Matthew Trueblood

Yesterday, we began a festival feast of old baseball by talking about the unique aspects (good and bad) of a 1990 Cubs broadcast. Today, let's tackle the game that was played that day, itself. Image courtesy of YouTube The funny thing about baseball is that every time a team tries something novel and interesting, they are lampooned for their ridiculousness, or else they instigate moral panic. Yet, everywhere you turn throughout the (more than) 150-year history of the game, there have been teams innovating, trying new things both legal and otherwise to gain small advantages within games or across seasons. This has become a more divisive and uncomfortable subject since the Astros were found to have cheated through the use of technology-assisted sign stealing, of course, but again, the Astros were just one in an unending line of teams both before and after them who were shopping for edges in ways they thought of as more creative than truly nefarious. Less well-remembered, but about equally recent, is a controversy between the Mets and Dodgers in 2016. Los Angeles asked permission to paint markers in the Citi Field outfield prior to a game that spring, but after it was determined that they were using electronic positioning devices—laser-based range finders, basically—to pinpoint the marks they wanted to put down for their outfielders, the league forbade them from doing it. What's notable, though, isn't that the measure was barred, but that it was something the Dodgers wanted to try at all. Teams are so precise and so focused on defensive positioning that they wanted to deploy high-tech means of ensuring they got it right, even though there are myriad ways—certain visual cues, the positioning cards all outfielders now seem to carry, coaches shouting and waving their arms—to do it without that rigamarole. They trust the technology, and they want to use it to increase the precision of their work. That's not anywhere close to new. What does it have to do with the game played on May 23, 1990, between the Cubs and Dodgers, though? I'm glad you (well, I, but kind of you) asked. In 1990, the league restricted the number of coaches teams could have in uniform and in the dugout during games. This was in response to a rising tide of teams employing more coaches than ever (hey, we've come full-circle, there). Back then, it was less because teams wanted to have three hitting coaches to implement highly individualized and evolving plans for each player than because they thought themselves engaged in a tense game of chess every day, against the opposing team and its manager. The coaches who clustered in the dugouts tended to be advisors on strategy and deliverers of signs, rather than instructors and biomechanists, but anyway, they were growing in number, and the league decided it was getting out of hand. Previously, six coaches had been explicitly allowed, and teams were often able to fudge it and get a seventh involved. The NL forced them to come back down to five for 1990. The Dodgers begrudgingly removed ex-catcher Joe Ferguson from their dugout staff. But the Dodgers didn't want to lose the value they were getting from having an extra set of eyes, so they (and a couple of other teams) simply pivoted to radio. Ferguson took up residence in the press box each day, and would radio down instructions on (among other things, probably) positioning defenders to Bill Russell, manager Tommy Lasorda's right-hand man. On May 23, 1990, it looked like this. Plainly, this is not a clandestine operation. You've gotta love the 1990 vibes of that headset. The league was aware of the process and allowed teams to use it—until barely a year later, when "reports of abuses" of the system were lodged by various opponents and the league banned radio communication in the dugout. The Dodgers were mad. "Football teams do it, why can't baseball teams do it?" Lasorda asked, rhetorically. He had a fair point—but maybe the motive for that protest was really that the team was finding too many edges, after all. It's funny how it's always the Dodgers, isn't it? Throughout baseball history, while the Dodgers might not originate a given innovation, they tend to be the ones most eager to adopt and expand it. They were, of course, the first organization to break the color line, which is sold to us in textbooks as a moral choice but which history suggests was much more about gaining a leg up. They were among the first teams to create a full-fledged farm system, an innovation Branch Rickey brought with him after creating the modern farm while working for the Cardinals. It was while in the employ of the Dodgers that Tommy John underwent and recovered from the surgery that now bears his name. Rickey made famous the Dodger Way, including little things like "coconut snatching"—a ham-fisted metaphor for finding opportunities to move players to new positions, especially sliding them up what we would later come to understand as the defensive spectrum—and physical training tools like string-frame strike zones and stride-correcting bands. I often lament that the Cubs have not taken a turn as the powerhouse of the National League for a decade—or even been consistent enough to post seven winning records in a stretch of 10 full seasons—since the 1930s. It's not a coincidence, unfortunately. There have been times when their ownership should have spent much more on the team, and opportunities were missed. More often, though, the Cubs got beat—they keep getting beat, even—because the Cardinals and Dodgers were better and earlier than them, at things like building a farm, integrating the roster, codifying player development, and seeking tools to stay ahead of the competition. That doofy-looking headset on Bill Russell is an imperfect metaphor for the problem, but it's one symbol of it, nonetheless. Here endeth Part 2 of our discussion of this one random game from nearly a quarter-century ago. Tune in tomorrow, when I actually talk about the players who played in this game (and how it went) for the first and only time! View full article

It's a holiday weekend. With the long desert of the offseason still stretched out before us, allow yourself an oasis and flip on a game from May 1990. The internet is, in some ways, a marvelous and joyous thing. Image courtesy of YouTube I refuse to be starved for baseball. It's healthy, sometimes, to deny oneself constant indulgence in vices, but I find my addictive love of the game too strong to stay away from it for long, now that the world wide web has made it possible to luxuriate in games anywhere from 10 to 45 years old almost on demand. When winter hits, we're not commanded to hibernate and make do only with the baseball we soaked up all summer. We have the option to treat summer as eternal and spin our way back in time, to some game we've never seen before, or had long forgotten. We can find all kinds of old baseball that is, nonetheless, new to us, and experience it the same way we might have if we were years older or hadn't had school that day. For this privilege, we have to thank (profusely) the myriad amateur archivists who post games by the dozens on YouTube. It's a treasure trove, and while a few accounts have been taken down over the years due to apparent copyright infringement, the league seems to have adopted a stance of benign neglect toward them lately. So, for instance, you can search for games from any team and any year, and you've got a fair shot of finding at least one full game they played that year. Today, let's enjoy what happens if you search "1990 Cubs". The game we'll review together is from May 23, 1990. Linked here is the detailed box score from that day on Baseball Reference. (Spoiler alert, obviously.) And here's the video itself: For nostalgic types, this is the superior form of the upload, because it includes (many of) the commercials. If you miss not only baseball (the game you got to watch just a few weeks or months ago) but the world of the 20th century, watching these games can really make you feel immersed in it—and the videos that keep the commercials from the original broadcast maximize that feeling of time travel. Not all of that is good, of course. Did you miss hearing Thom Brennaman call games? Probably not, but he takes the middle three innings of this one, alongside Steve Stone. Then again, if you're young enough not to remember (or perhaps even have heard of) the arrangement, this might give you a fun frisson of discovery: As late as the mid-1990s, Harry Caray would swap into the Cubs radio booth to do play-by-play for innings 4-6 each day. Stone would then broadcast with (most often) Brennaman, Josh Lewin, or Wayne Larrivee, until Caray returned for the final three frames. It wasn't a common setup even then, but it was certainly not unique, either. Nowadays, it would be a downright thorny legal issue. Anyway, Brennaman is here. So are some of the things we did well to leave in the century to which they belonged, like a midgame sequence in which Arne Harris lingers long on a shot of an attractive woman in the stands. Unlike so many similar shots over the years, this one doesn't involve an especially revealing or suggestive outfit. Yet, after Stone finishes a salient point about Mike Scioscia's evolving approach at the plate, Caray says, "Sorry, Steve, I didn't hear anything you said," followed by an unsavory chortle. "With me, Harry, it's baseball, baseball, baseball," Steve replies, but it doesn't quite save this moment from cringe territory. Harris, the famous producer of Cubs games on TV for so much of the formative period of the modern team, was infamous for these shots, but in this case, he also chose to work in artistic juxtaposition. After a brief cut back to game action, he delivered a shot of an adorable baby or toddler, as if to shame Caray for his ribaldry. Not only didn't it work, but Harry kept shooting: "Is that yours, Steve?" he teased, and Steve was forced to disclaim his paternity of a random child on national TV. It's undeniably funny, and a big part of why the Cubs' popularity soared during the superstation years. It's also a little unsettling, through modern eyes. Let's take a moment to celebrate Harris, though, for the much less objectionable innovation that made him and his broadcasts famous. Do you remember watching Cubs games prior to about 20 years ago and thinking every play—even relatively routine ones—was a little more exciting than in other places? Do you ever think that players used to run harder through the bag on ground balls than they do now? As ludicrous as those subjective impressions sound (and are, objectively speaking), they weren't totally in your head. They were created for you, by Harris. As nicely detailed by Zach Buchanan in this 2021 piece at The Athletic, TV producers of baseball games can make two different sets of choices when a ground ball is hit during a game. As a default setup, they pretty much all start with the center field camera, then flip to the view from high and behind home plate—a proxy for the vantage point of the broadcaster calling the play—when the ball is hit. The industry standard, going all the way back to the 1960s under NBC Sports producer Harry Coyle, was to stick to that second shot and follow the play to its conclusion, unless it were a ball in