Matthew Trueblood

In important news for the maximization of the value of new manager Craig Counsell, the Cubs completed their coaching staff Tuesday. They'll enter 2024 with, in some sense, three pitching coaches in uniform each day. Holmes, the former longtime MLB reliever, was with the Rockies when Counsell came up in the late 1990s, and they played another year together in Arizona in 2000. Strittmatter, meanwhile, played with Counsell all the way up the chain of the Rockies' farm system in the 1990s. To be sure, these moves are Counsell-driven. He chose people he knows, and with whom he's comfortable. However, it's also well worth noting their core competencies. Holmes isn't one of those hyper-modern pitching gurus who can clearly and concisely communicate advanced concepts to the public, but in his recent role with the Orioles, he worked successfully with a front office obsessed with the analytical nuances and biomechanical edges that exist in the current game. He also developed a reputation as an ebullient and enthusiastic resource for the relievers under his charge. In Baltimore, Holmes was the assistant pitching coach. The Cubs already have one of those: Daniel Moskos, who works as an assistant to Tommy Hottovy. In effect, it seems as though Holmes will take over the role previously filled by major-league pitching strategist Danny Hultzen, who moved on to the team's front office. Getting a guy with substantial experience and a relationship with Counsell for that role is perfect. While in Baltimore, Holmes talked about how much he loved working with Brandon Hyde, whom he said was brilliant at sensing when pitchers needed a day off. Part of Counsell's excellence lies in doing that very thing, and he should feel comfortable communicating about such matters with Holmes. For his part, Strittmatter stayed in Colorado when Counsell was traded elsewhere in 1997, and he pretty much never left. He's coming aboard as the replacement for Craig Driver, who was (in turn) the replacement for Mike Borzello. That's a role the Cubs have prized and from which they need to get significant value. Counsell's Brewers teams consistently and massively outperformed the league average in terms of pitch framing from their catchers. Much of the credit rightfully went to the organization's catching coordinator, Charlie Greene, but Counsell also had Walker McKinven and Nestor Corredor on his coaching staff, working closely with Greene to ensure the developmental work they did in the minors with their backstops carried over to the majors. Strittmatter, who was last the Rockies' minor-league coordinator, seems to be Counsell's attempt to find someone he trusts to do the same things Greene or McKinven did for him for years. Coincidentally, Greene himself got promoted to the Brewers' big-league coaching staff earlier this month. (In fact, it was no coincidence. Counsell and the Cubs were ready to poach Greene by offering him this same role, and the Brewers had to act to keep him.) If Counsell can create the same synergy with old minor-league teammate Strittmatter as he had with Greene or McKinven, it could be worth a win or two to the Cubs, by itself. These are smart hires, not least because they figure to make a newcomer in the manager's chair more at ease with a coaching staff of which he inherited most members. The Cubs have resolved their uncertainty about who will teach and deploy their players for 2024. All that's left is to figure out which players they'll be teaching and deploying. View full article

