Baseball

My Only Hope

By Sam Fels 1820 0

It’s not the best place to be if you’re like me, where the only respite from the dreariest possible Cubs offseason is the Hawks. If you lean more to the Bulls, well, it’s not much better for you, is it? When was the last time we were envious of White Sox fans? Fuck. What a state. Thank god for Liverpool (HAHAHA Killion you moron!).

In that state, I will reach for any straw I can that will leave me any hope of continuing as a Cubs fan any longer (yes, a Kris Bryant trade simply to save money would probably cause me to turn my card in, and I’ve been consistent about this). I don’t want to have to be something else. I’ve been this all my life. But eventually, there’s only so much you can take. So when I saw this making the rounds yesterday, first saw it on Cubs Insider, it was at least a flash of hope. A brief streak across the sky.

There are caveats of course, and plenty, as Evan mentions within this piece. Clearly whoever David Kaplan is talking to hates Kris Bryant, as the idea that he’s not even a top-30 player in the league isn’t something you’d hear spewed out of the gaping maw of the biggest meatball on a barstool in Bridgeport. Fifth Feather might say it just to piss me off, but he wouldn’t mean it. Second, whoever willingly talks to David Kaplan also must have their own issues, because I’d rather be speedbagged in the face by a werewolf than deal with Kaplan, and I know I’m not alone. Third, David Kaplan can’t count to six.

Now that that’s all out of the way, the idea or report that the Cubs’ asking prices for either or both of Bryant and Contreras isn’t a huge surprise. They should be! One’s a former goddamn MVP who only trails Betts and Trout in WAR since coming into the league and the other is what, the second-best offensive catcher in the league now that Buster Posey can’t bend his knees? Technically he was even better than Grandal at the plate (127 wRC+ vs. 121), and you can take Mitch Garver’s numbers and shove them. Nothing that happened at Target Field last year is real, other than them losing to the Yankees in October. That’s as real as it gets. Also, Contreras is due to make pretty much nothing this year, only upping his value.

So their prices should be in the stratosphere. These players don’t just come on the market, trade or free agent, that often. If you had to trade them, and make no mistake the Cubs most certainly don’t have to, you need to be getting multiple pieces back that help right away to soften the blow of not having a genuine difference-maker anymore. Otherwise, you’re just hurting yourself.

The hope is that Theo Epstein, who must know deep down how stupid this all is and dreams of drugging his boss to get him to see reality as it is, keeps the prices so high the next six weeks that a deal either can’t be done or he gets an actual good baseball trade out of it (Gavin Lux and Dustin May and that’s just for starters, assholes). Given the more likely scenario of the former, then he can go to Ricketts and say, “Look, I tried, but I’m not going to make a bad trade that hurts the team short- and long-term just to save money. That’s not what you hired me for.” That’s the hope, at least.

Because as we all know, and Theo knows, even this team as constructed right now isn’t bad. It’s still got as good of a shot as anyone to win the Central, and that’s with a hole in center, second-base (which might even be filled by Hoerner some point soon), and the bottom of the rotation. Still, all that would require is a bounce-back year from Quintana, and you’re basically a 90-win team as is right now (and Q’s underlying numbers suggest he was way more effective than most realize). The more you think about it, the nearer it gets to impossible that the Cubs could make a trade that Theo would think is acceptable.

Still, there’s the problem of getting under the luxury tax, which seems to be the directive. Right now, the Cubs need to shed about $6M to get there, according to most projections, and probably more to have any flexibility during the season. The elephant in the room is that it should be Jason Heyward’s name being thrown about, because that’s really the only obviously bad contract on the books. Does Darvish’s $22M look so bad after Zack Wheeler just signed for $21.5M? Dear reader, it should not.

The hurdles with Heyward are obvious. You’ll never clear all of his $23M. He has a full no-trade. Even eating half of his salary probably still requires throwing in a non-lottery ticket prospect to sweeten the deal, even if he agreed to go. And yes, he gave the speech that ate the cat that ate the rat in the house that Jim Thome built. I know all that.

But it’s that deal that’s affecting everything. Even with his plus-defense in right, he’s been a one-WAR player during his time here. He hit 20 homers in a year when everyone hit 20 homers. At this point, his power is probably not coming back, because one’s bat-speed doesn’t tend to get better in their 30s and velocity is only becoming more prevalent from pitchers. Even if you can clear $12M off the books, that’s under the luxury tax with minuscule flexibility. Yes, you’d probably have to fill another hole, which might just involve throwing Bryant out to right more often and letting Bote play third. It’s not ideal, but it’s a fuckton better than having Bote play every day because you have Heyward in right and no Bryant.

Who might be interested? Might I suggest the other side of town? Right now, Nomar Mazara is slated to play right, and ladies and gentlemen let me tell you, though he looks the part perfectly he is very much not the part. He didn’t hit in Texas with the juiced ball, so he’s probably not going to. He’s also a butcher in the field. Already with Eloy in left and the glove on his head, the Sox need outfield defense. And with the amount of kids they have, they could always use more leadership which they keep telling us Heyward provides to cover for the fact he’s been going to bat with several sticks of pasta instead of a bat. The Giants are always mentioned, because they need a true hero defensively to cover the Costco parking lot that is right field at Oracle Park (that’s what it is now, right? Who the fuck can keep track?)

Just an idea. But crowbarring Heyward off the roster would be a much less damaging way to shed money than losing actual contributors. Anyway, this is my hope. It’s forlorn I know, but it’s all I have.

Baseball

No, The Nationals Don’t Have Enough For Kris Bryant, So Shut Up

By Sam Fels 1912 0

I’m going to have to keep doing this until it actually happens I guess, but as some in greater Cubdom try to rationalize trading Kris Bryant, which can’t be rationalized, I’m just going to have to sit here and tell you how stupid all they are. Because they’re stupid, y’see. And I’m not. Clearly.

The latest round of nonsense, which has been around for a while, is the Nationals somewhat panicking over losing Anthony Rendon and missing out on Josh Donaldson (if they do) and putting in an offer for Bryant. That’s nice. Everyone should at least call. He’s a great player. But the Cubs should immediately hang up the phone after telling GM Mike Rizzo to do one. In reality, that’s what they should do to every GM who calls, and the same to their shithead owner when he calls and says he doesn’t want spend the money and make him fire everyone, but I’m drifting into fantasy land again. I would even suggest taking that phone and hitting Tom over the head with it repeatedly, but I’m the angry sort.

The Nationals supposed “offer” would center around…well, centerfielder Victor Robles. That’s nice. Robles is nice. Everything’s nice. The appeal is that the Cubs would have centerfield locked down for a while, which they haven’t since…fuck, Bobby Dernier? Dexter Fowler was only here two seasons, so does that even count? It was where Corey Patterson and Felix Pie died. It’s where Albert Almora is currently dying. So on some level, I understand. You’ve never seen a regular CF at Wrigley for a decade. Just hasn’t happened. Might be cool to have. Everyone loves new, especially when you’ve waited so long.

When it comes to Robles, the first thing the supposed experts have to yell right in your face because that’s what they do is, “HE’S ONLY 22!!!” Hey, I miss being 22 as well. Well, not really, I kind of sucked at being 22. Late-bloomer, I am. I mean, I miss the not ever really being hungover, which I could do then. Can’t really now. I’m getting off point again, aren’t I?

Anyway, the thing about yelling about he’s 22 is trying to project how much Robles could improve. And that’s certainly possible. He already was one of the best defensive centerfielders in the game, and the Cubs have undervalued their outfield defense some the past couple years. So with him and Heyward, hey that’s pretty good. And his defense certainly doesn’t figure to drop off through his 20s unless like, he gets hooked on Italian beefs and Off Color Brewery (it’s happened to many others).

But no one has any idea what he will be with the bat. Robles was below average offensively in his rookie season. He’s almost certainly never going to hit for power,, even if 17 homers at 22 looks promising. Everyone hit 17 homers last year. His hard-contact rate was simply sad at 24.6%. It’s just not really part of the projection. Maybe he’ll get there, but no one can say for sure. He hits a fuckton of grounders, which with his speed is fine, but I think we’d like to do a little better than fine when trading, y’know, the best Cub of all-time and fuck you.

Robles never walks, and probably isn’t going to either. He kind of did in a 40-game stint in AAA in 2018, but that’s 40 games. He doesn’t strike out much either, which again is nice, but it’s not like he’s making a lot of loud contact. He’s basically grounding out a lot. Maybe Cubs fans are getting Juan Soto and Robles confused. I’m not sure.

The thing with Robles is we don’t have a huge stretch of minor league performance to point to, which is what happens when you reach the Majors at 21. Which is a good sign in itself. He dominated in 77 games at High-A, but that’s High-A. He was just as good in 37 games in AA, but that’s just 37 games. And that was mostly on batting average and a decent number of doubles. Quite simply, no one can be sure of what he is and what he will be. Everyone’s guessing. You gotta do better than a guess for Bryant.

Robles screams of a plus-Juan Pierre or something, with actual very good defense but simply has to get up around 200 hits to be effective. Hard pass, thanks, because the Nationals literally have nothing else. Their best pitching prospects are probably two years away at least when Ricketts is going to let everyone walk anyway. The others have been bad at AAA. While Carter Kieboom would allow for a ton of Marvin The Martian jokes, he’s more contributor than centerpiece and isn’t that what Nico Hoerner is supposed to be?

If you’re somehow going to justify a Kris Bryant deal, and you never will, you better be getting three pieces back who are at least good and ready to be part of things no later than 2021. The Nats don’t have it. Move the fuck on.

Baseball

Dallas Buyers Club

By Andy Jonathan 1891 0

Hey, look! Some of the money got spent!

Honestly, I cant tell you how surprised I was to open up my twitter app last night during the 49ers game and see the following come across my feed:

At first I had to double check it wasn’t some asshole’s parody account (though the Bruce Levine one is pretty damn funny), and when it began showing up on MLBTR along with other beat writers it seemed the Sox had actually signed him. So now what?

Dallas Keuchel is not the same pitcher he was four years ago when he won the Cy Young for the AL with the eventual World Series winning Houston Astros. He is, however, an expert sinkerballer and a guy who generates ground balls at an astounding rate. Keuchel’s career average for GB% hovers just a tick under 60% (59.2% to be exact), which is second only to Marcus Stroman in the league for the last five years.

This is a very good thing, as The Down Arrow is not exactly a pitcher friendly park. Having an innings-eater who gets hitters to pound the ball into the dirt is a very handy thing for the Sox to have. With both Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito living life at the top of the strike zone, someone like Keuchel will go a long way to preventing Luis Robert’s hamstrings from flaming into dust his rookie season. It’s also gonna mean a lot more work for Tim Anderson, so here’s hoping he’s been working on his AL-worst fielding percentage this winter.

