Matthew Trueblood

I hear you on that, but I don't think a move like this one would come with much financial or opportunity cost. He's not optionable, though, to answer that question. Once Detroit agreed to grant that full year of ST, he rose above 5 years, which automatically removes options. (For future reference, yes, non-tendered players still carry their options to new destinations. If they still have them, they can be optioned after signing with a new team. Obviously, it's relatively rare that a non-tendered player still has options, but in cases where they do, that action doesn't pulverize them.)

One way or another, the Cubs are likely to add at least one starting pitcher before spring training. It would be best to add two, with one of them being an expensive but high-value addition to the front end and one being a depth option. Let's talk about one especially intriguing depth option. Things did not end well between the Tigers and Spencer Turnbull. The 2014 second-rounder out of Alabama climbed through the Detroit farm system over the next few years, and was occasionally impressive for his first few years in MLB. Early in 2021, though, he seemed to have turned a corner. That May, he threw a no-hitter. He was emerging as a star. Then, Tommy John surgery ruined everything. Turnbull missed the final four months of 2021 and all of 2022. In 2023, he made his return, but he was nowhere near as exciting or even as consistent as he had been before the injury. The team optioned him to the minors even though he claimed to be battling injuries to his neck and foot. After the season, Turnbull was vindicated, as the Tigers agreed to give him a full year of services time for 2023 despite having used the options to send him down. That was just a parting gift from Detroit, though. They non-tendered Turnbull, who is now a free agent a year (or two, had the service time not been restored to him) earlier than expected. Free agency won't be a lucrative exercise for him, at least this time, but he's on the market. The Cubs could swoop down and scoop him up as a swingman or sixth starter, and give him the season to rehabilitate his value. Obviously, if his sole interest is rebuilding that value and trying to hit free agency next year as a much-sought-after star with multi-year offers, Turnbull might prefer a team with less pitching depth than the Cubs have. If the Cubs can sell him on the value of their pitching instruction and development group, though, they might gain a leg up. There's plenty with which to work, and Turnbull does have untapped upside if someone can help him sort some things out. What Turnbull's arsenal looks like depends a little on whom you ask. Both Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball show him making use of a slider, a sinker, a changeup, and a curveball, but his most-used pitch is listed as a four-seam fastball at Savant and as a cutter at Brooks. That's an important distinction, not only to projecting his performance but to understanding his recent struggles. Whatever you call that 93-mile-per-hour offering that fronts Turnbull's repertoire, he throws it with extreme cutting action (it would be 96th-percentile cut) and extremely heavy vertical movement (97th percentile) for a four-seamer. For a cutter, though, it's extreme in its lack of glove-side movement, and has more rising action than the average. Here's what his overall movement profile looked like in 2023. Turnbull's big problem is that, coming from a relatively low arm slot but opening up to an extreme extent with his stride toward the plate, he leaves the ball on the wrong side of the plate for his stuff on far too regular a basis. His primary offering really makes more sense as a cutter, especially in tandem with the rest of his stuff, but it ends up on the arm side of the plate as often as not. One reading of that location map could be, "Well, that's a four-seamer, then. It's just a four-seamer he throws at the top of the zone to chase whiffs." That almost works, but here are the locations of his slider in 2023. Again, this is largely a mechanical problem. Turnbull's open stride and arm slot combine to cause a lot of pitches released a hair too soon, missing arm-side. That's true for all his stuff, but especially the stuff that needs to be moving to the glove side instead. At this stage of a player's career, it's not as simple as pointing that out to him and expecting an instantaneous, effective change, but the fix here is not overwhelmingly complex. If Turnbull does make that fairly major adjustment, everything else might fall into place. If he could command the cutter to the glove side, his heavy sinker would become much more of a weapon, and he'd still be able to change eye levels against right-handed batters thanks to the depth on his slider. Against lefties, he was very reliant on the cutter/fastball in 2023, because his breaking stuff didn't work at all against them with the locations of his various offerings. A tweak to his delivery or position on the mound could effect a huge change against opposite-handed hitters. He'd probably only be interested in a one-year deal, because his value is pretty low at the moment. If the Cubs worked out such a pact with him, though, Turnbull could be a compelling complement to Hayden Wesneski and Javier Assad--or, should either of them be traded this winter as the team addresses other needs, a smart replacement for them. What do you think of Turnbull as an under-the-radar target for the Cubs? Who else are you keeping an eye on as a low-risk, high-reward guy? View full article

