Today is Major League Baseball’s non-tender deadline, the day teams have to decide whether to offer contracts to players under club control (those who haven’t reached free agency). This will forever make us think of Kyle Schwarber, whom the Cubs non-tendered three years ago this offseason.
It’s interesting to read back on the MLB Trade Rumors report on the move from the time. Specifically, these lines jump out:
The Cubs do plan on tendering a contract to third baseman Kris Bryant, as MLB Network’s Jon Heyman indicated earlier in the week.
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Tendering a contract to Bryant, meanwhile, puts the Cubs in line to pay him a raise on this year’s $18.6MM salary. For a Cubs team looking to reduce payroll, he’s still a likely trade candidate, although finding a deal could be tricky.
I’d forgotten this, but there were some questions that offseason about whether the Cubs—who’d just won the NL Central in the Covid-shortened season—would keep Kris Bryant or simply let him walk. That was nuts at the time, and it’s still nuts, and while Bryant did bounce back in 2021, his performance and injury issues these last two years have been bad enough that the nuts-ness is notable. Tom Ricketts was apparently very much not confident in the pre-vaccine economy.
Was he, though?
It sure seems that way. The Cubs went on to sign Joc Pederson late in January, with David Kaplan reporting at the time that Ricketts had increased payroll, enabling the $7M price tag (Schwarber signed for $10M with the Nationals). It seems Ricketts had the purse strings drawn as tight as they reasonably could be, and that he then gradually loosened them as the global crisis began to pass. Now, he’s reportedly ready to spend money like never before, with the Cubs seemingly in on every big name on the trade market and every big-name free agent. One lesson from the Schwarber tragedy, then, is that Tom Ricketts is inconsistent with the purse strings. That isn’t a mortal sin—and it especially wasn’t a mortal sin at the height of Covid—but it’s probably not a great trait in an owner. You’d rather the professional baseball people, like Jed Hoyer, know how much money they’re working with and will work with in the future.
Going back to Schwarber:
We’ll never know for sure whether Jed Hoyer would have kept Schwarber had the financial flexibility been there. It’s possible Pederson would have been the one-to-one preference all along. What we should acknowledge, though, is that the non-tender was probably for the best for Schwarber, and that it didn’t work out all that badly for the Cubs. We don’t know whether Schwarber’s renaissance would have happened had he not gotten out of what was often a dysfunctional Cubs hitting ecosystem. He turned into more than a $10M player, but that might not have been the case had he stayed at Wrigley Field. Pederson, meanwhile, was a good player in those few months in Chicago, and while his specific trade didn’t work out (he brought back prospect Bryce Ball, who was released this summer), his was one of many trades that on the aggregate worked out quite well. The Cubs now have a top-five farm system. The Cubs are preparing to contend again. Kyle Schwarber is thriving in Philadelphia after thriving in Washington and thriving in Boston. It’s sad. It still makes me sad. But it was a weird time, and Tom Ricketts was especially weird within that time. Thankfully, it seems to be working out.
That Packers Playoff Probability
Despite the Packers being misery to watch and confidence in Matt LaFleur standing at an all-time low, projection systems still have them with a real chance to make the playoffs. FPI has the number at 8.9%, and FPI is lower on the Packers than futures betting markets. What’s happening?
One explanation is that someone has to make the playoffs in the NFC, and that both the Seahawks and Vikings are vulnerable among teams currently holding playoff spots. The Seahawks are only a tossup against the Rams this week on the road before a stretch that goes 49ers (H), Cowboys (A), 49ers (A), Eagles (H). The Vikings are a road underdog against the Broncos, and the Broncos are playing better, but that still says a lot. Someone has to make the playoffs in the NFC, and the Packers might end up holding the lucky spot on the cosmic Plinko board.
The other explanation, though, is that those of us who regularly watch the Packers are simply not used to watching a Packers team this bad, and that our calibration is off. It’s an arrogant thing to say, but it might be true.
Why Do Injury Reports Exist?
A lot of folks are up in arms about whether the Bengals broke a rule by not including Joe Burrow on their pregame injury reports this week. Burrow was seen wearing a wrist brace before last night’s game, and Burrow eventually left that game with a season-ending wrist injury. If Burrow was hurt, the NFL’s rules state he should have been included on the injury report even if listed as a Full Participant in practice. Bengals head coach Zac Taylor says Burrow wasn’t hurt, but he would also say that if the Bengals had hid something, intentionally or otherwise.
The NFL is investigating, and if they find the Bengals broke a rule, they’ll levy a fine. Why, though, are teams obligated to disclose anything about their players’ health?
As the story goes, injury reports began in 1947 after a scandal in the 1946 championship game involving gamblers, two players on the New York Giants, and a possible fix. They’re an effort to stop the sports gambling equivalent of insider trading. Why does that matter? In and of itself, it doesn’t. If injury reports didn’t exist, anyone gambling on NFL games would be accepting the risk of inside information affecting markets, just as gamblers on most college sports accept that risk. But the 1946 example is relevant: Transparency makes it harder to rig a game. It makes surprise absences more difficult to pull off. There are a million ways to point-shave, but injury reports cut out the one thought to have afflicted the NFL Championship in 1946, that of the last-minute fake injury. Are injury reports necessary? Probably not. But they probably don’t hurt, either.
What Is Left to Race For?
There will be an F1 race in Las Vegas, or so we’re told. We’re assuming they have the drain covers fixed, and that Saturday night will go fine logistically, but it’s possible for things to go so wrong that a race becomes impossible.
Assuming the race does happen…does it matter?
Ehh.
F1 is a sport in which every race is a worthy competition, and not just part of a larger whole. In baseball, the last game of the season usually doesn’t matter for two teams locked into their playoff seed or playoff-less spot. In F1, though, each race is a significant prize. In that sense, then, this matters.
The problem F1’s facing is that Max Verstappen and his Red Bull car have become so dominant that it’s no longer much of a prize if he wins. There’s a corollary here which makes the prize much larger for anyone else who wins, but more often than not, it’s an underwhelming result. In that sense, this only matters in limited scenarios.
Beyond that? There are second-place battles in both the driver standings and the constructor standings, so there’s that. Lewis Hamilton is trying to catch Sergio Pérez. Ferrari is right behind Mercedes. I’m not sure how much teams or drivers care about second place relative to third, but there’s that.
The Rest
Lesser things (or things of lesser interest):
- The Bulls have the Magic and Heat this weekend in Chicago. They’re favored tonight, but unlike some bad teams, it really is probably better for the Bulls’ future if they lose, which is a shame.
- The Blackhawks lost to the Lightning last night, having hung with them until the end. They get the Predators tomorrow in Nashville and the Sabres on Sunday back at the United Center. Unlike the Bulls, every win is a good sign for the Hawks these days. They’re heading in a direction.
- Iowa State football is home against Texas, hoping for a Justin Blackmon moment and trying to stay alive in the Big 12 title race. They definitely have a chance. The spread’s at single digits.
- Iowa State men’s basketball hosts Grambling on Sunday in the final buy game before the real competitions start. It’s been a positive start, but we can only take so much away from this bad of competition.
- The USMNT beat Trinidad and Tobago in the first leg of the Nations League quarterfinal, for whatever it’s worth. They’ll take a 3–0 lead into the Caribbean on Monday. Three goals after the 80th minute. Ricardo Pepi had the first.
