Of the top 25 free agents available entering the offseason, going by projected fWAR (returning MLB players only—this is coming from the Roster Resource list, so call it top 27 with Senga and Yoshida), eight remain unsigned. Of those eight, only three are “big” free agents. There’s a wide range between the top of the class—which was Aaron Judge, with 6.9 projected fWAR—and the 27th man, which is Elvis Andrus, with 1.9 projected fWAR.
Of the three big names remaining, one—Carlos Rodón—is a starting pitcher. The conventional wisdom at the moment seems to be that the Yankees want him and he wants the Yankees, but plenty of conventional wisdom ultimately breaks down, so put a pin in it. We’re here to talk about the other two: Carlos Correa and Dansby Swanson. Really, we’re here to talk about Swanson. Really really, we’re here to talk about the Cubs.
FanGraphs is low on Swanson. Even coming off a 6.4-fWAR year, even at the age of 28 (29 when the season begins), even after 2020 numbers that would have come out to 6.2 fWAR if they happened over a full season, FanGraphs has Swanson turning in just 3.2 or 3.3 fWAR this year, below even his 2021 levels.
I don’t fully get this, but the projections do include a 104 wRC+ and about five defensive runs saved, which comes out to a solidly above-average shortstop, but not a superstar. The 104 may be accounting for Swanson’s high BABIP in 2020 and 2022, but it’s worth noting that in each of those years, his xwOBA was equal to or better than his real wOBA, implying the BABIP was no accident. Similarly, after 21.4 defensive runs saved, a mere five feels tiny. I get that shortstops age, but that’s harsh.
Still, these projection systems are better than my gut at what they do. There are reasons—I’ve just listed them—to doubt the systems, but the systems are a good baseline, and the systems say Swanson is closer to Andrus in 2023 expected production than to Carlos Correa, which is not how this narrative’s been crafted.
I say this mostly as a Cubs blogger preparing myself to read and listen to a whole bunch of meltdowns if Swanson and Correa both end up elsewhere—say, with the Giants and the Twins, respectively. If Jed Hoyer doesn’t want to overpay for Carlos Correa, I really do believe he might be right. If Jed Hoyer doesn’t want to overpay for Dansby Swanson, I similarly believe he might be right. Those guys may be overpriced, and Jed Hoyer may be committed to not paying for overpriced players.
The problem, though, and this is where the meltdowns have merit, is that if everyone is overpriced…that’s just the price. There’s no ironclad law that says free agent cost is directly proportional to WAR. There’s no rule which dictates that $8M/WAR or $9M/WAR is the eternal rate. And there is a significant natural phenomenon going on right now with the Cubs, which is this: There is not enough talent on this current roster to compete for a playoff berth. If you want to get better fast, you have to sign a lot better players than Jameson Taillon and Cody Bellinger. You need to run, not walk.
Maybe Jed Hoyer doesn’t want to run. Maybe he doesn’t want to be hamstrung by a giant commitment to Carlos Correa, especially with the threat—which Sahadev Sharma seemed to point out this week—that Tom Ricketts could look at Hoyer next winter and say, “What? I gave you Correa. Figure it out,” and close the pocketbook again. Maybe he has confidence in the guys coming up through the pipeline, and he’s willing to wait until 2025. Fans will come back if that’s the case. But paradoxically, will Ricketts give Hoyer that much leash? These are the questions we start dealing with.
An underrated possibility in the Cubs blogosphere right now is that they will sign Carlos Correa. It would explain a lot of the inaction elsewhere—Christian Vázquez to the Twins? Ross Stripling and Sean Manaea to the Giants? Small moves, relative to signing Correa. But, if the Cubs were assured of signing Correa, it would have happened by now. They may be the likeliest, without us knowing it, but they haven’t signed him. And meanwhile, the well is drying up.
The Stripling and Manaea signings both hurt. Those guys have been great at times, and the Cubs have huge rotation needs. It’s easier to sign pitchers like that—proven potential, unproven consistency—when you’re the Giants and you made your 2021 bones by turning those kinds of guys into aces. It’s harder when you’re the Cubs.
The Vázquez and Zunino signings hurt too. It’s a smaller cost than failing to staff the rotation or get a lineup anchor, but opening the season with P.J. Higgins as part of the catching tandem would be inexcusable. Omar Narváez is still out there, along with a handful of other solid platoon guys, but the fear of the Cubs getting none of them is a bad one, because that’s when you start thinking malpractice is happening. Not overpaying and committing long term to a future aging third baseman who’s a good shortstop now is one thing. Sending P.J. Higgins out there to catch the third game of the year is another.
