On May 16th, the Chicago Cubs were 29-16 and in sole possession of 1st place in the NL Central.
The Cubs have now lost 18 of their last 23 games, have fallen to a .500 record at 34-34, and are in 4th place in the NL Central.
ESPN sources: Green Bay WR Christian Watson and the Packers reached agreement today on a four-year, $110.5 million contract extension that includes a $31 million signing bonus.
nothing wrong with lances proposals here but it feels sincerely irresponsible for the cubs to move more assets for a rental unless they were like borderline best team in baseball (theyre not)
Yesterday, @MLBNetwork asked me to come up with Tarik Skubal trade packages.
Here’s how I did it…
First — Not even 24h, and I’ve seen people say these are awful or they’d be accepted immediately, which is a good indicator that I wasn’t *too* far off.
I think DET wants close-to-MLB everything. I was trying to get good pitching prospects into each deal (their SP prospect depth is poor).
I did some back-of-napkin math to find Skubal’s surplus. Didn’t have a ton of time to vet this $ amount but needed to do this somewhat quick.
I calculated Skubal’s surplus as roughly $30m ($/WAR reg szn, rough $ of postseason contribution, QO value to DET minus salary).
Then I tried to beat that $ by >$10 mil with prospect value, using the $ value of FV tiers from FanGraphs with some massaging. I then placed prospects into tiers based on a combo of Eric Longenhagen + Kiley McDaniel’s ranks. See screenshot below.
I think I undersold the value of the Brewers deal on air, and oversold the value of the Dodgers deal, but I’ll maintain that the Dodgers have *so many* options to get this done, they’re the clear favorite by a lot.
The crux in all this is a) is my Skubal surplus low / high and by how much and b) moving prospects a half tier or more can swing some of these values by $5-10 mil, which can make some of these deals look light/heavy.
And super important to “b” is that it only matters what DET grades these prospects as. So if they have a 50 FV on a guy like Letson for MIL … maybe they don’t need to include one of Lara/Jett. 🤷♂️ For the Yankees’ package, they’re going to have a hard time with DET if Kilby is a 45+ FV bat to Scott Harris & Co, because they probably need Lagrange for stretch run.
I don’t think my process was perfect, but I’m happy with how this segment came out and my logic approaching it in the time I had.
Always room for improvement!
The Cubs got off to a great start offensively Tuesday night, with each of the first 2 batters (Hoerner, PCA) collecting hits.
But they notched just 1 hit over the next 7+ innings, going 1-for-23.
@JmoneysteckNFL alot of the league going after it this offseason feels like a cheap imitation rather than something they all have a true vision for. (the copy cats that is)