In addition to all the ground balls, Keuchel has thrown more than 150 innings (not including last year’s shortened season due to not having a contract until June) in all but one of his seasons, so durability is not an issue for the guy. Having a quality pitch framer for him last season in Tyler Flowers (skypoint) helped him bring his K/9 back up above seven for the first time in four years, so Yasmani Grandal should be able to continue that trend.

To top that off, he has a career ERA+ average of 110, which for comparison we turn to this tweet from @MrDelicious13:

https://twitter.com/MrDelicious13/status/1207999683861327878?s=20

 

With the last two signings, Keuchel and Gio Gonzalez (at least statistically speaking) immediately become the 2nd and 3rd best pitchers on the Sox rotation. It also means the days of seeing Ross Detwiler and Dylan Covey serve up plates of meatballs to opposing hitters are dead and buried. For the first time in what feels like eons the Sox will have major league quality starters at the 1-5 spots in their rotation. Granted Dylan Cease and Reynaldo Lopez are still unknown quantities at this point, but they’ve both shown flashes of dominance thus far in their careers and (at least in Cease’s case) are still valued members of The Future™.

This also creates a glut of potential starters for the Sox going forward, as the impending returns of Michael Kopech and Carlos Rodon from Tommy John surgery creates a scenario where the team has the flexibility to make some trades for a proven bat provided everyone stays (or comes back) healthy. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Hahn uses this as a reason to start Kopech in the minors as a way of both building up his arm strength and recapturing a year of service time. I’m assuming the Sox opening day rotation looks something like this:

  1. Lucas Giolito
  2. Dallas Keuchel
  3. Dylan Cease
  4. Gio Gonzalez
  5. Reynaldo Lopez

 

Finally I can look at the 4th and 5th starter spots and not feel like someone just scrubbed my eyes with a urinal puck. What a great feeling, lets keep it up!

In other interesting news, Dallas Keuchel is repped by none other than Jerry Reinsdorf’s arch nemesis Scott Boras. This explodes the narrative that the Sox were never interested in doing business with Boras clients, or at the bare minimum presents a new path forward for the Sox front office in the way they pursue free agents in the off-season. It also inches the Sox payroll close to the $100 million mark, with Keuchel’s contract for three years, $55 million (for an AAV of about 18 mil per). It also has a vesting option for a 4th year if he hits innings pitched numbers in the 2nd and 3rd year of the contract. With Keuchel turning 32 before the season starts that puts him at 36 in the 4th year of the deal which might look a little iffy but fuck it, it’s not my money.

So the Sox still need another bat (unless you’re totally wowed by Cheslor Cuthbert, and if you are I’d like to congratulate you on surviving this long with head trauma) and most likely another bullpen arm (Hello Dellin Betances!), but even if none of those things come to pass we can finally say the Sox have had a successful off-season. It doesn’t quite wash away the disappointment of losing the MannyDerby last season, or make me forget that Odrisamer Despaigne and Yonder Alonso were things last year, but it goes a long way towards making me hopeful that this rebuild is not going to stretch on ad infinitum.

Good work, Hahn and co. Now don’t jerk around with Luis Robert’s service time, because I’ve seen enough of Adam Engel starting in CF to last a lifetime.

Baseball

The Devil Is Always In The Details, But Not Absolution

By Sam Fels 2297 0

This one’s been making the rounds the past 24 hours or so. Brett over at Bleacher Nation did some awfully deep digging into the CBA to find out what a second year over the luxury tax threshold would cost the Cubs in total. It’s…dense, but worth your time.

If you can’t make your way through it, and again it’s dense, basically not only would the Cubs incur slightly more in penalties straight from the luxury tax, but their revenue sharing totals or rebates and other things would also get clipped. It is an easy path to see where it might cost them an additional $40M-$50M, not just the few million in salary and luxury tax. It’s complicated, but it’s there.

The first reaction you have to reading this…good god is this CBA fucked. Now you see why all work stoppages really end up about being owners vs. other owners, and it’s also galling that owners will happily agree to a system that costs them money as long as that money doesn’t go to labor. But that’s an America-as-a-whole problem, because our country is evil and stupid. We’ll leave that discussion for another time.

You could read this and totally absolve the Cubs of blame here. I wouldn’t expect any team to not “miss” $40M or more. Even if I think the Ricketts family could easily absorb that (and they probably could), that’s a lot of filthy lucre. But it doesn’t absolve them to me.

For one, as transparent as the Cubs were about the rebuild and process , this is the kind of thing they’re close-lipped about. It’s easy to see why, because other owners and Rob Manfred wouldn’t want anyone going out of line and saying what the real reasons are as it would only be ammo for the MLBPA in the next negotiation, and make everyone look bad. You could easily see the union taking that and saying, “Even some of your owners think this deal sucks!” It’s understandable, just not likable. Tom Ricketts is happy to take this bullet because he’s going to make his money anyway.

Second, it’s hard to feel any sympathy when you’re out there admitting that your renovation costs went $500M over budget. Especially when almost all of them aren’t aimed at people like you and me. I’m never going to step foot in a luxury suite. I’m never staying in Hotel Zachary. It’s unlikely I’ll even eat at that Big Star, even though I do love me some Big Star tacos. Hey, the wider concourses and bigger concessions and nicer bathrooms are great, but they feel like lowest on the totem pole when it came to what the Cubs really wanted to get to in remaking the park and neighborhood.

You go $500M over budget, that’s not just cost overruns. That’s incompetence. Which is usually a word that follows Crane Kenney around. And that’s playing a role here, no matter what the CBA rules are.

