Bleacher Bums Forum

“We have a real focus in a lot of areas,” Hoyer said. “It will lead to activity. I can’t tell you when.”

“We could have an active December,” Hoyer said. “We could have an active January. I don’t know. We’re not going to do bad deals just to do something quick.”

Q's: 

Just save the bad deals for January-February?  That's when Pressly, Neris, Turner, Mancini get signed! 

Does Jed's value-calculation program factor inflation?  Like, does he consider current deals "bad" because his computer is programmed based on prices from previous year and before?  Is his computer often lagging behind, maybe? 

Article also repeats Cub interest in Cabrera. 

Also, to Jed a "bad deal" is one where you pay market value. The quality of the player has no bearing on it.

Here's an Andrew Friedman quote from almost a decade ago: "If you're always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent."

Andrew Friedman must not understand the dynamics of baseball like Jed Hoyer does. What has that guy ever done?

Good news - Dodgers rumored to be the frontrunners for Skubal.

Presumably if that happens they'll look to deal Glasnow, which is why his name has come up in rumors too. When he's healthy he's ridiculous but $29 million is a lot for a guy who probably gives you 100 innings, give or take.

Schwarber and Alonso got 5 year/$150-155 million deals, so that is probably the baseline.  It has been reported that he turned down a 6 year $170 million deal with the Tiger's last offseason.  Boras is at least going to want to beat that with Red Sox money factored in.

...“We have a real focus in a lot of areas,” Hoyer said. “It will lead to activity. I can’t tell you when.”

“We could have an active December,” Hoyer said. “We could have an active January....”

Obviously they can be very active with signing non-roster.  We remember Keller more than Flexen, Trevor Richards, Ben Heller, Phil Bickford, Brandon Hughes, Brooks Kriske, Antonio Santos. 

But one each of SP, RH reliever, LH reliever, and utility player, probably one more LH reliever, I'm not sure how "active" that would be?  Especially if some of those are re-signing relievers or Castro. 

He might literally finish his "activity" with one external SP, and bringing back keller, pom, thielbar, and castro, and call it budget quits? 

Robert Suarez to the Braves, 3 years, $45 million.

MLBN speculating that Suarez will setup for Iglesias…

Also stating that most clubs were at 2 years for him due to age, which is crazy to me…

That would likely put them over the luxury tax and I don't think anyone is thinking the Cubs are doing that....

Thanks for Snider info.  I like the dumpster diving. 

*IF* Gallen plus Keller-Castro-Pomeranz-Thielbar went over budget (I don't think it would, but hypothetically...) they could easily skip one of the lefty relievers. 

Last year they opened with just one lefty reliever, Thielbar.  So they could skip having two.  Or they could dumpster-dive for a 2nd one? 

*IF* they hypothetically were to bring back one but not both of Pomeranz and Thielbar, I wonder which they'd prefer?  Counsell has history with Pomeranz, and seeemd to trust him/use him more by end of year.  So maybe he'd prefer Pom.  Thielbar was really good end to end, and was more of a lefty specialist, I don't think Pom had much splits advantage against lefties.  I could see either way.  Heh heh, maybe whichever was cheaper would be Hoyer's more determinative factor!