Dansby is hitting 071/235/107 this spring. We'd settle for Marquis Grissom at SS at the moment.

We'd settle for Marquis Grissom at SS at the moment.

Arcia better than Marquis Grissom?

I don't think keeping Dansby was the smart move. I am however shocked they didn't let Shewmake get his feet wet in MLB if they didn't think Vaughn was ready to go.

I'm guessing a trade will happen shortly (no pun intended)

Part of the quasi-official explanation here (that is, the explanation offered by the team's beat writer mouthpieces) is that they're sending down Grissom and Shewmake because keeping one of them would have likely meant losing Ehire Adrianza. And heaven forfend a team lose Ehire Adrianza.

#2 "We" in my sentence being the Cubs.

#3: Challenge trade! Dansby for Acuna. :-)

#2 "We" in my sentence being the Cubs.

My condolences. Someone was going to lose the Swanson sweepstakes by signing him though. Atlanta's losing offer was overly generous imho. Its not that Swanson isn't likely to be modestly above average for a year or two more. Its that you're going to be paying retail for a guy you could replace with someone better for ML min wage by year four of the deal and he's not even certain to be above average in year one. Swanson has all sorts of wide potential outcomes....but, few of them are better than his 2022.

Rangers might give you Luisangel Acuna for Swanson if you picked up 1/2 the contract. They do weird stuff.

Even I'm not that down on Dansby although it is very likely the Cubs will regret that deal. But of course none of his potential outcomes are better than his 2022 -- he was a 5.5 WAR player in 2022, they aren't paying him like a 5-6 WAR guy. Given age and contract length they're paying him like 60% of what Turner got. 20 WAR over 7 years would be OK and, not that I expect it really, 15 WAR over 4 years then the rest is gravy (very, very expensive gravy). The deal only runs through his age 35 season so it's not loony tunes.

16 years ago the Cubs signed Soriano for his age 31-38 seasons for 8/$136. Adjust for inflation and 7/$177 for Swanson's 29-35 years is a huge bargain compared with that. The curious thing is the timing -- unless the kids at A/AA are the 2nd coming of Bryant et al and immediately impactful on promotion, the Cubs main competitive window probably isn't until 2026-27 by which point Dansby will probably be pretty average-ish.

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I wonder what kind of refrigerator Dansby bought for his new home in Chicago.

I wonder what kind of refrigerator Dansby bought for his new home in Chicago.

The problem is the second fridge he bought to keep his bats cold.

I'll be here all week!!

15 WAR over 4 years then the rest is gravy

My projection tool has his median outcome in year one as 2.5 WAR. I mean, the mean outcome is a little higher at 2.7 WAR. There isn't much margin with his swing to lose much bat speed since he's already in the bottom quintile on swinging and missing in the strike zone. His swing changes between 2019 and 2020 basically increased his propensity to barrel the ball up in return for dropping his already below average whiff-on-in-zone-pitches rate to near bottom of the barrel levels. I'm not sure that is a combination that works as he ages....but, perhaps he can change to another useful swing profile. If you think the defensive improvement in 2022 was 100% real he'll beat my projections for the first few years I imagine and be close to the 4 WAR in year one he'll need to get close to that 15 over 4. Defensive WAR is incredibly volatile and he's never been that good with the glove before so I'm skeptical....and, his speed has dropped from top quintile to 2nd quintile and that can't be good for SS range.

I have my own questions on why the Cubs felt their competitive window started now too. And, if they did feel this way, why didn't they make multiple other moves like Texas did last year?

In 10k iterations, Swanson never cracked 6.5 WAR in any season (he did reach 6.4 WAR in season two of a couple sim iterations). On the other hand, he had negative WAR seasons in many thousands of iterations across that many sims, not all of them in the later years. My model is bad about assuming a team will play the expensive guy less of course...so, maybe those outcomes can be managed away by not playing him. But, that isn't the selling point on signing a guy "hey, we can just not play him if he sucks, even though we still have to pay him" sounds pretty terrible even if 100% rational.

If the Phillies had signed Swanson to play 2B, it'd have still been an irrational signing. But, it'd at least make sense since their competitive window is immediate....and, maybe they could toss Trea Turner in CF with Swanson at SS (then moves to 2B) until Harper is back if they're feeling really reckless with the new guys.

I'd love to know what the veteran Braves players think of this - but that ain't a beat crew where I expect anyone to try to find out.

I do wonder if it will have echoes of that Hader trade by MIL last season - by raw data, it added up financially. But the Brewers went into a collective snit fit over it; didn't end well and management acknowledged it had not "read the room," basically.