Jed's making moves. Just not ones that matter.
And Tom Ricketts reminds us that they never learn anything important from their mistakes


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Through the end of the month there’s a 33% off sale. It’s my way of giving you some nonsense to read while the world goes to shit.
It’s been a really tumultuous week for Cubs fans. A flurry of roster moves have meant saying goodbye to a bunch of all-time favorite players. I mean just look at this assortment of incredible talent that will no longer (maybe) be wearing Cubs uniforms next year (probably, but who knows?):
Relief pitcher Adbert Alzolay was removed from the 40-man roster and released to make room for hot shot prospect Owen Caissie. Adbert was the Cubs closer the last two seasons and now he’s just gone? Well, he’s recovering from Tommy John Disease, and he’s almost certainly going to clear waivers and will likely re-sign with the Cubs while he rehabs.
Outfield prospect Brennen Davis, best known for being Reggie Theus’ son and for finding creative ways to injure himself, Davis was once the Cubs’ top prospect. Then he was passed in the prospect rankings by all of these magnificent youngsters that Jed Hoyer has unearthed, and now he’s gone.
Pitcher Trey Wingenter was designated for assignment to clear a spot for one of two players the Cubs traded for on Wednesday. Is Trey any good? No. Of course not.
And, Patrick Wisdom was designated for assignment for the same reason as Wingenter. Wisdom was kind of a fun story. A 29 year old rookie in 2021 who slugged 28 homers (a Cubs’ “rookie” record) in just 106 games, and then who vastly overstayed his welcome. He was worth 2.3 WAR in 2021 and then totaled a whopping 0.6 WAR over his next three seasons. Last year he was basically worthless, hitting .171 and slugging just .392.
But hey, it wasn’t all goodbyes. The Cubs added two guys!
The first is former Guardians reliever Eli Morgan. Eli doesn’t throw hard, doesn’t strike people out and doesn’t induce many ground balls (just 32% of his batted balls are rolling in the grass). But, he’s been pretty productive. Last year he posted a cool 1.92 ERA for Cleveland in 32 games, and he had a lot of red on his Baseball Savant page. He was well above league average in expected ERA, expected batting average, average exit velocity induced (just 85.2 MPH). He had a very high chase rate, low walk rate, low barrel rate and low hard hit percentage.
In return, the Cubs sent Cleveland minor league outfielder Alfonsin Rosario, a sixth round draft pick just two years ago who hit 16 homers as a 20 year old in the Carolina League. He strikes out a lot, but managed an on base average 114 points higher (.344) than his batting average (.230) and he stole 20 bases in 25 attempts. So there might be some upside there. The Cubs decided that they have enough other minor league outfield prospects that it was worth cashing this one in for a soft tossing middle reliever.
And then later that day the Cubs traded for Angels backup catcher (and occasional first and third baseman) Matt Thaiss. The Angels had DFA’d Thaiss when they signed Travis d’Arnaud last week. Thaiss is a lot of things.
Being good at hitting a baseball is not one of them. He’s also not young (he’ll be 30 in May). His career slash line of .208/.313/.342 is not good. He does bat lefty, so there’s that, I guess. He’s basically a less good version of Paul Bako.
Jed’s done it again!
To acquire someone of Thaiss’ majestic abilities, the Cubs traded…cash to the Angels. They Venmo’d to get a catcher. Cool.
Are the Cubs better than they were before these trades? Uh…sure, I guess. Most middle relievers are pretty erratic from year to year so who knows if Morgan will ever be that good again?
For example, our old pal Brian Duensing pitched two seasons for the Cubs and he was great in his first year, posting a 2.74 ERA in 68 games and holding opposing hitters to a paltry .673 OPS.
And the Dunce Cat came back the next season…

…same guy, same pitching repertoire and he was fucking terrible. He had a 7.88 ERA in 48 games and the league OPS’d .863 against him.
So, you never know. Eli Morgan looks great on paper right now, but salad tossing pitchers sometimes end up with a mouthful of awful.
As for Thaiss? He sucks. I mean, he’s a backup catcher and most backup catchers suck. But even by that low bar, he’s just not very good. He can’t hit. He’s never hit and so any extra advantage you think you get from having a backup catcher who can bat lefty is erased by him just making a bunch of outs and any extra advantage you get from having a backup catcher who can play first and third in a pinch is erased by him actually getting at bats at those spots, too.