At this point, it's not the waiting game of Yoshinobu Yamamoto's free agency that is holding up the Cubs' winter. Rather, it's the long dance they're doing with the Cleveland Guardians, about multiple potential trades that could set the direction of their offseason. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports There's no question that the Guardians are interested in trading Shane Bieber, who is set to make somewhere between $12 million and $14 million via arbitration in 2024 and hit free agency after the season. They won't trade him purely to shed that salary, though; they have other ways to manage their budgetary restrictions for the coming year. The Cubs, in turn, are interested in Bieber, but not at the cost of Christopher Morel or any of the top tier of prospects (Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cade Horton, or Kevin Alcantara) in their farm system. As the free agency of Shohei Ohtani and the trade markets of Juan Soto and Tyler Glasnow played out, these two teams circled each other and exchanged ideas about deals that would include Bieber, but also expand beyond him. Cleveland might have longer-term payroll constraints to consider, which could lead them to move first baseman Josh Naylor, closer Emmanuel Clase, or both. I've written about why Naylor and Clase would each be excellent fits for the Cubs, and I can directly report that the two sides have talked about permutations of deals that would involve each of these three players--though, as far as I know, not all three in any one deal. Let's take this from the abstract to the concrete. Here are three possible versions of a trade between the Cubs and Guardians, each of which is theoretically possible but (perhaps) none of which is actually likely. This way, we can better define what does and doesn't make sense for each side. The Clean Rental Cubs acquire Shane Bieber; Guardians acquire Alexander Canario and Brandon Birdsell One important thing to keep in mind, when trading with Cleveland, is that they are almost perpetually in a roster crunch. With a highly effective model-based approach to the draft and a solid operation in Latin America, the Guardians' farm system is almost always deep, but it's especially deep with guys who quickly fill up the 40-man roster. That model-centric draft strategy leads to a lot of college picks, and those guys become Rule 5-eligible sooner than high-school selections. Right now, Cleveland has a full 40-man roster, so (while they could always designate someone for assignment or make a separate move) they're not looking to take on multiple MLB-ready pieces in a trade for Bieber. This deal fits their needs neatly. Canario would slot right into an outfield mix that remains a disaster area, and Birdsell made six starts at Double A this season, but doesn't become Rule 5-eligible until after 2025. In the long run, Birdsell might need to move to the bullpen, and Canario might be a better platoon outfielder than everyday guy, but they each give Cleveland a nice blend of upside and surety, without straining their organizational logistics. The Cubs, meanwhile, can spare both players, as they each exist in areas of depth for the team. Bieber would slot in right alongside Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon, and Kyle Hendricks, in what would be a very flat but impressively deep starting corps. The Two-Birds, One-Stone Approach Cubs acquire Shane Bieber, Josh Naylor, and Myles Straw; Guardians acquire Kevin Alcántara, Ben Brown, Alexander Canario, Brandon Birdsell, and Haydn McGeary Crucially, this deal is not just about the Cubs filling two of their most urgent needs. It also doubles Cleveland's pleasure. The Guardians signed Straw to a five-year contract extension in April 2022, and they almost immediately regretted it. After he'd excited them with a season in which he batted .271/.349/.348 with excellent outfield defense, he's batted .229/.296/.284 in the two seasons since. Now 29, Straw is still a solid defensive center fielder, but that bat is unplayable, at least as anything more than a fifth outfielder. He's due $4.5 million in 2024, $13 million over the following two seasons, and then small buyouts on club options for 2027 and 2028. Such a deal wouldn't hamstring the Cubs, of course, but it's the kind of mistake the Guardians really can't afford. They've been looking for ways to get out from under it, although their desire to do so comes far short of compelling them to give up a prospect just to do so. In this trade, they get major value for both Bieber and Naylor, and they also clear Straw's contract from their books. The Cubs, of course, fill both their rotation and their first base void. Alcántara would be a major loss, given his tremendous upside, but the team's medium-term outfield picture is crowded enough to make it worthwhile. Notably, this deal amounts to stacking Naylor and Straw (bad contract and all) for Alcántara, Brown, and McGeary atop the first trade. That's a plausible structure, but whether the Guardians would actually take an interest in it depends on where they fall on the wide spectrum of industry opinions about both Alcántara and Brown. For what it's worth, Brown is a good fit for what Cleveland likes to target and do with young hurlers. The Moonshot Cubs acquire Shane Bieber and Emmanuel Clase; Guardians acquire Christopher Morel, Kevin Alcántara, Brody McCullough and Brandon Birdsell This will seem far too rich to most Cubs fans, which reflects the reality of the stalemate between the teams. The Cubs are willing to move Morel, but they view him as a very valuable trade piece. Other teams, including the Guardians, see him as desirable but not a premium chip. If a deal around Bieber and Clase came together, it would probably be because the Cubs capitulated on giving up one of their top three prospects (they'd sooner let go of Alcántara than Pete Crow-Armstrong or Cade Horton, at this stage) and met the Guardians halfway on Morel. Right now, the Cubs' most urgent need is for better pitching depth. This move would solve that in one fell swoop, and Clase's long-term, team-friendly deal would give it a long-lasting impact. With the losses of Morel and Crow-Armstrong, they'd then face an equally urgent imperative to shore up the offense (and the outfield), and Bieber and Clase would take up a good-sized chunk of their payroll, so the viability of it might hinge on the team's sense of their budgetary flexibility. Still, there are ways to make up for the losses of Morel and Alcántara via free agency, and the Cubs' organizational pitching depth is sufficient to cushion the blow of giving up Birdsell and McCullough. This version of the deal is the least likely, but it would have the greatest chance of setting up the Cubs to compete for a World Series in the short term, and it would simultaneously have the greatest long-term impact of any of these possibilities. What do you think? Are any of these moves you would endorse? What changes to these frameworks do you propose? Bring me any good thoughts. Bring me anything but screenshots of the Trade Values site. View full article

It's the holidays, Squally. Where's your generosity of spirit? He's a solid second guy!