Third, this CBA isn’t exactly new, and the Cubs had to calculate for this from the way back. They had to know the really good team they were building even in 2014 would get expensive. And while some of the contracts haven’t worked out, it’s not like they weren’t part of the plan. They told Jon Lester before he signed that Jason Heyward was part of their plan too the following year. Maybe they didn’t see Heyward having such a huge free agent year in St. Louis and driving his price up, but it couldn’t have been that different than what they budgeted.

They knew that Arrieta was going to be a free agent after ’17 and need replacing, and it was clear in 2016 that he probably wouldn’t be worth the investment. Does that Darvish contract really look so bad now and was it really so unpredictable? What’s the other outlandish deal out of the blue we’re talking about here? Quintana is cheap. Kimbrel isn’t making that much in comparison. These can’t have put them over the edge.

This all should have been part of the plan. And if it’s the revenue they aren’t getting from Marquee, fuck even a wayward drunk like me could have told them three years ago that having your own network doesn’t work out to YES or NESN-like proportions anymore. Someone probably should have within the organization. But much like the Hawks, they were too busy snorting their own geniusness. That’s just bad planning.

Fourth, might it not be easier to get under the tax next year? One, it should go up a little bit, and second all of Lester, Quintana, Chatwood come off the books. That’s some $48M right there, which obviously gets partially eaten by arbitration raises but still, there would seem to be more wiggle room then if you bite the bullet now. The Cubs are only on dock for $96M for 2021, and even if we allot some $70 M to the arb-eligible players, that’s way south of the tax.

If I keep going, trading Kris Bryant to avert this also robs you of a big chance of postseason revenues. I don’t know how much they are but I know they’re something you’d notice in either direction. And it does so for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t add up. You’re still telling me you have to move your most important player because your luxury suites were too expensive because you can’t get a fucking decent estimate, and that shouldn’t wash with any fan.

Of course, that would still involve not tying yourself in to any huge commitments next season, which would still make for a pretty boring offseason now. And we’re in the midst of that. But it would involve not, y’know, moving along the best player you’re ever going to have and seeing what the next CBA has in store.

It’s a more complicated situation than we realized, but the Cubs are still fucked in the head.

 

Baseball

Third Time’s The Charm – White Sox Sign Gio Gonzalez to Shove

By Wes French 1449 0

The White Sox fulfilled half of what GM Rick Hahn said he sought to do to the 2020 rotation (and an organizational prophecy to re-acquire him a third time!) by signing journeyman LHP Gio Gonzalez on Thursday afternoon. The terms are not yet known, but I’d assume it’s a year and under $6M. Again, totally fair.

Gonzalez won’t get the tingles going for anyone the way the Zack Wheeler sweepstakes did, but he’s perfectly fine as your back end hurler that helps bide time until the Michael Kopechs, Carlos Rodons and Dane Dunnings are ready to take those innings back. He’s a career 3.68 ERA/8.6 K/9/3.8 BB/9 guy that basically won’t kill you, the type of arm that probably would’ve been good for 3-5 wins last year over the sub-replacement options the White Sox threw out there almost 40% of the season. His ground ball rate (45ish%) and HR/9 rate (0.9 or so/9) will also be welcome on a team that could use a little more and less of each, respectively. Fangraphs projects him at similar numbers and 1.5 WAR for 2020, so yea they’ll most definitely take that from a #5 considering the last few years worth of results.

Originally drafted by Chicago in 2004 (though never playing an MLB game for them in two (!!) stints), Gio the elder does come with some warts. He missed a good two-plus months in 2019 to start the season, not signing until late March only to be cut by the Yankees. He battled “dead arm” and surfaced with the Brewers to put up a respectable 1.4 WAR/1.9 bWAR with a 3.50 ERA/8K/9 over 87.1 IP (19G/17GS). He’s been incredibly durable over his career, so the injuries/slow start in 2019 and his not going late into games can probably be chalked up to sitting around most of the off-season and missing spring training completely. His velocity and spin rate are slowly diminishing, but so are every other 34+ y/o not named Verlander or Greinke.

Gonzalez actually improved in a lot of areas over his sort-of-rough 2018, and it doesn’t take much for one to connect some dots and see that, hey, I wonder if new White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal had anything to do with the improvement? Well we’re all about to find as the pair will team up again in 2020 on the Southside. Sometimes these things write themselves.

While this isn’t a bad signing, it could start to look that way if the White Sox don’t look to add one of the remaining better starting pitching options remaining on the free agent or trade markets. Gonzalez is perfectly palatable as an aging and hopefully mostly effective rotation filler, but depending on your opinion he’s anywhere from the fourth to second best major league starting pitcher on the roster.

This depends on how you feel about Reynaldo Lopez being consistent and how Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech can start their second seasons with the big club (with one coming off a year on the shelf). I’m going to guess not many of you are hip to any of those three slotting in at #2 caliber material just yet, so signing Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dallas Keuchel or trading for Jon Gray(yes, please) or David Price (gross) is still ideal to the White Sox really start pushing the Twins for the division crown in 2020 and creating a winning culture.

Funny, since the Sox will likely be battling those Twins for the services of all the aforementioned (besides Price). There’s a clear path here to making some noise and getting the fan base excited about more than just the waves of prospects set to potentially be sort of good. Signing Gonzalez can be a part of that, or it can be the signal that management really is punting this thing until 2021 (for the most part) if they keep signing off the proverbial scrap heap.

