Busy Day Already Underway, Baez’s Gold Glove Chance, Cubs Convention Coming, and Other Bullets

WHEW. Quite a morning, eh? The offseason just kicked off this week, and we’re already deep in the weeds of big arms returning, trades going down, financial considerations, roster construction, and so much more. And that’s just because of today’s Hamels/Smyly move!

Other transactional stuff last evening, if you lost it in the shuffle: Pedro Strop’s option was picked up, the Cubs claimed Johnny Field off of waivers, and Jason Heyward did not opt out.

We will update the payroll situation soon, but here’s where things stood going into the offseason.

Oh, also, there are going to be more options decisions, opt out decisions, and qualifying offer decisions around baseball today. BUSY DAY.

OK, gotta move on to other things for a moment …

  • By this analysis, Javy Baez shows up far behind Kolten Wong AND D.J. LeMahieu for the Gold Glove:
  • I read that, and while I totally think it’s a fair analysis, I think Baez is getting unfairly dinged because of his versatility and the Cubs’ allergy to extreme shifts. I’m biased. HOPELESSLY biased. But there is no “second baseman” out there in baseball that I’d rather have manning the position besides Baez.
  • (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

  • The Cubs Convention is coming, and the details are here:
  • More on the Giants’ front office pursuits, which are really hard to pin down:
  • You are reminded that the Giants might hire two top people, and Jason McLeod has interviewed. It is likely a very attractive (set of) job(s).
  • One of those snarky but serious points I think is almost always worth making at the outset of the offseason, when people outside our sphere are saying dopey things about the mistakes the Cubs have made in free agency:
  • One of my favorite features each year is Jeff Sullivan writing about the worst called ball of the season at FanGraphs. This year, it’s a middle-middle slider by Dakota Hudson, but there’s a good reason it wasn’t called a strike: Yadi Molina whiffed on receiving it (cross-up), and it hit the umpire. In the junk. Yeah, you can call that one a ball.
  • Oh wow, Cubs are already showing up on video game covers for 2019:
  • Eat it, Raiders:
  • Among today’s many Deals of the Day at Amazon, there are chargers, laptops, Lord of the Rings, and much more.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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