, right?

Mo's been really fun to watch. I am absolutely fascinated with what the plan is for folding him and the other young bats into next year's team. - Do you let Tucker walk to open up a dedicated spot (plus free up resources to throw at the pitching staff)? - Even if you keep Tucker, do you move Seiya for those same reasons? - If you let one of the vets go, you probably need to bring in some type of veteran bat as a backfill. How good are we talking here? Probably north of Turner... but a lot or a little? - How many of the four can we reasonably roster at once? Do we feel comfortable with any of them spending significant time back at Iowa? - Speaking of roster fit, how much catcher are we comfortable with Mo playing? How about Long and 3b? - Is there an anyone who's especially valuable on the trade market? And how much do we let that override the above considerations? I have thoughts but I don't have answers. It does seem like Mo has already won Craig over, at least at the plate. That certainly impacts the calculus, but TBD specifically how.

Because you have to make option decisions right away there's very little chance Shota goes anywhere IMO. Like I could see a situation where the team loses the Tucker bidding and you're left wishing you could roll some of that money over to a second rotation slot, but the Shota decision has to be made ~2 months before Tucker's decided.

Yeah. You hear all the time "if this was the playoffs I'd be out there!", and I suspect this is one of those where if it wasn't the playoffs he'd be put on the IL out of caution.

While it didn't work out, Monday's game is a good blueprint. One of the long guys, probably Rea, for 3 innings/once through the order. Soroka for two, and then shift to the short relievers. Maybe have one of the lefties go an inning-ish between Rea/Soroka depending on where in the lineup they are.

I'm probably Wicks' second biggest fan after Jason at this point, and there's still no way I'd have him on the playoff roster. He looked awesome Monday, but too little too late for building up trust for this year's playoffs.

If this ends up happening, curious what they do with the rotation. Right now Boyd and Shota are lined up to pitch the first two wildcard games, so easy peasy there. Taillon’s currently scheduled to pitch Sunday, presumably lining him up for game 1 of the LDS. Do you try and shuffle things around last minute to get Taillon lined up for game 3? Do you plan on that being a bullpen game, given that starters have basically no leash in an elimination game anyway?

Pretty big deal given how much of the Padres lineup struggles against lefties

Unconfirmed I believe but sounds like broadcasts will have to nix K-Zone as part of this to avoid potential shenanigans

I've been a bit out of pocket, has Craig announced the playoff rotation? Because the way they're coming at the Mets is a bit ambiguous. With the Cubs going Horton-Boyd-Shota coming out of the offday, one option is to go the same order for the wildcard round, with everyone getting extra rest, a week between starts. The other possibility is Boyd/Shota start the WC series on normal 5 days rest, and Horton is going Tuesday/Sunday this week to set up for a potential NLDS game 1. There's pros/cons either way, but I assume the plan is the former.

NOPE

I hope Alcantara starts tonight. I'd love for him to start at least 5-6 of these last several games.