The Major League Baseball offseason is underway, and it’s been a while since we had one of those with this much anticipation. The closest thing the human race has produced to Babe Ruth is on the market, and owners—coming off a positive inflection point in TV ratings and in-person attendance—appear ready to spend. It will be seen if this plays out in as exciting of fashion as it appears in our heads, or if we’re on our way to a standoff at the front which stops all dominoes from falling, but for the moment, there’s an excitement to the MLB offseason that even the Norovirus outbreak at the GM meetings hasn’t dampened. Baseball is happening, off the field.
Arguably the second-largest thing to watch, a stop–the–presses headline which could materialize even before Shohei Ohtani puts pen to paper, is the dawning Juan Soto saga in San Diego. For the last few years, the Padres have spent big, and the results have only partly materialized, and whether due to Covid or due to the absence from two of the last three playoffs or by some buy–now–pay–later design, the Padres reportedly do not have enough money to extend Soto, the 25-year-old who’s been the 9th-most productive position player in the sport since breaking into the majors in 2018.
Lacking money, as a baseball franchise, is not a black and white thing. There are loans and lines of credit, there is the divide between a franchise’s money and an owner’s money, and there is always the option of trading someone else, some other 33-million-dollar salary to remain solvent or liquid. This, though, might not be a question of solvency or liquidity. This is a matter of debt and revenue. ESPN’s Alden González, among others, reports that multiple sources hold the Padres are “not in compliance with Major League Baseball’s debt-service ratio, a mandate within the collective bargaining agreement that essentially prevents teams from taking on too much debt.”
I’m not an accountant, and I’m certainly not an accountant familiar with the balance sheets of MLB franchises. I don’t know whether Peter Seidler and the rest of Padres ownership could simply pour more money into the Padres’ bucket and make this go away. But for reasons of (presumably) making sure every owner can pay every employee and not cause a massive financial scandal and black eye for the sport, Major League Baseball has this rule, and the Padres need to cut some expenses. The largest expense on their payroll this year is Juan Soto, and he is by no coincidence their most valuable asset, projected to be worth roughly $52M this year despite being paid $33M. It’s better than that, too. Not only is Soto accompanied by twenty million dollars of free wins this year, but his contract is expiring, and whoever trades for him has at least a small advantage in the quest to extend the man. At the very least, they’ll be the ones who can slap him with the qualifying offer next offseason, raising the cost for other teams who want his services. At the most—if this is allowed by MLB (I can’t find whether it is or isn’t in quick search)—they can negotiate early, only agreeing to the trade if they have a contract extension ready to be signed. Scott Boras doesn’t like it when his players don’t go to free agency, but there might be a chance for this to resemble a free agent bidding process itself, with teams negotiating with Soto (and Boras) on an extension while simultaneously negotiating with the Padres on terms of a possible trade.
If you’re looking for the short explanation, then, of why the Padres would trade one of the pillars of their roster in a season in which they’re expected to aim for some level of contention, it’s this: They’re spending too much money, MLB rules mandate that they get a little more solvent, and Soto is the most valuable thing they have while also being the most expensive thing they have, four years younger than Ohtani and similarly a franchise cornerstone. I maybe should have led with that.
Can the Cubs Develop Pitchers Now?
Behind Soto, names showing up at the top of the FanGraphs/RosterResource free agent tracker, if you sort by 2024 projected WAR:
- Aaron Nola
- Ohtani (won’t pitch in 2024, but the highest 2025 expectation on the list)
- Blake Snell
- Sonny Gray
- Jordan Montgomery
- Eduardo Rodriguez
- Julio Urías
- Matt Chapman
- Marcus Stroman
- Cody Bellinger
- Lance Lynn
- Lucas Giolito
- James Paxton
- Amed Rosario
- Trevor Bauer
- Seth Lugo
- Kyle Gibson
That’s a lot of pitchers, and while at least two of them are seen as having significant character concerns, that’s still a lot of pitchers. Ohtani, Chapman, Bellinger, and Rosario are the only players in this section of the list, one where we drew the line at 2.05 projected WAR. Ohtani isn’t even a pure position player himself over the term of the contract he’ll sign.
