I’m excited, and I think this is a good organizational move, and here’s why:
(I’m talking about the Cubs not trading Willson Contreras and Ian Happ.)
First of all, I’m biased. I think Jed Hoyer’s smart. I like Contreras and Happ’s personas. So it’s possible I’m just talking myself into this. But here’s why I don’t think it’s that simple:
The Happ piece is straightforward. He’s under team control for another year, and the Cubs are presumably at least considering the idea of trying to make the playoffs in 2023. They were open to it this year, things broke on the wrong side of their median projection (they entered the year with something like 75-win expectations, if things had gone right as much as they’ve gone wrong they’d be right around the Giants right now), they’re probably open to it again next year, likely from a better starting point.
The Contreras piece has layers and layers. As it stands, should the Cubs not extend him, the draft pick compensation they’ll receive will in few universes match the prospect capital they could have gotten from the Mets or another trade partner, unless those offers truly were staggeringly low, in which case, well, the upcoming “Contreras’s market” question is even more emphatically answered. If they don’t extend him, no, this probably doesn’t make sense. So, what does that mean? Well, either those offers truly were staggeringly low, or the Cubs are at least interested in the possibility of extending him.
There were two routes the Cubs could go regarding an extension. In the first, they could trade Contreras, receive some prospect capital in return, and try to sign him after the season like any other free agent. In the second, they could hold onto Contreras and try to sign him after the season under the qualifying offer constraints, which make it more affordable for teams attempting to retain players than for teams trying to sign said players as free agents. In neither scenario are they guaranteed to re-sign Contreras, but in the second, the probability is higher. Is the first probability 0% and the second probability 100%? No. Is it 0% and 50%? I have no idea. But whatever that probability difference is, it’s part of the equation, alongside the offered prospect capital, the possibility of qualifying offer compensation, and any future intimidatory value the Cubs think they get from not budging on their price this deadline.
A piece of this I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere is that the Cubs just got a very good idea of what the market thinks of Willson Contreras. A trade for a rental isn’t the same as a free agent signing, but the two are correlated, and what teams offered for the catcher gives the Cubs some information on what they’ll offer him contract-wise this winter. They have a great idea of their competition. This may have changed their impression of the extension probability difference.
The Cubs were not, it seems, keen on extending Contreras early this season, but that does not mean they aren’t interested in ever extending Willson Contreras. That logical leap seems to be the consensus, but consensus can be dumb, and this one’s dumb. Sure, the situations are correlated, but they’re not the same situation. In one, Contreras had trade deadline value of some quantity, there was another year of his performance left to be performed (which helps with the accuracy of future projections), and there was more time to find another satisfactory answer at catcher. In the other, there’s a black-and-white decision point.
If the Cubs are at all interested in contending in 2023 or likely 2024, they need to address some holes. Specifically, they have problems at catcher, first base, and designated hitter. Coincidentally, Willson Contreras plays catcher, he designated hits, and he could probably play some more first base. He’s done a touch of that before. A player’s value is a reflection not only of how much better they are than a league-average replacement, but of how much better they are than their literal alternatives. The Cubs do not have a good alternative at catcher. Their lone catching prospect of any note can’t physically throw right now, Yan Gomes is moonlighting at a fossil exhibit, and there are exceptionally few impact catchers available annually in free agency. A catcher as good as Contreras is rare.
How rare, exactly, is Contreras? Well, by the time this season’s finished, FanGraphs’s Depth Charts project him to have amassed 3.8 fWAR, bringing his total from the last four seasons—his four “prime” seasons, between the ages of 27 and 30—to 10.1 fWAR. Averaged across those three and a third 162-game campaigns, that comes out to a 3.0-fWAR baseline from which to age. If he ages traditionally and loses half a WAR a year, he’d be a 2.5-WAR player in 2023, a 2.0-WAR player in 2024, etc.
In 2021, ten catchers were worth 2.5 WAR or more. Fourteen were worth 2.0 WAR or more. In 2019 those numbers were seven and eleven. In 2018 they were six and thirteen. Extend Willson Contreras, and for the first two years of his deal the Cubs have roughly a top-ten catcher heading their platoon, with plenty of at-bats available to him at first base and DH. Many teams could use a catcher this good, but few have as specific of needs, all met by Contreras, as the Cubs do. The Cubs know this. They also have a better idea than anybody as to how Contreras will age, having monitored his every game since signing him out of Venezuela all those years ago.
