I’ve seen an assumption floating around BCB, that the Cubs have about 90 million to spend in free agency this offseason. It sounds like a ton of money. Heck, per sportrac, that’d be more than the total salary of 14 ballclubs! The problem is that Free Agency is the most expensive way to acquire talent. Good players don’t always reach the open market, and when they do, they are either looking for a big pay day, or they’re not very good.

I wanted to see if, by adding $90 million in FAs, I could build a team that could contend in the NL in 2022. The post-2021 trade deadline Chicago Cubs were an awful team. Their 20-36 record after August 1st, extrapolated over a 162 game season, would be a 57 win team. Only the D-Backs and Orioles were worse this year. Here’s what the team looked like after the break, and what those performances would have looked like over a 162 game season:

There are some incredible and awful numbers in that chart that won’t be repeated in 2021. Frank Schwindel is never going to put up 6.7 WAR over a 162 game season. Ian Happ probably won’t be worth 4.9. But then again, there’s also some low hanging fruit for improvement. For example, the Cubs can instantly improve by never playing a member of the Romine family again.

Now looking at the Pitching:

To save space, I'm leaving out the reliever table, but after the trade deadline, the Cubs bullpen accounted for .8 WAR, that'd be 2.3 over an entire season.

I’m going to admit here that I didn’t watch many games after the sell off. Looking at the starting pitching data, I really pity anyone who did. Again, there’s some low hanging fruit here. May Zach Davies never pitch a game in Cubbie Blue again.

Looking forward, there’s clearly a lot for the Cubs to improve on. There are needs all over the roster, but the Cubs are also limited by a Free Agent class that is relatively limited in talent under the age of 30. CF (a pressing need) is thin, and most of the high-end FA talent is at SS. My assumption is that the Cubs will stick with Nico Hoerner at Short. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say the Cubs add 2 SPs, 1 corner infielder, 1 corner outfielder, and a backup CF.

There are some assumptions here as well, namely that these dollar amounts are correct, and that all these people want to play for the Chicago Cubs (particularly big question for that starry eyed third baseman). But I’m trying to think optimistically, so let’s again say for the sake of this exercise that these players take these contracts.

Now you also must address the outlier performances and make some other assumptions about the 2022 performances of the guys on the actual roster. I am making the following assumptions, which I think are optimistic, yet mostly fairly reasonable:

• Everyone stays healthy (ha.)
• Frank Schwindel will not be the best hitter in baseball but will be a borderline top 10 first baseman.
• Nick Madrigal and Nico Hoerner will both match their 2021 output, extrapolated over an entire season.
• Ian Happ plays a lot more like his second half than his first half.
• David Bote will return to form as a solid, unspectacular 5th infielder/semi-regular.
• Kyle Hendricks returns to form
• Adbert Alzolay and Justin Steele both turn out to be solid starters.
• The bullpen is league average (~3.2 WAR) without adding any relievers from outside the organization
• Every other player repeats their output from 2021

Here’s what these assumptions get you:

What does all this actual get you? For that I look at the delta between the 162 game average of the 2021 team after deadline, and this back of the napkin projection for this hypothetical 2022 club.

*Post-deadline, extrapolated over 162 games

After all this movement, and some very rosy projections for a lot of players, the Cubs end up with a top ten offense, and a slightly below average (though dramatically improved) pitching staff. If you add 21.8 to the 57 game pace of the post-deadline Cubs, you get 78.8 wins.

This sure seems like a lot of money to spend on a below .500 team.