Matt W

I love this concept, particularly from the perspective of hedging risk around Mervis. It could be downright dangerous to throw in the towel on him , as one of your offensive solutions , going forward. However, it’d also be foolhardy to bank in that , by any means, irrespective of how well he might do in Aug/Sep. As fans , it’s easy to focus on slotting guys neatly in everyday positional roles and think pretty linearly. Right now, Jed/Carter need to be maniacally focused on gettting more offense/slug on that 26 for next year and not spend a lot of time worrying about where guys exactly are going to play-per se. Hoerner, Swanson, Happ, Suzuki, and Amaya(fingers crossed)should be slotted in for relatively regular duty at the same position. Outside of that, they’re a ton of ABs to go around . To Matt’s credit, he was all over JDM for the Cubs this past offseason. On the surface , it didn’t seem like a perfect fit , due to his extreme defensive “limitations”, but Matt’s argument was that this O needed production wherever it could find it. For all I/we know, JDM got an offer from us but preferred LAD but I think you get the point. Matt, I have another fun/crazy article for you to write in Nov: why the Cubs should acquire Yo-Yo. One year remaining at $25 mil with a team option for ‘25 that could be a golden ticket if their hitting infrastructure can “fix” him. Again, given the FA landscape coupled with the mkt for arb-level talent drying up(teams getting smarter here-ala ATL), Jed will need to be creative-not his strong suit.

There are going to be limited shots to acquire transformative talent. Need to take their shots when they get them. Someone like Rhys Hoskins isn’t going to solve their problems….(nothing against him)

This entire series of pieces is a ton of fun. One issue that I have with this scenario is that, with a few exceptions, buyer beware on prospect for vet talent deals with Friedman. He has a real knack for avoiding those wince-inducing prospect deals. That said, we need to get out of the mindset of needing to “win” trades. It takes two to tango but I’d much prefer to gin up a low-key bidding war amongst the competing teams of the AL East, particularly TB & BAL. Both of those teams have some really interesting MLB or right-near MLB guys of interest (Mead, Manzardo, Wesburg, Mayo-to name a few).

Yep. Even the really smart, well-informed people in Cubs Twitterland become a bit of an echo chamber. This season, it seems like that group, broadly speaking, has been a bit blind to the structural shortcomings of this roster. It might be interesting to compare a potential Steele trade to that of Q in ‘17.In fairness, that trade was made as part of an explicit rebuild but some of the same conditions hold. You had a very solid , if not great(don’t @ me) asset,several years of cost control, and a counterparty that * desperately* needed the asset. Id submit that Steele likley can’t be expected to be this good going forward for a number of reasons that Matt laid out. Furthermore, the cost control dynamic really opens things up to some clubs , with limited checkbooks, that are desperate to make some serious playoff noise( TB, BAL, TEX, et al)….

Don’t see many paths to get the kind of bats that can help reshape this offense. In post-WS era, they’ve veered too far in the other direction, in terms of their preferred offensive profile. Given Steele’s cost control, it brings a lot of other clubs into the potential mix, to Matt’s point.

I’d also suggest Amaya warrants more serious consideration in Tier 2z