Stratos

There's no point in judging this offseason until the start of ST and OD. Let's hope they at least spend up to around the CBT line or above.

I'm sure there's still multiple teams wanting to dump (trade) players for salary reasons before ST or OD. If Jed is playing this like the trade deadline it could go down to the wire haha.

If the Cubs have more or less similar talent level as 2023 but upgrade the pen and the SP do a bit better, like Taillon, there's a chance they could hit 90 wins. Their depth in Iowa will be even better this year, pretty elite AAA depth frankly. The Cubs had a good run differential in 2023, 4th in NL. The Phillies scored 15 fewer runs than the Cubs and had 90 wins. The Cubs had a better run differential than the Brewers, who could lock down close leads while the Cubs had major problem for half the year. I think they add 5 runs easy if they had a better pen in April/May and Sept.

I'm not worried about the EV because of the 2-strike contact approach as you say. But I do think a lot of weakly hit balls on 2-strikes fell in to the point of him being a bit lucky. Everything just seemed to fall in. His BABIP is a bit high but nothing extraordinary however.

I could see something around what Swanson got. 6 years would be great, through age 33, but 7 years is ok. He lost some WAR playing a lot of 1B last year. Probably more like 4.5 WAR last year. But I think he overachieved last year, he seemed to have a lot of luck on base hits. His expected stats were a huge drop from the actual stats.

None.

It's not perfect. It doesn't take into account quality of contact.

It's a good extension, it's pretty cheap. They can always look to trade him in a few years before he really starts to decline. He'd still be under fairly cheap control and probably get more back because of it.

Must suck to be a site like this one and Bleacher Nation to come up with articles with nothing to write about haha.

You said he's "one of the healthiest pitchers in the game". He's 31 and has only pitched 2 full seasons because of injuries. He beat his xFIP by almost 1.5 runs this past season, which is why I said he overachieved. He's still a very good pitcher though and has great stuff. Can't see him coming cheap if he just won a Cy Young.

He's not that healthy though. Seems like he overachieved last year. But yeah he'd be nice.

If Boras puts himself and his clients into a corner by waiting near the end of the offseason to sign as a deliberate strategy to try to get teams to panic (like many Cubs fans have been doing all offseason) and overpay, then why is this a bad strategy for Jed to do the same? Jed holds the leverage. Cubs have a ton of prospects to deal from in trades, and so Hoyer can simply tell Boras "I don't want your client, he's too expensive so i'm going to pursue trades instead". But for a player/pitcher whose market has dried up he has no other options other than waiting for the trade deadline. I don't believe Jed is going to put himself in a situation where he has to become desperate, and he's not going to panic. Like I've said, the Cubs have options this offseason and can remain flexible. Jed's gone down to the wire many times over the years at the trade deadline and offseason so we have to assume he knows what he's doing.

Who needs a CF or OF?

Cubs came in and signed Swanson for a good value when he didn't have much leverage left after Turner/Bogaerts signed. The Cubs may be trying to do the same here with SP. Snell, Montgomery, Stroman, Imanaga. I'd be fine with any of them. The trade market also exists.

If Breslow found him intriguing enough to sign i'd figure the Cubs did too. The AAV may have been too high above what the Cubs wanted to spend on him. A bunch of quality SP have signed so far this offseason, that should give us a gauge. Pitchers only can get what teams are willing to pay. xFIP makes Giolito look better than he probably is.

Hard to get excited about back-to-back 4.90 seasons and an extreme flyball rate.

I think it would be best for the Cubs if Stroman didn't opt out. I think the Cubs are in a situation that's different than the last couple of offseasons because most of their best prospects are in AAA or AA and pretty close. I think they'll go short-term on as many guys as they can, but that may just not be possible at every position. If the Cubs sign a SP longterm it will be a rotation with only 2 open spots going forward to fit Horton, Wicks, Brown, Assad, Wesneski etc. unless they go with a 6-man rotation. Caissie, PCA, Mervis, Canario, McGeary, Murray, Horton, Wicks, Brown etc are all probably going to be in Iowa to start the year or on the MLB team. Shaw, Alcantara, and Triantos likely start the year in AA, which means they're close too and could get called in up in a pinch like Morel and Hoerner were (though less likely because of the amount of depth at AAA). Honestly it wouldn't shock me if they didn't sign any FA for more than 2 years, unless a great deal falls into their lap that they could flip in future seasons if needed, or keep and flip one of Happ, Suzuki, Taillon etc in the future. I'd be surprised if a significant trade involving prospects doesn't happen before Opening Day, probably for a short-term player/pitcher.

Yeah but you're still losing a prospect. If a player loses value that value is lost and can't be recovered, you can only spend more than you would have to compensate. Ricketts has never really let the FO do that. He's thrown them several extra million when needed in a pinch but not 20-30 million every year.