the gap or something, necessitating cuts to runners in various positions. On a grounder to second base, the camera follows the ball to the fielder, then patiently tracks along with the throw, over to first base. Harris didn't do things that way. He was famous for the 4-2-3 cut (named for the standard numbers assigned to the various camera positions involved), which starts the same way the Coyle version does. Once a player like Ryne Sandberg or Shawon Dunston collected a bouncer, though, Harris would cut to the camera positioned high alongside first base. The resulting shot would have the fielder throwing the ball downscreen, and right around the time it got to the glove of (in this case) Mark Grace, a runner would zip by in a blur. This style creates, perhaps, some artificial suspense, and those of us who watched hundreds of games produced by Harris learned to intuit based on the runner, the pace of the ball, and the cleanness of the play by the infielder whether they would be safe or out. For casual and new fans, though, and perhaps especially for kids, it was easy to mistake the extra cut and the more visible speed of the runner—they're streaking straight across your screen, in the Harris formula, instead of running deeper into the picture and off toward a corner as they do when viewed from high behind home—for extra action and more drama. It worked on plenty of double play tries, too, transforming even the out on the lead runner into a tense, visually captivating thing. The shots now often seen in slow motion on replays used to be how Harris would frame the play in real time. I began life as a baseball fan in 1997, so I only watched five seasons of Cubs baseball before Harris died at the end of the 2001 season. The broadcasts still tended to use his device until several years later, but now, they match the industry standard and stick to 4-2 on such plays. To some extent, Harris was also problem-solving, because in that much lower-definition era and without motion smoothing options like we have today, the extra cut kept him from having to show the throw across the diamond more or less as a confused blur, as some broadcasts did. These days, no one has to work around that hurdle, so the 4-2 makes the most sense. I still love the 4-2-3, though, even though I'm now aware of it and much less taken in by its attempt to create drama. I suspect the effective deployment of this subtly different capture of a play is part of why so many fans fell in love with a version of the game that was not actually materially more interesting or varied than the one played now—whatever old heads might tell you. For today, we end this here. This is part one, and it didn't even talk about the game itself! But when watching these old games, the game itself is just part of the fun anyway. Tomorrow, we will tackle the action of the contest. Come back and check it out. View full article

We know the Cubs will try to add proven, high-quality pitchers this winter, even if it be at a high price. That does not need to come at the expense of adding interesting arms on minor-league deals, though, and one journeyman should garner special attention from them. Image courtesy of © David Frerker-Imagn Images By all rights, Emmanuel Ramírez should be out of professional baseball. The game has told him he's not good enough—and even that it was functionally done with him—more times than most players can bear. Signed out of his native Dominican Republic back in 2012, Ramírez was released by the Padres at the end of the 2020 season. He then spent single seasons in the Atlanta and Yankees systems, cut loose again at the end of each. He became a minor-league free agent three times, and the third time, he ended up spending a year (2023) in the Mexican League. The Marlins liked what they saw there (and in last winter's Dominican Winter League) enough to bring him back into affiliated ball, and he finally made it to the big leagues for the first time, at age 29. After 15 ugly appearances with an ERA near 7.00, though, Miami waived him. The Blue Jays claimed him, but never brought him to the big leagues, and then they released him earlier this month. In nearly 900 professional innings, Ramírez has only gotten one taste of the majors, and the cup of coffee was a bitter one. His ERA isn't even good in the 101 innings he's pitched in parts of four seasons in Triple A. Quite simply, he's on the fringes of the MLB apparatus, over 30 years old and seemingly hanging on desperately to his last shot. He's back down in the Dominican, pitching winter ball again. That's not the résumé of a highly appealing free-agent target, but that's just what Ramírez ought to be, on a minor-league deal this winter. The gawky right-hander bears a passing resemblance to Carlos Marmol, but that's not why Marmol's former team should want him. He has redeveloped himself as a pitcher, and his stuff and his funky delivery are perfect fits for the Cubs. The mix is very simple, two pitches with a vague tertiary option. Ramírez throws a fastball that sits 94, with good cut-ride action. As I hope you've gleaned from me by now, the Cubs adore that fastball shape. It's what Porter Hodge, Justin Steele, and top prospects Cade Horton and Brandon Birdsell (among others) do, and the team targets it wherever they can find it. They also love a good splitter, and Ramírez has just that, too. It's almost the only pitch he throws as a complement to the heater. That splitter has variable movement, but the velocity gap it achieves from his fastball—10 miles per hour, on average—makes it a potential bat-misser even when it doesn't fall off the table as steeply as one might like. Most of the time, there's plenty of movement differential between the two pitches, too. For that reason, hitters whiffed on over 47% of their swings against the splitter last year, between Triple A and the majors. Ramírez's breaking ball is coded as a slider but really acts more like a curveball. It's not a very good pitch, and isn't of great use to him. Maybe the Cubs could help him firm it up into a truer slider, or a Death Ball-style curve, but the thrust of Ramírez's arsenal is the rising heater and the diving splitter. When it's right, it's plenty. E Ram Splitty.mp4 As you can see, Ramírez's splitter works just fine even against righties, thanks to an extreme overhand slot. That delivery is also where the backspin on his fastball comes from. He struck out 32.1% of the right-handed batters he saw last year; he can dominate them even at the highest levels of the game. The splitter pulls a string on them; his fastball is almost untouchable at the top of the zone. E Ram Heat.mp4 You've already seen his stats, though, and I'm telling you he'll be available on a minor-league deal. Why? Because lefties tend to bash his head in, especially by taking advantage of mistakes on his fastball. The slot Ramírez employs begets misses along a vertical line, rather than a horizontal one. He doesn't miss in when he's aiming away; he misses down when he's aiming up. That's always trouble. E Ram Dong.mp4 The difference in results against a pitcher's four-seam fastball based on vertical location tends to be fairly stark. For Ramírez, it's downright extreme. He just can't work effectively at the bottom edge of the zone with that pitch, so every miss has a chance of becoming very costly. Why should the Cube still be interested? Beyond the nice fit of the traits they seek (that fastball shape, for one) and the things they coach well (a sharper breaking ball from just this kind of pitch mix, for better results and platoon matchup insulation), there's one more thing: the Cubs don't have anyone else who throws like Ramírez. A great bullpen gives opposing teams an endlessly changing set of varied looks. The Cubs lean heavily toward lower arm slots; Ramírez would bring their only true overhand arm to the mix. By no means should Ramírez prevent the Cubs from landing anyone else this winter. He doesn't even need to take up a spot on their 40-man roster, initially. He has impressive enough stuff and is a good enough fit for the organization, though, to make him worthy of a close look as the team collects insurance policies to help make it through the long season ahead. View full article

We know the Cubs are in the market for a starting pitcher, to upgrade a rotation of uncertain quality and depth. After a monster deal Tuesday night, the Dodgers have swept one top target off the market, narrowing Chicago's options. Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images It's not quite December, when the hot stove tends to get up to full flame. Already, though, two top starting pitchers have found new homes. Neither is with the Cubs, though, and as some doors close, it becomes more urgent that Jed Hoyer and company position themselves for one of the viable remaining options. According to sources within the organization, the Cubs intend to slightly reduce payroll, which will constrain their pursuits of any high-end free agents or expensive trade targets—unless they can create new flexibility by trading away a player like Cody Bellinger, Nico Hoerner, or Jameson Taillon. Those pursuits don't seem to be optional, though. While Hoyer's public remarks have focused on improving at the margins, the message has been clear since late in the frustrating 2024 season: this team needs to get better to compete seriously in the National League, and they know it. Thus, if the team is going to pare its expenditures down from $225 million (or right around $240 million competitive-balance tax payroll) to the $215 million range (and about $230 million for CBT purposes), they will need to make a move that offloads Bellinger, Hoerner, or Taillon, thereby facilitating the major addition they envision. Blake Snell signed a five-year deal with the Dodgers late Tuesday night, at an annual average value of $36.4 million. That was right in line with the deal Tyler Glasnow starts in 2025, after Los Angeles traded for him last winter and signed him to an extension. It's akin to the rate Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, and Zack Wheeler are all paid, too. That came just one day after Yusei Kikuchi got $63 million on a three-year contract with the Angels. It sure looks like the going rate for Corbin Burnes will be at that $36 million level or above, so count the Cubs out, no matter what. Snell was the next-best starter on the free-agent market, and a more attractive one for the Cubs, because (unlike Burnes) he would not have cost them a draft pick. If Burnes is to be crossed off, and Snell is taken, and Kikuchi, Nick Martinez, and Michael Wacha (the latter two of whom reupped with their previous teams already this month) are also off the board, is the path to a major pitching addition getting perilous? To be sure, Max Fried is the best individual target for the Cubs, anyway. They love the pitch mix he brings, and his track record is perfect for them. Other teams might lightly discount his success based on his lack of an elite strikeout rate, but the Cubs won't. Fried is just one option, though, and good fallback plans for him are already coming off the board. Jack Flaherty would be a strong and interesting fit with the team, but he'd also be a clearly lesser move than Fried—more like a Kikuchi than a Snell. This is shaping up to be a team-friendly market, but a faster-moving one than last year's. The Cubs might need to make a move sooner than they typically would. Trading Bellinger within the next week would allow them to head into December with more options available to them, and ensure that they aren't left out as the good targets come off the board. They might have to wait to move him until Juan Soto signs, though, because he could be a strong alternative for a team who falls short in that sweepstakes. Trading Hoerner could happen sooner, but because Bellinger is the higher-salary player with the trickier fit into the team's position-player mix, it makes sense to wait another few days. Soto's market seems to be moving relatively quickly. If he signs early next week, trading Bellinger could be checked off the team's to-do list by the start of the Winter Meetings. One way or another, though, the team has to be proactive. It will only make their job harder if they let more strong free agents sign elsewhere before getting serious about making their own moves. While the Ricketts family's refusal to spend the $50 million more per season that they should be spending to keep up with the Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, and Mets will force Hoyer to make difficult decisions, it's time to start making them. View full article

