Author: Rice Cube

Dansby Swanson Rumors?

Just an FYI, sometimes Kaplan knows things…

Update: Passan confirms

Update, with numbers

Dreamcast 54: Whose Fault is This Anyway?

From my previous rant and given the busy schedule of the other jabronis, I recruited a Twitter buddy to commiserate with re: how stupid the Cubs are and how they can potentially unfuck the offseason somewhat. You can listen below:

Appreciate you guys tolerating my angst. You can also check out the archives at Podbean.

Is There a Plan?

At the beginning of this offseason, we knew the Cubs needed the following:

  • A starting catcher (no offense to Yan Gomes)
  • A center fielder
  • More bats
  • Probably another front-line starter

And that was just the bare minimum. A few weeks later, with many big names coming off the board, the Cubs still need:

  • A starting catcher
  • More bats
  • Probably another front-line starter

That really depends on how much you think Cody Bellinger bounces back to at least solid-to-All-Star level production, what you make of Jameson Taillon’s position in the rotation, and whether you believe the in-house bats take a step forward, but there is an old Chinese proverb about waiting for another rabbit to crash into a tree and kill itself so you can have dinner that night. The basic gist is that the Cubs have not done anything to significantly improve themselves at this point in the offseason, their options are dwindling, and we are justifiably disappointed because there doesn’t seem to be a plan. After the letter from Tom Ricketts, the pressers from Jed Hoyer about being aggressive, and Crane Kenney opening his mouth and suggesting that they’ve found extra money in their couch cushions, we still have nothing but the vestiges of the last great Cubs team (the shell of Kyle Hendricks and David Ross trying to do what he can to squeeze out some moral victories) because they chose to let this team crumble to dust. This can be any number of reasons:

  1. There was a plan in place by Jed Hoyer and the front office with the blessing of ownership, but the marquee (pun intended) free agents decided that the Cubs were not in competition shape. This is probably bullshit because the Rangers threw a ton of money at Marcus Simien and Corey Seager and now Jacob deGrom and that team was trash for the past few seasons. Then the Giants, who aren’t in much better shape, threw all the money and years at Carlos Correa, so if they had the money, the free agents would come. Which brings us to…
  2. Jed had a plan, but it did not involve setting or matching the developing market. This is what I would call stubbornly stupid because the pieces available out there filled a need and the club (either for real or through smoke and mirrors) had the financial resources to make it so. And that suggests…
  3. Jed had a plan, and thought the money was there, but it was really smoke and mirrors after all.

None of this reflects positively on the Cubs, especially when they are marketing their first Cubs Convention in years with not very much for us to look forward to, when they’ve objectively suffered ratings hits and attendance drops, and when they’re likely still losing season ticket holders as the new season looms. There is of course a way to still salvage this with current free agents still on the board, but that’s headlined now by one Dansby Swanson, who was plan B while the other three shortstops were plans A1, A2, and A3 in any order. Swanson is not enough, so they’ll have to sign or trade for a catcher, they’ll have to probably sign a Brandon Drury or Justin Turner to man one or both of the corners, and they might have to just throw some money at Carlos Rodon because I’m in the camp that says Marcus Stroman should probably not be the number one starter on a competitive rotation. It’s obviously too late for Correa, but Jed and crew really should have worried more about 2023 and 2024 (and probably all the way up to 2030 given Correa’s age), not 2035, because the contract he reportedly signed for is a built in Bobby Bonilla deferral mechanism. You need the guy now! Sign him NOW! But anyway, too late, hopefully they get someone else.

Without a significant push, I’m guessing Ian Happ walks and Marcus Stroman opts out after next season, although there are lots of pitching options in the next class of free agents. It probably doesn’t make as much sense to throw money at a Manny Machado (if he opts out) since he’s going to be older than if they had just throw all the money at Carlos Correa, and honestly who’s to say the Padres won’t just pay the man since they have money to throw around unlike some teams? The “wait and see” approach is probably better for the prospects because while the farm system has improved, I just don’t see many “can’t miss” guys in the wings, so that’s why I was pushing for free agency, where you know the players already have a track record of success. Now we just have to hope the Cubs make the pivot they should have earlier to sign the largest impact players so they can at least salvage this offseason, sneak into the playoffs, and generate some momentum for recruiting future free agents. Because in my mind, this “delay” in the timeline was completely by design and/or incompetence, and they’ll probably hear about it at the Convention now.

