Don’t see any big names other than Soto that are worth the multi year investment. And even him at supposedly 500 to 600 million is kinda nuts. Maybe go after the Chinese pitcher. Burnes is tempting but lots of miles on the arm and near 250 million plus is too risky as well.
That's just this year's guys.
It’s a stronger pitching market than position players. If the Cubs wind up trading Bellinger, I wouldn’t hate Anthony Santander, but I think a bat upgrade likely comes from trade. I could see the Cubs going after potentially 2 starters and a couple relievers. In the pen, I’d love for the Cubs get get AJ Minter & Ryne Stanek and bring Jorge Lopez back. On the starter side, Roki Sasaki is the crown jewel if they can get him, otherwise, I’d like to see maybe like a Nick Pivetta plus an injury recovery flyer on Shane Bieber or Walker Buehler. Lots of options on the table.
Well I’m talking about guys that won’t cost you some money. But guys that will cost you a shitload of money. Bergman, Soto, Adames, Burnes, Snell, Fhalerty.
We’ll see what they do. There’s a lot of chatter about Bellinger potentially getting traded and I think the Cubs were genuinely surprised to see him opt in. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a major addition if Bellinger goes. They’re going to spend up near the CBT again and they’re currently $40-50M below that for this year, and more than that if Bellinger gets traded.
Ah ha. The bolded part was sitting below the “See More” button. Now I see what you meant and can’t disagree. There are still worlds where the Cubs win this deal (Morel may never hit and Bigge/Johnson may not pan out), but I know which side I’d bet on at this point.
Sasaki looks like the real deal. If he waits until after Jan 15th, it would let all team's bonus pool reset and found the below #'s online, so I am guessing he will wait. I get how much he could get for a bonus; but any idea how much of a contract a team could offer? Any idea if there are limits on first contracts in these situations once he signs the bonus?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say he isn't signing with the A's.
LOL. Tauchman is worth 10x to this team as Parades. This was a “We paid up the wazoo for this guy so we’d better keep him so we don’t look like idiots” decision. What a frickin’ joke.
One small quibble, Thompson is out of options. He had to be traded, signed, or cut. Sounds like he took slightly under projected cost in order to have a little security. This one I’m okay with. Merryweather puzzles me because his arm keeps falling off.
I thought KT had an option year remaining, but if he doesn’t, then the move is even dumber than I thought. He’ll be released and out of the organization by June and Jed will get absolutely nothing in return…
Oh, good. We’ve got Plan B locked up if Fried and Sasaki fall through.
Bellinger is owed about 52 million if he takes player option in 26 correct? Not too risky. Doubt they get a ton for him though with injury history.
@hawkifann probably knows better, but Thais and Thompson are on split deals? I am going to be shocked if Thais breaks camp with the MLB club and is on the 40 man out of ST. He's defined to be a Des Moines guy who comes up if thee is a need. I believe he's got $400,000 guaranteed even if he starts the year in AAA. If they need him he's be added back to the 40 man and called up. Guarantees himself some money this way.
I know Thaiss is on a split deal. I haven’t seen that about Keegan, but it’s possible. Could be a good option for Keegan to do the same and lock in cash in a year where he has no more options remaining.
It wasn't announced, but because he took under his projected number there is speculation he also wanted to lock in some money. If he proves himself next season and earns a FA contract for 2026 it's a win for him.
I’m taking them as noise at this point. There seems to be this assumption out there that literally no team in baseball would want Belli even for a bag of balls and that the Cubs are re-setting payroll to Rays levels. Cubs have regularly spent to around CBT levels and I expect this year to be the same. I do think Jed likely assumed Cody would opt-out and started mapping out plans and now those plans have to change….but the prevailing wisdom on Twitter yesterday was that Bellinger is a player that could only find the starting lineup with the Cubs, which is absurd.
His guaranteed money isn’t that bad. But the injury history is. For a contender he’s more of a guy you want to trade for mid year if he’s having a good season.
Completely agree. He had to know that he wasn’t going to get more money if he opted out. I am ok with him back, but would have preferred to move on.
I thought there was a chance he’d opt out and get a lower AAV deal for more years. I could absolutely have seen him getting 4/$80M or potentially more, which is $30M+ more dollars than he’s guaranteed currently in Chicago….but either way, that has sailed at this point.
Same roster or same starting lineup? The roster thing is already over - no Wisdom, Madrigal, Tauchman, Hendricks, Almonte, Adbert, Smyly plus the trade for Eli Morgan…..so the comments I keep seeing about Jed “running it back” should have ended last week. That’s more than a full third of last year’s opening day roster gone….and if we’re talking OD roster, can add Morel to that with the Paredes trade.