This is heartening for the Cubs, who were in need of an ace even before Marcus Stroman opted out. There’s going to be a market for starting pitchers, and specifically for stopping pitchers—the famed idealized aces who can halt a losing streak in its tracks and pitch deep into postseason games. Montgomery and rotation-mate Nathan Eovaldi showed the value of this latter ability this postseason. Aces are a great thing to have, and the Cubs need at least one. The buzz so far, though, centers more around Bellinger and Soto and Ohtani.
Just because reporters are reporting more heavily on these bats doesn’t mean the Cubs aren’t set to pursue arms. But the fear, for Cubs fans, is that the emergence of Justin Steele and the commitment to Jameson Taillon and the stretch run rally by Kyle Hendricks have convinced the organization it can get away with Steele up front and a lot of lottery tickets behind him. This year should be evidence enough that this won’t work, but the argument continues that the Cubs have begun churning out starters from the farm system, and that more are on their way. Steele, Jordan Wicks, and Javier Assad would each be among the April rotation if the season were to start with no more free agents signed. None of those is a bad option to start a game in 2024, but only Steele is someone every team would want in their rotation, as is, and even Steele isn’t the most convincing Game 1 postseason starter. His career is still young. He’s still unconventional, which carries some risk because of the potential of the league adjusting more quickly than it does to most. He’s good, but the Cubs didn’t develop Spencer Strider here.
So, for the Cubs fans in the room: Keep an eye on how aggressively the team pursues top-end starters. The development’s getting better, but like Justin Steele, I’m not sure we should want to count on it handling everything just yet.
Jim Harbaugh’s Suspension?
The Big Ten announced this afternoon that Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh won’t be allowed on the sideline for the rest of the regular season, a stretch that begins tomorrow against Penn State and continues through the Ohio State game the Saturday after Thanksgiving (and possibly through the Big Ten Championship, if relevant, though I remain unclear on that last piece at the time this is published). As Pete Thamel has noted, the Big Ten’s announcement highlights that:
- The conference doesn’t know if Jim Harbaugh was or wasn’t aware of the scandal.
- Michigan’s response on Wednesday to the Big Ten’s notice that it might be punished didn’t deny anything. “Instead,” the Big Ten writes, “it offers only procedural and technical arguments designed to delay accountability.” That’s a funny sentence. Also kind of sums the whole thing up from Michigan’s perspective.
Michigan will, of course, sue, and I would imagine a judge will be asked to rule tonight on whether Jim Harbaugh can or cannot be on the sideline tomorrow in State College. I’m not sure how much of an impact his presence or absence will have, or how much a distraction this will be, or for whom. But it sure makes for an interesting 18 hours ahead.
The Iowa Under
Iowa and Rutgers’s over/under has plummeted to an historically low 28 points, below even what we get for service academy games. The gist of what’s happening? Iowa’s pretty good, but they can’t score, and that means they’re making other teams score even less.
I don’t know if 28 is a smart number. I don’t recommend betting on either side of the total. We’ve called Iowa unders a meme stock before, and I don’t know how wise it is to be on either side of those, either. This is mostly just wild. It’s enough to make one wonder if Iowa’s entire offense, as a unit, has the yips. How is a team this good defensively and this bad offensively? We need a book on this Iowa season.
Duke vs. Arizona
College basketball has a great night ahead (one game is already complete over in Brooklyn), and it’s headlined in Durham, where Arizona meets Duke in our first matchup of the year of high-seed hopefuls. In our preseason bracketology, both were 2-seeds, legitimate national title contenders.
Arizona is similarly built to last year’s Arizona, but Caleb Love replaces the Kerr Kriisa/Courtney Ramey combo and Keshad Johnson has transferred in from San Diego State to bolster the frontcourt with Azuolas Tubelis moving on. The questions for Arizona last year had a lot to do with composure and consistency and tenacity. This year, it’s a similar story. Can Tommy Lloyd manage the locker room he’s built? Because even if the locker room isn’t fighting, it isn’t guaranteed to be in the right headspace every night on the court.
