I am told there was a bit of a bathroom flooding situation back home while The Little Boy and I are in Chicago. Sorry you had to handle that solo, dear …
- The Yankees ultimately won it in the 9th anyway (with help from an Anthony Rizzo hit), but this was quite a yikes moment for folks rooting for former Cubs in the playoffs. Mark Leiter Jr. to Anthony Rizzo to oops:
- Rizzo has mostly offset any defensive miscues with a strong bat this ALCS, but it’s an open question what next year holds for him after an overall down offensive year (which followed the concussion-affected down 2023 season).
- As for Leiter, the righty struggled badly with the Yankees after the midseason trade, and I think he’s going to be a borderline non-tender. He’d make something in the $2 to $2.5 million range, which is not all that much, but he is without minor league options and would be taking up a 40-man spot. I then wonder, if he were non-tendered … would the Cubs try to bring him back on the cheap? It’d be kinda funny. That said, I would still have the same concerns that preceded his trade in the first place: when he has the splitter, he’s a monster. When he doesn’t – which happens for stretches – he’s average, at best.
- Speaking of postseason relievers:
- I want to be careful with what points are actually fair to make from that interesting factoid. Greg is not saying, and you should not presume, that it’s actually bad to sign any high-priced free agent relievers (some of them are very good!). Nor should you take away that every good bullpen is constructed by internal promotion, savvy trade, and cheap reclamation. Instead, the takeaway is something I hope we’ve all already known for a long time: it *is* possible to have a very good bullpen, transient though it may be from season to season, by way of internal promotion, savvy trade, and cheap reclamation.
- I don’t want to see the Cubs sit out the higher-quality reliever free agent market, but I also want to remember that the volatility there is very real (Hector Neris was good every single year until he wasn’t), and it isn’t homerism to say the Cubs do have a whole lot of quality internal options going into next season and a decade-long demonstrated ability to find impactful guys from the reclamation pool.
- Moises Ballesteros can just hit, man:
- Jonathon Long homered in that game, his second of the AFL season:
- This actually exists:
- Because of the Xander Bogaerts deal being SO excessively bonkers that offseason, I sometimes forget just how wild the Trea Turner deal was: 11 years, $300 million. Turner, 31, has been a four-win player on average between his two seasons with the Phillies, which is good, and maybe he’ll heat up enough over the next few years to justify the presumed downswing in the second half of that deal (that’s why you sign a guy to that kind of contract – you’re not EXPECTING to get great performance when he’s 40). But you want to get something more like six+ wins each year at the outset of that kind of monster deal. Without that, you can’t really say “hey, I know this deal looks not great from here on out, but that’s because he provided HUGE surplus value in the early years.” It’s thus like the Phillies are signing Turner today to a fresh nine-year, $255 million deal. Maybe he would get that kind of deal in free agency as of today, maybe he wouldn’t. My guess is not quite.
- Speak of which, that’d be my sales pitch if I were Willy Adames! Kinda almost similar overall numbers the last few years, maybe slightly better defense, and two years younger. That’d be the argument anyway. Still, I’d be shocked if Adames actually got something like 9/$255M.
- Elite investigative work: