2013

[C.C.]

Hendry left us average assets and no vision (or just a terrible vision, not sure). Theo pawned off the average assets that were overvalued, found some undervalued average assets and gave us a vision.

 

So basically whays changed is the vision.

 

This is pretty simple.

 

The vision includes sucking for a few years on purpose. It's not a great vision.

Well it included sucking for one year. Beyond this year, I think you'll see gradual improvements in both the short and long term until we're awesome at both.

 

 

If we don't sign any free agents I can't see us being any better next year. We might even be worse.

[sneakypower]

Yeah. You are being silly and I think/hope that you know it. That list included players coming off of 2.8, 2.2 and 2.8 fWAR major league seasons. To call them "penny stocks" just because you found a tortured phrase that could theoretically apply to them and sound bad does not diminish their actual value, which was significant.

 

The organization has significantly more player assets than the three players you named, and it also had significant financial assets at its disposal. This team is awful right now because Epstein chose for it to be awful. No more, no less.

didn't Casey Kotchman have a 2.8 fWAR last year? fwiw, Kurt Suzuki and James Loney had 2.3 fWAR seasons too last year

 

Dempster and Marshall were good enough players, but their contract statuses sucked most of the value out of them as assets

 

Until Theo rode in on his magic unicorn and convinced teams to pay significant value for these previously worthless pieces. Gotcha.

YOO HOO, you used the term "trade rape" to describe the Marshall trade you miserable idiot

[davell]

This team is awful right now because Epstein chose for it to be awful. No more, no less.

Oh, win? Just win games? Why don’t I strap on my win helmet, and squeeze into a win cannon and fire off into win land, where wins grow on winnies!

 

It's sad how thin the margin is on this being your least coherent point in this discussion.

 

Sorry man, probably because I'm on the same side, but I [expletive] loved it.

[C.C.]

Hey, easy on the attacks. Keep it civil.

[sneakypower]

There's nothing wrong with passing on any one free agent, or even the group of big names from this past offseason. Darvish and Wilson were the only ones I even wanted out of that group (after we got Rizzo) and Darvish was a blind bid and Wilson seemed set on LA. The issue is whether we're going to keep passing the next couple of offseasons so we can build up our farm system.

and when we pass on guys that make sense, i'll pick up a torch and join you, but it seems like an insane thing to be outraged about, pre-emptively

[SouthSideRyan]

Not by trying to plug your numerous holes with expensive assets that will lose value instead of gaining it, that's for sure. I think we will see improvement next year over this year, and in 2014 over 2013.

 

Why so, we can be bad instead of awful? And then mediocre instead of bad?

 

Signing a group of older guys at exorbitant prices who won't immediately turn you into a contender isn't a sound strategy. It wouldn't have made significant immediate improvement, and it certainly wouldn't have improved the long term prognosis. In fact, the opposite is true; it would have prolonged the system building process while not providing significant enough short term improvement to make it remotely worth it.

 

The only way it prolongs the system building is not giving us the highest draft picks possible, so again be incredibly shitty or incredibly good, there's no value in the middle.

 

Well, it would have provided the illusion and pretense of having a chance, and maybe that's all some people really want.

 

Yep, like I said that's all I want, to smile and eat a [expletive] sandwich 76 win team.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

YOO HOO, you used the term "trade rape" to describe the Marshall trade you miserable idiot

 

Yes. We traded something valuable for three somethings valuable.

[Gilby]

And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.

 

This type of thinking is what got us here. Paying a bunch of players in their 30s to take a terrible team to average or slightly below average would make it hard to ever build the consistently great team Theo is trying to achieve.

 

It's interesting that just a few posts above this, you bash Jim Hendry.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Gilby

[CubColtPacer]

And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.

 

You lose more than that.

 

1) You lose draft picks. As davell mentioned, signing Pujols and Wilson would have cost the Cubs their 2nd and 3rd round picks this year.

 

2) You lose roster flexibility. Signing Pujols makes an opportunity to flip Cashner for Rizzo go by the boards. Sure, you still have Cashner to trade, but who knows if there's another undervalued asset out there for him to get? The more flexibility you have for positions, the more likely it is to be able to find diamonds in the rough.

 

3) You lose financial flexibility. If the Cubs signed Pujols, Wilson, and Cespedes, do they have the money for even small acquisitions like Maholm? Probably not (they had a lot of money left over, but signing those 3 would have sapped it very quickly), and so you lose one of the other easy ways to build assets-buying players in free agency who just need playing time, and then flipping them when there's a need. And as sneaky mentioned, do the Cubs have the money for Soler if they put a large amount into free agents?

 

4) As you mentioned, your team is better so you lose draft positioning and IFA money.

 

5) The Cubs would also lose whatever they did or are planning to do with that 30 million dollars. I don't know how much value to put on this one because we know that money didn't go into thin air, we're pretty sure that money wasn't just pocketed by the owners, but we don't know where it went.

