Stratos
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Everything posted by Stratos
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Nico Hoerner underwent successful right flexor tendon surgery
Stratos replied to KCCub's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
At the very least they could stay about the same. It's not like they wouldn't get good assets back for a 4 WAR guy with surplus value. Again I wouldn't have traded him this offseason anyways so its moot. -
Any non-Soto FA's you guys would like the Cubs to target? I like Max Fried a lot, especially with our INF defense and his high GB%. Snell got 5/125 last year, Nola got 6/150, Rodon got 6/162, so Fried will be in that range. Wicks could try out as our #5 and Assad/Brown in the pen. If Wicks struggles a bit we can try one of those other 2 in the #5 slot.
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Nico Hoerner underwent successful right flexor tendon surgery
Stratos replied to KCCub's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Next offseason seemed a lot more likely unless they planned to go with Shaw on Opening Day, which doesn't seem their style. Get Shaw some AB's this season and have him as a backup on the INF for injury depth for 3B/2B is probably how they were going to go. -
Maybe im an idiot but I can't find any statcast data for minor league hitters on BB Savant. Do you have a link?
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Soto is really good, but also not quite in the same league as Judge and Ohtani. But he's younger, so it gets complicated. I don't know how much he'll get. I don't think 500m is underselling, maybe 450m is on the low side, not sure. 500m would be the biggest deal of all-time and he's not as good as Ohtani or Trout. What do you think he'll get in non-deferred money so we can keep things simpler and comparable to other players? I think it'll come down to what teams project from him going forward. He was only age 25 this year, and was 8 WAR this year, which is quite a bit higher than his norm. Has he not even peaked yet? Or was this a career year in a walk year? He also gets some extra PAs hitting 2nd all year to bump the WAR a bit. If Yanks gave him 40m AAV for ages 26-33 then 30m AAV for ages 34-39 that's 500m. So 14/500.
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Ohtani's deal in non-deferred dollars is 10/460. He's a better player than Soto obviously
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True about Trout. I think he lands with the Yanks for a gazillion billion dollars. We probably make a good offer but are a bridesmaid as usual. If the Yanks don't dump a bank on his doorstep maybe we have a chance. Not getting my hopes up
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I could see 500m in the upper range. Can't see him getting an extra 100m for the latter half of his 30s. My thought is teams will want to lock him up for his career at that money and spread out the luxury tax hit. Trout got 12/426 in 2019 being 1 year older, and there's some inflation, but Soto also isn't Trout, plus Soto may be a DH in his 30s since his range is already poor and speed is below average. For as good a hitter as he is i see him as around a 6.5 WAR player at this point in his career and that's going to drop as a DH. He's also gets a modest bump in his WAR given he typically hits 2nd in the order which helps him rack up extra PAs on the year. They need a stat to normalize WAR for 150 games and 650 PAs.
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Wow amazing, thanks! Where do we find this, Baseball Savant?
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Since Paredes is out of the small foul lines of TB maybe he's more of a 3 WAR guy now. I'd be very pleased with that next year from him. Curious what the projections will give him for 2025. If he has a good season I wonder what they do with Shaw. They have Nico for 2 more seasons. Maybe trade Nico next offseason. Also curious what the EV and bat speed numbers are for Shaw.
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How much do you guys think he'll get? I think he could get 15/450m. Here's the most expensive contracts to compare: https://theanalyst.com/na/2024/10/the-highest-paid-major-league-baseball-players-and-largest-contracts-in-mlb-history Trout got 12/426 and Betts got 12/365, both at age 27. Judge was 9/360 at age 30 (older but a better player).
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Bad news for the Cubs hopes for Soto is this WS run gives the Yanks all the more reason to throw the money down to keep him, and more reason for Soto to want to stay. Plus fans will def put the pressure on Cashman. Heard the favs for Soto were Yanks and Mets.
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The point is the Cubs aren't coming up short because of the deals 3+ years long. Jed's errors in FA are coming from all the bad short-term deals and bad exercised options. The money given to Hendricks, Smyly, Neris, Mancini, Barnhart could have been spent better. Put Bote in there too (Theo deal). Maybe the Gomes option was understandable at the time, but he was also old, i can let that one go. Barnhart also wasn't very expensive but 2 years was stupid given he was coming off a 0.3 WAR, 63 wRC+ season and was 32 y/o. The others mentioned were just overpaid for their talent level and could have gone towards some better players. That's about 45m spent on meh players on 1-2 deals/options that combined for negative WAR in 2024. 45m could have payed for another Swanson + Happ or literally any player. Count Bote and its 50m, almost half the Brewers payroll spent on zero WAR. That's NOT efficient or good value. Value and efficiency are good things, and if Jed was as careful with the smaller contract as the larger ones we probably would have been in the playoffs last year and at least made it much closer (or better) this year. That wouldn't be bad for a team not getting a ton of WAR from cheap young players yet.
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Seiya, Swanson, Imanaga, Taillon. Jeds FA problem has been overpaying on the 1 to 2 year contracts for barely above replacement players, not 4+ year deals.