The Evolving Narrative

I will start by saying that social media is great for many things, despite the efforts by certain proprietors of websites to destroy it or make it totally not fun. It helps us connect with friends and fellow fans, it makes folks of authority and celebrities more accessible to us mere peasants, and it allows us to learn more about the world around us depending on how open we want our network to be. With the good comes the bad, which is the goldfish-level attention span and the incessant obsession to refresh and doomscroll to see if news has been updated. With the infamous Heyman “Arson Judge” snafu, it also brings to mind the need to determine the veracity of reports and the reputations of the messengers, as it is probably better to trust Passan and Rosenthal than what I might term the “B-squad” at this point.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that the Cubs have basically pissed away most of the goodwill they earned with a historic World Series championship. AC has outlined how to compete for the World Series, and we are all well aware of how chaotic baseball can be, especially in the playoffs when one cold spell coming up against a hot streak can torpedo a historically great regular season. And like most other billionaires trying to maximize profits, baseball team owners try to do what they can to reduce the amount being paid to players we actually want to watch while continuing to gouge us with high ticket prices in between making it difficult to hunt down an affordable stream of the live game. Evan at Cubs Insider compiled a number of Cubs fan accounts of why they’re giving up their season tickets or just not taking the opportunity to buy in, based off this original tweet resharing a letter from last year when another former season ticket holder elected not to renew. We can rationalize what transpired in the time between the last NLCS run and today, when the Cubs said goodbye (justifiably or not, that’s in the eye of the beholder) to pretty much their entire championship core, and the money seemingly just stopped flowing into the product we scrounge our discretionary income to see once or twice a year in person because we can’t afford much more.

Like AC alluded to, this is bad optics and it’s no wonder fans just won’t settle anymore. It may have been different back in the day, as Evan pointed out, when Cubs playoff appearances (much less victories) were few and far between and fans were just happy they got there. This was supposed to change, because the Cubs now had a smart baseball operations setup and good coaches and talent development and the financial backing to sustain a core, and with the rise of social media and fans learning more about how baseball works, they couldn’t count on as many fans being naive and buying into the lovable losers trope anymore. And even if they could count on fan goodwill, goodwill alone doesn’t pay the bills because inflation sucks and fans need to pay rent too.

Tim as usual is hilariously (and I believe justifiably) angry about this as you can see in his mini-rant on Twitter. I think Tim is prone to hyperbole because that’s who he is (enjoyable, I might add), but he is probably right about the system not producing the Bryant-Schwarber level of talent that would signal a contender in the making at this time. The best prospect is Pete Crow-Armstrong and a comfortingly long list of pitchers who could act as depth behind the MLB rotation right now, with a few other prospects of interest unfortunately on the mend due to some annoying ill-timed injuries (sad for both them and for us). Absent of in-house talent they can count on, no matter how much we fawn over Matt Mervis’ power potential, and with a need to contend to boost profits, the Cubs would seem to have little choice other than to spend. As Winkelman pointed out, there is no other way to acquire quick talent because the past CBAs have restricted amateur spending domestically and internationally, so a talent infusion requires free agency. It is true the Cubs have spent in the past when they “didn’t need to” because they were able to get Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki for pretty decent sized contracts, but they probably should have known (even if we didn’t) that prices would go bonkers and had been prepared for that. However, it isn’t just the Cubs sitting out while the Mets buy up everyone who isn’t nailed down, as other teams are also waiting in the wings to see what happens next, so we can’t just blame the Cubs for inaction. But it is damn frustrating!