J.T. Realmuto makes $23M a year, but he signed that coming off a 2019 and 2020 in which he was, averaged to a 162-game season, a 5.3-fWAR catcher with a year of “prime” remaining. It was a strange market, due to Covid uncertainty, but the most noteworthy catcher extension in the game points to a contract for Contreras that’s not bank-breaking, and might even come out with an average annual value lower than the value of the qualifying offer (I don’t think Contreras would accept the qualifying offer, but there’s probably a chance). The deal should not be expected to be as large as those signed by Kris Bryant and Javy Báez. It might not be as large as that signed by Anthony Rizzo. For all three of those players, the prospects were offered. For Contreras, it doesn’t seem good-enough (for the Cubs’ liking) prospects were offered. Just because the Cubs didn’t extend those three doesn’t mean they won’t extend Contreras.
In sum, then, I guess what I don’t understand is why everybody isn’t taking this as a strong indicator that the Cubs are going to re-sign Willson Contreras this offseason. They know what his agents want. They know what they’re willing to pay. They have some idea of how the free agent market will treat him. And they decided not to trade him. As funny as it would be if Jed Hoyer was just pissed at the Mets, I don’t think being pissed at the Mets is why Jed Hoyer did this.
Moving on:
The Padres Probably Won’t Win a World Series with Juan Soto
But that doesn’t make it a bad trade!
The Padres are all the way in despite holding less than a 50% probability of hosting a single postseason game. They’re four and a half games back of Atlanta, and even with Soto, I’m not sure they’re as good as Atlanta on paper. They have to play the Dodgers nine more times. They have to play playoff-peripheral teams nineteen more times. They get six comical games in the next two weeks against the Nationals, and they play some other pushovers, but they are fighting an uphill battle.
The deal wasn’t just for this year, though. Juan Soto is under team control through 2024. It’s possible he’ll be the best player in the entire world both those years. Even then, though, will the Padres have better than a 50% chance of winning the West? Even if you give them a downright silly 80% chance of winning a hypothetical NLWCS each of the two years, you’re looking at a World Series probability each season of somewhere around 11%, which combined with this year gives you a 75% chance the Padres don’t win a World Series with Juan Soto on their payroll, in the event they don’t eventually extend Juan Soto (I don’t know the probability of them extending him).
It’s a great move for a franchise. They went all in, they committed to their players, they committed to their fanbase, they brought in a guy whose closest comparison might be Ted Williams. But it doesn’t guarantee a championship. It doesn’t do anything close to that.
Assorted Deadline Thoughts
If I were to categorize how teams did at the deadline, top of head, I’d say…
- The Padres, Yankees, Mariners, Twins, and (sneakily) the Rays all got notably better.
- The Phillies and Blue Jays each got better, but they didn’t hugely move the needle.
- The Dodgers, Braves, and Brewers all got a little better, but were rightly expected to do more. All three may have earned the benefit of the doubt, though, and all three may have taken it easy to try to extend their respective competitive windows.
- The Mets, White Sox, and Guardians all did just about nothing. I believe the Guardians did this by design, being on the front end of their window.
- The Giants and Red Sox did a mix of things, leaving the door open to a comeback but also cashing in on some value. The Cardinals kind of did this as well, but they’re much playoff-likelier than the Giants and Red Sox, making their deadline more puzzling.
- The Orioles waved the white flag, but they didn’t trade too much. It’s not inconceivable that they could pull off a playoff berth.
With all of this, it’s pretty easy to break this into “winners” and “losers,” but it’s more gradient than that. The Brewers and Phillies caught a great break with the Cardinals not acquiring Soto. The Yankees were aggressive, but they were expected to be aggressive. The Twins really made a move in the Central, and maybe that surprised the White Sox and Guardians. Now, everybody gets to play the hand they’ve drawn themselves. Two months of regular season baseball remain. Play ball.
**
More on the non-baseball parts of the world tomorrow. In the meantime, viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
- 4:10 PM EDT: Colorado @ San Diego – Game 1, Feltner vs. Darvish (MLB TV/ESPN+)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Milwaukee @ Pittsburgh, Burnes vs. Wilson (MLB TV)
- 7:05 PM EDT: New York (NL) @ Washington, deGrom vs. Abbott (MLB TV)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Seattle @ New York (AL), Gilbert vs. Taillon (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Arizona @ Cleveland, Gallen vs. McKenzie (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Toronto @ Tampa Bay, Gausman vs. Rasmussen (MLB TV)
- 7:20 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ Atlanta, Nelson vs. Strider (MLB TV)
- 7:40 PM EDT: Detroit @ Minnesota, Manning vs. Archer (MLB TV)
- 7:45 PM EDT: Cubs @ St. Louis, Thompson vs. Wainwright (MLB TV)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Baltimore @ Texas, Lyles vs. Howard (MLB TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Boston @ Houston, Crawford vs. Javier (MLB TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Kansas City @ Chicago (AL), Keller vs. Giolito (MLB TV)
- 9:45 PM EDT: Los Angeles @ San Francisco, Anderson vs. Wood (TBS)
- 10:10 PM EDT: Colorado @ San Diego, Ureña vs. Knehr (MLB TV)
