Hairyducked Idiot

This. Or at least for Taveras for sure.

I can't decide if this would be amazing or horrifying.

Dodgers decline their option on Mark Ellis. If nothing else, that might dampen any market for Darwin Barney.

Ellsbury, Price and Stanton would probably get you to the fWAR projection needed for contention.

I don't think there's anything new in this article from Muskat today. The quotes are from the Sveum press conference, right? http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/chc/chicago-cubs-expect-to-make-minimal-use-of-free-agency?ymd=20131025&content_id=63355730&vkey=news_chc I'm going to guess that they don't make any big trades this offseason outside of selling if they get bowled over on Samardzija or Castro. I could be very wrong. Almost nothing would shock me this offseason. But I just can't see them trading prospects for an MLB player when they aren't in "go for it!" mode, which they don't appear to be. They'll flirt with dumping one of those two for prospects all offseason, but I doubt anyone meets their price. Gosh, everyone's going to get a qualifying offer, aren't they? I feel like we're caught between a rock and a hard place. I don't care about the 2nd-round pick, but the FO appears to. If they're going to give it up in compensation, I'd assume they'd want to blow it on the biggest piece they can and not just an Ubaldo or a Saltalamacchia. But after that, you're in the Ellsbury territory, and I don't think we're prepared to go to the $125m or whatever it's going to take to play on that level. Seeing what I've seen from the front office, I don't think they're happy with any of their choices, but I guess it'll come down to this: 1) Do all their due diligence on Tanaka right up to the point where the Yankees, Dodgers and Rangers all drop $60m on a posting bid and we can't come up with half that. 2) Flirt with trading Samardzija all winter, hold fast to Rays-ian demands, probably don't get them met, and pick it up again at the deadline if/when we're out of it. 3) Drop a surprisingly high AAV on Kazmir as the top non-QO pitcher. Something like 2/$20 or 3/$27, maybe a vesting player option for the third year. Do something similar on an outfielder like David Murphy (2/$15 should get it done) as a DeJesus-style BABIP reclamation project. 4) Fill in the rest of the roster with a backup catcher and infielder, both of whom should be veterans with fringe-starting cred. Just enough that you aren't flat-out giving the third base job to Olt or putting too much pressure on Castillo. 5) Spend the rest of the offseason hyping the farm-system rankings and new manager. I think the Cubs want to make a big move or three this offseason, but there just aren't any on the board that really make sense given their philosophy and mindset, and I think Epstein would take a special pride in holding the line. He doesn't make moves just for the sake of making them.

Doing it any other way tends to lead to overestimation, in my experience. Late edit to expound on that now that kids' Halloween party is blessedly over. Last year, Castro had never been under 3.0 in a full season. Rizzo was coming off 1.6 six in half a season. Those two came in a 1.5 combined. That happens a lot in baseball. If your projections don't look at least a bit pessimistic for your own team, then I think it's a good bet they are actually overoptimistic. The 13 named players in that post are projected to a combined 21.5 fWAR. Those same 13 players in 2013 produced 16.7. Some of them are in line for more playing time than they got in 2013, but I don't think this is as gross of an underestimation as it may appear if you start assuming too many easy-to-fall-into-as-fans traps, like part-time players doubling their production when their playing time doubles or automatic full bouncebacks from disappointing young players.

Sure, but after the Yankees and Dodgers both offer up more than your entire baseball budget for Tanaka, you'll have to go to plan B.

I would bet my life savings that whoever wrote that has, at some point, had a column on a small-town newspaper editorial page.

You're definitely right that small differences can always be quibbled over. And in that spirit: Valbuena's 3.4 as Cubs is almost entirely based on some huge defensive totals that don't seem particularly sustainable. I did flat-out forget about Villanueva, though. I don't know why I keep doing that. I think in general projections like this *should* seem a touch pessimistic across the board, because that's the easiest way to account for collapse rates. You're going to lose 3 wins to Castro turning into Neifi Perez or Garza's elbow acting up, or in 2012 to Byrd cycling down or Soto forgetting whether he hits better on or off weed. Everyone's projection gets dragged down a little bit because there's a sub-replacement disappointment lurking in all of them, just waiting to be let out at like a 12% per season rate.

