Smart organizations do smart things. Dumb organization do dumb things. The White Sox didn’t trade Luis Robert Jr.? Probably dumb. The Celtics extended Sam Hauser? Probably smart. In sports, if you don’t know what to think of a move, it’s fair to err on the side of track record. Obviously, this can be taken way too far. It’s best used as a prior—a position from which to start. If you always grade decisions according to an average of what came before them, you will always be at least one step behind.
I bring this up because when the headlines came in Tuesday night saying DJ Moore had signed an extension, I anticipated reading about a dumb, expensive, needlessly optimistic contract. We’ve written plenty this summer about the Bears’ excessive focus on skill positions at the trenches’ expense, and Moore is the kind of player it’s easy to overpay. He’s reliable. He’s good. He was a great acquisition in the manner the Bears acquired him. He’s a young veteran on a team hoping it’s built a young core. But he’s not one of the best number one wide receivers in the league, and he’s not going to be. PFF had him twelfth this spring in their preseason receiver rankings. That’s Kirk Cousins territory.
So, knowing the nature of wide receiver extensions right now, I assumed it was a classic Bears move. Take a good player with a bigger name and convince yourself he’s the best there ever was. Looking at the deal, then…this isn’t what they did at all?
Moore’s new contract makes him the seventh-highest paid receiver in the NFL by average salary. In guaranteed money, he’s third. That’s high, but those rankings will drop soon, with CeeDee Lamb in negotiation with the Cowboys. They’ll continue to drop over the next five years, as the receiver bubble presumably continues to grow and the salary cap presumably continues to rise. The extension doesn’t kick in until 2026, leaving a little cap space open this year for one last reinforcement and plenty open next year for Caleb Williams’s crucial sophomore season. (The Bears will know their weaknesses a lot better in April than they know them right now.) It runs through his age-32 season, which isn’t alarmingly past a receiver’s prime. Keenan Allen is 32 right now, to give a reference point.
By all accounts, Moore has been a positive presence within the Bears organization culturally, and it’s hard to think of a more stabilizing force on last year’s team. The Bears locked up a 1B-quality receiver at a 1B price. They kept their franchise quarterback’s safety valve happy as the partnership begins. They may have even paid just enough to keep themselves from doing something counterproductively aggressive in two years. The trade that brought DJ Moore to Illinois could well turn out to be the shrewdest play in the history of Bears personnel moves, for reasons far beyond only Moore. This contract is quieter, and it won’t have that trade’s impact. But it’s smart enough to deserve plaudits even amidst a bubbly wide receiver market. It might be smart enough to make us start readjusting some priors.
Hall of Fame Weekend:
- While tonight marks the NFL’s preseason opener, and the Bears are playing, the bigger focus of the weekend, for both football and the Bears, is Saturday’s induction ceremony for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Alongside former Bear Julius Pepper and four other inductees, Steve McMichael and Devin Hester will both join the fewer than 400 players enshrined in Canton. Each of the two is legendary in his own way, worthy of the crown. McMichael’s induction will be especially emotional, as he’ll remain at home in Homer Glen for it, unable to travel due to ALS. The ceremony begins at 11:00 AM CDT and will be broadcast on ESPN.
News/moves/injuries/speculation:
- Nate Davis has remained sidelined since going down with that strain this weekend. Kyler Gordon has also missed time this week, as have a few non-starters.
- Tarik Cohen retired this morning, ending his comeback attempt with the Jets. Always liked that guy.
The game:
- Thursday, 8:00 PM EDT: Bears vs. Houston (ESPN/ABC)
The starters won’t play, so get ready for Tyson Bagent’s big night. The main focus is the new kickoff rules.