The fire hydrant-shaped flamethrower was unpardonably inconsistent early last season, perhaps because he wasn't fully healthy. Late in the summer, though, something clicked. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images It doesn't require a bunch of squinting and fancy explanation to identify Daniel Palencia as a potentially elite relief pitcher. He throws a fastball that sits on the high side of 98 miles per hour and ratchets all the way up past 102 when he gets really juiced up—and Palencia seems to be juiced up almost all the time. He also has a nasty slider and a splitter that bedevils hitters, when he can properly set it up and execute it. All the elements of one of the game's best high-leverage arms are present. Throughout his young big-league career, however, that relentless energy has tended to do Palencia more harm than good, because he's often so intense as to be somewhat out of control. That can't all be chalked up to mentality or emotions, of course. Struggling to throw strikes is an occupational hazard of throwing hard, just as injury risk is. Nonetheless, it's true: Palencia has been more exciting than honestly effective since coming to the big leagues in the middle of the 2023 season. He's made 47 appearances, with an ERA of 5.02. He's walked 13.8% of the batters he's faced. When you watched Palencia pitch early last season, it looked like he might never find the consistency of release point and movement to be a viable big-leaguer, despite the explosiveness of the stuff. In fact, if you looked closely and knew what a fully functional Palencia looks like, you could tell that the stuff wasn't even as explosive as it ought to have been. Palencia in May.mp4 That's a 99-mile-per-hour fastball, but it's also a bad pitch. Palencia's body is extraordinarily powerful and he generates incredible arm speed, but there's very little control over where the ball is going or how it moves, because he's cutting it loose from an angle and at a degree of arm extension where most of his major muscles can have only a vague effect. He threw it 99, but without either life or command. When Palencia is at his best, he throws with better hop on the ball than that—and it comes in harder than 99. Two stints on the injured list quickly affirmed what you could guess when watching him: Palencia's shoulder was not fully healthy. He struggled to maintain a release point and to keep his arm angle up where it works best, because of that functional deficiency. Across 18 appearances before his second absence, Palencia pitched 25 innings. He struck out 37 of the 116 batters he faced, but he also walked 18 of them, and he allowed 22 runs (20 of them earned), dividing that time between Chicago and Triple-A Iowa. Upon his return in late June, though, Palencia was finally fully healthy and able to move the way he does best. Once he had cleared that physical hurdle, his release point grew more consistent. Then, in mid-August, he made a further change to raise his arm angle, and that further tightened up his release point. This change is not about having moved over on the rubber. As you can see, Palencia's release point moved toward the center of the mound, but he was already working from the first-base side thereof before the change. The adjustment was purely about his delivery, and how he made his arm action slightly more compact. In the middle phase depicted above, from late June through Aug. 10, Palencia was markedly better than he had been while muddling through the shoulder fatigue early on. He had a 2.92 ERA in 11 appearances, all in Triple A. He struck out 19 of 56 opposing batters, and he didn't allow a home run. He really locked in thereafter, though. Once he firmed up a new arm slot, he finished with 14 outings in which he faced 69 batters, fanned 28, and didn't allow a homer, while holding opponents to a .573 OPS—all despite being jerked around a bit, called up twice and sent right back down. You can see changes in Palencia's movement along the same dividing lines. Splitters tend not to work well from low arm angles, and indeed, when Palencia raised his arm angle, he got more confident and effective in his deployment of the splitter. His fastball also gained rising action, and velocity. As a result, he missed more and more bats. Most importantly, once he found that release point, he was around the strike zone much more consistently than he had been before that. Season Segment Fastball Vel. Fastball IVB Fastball Whiff% CompLoc% I 97.9 15.2 30.6 79.8 II 99.2 15.8 32.3 76.8 III 99.7 16.4 38.5 82.4 (In this table, competitive locations are any within 18 inches of the center of the zone.) Here's what Palencia looked like in September, throwing 101 instead of 99, with hop at the top of the zone. Palencia in Sept..mp4 The change in arm angle is subtle, but it's there. Compare their arm positions at release in the two examples given here, and you can see it: Again, though, the difference is small enough that it could almost be random variation. No pitcher perfectly repeats their delivery every time, after all. Helpfully, thanks to Statcast, we can measure pitchers' arm angles directly on a pitch-to-pitch, outing-to-outing, and month-to-month basis. Doing so with Palencia tells the story pretty clearly. Those numbers are a bit of an abstraction, though. Here's a comparison of Palencia's arm angle to his Cubs teammates, in both his early-season stint in the majors and his late-season ones. From small things, in pitching, big things soon come. Palencia made a fairly small change, made possible by getting fully healthy after a spring marred by arm trouble. It paid off in a huge way, and now, it's fair to hope that a healthy Palencia can come back in 2025 and deliver dominant relief work throughout the season. To be sure, he has the strikeout stuff every team craves at the back of their bullpen. He might still walk more than an ideal reliever would, but he has the raw stuff to prevent hard contact in addition to racking up whiffs. His 2024 season was a half-disguised breakout, and Palencia is as valuable as any piece in the team's prospective relief corps heading into this offseason. View full article

Let Jed cook... the Sasaki family dinner. If he's a good cook. Do we know whether he is? Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images When it comes to running an MLB franchise, there are big moves, and there are small moves. The Roki Sasaki sweepstakes do not fall along the spectrum between one and the other. They are, instead, a degree of big not even captured by that word. Free-agent contests for top players are vital, because they decide the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars in team budgets and can often be the difference between 85 wins and 90. The thing about the Sasaki showdown, much like the one for Shohei Ohtani seven winters ago, is that it has just as good a chance to make the difference between 85 wins and 90—but it won't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, this is the rare potential deal in which the excess value in a transaction might be fairly expected to be in nine figures. After Rob Manfred said he expects Sasaki not to sign until the opening of the new international free-agent period Jan. 15, the auction for his services figures to be wide-open. Like many teams, the Cubs would only have been able to offer Sasaki a paltry amount to sign with them next month. However, they could (if they're willing to renege on some deals with teenagers from Latin America, distasteful though that would be) free up $5 million or so to offer him as a signing bonus in January. That's competitive with most of the rest of the league, and we know for sure that Sasaki isn't looking for the absolute top dollar, anyway. If he were, he would have waited another two years to make his migration, at which point he could have made an amount close to the $325 million Yoshinobu Yamamoto commanded as a more unfettered free agent last winter. So, Sasaki is likely to sign for somewhere south of $10 million, while the market rate for his services is acknowledged to be somewhere north of $200 million. Is it just me, or would it be ludicrous not to allocate massive resources of personnel, time and energy to the recruitment process? In fact, why have Jed Hoyer focused on anything else for whatever amount of time it takes for Sasaki to make his decision. If this were a position player, or even a traditional, domestic starter, that would be one thing. Again, you'd generally be paying a nine-figure price for this caliber of player. There'd also be a clear opportunity cost even to signing such a player. You'd be displacing someone by bringing them in. With Sasaki, however, that's simply not the case. He has touched as high as 103 miles per hour and routinely works in the upper 90s, with one of the best splitters in the world and a promising slider, but he's never eclipsed 130 innings of work in a professional season. His injury issues and his relative youth make it unthinkable that any team would bring him in and throw him into a five-man, five-day rotation schedule. In other words, either you win the bidding for Sasaki and operate a six-man rotation, or you lose, and nothing about the other steps you were taking to build your roster changes at all. One of the virtues of having a two-headed monster at the top of the baseball operations decision-making tree is the option of triggering this kind of extreme specialization, on a temporary basis. Carter Hawkins is the Cubs' GM, and while that title doesn't carry all the authority and prestige it once did (since the widespread advent of the president of baseball operations), it reflects a certain amount of belief in Hawkins's ability to find and execute transaction opportunities. It reflects a real degree of responsibility for roster-building. While Hoyer could (and obviously would) stay in the loop, there's just no reason why Hawkins couldn't be entrusted with