Fixed! Lol. Can't BELIEVE the B-Ref linker defaults to a kid in a summer wood-bat semipro league instead of him. 😄

Giving up on players willy-nilly is no way to do business, but a healthy pace of turnover and trade is vital to the sustainability of a competitive organization. The Cubs have three open spots on their 40-man roster right now, but they also have three players they need to jettison by February. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs need to add a potent bat to their lineup, a frontline starter to their rotation, and better depth to their bullpen this offseason. That's partially because of the failure of these three players to develop into anything useful. Brennen Davis, OF By every account, Davis is a great guy, a hard worker, and a very talented ballplayer. Sometimes, when it comes to trying to win baseball games, none of that ends up mattering. Injuries have stolen all the promise from Davis, and while there might still lurk some spark of hope for a resurgent season or two and a modest big-league career, he's little more than a phantom on the Cubs roster now. He's a long-levered, tragic reminder that Kevin Alcantara is no sure thing. That Davis was rated so highly as a prospect just a couple of years ago is a cautionary tale, but not because he was fool's gold. He just failed the last, sternest, cruelest test a player has to pass, in order to become a success in MLB: he's not lucky. That sounds silly, and ephemeral. It sounds like waiting things out will fix it. Alas, that's not how this particular kind of baseball luck works. The gods just didn't dip enough of his body parts into the River Styx. The Cubs need to trade or cut Davis and spend that 40-man spot on a player who will deliver real value in 2024. Caleb Kilian, RHP The natural contrast with Davis is unkind to Kilian, because he hasn't been thwarted by injury. He's just not able to translate his raw talent into actionable big-league talent. Since he was a prospect in the Giants system, there have been doubts about his ability to flesh out a repertoire that misses bats in MLB, not least because of the wanting shape on his fastball(s). He's tinkered relentlessly and occasionally looked to be on the brink of figuring things out, only to have everything go back to seed. The block might be mental. It might be mechanical. It might, after all, be physical, and he could be pitching right through stuff that might shelve a less determined soul. At this point, as is the case with Davis, it just doesn't matter. If anyone will make an offer for Kilian, the Cubs should take it, but he's not worth much even as a throw-in at this stage, and getting him off the roster will almost assuredly make room for a more useful pitcher--even if it be at a higher price for the Ricketts family. Michael Rucker, RHP A rubber-armed up-and-down guy is not without some value. David Ross wasn't great at extracting that value from Rucker, but he did explore various methods, and Rucker tried valiantly to make meaningful adjustments. It just isn't there. He's never going to be more than the seventh or eighth arm in a team's bullpen. If the Cubs had a clear and durable top pitcher or two in their bullpen hierarchy, they might be able to benefit from that kind of presence, the way Craig Counsell has benefited from having so many seemingly fungible arms float around at the edges of his bullpen in the recent past. To get to that kind of pen, though, the team needs to clear more roster space and chase some upside. Rucker has none of it. Would you stand up to defend holding onto any of this trio? Are there other members of the current 40-man roster you think the Cubs need to get shot of, in order to take the next step toward contention? Weigh in below. View full article

With their offseason starting so slowly, the Cubs are far from a finished product for 2024. If the season were to begin today, though, how would they line up along the chalk lines? Let's take a look, to pinpoint what still needs to change. Understandably, fans are growing impatient. There are still a number of avenues available for the Cubs to markedly improve, but there's no question that they need to do so, and that will require a much bolder second half of the offseason. What do you think of this roster projection? Where did I err, and who should be on the list instead? Join the conversation below. View full article