Why Taillon Didn’t Go
There’s a lot of confusion over why the Cubs didn’t trade Jameson Taillon this week. The simplest explanation? He has an expensive contract, he’s aging, and he’s not that good. There are a lot of takes out there, but if you’re measuring Jameson Taillon as a trade asset using conventional numbers ($8.5M/WAR, 0.5-WAR decrease per year after the age of 30), you find a guy set to be paid more these next two seasons than he’s worth. Over the remainder of his contract, Taillon is set to make roughly $40M. Over the remainder of his contract, Taillon is set to produce roughly $17M worth of value. He’s a negative-value asset right now, or put more simply: His contract is bad.
Taillon is having a good season. He was really having a good season before Monday night. (I doubt one start scared anybody off, for what it’s worth, but you can’t rule out the possibility.) The hope, looking at Taillon as an asset, was that a pitching-hungry team willing to spend money would accept that $40M price tag in exchange for rotation stability the remainder of this year plus playoff upside. Taillon may be aging, but he isn’t old. Plenty of teams could have used him these next three months.
Unfortunately for the Cubs, teams were rather cost-conscious this deadline, and ultimately, it appears the Cubs didn’t find anyone who valued Taillon as highly as they do. Instead of someone else overpaying Taillon by about $20M in 2025 and 2026, then, it’ll be the Cubs. He’s a useful guy to have around, especially with so many of the Cubs’ starting pitching options so uncertain. But ideally, the Cubs will sign and/or develop five better pitchers than him next year. That, or he’ll defy the aging expectations. Which is possible! It happens.
The contract isn’t terrible, but it’s bad. Taillon isn’t bad, but he isn’t great and he’s likely to get worse. He became such a focal point for Cubs speculation because there were so few other clear targets on the Cubs, and because I think we all underestimated just how salary-averse teams were going to be. Without knowing what was discussed, this is not a decision which can be labeled good or bad. Our prior? It was probably the right call.
News/moves/injuries/speculation:
- The front office did successfully deal Mark Leiter Jr. to the Yankees, landing minor league reliever Jack Neely and minor league infielder Benjamin Cowles in return. Cowles is a fringy prospect who’s out for the season, but Neely might find his way to Chicago by the end of the year. He isn’t expected to be a game-changing reliever, but very few are.
- Cody Bellinger’s off the IL, with Miles Mastrobuoni back to Triple-A in the corresponding move. Caleb Kilian’s off the IL and back in Iowa as well. The Marlins claimed Jesus Tinoco. Bellinger’s return makes Tomás Nido the only Cubs position player currently on the injured list. The team is playing with a full lineup on the hitting side. Good timing for Miguel Amaya to start putting it back together at the plate. He’s at a 187 wRC+ in 32 plate appearances since the All-Star break.
- The Cubs will wear a Motorola patch on their jerseys starting immediately. It’s a bummer, but you can only get upset about so many things.
Games:
- Thursday, 7:05 PM CDT: Cubs vs. St. Louis (Marquee/MLB Network)
- Friday, 1:20 PM CDT: Cubs vs. St. Louis (Marquee/MLB Network)
- Saturday, 1:20 PM CDT: Cubs vs. St. Louis (Marquee/MLB Network)
- Sunday, 6:10 PM CDT: Cubs vs. St. Louis (ESPN)
Tuesday’s loss was disappointing, and the Cubs are now south of 1-in-20 in FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds. Last night was fun, though, and the Cubs do have the 12th-best offensive projections in baseball over the remainder of the year, per FanGraphs’s Depth Charts. So far this season, they’ve been the 20th-best hitting team. If the health can hold up, some positive regression in that department should be on its way.
Shōta Imanaga faces Sonny Gray tonight in a battle of best-on-best. Javier Assad draws Erick Fedde in the latter’s Cardinals debut tomorrow. The Cubs scored three off Fedde in five innings when they played the White Sox in June, but struck out seven times and managed neither a walk nor a home run. Taillon pitches Saturday against Kyle Gibson. On Sunday, Justin Steele squares off with Miles Mikolas, who’s been better than his ERA. I don’t know that any one game looks particularly more or less winnable than the others. I’d expect the Cubs to generally be narrow favorites throughout the series, but I haven’t looked at MLB markets yet today. A split is likeliest. Take three out of four, and the Cubs are still mostly out of the race, but: Take three out of four, and the Cardinals are in a rough spot then themselves.