the bulk of the non-Sasaki hot stove work for the two or three weeks Sasaki's free agency is likely to last. What could Hoyer do with the extra time and attention? First of all, presumably, making a strong pitch to Sasaki will be important. That means compiling compelling evidence of the organization's recent progress (which they believe is substantial) in terms of scouting and player development, and it would be great if it could be rendered faithfully into Japanese, so it wouldn't need to be conveyed to Sasaki primarily through a translator. Hoyer could and should hire a dedicated Japanese translator with experience working in baseball, work closely with them to create the best form of the presentation possible, and build a version thereof that could be delivered in a dynamic way in a meeting including both Sasaki and his English-speaking agent, Joel Wolfe. If, in the process of building that presentation, Hoyer also discovered that part of it rings hollow—if there is anything, based on what needs to be extensive background work, that he thinks Sasaki will want from his new club that the Cubs don't yet offer—then he should deploy resources to bringing the team up to snuff. That, too, could take a significant amount of time and energy. For these reasons, it would be best if that was Hoyer's only focus. It's only a chunk of one month. Hawkins needn't enter into any major deals without at least checking with Hoyer, and ownership would still sign off on anything huge. While Sasaki is a free agent, though, Hoyer should never be more than one call away from him, and the team should show its commitment to him by dedicating more of their manpower to him than any other team does. Sasaki is eschewing a larger payday because he craves something the United States can offer, which he didn't find in his time in NPB. He's proving that factors well beyond money matter immensely to him. The Cubs should meet him at that high level of purpose, and show him that they hold that alignment of priorities in high esteem. View full article

After entering the winter claiming to be serious about winning in 2025, the Angels have backed that up with a series of moves pointing vaguely in that direction. Could the piece that brings it all together be the Cubs' high-priced slugger? Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images Monday morning began with surprising news from Orange County, as the Angels agreed to a three-year deal worth $63 million with left-handed starter Yusei Kikuchi. It's their fifth notable move of the young offseason, already, after they traded for Jorge Soler immediately following the World Series and signed Travis d'Arnaud, Kevin Newman, and Kyle Hendricks earlier this month. Late in another lost season, the team let it be known that they intended to increase payroll and compete for the AL West crown in 2025. That seems a far-fetched goal, but with the Astros, Rangers and Mariners in varying stages of confusion and likely payroll reduction, it isn't quite impossible. In just a few weeks, the team has demonstrated (at least) that they were serious, and that they want to be better than they have been for the last several years. Without another, bigger, better move than any of these smallish ones, though, they won't be able to make good on those desires. At the moment, their hopes for actually contending next season rest far too much on miraculously healthy seasons from the dramatically injury-prone Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon, plus a smooth recovery and undiminished performance from the currently injured Zach Neto. They've also made themselves extremely right-handed across the outfield, with Trout, Taylor Ward, Soler, and Jo Adell figuring as the main options. Mickey Moniak was their main left-handed outfield bat last year, and is the closest thing in the bunch to a viable defensive center fielder, but he had an 81 OPS+ last season—and a .266 OBP that made him downright devastating when the team had a potential rally going. There's still significant room between the Angels' projected payroll for 2025 and the first threshold for the competitive-balance tax, though. The Cubs are, reportedly, at least passingly interested in trading Cody Bellinger, the better to allocate the $30 million they owe him this year to upgrades elsewhere on the roster. Is there a fit here? To some extent, this depends on whether the Angels are among the handful of teams who still view Bellinger as a viable center fielder. He's losing that status, in the eyes of many teams throughout the league, but few consider him totally untenable out there. If Los Angeles thought they could pencil him in even half the time there, giving Trout more days either in a corner or at DH, he'd have immense value for them. There is, just out of reach at the moment but starting to shimmer as a possibility on the horizon, an Angels lineup that could be pretty dangerous, with Bellinger as the left-handed counterweight to the aforementioned righties; Nolan Schanuel and Luis Rengifo as nice complementary bats; and a defensive alignment that actually makes some sense. Of course, in all likelihood, no Bellinger-for-prospects deal with the Angels would make any sense. To give him up, the Cubs would surely want to get either Logan O'Hoppe—the talented but (so far) inconsistent catcher whom they targeted in talks before the trade deadline—or Ward. If it be O'Hoppe, the Cubs would have to kick something else in along with Bellinger, but they might regard that as worthwhile, since that would represent a long-term solution at a position of need that is often hard to fill. If Ward were the target, it would probably be something closer to a straight-up swap, with the Cubs gaining about $20 million in new payroll flexibility (Ward is projected to make about $9 million via arbitration this winter) and the Angels getting Bellinger as a centerpiece of their lineup. Some money might be involved, but no big prospect would have to accompany Bellinger on the trip west. As I wrote last week, Bellinger won't be traded in a pure salary dump, unless it be because the team knows they have a big countervailing acquisition lined up. This would be a Bellinger trade that made the team (if not better) a bit better-constructed, though, while also giving them the added flexibility they're looking for. If the Angels are believers in Bellinger's glove and legs, there might be a perfect match here, now that the Halos are pot-committed in the poker game around the hot stove. View full article

Chicago might not be done trying to upgrade behind the plate, but the player they've already acquired has unexplored upside—and they might prefer to create value through great coaching, rather than paying for raw talent. Image courtesy of © Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images In a perfect world, you'd certainly ask for more offense than Matt Thaiss promises, even from a backup catcher. He does offer a couple of redeeming qualities, but in most of the offensive essentials, he's below-average. Here are his percentiles among all hitters with at least 150 plate appearances in 2024, in various categories and skill measurements. PA Swing% Chase% ZSw-Chase InZoneWhiff% PHiA/SW 100+/Sw LandAng LaunchAng LowHit% MedHit% HighHit% 186 24.4% 86.8% 87.8% 0.2% 24.9% 35.7% 68.5% 52.1% 40.3% 19.8% 79.2% ExitVel 10thExitVel 90thExitVel Hit95+% Well Hit LA Sweet Spot EV BABIP Barrel% FBDst xWOBA wOBA SAEV 20.5% 10.8% 54.3% 56.5% 65.3% 54.3% 67.2% 47.4% 68.9% 21.3% 33.0% 22.7% Thaiss makes very good swing decisions, and his key power indicators—90th-percentile exit velocity, average launch angle on well-hit balls, and average exit velocity in high-value launch angle bands—are slightly better than average. Almost all of that positive stuff is undone, though, by his calamitous lack of feel for contact. If you isolate his work against righties, the strengths get even stronger—but he doesn't swing and miss any less often. It sets a fairly low ceiling on his offensive game, unless the Cubs can find a way to ameliorate it. Defensively, though, it's much easier to imagine a stark improvement. Last year, Thaiss was worth -4.6 runs as a pitch framer, according to Baseball Prospectus. In 2023, that figure was -2.5 runs, and it was -1.1 in very limited work in 2022. Thaiss, the college catcher whom the Angels converted immediately to first base after drafting him only to move him back to the battery three years later, has not been able to overcome the whiplash of that series of development choices. In truth, the Angels just aren't good enough at basic player development to recover from galaxy-brain player development errors like moving a catcher off the position, then back to it after multiple seasons away. The Cubs can be, though. There's some low-hanging fruit in terms of fixing Thaiss as a framer, which is really the difference between a version of him that's narrowly a viable part of the roster at all and one that makes you perfectly comfortable using him as a secondary backstop. Catching coach Mark Strittmatter and company had some success last season bringing along Miguel Amaya as a receiver, and the team just went out this fall and added venerable catching instructor Jerry Weinstein to the organization. Those two have every chance to turn Thaiss into an average catcher, in terms of framing. Here's how. First of all, and most simply, Thaiss catches off the wrong knee when setting up for a pitch on the third-base side of home plate. This is so seemingly basic—screamingly so—that it seems impossible that big-leaguers would get it wrong, but believe it or not, it happens often. Some instructors (wrongly) tell their pupils to pick the knee they're more comfortable putting down, regardless of pitch type or desired location. Some catchers are even capable of succeeding that way. Such cases are desperately rare, though, and the theory of comfort over position is ill-founded. Here's Thaiss catching a ball targeted for the third-base side of the plate this year. Thaiss - 3B edge rt kn up too far fwd.mp4 This is Thaiss's standard setup: left knee down, upper body leaning forward against the right leg. On this pitch, his hurler did him no favors, missing all the way across the plate, but Thaiss had no chance whatsoever to salvage the strike, because of his setup. Here's how the best framer in baseball, the Giants' Patrick Bailey, sets up and receives a pitch aimed for the third-base side of the plate. Bailey - 3B edge lt kn up uprt stc.mp4 Taylor Rogers hits his spot, which makes Bailey's job easier, but the pitch is high and out of the zone, by modern standards. Nonetheless, Bailey snags it and steers it down into the zone for the called strike with relative ease. He can do so because he's set up with the right knee down, making his left leg the edge of a frame he presents to the umpire. The ball comes right to the center of his frame, along the inner edge, but because he's in an upright posture rather than leaning way forward, he can subtly turn his right shoulder backward, making it look like he's reaching back to the heart of the plate for a pitch he's really only reaching forward to collect. Starting with a high mask and high chest also gives him the stability and the visual line to bring the mitt up high, catch the