In the latest episode of the unofficial Cubs podcast of North Side Baseball, one of the co-hosts is in a very dark place. The rest of us make it much worse. Image courtesy of Matt Trueblood via Spotify for Podcasters The Chicago Cubs are testing their fans' patience and threatening some of their sanity. In the latest episode of This is Not a Rebuild, the guys try to make sense of the team's approach to free agency, take turns ranting on subjects ranging from Eric Hosmer to the sustainability of any sector of our economy, and then close with a Random Cub of the Week! Here's the full episode, on Spotify: It's also available on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, rate, and review the show on your favorite platform. This offseason hasn't been much fun so far, but the show continues to be. View full article

The Cubs' hopes of adding a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher this winter have been dealt a few heavy blows this week. The next few days will be critical: Does Jed Hoyer have good options left to address his starting staff? The Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers agreed to a deal Thursday to send Tyler Glasnow to Los Angeles, along with outfielder Manuel Margot. The Rays will get young, controllable starting pitcher Ryan Pepiot and outfield prospect Jonny DeLuca in return. As of early Friday morning, though, the deal isn't official, because it's contingent on Glasnow and the Dodgers agreeing on a contract extension to keep him around beyond his scheduled free agency at the end of 2024. For a long time this offseason, fans grew more anxious, but little actually changed. Although the Cubs haven't addressed their fairly dire need for help at the front end of their rotation, they also hadn't missed out on many of their realistic options to make that upgrade. Now, though, the music seems to have stopped, and chairs are filling up. The team needs to find one soon, and Glasnow marks a very oft-mentioned target taken off the board. While his lack of durability is an important mark against Glasnow, the other argument not to acquire him was that he'd only be around for one year. That the Dodgers are getting him to sign an extension to make this deal work makes this feel like more of a miss for the Cubs. Soon, another important miss will also become official. Yoshinobu Yamamoto's lucrative free-agent sweepstakes continues, but the Cubs seem not to be a serious player in it. One by one, the pitchers who could materially change the look and feel of the Chicago rotation are finding their new homes, and none (so far) are on the North Side of Chicago. Three good options do stand out, though. It's not too late to flip the script. Let's break down the situation with each hurler. Shota Imanaga Of the remaining pitching targets, the most intriguing is Imanaga. It's pretty clear, by now, that his market will reach the $20-million annual average value range, and it's likely to be a five-year deal. That's a big payout to a 30-year-old, but as I've written before, Imanaga has a ton of upside. If the Cubs can land him, they'll have the swing-and-miss element that has been missing from their rotation the last several years. Imanaga's strikeout-to-walk ratio of 188:24 in NPB this year is like something out of a video game, especially given that he did it while facing only 637 batters. Against MLB hitters, he'll need to make some adjustments, and both of those rates are likely to move in the less desirable direction. They have plenty of room to do so without posing a problem, though. Imanaga's sheer stuff supports the numbers and suggests he could keep them up, to some extent. As we've discussed recently, it doesn't seem like the Cubs are willing to go far enough to sign top-end superstars in free agency, but Imanaga fits into the range to which they do seem willing to stretch. Shane Bieber The Cubs and Guardians have had substantial trade talks around a number of names and involving a lot of potential combinations of young Cubs talent, but one player who stays right in the center of the conversation is Bieber. He's not a Glasnow-like swing-and-miss maven, at this point in his career, but he does several things well and has a deep repertoire. He's the kind of starting pitcher the Cubs have tended to value more highly than most of the rest of the league. With the precedent set anew by the Glasnow deal, it wouldn't be shocking to see the Cubs try to secure an extension with Bieber before completing a trade. In 2024, the hope is that he would be a No. 2 starter, but for the handful of years after that, he would project as more of a mid-rotation option. An extension that ensured he would be a long-term replacement for Kyle Hendricks (who needs to slide to the back of the rotation mix in 2024 and is likely to leave thereafter) would make a trade for Bieber more exciting. Jordan Montgomery If any free agent smoothly blends the reliability and control of Bieber with the upside of Imanaga, it's probably Montgomery. I discussed why he's a good fit for the Cubs, from a pitching philosophy perspective, earlier this offseason. The market for Montgomery is yet to gain full heat, but that figures to change as Glasnow and Yamamoto come off the board, and it could move quickly at that point. He doesn't miss bats the way you'd like your front-end starter to do so. That's the knock on Montgomery. His durability is superb, though, and he fills up the strike zone. He also does things with seam-shifted wake and the unique release point on his high, over-the-top deliver that make him tough to read and tough to hit. It's unlikely that the Cubs can afford both Imanaga and Montgomery, and if they do want to sign Montgomery, they might prefer not to extend Bieber, so as not to overcommit to mid-rotation hurlers for the long term. Still, it might be that the Rangers' co-ace for the stretch run is the right guy to prioritize. Which of these three hurlers strike you as most likely (or most desirable) for the Cubs? Who else is still on your radar? Let's talk about raising the ceiling in the rotation, even if it can't be with Glasnow or Yamamoto. View full article