In the next days and/or weeks, the narrative will change depending on what happens. The Ricketts will either cement their reputation as miserly owners who don’t care as long as they sell a certain number of tickets and make a certain amount of profit, and Jed Hoyer will get (fairly or unfairly) roasted in the court of public opinion because he failed to build a good enough case for the Cubs contending starting in 2023, or because he decided it wasn’t time to blow all the money Crane Kenney claims to have allocated to baseball ops. Or they will sign and/or trade for the pieces that will get the Cubs back to the playoffs, and have the Pitch Lab and coaching/development infrastructure to sustain it instead of wasting away all the talent as they did with the previous core, and we’ll have to eat our words and admit that Jed and Tom knew what they were doing all along. Which one do you think is more likely?

(In my train of thought writing through all this I neglected to state that the lack of news doesn’t mean that news doesn’t actually exist, it just means the Cubs haven’t leaked anything yet. The beat guys obviously have their own agenda and the sources they use are likely operating on their own agenda as well, i.e. as agents and/or owners attempting to sway a price point. Given that they’ve already said the money is there, and their own TV personalities are talking continuously about possible impact free agents, the Cubs have to know how bad it will look, kind of like now, if they don’t get something done. So we will see!)

Preferably, sooner rather than later, the Cubs give me a reason to keep paying attention and to pay for a ticket too.

Avoid Being Average

There was a tweet from Marquee’s Tony Andracki (cool dude) that probably caused several aneurysms the other day, and Brad on Twitter attempted to put it into context:

If we assume that Seiya Suzuki takes a step forward after an adjustment year and Cody Bellinger can at least find some kind of a groove, then it does look a bit better. However, I’m still not thrilled with having to rely on “what ifs” even if the run environment did change because pitchers are just filthy and more difficult to hit than ever. There is an opportunity for the Cubs to add, and while the radio silence on the big gets is a bit frustrating, I’m hopeful that the next time I post some new shit, it’ll be because there’s a super team in the making. Next year’s free agent class is relatively bare, so the time to add is now. I suppose the Cubs could rely on solid pitching to sneak in a few wins and stay in contention by the trade deadline, but why do that when you can make your team better now? Am I just being narrow-minded?

Let the Dominos Fall…Please?

Among other rumors flying around, the big one that got everyone’s interest was this bit from Kaplan (and others):

Put your money where your mouth is

Whether you believe it is because the Cubs don’t want to deal with another season of losing/biblical losses, or that Papa Ricketts’ heart grew three sizes that day and Tom got an advance on his allowance, the consensus once again is that the Cubs are for real and they want to spend. Although we won’t know for probably at least a couple more days, the first domino apparently has fallen with the Cody Bellinger deal that was just reported:

This represents a discount from the projected arbitration salary although Bellinger was non-tendered by the Dodgers last month, so this is a more expensive version of a reclamation-style pillow contract, but it does get a lefty bat, a capable center fielder, and a player with former MVP potential hopefully still in his body into the mix. Based on that salary, that leaves the Cubs at least another $80MM to throw around before they hit the luxury tax threshold, so here’s to them signing all the shortstops and pitchers. Maybe a catcher too. Trade for some if possible, I don’t care, just do more!

2022 MLB Winter Meetings Reset

The Winter Meetings go from Sunday to Wednesday this week and I’m guessing plenty of texts and conversations have been conducted even before everyone arrives in San Diego. Ken Rosenthal on his Athletic mailbag podcast suggested that the new CBA seemed to give teams more confidence to spend, which accounts for the higher-than-usual price tags we’ve seen for the relievers, middle rotation starters, and of course Jacob deGrom, who got more years and money than most would have predicted, but perhaps the Rangers are just nuts. If the Cubs want to spend, they obviously will and we’ll find out together, but aside from that, there are other things to look to during these meetings.

Draft Lottery

The first ever MLB Draft Lottery is on Tuesday, and the Cubs have the 12th worst record in 2022 and the odds that go with it to snag a top-6 pick. Let’s just say the Cubs will just pick 12th in every round, but if they sneak into the top 6 anyway, that would be pretty funny and if the QO guys haven’t signed yet, that might partly change some of their calculus since they’d have a few hundred thousand more dollars to distribute in next year’s draft as a result.