ball in the lower portion of it, and drive it downward, as though he had to do so to catch it. This is why Bailey was worth nearly 200 extra called strikes relative to what was expected this year. The way Bailey uses the left leg to set an edge and shape the zone is not the only reason why the proper way to catch on the third-base side of the plate is with that leg up and the right knee down. There's also a question of the glove action it allows you. When the left leg is up, the catcher can use it as a kind of fulcrum for the arm. Especially when catching a low pitch, you want to let the mitt hang loosely, then rotate slightly as one comes up through the ball at the catch point. That gives the impression of a smooth collection at a higher point, as opposed to any hint of stabbing down or dipping and lifting. Here's Thaiss trying to frame a low pitch, with the left knee down. Thaiss - 3B edge rt kn up floppy hand.mp4 There's a problem with his mitt action, for sure. Firstly, he sets the target too long, trying to help his pitcher see and lock in on a spot but cuing the umpire to look for the ball up, which made the ball down at the knees look lower than it was. Secondly, though, look at the way he drops his mitt. He shows the center-field camera the back of the hand, then strikes out at the ball. Here, by contrast, is Cleveland catcher Bo Naylor catching a low pitch, with the left knee up. Naylor - 3B edge lt kn up gets low for ch.mp4 As you can see, Naylor gets extremely low in his crouch, an advantage he had because he was asking for a low pitch, whereas Thaiss was looking for Griffin Canning to throw one high in the counterexample. However, Naylor's torso still stays upright. He gets the fluid motion of catching the ball off the corner at the knees by starting with his mitt down on the ground but the open side showing to the center-field camera. He coiled his arm to invite a smooth swing of his albow, out and up at once, with the glove naturally reorienting itself into the catching position. Good catchers execute this movement dozens of times per game. Thaiss struggles with it, because it's much easier to do with the right knee down, and he always has the left one down. Here, perhaps, is an even more stark example of that arm motion, from Detroit's Jake Rogers. The way he kicks his leg out to surround the ball and get low on the low pitch make it easy for him to steer the arm upward at a steep angle, while still looking natural. Rogers - 3B edge lt kn up hi to low kickout.mp4 Now, let's look at how Thaiss operates at the top of the zone. Thaiss - rt kn up lean fwd lo to hi mask too low.mp4 His mask and his shoulders start low—so low that he has to catch the ball above his own mask level. To catch it means blocking his own line of sight of the ball momentarily, which is why he's not able to catch it quietly and his mitt drifts away from the center of the zone before he can wrestle it toward it. Low to high just isn't effective, the same way high to low can be. It's easier to fool an umpire by sinking deeper into the crouch than by starting low in one and rising up at the hips and shoulders and head, especially because going high to low doesn't involve the same disruption of vision. Here's how the pros do it. Bailey: Bailey - 1B edge rt kn up uprt stc.mp4 And Naylor: Naylor - 1B edge rt kn up uprt stc.mp4 Bailey starts and stays so high that the ball never threatens the top of his mask. He has the elbow hinge we've talked about. He's using the other knee, on the other side of the plate, to set the edge the same way. Naylor is a little lower in his set than Bailey, a little more athletic and adaptable to a big miss, but he's still considerably higher than Thaiss. Watch his hips, his shoulders, and his head. Unlike Thaiss's, they all stay almost perfectly still, making it much easier to catch the ball quietly and make it look like it was in the zone all the way. As all of these comparisons imply, too, there's an issue with Thaiss's right foot that needs to be addressed: he's too stiff and locked into it. Thaiss - rt foot too stiff, no elbow hinge, lost btm edge.mp4 He's almost trapped on top of his right foot, like it's an uncomfortable stilt. Sifting through video of Thaiss, this problem is not uncommon. The knee down provides stability, but getting the most out of it requires a catcher to have good technique in the setting and the movement of the leg that isn't being kneeled on. That sometimes means the long leg kickout, to help get low. It sometimes means getting the foot planted outside the frame of the body, to set that edge and have a leverage point for all movements on the other side of the body. It sometimes means repositioning to a wider base just before the pitch is thrown to create a bigger zone and facilitate the turn of the right shoulder. Thaiss isn't executing any of those consistently, yet, and thus, he's not getting any of those benefits. All of these things are coachable, though. They're teachable movements. I chose three above-average framers to compare with Thaiss, which might feel like three members of a totally different species than him. In fact, though, these are three players very close to the same size as Thaiss, and none of them are notably more athletic than he is on the bases or at the plate. Their edges over him are in understanding the rudiments of catching, because the Angels don't seem to have effectively instructed him on any of them. In summary, look for the Cubs to do three things with Thaiss, mechanically, when they go to work with him this spring: Make which knee he puts down in his setup dependent on pitch type and location, as well as handedness of batter. Left knee down works better, in most cases for pitches high and/or on the first-base side of the plate, especially to right-handed batters. Right knee down, which Thaiss currently uses almost not at all, works better for most low pitches and all of them to the third-base edge of the plate. Encourage a more upright posture with the upper body. Let the mitt drop, but keep the elbow internally rotated, so the arm can smoothly swing up through the ball on low pitches and so that the mask stays above the ball on pitches at the top edge, permitting a quiet catch and centering. Redistribute weight and balance within the setup, so that whichever foot is up is more free to be repositioned and the whole body can move subtly to catch a pitch that's off-target, rather than having an anchor that forces an obvious, off-balance lean. These are the key principles, as it happens, that most often show up in the rebuilding of a catcher when they enter the Brewers system—whence came Craig Counsell, whose attention to detail definitely extends to this part of the game. Under Counsell, the Brewers turned William Contreras from a borderline DH to a fine and occasionally even plus receiver, using exactly the trio of changes described above. While the gap in teams' evaluative understanding of framing closed long ago, there's still a major difference between the good and bad teams when it comes to educating and developing good receivers. That's been especially true the last few years, as a new state of the art in framing has developed, more predicated on fluidity and dynamism than on being quiet as a mouse and solid as a rock, the way David Ross and the great framers of the last generation were. The Angels are on the wrong side of that divide. The Cubs were, too, until recently. They hope and believe that changed, when they hired Counsell and he (in turn) hired Strittmatter. Bringing in Weinstein, an octogenarian but one of the true gurus of the craft at the moment, has to have given them added confidence. If, as an organization, they can turn Thaiss (and/or Moises Ballesteros) into an above-average framer, both Strittmatter and Weinstein will have earned triple their salaries. While Thaiss has no star-caliber upside, making him an average-plus defensive catcher would turn his offensive profile from underwhelming to delightfully acceptable. He'd become a pitch-perfect complement to Amaya, for however long that was needed, and the team could even consider carrying three catchers once Ballesteros is ready, so that he could sometimes act as the DH while learning the game-planning rigors of catching in the majors on the job. Any team who has to pay free-agent prices or trade young talent for every fistful of extra runs they score or prevent is doomed. Scouting and player development are most often cited as ways to get teenagers into the organization and mill them into stars, but sometimes, good staff work is just finding a player with an aptitude for improvement and an easy path to doing so, and handing them to a gifted group of coaches and instructors. The Cubs won't stop looking to bolster the catcher spot, but by acquiring Thaiss at a cost so low it's virtually zero, they've given themselves room to profit from their own improving developmental infrastructure. If it pays off as neatly as it very well might, they'll have created some extra flexibility as they seek to fill other, more important gaps on the roster. View full article

Thanks to the two minor trades in between two separate roster deadlines, the Cubs have changed a lot in the last week. Let's take a look at where they stand, and what is likely to come next. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images On Friday evening, the Cubs non-tendered Nick Madrigal and Mike Tauchman, bringing the total number of players previously on their 40-man roster jettisoned this week up to six. They agreed to terms with Julian Merryweather, Keegan Thompson, and Matt Thaiss, a pretty reliable indicator that those three were on the verge of being non-tendered as well; the team was willing to keep them only if they could lock in favorable terms. We don't yet have terms of Thompson's deal, but Merryweather signed for $1.225 million, a bit shy of public projections and a solid $300,000 lower than what he certainly could have ended up getting had the arbitration process played all the way out. Thaiss, who was projected for $1.3 million by MLB Trade Rumors but had just landed with the Cubs because he was designated for assignment by the Angels, understood his real position and agreed to a split contract. This is similar to what the Brewers did with Eric Haase last winter. Like Haase last year, Thaiss will make $1 million (or rather, the prorated share thereof) for whatever time he spends in the big leagues next year, but just a $400,000 rate for whatever time he spends in the minors. As we discussed when he was acquired Wednesday, he can't be optioned to the minors, but that doesn't mean he couldn't end up there. Last spring, Haase was designated for assignment just before Opening Day by Milwaukee, cleared waivers, and was outrighted to Triple A. He ended up coming up in July, and was a solid contributor for them in the final two months. If the Cubs do acquire a better catcher than Thaiss between now and mid-March, expect them to do the same thing with Thaiss. If not, he's a low-cost stopgap until they believe Moises Ballesteros is ready to handle the defensive duties of catching in the big leagues. The rest of the team's arbitration-eligible players were tendered contracts, meaning they'll remain under team control but that we don't