There’s talk that the Cubs are still in the market for a catcher even after emailing some coupons to Arte Moreno for Thaiss, but you and I know that this is it. Carter and Jed went to the whiteboard and drew a big line through the “backup catcher” on their needs list.
And you know Carter accidentally used permanent marker and fucked up the whiteboard.1
It’s one of my favorite Cubs’ fan offseason hobbies. Rationalizing a completely underwhelming personnel move. It always goes like this.
- Sure, his numbers are bad, but he’s actually pretty good. I think it’s a sneaky great move. I had him really high on my list.
- Well, it didn’t cost them much, so I’ll bet they just did it as a fallback. They’re still going to go after a really good player.
- If they need a 40 man spot they can cut him and nobody will claim him so they can stash him at Iowa.
- I’m going to buy his Obvious Shirt.
But those moves weren’t all the Cubs did this week. Tom Ricketts was quoted in Meghan Montemurro’s piece the other day about Juan Soto, as saying this:
“I honestly feel like if you get too involved, you’re probably not adding much value,” Ricketts said. “And also, if you’re making the personnel decisions and the team doesn’t do well, what happens next? There’s no accountability.”
Let’s set aside the fact that the Cubs should absolutely be trying to sign Juan Soto because if you added his bat to the assortment of “pretty good but nowhere near great” players on the roster everything would immediately look much better and you’d effectively be opening a World Series contention window for 10 or 12 years.
Even if you do not plan to actually sign Soto, shouldn’t you get in on the bidding to drive it up for whoever does sign him? Don’t you want your rivals to have less money available to go after the players you actually do want?
Never mind. I’m sure Tom would look at driving up Soto’s price to the detriment of the Dodgers or Mets or Yankees as being harmful to the Cubs because it might incrementally increase the asking price of some middling talent the Cubs actually do want.
“Well, if Juan Soto is worth $60 million a year, I should be getting $6 million. After all, I’m at least 10 percent as good.”
And Tom’s quote up there is infuriating for a much bigger reason.
It’s so him to say that if you spend a lot of money and your team doesn’t do well that you can’t hold the baseball operations guys accountable. Not only is that bullshit, but it ignores the fact that you should also be holding them accountable if they don’t spend a lot of money and the team doesn’t do well.
In 2019 when Theo Epstein wasn’t allowed to go after Bryce Harper, it was because the Ricketts wanted to scale back their payroll. Harper wanted to play for the Cubs. They were Bryce’s preferred destination. They never made him any kind of offer. He signed a 13 year deal with the Phillies that I’m sure made Tom reach for the fainting couch.
That deal pays Bryce Harper an average of $25.2 million a year.
He would be the Cubs best player by an enormous margin. He’d be the best player in their entire division.
He’d also be the Cubs’ THIRD highest paid player.
That’s the thing the Cubs ignore when they refuse to get in on these big free agents. The cost of players goes up anyway. So being afraid to sign a 26 year old slugger who had already won an MVP and had hit 184 homers with a .900 career OPS when he was begging you to sign him, probably does seem like a huge investment.
Until six years later when he’s still great and you are paying Dansby Swanson and Cody Bellinger more than that to not be nearly as good, and paying Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki almost as much.
Soto is also 26 and he’s already hit 201 homers, won a batting title and has a .953 career OPS. And yes, he’s going to sign an astronomical deal.
And believe it or not, six years from now when he’s still playing on that deal, he’ll be making less than some far less productive Cub.
If it’s the length of the contract you’re worried about, why not just call up Scott Boras and offer Soto a three-year, $180 million deal? Get him to a $60 million AAV with a chance to be a free agent again before he’s 30.
What’s the worst thing that could happen.
Well, for the Cubs, the worst thing that could happen is he’d say yes.
Do you know if you accidentally use permanent marker on a whiteboard you can get it off by taking a dry erase marker and writing over it? The chemicals in the dry erase marker that allow it to be erased will work on the permanent marker and help you remove it. Carter doesn’t know that. They don’t teach that kind of useful shit at Vanderbilt. ↩