On Saturday, the record for the biggest contract in MLB history was nearly lapped. In one Instagram post, the Cubs got their definitive answer, after the most mysterious free agency in recent memory. Now, they can move on. Image courtesy of © David Richard-USA TODAY Sports At $700 million (even given massive deferrals), Shohei Ohtani was not a fit for the Cubs. I would argue that he's not even a fit for the Dodgers at that number, but they have it to spend and he's an extraordinary player, so now, he's a Dodger. The Cubs didn't land Ohtani despite their second earnest effort to court him, but if it was going to cost anything like this much money, they made the right choice by not overextending to win the bidding war. Perfect rationality is no way for a baseball team to live, but this contract represents a degree of irrationality that was always going to be insupportable. With that roadblock out of the way, though, the Cubs can now begin their offseason, for real. Over the next 10 days (before things begin to wind down for the holidays), there will be a flurry of moves throughout MLB. Chicago's chances of landing Yoshinobu Yamamoto are very slim, just as they were with Ohtani. It feels very much as though Yamamoto will end up with the Yankees or Mets, on a deal that could reach $400 million in total expenditures after accounting for the posting fee. There are plenty of other stars who will soon change teams, though, and the Cubs figure to be in on several of them. Tyler Glasnow's name keeps coming up in connection with the Cubs, but the Dodgers just gained about 700 million more reasons to be aggressive about a deal to bolster their rotation for exactly one year, so the competition there will be stiff. The Cubs' best bet to upgrade their own starting staff might yet be a Japanese phenom, because they're still being mentioned as a suitor for Shota Imanaga, and Imanaga has a chance to be the sneakily low-priced ace on this increasingly crazy market. Remember, a week ago, we heard rumors of the Cubs being interested in Jordan Montgomery. They could now get serious in pursuit of him, although you'd figure it's either Montgomery or Imanaga, rather than both. The fit with either makes sense, and probably more sense than the one with Glasnow, but any of the three would be a boon to the rotation. The team does need that, and would have even if they'd signed Ohtani. At the moment, though, the next move I would bet on from the Cubs is a trade with the Guardians. They've been linked to Shane Bieber, Emmanuel Clase, and Josh Naylor, and all three of them make sense for Chicago. They will not acquire all three, but various combinations of them have been kicked around by the two sides, and there are other interesting pieces who could flow each way. While Cubs fans all agree on the need for more swing-and-miss from the rotation, and while Bieber doesn't exactly promise to deliver that, we have to keep in mind that the Cubs have concrete preferences in their starters, and reasons for those preferences. Bieber fits those preferences. Clase would be an interesting pickup for the bullpen. He's obviously one of the game's best closers, but just as obviously, he pitched his arm off for Terry Francona at times during the last few seasons. I don't think Francona was consciously trading Clase's future for his own present, but the aging skipper turned to his All-Star relief ace so often to hold thin leads cobbled together by an anemic offense that Clase did wear down under the burden as last season progressed. When he's right, though, he's overpowering, and building a bullpen in front of him would feel like a breeze, compared to the difficulty of assembling a usable committee each year over the last few. Naylor is a brilliant fit for the Cubs, but the Guardians aren't yet clearly ready to trade him. He's such a heartbeat of that team that they can't easily let him go, even if they have pressure coming from the farm system in the form of top prospect Kyle Manzardo. The idea of Naylor's slashing left-handed offense and solid glove at first base is highly appealing, though. There are all of those options, and plenty more. The Cubs could pivot to trying to trade for one of the Marlins' controllable starting pitchers, although whether any of them represent a sufficient short-term upgrade over the team's options of Ben Brown and Cade Horton to justify their cost is a reasonable question. They could try to sign a player they did once woo as a coveted international free agent, in Jorge Soler, or swoop in to collect the Dodgers' jetsam after J.D. Martinez's time as the designated hitter in Los Angeles was semi-officially ended by Ohtani's signing. They could engage with Rhys Hoskins on a short-term deal, or Matt Chapman on a longer one. There might be a couple of interesting trade targets in Minnesota, where the Twins need to unload the salary of either Jorge Polanco or Max Kepler and want starting pitching. Ryan McMahon could be a really nice complementary piece and long-term addition, if trading for him were only the third-biggest move of the winter. He'd only be disappointing as a headline move for the team. The Padres might look to offload even more salary, before they go about reassembling a competitive team. The Mariners have Logan Gilbert, who might be available for a deal centered on young hitters. Opportunities abound. Jed Hoyer is just getting started, after this chance slid by. He might have a slightly narrower road to success from here, but he has multiple forms of currency with him and there are still jewels to find. Which direction do you want to see him go? View full article

The Cubs continue their pursuits of stars and high-caliber, high-certainty answers in various areas of the roster. That exercise remains important. Maybe, though, we're all letting the time dilation inherent to baseball fandom exaggerate that importance for us. Image courtesy of © MATTIE NERETIN / USA TODAY NETWORK Being a sports fan is a funny thing. There's a season, and there's an offseason, and while plenty happens during the offseason, they don't call it the "low season," as opposed to the "high season". No. Baseball is a binary condition. It's either being played, or it isn't. (Plainly, it's not that simple, either, because there are winter leagues and developmental leagues, but you get what I'm saying. Except insofar as they affect a team's talent level and readiness, things that happen during the offseason don't count.) Yet, we fans are alive all winter. We watch and root in the offseason about as ardently as we do during the season. That can create a strange sensation--a tension between our lived reality and the baseball reality. For instance, because there are several months and a few important developmental hurdles to clear before the Cubs' farm system (one of the best in the game, by general acclaim) can deliver much value for the 2024 roster, the strong tendency for Cubs fans is to discount and even dismiss that value. It's so far away as to feel unreal, in addition to feeling (in a much more deserved way) uncertain. In reality (baseball reality), though, the time when Pete Crow-Armstrong will make a major contribution to the Cubs is right around the corner. Ditto for Ben Brown and Owen Caissie. Cade Horton, James Triantos, Kevin Alcantara, and Matt Shaw are not far behind. While a few might have more immediate (in the real-world concept of time) value as trade chips this winter, and while others will inevitably struggle or even outright fail, it's perfectly rational to expect that at least two or three people from that group will be worth more than one win above replacement for the 2024 Cubs. Here, now, in a December darkened by the nine-mile shadow of Shohei Ohtani, those contributions feel far away. Move yourself forward in time, though, to July 4, 2024. Nearly seven months have elapsed, but only three of them were full of baseball games that count in the standings--and those only make up about half of the total schedule. It's very possible--we shouldn't say 50 percent, but it's north of 10 percent--that if the Cubs hold onto Caissie and Horton this winter, one of them will have already been in the big leagues and providing a much-needed spark or reinforcement for a month by then. The offseason means the Statcast cameras and the turnstiles are turned off, but not that the players are. The Cubs have worked hard to create an environment of year-round player development and improvement. Between winter work and spring training, there are plenty of ways that guys like Triantos and Shaw can gain ground on the league they want to join and in which they want to have success, before the clock of the season itself starts ticking again at the end of March. I mention all of this merely as a reminder that the Cubs' farm system, though it lacks a surefire star or the obviously MLB-ready talent of some of the other upper-echelon systems in baseball at the moment, does not lack short-term impact potential. That doesn't mean Cubs fans shouldn't want or expect big moves from the front office. Those are still needed. That need is blunted and softened, though, by the fact that Horton might step into the middle of the rotation by Memorial Day. It's made less glaring by the fact that even if Crow-Armstrong stumbles in spring or in the early going of the season, the team has not only veteran Mike Tauchman to whom to turn, but Alexander Canario and Alcántara looming as alternatives to plug in as stopgaps. We baseball fans didn't always have such an overeager, anxious relationship with the hot stove season. It feels fairly new, a product of modern technology and the way the world consumes not only news but entertainment, sometimes commingling them until they're unfortunately indistinguishable. Then again, the game also didn't used to have quite as great a lag between the continuous clock of a living organism and the stop-start clock of a seasonal enterprise, either. That's because player development used to take longer, and be more fraught with error. Some rules changes have made those processes more efficient, and obviously, technology and better comprehension of the human body have improved instruction and training. The contraction of the minor leagues has also forced the acceleration of top prospects' progress, to some extent. Great young talents spend less time in the minor leagues than they used to. If Shaw debuts with the 2024 Cubs, he won't really be seen as ahead of schedule. He'll merely be a collegiate pick who panned out. Don't overlook the value of the Cubs' depth or their commitment to the farm system. It shouldn't neutralize your desire for them to sign Ohtani, or to make a valuable veteran addition to the starting rotation, or to try to find a stronger middle of the batting order. It's just that the fruits of the franchise's labor to build up that young talent might come sooner than it feels, right now. View full article

