Agreed...oops I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
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He wasn't anywhere near MVP level before or after he was injured. It could be an off year, but there was a significant drop in power (13 homers in over 450 at bats). He was basically Jose Martinez. That is a good offensive player, but hardly MVP.
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Yeah, as a Royals fan who admires both the Cubs and Cardinals approaches to winning, I think the doom and gloom towards the Cubs’ window is a bit short-sighted.

The Cubs definitely need to enhance their bullpen and starting pitching, but they aren’t irreconcilably behind in those spots.

I think they need to add an experienced stopper on the back end. The relief market is pretty rich this year, and I would expect the Cubs to be in play for one of Andrew Miller, Britton, Holland (who was vintage as a National), or Familia.

In the starting pitching market, there’s not a ton there. They’ll pick up Hamels’ option and start their rotation with Lester, Hamels, Hendricks, and Darvish. That leaves them hunting one spot (also have Smyly returning 18+ months out from his Tommy John).

(Edit) Hit post and realized I’d completely left Quintana out of this. He’s an factor, too, obviously.

Is one of Keuchel or Corbin possible? Hard to say as those are clear top 2s. But there are also a lot of intriguing guys I could see Epstein kicking the tires on:

Eovaldi
Harvey
Ryu
Happ
Gio Gonzalez

They also have a pair of good-but-not-as-good-as-they-used-to-be pieces in Schwarber and Russell, who are expendable. I imagine a team like the Dbacks - who seem poised for a retool if not a rebuild - might be willing to offload Greinke for something built around those guys.
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Let's look at recent history...the last decade so far (because anything further back would just be too sad for you).

Since 2010, the Cubs have: 2 Division titles, One World Series Win, and Two Division Series Playoff Wins.

Since 2010, the Cards have 3 Division titles, One World Series Win, One Pennant Win, and Three Division Series Playoff Wins. All but one of those years after LaRussa.
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You realize that Bryant is almost certainly going to make more than Rizzo next season through arbitration? Baez is gonna probably approach $8 million in his own right. I mean in the end if the Cubs tender all their arb guys, they'll be approaching $40 million in arbitration salaries when all is said and done. It's not as though they're still getting these kids at $600K anymore. They're still bargains, to be sure. But the difference between their pre-arb years and arb salaries is gonna suck up some of what they'd need to reinforce their starting rotation or bullpen.

Now the Cubs aren't a bunch of skinflints like DeWitt and the Cardinals so they'll think nothing of bumping near $200 million in salaries if they think it will keep them at 90-95 wins, but they can't keep whistling past the graveyard and acting like their salary structure is as healthy as it was in 2016.
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And how does that comparison look if you go the past five years or project through the next five?

Unless the Cardinals find a true middle of the order bat, I have a hard time seeing them overtake the Cubs in the next 3 years.
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Greinke is due $31+ million/season for the next four seasons (ages 34-37). The Diamonbacks would deal to anybody that's willing to take on his contract, IMO. That deal is just an absolute disaster and was remarkably stupid from the second it was signed. Greinke is probably going to average about 3 wins/season over the remainder of that deal and that may be generous.
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Sure, how did it look right after 2016 for the Cubs. Much better than it does now. He made the point that the Cards went to shit after LaRussa, and of course that isn't the case.

The Cubs have a good nucleus (of position players) for sure, but that perpetual dynasty lineup looks much more pedestrian than one would have guessed 3 years ago. One big difference 5 years ago and now was their pipeline of youth. They have exhausted or frittered away a ton of talent and the cupboard is pretty bare. If 2018 Bryant is the norm going forward, that lineup is much different. Baez saved their asses this year. He finally came into his own.

Also, which group of pitchers projects better over the next 5 years? Mikolas, Reyes, Martinez, Flaherty, Wacha, Gomber/Gant/Hudson average about 25 years old.
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The Astros are the team that is starting to look like what the Cubs thought they were going to be. And that's with Correa being disappointing as hell this year.

That said, the Astros are going to have similar issues in 2020 and if they can't get at least one more this year or next, they're gonna look back on this era as a little disappointing as well.

The major difference appears to be that when the Astros went fishing for pitching, they got guys that have come up huge for them in Verlander and Cole. The Cubs went with the longer view chasing Quintana and Darvish but both guys have been much less effective. In Hamels, they got some version of what the Astros have gotten from Verlander but it wasn't enough.

And unlike the Astros, who still have guys like Whitley, Tucker and Alvarez to fill some holes as players like Springer and Morton get too expensive to retain, the Cubs largely cleaned out their farm system over the last 3 seasons.
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Are you basing that just on age or what?

He’s put up 10.3 bWAR (superior view, IMO), and 8.6 fWAR over the past two years.

Yes, he’s about to be 35. He also is a pitcher who has long succeeded with command and pitchability. Is he going to fall off a cliff to the point that he struggles to get to 3? It’s possible but I don’t see the evidence for it.

