Steve Adams

• Hello! As you may have noticed Monday, Anthony and I flipped our chats around this week. He’s off today, so you’re stuck with me heading into the weekend. Apologies in advance!
• Speaking of advance, feel free to send questions in advance. We’ll get going at 3pm CT!
• Hello all! Happy (almost) weekend and happy (almost) playoff baseball!
• Let’s begin

Alex

• The Cubs have all of Gausman, Holmes, Boyd, and Imanaga departing via FA this offseason. Other rotation options include tons of question marks (Steele, Cabrera, Ben Brown, Horton). How do you see them addressing the SP staff this offseason (maybe with some names you think make sense), and what would they have to do to make you feel confident about them as a threat for the division going into next season?

Steve Adams

• Yeah, they (again) need to add pitching — both on the rotation and bullpen side of things. The market doesn’t have many candidates for long-term deals, which works in their favor, because the Cubs don’t love to go long-term on pitching deals. I doubt they’ll be on Tarik Skubal, just based on how they’ve operated in recent years. Probably not Trevor Rogers, either.Anyone from Gausman, Boyd, Holmes, Sonny Gray, Robbie Ray, Tyler Mahle makes some sense.Trade-wise, Drew Rasmussen’s one of the likeliest players to be moved this winter in my view. Reid Detmers will be out there again. Cubs liked him at the deadline. After years of speculation, I think the Mariners will be open to moving a starter … any of George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Emerson Hancock will probably be in play to some extent.
• They have enough question marks that I think they ought to sign someone and trade for another rotation arm.

gordoj

• Trevor Larnach and Bailey Ober appear to not have roles with Twins next year.  Is there much trade value there?

Steve Adams

• Yeah I think they’re both goners. Larnach basically told the Star Tribune this week that he thinks he’s gone, too. With Buxton, Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez, Luke Keaschall, Alan Roden and some more prospects (e.g. Hendry Mendez), there’s just no good reason for the Twins to pay $7MMish to Larnach for his final year of arbitration. I think they could get a reliever or a low-end prospect there, but he’s slipped a lot since the deadline and doesn’t provide any real defensive value so I don’t expect a big return — and it’s possible he’s just non-tendered.
• Ober is in a similar spot. Twins have Pablo Lopez coming back to join Joe Ryan, Taj Bradley and a smattering of other interesting arms (Mick Abel, Connor Prielipp, Zebby Matthews, Kendry Rojas)… they also traded an actual prospect for Dean Kremer at the deadline, and Kremer is in the same price range and service bucket as Ober. He’s pitched mostly well since the trade and has better stuff than Ober, whose fastball slipped under 90 mph this year.
• As with Larnach, there’s a chance this just leads to a straight non-tender. But Ober has a decent track record as a fourth starter and could be shipped off to  a team in need of innings to fill out a staff. If the Twins can get the Athletics’ or Giants’ No. 23 prospect or something in return, go for it?

Guest

• What happens with Profar in 2027?

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