Do they have to mess with his swing? Or just where and how much he swings? I think the distinction matters. But I get what you mean.

If the Cubs aren't going to land Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto, they need to find another way to add an excellent player to the top of their roster. One of the increasingly obvious options is a fraught one. Let's explore it. Image courtesy of © Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports It's hard not to see the match between the Cubs' roster construction and free-agent third baseman Matt Chapman. Last winter, faced with a market that priced them out of the elite offense they had wanted to build, the team pivoted and tried to win by assembling an elite defense, instead. Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner each won Gold Glove Awards this past season, and in 2024, the organization hopes to install Pete Crow-Armstrong as the regular center fielder. Chapman would be a hand-in-glove fit for that approach. Although Nick Madrigal proved to be a defensive whiz at the hot corner in his own right, he's not a third baseman, really. He can't be. He doesn't hit enough, and his arm isn't strong enough. With two Fielding Bible Awards as the best third baseman in baseball and plenty of seasons as one of the two or three best, Chapman is on another level. He'll turn 31 in April, but he should age fine, defensively. He's built for the spot, and there's nothing about the position at which he's less than excellent. The questions, of course, are about his bat and his price tag. Though he's a .240/.329/.461 career hitter and has occasionally looked like a superstar slugger in the mold of fellow defensive ace Nolan Arenado, he's been badly inconsistent over the last few years, and his power dried up in an ugly way in 2023. In particular, despite relatively even career platoon splits (identical isolated power, very similar walk and strikeout rates), Chapman has struck out about 30 percent of the time against right-handed pitchers over the last three years. He's limited by that vulnerability, in a way he wasn't obviously limited before. One thing no one questions is the quality of Chapman's contact. Few hitters hit the ball hard as regularly as Chapman does, and he gets the ball in the air at a high rate, too. In fact, only hitting 17 homers in 2023 was a somewhat stunning shortfall, relative to the production one should expect based on the way he attacks pitches. In part, that problem stems from Chapman not pulling the ball all that much, especially in the air. Hitting long fly balls is great, but doing so to center field and the other way is less valuable, on average, than pulling it. It's clear that Chapman has the swing talent to generate huge power and/or a high batting average on balls in play. Maybe the issue we need to tackle is one of approach. Could changing the level of Chapman's selective aggressiveness help him get fuller value from that talent? Last month at Baseball Prospectus, Robert Orr came up with a brilliant, more nuanced way to measure the quality of players' approaches at the plate. Dubbed SEAGER, in honor of its exemplar, the model improves upon the simple question of whether a hitter differentiates between balls and strikes with their swing rates. It punishes hitters who let hittable pitches go by, especially in certain counts, and it more subtly but more accurately rewards hitters who show smart selectivity. Chapman is one of the best hitters in baseball at simply swinging a lot in the zone and laying off pitches outside it. By SEAGER's reckoning, though, he's not quite as good at balancing the twin mandates of hitting as his in- and out-of-zone swing rates would imply. Maybe Chapman is, in part, leaving damage on the table by watching too many strikes go by. Taking a patient approach at the plate, which is a major focus for Chapman, requires one to let the ball travel a bit. That's why, by and large, more patient hitters tend to use the opposite field more. It's an extreme not quite in evidence here, but recall Joe Mauer and the way teams would wheel around toward left field against him, because he was so reluctant to swing at bad pitches that even good swings usually just pushed the ball into left field. Once one gets used to letting the ball get deep and hitting to the big part of the field, one also starts tending to swing more often at pitches on the outer part of the plate. That was true of Chapman in 2023. With all the bat speed and leverage in his swing, though, using the big part of the field and attacking the ball on the outer third isn't actually the optimal way to hit. Chapman does better not on all those pitches he looks for over the outer half, but when he can cleanly turn on the inside offering. So, the picture is coming into focus. Chapman is covering the strike zone as well as he can, given his relatively high baseline whiff rates, and he draws plenty of walks and he hits the horsefeathers out of the ball. What he's not doing is honing in correctly on the pitches he can best handle. His bat path is unfriendly, especially, to hitting the ball against right-handed pitchers when they locate up in the zone or out away from him, and he's not being aggressive enough on the inner half to avoid needing to cover the outer half. Alas, all of this good information falls somewhere short of answering our vital questions. We can diagnose Chapman's problems, but to what extent any of them are tractable (or whether the Cubs are the right team to help him make the needed adjustments, if they're possible) is very hard to say. It seems like new approaches could be available. It seems like Chapman could pull the ball more without too many of those pulled balls being on the ground. It seems like he could clear the left-field wall at Wrigley Field 30-plus times a year. Double alas: things are not always as they seem. Chapman's defense sets a high short-term floor for his value, but his ceiling is unclear. How much would you be willing to pay to slot him in alongside Swanson and Hoerner? Would Chapman be an adequate primary addition this winter? Let's break it down. View full article

