On the spending side, I’ll disagree. Cubs signed 10 FA. The bottom 6 “value” contracts were Mancini, Barnhart, Fulmer, Boxberger, Nittoli and Hosmer….all poop. I find no value in such poop.
Think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying value signings are universally good. They often are very much you get what you pay for. I'm saying the difference between let's say Hosmer and any big ticket FA you want to name is if Hosmer is shit you just cut him and you aren't out much. If a value contract hits you come off looking really well. I'm not sure i'd term Bellinger a "value" contract because he's kinda making decent money but to illustrate the point, if he's bad cubs are on the hook for 1 year. If he's good and the cubs are shit he's a valuable trade piece. And ideally you want him to be good and the cubs to be good but from a pure game theory standpoint that signing is often far superior to just throwing lots of money on a multi year deal at someone.
It's a lot easier to do this with relievers to be honest. For example, cubs signed Mark Leiter to a minor league contract and look what he's become for them. He's given them roughly 1 fWAR over 100 innings the past two seasons making the league minimum so you're talking like $1.5 mil for the two seasons when typically $8-9 mil per WAR is the expectation.
As for the higher priced FA, i mean sure it's easy to point to dansby playing well and say it's the way to go but most viewed him as the 4th best option in FA. Correa has a 94 wRC+ right now. Xander is playing ok but you'd be expecting more than his 108 wRC+ on the contract he got after roughly 3 seasons over 130 wRC+. And Trea turner has been pretty horrible with a 81 wRC+. Ironically, dansby's defense makes him a bit more steady since he only had a 116 wRC+ last season and the minor fall of so far to 109 hasn't really mattered though the back years of the contract could look worse if the bat trends down anymore and age hurts his defense.
Even though I'm less down on Taillon than a lot of people I think he's a great example of what I'm saying here if you want to believe he wont turn things around. Cubs gave him a 4 year deal because he was viewed as a "safe" signing who maybe had more in the tank. Issue is now that he hasn't performed well you really can't get rid of his contract the same way you can cutting hosmer. You sorta just have to ride it out for a year or two at the very least. And with bigger contracts like say Trea Turner if that turns bad you're very fucked.
Ultimately that's why i'm saying you build through player development. If you're needing to buy 1-3 starters or middle of the order hitters you're already behind the eight ball. Ideally, you should be buying relievers and like back of the order hitters/bench bats with upside as your value plays. So for example, hosmer being shit doesn't *really* matter if you've already built a decent core of your line up. You're just another team looking to buy a rental 1B in july which typically isn't very expensive. You may not be the 2001 M's with a team like that but let's be honest. most teams in most years aren't even 100 win teams.