yet know their salary for certain. The 40-man roster is now at 38, so the team has created a little bit (though probably not enough, yet) of room for external additions. The pruning of the roster is not finished, but the rest of it will be done on an as-needed basis. Here's a rough roster projection, if the season (alarmingly) started tomorrow. Catcher (2) Miguel Amaya Matt Thaiss Infield (6) Michael Busch Nico Hoerner Dansby Swanson Isaac Paredes Miles Mastrobuoni Luis Vazquez Outfield (5) Ian Happ Pete Crow-Armstrong Cody Bellinger Seiya Suzuki Alexander Canario Starting Pitchers (5) Shota Imanaga Justin Steele Jameson Taillon Javier Assad Jordan Wicks Relief Pitchers (8) Porter Hodge Tyson Miller Nate Pearson Julian Merryweather Keegan Thompson Eli Morgan Rob Zastryzny Caleb Kilian On 40-Man, Off Active Roster Owen Caissie Matt Mervis Kevin Alcántara Benjamin Cowles Hayden Wesneski Ben Brown Luke Little Daniel Palencia Jack Neely Gavin Hollowell Michael Arias Ethan Roberts This is how we have to list it, I think, because it keeps players (Canario, Merryweather, Thompson, Zastryzny, and Kilian) who are out of options hypothetically in the organization. In reality, I expect the team to make more additions this winter, forcing more changes, and while Roberts and Mervis could be among the first to go, I would also expect Zastryzny and Kilian to be high on a cut list. Canario likely has a modicum of trade value, though after Tauchman was culled from the herd, he becomes more plausible as a complementary outfield option. Much depends on the shape of their next set of moves. The infield mix listed above is obviously weak. One of Mastrobuoni and Vazquez will need to be in the minors for the team to enter 2025 with any serious intention of winning. A number of appealing infielders are available via free agency and trade, and a few (headlined by Mariners third baseman Josh Rojas, whom I highlighted as a target six weeks ago) joined the pool of available talent by being non-tendered Friday. The search for another catcher probably isn't over, with Thaiss signing that split deal. Last winter, the Brewers ended up signing Gary Sánchez. The Cubs need right-handed power, and Sánchez could be a fit for them, too. It's not the worst idea to closely mimic the Brewers, in some areas. We also anticipate additions to the starting rotation and bullpen from here, and as long as the team is smart about who goes when those newcomers join, this is shaping up to be a better, deeper team than it was last year. With Wisdom, Madrigal, and Tauchman all gone, you figure there will be at least one major external bat coming in. If the team follows through on their rumored interest in trading Cody Bellinger to facilitate other moves, even that would only cancel out. It sure looks like Jed Hoyer is creating space for guys like Caissie, Canario, Alcántara, Ballesteros, and Matt Shaw to have an impact in 2025. In that way, this roster is taking a shape vaguely reminiscent of 2015's. The upside is lower, at the moment, but the floor might also be higher. It's easy to forget, given how well it turned out, how wide the error bars were on possible outcomes for that team trying to emerge from a three-year rebuild. In 2014-15, the key additions were Jon Lester and Jason Hammel in free agency and Miguel Montero and Dexter Fowler in trades. That's almost exactly what the Cubs need now: two strong starters (or one and a strong reliever), and two well-rounded hitters, ideally with strong on-base skills. It wasn't an easy offseason to pull off back then, and it wouldn't be easy to do this winter, either. It's pretty clear what the team needs to do, though, and with so many of their fringy pieces either shoved out of the way or locked into clearer places in the budget, they now have some obvious ways forward. View full article

You are safe here. You control your breath, your center, and your reaction to vague rumors that start sizzling through the internet like there's more meat beneath them than there really is. You can do this. Image courtesy of © Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images Cody Bellinger is not about to be dumped in a financial maneuver. Put that loathsome thought far from your mind, and if that means disbelieving in that Lilliputian legend of the notes column Ken Rosenthal, then so be it. The Athletic's senior baseball writer is very good at his job, judicious with his reporting, and well-meaning enough, but he's not always right. In fact, in small particulars of rumors just firm enough to plug into pieces around this time of year, he's very often very wrong. It's an occupational hazard. This time, while he's hit on a legitimate possible transaction in a constellation of them coming up this offseason, he's wandered off the path when it comes to what such a deal would look like. Don't follow him, but don't worry about him, either. He'll find his way back and be ahead of you again before you know it. The Cubs are, in theory, open to trading Cody Bellinger. That has been true since he opted in; it was even true back in July. However, now as then, they feel no special necessity to move Bellinger, and they won't be doing so just to clear money—or even, as Rosenthal said in a podcast clip that has gotten a little too much air under it Thursday afternoon, "to move money around". The Cubs don't need to offload anyone's salary in order to do any of the things they're realistically willing to do this winter, anyway. If they were to plunge seriously into a pursuit of Juan Soto, it could be a different story, but they (misguidedly, we all agree, but that doesn't make it less true) long ago turned away from that possibility. Bellinger is arguably in the way of their effort to improve the lineup and the overall positional composition of the roster, but he's not financially in the way. He will be traded only if the front office finds a deal they judge to be expedient for baseball reasons, and probably only when or if they feel reasonably good about a second move that would make you pretty happy, like the signing of a big bat who more neatly fits their needs as a counterweight to the outgoing salary attached to Bellinger. Rosenthal is right about the most important part of his report, which is that Bellinger's trade value is likely to be complicated and fairly limited. Almost every team who has set out to trade a player with an opt-out left in their deal has found that it significantly eats into that player's value, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Opt-outs are hugely player-friendly clauses; teams love to hold optionality, and hate when a player can hold it against them. That said, Hoyer and Tom Ricketts do not themselves hate the deal to which Bellinger is signed. Not only is it the one they fought a months-long staring contest with Scott Boras to win less than a year ago, but the season he just had is exactly the kind of season that makes them glad they got this kind of deal done, rather than a longer-term one with less flexibility for the player. They have Bellinger for one or two more years at a fairly high annual salary, because they didn't want to have to have him for four more years right now, locked in at double the remaining guarantees on his deal. I do have to do some quick cleanup on Rosenthal's attempts to articulate the terms of Bellinger's contract, though, because the deal is a bit complicated and Rosenthal has fallen into line with many who have misunderstood and misstated its structure. Because each opt-out in the deal involved a buyout, people keep losing track of how much money is actually owed to Bellinger and when. In the clip from the web show Foul Territory that was posted on social media and seems to have people worried, Rosenthal alludes to Bellinger still having "$60 million over two; that's what he's guaranteed". That's not what he's guaranteed. Bellinger got $27.5 million of the $80 million total value of his deal in 2024. In fact, though, that first year guaranteed him $30 million. He could have taken a $2.5-million buyout for 2025 if he had opted out. Instead, he'll now make $27.5 million this year, after which he can either take a $5-million buyout (making his effective salary for the coming season $32.5 million, though his competitive-balance tax threshold number would be $30 million in that case) or stick around for a final year at $25 million. It's a $20-million decision. In other words, the money left to be paid to Bellinger if he opts in again next fall is $52.5 million, not $60 million. That's important. So, too, is the fact that if he does opt in again, his AAV for CBT purposes will continue to be $26.67 million, as it technically is now. With that cleared up, we can ask more straightforwardly: What is Bellinger, at either one year and $32.5 million (with a significant chunk of that payment pushed out to the end of next year, though) or two years and $52.5 million, worth in a trade? Because there are still teams who view him as a vaguely viable center fielder, and because he still hit pretty well during his healthy stretches of 2024, the answer to that question is: Eh. Something decent. There are two scenarios I can see where the Cubs do deal Bellinger. One would involve it happening quite soon, as both the Cubs and a trade partner firm up so-far fluid plans for the offseason and try to get their resources properly aligned. The name that makes the most sense is Ranger Suárez, who had a tough second half for the Phillies (5.65 ERA after the All-Star break); is not urgently needed in one of the game's best starting rotations; and is due a hefty sum (likely around $9 million) via arbitration in his final year of team control. Suárez barely fits into the Phillies rotation, but would be a solid No. 4 in the Cubs', with upside from there. He had location issues and lost the ability to miss bats with his sinker in that lousy second half, but the raw stuff was basically undiminished. He has a profile that would suit all the Cubs' pitching predilections. In all likelihood, the Cubs would have to chip in something else to achieve a swap of those two, but it would be a minimal something else—maybe as minimal as $2 million or something, rather than a player. The Phillies need help in the outfield, and Bellinger is a pretty good fit. That kind of trade would advance the Cubs' offseason objectives, because it would check one big box by giving them both upside and stability (if only in the short term) in their starting rotation. It would make them at least $15 million less expensive, too, but the object wouldn't be those savings. They would turn around, then, and spend that money and more on a player like Anthony Santander, Willy Adames, or Pete Alonso, depending on how each of their markets develop. If that sounds a little convoluted, compared to holding onto Bellinger and signing a starter akin to Suárez instead, your instincts aren't failing you. Getting Suárez (and this is just one example, but it's a salient one) would have the advantage of cost control, at the expense of a chance to get a player for a longer term. I regard this type of deal as basically unlikely, specifically because the Cubs would have to find a Goldilocks zone where they felt they were getting better by the exchange of Bellinger for some other hitter