Shoved into trade rumor after trade rumor. Moved around the diamond endlessly, but somehow, less than the team wants. The Cubs' most enticing young slugger is also their most enigmatic value proposition. Let's pin it all down. Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports There's an uncomfortable (and, perhaps, ultimately unreconcilable) tension between Christopher Morel's approach to baseball and the milieu of the modern game. Morel is a smart player, but he keeps things simple. He swings hard. He runs hard. He throws hard. He doesn't have Javier Baez's physical genius for the game, or Ian Happ's calculated, carefully-calibrated approach to maximizing his own value. He works hard to be in great shape, and he studies enough to know what kind of meatball he's hunting. Meanwhile, baseball becomes an increasingly complex and closely-dissected exercise. Morel is a square peg for a shifted elliptical hole. Given that gap between player and broad situation, it's hard to evaluate Morel, and hard to predict his future. That's why, even after two seasons in which he's steadily produced at an above-average rate and delivered power that fits gorgeously with the Cubs' needs, the team might be lukewarm on him for the long term. In 854 career plate appearances, he's hit 42 home runs and equally as many doubles and triples, but he's also struck out in 31.6 percent of his career plate appearances. It still feels like his profile could collapse and his future go dark at any moment. Some of that might be our own problem. Not all feelings are reality. Morel did shore up his contact rate a bit within the strike zone in 2023, as that number rose from 65.2 to 72 percent. He only chases at an average rate outside the zone, so he's able to draw walks at a solid rate, in addition to crashing into the ball with the force of an 'L' train on a pretty regular basis. He can produce pretty valuable offense while running a high strikeout rate. Still. Still! It's hard not to sweat a little when you review those whiff rates, and you can bet teams who might be acquiring him in trade would feel that same unease--or at least pretend it, to gain significant leverage against the Cubs front office. O the 626 player-seasons in which a hitter has had at least 500 swings within the zone over the last three years, Morel's 2022 had the highest whiff rate. That significantly improved 2023 rate? It was still the 18th-worst on this list. It's fair to call his swing-and-miss disastrous, even if it's part of his constellation of traits and (perhaps) a necessary tradeoff for the jolt he puts into the ball. Interestingly, though, that vulnerability isn't as easily exploitable as such things often are. Morel has been extremely consistent against right-handed pitchers across his first two seasons, in a way that defies any conventional wisdom about righty hitters with huge whiff issues. h/t Baseball Reference That means that he can be played (as long as he can stay ahead of the adjustment curve) most days, rather than having to be hidden from tough matchups or tucked away into a platoon. That should really goose his utility to any team, including the Cubs. As baffling as his array of extreme characteristics feels, I've become reasonably confident that Morel will continue to hit at an above-average level in the big leagues. Even last year (as he improved significantly by doing better against left-handed pitchers and against offspeed pitches in general), though, he went into long slumps so rough that he felt unplayable for a fortnight at a time. That brings us to the other, larger, less answerable question about Morel: What is his short- and long-term non-batting value? Infamously, the Cubs' request that Morel get some time at first base in the Dominican Winter League have gone for naught. Unlike affiliated minor leagues, LIDOM is a competitive environment--an analog of MLB, not a serf to it. Morel's team is using him in the way they think gives them the best chance to win, and not based on any developmental prerogatives. Here's what's interesting: it's there, in LIDOM, that Morel is being entrusted with more defensive responsibility. Often, it feels like teams want a player to try a new position to give them greater positional or replacement value, but the Cubs are trying to prep Morel for a job that would put pressure on his bat to improve from where it's been in his first two seasons, while Aguilas Cibaenas are playing him most at third base and a bit at shortstop. That the Cubs would regard that as bad news reflects such a profound and ironclad conviction in Morel's inability to man the left side of the infield in MLB that it forces one to pause and worry. Morel's arm is a rocket. He's a good enough athlete and a seasoned enough infielder that it feels like third base should be the perfect fit, for him and for a team who currently plans to use Patrick Wisdom and Nick Madrigal at the hot corner for 2024. Whence comes their certainty that he will never learn the footwork or achieve the accuracy on throws required to stick at third? And if they're right about it, how can Morel really be part of their plans beyond this season? Most people who have familiarized themselves with Morel seem to agree that his best position is second base. Obviously, that spot is spoken-for with the Cubs for the next few years. That makes it pretty easy, in one sense. The Cubs can best utilize Morel by trading him. Where, and for what, is the big question. What do you see in Morel? What's your level of confidence in his stick, and what do you make of him as a defender and athlete? Jump into the conversation. View full article