Rule 5 Draft

The Rule 5 Draft will be held on Wednesday, the Cubs have some spots open and some guys on the roster they can probably afford to outright or DFA if they wanted to, so I imagine they’ll pick someone (just not sure whom). Since draft order is determined by the regular season record, the Cubs will pick 12th in all rounds of the Rule 5 (however many) and may stand to lose a few good prospects if any other teams feel like taking a risk, especially on a still-kinda-far-away prospect like Luis Devers.

Random Rumors

  • The Marlins are apparently open to trading anyone not named Sandy Alcantara, so there are a lot of their capable starters that could be had for the right price.
  • Sean Murphy is of course the big catcher name on the trade block, but unfortunately none of the rumored suitors are the Cubs (so far). UPDATE: guess Atlanta isn’t the top suitor but there are plenty still in the mix for Murphy per Feinsand.
  • Pirates OF Bryan Reynolds (pretty much their only good player besides Ke’Bryan Hayes and Oneil Cruz) reportedly requested a trade because, well, it’s the Pirates and can you blame him? I don’t really see an incentive for the Pirates to talk to the Cubs about a swap, but you never know. UPDATE: per the Pirates beat, the Yankees are the top team in the Reynolds sweepstakes.
  • The Cubs have been linked in various degrees from “sorta” to “very interested” to all the big four shortstops, so chances are they’ll snag one of them and we will have to grow to love Dansby Swanson. Or don’t, I can’t tell you what to do (hoping for Correa or Bogaerts tbh, and the latest suggests Bogaerts is now the priority, which yes, and also suggests the Cubs aren’t afraid to give up a draft pick since the farm is kind of loaded right now anyway and their first rounder is protected regardless).

First Names Off the Board

Here we are, the week after Thanksgiving and before the Winter Meetings, and very little has happened not just for the Cubs, but for all of MLB. I think we don’t have to officially freak out until after the Winter Meetings have concluded, or maybe not even until Spring Training since the rhymes-with-schmollusion is delaying free agent deals in recent memory, but as fans, this is rather frustrating. Anyway, let’s look at the major league signings we do know about.

  1. Joc Pederson (Giants) and Martín Pérez (Rangers) accepted the qualifying offer and thus remained with their original teams, so obviously they’re off the board.
  2. Anthony Rizzo re-signed with the Yankees after rejecting their QO, so that’s a long-shot 1B option off the board. He got two years and $34MM guaranteed with a third year option so that tells you something about that level of free agent.
  3. Tyler Anderson moved to the suburbs as he rejected the Dodgers QO by default and signed with the Angels, setting a mark of $13MM AAV for a middle-of-the-rotation type pitcher on the free market (three years overall for $39MM).
  4. Jeimer Candelario just signed with the Nationals, with a $5MM base with $1MM in incentives for basically around what the Cubs spent on Jonathan Villar last season, although I think Jeimer would’ve been a far better option than Villar ultimately proved to be, but now that’s over with. UPDATE: Apparently the Nats also signed Stone Garrett, which is a hell of a baseball name. Gotta have fringe players when you’re in a rebuild, right? And the fact that the Cubs haven’t signed a fringe player yet suggests they either A) intend to sign non-fringe guys or B) that they’re going to rely on their own in-house fringe guys.
  5. The Pirates signed Carlos Santana to a one-year deal worth $6.725MM, setting a mark for shitty washed-up first basemen in free agency.
  6. The one that kind of hurts is Jose Abreu, who got poached by the Astros on a three year deal worth $58.5MM ($19.5MM AAV) so that’s probably the most expensive first base option this offseason as no one else comes close to what Abreu can offer in my opinion.
  7. Luke Maile, a backup catcher formerly with the Guardians this past season, signed with the Reds for $1.175MM, so if there’s a backup option out there to Yan Gomes, that’s probably the scale we’re looking at. I still hope Yan is the backup as there are non-Willson Contreras catchers out there that could probably hit better than Yan.
  8. The Mariners did sign Trevor Gott, who got nontendered by the Brewers, but we don’t know the details at the time of this post. My guess is he gets no more than $2MM, which sets the floor for a meh reliever.
  9. The White Sox used the money they won’t be paying Jose Abreu to sign Mike Clevinger instead. Clevinger was somewhat pedestrian for the Padres last season but apparently will earn over $8MM, and maybe $12MM if you believe Jim Bowden, for his one-year deal. So that establishes a price point for a reclamation project type pitcher who used to be good and happened to lose the 2016 World Series to the Chicago Cubs.
  10. The Red Sox signed Joely Rodriguez, basically an older journeyman reliever who played in Japan for a bit and bounced over the league over the past couple seasons, to a base $2MM guarantee with incentives and an option/buyout for 2024. Just another price floor to work with.

