Re: Darvish

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So Brett from BN seemed to take us finishing in second as this was a serious bid.

 

At the time of the bidding, I reported that the Cubs had made a serious bid, one strong enough that they felt they had a chance of winning. Obviously the Cubs did not win the bidding, and, since then, we haven’t heard much about whether they were putting in a token bid, or whether they really wanted to land Darvish.

 

It turns out it was definitely the latter.

 

According to Buster Olney, the Cubs finished in second place in the bidding behind the Rangers, who won the post. Olney notes that the Cubs, like every other team, were more than $35 million behind the Rangers’ winning bid of $51.7 million, but it turns out that the Cubs actually out-bid the Blue Jays, who were everyone’s favorite to go nuts on Darvish at the time.

http://www.bleachernation.com/2012/07/05/the-cubs-were-the-runners-up-for-yu-darvish/

 

I'm saying it's a token bid considering it was around 15 million; he says it wasn't because we were tops in the second tier and that nobody expected him to get around Dice-K's number because he might decide not to sign if a team did that. While I vaguely remember a rumor about that, I think it was well-expected that he would get around Dice-K's s posting fee or more, even when the bidding was over and we were waiting. I mean, if you told us the 15 million number around that time I think we would all say that would be a token bid. I think we knew it would take around Dice-K posting bid money to win, and that's exactly what it did take.

 

Thoughts on whether or not you think it was a token bid or serious, if you had to pick one or the other?

 

PS - not trying to discredit Brett or anything, the site is awesome. Just playing devil's advocate since he made it seem like the answer was obvious, and I thought it was pretty obvious that it was the exact opposite.

 

It would have taken a Dice-K bid for the cubs to win the bid bc one team was stupid. It would have taken Texas 1/3 of what Dice-K got to win the bid.

[Brian]

I think it is just looking for something to be upset about to get worked up over the amount that the Cubs bid. Theo or whoever was in charge of it probably felt (was told maybe) that whatever we bid is what they were comfortable with bidding. It would have been stupid for the Cubs do dump $50 million just to talk to a guy at the start of a rebuild. Yes he might be a guy that they could build around, but it sure seems like a waste of resources to essentially flush $50mill. If you agree that $50+ is too much but are upset that they weren't higher than $15 (or whatever it was), that doesn't make sense either. I have no doubt whatever the bid was they felt was either competitive or as high as they were willing to go. I just cannot imagine it being a "token" bid. If the Cubs were going to throw out a "token" bid with no intention of winning i'm sure it would have been much lower.

[ScrubMD]

So if another GM had done a bunch of bath salts and bid $150 million, would that have made the Rangers' bid less serious?

[Little Slide Rooter]

Christ, that's disheartening. They didn't even really try to get Darvish and in Cespedes you had a player wanting to come to the Cubs and they didn't get it done. If it weren't for Soler it would be time to look for the ol' forehead needle filled with heroin when evaluating their signings thus far.

 

What's to evaluate? There's Soler, Concepcion, a great deal on DeJesus and a bunch of reclamation projects and spare parts. Additions will come, but they're not going to get into bidding wars. Who knows, maybe they will for Hamels. Going forward, we have 3 guys resembling impact players: Rizzo, Castro, and Samardzjia. 4 if we keep Garza. More are needed. There's just no way that they'll let the team turn into rubbish and the bottom drop out of the ticket sales. Remember this is a business as well as a baseball team. They need to make money. If the Cubs keep sucking, ticket sales will plummett. Ricketts knows that. Epstein knows that Ricketts knows that. They're not going to keep scraping scum off the sidewalk for the next 3-5 years while they wait for a bunch of 18-20 year olds to be ready for the big leagues and another 2-3 those that make it to fully develope.

[Sammy Sofa]

tl;dfc