Baseball

My Brian Hurt Like A Warehouse, It Had No Room To Spare

By Sam Fels 2018 0

I’m with you, dear reader. I know you’ve come here of late, perhaps the past couple months, and all you find is anger and despair. That’s not very fun. And we could sit here and say it’s not our fault. We didn’t make the Hawks, Cubs, and Bears so frustrating, and the White Sox a bit confusing. Thank god we don’t cover the Bulls yet! There’s probably a more reserved tone we could take at times, maybe see the long view a bit more. Find the positives. Find the path to happiness again and such.

But then I read this like this.

Let me help you out with the hammer:

Trading Schwarber and Bryant would seem excessive for a team that intends to contend in 2020. The Cubs, however, are hellbent on avoiding the fates of teams such as the Phillies, Giants and Tigers, who entered down cycles after going all-in for extended periods in recent times. The Giants and Tigers are headed for their fourth straight losing seasons. The Phillies have not had a winning season since 2011.

The Cubs are three years removed from their World Series title, and their window is starting to close. Left-handers Jon Lester and José Quintana are entering the final guaranteed years of their contracts. Schwarber, Bryant (assuming he loses his service-time grievance), shortstop Javier Báez and first baseman Anthony Rizzo are under club control only through 2021, Contreras through ’22.

The clock is ticking. A recalibration is in order. Let’s not forget, the Cubs are changing managers from Joe Maddon to David Ross. If the front office does nothing, it would place unfair expectations on Ross to win with Maddon’s team, a team that was less than the sum of its parts in finishing 84-78 last season.

I don’t even know where to start. And this isn’t Ken Rosenthal’s doing, he’s just reporting what he hears. So let’s just take it in order.

First of all, the “intends to contend in 2020” is goddamn laughable when you’re out here so publicly flogging your best player, the best player you’ve had in a generation, and the best player you’re going to have in a generation. Even more so when you’ve made it clear you’re not trying to trade him for help right now. I would argue until my dying day, which the Cubs seem intent on bringing about sharpish, that this is still a team that needs more minor tinkering and moves around the edges to win the Central again, but we’ve been down that road.

It’s the “hellbent on not being the Giants, Phillies, or Tigers” that is just…I mean galling doesn’t even get there. Enraging? Exasperating? Utterly incomprehensible? Pure nonsense? You can mix and match your own adjectives and see what you come up with.

I really shouldn’t have to point out that the Giants won three World Series in five years, and their being bad now is a trade I doubt you’d find any Giants fan unhappy with. We all know there’s a price of success, especially success at that level. And the Giants certainly made their missteps afterward and maybe even during, though anything built on that level of power pitching has an itchy foundation. The Giants also had another playoff appearance two years later (you may remember it), so in total they had seven years of being a relevant team at worst. Seven, keep that number in mind.

So to the Phillies. They won a single World Series, just like the Cubs have and seem intent on only doing. Except they went to two consecutive Series, made the playoffs five straight years, and weren’t all that far from adding a second consecutive title. Yeah, the crash was hard, but the core of that team when it was all over were all in their mid-30s, something NONE of the Cubs current core will even be in 2021 or 2022. The Phils’ success came later in their careers. The oldest at that time of reckoning for the Cubs–or so they seem hellbent on telling you it will be– will be Rizzo at 32. The youngest of the Phillies was Utley at 33 when their cycle came to a close. It’s just not a clean comparison.

Right then, the Tigers, who don’t come with any of the flags that the previous three teams mentioned have. They do have two WS appearances, which the Cubs have yet to manage, but fine, no one cares when you only win a total of one game in them. The Tigers were competitive for seven season out of nine. A couple dice rolls here or there and they add a third or maybe fourth Series and maybe even win one. Again, nine seasons. Seven competitive.

The Cubs have managed five. That’s if you even include this past one, which I will because they were better than their record, or should have been. But you don’t have to, which makes it four. Five. How is five years an acceptable run at it? Especially what’s already here? And why would we assume punting on this one and maybe the next one guarantees anything beyond that, given that you still might see the Ricketts not pay whoever’s left or whoever develops into another piece in that time?

Rosenthal mentions their window closing, and uses Quintana’s and Lester’s contract situations as reasons why. Except they’ve pitched themselves to the bottom of the rotation and also their contracts ending opens up $35M+ of payroll that you could, oh I don’t know, improve the team with? I know, I’m fucking nuts and should be locked away from society for your safety. Out here with ideas like that. I mean, starting with Baez, Bryant, Rizzo, Contreras, Schwarber, Hendricks, and Darvish with $35M in space to use however you see fit seems like a nice base to me, but again, the sky is plaid in my world.

The last sentence is just weird and paradoxical, because if last year’s team was less than its parts it would seem that David Ross is kind of in a sweetheart spot as the team would have an excellent chance of improving simply because of market corrections and health. Not that you’d want to count on any of that, but still.

And again, this is all horseshit, a word that’s becoming synonymous with everything Cubs right now. The Cubs aren’t trading Bryant because they think it improves anything, short-term or long. It’s because they don’t want to pay him what he will earn in two years, and they don’t even want to pay him what he will get this year in arbitration. It’s not a “strategy.” It’s simple greed. The new buildings are up, the luxury suites are in, and Ricketts doesn’t have to do much to watch the money flow in. So he’s not going to.

I recognize that Ryu at $23M a year or so is a risky investment, and he’s just about the only difference-making starter on the market right now. And I will accept a baseball trade of Contreras to find another starter, if possible. What I won’t accept is the idea of an extra $20M-$25M breaking the Cubs financially. There is nothing the Yankees have, or should have, that the Cubs don’t.