The slow burn continues to be slow, and hopefully it ramps up next week. So far it’s mostly been minor league deals, guys deciding to go to Japan or KBO, and the Jose Abreu deal was probably the most surprising but also indicative of the philosophy that if you pay a guy enough, he’ll sign. It just so happens that the team (i.e., the Cubs) has one number while the player has his own number, and perhaps this early in the game, the team just has to guess the right number to get a signing. I guess we’ll take a wait-and-see approach, but I didn’t expect much to happen until next week anyway for a multitude of reasons.

About Spending…

I know AC (and others) are very antsy for the Cubs, and anyone in MLB for that matter, to stop their faux collusion and start spending already, but the calendar is the calendar and both the agents/players and the owners/front offices are in a staring contest at the moment before the Winter Meetings in a couple weeks. I was going to set up a roster rundown, but then I realized it was a fool’s errand if the Cubs actually make blockbuster trades and signings, plus the Rule 5, so I’m going to wait on that until after the Winter Meetings are over. In the meantime, we know a few things about the payroll going forward.

Thanks to Cots Contracts and MLBTR’s arbitration projections, plus the league minimum of $720K for next year for the pre-arb guys, we have a pretty good idea of how much the Cubs have to spend before they hit the first luxury tax threshold, give or take a few million dollars, even with Jason Heyward’s dead contract on the books. The payroll breakdown shows a sharp drop in salary obligations after 2023, pending extensions to Ian Happ and/or Nico Hoerner, so there’s room to add for sure. Since the luxury tax threshold rises to $233MM next season, the math suggests that the Cubs have anywhere from $90MM to $105MM before they hit that mark, and depending on how creatively the deals are structured, even if they bust through that first tax level, they can quickly reset the year after. And despite the biblical losses and Marquee not being as big of a success etc etc, the Cubs probably have the money to throw around should they choose to, and we should hold them accountable to do so.

I couldn’t find Mau’s original tweet but this is pretty solid

One of the caveats of free agency is of course the qualifying offer, which most players including Willson Contreras declined. At this time there are still 10 unsigned players who rejected the QO:

  • Dansby Swanson
  • Willson Contreras (Cubs would obviously get him if they re-sign him, and a comp pick if someone else does)
  • Trea Turner
  • Carlos Rodón
  • Chris Bassitt
  • Jacob deGrom
  • Brandon Nimmo
  • Xander Bogaerts
  • Nathan Eovaldi
  • Aaron Judge

Should the Cubs decide to sign someone from this list, they’ll forfeit their second round pick for the 2023 Draft and $500K in international pool money. Given the handshake deals they’ve probably made with prospects already but the fact that they can pick anywhere from 1st through 6th to 12th through 14th depending on the draft lottery, the prospect of them going for a QO free agent like they did before 2016 seems slim, especially since they’ll probably have less than the $10MM they got last draft while picking 7th in each round. Then again, if Willson signs a contract greater than $50MM overall, the Cubs might snag a pick after the 1st round, but at worst they’ll snag a pick just before the third round, and someone will have to help me with draft temporal mechanics because I’m not sure if the pick surrendered by signing someone else who declined a QO means they’ll lose that pick anyway (first round is protected).

My guess is that the Cubs will maximize that $100MM or so of buffer between their current obligations and the luxury tax threshold, and do so with non-QO guys like Carlos Correa, and hopefully others like Justin Verlander, but perhaps that’s a bit too eye-in-the-sky? But they certainly have the money to make it work!

