Thinking About a Good Offseason, Taillon on Top, Conforto, Mancini, and Other Cubs Bullets

I am out and about for most of the day today, so I had to hustle through these Bullets, and they are going up bright and early (and I’m on vacation, so I’m going to try to be NOT SUPER ANGRY ABOUT KODAI SENGA TODAY )…

  • Patrick Mooney wrote about whether the Cubs can have a successful offseason without landing one of the top four shortstops. It’s been the question since October, and my answer has consistently been a version of, “I suppose the answer is yes, but it’s pretty hard to imagine what it would look like, realistically.” I tend to think it got a lot harder last night with Kodai Senga signing with the Mets.
  • For his part, Mooney touches on the things the Cubs are looking to accomplish this offseason, with an eye toward answering the question. If Jameson Taillon is as good as the Cubs hope*, and if Cody Bellinger bounces back … and if the Cubs get a great glove behind the plate to pair with Yan Gomes, and if the Cubs knock it out of the park with relief additions again, and if the Cubs add another quality starter and a bat at first base … I mean, OK, yes, you can start to see a path I guess. Ultimately, though, Mooney reminds folks that two shortstops ARE still left on the market, so we can get there when we get there.
  • *(On Taillon, by the way, Mooney passes on a Sahadev Sharma report that I missed initially: the Cubs rated Taillon as the best starting pitcher on the market who was not attached to a Qualifying Offer. That would mean the Cubs rated him more highly than Kodai Senga, which, if true, could suggest they wouldn’t go higher than four years and $68 million (Taillon’s deal) … and Senga reportedly got five years and $75 million.)
  • I could get on board with this (it’s an upside play at this point, even in a rotation), but I’d need to feel pretty confident he could still handle CF well enough when necessary:
  • If the Cubs add Trey Mancini (which I am “fine” with, even if it isn’t necessarily the kind of impact bat they need), you can expect to hear a lot about his numbers last season potentially being misleading:
  • This is correct, but also, I can’t help but think to myself … wow, THAT team had a nearly league average wRC+? That’s wild:
  • Just do it:
  • A reminder that Rob Manfred and MLB want to control all streaming so that they can form a model without blackouts (which will be a good thing for the sport, ultimately, but they have to get the pricing right):
  • 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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