plus whatever Bellinger brought back in trade, after accounting for transaction costs. It's a possibility, though. The other scenario in which the team might trade Bellinger is more remote, and would come much later in the winter, but would be a bit more easily understandable. The team might simply wait out the market of any of the top sluggers on the market—the aforementioned Santander, Adames, or Alonso; Alex Bregman; Teoscar Hernández; or Christian Walker—and then jump in, if they liked the way one of those players' prices was falling. Trading Bellinger would then be a little more about getting money out of the way, and about getting Bellinger himself out of the picture, so they would simply try to get a prospect they liked (even if it be someone with warts, like already being on the 40-man roster and running out of options, or an injury that would make them more of a long-term play). That scenario would be predicated on the team having not dealt away undue amounts of their stock of young hitters; viewing the player they could scoop up in the free-agent freefall as a clear upgrade for their specific needs; and being comfortable with, again, the transaction costs involved in making an upgrade with built-in friction. It's somewhere on the wrong side of a coin flip that Bellinger is dealt this winter. If he is, it certainly will not be as part of a cost-cutting endeavor or a lateral step in the pursuit of serious contention. My stern advice about this rumor is, don't worry about it. Take it only as a sign that, in a winter I've said many times contains a wealth of possible paths to improvement for the resource-rich Cubs, this is one path they're considering, just in case it turns out to be the right one. Sometimes, a well-founded report gets a few degrees off course and leads to more worrying and confusion than it should have. View full article

The Cubs made two more additions to the edges of their big-league roster Wednesday, as part of a week of enforced roster churn. The moves seem small, but when you widen the lens, their place in the grand scheme of team-building becomes much more clear. Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images At first blush, it's easy to wonder why the Cubs would want former Guardians righthander Eli Morgan badly enough to trade a raw but toolsy outfield prospect for him, and losing another righty reliever (Trey Wingenter) in the process. Morgan (since the start of 2023, minors and majors together, 126 innings, a 23.3% strikeout rate, an 8.0% walk rate and a 3.14 ERA) is better than Wingenter (95 innings, 31.1% strikeouts, 11.3% walks, 5.00 ERA), but is it really by enough to justify giving up Alfonsin Rosario? Likewise, in the sequence of moves they made Wednesday, the Cubs paid cash to the Angels (likely a nominal fee only slightly higher than the $50,000 waiver fee paid when a team claims a player) to acquire the previously DFAd Matt Thaiss, but had to designate Patrick Wisdom for assignment to make room on the roster. (Wisdom's departure was actually, technically in conjunction with the Morgan move, and Wingenter with the Thaiss one, but it will help us think through this more clearly to match pitcher to pitcher and hitter to hitter.) In a vacuum, Wisdom is probably a better player than Thaiss. He's been one of the Cubs' few relatively consistent sources of power over the last four years, especially from the right side of the plate. He can, believe it or not, still be optioned to the minors, and Thaiss can't. So, what gives? To understand these moves, it's important to keep your eyes on the prize. Eventually, the Cubs' goal is to get back to consistent winning. In fact, it's their goal to become a team that wins every year for a decade or more, for the first time in over a century. To do so, they obviously need help at the top of their roster, and these moves do virtually nothing to provide it. At most, they give the team about $1.5 million in new money to reallocate (the difference between the projected arbitration salaries of Wisdom and Wingenter and those of Morgan and Thaiss, less a loose estimate of the amount paid to the Angels in this process) and replace two players at the bottom end of the roster with two new ones. But. The baseball season is long. The calendar is well and truly stuffed, and it now stretches from mid-February through the beginning of November. That's underselling it, too, because for many players, the season doesn't end when the season ends. Take top Cubs catching prospect Moises Ballesteros, whom the team sent to the Arizona Fall League and who performed so admirably there that his already-high stock continues to rise. Ballesteros played 124 regular-season games, then 19 more in the AFL. His official total for plate appearances on the season was over 600, while primarily playing catcher, all at age 20. That doesn't include his spring training action (four games on the big-league side, several more than that on the minor-league side), All-Star appearances (he was selected to the Futures Game in Texas, and took part in the skills showcase there, too), or winter ball—yes, winter ball, which Ballesteros said he wanted to do near the end of the AFL slate. Ballesteros is a native of Venezuela, of course, and it's very common for players to want to go home and play in their country's primary league during the MLB offseason. The Cubs reportedly refused to give permission for Ballesteros to play for the Leones de Caracas last week, forcing him to rest and to have a few months' worth of offseason. That's the only responsible course of action they could have taken. He only turned 21 on Nov. 8. The workload he's already borne this year is hefty. Anything more would have been dangerous. Slowly, though, teams are likely to lose their ability to stop players from playing winter ball, at least without hurt feelings and fights. Ronald Acuna Jr. famously takes enormous pride in playing in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he had 48 plate appearances in 2022 and 104 in 2023. Acuna also always wants to be in the lineup for the Atlanta Braves, but twice in the last four years, he's torn his ACL. As games pile up, injury risk increases. This is not a baseball-only problem, by a long shot. There are, increasingly, huge demands falling on top players in all sports to keep playing, close to year-round. The NFL's schedule seems hilariously overlong at 17 games, with the four-round playoffs after that, but the league is already itching to expand to 18 contests. In soccer, the problem is perhaps even worse. In one calendar year, starting last fall and ending late this summer, Manchester City and Spain midfielder Rodri played 63 matches, and his offseason ended up lasting about three weeks. He fumed about it in the press in September, as fans and analysts questioned the latest round of expansion in the UEFA Champions League and the looming Club World Cup, which will further burden top teams with extra games. Then, early in the English Premier League season, Rodri tore his own ACL. He'll miss the rest of the season. As Rodri's and Acuna's cases exemplify, players are often aware of the risks associated with heavy use, and they harbor some resentment of them. Yet, they'll keep playing as long as their teams will have them, both because that's how one becomes unimaginably rich and because some of the games that are theoretically optional (winter ball for baseball players; international competition for soccer players) don't seem so to them. Acuna wants just as badly to thrive in the LVBP as in MLB, though he knows which of the two pays him a salary that will guarantee his grandchildren grow up spoiled, and therefore accedes at times when the team asks him not to overdo it. Ballesteros doesn't yet have the kind of power Acuna does, and when the Cubs didn't grant permission to play this winter, he was stuck. The very fact that the team turned him down is a reminder of how long his season already was, though. You can mentally add just a little bit of expected injury risk to Ballesteros heading into 2025, given his age, the mileage he just put on, and the position he plays. The Cubs weren't as stringent with two pitchers on their 40-man roster, Michael Arias and Daniel Palencia. Arias was a halfway-surprising addition to the roster to shelter him from the Rule 5 Draft last year, and he didn't have a strong 2024, so he's trying to make up some lost ground as his roster spot hangs in the balance. Palencia, by contrast, finished very strong this year. Yet, he, too, is pitching winter ball. Arias is in the Dominican Republic; Palencia is in Venezuela. Because Palencia was shelved twice with a scratchy shoulder this season, it makes sense that he and the team want to make up a few innings' worth of the missed time. However, in a highly optimistic projection of the Cubs' bullpen next season, Palencia would feature very prominently. You don't really want a player you might thus depend on down in winter ball, spending bullets—especially a guy who throws 100-plus miles per hour. It slightly increases the chances that Palencia has more arm trouble in 2025. This is where Thaiss and Morgan figure in so pivotally. Before Wednesday, the Cubs simply didn't have a viable backup catcher in their organization. Now they do. This will allow them to have Ballesteros start slow and catch less often in spring training, saving some of his energy and shielding his health for what they hope will be a second-half debut. That Thaiss, like Ballesteros, bats left-handed gives him matchup value and lets Craig Counsell seek small advantages. That's what the team brought him in for. It's valuable to rest other people, too, and in theory, Wisdom could have been part of that plan. In practice, though, that proved to be a role to which he was ill-suited. He needs regular at-bats to find his rhythm and produce according to his talent, and that's fine, but his talent isn't sufficient for the Cubs to try to carve out a regular role for him again. Wisdom must go somewhere in need of a slugger and without the slowly rising expectations the Cubs face. He couldn't help them manage the workloads of their infielders anymore, and once the team added Ben Cowles to the 40-man roster on Tuesday, they knew they would have a zero-friction option for the tail end of the bench if needed. Thaiss protects Ballesteros and answers a key roster question in a way Wisdom didn't. The same is somewhat true of Morgan. If Palencia ends up injured again early in 2025, or if the team needs to be proactive with him and keep him in the minors early to manage his workload, Morgan is a more credible stand-in for that job (albeit with radically different stuff effecting a different shape of value) than Wingenter would have been. He's more consistent, more durable, and he can be sent to the minor leagues. That means that, if and when Palencia is ready, the team need not sweat sending out Morgan, whereas keeping Wingenter to do the same placeholding would have meant losing a player altogether when bringing up Palencia. Matt Shaw is in Asia right now, playing in the Premier 12 tournament for Team USA. In 2026, there will be another World Baseball Classic. All these offseason attractions and opportunities are wonderful for the sport, but they put pressure on teams to amass more depth than they would otherwise need, and they sometimes put players in a tough spot. Checking off a positional area of need, even if it be in underwhelming and impermanent fashion, is one way to extract value in small, early winter moves. So is upgrading the relief corps while simultaneously getting more nimble, roster-wise. It all sounds silly, because baseball isn't as taxing on any given day as soccer, football, or basketball, but then, baseball plays so much more often. In the early years of the new playoff format, we have seen series after series become a war of attrition, with two teams who cleared 90 wins during the regular season suddenly casting about for parts and pieces because of injuries or fatigue-driven underperformance. Any team aspiring to win in the long run has to be cognizant of that looming risk, and ready to meet it. The Cubs' moves Wednesday made them incrementally more so. View full article

