Bleacher Bums Forum

It also is termed "below market value" which makes it very trade attractive.

The future "market value" will depend a lot on what happens with his bat.  If he was a 100+ OPS+ hitter, his "market value" would be significantly higher, baseball level, compared to the 74 and 84 he's been the last couple of years.  Who knows?  I think the actual "market value" has to consider his off-field issues; the real market would. 

As a fan, I'm certainly hoping that he hits well enough to make that contract a baseball-level bargain.  And likewise I hope that his off-field behavior and persona improve dramatically, as a result of sincere and lasting improvements. 

The Cubs are paying Russell for 0.425 WAR, even with horrific offense and time missed he’s been worth 1.5, 1.4 WAR the last 2 years.

That’s fWAR.

bWAR has him at 2.0, 2.4—giving him more defensive value credit, which in his case I think probably is more accurate of his overall value.

Russell may be a 2WAR guy even if he hits like Frank Castillo, I get that.  I'm just saying that if he could hit a little bit, or even get up to or close to or even a shade above average, he'd have a LOT more market value than as a strictly defense-only guy.  You can calculate value based on present market-value and past-performance.  But his future performance, who can guess?  Maybe he'll be in the 74-84 range again of last two years; maybe he'll rebound and get back into the 91-94 range of his first two years; maybe with some age and maturity and good health and good coaching he'll show the age-based improvement that many people anticipate back when he was 21 and he'll blossom into a 100-105 guys. 

The defense is pretty predictable; it's going to be elite.  >90th percentile in the whole game in terms of defensive value. 

But the offense is very unpredictable.  Might be <10th percentile; might improve into the 20th-40th percentile which would be a huge step up for any offense playing him every day; or might improve up into the 40th-70th percentile and be no liability whatsoever in the lineup.  If you didn't have to sacrifice scoring to play him, his value will go way up, whichever WAR calculation you use. 

I think there's something of a composite team factor for offense.  Red Sox catchers as a group were even worse offensively than Russell last year, and their offense rocked nonetheless.  So as Blue has often noted, *IF* the other guys rock, Russell can be an auto-out and we can still have an elite offense.  But Red Sox had two >1K guys, and of course no pitcher batting.  So an opposing pitcher still had to respect 8 guys, and it was only 1/9th of lineup that was an auto-out rally-killer. 

I think it's harder to sustain a non-HR-based scoring inning when the number of auto-outs increases.  Sure, if Schwarber and Bryant are posting 1.030 OPS seasons, everything's going to be fine, whether Russell is a 5th-percentile or 45th-percentile hitter.  HR's are huge, of course; if the Cubs could be one of the stronger HR-hitting teams, you can score anytime.  But if you're trying to score by bunching ≥2 hits in a given inning, that's hard enough when you've got three outs; it gets harder when you're giving away auto-outs.  Hopefully Russell will be considerably upfield on the anti-awful spectrum when he's in the lineup this year. 

Maybe his plan is to resign in June and take a job with Detroit!

One of the Padres writers stated the Cubs and Padres have talked about Bote in a trade and that the Padres are looking to dump Wil Myers who is owed $74 million through 2022 if his option isn’t picked up. Heyward is owed $32 million more through 2023, so I can’t imagine that the Padres would take him back.

The interesting part about Myers contract is he is owed $5.5 million this year and has an AAV $13.833. Maybe the Cubs could dump Chatwood, Kintzler and Duensing lowering their money this year and either take pitching prospects back or get some cash back to lower the salary and still get something less interesting back.

One of the Padres writers stated the Cubs and Padres have talked about Bote in a trade and that the Padres are looking to dump Wil Myers who is owed $74 million through 2022 if his option isn’t picked up. Heyward is owed $32 million more through 2023, so I can’t imagine that the Padres would take him back.

The interesting part about Myers contract is he is owed $5.5 million this year and has an AAV $13.833. Maybe the Cubs could dump Chatwood, Kintzler and Duensing lowering their money this year and either take pitching prospects back or get some cash back to lower the salary and still get something less interesting back.

I don't really think Myers frees up enough money to do anything else if it's Chatwood going the other way, especially after 2019. If they've soured on Myers enough to trade him for Heyward straight up, then maybe there's something there...but that really just frees up luxury tax money rather than real money past 2019.

How much would the Cubs have to add to Bote to get Kirby Yates? He only has one elite year and is only two years from free agency, so would a similar package to what they gave up for Wilson and Avila (Bote plus a decent prospect with some upsidein the low minors) do the trick? Maybe add a little better second prospect and send Duensing (or Kintzler and half his salary) to even out the money?

2019 the Cubs have $60 million coming off the payroll and after 2020 another huge chunk.

Yeah, but you don't want to be spending $22.5 million/year of those savings on Wil Myers in 2021-22 when you could just be done with Chatwood.

I keep reading that all these savings are going to free up future payroll and the Cubs will be able to spend in free agency again...which is true to an extent. But a lot of that will be going to raises for Bryant, Baez, Contreras, Schwarber, Hendricks (for 2020 at least), and others.

Another big chunk will go to rebuilding the pitching staff--Lester, Hendricks, Quintana, Hamels, Strop, Cishek, and Morrow are all free agents in the next two years. Given the Cubs' recent history of developing pitchers, you're being overly optimistic if you think the Cubs will be able to fill more than 2-3 of those positions internally.

Another big chunk ks going back in the pockets of Ricketts family members. If they're not putting the cash in now when they're in the middle of a championship window, then they're almost certainly going to cut back to get under the luxury tax again once the Cubs go into a retooling phase in a couple of years.