With two brand-name targets for external acquisitions by the boards and another two seemingly on the verge of the same, the Cubs are circling toward a reunion with their breakout star of 2023. Don't be tempted into thinking of that as a consolation prize. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports I've said this in a couple of places recently, but in my opinion, the Cubs' goal this winter ought not to be to project for a certain number of wins or to be obvious favorites in the NL Central. Rather, the goal should be to add at least two players who project to be comfortably above-average, for multiple seasons. In fact, that should be the goal most winters. Flexibility is good, and Jed Hoyer is good at maintaining it, but a team can't gain the kind of traction the Cubs need to gain without committing to (and securing a commitment from, unless they're under team control anyway) good players for the medium or long term. In fact, that's what Hoyer has been trying to do over the last couple winters, anyway. Two years ago, around the lockout, he signed both Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki. Just last year, it was Dansby Swanson and Jameson Taillon. That's on top of moves like the extensions the team signed with Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ in the spring. They're building this roster out by committing to these guys for long enough to truly build around them, instead of having to replace them just when they start to get their feet under them. That brings us around to Cody Bellinger, because he, too, signed with the Cubs last winter, but it wasn't the same kind of deal. He delivered real value, but it was on a one-year deal, so now that value has burned itself out. Now, after the Cubs missed out (however voluntarily, or not) on Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto and with their hopes of acquiring Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Tyler Glasnow looking very dim, rumors of Bellinger and the Cubs reuniting are starting to percolate. It's hard, emotionally, not to think of that possibility as an unsatisfying status quo kind of move. We've well established the risk of regression for Bellinger, based on his underlying performance indicators. Soto and Ohtani each would have represented major upgrades, and Yamamoto would be a level of impact player above what Bellinger has been in any season save his MVP campaign in 2019. After not landing any of them, bringing back Bellinger would feel like a lateral move at the worst time--at least narratively. Instead, try to imagine that Bellinger is an equally young, equally versatile, equally graceful left-handed power hitter. Imagine him as a free agent without draft pick compensation attached, since by re-signing him, the Cubs would lose only the opportunity to gain an extra pick if he signed elsewhere instead. Whereas Bellinger was just in Chicago on a pillow deal in 2023, if he comes back now, it would be on a contract lasting at least six or seven years. It would be a long-term commitment between the two sides, and even if that makes fans a bit nervous, it should also excite them. Bellinger, were he to return now, would be a fixture at first base for the team for the foreseeable future. He'd be the first Cub to officially be on the books into the next decade. It's unlikely that a move will come together unless Bellinger's asking price falls down to $25 million or so in annual average value, which means that (especially in five years or so) it needn't be the top salary on the roster. There really wouldn't be inordinate pressure on Bellinger to rejuvenate himself further, or to recapture that 2019 form. He'd just need to approximate what we just saw from him in 2023, and he would be able to do it with the security and fan affection that comes with that kind of long-term deal. Slot Bellinger in that way, and a little of the pressure on the team's scouting and player-development systems also abates. The team's capacity to trade from their depth on the farm system, especially with regard to position players, would increase just a bit. Bellinger would still be a good fit with the Cubs, if his market doesn't take off the way he and Scott Boras have hoped. It would help the team establish its long-term core. I'm not sure who either of the Cubs' long-term, above-average acquisitions this winter will be. They're likely to be active in the trade market, and they have plenty of money to spend. There are other free agents in whom they might have active interest, beyond Bellinger, like Jordan Montgomery or Matt Chapman. If they do end up reupping with their best player from the season just past, though, they'll have done something bigger than they did by bringing him in the first time, and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact. View full article