Everybody calm down! Now. There. Let's all take a deep breath, here. It's been a bit of a day. Time to reset things a bit. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports In the blizzard, the absolute onslaught of things that have been said and slung about the Cubs' pursuit of Shohei Ohtani as that pursuit has gained steam in the last week, there's something that ought to have been said just a bit more persistently: the Cubs aren't likely to sign Shohei Ohtani. I'm not breaking news with this. As of this writing, the team isn't out on Ohtani or officially moving on to other business. I'm just reinforcing what, perhaps, we all ought to have reinforced more, sooner: The Cubs were never actually likely to sign Ohtani. Even if there weren't an overwhelming favorite to win the bidding, in the long-lurking Dodgers, winning a bidding war like this one (not that there has ever been a bidding war quite like this one) could never be a sound bet. There are too many variables, and some of those variables are billion-dollar franchises who want to beat you, and some of the variables won't even tell you their dog's name. No, you could never rationally believe that a given team (least of all the Cubs) is in a majority position to land Ohtani. So, let's say the Cubs are slowly fading from the bidding. Or let's not; choose your preferred truth. In either case, what we should do is talk about how insane everything went on Tuesday afternoon and evening, and then discuss what the Cubs will do next if and when Ohtani signs elsewhere. After a couple of bad reports from Bob Nightengale on Tuesday, chaos rained down on Cubs Twitter, and several adjacent Twitters. (Never, ever listen to or credit Bob Nightengale. It's not that hard!) Nightengale's report suggested that the Cubs were all but eliminated from the Ohtani sweepstakes, and that it was because they balked at the price tag involved after it exceeded $500 million over 10 years. That would have been worthy of outrage, but it's pretty clear it wasn't true. Between that report and another one from Nightengale about the availability of Christopher Morel in Tyler Glasnow trade talks, Jed Hoyer got rather heated when he encountered Nightengale just ahead of Hoyer's evening press availability. This is the kind of circus that first put the Winter Meetings on the map, decades ago, but every now and then, we need a good reminder that neither we fans nor the (smarter-dressed, better-educated) people behind the curtains and the suite doors have really changed. Nightengale screwed up, twice. Fans reacted like rabid squirrels. Hoyer reacted roughly like the very drunken, red-ass ex-players who used to fill his job, despite what we can safely assume was a sober mind and a nice pair of chinos obscuring the color of his posterior. Once the dust settled, though, the truth that emerged from the haze turned out not to be dreadfully far from what Nightengale said. Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic published a late story talking about how the Cubs will pivot, since their hopes of reeling in the market's biggest fish are dwindling. It's possible for Nightengale to have been wrong, and to have bungled the story in a hurried effort to tell it, without his being far from the reality of the situation at all. The Cubs do seem to be, slowly, bowing out of the Ohtani frenzy, and while it's not because they blanched at spending $500 million, it can't be entirely separated from the money that has been offered to him. As Mooney and Sharma were quick to point out, moving on from Ohtani (last time I'll so qualify this: if they really are moving on) doesn't mean plunging everything into Yoshinobu Yamamoto. On the contrary, and in keeping with the tone of national reporting for the last week and a half, they affirmed that Yamamoto is probably New York-bound, and that the unstoppable inflation of his market has taken him out of the range where the Cubs are likely to have interest. The big question left, after all that, is: Uh-oh. What now? (Yes, the uh-oh is part of the question.) It seems as though the first answer to that question is Glasnow. The Cubs really do seem infatuated with him. The rumors connecting them to the Rays on Glasnow deals haven't abated for over two weeks, and the fit is a pretty intriguing one--even if Glasnow isn't the type of starter in whom the Cubs usually prefer to invest. Morel, we can now safely say, is not part of those conversations. If a deal comes to fruition, it will center on the Cubs' bevy of young pitchers. Glasnow, alone, doesn't move the needle much. Even those who have been very excited at the prospect of landing him for the last month (or for much longer) will admit that he was always part of a multi-move maneuver, in their heads. The Cubs need to bolster their lineup, add another solid arm for the rotation (especially if they trade a viable one to acquire Glasnow), and beef up their bullpen. That's been true all along, and isn't dependent on their interest in Ohtani. Without Ohtani (or Yamamoto, or Juan Soto--who seems most likely to end up with the Yankees) as the crown jewel of the winter, though, it becomes more daunting. It feels like a very heavy lift, and the thing is, it's been that kind of lift this whole time, but Ohtanimania has been distracting many people from that fact. We got rumors connecting the Cubs to Rhys Hoskins yesterday. That one makes a world of sense. We got speculation about them having interest in Matt Chapman, contingent upon Ohtani going elsewhere, which makes a moderate amount of sense. Hoskins's power and the Cubs' need at first base make them perfect potential partners. Chapman's asking price is going to be so much higher as to make the fit much more complicated, but he's a right-handed power hitter at a position of need for the team, too, and he adds phenomenal defense to the stew. At the end of the night, a handful of relievers had signed on a trickle of short-term deals elsewhere in the league. Each was below any threshold at which you can plausibly get mad at a team for not jumping in and snagging a player instead, even if you love them. The Cubs'major relief targets remain on the open market. So does possible trade target Emmanuel Clase. In addition to Glasnow, Shane Bieber, Logan Gilbert, Framber Valdez, and others remain on their incumbent teams, with varying degrees of expectation that they'll be traded. My favorite free-agent target of the moment, and really of the last month, is Shota Imanaga, the less expensive (admittedly, older, less well-rounded, and riskier) alternative to Yamamoto for high-dollar import shoppers. Mooney and Sharma mentioned the Cubs taking a more active interest in him, as they turn away from Ohtani and Yamamoto. Other good free agents also remain, though, including the likes of Jordan Montgomery. Because the Cubs are far from being alone in having had their offseason held hostage for the last month by Ohtani's bizarre approach to this process, they also haven't seen any avenues they were especially interested in exploring be closed to them yet. The next week will be critical, but nothing is lost, yet. Today, any dreams of the team signing the biggest stars on the market should be a bit dimmed, but then, they never should have been held quite as brightly as many were holding them. Here, in reality, there are plenty of non-glowing but acceptable options available. View full article

He's definitely a "Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" kind of candidate to sign. That, as it happens, is my motto for baseball offseasons. We all fall in love with particular avenues or solutions, and I think it's right and desirable for teams to identify guys they genuinely believe in when making big investments. But often, 12 other teams also want a given guy, and it's important to develop second and third options you like, at the right prices. The sign of a team that consistently wins is always having and nimbly plucking those fallback plans.