If the Cubs spent like the Dodgers and could just spend away their bad contracts sure that would be great and would be my preference. But we can't keep comparing ourselves to the Dodgers. They have about 130 mil more in annual revenue. I'm going on the assumption the Cubs have a budget limit every season because that's how Ricketts has always handled the payroll and Jed has to work within that budget, even if I don't like it. Theo wasn't able to just "spend away" Heyward's underperformance. Yes guys get hurt etc and it can't be predicted, and Heyward looked like a smart contract that they still shouldn't have regret signing. But you can minimize the risks, try to choose younger guys over older ones, sign 7 year deals over 10 year deals etc if the choice is there. If you think of the stock market, putting your eggs all in one basket is a lot riskier than diversifying your risk and spreading your money across several good or very good players rather than dropping bombs of money on 1 or 2 stars player through age 40. More risk can mean more reward but it can also blow up in your face and hamper a franchise for years. I don't have an issue of them signing Bellinger or a 30 y/o SP even if they have a couple of meh years near the end. My point before is that they have the flexibility to not pigeon-hole themselves with 1 specific SP or 1 big position guy they like. There have been numerous quality SP's on the market this year with similar value and they can trade for a SP too. e.g. If bidding for Montgomery gets much higher than expected and you can get Bieber cheap then get Bieber, if Montgomery falls in your lap for cheaper than expected and Bieber is expensive then go Montgomery. I think the Braves have a good philosophy. Develop your best players via prospects, extend them or let them walk like Swanson/Freeman if they won't and take the QO or trade them to reload the farm. Supplement the team with trades and smart FA signings. Jed has done the same with Happ, Baez, Bryant etc and it's been working out well so far.

He needs to accept the fact that he's old, he sucks now, and he needs to retire. But I like the fact that he seems to love playing baseball.

His 4-seamer was terrible for the Cubs last year, hitters slugged .771 off it. He needs to figure a FB he can use, maybe the sinker or cutter, or get the 4-seamer going better. He cutter sucked too though, the sinker was effective. Small samples though. Weird how pitchers seem to throw sinkers less these days.

Can Manaea throw 94 mph as a starter though? Did he do that last year? Or just in relief? His K rate went up as a reliever. So did his velo I assume. He sucked last year as a SP. 4.82 ERA in 43.2 IP. The Cubs seem to like guys with control and try to improve the stuff in the lab. I think that's why they signed Taillon.

How do you "overcome" an overpriced contract? Please be specific. That money and those wins are gone. It would only happen if the FO has a blank check or can spend silly amounts of money on payroll. I've never argued that you should never sign a player past their prime years, but you should try to avoid it where you can, and try to get more prime years than post-prime years where you can. The Xander Bogaerts contract, for example, is a really bad contract. It's embarrassingly bad. He's going to be a Padre until the year 2033 and very likely sucking wins from the team on a yearly basis for over half the contract. But they went all-in on 2023, that's their choice. They made a huge bet and lost. You can't keep using Lester as an example. He was signed for only 6 years. He had won 2 rings for Theo's Red Sox and performed very well for them in the playoffs and WS. He was arguably good for 4 years and mediocre to bad for about 2, but made up for it with the many very good playoff performances he had for us. He was on Cubs teams that had players with very high surplus value. If he would only sign for 8 years would you have have taken him for 8 years, without the hindsight of knowing what happened in 2016? He would have been an asset for the first half of that deal and cost the team wins over the last 4 years. If the Cubs had a 280m payroll sure, it starts to matter less when you can just throw around money to fix problems. And i've never said they shouldn't sign a high-end FA. They signed Swanson, that's a pretty decent FA contract, even though he's probably going to regress over the latter half of the deal, so yeah you can live with a few years of regression to get a really good player. If he signed for 250 mil would that make you feel better about it because it was "big money"? No, I didn't want them to sign Bogaerts or Turner for what they signed for. I wouldn't have signed Judge, Rodon, DeGrom, or Verlander either. I would love for the Cubs to have the Dodgers payroll. It's projected to be 277m this season by Sportac. If you're spending that much on players and have a very good farm system like the Cubs then I do agree you can sign some of the best players in baseball to deals that probably fade on the back half. The calculation changes if the payroll goes from 230m to 280m. My arguments are based on the assumption the Cubs spend around the CBT line. I've always argued they should spend over the tax line this season. My ideal would be to have a very high payroll and sign Ohtani, Nola or Yamamoto, maybe Bellinger, a good closer etc. So maybe we agree in some ways and don't even know it haha.

It's possible you're right on this specific point, but it can only be confirmed if the Cubs don't spend as much relative to the CBT line as their last run. Otherwise, it just means they're being smart. There's a huge difference between the 2.

The Cubs are a large market team and as long as they spend payroll near or over the CBT like a large market team should they will never "experiment with what it would be like to be a small market team". The Cubs advantage is their larger payroll, so they should use it but typically spend it as efficiently as they can to maximize their wins. Having more payroll shouldn't be an excuse to flush money down the drain. Money = wins. Flushing wins down the toilet is totally illogical (except in exceptional cases, like trading a quality prospect for a 3-month rental at the trade deadline to try to save or leverage a season). The Tigers have been flushing a bunch of wins down the toilet every year the last 7 years because of the Miguel Cabrera contract because they could have spent that money on much better players. Every single front office in the MLB should be doing everything they can to maximize their number of wins per million they spend on payroll. That's literally their job. If the Cubs can do that better than other large market teams they will be at an advantage and win more games than other teams that spend the same in total payroll. I think a lot of fans are impatient and are guided by on emotion over logic. They want star players right now to get a short-term dopamine hit of excitement so their team has the best chance to win next year while not worrying at all about the consequences 5+ years down the line.