So fuck off with all of this.

Baseball

How You Can Do Things Differently And Still End Up In The Same Place

By Sam Fels 1543 0

You have to give it to Anthony Rizzo’s agent. There’s no time like the present to add on to the Cubs’ miserly ways and paint your client as the sympathetic one. It’s working for everyone else, and the organization may never be a bigger villain than it is right now.

When I first heard the news about the Cubs shrugging off any extension talk at the moment for Rizzo, it made sense in my mind. Because the Anthony Rizzo debate in 2021-2022 has always been a dicey one from the time he signed that contract back in 2013. Right now he’s one of the best bargains in the league.

But when he comes up for free agency with everyone else he’ll be 32 and turn 33 the next season. These days, that’s very much when it’s thought that players start their career descent, if not a year before. He’s had regular back issues the past couple of seasons, which have kept him out an increasing number of games the past two seasons. While he’s a great defensive first baseman, it’s not considered a premium position (though defensive metrics haven’t really figured out how to grade the errors 1st basemen save their teammates, because if they did Derrek Lee would be considered the greatest defensive player of all time and could rightfully sue Aramis Ramirez for half of his career earnings with the Cubs). A wait-and-see approach on Rizzo for those reasons makes some sense.

And yet, for someone who has seriously considered turning in his Cubs fan card if they trade Kris Bryant so as to avoid having to extend him or lose him for nothing, and for much higher money than Rizzo would get, the reasons kind of aren’t all that different, right?

Bryant is two years younger, so any extension he gets when he becomes a free agent, here or elsewhere, will certainly extend into years where he’s just not the player he was. You’d be getting some years of his peak, in theory, which you wouldn’t with Rizzo, in theory. He has been even more injury plagued the past two years. The difference being that A) it certainly feels like he was mishandled by the Cubs medical staff at least last year and possibly both, and B) shoulder and knee problems, while worrying, don’t portend quite as much to a full structural breakdown as recurring back problems would. But again, they’re not something you’d completely disregard either.

Theo Epstein commented when asked that the two sides were just too far apart to keep talking, and clearly the Cubs have other things they need to get done this winter (or have convinced themselves they have to get done). It’s hard to fathom what Rizzo was asking for come 2022. You would have to think his team had something like Paul Goldschmidt’s or Joey Votto’s $25M a year in mind, given that Rizzo has been fairly compared with at least the former for pretty much his whole career. Rightfully so.

Still, the Reds have watched Votto completely lose his power ever since he started earning the big check, and the Cardinals must fear the same after they watched Goldy’s wRC+ drop 30 points last year. And he’s 32, the exact age Rizzo will be turning when his time to hit the market comes.

Of course, by that rationale, you wouldn’t sign any player past their 30th birthday, really. And maybe that’s the approach some teams want to take and just might. But you could do this all day. The Cubs definitely want to sign Javy Baez to an extension, and he’s he exact same age as Bryant. And how much athleticism can he lose as he ages before it affects what he brings to the table? You can do this with Schwarber and Contreras too, if you want.

And for right now, the Cubs don’t appear inclined to consider the intangibles with Rizzo, of which there are many. He’s entrenched in the city and community, is the unquestioned leader of this team and pretty much the face of it, and the affection between and he and the fans couldn’t really be much higher. We want to believe that factors into contract negotiations, because we simply can’t bear the thought of Rizzo wearing another jersey. It wouldn’t make any sense.

All those things applied to Brent Seabrook as well. How’d that go?

Again, to me you just pay Rizzo something reasonable, unless he completely falls off or is using a cane in the next two years. Because they have the money, and perhaps at age 32 he won’t really be seeking more than four or five years and even if he’s not the All-Star he is now it’s hard to imagine him every being a true detriment to the team.

But it’s trickier than it appears on the surface. Maybe it all is.

Baseball

Here’s Another Strand To Their Lies

By Sam Fels 1889 0

You probably already have figured this out by now, but every time I write about the Cubs from here until spring training, if I can even bring myself to do it depending on what happens, might send me into a rage that causes me to spontaneously combust and the article will remain partially finished. I will leave specific instructions to the minions to print it as is so you’ll know when and where exactly it happened, because I don’t want you to be uninformed.

Anyway, Joe Sheehan usually puts it better than I do:

That was in response to the Lerners saying they can’t afford both Strasburg and Rendon, which they definitely can, but it applies anywhere. And so it is with the Cubs and the Ricketts family. And one thing they’ve seemingly kept under wraps, as Sheehan pointed out in his newsletter today, is that we will be operating with a completely new CBA in just two years.

So the idea that the Cubs will not be able to afford everyone when they’re a free agent…you simply can’t know that because we don’t know what the CBA will look like. Perhaps the owners and union have some inkling on where things are going based on preliminary discussions. Or perhaps the players will get their head out of their ass and hire an actual lawyer to head their union instead of a middling, power-hitting first baseman whose basic negotiating tactic has been to present his belly to be tickled.

Again, as Sheehan pointed out, the MLBPA failed to peg the luxury tax to revenue for the whole league. The tax threshold jumped 16% between ’10 and ’17, while revenues went up 70%. But you can’t renegotiate that now, only in the future for what’s to come.

Still, the fear for the Cubs has always been going too far above that threshold for a second straight season, which is at $208M for this season. After arbitration and such the Cubs are projected to come in above that again or right at it, which is what apparently has Tom Ricketts shitting himself in public so you can understand his suffering. They want to get in under that mark.