That deal was and still is crazy. He’s due $105 million for his age 35, 36, and 37 seasons (deal is up after 21). There’s a ton of risk there but also reasonable reason to see him continuing to be successful.

Even over the past 3 years, when he averaged 4 wins a season, you’re looking at a overpay. Way to go, Dave Stewart. Way to go.
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Age, velocity and quality of contact. He's giving up more hard hit balls, missing fewer bats and there is absolutely a point of no return with velocity and I believe Greinke's getting nearer and nearer to that. To his credit (I guess) he seems to recognize that and essentially pitches backwards at this point in his career. I just don't see a way for that to hold up over any appreciable period of time.

Sure, he's been worth 8ish wins over the last 2 years....he was also worth about 30% less in 2018 than he was in 2017. He was a 3.5 win pitcher last year and he's out of rope w/r/t raw stuff. I'm not saying he'll fall to 3 next season, but I'm saying he may well be sitting at 1.5-2 by the end of the deal. The 3 win average would incorporate additional slow decay from where he sat last year (a noticeable dropoff from where he was the year before).

Frankly, he's another 1 mph in velocity loss away from being a potential replacement level pitcher. You've seen the studies on the correlation between velocity and effectiveness; there's really no escaping it. As velocity wanes, performance goes with it. He is, at best, a RH junk tosser at this point and sooner or later his ability to just trick guys will be gone if they can just sit there and flick away 88 mph BP fastballs until he makes a mistake.

I might be willing to take him on for half of what he's owed over the next 4 seasons, but even that carries with it a little bit of risk.

EDIT: You're correct; only 3 years left on the deal. Still nutty, but a little less risk and a little more palatable. Still at least 1/3 higher than I'd be comfortable taking on, though and probably worse than that.
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Wrong. I've asked you to expound upon your belief with evidence. I don't think I've seen you back that up yet.
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One big move the Cubs could make would be to trade Bryant in a couple seasons.

It all depends on how Bote develops, but they already bumped Bryant to the OF to get Bote into the lineup. He's going to have to show some adjustments at the plate because he didn't end the year as well as it started, but he had one of the best hard hit rates in baseball. If you can get 850ish OPS out of Bote I think you pretty much have to trade Bryant because there's an obvious elephant in the room with him. He's going to be 30 years old when he is eligible to become a FA and his agent is Scott Boras and there has been no progress on extension talks.
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This season made retaining him a possibility.

Prior to this year, given his $12 million Arb1 salary, there was a real chance that he could see $30 million in year 4 (given the generally accepted 40/60/80 projection model that would've led to a 'market' year 4). By cratering this year, it probably suppresses his potential figures across the board. He could've seen 12/16/24/30 and is probably looking more like 12/14/19/24. Obviously still not cheap by any stretch and if he struggles with the should again those figures all drop even further.

But if his 4th year arbitration salary is $30 million, Boras pegs the contract demand at $30 million/season and either won't accept less than that or he'll slow-play the shit out of it and drag it into February. Few teams that hope to immediately contend can deal with that kind of shit or sit on that kind of hole in their budget structure.

At that point I would expect the Cubs to take whatever they'd have allocated for him and moved along.

But if his 4th year arb figure is at $24 million and that's the anchor point, there might be a way that the Cubs and Boras come together on a 6/$150 sort of deal.

Boras's goddamn pride has blown apart so many deals. Worse still is the fact that he's usually right and there's at least one clearly idiotic team out there that will blink. I'm still just pissed at the Padres for giving that fucking guy something remotely resembling what he wanted for a POS like Hosmer. It's going to do nothing but encourage him to pull this stunt again. And again and again and again. All he needs to do is 'win' 1 of every 3 and he won't change his model.
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It's my opinion that it's a superior view for pitchers. I think Fangraphs' pitcher WAR relies far too much on FIP and has a tendency/weakness in that it can overly value the WAR of pitchers who strike out a lot of hitters and have good K:BB ratios but don't have great actual results.

I would need to be able to take the actual formula they use to calculate pitcher WAR to be able to expound on it more than finding examples (like Wade Davis as a starter in 2013 as an off-the-top-of-head example) of starters struggling who have strong WARs because their FIP is good.

I don't think they've shared that secret sauce just yet.

The $35 million/year is more than I realized when I responded to you. Dave Stewart :shakes head:

If you're talking fWAR, yeah, 9-10 over the next 3 years is probably about where he'll land. I'd see him more around 11-12 in rWAR, which is what I "think" in. And I don't think it's a stretch to see that over the next 3 year in fWAR, either, considering Kyle Hendricks averaged 3.4 fWAR/year over the past 3 years with even less velocity and less in his bag of tricks.

Losing velocity hurts most guys when it goes away for good. Greinke is one of the few with the arsenal and command to compensate (if it did actually go away for good), in my opinion.

To pull it back to the original context, though, it wouldn't take Schwarber and Russell to pry him away from Arizona, so I was way off base there.
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