It made sense that the Cubs couldn't (or wouldn't) keep pace with the Dodgers, Giants, and Blue Jays in the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes. That's in keeping with the way Jed Hoyer has done business ever since taking over. The question is: Even in some future in which the Cubs have a more aggressive top baseball executive, will ownership let them cook? Ohtani's contract was one thing. Whatever number you prefer to assign to it, its practical impact exceeds half a billion dollars, and although Ohtani has been one of the greatest players in baseball history for the last three years, there's risk the size of Lake Michigan in throwing that much money at him just as he begins the process of rehabbing from what amounts to a second Tommy John surgery on his elbow. He's also almost 30 years old, so even though he didn't elect a contract as long as those signed by Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts last winter, he'll be nearly 40 when the deal wraps up. None of that is true of Yamamoto. He's not a unicorn, and he's racked up heavier workloads than any MLB team would allow a pitcher to incur by the age of 25, but then again, he's only 25. He's one of the world's most accomplished starting pitchers, and signing him will come at a purely financial cost--no draft picks will be taken away. nor international free-agent spending ability curtailed, for whichever team signs him. If the Cubs won't venture past $300 million for him, for whom will they do so? The answer should be obvious by now: it's no one. That's just not going to happen under Hoyer's leadership. Maybe that's ok. Epstein and Hoyer's second half-decade at the helm of the organization saw too much slippage in the good foundations they had laid during the first few years. They were betrayed and undermined by ownership, but they also failed. They were supposed to come to Chicago and turn an inconsistent franchise into a perennial contender, for the first time since before World War II. They didn't do it. Hoyer is trying to get that heavy lift right this time, and perhaps that's laudable. It's possible to win without high-priced superstars. It might even be the wiser course in many cases, and especially so for the Cubs. They face the same stiff penalties other big-market teams do when they exceed the luxury tax thresholds, and they don't receive any of the little benefits that help small-market teams compete, but unlike every other big-market team in baseball (unless you count the White Sox as one), the Cubs are competing exclusively against small-market teams. They would take on a lot of risk by building around superstars, given the head start on sustainability the current rules give to the Reds, Brewers, Pirates, and even Cardinals. Still, Cubs fans are within their rights to be frustrated by this way of doing things. Hoyer hasn't yet proved good enough at his more conservative way of building a team to be one of those teams who wins without stars, and it's not fun to root for a team who has such an overabundance of resources--many of them extracted directly from fans, via high prices on absolutely everything--and harbors them so jealously, when they don't even offer the solace of consistent playoff appearances. The essential question is this: Is Hoyer's conservatism the only thing stopping the team from playing for Yamamoto-like boondoggles? If so, then fans can console themselves with the knowledge that they'll soon see either a turn in the team's fortunes or a change of its course. If it's just that Hoyer doesn't like putting too many eggs in one basket, then (if the team doesn't win something big, and soon) he'll be replaced by an executive who's more disposed to do so. Eventually, if it's just Hoyer between the Cubs and a Yamamoto, an Ohtani, or a Juan Soto, then either his plan will work, or it won't, and the next person will land the team's first true megadeal. Alas, that's just one possibility, and the other is more pernicious. Hoyer probably isn't even asking Tom Ricketts for the right to truly swing with the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, and Padres on contracts like the ones the highest-profile free agents have signed over the last few winters. The nightmare scenario is one in which the Cubs can't get over the hump (without star power) in 2024 or 2025, Hoyer is dismissed, and a new executive tries to bring in the kind of generational player Hoyer neglected--only to be told that the owner was never going to permit that kind of major move, anyway. The biggest drawback to Hoyer's conservatism is that it prevents us from updating our information on Ricketts's willingness to do what it takes to win. If the team keeps making good progress in its scouting and player development, maybe it will never matter that much. If the team turns Pete Crow-Armstrong and Cade Horton into the next Corbin Carroll and Gerrit Cole, they won't need to shell out $300 million to keep them. They'll have a chance to get aggressive and sign them long-term for half that much, or less. If not, though, we need to know whether Ricketts is even open to paying the irrational price the market sets on elite talent. We can't get that answer while Hoyer stands in the way. View full article