But how far above this are we really talking? Some have the Cubs coming in at $182M before any free agent additions, while some others have them around $210M. It seems unlikely the Cubs are in for much more than a $3M-$4m payment this year at the 30% rate, if they even get above the threshold. Obviously their arbitration numbers will grow next year from where they are now, but also Lester’s money comes off the books as does Chatwood’s, as does Jose Quintana’s. That’s $43M right there.

And then the year after there’s a new CBA, which could peg the luxury tax at $250M for all we know. Or possibly not even have one, depending on how hard the players want to go at this (and it should be exceedingly hard). Let’s be nice and dream, and say that the Cubs come to their senses and decide they’re going to keep everyone because y’know, they’re good at baseball and that’s sort of the idea here. And I’m going to say it costs $125M total to keep Schwarber, Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras, and Baez. Fuck, let’s call it $135M, because Bryant likely should end up with $10M more than any one else at least per year. And it’s another $30M for Kimbrel and Hendricks after that, but Kimbrel will only have one more season left. Darvish gets $19M. Heyward is in at $24M. That’s $208M for a reliever, 2/5ths of a rotation, corner outfield spots, and three-fourths of your infield as well as a catcher.

Sounds like a lot, but you also have Hoerner around who will make nothing, perhaps a fully developed Happ, and also two years to fill in those blanks with your system, which should be enough time to come up with something. Basically, if the luxury tax bumps to where it should in 2022, you’d have to work to get there.

Let’s call it all told $245M in 2022. That’s after your own network for two seasons and assuming no new hotels or luxury suites, though you never can tell. It’s higher than say a $220M bill with salaries and luxury tax penalties tacked on that you might get this year or next, but is it astronomical? Is it fuck.

If you want to convince me that, at most $15M over two seasons is enough to break the Cubs financially, I want to see some fucking books opened. Again, this isn’t about “can’t” afford. It’s about “don’t want to.” And it’s all a lie.

Baseball

Everyone’s Talking About Some Guy… Who Cares? – White Sox Trade for Nomar Mazara

By Adam Hess 1526 0

There was once a time when acquiring Nomar Mazara from the Texas Rangers would have been a move that inspired excitement and a great deal of hope in White Sox fans. Back in the winter of 2016, Mazara was the rumored headliner of the Rangers’ offered package for Chris Sale. What the Sox did get for Sale ended up being much better than anything the Rangers had to offer, both at the time and in overall MLB results since then as Yoan Moncada has turned into a star and Mazara has been well….. not good.

So you will be more than forgiven if the Sox acquiring Mazara Tuesday Night, in exchange for Steele Walker, is no longer an exciting move for you. Despite being a former top-25 prospect with huge power that many thought would blossom into a middle-of-the-lineup force, Mazara has struggled in the major leagues, never really improving much from his rookie numbers that were considered promising at the time, but when you post the same numbers for four seasons in a row you go from promising to frustrating very quickly. And that is what happened to Mazara and the Rangers, as it appears Texas was just done with waiting for the potential to deliver.

As you can tell by my headline, I don’t think much of this move – meaning I do not love it or hate it. It’s basically, as our friend and fellow FFUD Sox writer AJ put it, a giant shrug emoji of a trade.

It’s somewhat cliche to say that former top prospects who have disappointed early in their careers “still have potential,” but that cliche feels very applicable and appropriate in Mazara’s case. Like I said, his rookie year was promising with a .266/.320/.419 slash line and a 91 wRC+, but he has not improved significantly since. The last two years he has posted wRC+ of 95 and 94 respectfully, though 2019 did see home post a career high SLG% of .469.

Pretty much all of his offensive value comes against RHP, where for his career he’s barely inched above average (103 wRC+) but 2019 was one of the best of his career in that regard with an .844 OPS and 110 wRC+ against righties. Please don’t ask me about his numbers against LHP, and save yourself the trouble/stress and just don’t look them up. Just trust me when I tell you they are bad, and Mazara will be best used in a platoon.

Which is where the major question mark from this move comes in – is this all the White Sox plan to do to address right field? If it is, this could end up being something of a bad move – it’s the kind of flier they should’ve been taking on players the last three years rather than going into a 2020 campaign where they are supposedly trying to compete. However, if they don’t dust their hands and call it a day, and try to go out and find a genuine platoon partner for him, Mazara could prove to be something of a savvy addition. You can do a lot worse than a guy who produces like he does against RHP (which the Sox struggled with in 2019) as a platoon OF and bench piece. Asking him to do more than that could be a fool’s errand.

The cost is very reasonable, as while Walker was the #6 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s list for the Sox system, they’re the only publication with him that high. His ceiling has always been limited, and while Mazara has struggled to hit in MLB, Walker is just 14 months younger and struggled in high-A last year. While I am a fan of Walker and think he could be an MLB regular some day, his age and ceiling compared to Mazara’s make this is a very worthwhile move.

So while this is hardly an exciting move, it doesn’t strike me as one to be upset about in any way.  The Sox appear to believe they see something in Mazara, both in the analytics and in his tools, that leads them to believe they can fix him. New hitting coach Frank Menechino is a preacher of a more patient approach and an analytics advocate, which is what made his hiring a good one and may provide a sliver of hope that the Sox can indeed help Mazara reach his ceiling. It’s not like a change of scenery for a mid-20’s former top prospect with a lot of power being a launching point has not happened before (hello, J.D. Martinez). I am hoping this won’t be the only move they make to address RF, because there are some good platoon options out there in free agency (I will take Domingo Santana, please) but until we know for sure what the Sox’ overall plans are for Mazara, this move strikes me as nothing more than an upside play that makes sense for the Sox to try.