In an unbearably arid news desert, the latest mirage that has fans pouring sand into their mouths like water is a report connecting the Cubs to the erstwhile Phillies slugger. It's interesting, right up front, that the sides have considered deals that run longer than a single season. That underscores a key difference between Hoskins and the player to whom he has most often been compared in the first month of his free agency, Cody Bellinger. Unlike Bellinger, who needed to prove he could regain some measure of the greatness he achieved before a couple of seasons marred by injuries, Hoskins isn't coming off a down year. Rather, he's coming off one that was deleted by injury altogether, but in a way that teams can feel confident will be fully behind him by the time he reports to spring training. Whereas Bellinger had previously-demonstrated MVP upside and humongous upside if he could get back to free agency after showcasing it (soon to be affirmed by a payday around $200 million this winter), Hoskins is much older (31 next March, while Bellinger was 27 last winter) and has a much lower ceiling. On the other hand, he figures to continue to be an above-average hitter with very good power for at least the next few years, so the starting point of any conversation about his services for 2024 is relatively high. He doesn't need to make good, the way Bellinger did, and indeed, there's much less to gain by his trying to do so. Therefore, a multi-year partnership is plausible. From the Cubs' perspective, it might even be preferable. Because the chance of a huge year that earns him a Kyle Schwarber- or Nick Castellanos-level slugger contract still exists, though, Hoskins (via Boras) is likely to want the right to opt out after a year, just as Conforto had that right built into the two-year deal he signed with the Giants last winter. Let's set aside the question of what kind of deal would actually come together, for the moment. Instead, we can focus on what Hoskins would bring to the table for the Cubs. Beyond filling the team's current hole at first base, Hoskins would deliver the combination of power and patience that was missing from the lineup for long stretches of last season. For his career, he has a walk rate of 13.5 percent, and he's never been south of 10 percent in a season. He strikes out more than an average hitter, but not by as much as one would expect, given his power and the willingness to work such deep counts. The specific thing that makes Hoskins a great fit for the Cubs is that he hits the ball hard, in the air, to his pull field with great regularity. That (along, ideally, with a disciplined approach, which he also possesses) is the recipe for sustainable slugging, especially for a right-handed hitter who can take aim at Wrigley Field's shallow left-center power alley. It's how Hoskins has swatted 148 career homers, and why he should continue to be a 30-homer bopper for at least a few more seasons. Let's illustrate the point, and how he derives the benefits of that approach at a lesser cost than most. Here's a scatter plot of all hitters with at least 250 batted balls since the start of 2022. Along the x-axis, we have the percentage of their batted balls that were pulled at a launch angle of 10 degrees or higher. On the y-axis, we have their average exit velocity on such batted balls. The red star (enlarged to make sure he stands out) is Hoskins, who ranks higher than most in generating those batted balls and in how hard he hits them when he gets them. To the right of it, in red, note Patrick Wisdom. As you can infer from the identity of that point, there's a cost to selling out for any more pulled fly balls than Hoskins generates. Wisdom strikes out at a rate that perpetually threatens his viability in the everyday lineup. Hoskins is able to keep his relatively low, for someone with so much power, by not overdoing it. Below and slightly left of the star is another red point, partially obscured. That's Cody Bellinger. He doesn't sell out to pull fly balls as much as Hoskins does, but by trying so hard to avoid striking out, he gives up velocity. He averaged just over 91 miles per hour on his pulled flies, which is still within the realm where pulling it in the air is valuable but not to the point where the ball is usually going to go when you get ahold of it. Finally, look well to the left of the star, but slightly above it. That red point is Christopher Morel. Far from being obsessed with pulling or launching the ball in a particular angle, Morel is all about maximizing exit velocity. That's why he averages nearly 97 miles per hour when he connects to the pull field and in the air, and that's why most of the balls he hits that way are no-doubt doubles or homers. Because it's not what he's going up looking to do, though, he doesn't do it all that often. Hoskins, then, represents the sweet spot. That's true in this very narrow regard, but it's also true in a broader, more important way. He could be the perfect target for the Cubs in free agency, because he fits their situation, their ballpark, and their team approach. If this deal eventually comes to fruition, set expectations a little lower than what we just saw from Bellinger, but slot him right into the cleanup or fifth spot in the batting order and feel confident about it. What do you think of Hoskins? Would you prefer a one-year deal with him, or a commitment of three years or more, if he's open to doing one without opt-outs? Is there another first baseman you'd prioritize? Leave a comment to further the discussion. View full article

Yesterday, we discussed whether the man the Cubs acquired in the David Robertson trade back in 2022 could play an important role out of the team's bullpen in 2024. Today, let's dig a bit deeper into his stuff, to better anchor that conversation to reality. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports The good news is that Ben Brown has a genuinely unique fastball. The lanky righthander has a high release point, good velocity, and plenty of movement, and it's particularly unusual to see the combination of the three that he sports. He marries that heater with a bevy of other offerings, including two or three different breaking balls (which ones they are depends on who you ask and when you take your measurements) and a rudimentary changeup. The bad news, in a sense, is that Brown has a genuinely unique fastball. There are some reasons why most pitchers don't have the combination of characteristics that Brown has on the pitch, and they're not all matters of genetics. In 2023, fewer than half of the fastballs Brown threw were in the strike zone, which would have been in the lowest 16 percent of MLB for fastball zone rate. It's easy to dismiss that as more of an item to check off his developmental checklist--firm up fastball command--than a problem with the way he throws, but realistically, those characteristics help drive the difficulty he has with landing the pitch in the zone. Brown releases the ball from about 6.75 feet above the ground, even coming down the mound as he delivers. Only a fistful of pitchers release their fastball higher, and doing so creates some problems for the hitter. By general acclaim, Jordan Montgomery's similarly high release point is part of what makes him so tough to pick up. The same is true of Blake Snell, Pete Fairbanks, and Justin Verlander. However, throwing from that high forces a pitcher to steer the ball downhill rather steeply. Teams have fallen in love with Vertical Approach Angle (VAA) over the last few years as a way of better evaluating fastball movement. Those who prize that often prefer lower release points, because they tend to lead to flatter fastballs at the top of the zone. Guys like Paul Sewald and Jose Cuas miss more bats with their fastballs because their arm angles scream sink, so their riding fastballs seem to hop over swings. Operating at extremes is a good thing, in this regard. It's ok that Brown's VAA will never be especially impressive, because by using such a high release, he produces a different, harder-to-quantify but equally real source of deception. The problem is that that release point also creates a related but separate issue: it's hard to throw strikes with a pitch that wants to rise and run, from that high off the ground. Hence Brown's difficulty filling up the zone with the heater, and his inflated walk totals in Iowa last year. Then there's the matter of the movement he generates, itself. Most hurlers with such high release points stay behind the ball and spin it so well that it resists gravity more en route to the plate than Brown's does. Of those with similar slots, the only ones whose movement numbers are similar to Brown's are lefties who don't throw nearly as hard as he does: Austin Gomber, Will Smith, and Brandon Williamson. Brown's height plays into this. He gets more armside movement on his pitch, for instance, because throwing from that height doesn't require him to come over the top as much as it does for others. His arm slot isn't quite as high as you'd think, given the raw release point. Again, that makes him unique, and uniqueness is good. It'll only matter, though, if he can harness that uniqueness and operationalize it for use at the highest level of the sport. He got whiffs on an encouraging percentage of swings with the fastball in Triple A in 2023, but translating that to MLB requires him to keep working hard to improve. He has to be in the zone more, so that he can get the same whiff rate on swings while inducing more swings, and being in the zone will be vital to getting the chases he needs to make the breaking stuff play up the way it should. All of the above makes using him as an MLB reliever in 2024 even more interesting. First of all, because this unique fastball gives him some funk that should lend him effectiveness in a limited role, he can contribute there while he works on polishing his game. Secondly, working with Tommy Hottovy and the team's big-league coaching staff throughout the year is likely to give him the best possible chance to solve this riddle. Thirdly, the (likely tough) feedback provided by big-league hitters might help him understand the depth of needed adjustments. Finally, though, he could also make sure that whatever changes he does make are friendly to the effectiveness of the rest of his repertoire. Brown might be limited to a bullpen role forever, because of this unique but problematic fastball. His best chance to avoid that fate, though, is probably to get some time as an apprentice in relief, the better to figure out how he could work as a starter before facing the real challenge of doing that at the highest level. Let's kick this subject around some more. Let us know what you've seen from Brown's fastball, or just weigh in on his rightful place in a much more crowded Cubs pitching hierarchy than we've been accustomed to in the last half-decade or so. View full article