With which part? You quoted the whole article! 😄

In their second incremental but clearly positive move of the day, the Cubs added a left-handed bat to set a floor at catcher, and further clarified their fluid relief pitching depth chart. Image courtesy of © Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images It was almost too obvious not to happen. When the Angels designated left-handed hitter and catcher Matt Thaiss for assignment to make room for Travis d'Arnaud last week, the fit between Thaiss and the Cubs was instantly visible. He's a stopgap backstop, someone to pair with Miguel Amaya in the short term and to ensure they don't have to rush Moises Ballesteros—unless they either acquire a different catcher via free agency or trade or find Ballesteros to be unexpectedly sound and ready, in which case Thaiss might never play a game in a Cubs uniform. As a roster spot placeholder in November, though, he's a no-brainer of an addition. Thaiss, 29, is a left-handed bat and a catcher, though attaching each label to him stretches their definitions slightly. He batted just .203/.323/.299 last season. He has both a disastrous tendency to swing and miss (even within the strike zone) and a lousy batted-ball profile. He doesn't hit the ball nearly hard enough, nor lift or pull it enough, to make up for an unavoidably high strikeout rate. However, he does have excellent plate discipline, rarely chasing pitches and working his way on base at a good rate, given his other shortcomings. Since Amaya is a right-handed batter whom the team hopes will be a lefty-masher anyway, Thaiss should never see a lefty in the Cubs roster mix. He's a .220/.332/.351 hitter against right-handed pitchers since the start of 2022. That's perfectly solid, from a catcher hitting at the bottom of the order, so the team just needs him to sustain that on-base ability. This is not an upside play; it's just about making the roster better than it was last year. No longer should one-third of the team's at-bats at catcher be an irredeemable sin against baseball, void of any production whatsoever. Unfortunately, Thaiss also isn't any help behind the plate, at least based on his track record. He's a subpar pitch framer and has thrown out just 16% of opposing base stealers since the start of 2023. This acquisition takes no real pressure off Amaya, but it does alleviate whatever pressure the team was feeling to find a backup who could be a bridge to Ballesteros, whom the team presumably has at least some hope of promoting within the first few months of next season. He has three years of team control remaining, but they will only come into play if the Cubs are able to draw a new level of play out of him on one side of the ledger or the other. They probably have better coaches than the Angels do, but not good enough to turn Thaiss into a player whom they'll want to keep around for very long. Thaiss is also out of minor-league options, which is why the Angels only got cash considerations from the Cubs in exchange for him. In order to stay in the organization, he'll have to show the Cubs he can be a credible big-leaguer. He's cleared that standard the last two years, though, despite his many shortcomings, and they had no backup catcher in place at all before making this move. Given the minimal cost, that made adding Thaiss appealing. It did involve an opportunity cost, of course, because the team had a full 40-man roster. As Thaiss comes in, out goes Trey Wingenter, the big, funky righty with electric stuff whom they claimed off waivers late in the 2024 season. Wingenter, too, is out of options, but as a reliever, he plays a position where being able to be shuttled to the minors is much more important than it is for catchers. After the team acquired Eli Morgan earlier in the day (and removed Patrick Wisdom from the roster), the Cubs basically balanced their scales here. Morgan, who has an option year, takes the place of Wingenter. Thaiss, who plays a more needed position, takes the place of Wisdom. In each transaction, the Cubs clearly get better. They get better only by a tiny fraction, but they do get better. They're perhaps $1.5 million cheaper, and they're better. The transactions cost them Alfonsin Rosario and however much cash they sent to the Angels, but those are small considerations. These are scene-setter moves, but they're solid ones. If, from here, the Cubs merely make another handful of slightly larger moves like these, fans will be rightfully livid come Opening Day. If, however, they go on to convert these small improvements into something genuinely valuable by making larger-scale additions at key positions of need, the deals will look very savvy. This neatly echoes the trade deadline, when the team seemed to be carefully canceling out certain transactions and just staying ahead by being pleased with the aspects that didn't cancel out. Back then, they gave up Hunter Bigge in one move, but got back Jack Neely in another. They gave up Josh Rivera in one deal, but brought in Ben Cowles in another. They gave up Mark Leiter Jr. in one move, but acquired Nate Pearson in another. After all that, they felt they were fairly tidily swapping Christopher Morel for Isaac Paredes, and Paredes is the more valuable player. Although the bigger moves will be the ones that determine the success or failure of Jed Hoyer's approach, these have been a series of well-executed maneuvers over a span of several months. The edges of the roster needed major upgrades this winter, and this week has already brought a few of them—with another few possible in the coming days and weeks. View full article

Very much prioritizing the construction of a better 2025 bullpen, the Cubs moved to land an optionable righty without a bat-missing out pitch, but who had sparkling numbers last year anyway. Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images Entering the offseason with needs all over the roster and knowing they have several promising but not yet established arms taking up space on their projected bullpen depth chart, the Cubs struck on Wednesday to slightly ease their roster crunch and create more good choices for themselves in the relief corps. With the acquisition of Eli Morgan, they gain a righty with three remaining years of team control and one more season in which he can be optioned to the minor leagues, but one without a devastating offering that guarantees outs late in games. Morgan, 29 next May, had a 1.93 ERA in 42 innings for Cleveland this year, but that didn't even make him one of the team's four most effective relievers. He has a four-seam fastball, a slider, and a changeup, all of which he can throw for strikes, but the heater only sits at 91-93 miles per hour, so he doesn't rack up strikeouts. Advanced metrics don't quite support the dazzling topline numbers he posted, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise. No one's true talent is a 1.93 ERA. Morgan doesn't work as a high-leverage reliever very often, because he runs a below-average strikeout rate. However, because he commands his changeup well and therefore keeps lefties relatively quiet, he can be a flexible, valuable middle reliever. He's projected to make just $1 million next season, and crucially, he can still be optioned to the minor leagues for one more year. That sets him apart from non-tender candidates in the Cubs' incumbent pen, like Trey Wingenter, Caleb Kilian, and Keegan Thompson. According to Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic, the Cubs will send an A-ball player to Cleveland to complete the deal. It won't be a high-octane move, but this makes the team's relief unit both stronger and more flexible. It also spells the end of Patrick Wisdom's time with the team. After four-plus years as a good organizational soldier with big power and a solid clubhouse influence, Wisdom was always going to be non-tendered Friday, if not released sooner. His removal from the roster makes room for Morgan, though, as the Cubs continue to have a full 40-man slate. If the season began tomorrow, the bullpen depth chart would look something like this: High-Leverage Porter Hodge Nate Pearson Medium-Leverage Locks Tyson Miller Luke Little Eli Morgan The Out of Options Crew Julian Merryweather Keegan Thompson Rob Zastryzny Caleb Kilian Trey Wingenter Upside Arms Not Guaranteed Full-Time Roles Daniel Palencia Jack Neely Gavin Hollowell Ethan Roberts As I've said before, I think they need to upgrade even more from here, which means non-tendering a couple of the players in the out-of-options bucket, and maybe Roberts, too. For now, though, Morgan is a clearly solid addition to the bridge from the team's rotation to the likes of Hodge, Pearson, and Miller. So Long, Fonz We now know whom the Cubs gave up to make this upgrade, and it's about the caliber of player we ought to have expected. Alfonsin Rosario, on whom they spent precisely the slot value after taking him in the sixth round in 2023. Rosario is a big, strong player from a South Carolina academy who flashed big tools in his first full pro season, but his strikeout rate was huge. No player who strikes out over 30 percent of the time in Low A is going to jump out as a strong prospect. He's got oodles of obvious talent, but there's at least as good a chance he never plays a game in MLB as that he ends up a productive regular. He'll have to make some huge adjustments to get to the majors from here, and while it's possible the Cubs could have coaxed those out of him, sometimes, it makes more sense to turn that potential value in real and immediate value instead. Rosario becomes the third member of the 2023 Draft class traded in deals with just that kind of exchange in mind. Josh Rivera (Nate Pearson) and Zyhir Hope (Michael Busch trade) went the same way. Whether that ends up being smart depends more on whether you're right about the player you acquire than on whether the player you trade away becomes an eventual star, so while Hope's stock has shot up and Rosario could find the key and turn all his tools into a dazzling profile, the more important questions are whether the team continues to get value from Busch; whether their tweaks with Pearson pay off with a full season of good health and effectiveness; and whether Morgan can repeat some of the results he posted in 2024. On balance, so far, they seem like good bets. View full article