In a time that has been marked by the emergence of “super teams,” the Chicago Cubs of the last three years are one of the few clubs worthy of that description. They’ve averaged 97 regular-season wins, won two division titles, advanced to the National League Championship Series three times, and quite famously claimed a World Series title in 2016.

In that context, last season might be regarded as a disappointment. They won “only” 92 games during the regular season and then failed to get back to the World Series, losing in five games to the Dodgers. Much of the Cubs’ lack of success — which, admittedly, is a relative term in this case — has been attributed to a hangover effect from the long and satisfying World Series run. The Cubs were projected for 96 wins at the beginning of the 2017 season. Despite adding Jose Quintana at the deadline, the club finished four games under that mark.

As presently constructed, Chicago remains both excellent and flawed. Projected once again to cross the 90-win threshold, the Cubs’ roster nevertheless features some questions. Yu Darvish is the answer to the most prominent of those — namely, the club’s rotation depth.

Travis Sawchik argued three months ago that the Cubs are the best fit for the best pitcher on the market. Since that time, the team has signed Tyler Chatwood to fill a spot in the rotation. That seems promising.

At the same time, though, the Cardinals have made some moves on the margins and put themselves within striking distance. Entering Last season, for example, the Cubs featured a 10-game cushion over the Cardinals in our projections. As of today, however, Chicago’s projected lead over the St. Louis is just four games. The Cardinals got better, adding Marcell Ozuna to bolster their outfield.

As the forecasts suggest, the Cubs remain in a better position than the Cardinals. All things being equal, that’s good for Chicago. There are some warning signs, though.

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Cardinals righty Jack Flaherty didn’t have what you’d call a “flawless” introduction to the majors. While he had some luck missing bats over his roughly 20 innings, he allowed too many walks and really struggled once batters made contact. His 6.33 ERA was 50% worse than league average after accounting for park and league.

The 22-year-old did, however, do one thing right: he threw 87 excellent sliders. The sliders were so excellent, in fact, that Flaherty recorded better numbers on the pitch than anyone else in the second half — just better than the ones thrown by Clayton Kershaw and Garrett Richards. Maybe he can learn something from those other two and help parlay his excellent slider into more excellent outcomes.

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Here’s your daily reminder that a lot of free agents remain available. A lot!

There are probably a number of reasons behind the slowly developing market, and we’ve documented a number of them here at FanGraphs dot com.

Teams have devalued free agency more and more. Players are trending younger. The average age of a position player was 28.3 years last season, compared to 29.1 in 2007. As I noted in a piece for The Athletic over the weekend, pitchers and position players aged 30 and older accounted for 41.8% of WAR production from 2001 to -03 but just 30.6% over the most recent three seasons (2015 to -17). While Craig Edwards noted yesterday that hitters in their early 30s are generally still pretty good, hundreds of age-30 seasons — almost always free-agent seasons — have disappeared.

Teams have perhaps also learned to wait on free agents, driving prices down. The data supports that hypothesis: February free-agent signings have increased for three straight years and are likely to far exceed last year’s mark of 65 signings, the most in a decade.

Moreover, large-market teams are trying to stay under the tax threshold and reset their tax status, while more and more clubs are following Astros- and Cubs-like rebuilds and tearing rosters down NBA-style while collecting premium picks and clearing payroll space in the process.

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Last week, I took a look at the unenviable position in which the Major League Baseball Players Association currently finds itself — and, in particular, the relative lack of leverage it is likely to have over ownership during the next round of collective bargaining in 2021.

In addition to noting that there are few substantive concessions the union could offer ownership, my post last week also briefly discounted the extent to which the threat of a work stoppage would benefit the players. The point probably merited further discussion, however, so this post is intended to more comprehensively explain my thinking in that regard.

How a Work Stoppage Would Most Likely Arise

To begin, it’s important to understand how a work stoppage would likely unfold during the next round of collective bargaining. As I previously explained back in 2016, any labor stoppage in Major League Baseball would — at least for the foreseeable future — most likely come in the form of a lockout by ownership rather than a strike by the players.

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Episode 797
The White Sox recently invited media to attend a hitting camp at their complex in Glendale, at which camp lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen — himself a well-regarded member of the media — observed Jake Burger, Yoan Moncada, and (in particular) Luis Robert all exhibiting impressive power on contact. Longenhagen waxes poetic on Robert’s talents in this edition of the program while also addressing the interesting case of Angels catching prospect Taylor Ward and the ascent of new Pirates prospect Colin Moran.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 18 min play time.)

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I always look forward to these posts, maybe a little too much. It’s one thing to begin a polling project, but it’s quite another to wrap up and take a look at all the community feedback. Sometimes, it isn’t surprising. I mean, we all have a sense of how the community feels about certain subjects. But every single project has something worth talking about. Let’s talk about owners, and ownership groups.

Last week, I ran a post with 30 polls, one for every team. The question: How do you feel about the people ultimately in charge? More than a month ago, I ran a very similar project, only, that time, I asked for your evaluations of the various front offices, independent of ownership. This was supposed to direct the spotlight to the other people, a follow-up project like the one I ran in January two years ago. It should be very obvious that we don’t actually know that much about the owners, or about the influences they have, but if nothing else, we have anecdotes, and we have success cycles and payrolls. Follow a team for long enough, and you’ll develop some form of an ownership opinion. I wanted to collect the community opinions.

That is what follows, down below. I’ve put all the numbers into a spreadsheet and performed some basic analysis. As it happens, for you fans of specific teams, you probably know more about your owners than I do. So, I’m not going to include very much discussion in this post — that can be carried forward in the comments. My job is just to reveal what you said! I should do that.

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A few days ago, the Blue Jays picked up a new, young, cost-controlled starting outfielder. They got him in exchange for a reliever, and for a pitching prospect with lousy peripherals. It’s not hard to see how you could spin this as a big positive for Toronto. The other side, of course, is that the Blue Jays are taking a chance on a guy who the Cardinals couldn’t make better over a number of years. It’s fine for any team to express faith in its own player-development system, but if the Cardinals can’t get a guy polished, what hope might another club have?

As is generally the case, all three players in the trade are interesting. High-level baseball players are always interesting. Randal Grichuk is interesting, because of his track record and skillset. Dominic Leone is interesting, for the way he reemerged in 2017. And Conner Greene is interesting, because of the raw quality of his stuff. The Cardinals hope they just made their bullpen better. I don’t mean to ignore their side of this. But I’d like to focus on Grichuk, and, specifically, I’d like to focus on how he hasn’t progressed. The era in which Grichuk plays today isn’t the same as the era in which he debuted.

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Last week, in Part 2, we learned about one of Lars’s colorful teammates with the Henley and Grange Rams. Today, we get reintroduced to Birdman Bats cofounder Gary Malec — previously featured in the Lars Anderson Discovers Japan series — and hear about a visit to a tattoo parlor that prompted an ink artist to say, “So, you lost a bet, did ya?” We also get a story about the cosmic jest and excruciating mental math that comes with the International Date Line.

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Lars Anderson: “The 2017 Birdman World Tour/Strategic Universal Takeover continued down under, rolling through Adelaide with a visit from the boss himself, Gary Malec. Since Gary was the catalyst for both myself and our bats being in Australia, it was only fitting that he’d check on the seeds he’d sown.  

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