By broad consensus, the Cubs need more pitching depth to avoid a reprise of the disappointing finish they experienced in 2023. Given the track record of their new manager, one partial solution to the problem might be to do something their old one refused to. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports The Cubs didn't ultimately decide to move on from David Ross until they realized they had a real chance to get Craig Counsell as his replacement. For many fans and neutral observers, though, the Rubicon was really crossed during the late stages of the season, when Ross responded to some late-season call-ups by letting young players waste away on the bench. "We're not developing players right now," Ross said in mid-September, when asked whether Pete Crow-Armstrong would play regularly after his arrival from Triple-A Iowa. The underlying mentality--that the priority was winning games down the stretch, not giving Crow-Armstrong time to learn and adjust to big-league pitching--was sound, but it was so woefully incomplete as to be counterproductive. A good manager develops players and pursues the playoffs at the same time. They're not insecure or uncomfortable with complexity. They think in pages, rather than paragraphs or simple sentences, and they know how to juggle torches and chew gum at the same time. One of the reasons why the Brewers have cruised past the Cubs more often than not over the last half-decade is that Counsell is that kind of multi-track mind. He's always been better at balancing the competing interests and contradictory tasks that fall to a manager of a team trying to be good both in the present and in the future. To take one example, along with longtime pitching coach Chris Hook, Counsell masterfully onboarded and utilized some young Brewers hurlers during his tenure there--including by having some starting pitching prospects work, first, as relievers. Counsell is far from the inventor of this developmental stratagem. It's almost as old as the professional game, and Earl Weaver popularized it during his long run of success with the Orioles in the 1970s. In Weaver's book, Weaver on Strategy, he gives this as his Eighth Law: "The best place for a rookie pitcher is in long relief." He believed in easing guys with starter upside into the mix as penmen. Rhetorically, that's not far from what Ross said in September. In practice, though, Weaver was being more open-minded, and more proactive. He made his evaluations by giving players a chance to sink or to swim, and he trusted the Baltimore higher-ups to put talented people under his charge so that he wasn't placing that probationary opportunity in undeserving places. Counsell's way of working in the likes of Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes was different than what Weaver did with guys like Dennis Martinez and Scott McGregor, because the game is far different now. In 2018, Burnes made 30 appearances with the Brewers, and 20 of them last three outs or fewer. That still leaves 10, and he did stretch out to as many as three innings, but in short, Counsell and the Brewers brought up a highly-touted pitching prospect to work mostly in short relief, as a means of apprenticing with the parent club. Woodruff worked as much more of a true long man that year, even making four spot starts along the way. These weren't any kind of capitulation on promising arms. Using them in relief was just a convenient way to kill two birds with one stone: deepening the team's bullpen, and giving Counsell and Hook much more thorough and intimate knowledge of both hurlers than they'd have had before. A team fortunate enough to develop a surfeit of good pitchers should let some of them reach the majors in relief, as a means of managing growth and dispersing opportunities, and because it's the best way to leverage that extremely valuable strength. Let's talk, then, about Ben Brown and Cade Horton. The Cubs view both as starting pitchers, in the long run. If the team has a successful winter, though, neither will be in line for starts any time in the first half in Chicago. Maybe the highest short-term use of them is to promote them to the big-league bullpen and lend the club that depth and swing-and-miss that would otherwise be in deficit without some significant external investment. Is bringing these two top pitching prospects up to buttress the bullpen the right way to address the team's reliever needs going into 2024? Or should they take the plunge and pay for someone like Josh Hader or Robert Stephenson? Let's weigh the options together. View full article

I don't think the third piece would be quite on that level. Maybe more like Canario or Arias, depending on their appetite for risk and upside. Or maybe it's Brown or Wicks and Shaw, and they don't want Morel at all. But yeah, the potential fits are equal parts fascinating and improbable. Sure would make a compelling new roster though.