When is $700 million not $700 million? When it's less. However, that doesn't mean it's only $460 million, either. And by the way, what is 'only' doing in that sentence? Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports After a couple days spent finalizing the details and clearing the necessary roster spots for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani's megadeal became official Monday. In the process, reporters laid out the particulars of the deferral structure that was alluded to in less exact terms on Saturday, upon the first reports of the deal. Ohtani will only be paid $2 million per year for the 10-year life of the contract. Then, for the following 10 years, he'll receive a staggering $68 million per year. As a result of that extreme structure, Ohtani's deal has an annual average value of just over $46 million, for luxury-tax purposes. That set of a torrent of outrage on Twitter, wherein the Dodgers were accused of all manner of manipulation of the tax. Many wailed that the MLB Players Association has been derelict in allowing this to become a legal deal, and that the loophole it represents is sure to cause greater friction in the next round of negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement. The general feeling seems to be that, whether legal or not, ethical or not, the Dodgers got away with something here. It's just not true, and it's tiresome that people are so insistent that this is a problem. We can explain the confusion, easily enough. Since the deal was initially reported as $700 million over 10 years (and after some sloppy initial reporting by a few people who specialize in the math around these types of deals), it's causing the weirdest case of reverse sticker shock in human history as fans come to grips with the fact that the Dodgers will only face that $46 million in annual weight on their competitive-balance tax payroll. All the trouble there is in your head, though. Even as the deal was first announced, every major reporter stressed that there were major deferrals involved. This is the most extreme deferral structure in modern baseball history, but it's just a slight exaggeration of the terms everyone should have envisioned in the wake of the initial news. The contract was never going to be worth $700 million in real, present value. We knew the deferrals were going to be the majority of Ohtani's salary, which meant that the actual deal was falling right in the range everyone expected before the eye-popping 7s hit our eyeballs on Saturday afternoon: comfortably north of $500 million, but south of $600 million. While the league and the union have an agreed-upon interest rate they apply to deferrals and a formula for the CBT hit of a deal, we don't have to accept that net present value figure as a simple statement of the value of the contract. To Ohtani, who doesn't need to sweat the time value of money because he makes upward of $40 million per year through endorsements and other off-field income streams, this structure is worth much more than $460 million. He has a chance to limit his tax liability for the $680 million that will be paid after the contract ends, by moving out of California to any number of potential tax havens. He also has a chance to borrow against that money even before he actually receives it, if necessary, and thus invest and add to his mountains of cash. It just doesn't matter that much, to him, when he's paid. Nor should it matter much to fans of other teams. The Dodgers derive a small advantage here, because the extremity of these deferrals pushes that CBT hit down, but even by that calculation, Ohtani will be the highest-paid player in baseball, with a cushion of over $2 million on second place. If the deferrals were more along the lines we expected, the hit would be something like $53 million. That difference is small. It can buy the Dodgers an extra platoon bat or setup man each year, but it's small potatoes, really. The fact that they will be making such a small actual outlay to Ohtani during that time certainly helps, but only for bean counters. The CBA's rules penalizing big-market teams for repeatedly exceeding the CBT (especially the second, third, and fourth thresholds) will still be there. For most of the next 10 years, the Dodgers will have their first draft pick pushed back 10 spots. For most of them, they will lose international free agency spending power. They will pay high tax rates on their overages, and their overages will not be inconsiderable. This coming year, they'll lose two of their top five draft picks and a significant chunk of their IFA money--with the latter becoming especially restrictive if Roki Sasaki succeeds in convincing his NPB team to post him to MLB next winter. These impacts will be felt, even if they're getting an apparently tremendous bargain in the short term on Ohtani. Then, they'll have to pay him $680 million while (almost surely, given the unique demands and physical stresses of the unique thing he does) he retires to somewhere beyond the reach of the American IRS. It's fine to be mad that the Dodgers went so much further than the Cubs were willing to. It's fine to feel that the system is rigged, and that the league should revisit revenue-sharing rules to give more teams a chance to compete with the elite earners in the biggest coastal markets. Let's just stay focused on those real concerns. The particular structure of this deal doesn't make things as easy for the Dodgers as many have claimed, and it's not a circumvention or a subversion of anything. It's just a radical solution to the problem of paying a player $700 million. View full article