Garrett Crochet Watch: Extension Edition
Oh Garrett Crochet. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
We’ve said plenty about this saga, and there’ll likely be plenty more to say as the season winds on and many eyes remain on Crochet’s innings and his health. For today, we’ll just add that if Crochet and his agency’s goal was to get an extension, converting his value into dollars and insuring against the injury they almost seem to expect, Crochet and his agency, CAA, failed at that goal. They did not get an extension. If Crochet does stay healthy—which is likely, as the White Sox have no incentive to throw him another inning this season—he should get a nice little bag of cash before or during arbitration, but it will be nothing like the extension he wants.
Should the White Sox extend him? I don’t see why they should. I know we’re belaboring the point by now, but the overall message Crochet and CAA sent in July was that they do not believe Crochet will stay healthy. They’re not counting on Garrett Crochet’s body, so why should the White Sox, who have access to the pitcher at below-market rates for three more years?
The White Sox should get together with CAA and with the best relevant scientists they can find to develop an approach which maximizes Crochet’s future health. That’s the wise collaboration, and with no contention on the horizon, they can afford to do that more in 2025 than any other team who might be interested. But an extension? I don’t know why the Sox would double down on the risk. Holding him may have been smart. The offers may have simply been too small. But an extension seems reckless.
News/moves/injuries/speculation:
- The Sox did successfully trade Erick Fedde, Michael Kopech, Paul DeJong, Eloy Jiménez, Paul DeJong, and Tanner Banks. That’s a healthy number of moves, and depending what they were offered for Luis Robert Jr., it’s possible they didn’t misplay that hand.
- In return for Fedde, Kopech, and Pham, they landed Miguel Vargas, Alexander Albertus, Jeral Perez, and a player to be named later or cash. Vargas is the best asset of the three, an MLB-ready second baseman and outfielder projection systems like to be an above-average MLB hitter once he starts getting everyday at-bats again. (He played regularly for the Dodgers to start last season but was sent down in July.) Albertus and Perez, though, are worthwhile prospects. Could the Sox have gotten more? The implication is yes, given what the Astros gave up for Yusei Kikuchi, in theory a less valuable asset than Fedde given Fedde’s affordable contract next year. But it’s possible the explanation there is that the Astros particularly liked Kikuchi, not that the market was high on pitching in general. The bulk of starting pitching moves this deadline were not as aggressive as that one.
- In return for Jiménez, the White Sox primarily got salary relief, though they also picked up a minor league reliever named Trey McGough in the deal. The salary relief angle, as plenty have pointed out, is bizarre. It’s only nine million dollars, accounting for rest-of-season salary and next year’s expected buyout. With a franchise who might care about its clubhouse, we’d assume there was something wrong and the White Sox wanted Jiménez out of there. This is not, however, that kind of franchise. The White Sox do not appear to care about culture in the slightest.
- The returns for Banks (William Bergolla) and DeJong (Jarold Rosado) weren’t nothing. Fringy prospects, but legitimate prospects nonetheless.
- With six spots cleared from the active roster, the Sox called up Lenyn Sosa and Dominic Fletcher to join Vargas in the hitting corps, plus Touki Toussaint, Sammy Peralta, and Fraser Ellard to join the bullpen.
Games:
- Friday, 7:10 PM CDT: White Sox at Minnesota (NBC Sports Chicago/MLB Network)
- Saturday, 6:10 PM CDT: White Sox at Minnesota (NBC Sports Chicago)
- Sunday, 1:10 PM CDT: White Sox at Minnesota (NBC Sports Chicago)
Crochet is listed as Saturday’s starter, with Davis Martin getting the series opener and Chris Flexen on the hill on Sunday.