Names are flying through the MLB trade rumor mill on the eve of the Winter Meetings. One stands out, though, as both an especially unexpected and an especially impactful potential target for the Cubs. That would be a fascinating trade market, and as enticing a target for the Cubs as has yet been named. Valdez, 30, ran out of steam in a visible and worrisome way late in this season, but he's one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. In the age of the 160-inning ace, he's averaged just a whisker under 200 innings over the last two regular seasons, and another 37 frames across the two postseasons. In the last four seasons, he's received Cy Young votes three times. With two years of team control left and a projected salary between $12 million and $13 million for 2024 via arbitration, Valdez would cost more to acquire than Tyler Glasnow, Corbin Burnes, or Shane Bieber. He's also worth much more. One of the elite ground-ball guys in the game, he fired a no-hitter in 2023, and dazzled in the 2022 World Series, contributing as much as anyone to the Astros pulling out that championship. Lest his rough second half and his age worry you, he threw harder than ever in 2023, with his sinker averaging north of 95 miles per hour. It's the curveball that makes Valdez great. The pitch is nicknamed 'the Ax', and that's fitting, because its violent downward chop cuts through hitters so ruthlessly. Few breaking balls are both bat-missers and ground-ball getters, but Valdez's curve manages that trick. He was almost a two-pitch starting southpaw (like Drew Smyly and Justin Steele) until a few years ago, but he's brought along (first) his changeup and (especially in 2023) his cutter to such an extent that he's now a fairly legitimate four-pitch guy. The cutter firmed up significantly after an in-season mental adjustment, and works a lot like a slider off his sinker against fellow lefties. Again, the Astros are trying to thread the needle. Any trade for Valdez would need to include young talent they believe will help them in the short term, as well as in years beyond 2025. Christopher Morel probably isn't a great fit there, though he could certainly find playing time in the short term and they could try to groom him as the replacement for Alex Bregman after Bregman hits free agency next fall. It's likely that the lead piece in a trade would have to be someone like Jordan Wicks or Ben Brown--a level above the top pitching names the Cubs figure to make available in trades for Glasnow or Bieber. With Valdez, though, the Cubs' pressure to add to the starting rotation would essentially disappear. They'd have one of the game's most durable aces, and someone from whom Justin Steele might still learn a trick or two. Any other additions the team made--be it Shohei Ohtani, Josh Hader, re-signing Cody Bellinger, or something completely off our radar--would get more exciting with Valdez as the anchor of the rotation. It's worth discussing, even if it's unlikely that the deal will actually materialize. What do you think? Is two years enough club control to make you willing to trade Wicks or Brown? Do you prefer Valdez, Glasnow, Bieber, or a bigger splash in the free-agent starter market than the Cubs appear to have planned? View full article

On Friday, Jeff Passan rolled out his preview of the Winter Meetings at ESPN+. Within it were several juicy Cubs tidbits, not least an unexpected connection to one of the market's top left-handed starters. Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports It's true that this is the first time we've heard the Cubs tied to Jordan Montgomery, the erstwhile Yankees and Cardinals southpaw who made such a strong impression by fronting the Rangers rotation in October. That doesn't make this actually surprising, though, because the guy does a lot of the things the Cubs want starting pitchers to do. As much as fans have fixated on the apparent need for more whiffs from the starting rotation in 2024, that's not necessarily the Cubs' priority. Contrariwise, the team prizes durability, pitchability, and the ability to fill up the strike zone. It's not by pure coincidence that they went out into last winter's free-agent market and came back with Jameson Taillon. It's not an accident that Kyle Hendricks is the final on-field holdover of the 2016 team. It's not Justin Steele's internal wiring that led to the halving of his walk rate and his command-over-stuff breakout in 2023. Whereas many teams lock in on specific, stuff-oriented pitch characteristics, the Cubs prefer a holistic and fundamentally old-school approach--even if they use extremely modern and quantitative methods to make sure that approach works. Montgomery fits into all of that gorgeously. He runs below-average strikeout rates, which will dent his value on the market even as his postseason brilliance gooses it. He also limits walks and induces lots of weak or harmless contact, though. Moreover, he takes the ball every fifth day. Since the start of 2020, Montgomery has made 104 regular-season starts--more than all but eight other pitchers in MLB. He's 19th in innings pitched over that span. While the Cubs have quietly become great at finding high-velocity, great-stuff arms in relief, they continue to prefer things other than raw power or movement in the rotation. That's why Montgomery, who sits right around 93 miles per hour with a sinker that doesn't really miss bats (but which he does command very well), figures to appeal to them as much as to almost any other team in MLB. I think the team believes that some of the movements that generate extreme velocities and elite spin also tend to generate physical problems. They believe in guys with pitching-specific athleticism, who can succeed without pushing the limits of their tissues as hard as some others do. It's not as though Montgomery is without an injury history. He underwent Tommy John surgery five years ago. Other than that, though, he has an impressively clean record. The only starts he's missed since coming back from that operation were when he was shelved with COVID in 2021. When on the mound, he also pitches in a distinctly Cubs style. Though he utilizes a sinker as his primary fastball, Montgomery works with the pitch up in the zone, just as Kyle Hendricks and other Cubs have recently had some success doing. It doesn't miss bats, but it induces weak contact and plenty of ground balls. By contrast, and partially because of the combination of his over-the-top delivery fastball command, his changeup and curveball each miss plenty of bats. The curve isn't one of those hissing, 3,000-RPM things, though. It has perfect spin mirroring with the sinker, but tumbles, a bit the way Drew Smyly's works. It doesn't back up, as Smyly's sometimes does, but it has the same unorthodox hook-behind-the-navel effect on hitters. His changeup is especially funky. Of the 139 pitchers who threw at least 200 changeups in 2023, only six had less arm-side run on that pitch than Montgomery, and only two got less drop on it. What he throws is a true, floating straight change, a pitch that befuddles right-handed batters because it looks so much like his sinker out of the hand and then feels like it never gets to them. The Cubs (led by Hendricks's famous cut-change) had the changeups with the least run in the league last year, and they were sixth in changeups with the least downward movement. None of this means that Montgomery will actually sign with the Cubs. They have irons in many fires when it comes to upgrading the rotation, and they also have to bolster their lineup this winter, all without breaking the bank too badly. Still, it shouldn't shock anyone to see these parties mentioned in connection with one another, because they could not be a more serendipitous match on a pure profile level. Dating apps would run these two at each other like zoo breeders locking endangered animals in one small habitat. Whether that actually results in consummation is uncertain even for Farmers Only and the zoo, though, so we shouldn't expect it to be automatic here, either. View full article