Offseason Timeline, Velazquez Did It Again, Silver Sluggers Announced, and Other Cubs Bullets

My phone just started doing a weird thing overnight, basically telling everyone who texts me that I have notifications turned off … except I don’t. So that’ll be a fun bug to try to sort out today.

•   The more I’ve thought about it, I am very concerned that news of the latest proposal on economics from MLB will be met with some serious mudslinging from the players’ side, and this whole thing is about to turn into another shitfest. I wasn’t expecting the owners to propose something obviously acceptable three weeks out from the CBA expiration, but the failure to move off of the untenable hard cutoff of free agency at 29.5 years old is really concerning. If they had at least dropped the age a year or presented the age cutoff as one of two alternative paths to free agency (X age or Y service time, whichever comes first), then I could see some positive movement toward a resolution.

•   As Maury Brown writes, when MLB first proposed this kind of setup – a scrapping of arbitration in favor of another way to pay younger players and free agency at 29.5 years old – it was viewed as a “moonshot,” unlikely to get any real traction. But the fact that MLB came back with the same kind of setup two months later suggests they really do want to radically overhaul the system in a way that is hard to say is a win for the players. We have all already been concerned about a work stoppage coming, but I mean, it’s impossible to wake up this morning not feeling like it’s even more of a lock than it was.

•   To that end, we’re already starting to think about timelines for a lockout. Realistically, if you want to have a period for the “offseason” and then have players get to Spring Training with a normal and safe ramp-up period, a new deal has to be in place by about February 1. Any time after that, and you risk creating problems for the players (and then later than that, you risk losing Spring Training games and/or impacting the start of the regular season). Man I am now dreading December and January. Usually it’s a very fun time of the offseason calendar. Sigh.

•   You can’t keep up with all the damage Nelson Velazquez is doing in the AFL:

•   Listen to the sound. Just listen:

•   Velazquez is up to a .371/.481/.742 slash line, and his 1.223 OPS leads the league by nearly 150 points (lol). If you missed yesterday’s Cubs prospect notes, tons more on Velazquez, and just how “real” we can consider what he’s doing. The strikeouts/contact rate are a serious concern as he develops, but you LOVE the trajectory this year:

•   The Silver Sluggers were announced, and the Cubs’ lone finalist – Patrick Wisdom – did not win. The winners list was a reminder that, for all the attention that Braves pitching and outfield trades got this year, their infield was ridiculous:

•   If you ever wanted to look back on which prospects were signed in which Cubs IFA class:

https://twitter.com/CubsCentral08/status/1459128447050076162

•   This Luis Castillo two-seamer was perfect:

•   Dick Butkus ain’t messing around:

•   The timing for the Bulls and Vooch (he was finally turning it on) is as bad as it can get:

•   Meanwhile, the Bulls might have to start thinking about opportunities they can jump on:

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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