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Ohtani/Freeman/Betts seem like such nice dudes. Im going for Cleveland and Mets because it would be nice for fanbases. Would be fun to watch Yanks/Dodgers go at it though with those hitters
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Diaz made 21m this year, which is wild. Then again, Jed gave Neris and Fulmer a combined 14m and they're just average relievers.
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Theo also had the advantage of 3 years of tanking that nabbed 2 elite college players and 1 good college player. We don't really know for sure if not tanking in 2022 was a Ricketts or Jed decision, but by money is on Ricketts for wanting fans in the seats to recover losses post-COVID. Other than that I just don't see how Theo made risky moves that Jed hasn't to turn them into a winner. The riskier moves he made were after they became a 95+ win team during their competitive window. Jed's made a bunch of good trades including Busch, Paredes, and the guys acquired to reload the farm. We could argue Jed should have made more prospect swaps like Busch-Ferris to speed up the rebuild since most of the guys he got in the selloff were very young.
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It can't be Rickett's fault when Theo doesn't sign Harper or Machado but Jed's fault when he doesn't sign Seager, Turner etc. Jed has done quite well on longterm deals, and avoided long deals on Stroman, Bellinger which we'll probably all be thankful for. In fact i'd say Jed has near embarrassed most of the rest of the league in the FA longterm realm. Theo made some aggressive trades like Chapman, Quintana because the Cubs were in a strong competitive window. I think the whole "Jed isn't aggressive" is overblown. He was aggressive getting Counsell. He's been aggressive at every trade deadline and brought back 2 of the best position players the last 2 deadlines. He's made a ton of good trades. I'd call him more "prudent".
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I don't see Jed (or Theo) grabbing a top 29 y/o player and signing him for 10 years. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. If they ever sign a mega deal I assume it will be for a young FA like the Soto/Yamamoto/Harper type so they get max prime years. The Heyward signing was also a value signing in a way, they paid for ages 26-33. If he followed a typical regression curve it would have been a solid FA contract especially for an 8-year deal. Above all i think Jed/Theo are data-driven and a deal like Trea Turner/Bogaerts for 10/300 doesn't add up given they were 30 y/o,
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I don't think we know how much its been Tom vs Jed with the longterm contracts. But note that under Ricketts and Theo/Jed the Cubs have NEVER signed a superstar FA deal. The Heyward deal was similar to the Swanson deal and both weren't top WAR or MVP types. Not sure if Theo ever signed a huge deal with the Red Sox.
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Agree with this. If you're Tom you have to be annoyed that the Cubs trade/lose their 4 best players plus Darvish and it takes several years to rebuild and counting but the Brewers lose Burnes, Woodruff, Hader, and Counsell and don't skip a beat.
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If I were Ricketts i'd be not disappointed about missing the playoffs the last couple of years (21-22 Jed had some budget cuts and lost the core so more understandable), but i'd be happy he hasn't wasted a lot of my money on bad longterm deals. Jed could have easily spent to win-now and made himself look good then bounced before big contracts started to age poorly. Would be weird to axe him without at least waiting to see the fruits of most the prospects acquired when he was first was hired. I'd give him 2025 and 26. As i've said I think his biggest flaw is overpaying for below-average players on the shorter deals.
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What's nice this offseason is that pretty much all the guys we're losing to FA (Bellinger pending) were all basically dead weight with little to no real value in 2024. That means we can only add value with that money whatever we spend it on, we can't really do any worse. At worst the player(s) we spend on this offseason with that cash are a bust again like Hendricks, Mancini, Neris, Gomes etc. We were free of the Heyward contract finally last offseason but then spent 16m on Hendricks and 10m on Neris. Treading water. Stroman and Bellinger left for FA and we replaced them with Imanaga and Bellinger, which together was mostly a wash from Stro/Belli 2023. We acquired Busch but brought back Gomes who was negative 1.2 WAR. Added PCA but Morel was a bust. We need to stop treading water and add WAR. All the options I can think of to do this: 1) spend better (more efficiently, especially on smaller contracts), 2) trade assets in the minors for MLB players, 3) raise our total payroll, or 4) trade 1 or more expensive players and replace them with cheaper players (e.g. prospects) and spend that money saved to upgrade another position at a net gain in WAR. Example: trade Bellinger and replace with Caissie/Alcantara/Canario, then use that cash to sign a top SP in FA.
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Now would be a good time to look at how we did with last offseason's moves. We can look at what our needs were, who we acquired, and compare how they performed per their contracts versus the other options Jed had last offseason. Hindsight is 20/20 of course. Per my mediocre memory, our needs were: CF, 1B, 3B, SP, relievers. We also dumped Rossy for Counsell. ----------------------------------- I can start with CF: Options were Bellinger, Bader, Kiermaier, or going with PCA (after a terrible Sept debut) Jed's move: Bellinger, 3 years w/ high AAV with opt outs. Result: Bellinger did fine, WAR was suppressed by injury & playing DH for about 20% of the season. Bader, Kiermaier, and other options did poorly. PCA came up to field and run excellently but overall hit below-average. Transaction grade at the time: B+. Grade post-2024: B-
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It's a deciding factor on whether he's more or less valuable than Murphy.
