Sentiment only goes so far

There was a lot of talk when free agency officially opened at the stroke of midnight last Monday that because of the inevitable lockout coming on December 1 that there will be a lot of activity this month as players try to lock in some cash and teams try to get ahead of whatever the CBA's new limits on their their spending might be. All of that is true, but when you keep seeing that team spent "$1.9 billion" in the month before the 2021-2022 lockout and that creates a sense of expectation that this month will be chock full o' action, we need to remind ourselves that $1.4 of that $1.9 billion was spent in the final eight hours before the lockout officially started. So yeah, there will be action, but a lot of it will happen on November 30.

Jeff Passan got some Cubs fans excited with a Tuesday report that, "the Cubs badly want Skubal." Well, they should. They need pitching and he's the best pitcher and those dots are easy enough even for Carter to connect. So that's exciting, right? Jed's had one big move in him each of the last three years (and only one), from Craig Counsell before the 2024 season to trading for Kyle Tucker before the 2025 season and signing Alex Bregman before this past season. So this year's is going to be Tarik Skubal?

Well...

The issue, of course is the rest of Passan's quote.