Team-Building Exercise

Today is a pretty important day, whether you want to help preserve whatever this democracy is now or you want to try to burn down Parliament (don’t do that last one, didn’t work out so well for the last guy). I already did my civic duty but since it’ll be a while before we know what happens, I thought I’d look at the free agent list and do my best to set up the game we talked about a while back. Keep in mind that this is more unscientific and a lot of it is based on “feel” but I’ll try to put a 2024 fWAR number next to each name as we group them into bins. As mentioned previously, the Cubs have about $60MM to spend before hitting the first luxury tax threshold at $241MM, then the tougher penalties trigger at $261MM. So it would seem that if the Cubs wanted to go crazy, their AAV for this offseason has to be around $80MM or less, and probably closer to that $60MM number unless Juan Soto suddenly decides he couldn’t care less about New York.

For reference, MLBTR’s top 50 (including a few players from the Asian leagues) is here, and the full list (apparently updated regularly as guys sign) is here. Let’s set a hard $80MM limit (you don’t have to spend everything) and then here are the tiers, with some rounding to keep it relatively simple (* = QO’d but just kind of assume the Cubs don’t care if they actually sign these guys)…

$50MM

Juan Soto*…and that’s it really. FanGraphs says he accumulated 8.1 fWAR in 2024.

$30MM

• Corbin Burnes* (3.7 fWAR)
• Alex Bregman* (4.1 fWAR)
• Blake Snell (3.1 fWAR)
• Willy Adames* (4.8 fWAR)

$20MM

• Max Fried* (3.4 fWAR)
• Pete Alonso* (2.1 fWAR)
• Jack Flaherty (3.2 fWAR)
• Anthony Santander* (3.3 fWAR)
• Sean Manaea* (2.8 fWAR)
• Teoscar Hernandez* (3.5 fWAR)
• Yusei Kikuchi (3.5 fWAR)
• Christian Walker* (3.0 fWAR)
• Nick Pivetta* (2.0 fWAR, the going thought is that he accepts the QO)
• Nick Martinez* (3.5 fWAR, probably accepts QO)

$15MM

• Tanner Scott (1.6 fWAR, reliever)
• Luis Severino* (2.1 fWAR)
• Jurickson Profar (4.3 fWAR)
• Nathan Eovaldi (2.7 fWAR)
• Tyler O’Neill (2.5 fWAR)
• Gleyber Torres (1.7 fWAR, slumped a bit in his walk year eh)
• Max Scherzer (0.6 fWAR, partly injured this season)
• Justin Verlander (0.7 fWAR)
• Paul Goldschmidt (1.1 fWAR)
• Walker Buehler (-0.2 fWAR, but he did just get the save in the World Series clincher)
• Kirby Yates (1.9 fWAR, reliever)

$10MM

• Jeff Hoffman (2.0 fWAR, reliever)
• Clay Holmes (1.2 fWAR, reliever)
• Carlos Estevez (1.2 fWAR, reliever)
• Matthew Boyd (0.9 fWAR, swingman when not injured)
• Joc Pederson (3.0 fWAR)
• Andrew Heaney (2.2 fWAR)
• Frankie Montas (1.4 fWAR)
• Danny Jansen (0.5 fWAR, surprising since he’s so coveted as a hitting catcher so defense must suck)
• Jose Quintana (1.0 fWAR, you wanna take a chance?)
• Michael Conforto (1.3 fWAR)
• A J Minter (-0.1 fWAR, must have had a few blowups)
• Kyle Higashioka (1.6 fWAR)
• Michael Soroka (0.4 fWAR, swingman)
• Andrew Kittredge (0.3 fWAR, reliever)
• Kyle Gibson (1.5 fWAR)
• Tommy Kahnle (0.1 fWAR, reliever who does throw non-changeups)
• Ha-Seong Kim (2.6 fWAR, more if he hadn’t gotten hurt)
• Shane Bieber (0.8 fWAR, probably needs a pillow contract due to the injury issues and TJS)
• David Robertson (1.9 fWAR, reliever)
• Travis D’Arnaud (1.8 fWAR, probably shorting him a bit but ATL didn’t want him)

Have fun spending imaginary money!