Baseball

Turns Out, You Can Turn Off What Turns Me On

By Sam Fels 2089 0

I don’t even know if we have younger readers. I know we have a couple younger writers, but maybe everyone who reads this remembers when “Cheers” was on NBC. Maybe even when Diane was the female lead (not even close to as funny as Rebecca and I’m not even going to entertain an argument about it). But let me take you back anyway to 1996.

The heart and soul of the Blackhawks wanted to be paid what he was worth. He made no bones about it for a few years. The Hawks hung around the fringes of championship contending, though never really looked like they could threaten the Wings or Avalanche. Perhaps with another move or two, and not even major ones, they could have. But the owner was one of the biggest assholes on Earth who thought he was larger than any player, and the Hawks traded pretty much everyone’s favorite player that summer instead of paying him what he was worth. And right after that, they were irrelevant in this town, in that sport, everywhere for 13 years until that shithead owner died. You could fire a cannon through the UC on most game nights and maybe hit one person.

Jeremy Roenick was never the hockey player that Kris Bryant is the baseball player.

And that’s exactly what should happen to the Cubs if they are going to seriously pull the trigger one what increasingly looks like a likely Bryant trade. They should draw 15,000 a game and Hotel Zachary should collapse onto Tom Ricketts’s head. But it won’t, because somehow–and I really have no idea how–enough Cubs fans have convinced themselves this is just the way it has to be or that it might even be good business.

I don’t know how many times I have to scream this until there’s blood fountaining out of my eyes, but a Kris Bryant trade has nothing to do with baseball. The ideas of “extending the window” or “long-term health” are goddamn smokescreens to fool a surprisingly large portion of the fandom who became infatuated with the rebuild and apparently never want it to stop. It is simply about not paying Kris Bryant what he’s worth because the Ricketts family wants to keep a little more for themselves. Because of the way baseball is structured and the way the park is now, they don’t have to actually draw full house to turn a profit. They’re not the only ones skating on this.

The offers rumored for Bryant are utterly ludicrous, and yet I see far too many people trying to justify it after looking up from their Top 100 prospects list that I’m sure they don’t jerk off on daily. Austin Riley and Cristian Pache? The first struck out half the time last year and got replaces by fucking Charlie Culberson and Adam Duvall, and the second is someone you’d have the privilege of waiting two years for to not be as good as Kris Bryant. Oooh, a .,747 OPS in AAA, excuse my while my throbbing erection bursts!

The Dodgers? Here I was under the impression that the Cubs and Dodgers were supposed to be fighting over the NL pennant for near a decade, and now the Cubs are just going to hand them their best player? Well it must be for Walker Buehler, another franchise turning player? Nope. Oh, well then maybe Gavin Lux and Dustin May, two of the higher regarded players around who are ready now? Sure ain’t, fucko! It’s for Alex Verdugo, who couldn’t keep Joc Pederson or Chris Taylor out of the goddamn lineup. How is this not making everyone want to pull out their own esophagus?

There is not a trade for anyone other than a list of about seven that makes any sense for Kris Bryant, Repeat this to yourself until you believe it or until you keel over. I don’t really care which.

I’ll give the Hawks this. As much as can be said about them right now, and I’ve said it all, they are trying to win. They may not know whether it’s now or in two years, and they probably don’t know how to go about either, but they idea is the same. And it has to be, because the NHL is still so gate-dependent. The Cubs have given up on that, and they’ll get away with it because I’m apparently the only one angry about it. This is completely fucked.

And yet so many have convinced themselves it’s the right, or just acceptable move. We’re less than two years removed from Bryant not just being in the discussion of best 3rd baseman in the game. It was fact. You didn’t hear a peep from anyone about it. And then two injury-riddled seasons later and suddenly everyone thinks he’s Keith Goddamn Moreland? “Oh he’s not clutch!” Fucking die. Or did I hallucinate the homer that bailed the Cubs out of only the World Series in Game 5? “He’s not that good.” You’re too stupid to live and you’re taking up my oxygen.

The Rickettses fucked up on their budgeting for all the things that didn’t have to do with baseball, and now they’re going to make you pay for it by punting on the next two years at least to watch a hardly impressive Cardinals team or a suddenly improving Reds one zoom by you. Every time Tom Ricketts leaves the house he should be pelted by rotten vegetables because he has the business sense of a Twinkie but will never pay for it because Papa is godly rich and has all the money anyway.

“Sports is a business,” is always the rationale, and it’s not wrong. But we use that so often it’s lost all of its meaning. At the very end of it, the idea was that the “business” still, however tenuously, balanced on getting people interested and in the park and their eyes on the TV. You could only do that by winning. And now that’s out the window. And no one cares. They’ll win if it comes along to them, but not if it costs that much. And this is Chicago, which at least used to be one of the most pro-labor/union towns anywhere. What the fuck happened?

I hope the White Sox win three consecutive World Series, and I hope they beat the Cardinals to do it so you’ll have what you decided was ok to miss out on because it made sense in your own convoluted Moneyball brain (which you completely missed the point of) right in your face. And I hope the most obnoxious Sox fan in your life (redundant I know) never lets you hear the end of it. Lucky for me, I have about five of them, three of which work for this site. It’s what you and the Cubs deserve.