Bertz
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Everything posted by Bertz
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Close the book on this one
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Levine's pretty hit or miss at this stage of his career. That said the only time from the last couple of years I can remember him being this on something was Jesus Luzardo last winter. And that deal was done before the physical spiked it, so I'd consider it a win for him.
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My understanding is LT numbers are vased on guaranteed dollars. So presumably for Harvey it's $5M with a $1M buyout, and thus the $6M guaranteed is the LT hit. I do know that option decisions that retroactively change the AAV can have a carryover. For instance Stroman's contract was 25/25/21, for a 23.7 AAV. When he opted out before that 3rd year we got a 2.6M 'penalty' in that 3rd year to make up for that AAV gap the first two years. I don't think this happens on mutual options though, mutual options are essentially just deferred money.
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He's supposed to miss 2026 so this is a pure IL stash play. Still he's been great when healthy the past few years.
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Worth noting Schwarber was significantly more raw than even Mo. As far as I can find he caught 100 games in college and another 70 in MiLB. Mo's at about 240 if we only count full season ball. FWIW Amaya was only 265 before he became a full time big leaguer.
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The outfield's a little tricky. There's not really room for another lefty at the moment unless you decide to send Mo to Iowa. On the flip side we have essentially zero LHH outfield depth. Dylan Carlson is a switch hitter but much better against lefties, and then...Brett Bateman? And even the righties all have their question marks. On the pitching staff you handle this by adding another veteran like Tauchman, pushing Mo down to Iowa and telling him to hang tight knowing that attrition will work it all out in short order. On the position player side though? There's no guarantee of that injury, Happ/PCA/Seiya combined to miss less than 30 games last year. Ideally we can get someone of substance on a minor league deal. Max Kepler or Michael Conforto? I suspect those guys can do better though, and we'll just have to live with the idea that if god forbid something happens to Happ or PCA our lineup just gets a little too right handed.
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I think there's a decent chance of another bench guy, and a decent chance of more pitching. Probably won't be a surefire starter if it's not Gallen, but someone you can stash on the IL (Griffin Canning?) or someone you think might take off in relief (Walker Buehler?).
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Each of the last three years we've gotten 30+ games at catcher from guys who weren't one of our top two catchers heading into the season (Amaya in '23, Nido/Bethancourt in '24, McGuire last year). Amaya especially is made of glass, I don't think we should write off Mo getting some run at catcher. He of course could just hang out at Iowa until the IL trip that opens up that playing time, but A) is it really possible for him to radically change our defensive evaluation on him between now and like July and B) to your point of growing pains we're just kicking the can on getting those out of the way. I just don't see the point of blocking the kids for low margin upgrades. Especially at DH, where we're not boned if Mo faceplants. Austin projects really well, Long purely offensively is probably a bit better than Mo (at least in the short term), or we could of course just rotate guys through it as a rest spot. And of course I think KC's got a great point that DH is about as easy of a spot to fill at the deadline as you could ask for.
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I just don't really see the point? Like why bother? For 5 points of wRC+? And if you want to lean really heavily on projections it's worth noting they really like Austin's bat and they don't think Mo provides zero defensive value.
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Cubs fans will suggest literally anything to avoid giving a job to a kid
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Felix Hernandez and Zack Greinke both did the "changeup almost as fast as my fastball" thing. Unfortunately neither guy did it early in their career when they still had primo velocity. It was a lot of 92 MPH fastball with an 89 MPH change, but it worked exceptionally well.
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👀
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2025-2026 Offseason Top Prospects Lists
Bertz replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
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As the resident Ben Brown fan (apologist?) I'll do my monthly reiteration that he has the peripherals of a strong #2 starter, and those tend to become meaningful far faster than quality of contact. I'll also say my read on the situation is that his issues last year were more between the ears than in the arm. Everyone wrings their hands about him only having two pitches, but smaller repertoires tend to result in more of a times through the order penalty rather than the first inning struggles that really torpedoed Brown's results. I think the best way to balance the standings and Brown's development is letting him be a multi-inning reliever, slowly increasing leverage and/or length as his performance dictates. That said if the team has specific arsenal changes they want to make Iowa wouldn't be the worst thing. The changeup is obvious and already in progress, but I also wonder if there's something that moves glove side that they could implement. Pretty much the first thing they did post trade was kill his slider and focus on his curve, but that was A) at the height of the sweeper fad phase and B) pre-Zombro.
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Watched the presser, nothing too crazy which is probably good news: - Jed made it sound like they were done with big transactions and just continuing to hunt for depth - HOWEVER Bruce Levine tried to get him to bite on a thinly veiled question about Zac Gallen and Jed got a big horsefeathers eating grin on his face and said something about having plenty of resources - No one is hurt that we didn't already know about. Carter mentioned Steele and Trent Thornton rehabbing but no one else is currently hurt. - Apparently Hunter Harvey was absolutely gushing about the Cubs pitching and medical staffs. He's come from some particularly backwards orgs but still feels notable - A question about the roster cliff came up. Jed then mentioned the young SPs and how good they feel about them - Michael Busch is apparently getting the opportunity to play every day against LHP?
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Kind of shocked that Palencia is the anointed closer and not just "in the mix".
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FWIW we have early season series against both the Dbacks and Mets. We won't miss Lindor and Carroll but we'll probably get the power-sapped versions.
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Sloan was a no Statcast park prior to this year, so great news
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This post is from last night, so this presser is this AM. Presumably we should get any injury news and probably some vibes around how much they're still looking to do in FA.
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Honestly they're not much different on the position player side. The quintessential "it's not who you play it's when you play them" team the last few years.
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They were probably already going to need a SP, feels like they might need to be the team that comes hat in hand for Gallen now.
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Woof. Hamates are quick to get back on the field from but long to get back to 100%.
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Love seeing Conrad out there this early. Makes it seem more likely he's fully healthy and can hopefully proceed right to South Bend on Opening Day.
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I follow Dan Szymborski's writing pretty closely. He's mentioned something a few times this winter that I thought was really interesting. Basically that the Brewers beating the projection systems every year has been less about them getting a bunch of individual results that the computers don't see coming, and more about the Brewers being good about shifting playing time to guys the computers think deserve more playing time than the public does. For instance Isaac Collins projected for approximately 2 WAR/600 heading into last year, and yet didn't appear at all on Fangraphs' pre-season depth charts. So one thing Dan did when he ran ZiPS a few weeks ago (after the Peralta trade, before the Durbin one) was try to anchor less to what we expect playing time to look like now and more optimize towards what would theoretically be most effective. That method closed the Cubs/Brewers gap considerably. And it makes sense, the Brewers have absurd depth and only like four or five guys making decent money. They can funnel playing time to the guys hitting their 60th percentile outcomes and away from the guys hitting their 30th. The Cubs do IMO have a more obviously talented top of the roster, and plenty of depth of their own. I think much like this past year if the Cubs don't win the division it's going to be more of a "Brewers won" than "Cubs lost" situation.