I’m not shaken up about the Sean Murphy trade—the Cubs aren’t good enough to be sacrificing prospect capital right now, and Murphy wouldn’t have made the difference unless accompanied by a whole lot of help via free agency. It’s earning the Brewers a lot of plaudits, and those are probably fair, and that’s bad news, but it doesn’t upend the landscape to have William Contreras in the division.
There are more still out there—Nathan Eovaldi, Corey Kluber, Brandon Drury, plenty of guys. But the Cubs will have to sign a lot of them if they’re going to compete. Even if they do sign Swanson. Even if Swanson does overperform. They need half a starting catcher. They need bats at first base and designated hitter (and it’s hard to see Trey Mancini being good enough to be that bat, but maybe Matt Mervis is about to win Rookie of the Year and I’m a fool). They need one or two more starters, and they still need to build the bullpen, unless they’re going to roll the dice on the guys they ended last year with.
It’s just so much, which goes back to our point from last week about the gap being too large. And the worst part is that these additions aren’t to fill in the gaps around studs. The additions either need to be the studs, studs need to materialize elsewhere, or the Cubs need to be the deepest team in the majors. There are no stars on this roster.
What’s going to happen? Let’s look at two scenarios:
Scenario A
The Cubs still get Correa or Swanson. If it’s Correa, the risk is that the deal is eleven years long and could turn into a whale. If it’s Swanson, the risk is that he might get bad fast, and even if the deal’s only seven years, seven’s still a lot. He’ll need to be defensively excellent or a great clubhouse guy to be worth it. I don’t love either hypothetical, and I understand why Hoyer doesn’t either, but I do think he wants to accelerate the process, and I don’t think there would have been all that smoke this summer about the Cubs signing one of the four if they weren’t going to do it.
Signing Correa or Swanson would push Nico Hoerner to play more second base and third base, putting Nick Madrigal in a platoon role and getting Patrick Wisdom to play more first base and designated hitter. Maybe the Cubs don’t sign anyone else to fill those spots.
The Cubs get a real backup of a second catcher, and they sign Corey Kluber, and they pick up a few bullpen arms they think they can get a lot from and use as trade chips if the need arises.
Scenario B
The Cubs don’t get Correa or Swanson, but they get Andrus to have a competent second shortstop option if Hoerner misses much time at any point, and they get Drury to beef up the infield’s offensive production. They sign Narváez, giving them a very good catcher to pair with Gomes who also compliments Gomes’s splits. They make few moves in the pitching market.
**
These scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive beyond the shortstop piece—you can sign Narváez in either, you can sign Kluber in either, you can sign Drury in either—but they kind of give an idea of a median approach which, while not getting the Cubs up to division contention, leaves them close enough to .500 on paper to have some semblance of optimism.
That’s the thing about the two scenarios. I’m not sure Scenario B really leaves the Cubs that much worse in 2023 than Scenario A does. Especially in the Swanson version of Scenario A. And Scenario A really does commit the Cubs long-term to someone expensive, which is necessary to an extent in baseball but seems to be something Tom Ricketts has grown quite opposed to doing. If that’s what Hoyer’s thinking, I do get it. But it’s tough. To say it one more time: The hole is just so deep.
Houston’s Going to Have Questions Now
Well, Houston was going to have questions regardless. They play in the AAC, which is looking like just a two-bid league again this year. Their nonconference schedule was fine, but they’re playing few titans. Their scores are low, which is partially a product of playing such slow basketball but has occasionally come back to the offense that vanished against Villanova last year in San Antonio. Even if Houston had gone undefeated, they would have faced questions in March, the same way Gonzaga faced questions in April of 2021 after opening the year with 31 straight victories. Houston could have gotten through nonconference play at 13-0, capping off the noticeable parts with a win at Virginia, and plenty would have still said, “Yeah, but prove it,” as though there was more the Cougars could have done.
This is how it goes with mid-majors, and I mean the real mid-majors, not low-majors who get called mid-majors. I mean the middle tier of the power structure, those playing the likes of East Carolina and Pacific and San Jose State and Fordham in conference games. The schedule is just different, and so though our impression can be the very same through wins and losses and final scores in whole, the belief doesn’t come that accompanies Kansas or Arizona or Purdue grinding their way through a long conference season. No matter how good a mid-major is, there will always be questions.
