Stratos

What scares me about the Boras vs Jed battle is that the Cubs need Bellinger/Chapman to be ready for ST and OD more than those guys need to be ready for ST/OD. You sign a longterm deal and the stats from this season don't matter. Boras is in a good leverage position over the Cubs and other teams. He knows what he's doing. Waiting on one of these Boras clients also means Jed doesn't know how much left he has to spend on the pen or another bat etc. But even if we sign one of these guys in March they'll be ready by early May. Missing them for 1 month is a loss, but not a total loss. Baseball needs an offseason deadline.

We have Busch, the poor man's Hoskins, who fits the Ricketts' spending tolerance better...that tolerance being league minimum salary 😂. This year i'd rather have Hoskins but longterm Busch is still pretty nice. Gave up a good prospect for him though. I'm glad to have another lefty power bat, so maybe Hoskins wasn't the ideal fit that way. Unfortunately the Brewers actually signed a decent player. Oh well. Maybe the Cubs don't grab another corner INF/DH bat, but I think they may., someone decent coming on a good value leftover on the FA heap. They do have Mervis, Canario, among others to try at DH, but I think they do better as depth/bench pieces over OD starters.

Quoted for truth.

There's not much back and forth right now I imagine. It's a staring contest right now. Boras has a general number he wants and teams aren't matching it, so he's waiting them out until they match it or get close. Someone like Paxton who can only demand a short-term or 1 year deal has to sign sooner than later because this year is important to his earnings next offseason. A guy like Bellinger or Snell etc who will sign a longterm deal doesn't have to worry much about his stats being affected by a late ST this season, the money over the next several years is much more important. Snell can wait until the trade deadline if he wants like Kimbrel, it doesn't really matter. Burning 13m of a half season of salary is better than leaving 20m on the table. Hoskins probably signs before the other Boras guys. Bryce Harper only signed in March.

Well they did it last year so not going to assume they won't do it again. Fulmer + Jonathan Villar incoming.

Jed has a number he wants. Boras has a number. Who blinks first? We'll be here until the all star break.

Don't underestimate the power of Ricketts cheapness.

OH MY horsefeathers GOD A BORAS CLIENT IS ABOUT TO BE SIGNED. Paxton to Dodgers, not inked yet.

Here's how you can break Boras: a big market team like the Cubs waits for any substantial Boras FA to sign with another team late in the offseason (e.g. after mid-January) that they never had any intention on signing and make a fake leak to a major journalist that they had offered e.g. 30 million more than the winning bid the player actually signed for (a total lie) but were unwilling to wait out Boras because they wanted to get their main roster pieces ready for ST. This will make the player upset at Boras for leaving a lot of money on the table by waiting too long. Other Boras clients will notice this and in future offseasons some Boras clients will insist that he not wait late to sign. If Boras is going to continually plant lies in the media to gain negotiation leverage then the Cubs should do the same.

I know what they're doing, it looks like they're trying to stay under the LT line. You don't do that with a 10.5m reliever. So far all they've done is signed the cheapest "quality" SP available and filled 1B with a rookie at league minimum plus signed a reliever who had a 5.02 ERA last season. Almonte agreed to a 1.9m deal to avoid arbitration in Sept., looks like he's meant as one of our new pen "upgrades". They'll probably sign one of Chapman/Bellinger, add a decent reliever, maybe another usable bat that isn't too expensive, and slide under the LT again. I hope i'm wrong but it's not like we haven't seen this act before. All this hot air about the Cubs going to be a big spender the rest of the offseason is probably just Boras spreading his usual nonsense for leverage.

This really sucks. If it wasn't that serious he probably would have kept it quiet. Hopefully he gets through it.

Relievers are volatile but it's not random, it's just smaller samples. The better the pitcher the higher probability they'll perform well. We can't just count of randomness landing in our favour, not a winning strategy. An extra reliever isn't that big of deal, just a few million.

I said they sucked for 3 out of the 6 months of the year, especially in the late innings. April, May, and Sept. I didn't say they didn't have a closer, I said they didn't have a closer going into ST or on OD through April and May, which cost them wins. Sure Ross is at fault for continuing to throw Fulmer into closer situations he wasn't performing well in. I have no idea exactly who they should acquire, that's not my job. If we assume Wicks gets the #5 SP spot, the Top 8 guys in the pen right now looks like: Alzolay, Merryweather, Leiter, Smyly, Cuas, Wesneski, Assad, Almonte Other likely candidates on the 40-man are: Rucker, Thompson, Palencia, Little. They have a few Iowa arms as well. Everyone but Alzolay, Merryweather, Leiter, and Little project with ERA's above 4 because they just aren't that good and have some kind of big question marks, as does Little with the walk issues. We can swap Little for e.g. Almonte on the MLB roster. Alzolay is injury prone, some other guys will inevitably get injured as always happens, and the 2nd group of RHP above aren't exactly quality depth arms. We have basically the same group of arms from last season. 1 new arm replaces Rucker. The pen is ok but doesn't appear as a strength on a team already with a pretty average rotation. We should do better than "ok".

I never mentioned a dollar number needed to improve the pen, and definitely not 35m.

Some juicy juiceburgers to update status of top remaining FA: https://www.mlb.com/news/free-agent-market-update-january-2024 And.: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/cubs-notes-bellinger-hendricks-bullpen.html

He threw his 4-seamer and chanegup each about 29% of the time in the MLB. His 4-seamer got absolutely destroyed by hitters. The sinker did a lot better. Maybe the 4-seamer makes the change-up better because they look similar, compared to the sinker, I don't know. So he needs a decent fastball, at least from what he showed last season. Between AAA and MLB last year he had about a 7.0 K/9 over 67 IP, which is troubling.

Most people on the other board disagreed with me last Spring Training when I kept repeating that the Cubs were weak in the late innings including closer. They said we'd "figure it out". Well I was right and we threw wins down the toilet the first 2 months trying to "figure it out" and the lack of pen depth hurt us in Sept when Jed didn't acquire enough pen help at the deadline. We had a bad pen last year for 3 months of the season and when it was effective it was held together with duct tape and nothing has changed on the roster so far besides acquiring a below average arm from the Dodgers that they didn't want because he's not very good. He can compete for a spot in ST but he shouldn't be penciled in for anything. They lost Fulmer and 1 arm is going to solve their pen issues? They can add 1 good arm and then they're 1 injury away from being ineffective again. Rucker sucks. Our lefties Smyly is meh and Little is unknown and walks lots of guys. Cuas has good stuff but walks guys. Almonte has avg stuff and walks guys. Leiter Jr was abused last summer and faded down the stretch, will he be effective again? Alzolay was abused also and got hurt, will he get hurt again? Wesneski is all over the place, Thompson looked bad last year. Assad can be solid in a swing role. Brown might stay stretched out in Iowa. If our strategy is to just throw random arms at the wall and hope a handful stick i'm not enthused by this. The pen is not a strength and probably won't be with just 1 addition.

If the Cubs stay under the LT, which I think they will, then both Bellinger and Chapman doesn't make sense. If they expanded their budget over the LT then yes I'd like both.

My point wasn't that we should have traded Darvish, my point was that it may be possible a player can be traded even if they have a NTC.

They still need to buy relievers

I'll take as many good players as the budget can afford. Guys like Bellinger and Chapman usually come at a reasonable # of years, unlike elite players. Even if they have a NTC you can often trade them too if you want to make room for a prospect down the line to add surplus. They traded Darvish.

Wouldn't it be nice if the Cubs signed both Bellinger and Chapman? Probably would just push us about 25m over the tax line and under the 2nd line if they also wanted to acquire a solid reliever FA or 2.

I'd bet Bellinger could play 3B and 2B also if he had to. Belli at 3B anyone? Haha.

I agree with you about Bellinger's versatility. That ups his value and isn't reflected in his WAR. He also played 1B for over 50 games last season that actually reduced his WAR because of the big penalty given to playing 1B over CF. If he had only played CF last season his WAR would have been around 4.5 WAR or possibly higher. If Chapman doesn't come with a NTC then he can always be dealt in a couple of seasons if needed. But as others have mentioned Nico is a FA after 2026 and we'll have potentially Shaw, Morel, and Triantos to replace him at 2B. Nico isn't a guy i'd rush to trade though, I'd be fine holding on to him and just getting a QA pick for him. The biggest mark on Chapman IMO is the age on a 4-5 year contract, he'll be 31 in April. On a 6 year deal we'll have Bellinger through his age 33 season. He's quite young for a FA.

There's some appeal there but also an extreme flyball pitcher, which isn't easy to fundamentally change. Also an unsustainable BABIP last year. Steamer projections are very average (3.80 ERA).