Who Let Marc Eversley Speak to the Media?
“I don’t want to, a year from now, [be] winning 15 games and focusing on the lottery. We have an opportunity here to roll out younger players who give us an opportunity to turn this thing around, maybe not quicker, but in a more pragmatic approach than just looking at the future and building through the draft.” – Marc Eversley, to Jamal Collier of ESPN
Define “pragmatic,” Marc.
Eversley was heavily quoted through this Collier piece this week, a piece which drew a lot of attention to the Bulls’ stated delusion. Do Eversley and Artūras Karnišovas really believe what they’re selling? They must, at least to an extent. They’ve made it clear though their actions that they don’t see value in draft picks.
Squint, and you can see a noble throughline to what Eversley espouses. He speaks disdainfully towards tanking. He implies the franchise’s reticence to complete trades in-season comes from viewing the team as a community, one not to be broken up. None of this is pragmatic, of course—this is not a practical way to run an NBA franchise that keeps struggling to make the playoffs—and it’s also not actually all that respectful towards players. These players know what industry they’re in, and those who might have been traded would have likely enjoyed pursuing a title. But there’s at least a common theme of wanting to do things in some ‘right way,’ which—while again, not pragmatic—can be respected.
If this is really the philosophy, though, why doesn’t Eversley come out and say it? Why not say, We want to be a great home to free agents and the kind of organization that does things the right way. Instead, Eversley mostly alludes to it, off-hand. Read between the lines and you can get this sort of explanation, but Eversley doesn’t offer it himself.
The article also includes a check-in on Zach LaVine’s relationship with Billy Donovan, reporting that Donovan recently spent a few days in Los Angeles to try to repair that relationship. I don’t know whether embarrassing LaVine was Collier’s intent, but juxtaposing an example of LaVine wanting to be treated like a great player (“You play a guy like me down the stretch”) against an example of LaVine not wanting to be treated like a great player (“LaVine has…felt singled out during film sessions and feels like he has taken too much blame”) left me, at least, laughing.
More than anything else, the article confirms perceptions. Marc Eversley and Artūras Karnišovas are incoherent and deluded. Zach LaVine is a diva who hasn’t earned the things he wants. Oh, for the days of Luol Deng.
Speaking of Luol Deng: There’s been a lot of nice press during these Olympics about what he’s done for South Sudan basketball, and—yes. Agreed. Wow. Paying for travel out of his own pocket, for example. It’s staggering stuff, and it reminds one just how impressive Deng’s rise was from childhood as a political refugee in Africa to a 15-year NBA career.
South Sudan’s past and present are immensely complicated. One of the reasons we aren’t linking to Deng feature stories is that we aren’t finding many which even mention the country’s 2013–2020 civil war, something which makes us suspicious of some intentional glossing over. If the story is as good as we all want it to be, though, we can only hope Deng’s patriotic generosity continues to bear fruit.
Bedard vs. Faber
The Wild locked up Calder Trophy runner-up Brock Faber the other day, signing the 22-year-old defenseman to an eight-year extension. With no realignment seemingly imminent, this sets up for a long-term rivalry between Faber and Connor Bedard in the Central, one in some ways more direct because of the oppositional positions the two play. This coming season, the general expectation in betting markets is that the Wild will be a playoff bubble team, while the retooled Blackhawks are not retooled enough to challenge for postseason hockey. In other words, Bedard & Co. should find themselves in position to play spoiler.
Can the WNBA Hold the Attention?
Nothing Sky-specific today, but…
Long ago, the decision to schedule the WNBA on a summer cadence was made because of TV programming availability. The WNBA targeted a lull in the sports calendar. Now, amidst the league’s most noteworthy season ever, the question is whether it can hold attention as football returns. Even if it can’t, it’s been a successful year. But if it can…
Games resume on August 15th, two weeks from today. The Olympic break is very, very long.