But boy, Houston sure made those questions louder. Bad loss from the Cougars this weekend, not because Alabama’s bad but because this is a game Houston had in the bag, and because that scary weakness—the capacity to go perturbingly cold for long stretches of basketball—reared its head in a big moment. The biggest moment of their year so far.
Where does that leave our national picture? This is how I’m seeing it:
Believable National Championship Contenders: UConn, Purdue, Houston, Tennessee, Kansas, Virginia
All six of these teams have questions. UConn has to sustain what they’re doing. Purdue needs to win games when their offense is merely medium. Houston has offensive questions of their own (and is fairly unproven), Tennessee looks bizarre (they really let Maryland back into things after what started as a turtle stomp) but has great results, Kansas might be hitting its groove or might have just had two good games, Virginia’s been winning close a lot, which can be a bad sign. But these are the six whose questions are the quietest, and between them, they’ve lost to only Tennessee, Alabama, and Colorado—a contender, a character, and probably a bubble team.
But.
None of these six teams have as significant of current questions as the next batch. Things are going much better right now for these six, and that’s probably meaningful.
Capable, But Consequential Questions: Texas, Kentucky, UCLA, Gonzaga, Arizona
This is where things get more uneasy. Texas is in unique flux after Chris Beard’s arrest, Kentucky is only 1-2 in games against potential at-larges, UCLA failed in two solid chances to impress back in November, Gonzaga looks like the years of flawlessness have finally sparked some weird exhaustion, and Arizona’s defense sometimes doesn’t exist. It isn’t at the level of recent Iowa teams, but it’s troubled. It’s a troubled defense. The ceilings are there, especially for Kentucky, Gonzaga, and Arizona, but the floors are more on the mind at the moment.
Characters: Alabama, Duke, Arkansas, Baylor
These four are hanging around, but it’s hard to presently believe any can peak in the ranks of national title contenders. Maybe they could make a Final Four, or even the national championship game, like UNC did last year, but only in chaos can we presently see them winning this thing. Only Baylor seems like it has the ceiling, and with the Bears, there are flaws in too many corners of the stat sheet.
Speaking of UNC: We aren’t including them in this area, nor are we including Auburn or Indiana. Each is a fine team, but neither is good in a national sense, and to be honest, neither UNC nor Auburn was really that good last year. UNC was good for nine games. Auburn drew a favorable SEC schedule. It never should have been very believable that either could really win it all.
Tonight
Memphis’s trip to Tuscaloosa is fun. You’d imagine Bama is definitely still up for this game after the big win, as they look for the AAC sweep. Memphis is intriguing. It’s very easy to see it all falling apart—these guys did lose to Saint Louis and Seton Hall, which I’m not sure anyone noticed—but they’re a team that’s capable of looking phenomenal as they do something that isn’t really that impressive. Like Auburn. Who they conveniently just beat.
Iowa State
No, not a tier, just never talked about the Iowa State side of things. Nice win on Sunday. Took care of business. Not a lot to add. Hope Caleb Grill feels better soon.
1-1
The Bulls almost got a weekend sweep, but no luck on that front. A.J. Griffin made a ridiculous bucket, down went the Bulls in Atlanta.
It’s easy to see this team being 4-seed good, which is what blowouts like Saturday’s of the Mavs highlight so well, but the problem is how big the gap is between that and where a franchise like the Bulls should eventually be again. Which is probably why there were more reports yesterday that the Bulls are going to do some selling come trade season.
Thursday Night Thunder Returns
I’m not going to pretend to remember Thursday Night Thunder, ESPN’s old grassroots racing broadcasts, but they’re coming back! With a predictable twist: It’s SRX. Tony Stewart’s Superstar Racing Experience will pivot to Thursday nights and be broadcast on ESPN. Begins in July. Love to see it. ESPN dominates so much of the sports conversation. You have to get into their room if you’re hockey or baseball or NASCAR or IndyCar.
**
Viewing schedule for the evening, second screen rotation in italics:
College Basketball (of national interest)
- 9:00 PM EST: Memphis @ Alabama (ESPN2)
NBA (best game of the night)
- 7:30 PM EST: Golden State @ Milwaukee (TNT)
NHL (best game of the night)
- 8:00 PM EST: Vegas @ Winnipeg (ESPN+)
