Brock Beauchamp

I know... We were part way through the process and realized that it was coming in a different form that would not only undo our work but potentially screw up the native system. So. we stopped.

Welcome to North Side Baseball!

It's actually coming in a core software update some time in the next... whenever... so I'm not sure when it's coming but it *is* coming. But it's still likely a long ways off, unfortunately.

At one point, Jerome Walton was the next great Cubs outfielder. Born in 1965 in Newnan, Georgia, Walton was drafted in the second round by the Cubs out of Newnan High School. Walton shot up through the Cubs' farm system. He posted a .795 OPS in Rookie ball in 1986, a .926 OPS in A-ball the following year, and an .822 OPS in Double-A Pittsfield in 1988. This rapid path through the minors caused the Cubs to open the 1989 season with Walton on the roster as their everyday starting centerfielder. Walton, known for his speed and toolsy nature, did not disappoint. After an early acclimation period when he saw his batting average drop under .250 in April, Walton started heating up in July and saw his batting average flirt with the .300 mark for much of the second half of the season. Fans, quickly becoming enamored of the young outfielder, started the "Jerome-O-Meter", which tracked his batting average as he looked to hit over .300 in his rookie campaign. Ultimately, Walton fell just short of .300, finishing the 1989 season with a .293 average. Still, this was enough for him to cruise to the NL Rookie of the Year award, finishing ahead of his teammate Dwight Smith. Walton was the first Cub to win Rookie of the Year since 1962. Unfortunately, this was the peak of Walton's career. He struggled badly in the 1990 season, posting an 83 OPS+ in only 101 games played. He continued his downward slide in the following two seasons, posting a 67 and 25 OPS+, respectively. Following the 1992 season, Walton became a free agent and left Wrigley for the California Angels. Walton bounced around baseball for a few more years, playing in Cincinnati, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Tampa Bay. His final MLB season was 1998. In the end, he finished with a 92 OPS+ and 3.7 WAR in 1,761 plate appearances. View full player

The penalty side of the Qualifying Offer needs to go away in a big way. Teams losing good players to free agency should get a pick. There should be no penalty for signing that player. It's salary suppression.

That's the big difference for me. I don't need to be in an ideological bubble, I just want a reprieve from the worst horsefeathers humans on the planet spouting absolute nonsense at me. And then there's the third-tier advertising that's just engagement farming, bots with half-naked avatars pestering everyone, etc...

While there is a small contingent of fans who *love* Rays-style baseball, I'm not one of them and I suspect most fans feel the same. As someone who was recently immersed in the Red Sox, watching them get back to their spending ways and get into the mix on literally every good free agent this winter is pretty damned fun.

This is disappointing news but hardly surprising to Cubs fans. Bob Nightengale of USA Today mentioned that Jed Hoyer and the Cubs are "probably out" on the top end of the free agent market this season. That means no to Juan Soto, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, or Blake Snell donning Cubs blue in 2025. Coupled with rumors of the Cubs slightly scaling back payroll and Cubs fans could be in for a long, dark winter after yet another mediocre 83-79 finish to the 2024 season. View full rumor

The embeds are now cleaner, they work just like Twitter.

Oh hell yes, give him to the Angels. The baseball gods almost demand it.

It took me a minute to spot Fried, I thought your dream team was just a new backup catcher.

Testing copy.

Awesome, thanks!

Who should I remove from the bullpen when I add Morgan?

As an early-offseason cover your ass move in case the market prevents you from reasonably upgrading, this is fine. If the Cubs roll into Opening Day with Thaiss on the 26-man, it's probably a failure.

The middle finger?

To avoid ridiculous complexity, we just went with MLBTR this year. Top 50 free agents and top 35 trade candidates. Obviously, the actual pool of players is much larger than this, it just becomes a massive undertaking to add all those players and come up with dollar amounts that feel right.

New Mexico is very pretty.

Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool (formerly the Payroll Blueprint) to build your ideal Cubs roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Chicago Cubs. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason. This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Cubs' 2024 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints. Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss). Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on desktops due to its complexity but will work on mobile devices if need be). Top Left: The 26-man Roster We have created a rough guideline of what the Cubs 26-man roster looks like today. The roster is flexible; any player can be added or removed as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly. The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be rather uncommon but we want to present users the opportunity to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes. Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 35 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates. Bottom Right: Free Agents Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter. Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to which the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like… But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g. Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences”. The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Cubs to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and, any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs, you can write up as much detail as you desire. That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete. Thank you for joining us at North Side Baseball. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment! Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now

It's something I'm considering for next year. I've never been happy with how this presents and I feel like I'm just barely getting it to a satisfactory point this year (its second year of existence). Before two years ago, it was a spreadsheet we just shared with users and I've been working backward from that template, figuring out how to improve it. And it never gets enough of my attention for me to really fix what bugs me about it.

Actually, I think I've found a way to improve the format of this, should have it updated tomorrow some time.

You add free agents to the 26-man list with a salary and the payroll adjusts accordingly. Then type up your reasoning on the right in the comments box. Fixing the dark mode stuff today, hopefully can finish it.

Yeah, picking a payroll number is always hard but in this system, there is no penalty or reward for going over/under, it's just a baseline number. Fixing Shota now, thanks.