Bending the Rules

Towards the end of the previous post, in between waiting for the Cubs (and really all of MLB) to show signs of life on the transactional front, AC and I started pondering how batters might mess with pitchers with the new pitch clock rule coming in 2023. As a reminder, in addition to the defensive shift restrictions and the larger bases, MLB is implementing a pitch clock:

PITCH TIMER

From MLB.com

In an effort to create a quicker pace of play, there will be a 30-second timer between batters. Between pitches, there will be a 15-second timer with the bases empty and a 20-second timer with runners on base. At last check, the pitch timer had reduced the average time of game in MiLB by about 26 minutes. This rule, which includes limits on throws to first base, has also increased stolen-base attempts. With this rule in place in the Minors this season, steal attempts per game have increased from 2.23 in 2019, at a 68% success rate, to 2.83 in 2022, at a 77% success rate.

The pitcher must begin his motion to deliver the pitch before the expiration of the pitch timer.

Pitchers who violate the timer are charged with an automatic ball. Batters who violate the timer are charged with an automatic strike.

Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.

With runners on base, the timer resets if the pitcher attempts a pickoff or steps off the rubber.

Pitchers are limited to two disengagements (pickoff attempts or step-offs) per plate appearance. However, this limit is reset if a runner or runners advance during the plate appearance.

If a third pickoff attempt is made, the runner automatically advances one base if the pickoff attempt is not successful.

Mound visits, injury timeouts and offensive team timeouts do not count as a disengagement.

If a team has used up all five of its allotted mound visits prior to the ninth inning, that team will receive an additional mound visit in the ninth inning. This effectively serves as an additional disengagement.

Umpires may provide extra time if warranted by special circumstances. (So if, as an example, a catcher were to be thrown out on the bases to end the previous half-inning and needed additional time to put on his catching gear, the umpire could allow it.)

Note that the rule that will be used in MLB is slightly altered from the rule that was used in MiLB this year. In MiLB in 2022, it was a 14-second timer with the bases empty and 18 seconds (Double-A and lower) or 19 seconds (Triple-A) with runners on, with batters required to be in the box by the 9-second mark and a strict limit of two disengagements per plate appearance (that did not reset if the runner advanced). In its most recent week of play, the Minors have seen an average of .45 violations per game.

While I would love to see what the batter and pitcher might do to get each other off their game, I feel like there simply isn’t enough time. If the bases are empty, the pitcher has basically 14 seconds to toss the pitch once he receives the ball from the catcher. The 8-second alert rule means the batter has about 7 seconds to mess with the pitcher however he wants (which seems a long time but he has to set and be ready to swing so I don’t know) or else be charged with an auto-strike. I think there’s probably not a lot of leeway to do much here, although the time between batters (i.e. the ball is thrown around the horn after the previous play is completed) gives the new batter about 20 seconds to moon the pitcher or whatever.

I think the additional level of stress due to the limited disengagements (step-offs and pickoff throws) will be more telling, and will give the batter and baserunner(s) extra time to generate a violation or draw a balk. With 20 seconds to play with and only two disengagements before an auto-balk, the batter and runner have about 12 seconds to spook the pitcher, and that’s where I think AC’s philosophy might come into play more effectively. With bases empty, the batter is just trying to get himself on base somehow, but with runners on and those additional wrinkles with both the clock and the knowledge that pickoff attempts are at a premium, this could get entertaining. I’m desperately trying to find out where I saw the nugget about the batter only getting one call for time per plate appearance but I imagine that timeout request will be much more strategically employed, so there ya go.

The last bit is about the Cubs staff as constructed last season, and obviously some of these guys won’t be on the roster in 2023, but it was still quite telling when most of the pitchers not named Wade Miley would have violated the pitch clock whether there were runners on base or not. This is definitely something they will have to work on in the spring, and I’m sure we’ll see lots of reports of players and managers and umpires freaking out as they learn and adapt to the new rules and enforcement patterns (if any, umpires are a fickle lot).