Duke returns much of last year’s roster, with Kyle Filipowski the biggest name and Jeremy Roach the elder statesman of the group. After an underwhelming start to the season (the Blue Devils were 8–6 in a mediocre ACC with six games to play), Jon Scheyer’s first year as head coach ended with ten wins in eleven games, that eleventh a physical loss to Tennessee in the tournament’s second round. Miami should again be solid, UNC’s expected to bounce back, and Virginia’s going to be around, but the ACC is Duke’s to lose, with the basic formula being to return a lot of players from what was ultimately already a good team.
And He Can Shoot!
Some quick Iowa State bits:
- It’s been really fun to see Tamin Lipsey get his praise around the college basketball media sphere. EvanMiya has him as the fifth-best player in the country right now. Three Man Weave has him featured in its frontpage collage. Lipsey is currently expected to be in the All-American conversation, perhaps even finishing ahead of Tyrese Hunter in those eventual ballots. What’s exciting about the guy for us, though, who watched him grind last year with a personal interest, is that he’s 3-for-4 from deep in the early going. The games have been easy wins, so the shots have been low-pressure, but Lipsey’s biggest offensive vulnerability last year was that teams could dare him to shoot. That was the obvious front on which he needed to get better, and the early returns are minimal, but the fact he’s shot two per game is a step in the right direction. Iowa State doesn’t need Tamin Lipsey to shoot like Klay Thompson. If he can make threes at any respectable clip, defenses will have to guard that dimension in addition to the rest.
- Milan Momcilovic also had another good game last night against Lindenwood. Great early returns there. I did not expect to see Iowa State score 100 points in a game this year. I knew who was on the schedule.
- It’s been a good start for the wrestling team, who handled Cleveland State and now faces Davidson this weekend. We’re about to get into a lot of things I’d like to know, but one is how much hope the 10th-ranked team in the country has of turning out to be better than the 2nd-ranked team, especially in a dual setting.
- Iowa State football’s on the road for a late one tomorrow against BYU, and BYU is so pretty. I get a huge kick out of how much of the coverage revolves around mountains the first time every Big 12 program visits Provo. I don’t blame them, either! If we did pictures on this blog, we would quickly become a BYU athletic facility hype zone like few others. Mountains are so cool.
- The game? Yeah, Iowa State needs it. Win, and the bowl is secured and there’s still a path to winning the Big 12. Lose, and the Big 12 dream effectively dies while the bowl goal starts to look like it’s slipping from ISU’s grasp. A visit from Texas and a home game against Kansas State are an unpleasant way to end the season. It’s going to be hard to beat a respectable team on its home field late at night at altitude, but that’s the task ahead for Iowa State.
Are the Lightning Struggling?
Holy butts was Connor Bedard good last night. Two goals and two assists against…(Are the Lightning still one of the best teams in hockey?)
A problem I run into with hockey is that who’s good and who’s bad seems to change very quickly. It has the same thing going on as baseball in that each game is up for grabs, but baseball’s season makes abundantly clear who’s good and who’s bad, often quite early. I’m sure part of my issue with this is not following hockey as closely as I follow baseball, but I don’t think that’s the whole problem. My impression—our impression, from building out our Gelo NHL model (which we’re hoping to have live again in a few weeks)—is that hockey teams really do get better and worse quite quickly. I would love to see how hockey compares to baseball in what constitutes a representative sample size of games for figuring out how good or bad a certain team is.
Why Is Jordan Love Throwing the Ball So Far?
Another thing I’d like someone to explain to me is how much deep passing is supposed to be part of Matt LaFleur’s offense. I thought one of the issues between him and Aaron Rodgers was that LaFleur wanted to make the thing very simple and direct for the quarterback, with lots of movement and open receivers in short distances, and Rodgers said, “Hey man, I’m Aaron Rodgers. I want to go deep.” I then thought that Jordan Love would be running a Brock Purdy offense. So why the hell is Jordan Love throwing the ball further than any quarterback in the league?
I’m being serious when I say I’d like it explained. I think I’m missing something here, about LaFleur or about Love or about ADOT, the metric on that chart. What I’m pretty sure I’m not missing, though, is that the deep passes aren’t working out very well. I’m beginning to suspect that the Packers drafted Love to run a different offense than the one he’s running, and whether that’s because of him gunslinging or a change in philosophy, it doesn’t reflect all that well on where the franchise is at.