Baseball is hard. That's ok. It should be hard. Life is hard. It's complicated, too. Often, so is baseball. The very best things in life are the simplest, though, and the same is true of baseball. Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports There's nothing complicated about Emmanuel Clase. The Guardians' closer is just a rear-back-and-fire guy. He throws a cutter and a slider, and the cutter hums in at very nearly 100 miles per hour. It takes little more than that to be an elite relief pitcher, and for the last three years, that's what Clase has been. He's been an All-Star the last two seasons and led the American League in saves each year. He's also had a rubber arm, with seven more appearances than any other pitcher in baseball since the start of 2022. Nothing is ever quite as simple as it looks. Even though he's still touching triple digits with that cutter, Clase did lose half a tick in 2023, and with it went too many of his strikeouts. Somehow, he lost the mystical thing that makes one slider miss bats when dipping off the trajectory of a sizzling fastball, and fell in with the likes of the ones who make the same veer but don't earn the same result. Even so, Clase pounds the strike zone in a way few other closers in the sport do, and he has one of the best ground-ball rates in the game. That cutter stubbornly resists being barreled up, and hitters manage lots of weak dribblers. Yet, he did get hit harder in 2023, as his command of the cutter got a bit loose against lefties (more balls out over the plate, away from them, rather than crowding them inside) and he left his slider up too often against righties (where hitters could get underneath it a bit). Between fewer missed bats and more high-value contact, it's no great surprise that his ERA rose from just over 1.30 for the two previous seasons to 3.22. The very simplicity of his approach makes it a little hard to fix Clase, if we admit that he got broken last year. So much of his success depends on consistently executing those two dazzling pitches, with the intensity and physical electricity of his delivery, that the question of his value boils down almost solely to repeating well. It's not that he doesn't utilize sequencing or psychology at all; it's just that it plays a relatively small role in his game. Clase has extraordinary stuff, and the variable that controls his value is whether he can throw it where he wants to. Perhaps the variable that controls that, in turn, is the degree to which Clase's arm is currently under the assault of such heavy use. In the last few years of Terry Francona's career, he rode Clase hard. That wasn't callousness; he had little choice. Still, calling on Clase so often surely led to some of his fraying in terms of command and control. With a bit more protection from appearances on back-to-back days and multiple-inning outings, Clase might bounce right back to his unassailably elite level in 2024. That's why he'd be a great target for the Cubs. They can't count on Adbert Alzolay, alone, to hold down the back end of their bullpen. He, Julian Merryweather, and Mark Leiter, Jr. form the foundation of a decent bullpen, but Clase would round it out gorgeously. The team has enough pitching depth to keep the pressure of a heavy workload off Clase, and a better offense than Cleveland has had during his career. They also have Craig Counsell, who has plenty of experience keeping elite relief weapons fresh and who has proved exceptionally deft at it. With three more seasons of guaranteed money left on his deal and another two club options beyond that, Clase is a phenomenally valuable asset. He'd cost the Cubs a huge haul on his own--let alone as part of a package with Shane Bieber, Josh Naylor, or both, as some have mused. The Cubs would have to let the Guardians pick at least two pieces from the top end of their farm system, and they might need to surrender a young player from the big-league roster, too. Nonetheless, Clase's compelling. He's the rare closer with a truly transformational upside, and the combination of years and affordability on his contract means the impact would be long-lasting. Unless and until the Cubs expend trade capital to land a different star, he should be on your radar. The situation is a bit complicated, but the player himself and the value he promises are wondrously simple. View full article

Dude.

Not sure if you're serious. I think not? But to be safe, let's rattle off a non-exhaustive list, so everyone has a sense of just how big a payoff there is for speculating in this kind of market when you have a good dev staff in place. Jeffrey Springs. Robert Stephenson. Evan Phillips. Max Muncy. Isaac Paredes. Tyler Glasnow. Chris Taylor. Ryan Pressly. Marwin Gonzalez. Tyler Anderson. Randy Arozarena.

This is a widely-held opinion, and it comes from the right mental place. But I would counter with: you're *never* out of the "find a guy and fix him" business, if you're a smart team. The Dodgers and Rays and Astros still find and fix guys just about every year. It's the kind of thing you keep doing even while also spending big to upgrade the top of the roster. Your other point--that there might not be much opportunity for Turnbull with the Cubs--is a good one, but it depends, right? A trade could change that. Using a six-man rotation could change that.