Back of the napkin fWAR projection based on what we have in place: Sweeney (1.5) /Lake (1.0)/Schierholtz (1.5) Olt (1.0) /Castro (2.5) /Barney (1.5) /Rizzo (3.0) Castillo (2.5) Bench (3.0) Samardzija (3.0) /Wood (2.0) /Jackson (2.0) / Arrieta (0.0) / Rusin (0.0) Bullpen cast of thousands (2.0) Total: 26.5 (coincidentally the same as 2013) Some notes: The Cubs actually got about 5 fWAR from their bench this year (defining it as all position players outside of the top 8 in PAs) in an uncommonly strong year. Navarro, Lake, Sweeney, Ransom, Bogusevic, and Murphy combined for 6.8 fWAR in 1232 plate appearances, or roughly two starting jobs' worth. That's a better pace than any of our actual starters except for Castillo. 2.0 from the pen would put us around 20th in the league. Below-average, but not aggressively so. This year's pen put up -0.2 for 29th. Next year's pen should be almost entirely turned over and full over very unproven guys, so it's pretty hard to project. So if you want to be competitive in 2014, you need to pick up about 13.5 wins worth of improvements. There's some room for internal improvements in those projections (Castro, Rizzo, Samardzija all seem capable of more than that, the bullpen could have a magic year) but also plenty of room for underperformance (3b could easily become a Stewartian black hole, Castro could be replacement-level again, one of the useful SPs could get hurt). 13.5 wins doesn't sound like a lot, but then you realize that the biggest gain to be made would probably be adding a Tanaka or Price to the rotation, and that alone is probably only about 1/3rd of what you need. It's hard to gain big chunks out of that because you are replacing non-worthless players. So if we want to "go for it" in 2014, we probably need to add 4 or 5 starting-quality (2.5 fWAR or better) players this offseason. At this point, I think I'm inclined not to include any projection of a call-up for Baez or Bryant. It's fun to get a rush talking about how they could probably mash in the big leagues right now, but I think a neutral projection for them has to be September call-ups if anything. One guy was last season striking out almost 30% of the time in AA, and the other hasn't yet appeared above A+. A little bit of conservative projection isn't out of line.

How long do teams have to make qualifying offers to their own FA? Wouldn't FA start after that deadline? If I'm reading it right, they have five days from tonight.

Awesome, Sucks, Awesome, Outfielder, Sucks, Borderline Plenty of room for an infielder in there if there's one we like. Now do the OF and SP options in the next 12 months and compare. But don't really if you're going to put effort into it like that. I'm not denying that other positions make *more* sense. But right now, I have no clue at all what the front office is thinking for 2014. Nothing would surprise me.

The best part is that under the new CBA, all the free agents are now fair game, right? No need to wait for filing or anything. The offseason is finally about to begin.

Awesome, Sucks, Awesome, Outfielder, Sucks, Borderline Plenty of room for an infielder in there if there's one we like.

That makes me way too happy.

Attempting to explain to any of their fans how [expletive] lucky they were all season with RISP, Allen Craig in particular, was absolutely mind numbing. I noticed a pretty high percentage of GRB posters acknowledging that. But obviously that's not your average fan.

Of course not. If you don't start now, you'll never get a second in by the end of the game.

you're not gonna do that X amount of WAR was from Theo and y was from CHerington thing? I wonder how Boston fans feel about this as a whole. The ones I've seen feel like Cherington cleaned up Epstein's mess and give much more credit to the deeper organization than they do Epstein personally.

you're not gonna do that X amount of WAR was from Theo and y was from CHerington thing? I think the easiest thing to do is that whatever percentage you want to assign, 2004 and 2013 balance out and he gets full credit when you combine the two.

Well, this is fun. I guess it does make me feel better to know the guy who oversaw most of this for Boston is now in charge of us.

Didn't Sanchez get hurt this year? I know I'm super-biased about pitching injuries, but surely we can find some prospects without them.

I'm sure someone will rate us as No. 1. I'll wait until that happens before I decide who I'm going to listen to.

I'm still not ruling out an offseason scenario where we deal Samardzija and Castro for prospects.

What? The double play is not really worth mentioning in this argument. It's not?

I have a social forum? Well, the hackers have a social forum. Sometimes I guess they let you have it for a few days at a time.