 

So should free agency be completely eschewed? Maybe not. Players like Cespedes and Darvish might have qualified for more reasons than their ages. They wouldn't have cost a draft pick and they both play positions (OF and SP) where you have to have multiple of anyway. But spending big money in free agency typically is a rather poor way for the whole organization to gather assets. By staying active and staying flexible, an organization can usually pick up better assets by going a different route However, I tend to agree the Cubs could have gone the free agency route and likely succeeded in building the organization as well, although the success rate would be lower than it is now.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

 

If we don't sign any free agents I can't see us being any better next year. We might even be worse.

 

If we take the same approach as last year, this team is Astros-level bad in 2013.

[XZero771679666304]

And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.

What if Theo and co. just didn't like any of the big FA this offseason? All of them had risks attached given where we stood and the money required to get them.

 

Pujols: $200m+ over 10 years, it would be tough to build a WS team while he was still at an elite level, there were signs pointing to him declining and coming back towards the pack of 1B

 

Fielder: Poor defender, long term questions about if he could stay in the field for a team that doesn't have DH.

 

Wilson: Short term track record of success as a starter, saw major jumps in IP over the last two years compared to his career

 

Darvish: Would have taken $100m plus to acquire him the FO might have had a bad taste in their mouth after Dice-K. He hasn't been all that great this year. Previously had a lot of innings on his arm already.

 

Cespedes: By all accounts we wanted him and offered him the same AAV as the A's but he wanted a shorter term deal (4 with the A's v. 7 with us) so he could potentially cash in big one more time.

 

If he didn't like any of them why did he put in a bid for Pujols, Fielder, Darvish, and Cespedes? PR move?

 

It wasn't as if they were either/or propositions. Cespedes and Darvish were young enough, and they apparently made the offers the thought reasonable (and in the case of Darvish, more than any other team but Texas thought reasonable). I think they thought they had a legitimate shot at both.

 

We don't know that any offers were made for Pujols/Fielder, but if there had been, obviously they weren't willing to pay a premium for diminishing returns, which would be wise given the state of the team.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

5) The Cubs would also lose whatever they did or are planning to do with that 30 million dollars. I don't know how much value to put on this one because we know that money didn't go into thin air, we're pretty sure that money wasn't just pocketed by the owners, but we don't know where it went.

 

I'm not pretty sure about that.

[XZero771679666304]

 

If we don't sign any free agents I can't see us being any better next year. We might even be worse.

 

If we take the same approach as last year, this team is Astros-level bad in 2013.

 

No.

[WrigleyField 22]

Hendry left us average assets and no vision (or just a terrible vision, not sure). Theo pawned off the average assets that were overvalued, found some undervalued average assets and gave us a vision.

 

So basically whays changed is the vision.

 

This is pretty simple.

 

The vision includes sucking for a few years on purpose. It's not a great vision.

Well it included sucking for one year. Beyond this year, I think you'll see gradual improvements in both the short and long term until we're awesome at both.

 

 

If we don't sign any free agents I can't see us being any better next year. We might even be worse.

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

We'll sign at least 2 SP in the Maholm mold and one starting position player. These players cumulatively will be have an AAV of around 25 and net us 4-7 WAR. We'll eventually get to the point where we have one big hole and splurge on a big time FA to fill it, while having plenty of prospects in the pipeline close to being ready, ensuring continued success.

 

 

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[Hairyducked Idiot]

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million.

[WrigleyField 22]

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million.

I haven't done the math, but did you figure in our official payroll number or what we're actually paying guys?

 

 

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[SouthSideRyan]

And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.

 

This type of thinking is what got us here. Paying players in their 30s to take a terrible team to average or slightly below average would make it hard to ever build the consistently great team Theo is trying to achieve.

 

It's interesting that just a few posts above this, you bash Jim Hendry.

 

For the 90th [expletive] time, signing free agents is not why Jim Hendry was a terrible GM

[SouthSideRyan]

If we only spend 25M on FAs, our ML payroll will have dropped ~20M and we won't have any 30M Soler contracts to hand out on the minor league level.

[Gilby]

And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.

 

This type of thinking is what got us here. Paying players in their 30s to take a terrible team to average or slightly below average would make it hard to ever build the consistently great team Theo is trying to achieve.

 

It's interesting that just a few posts above this, you bash Jim Hendry.

 

For the 90th [expletive] time, signing free agents is not why Jim Hendry was a terrible GM

 

Was it the drafts he wasn't given the money to do well at?

 

As mentioned before, finishing 20th in the league instead of 29th, does affect the team a lot with the new draft rules. If you hate Hendry for drafts, you should appreciate that.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Gilby

[Hairyducked Idiot]

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million.

I haven't done the math, but did you figure in our official payroll number or what we're actually paying guys?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Before the trade deadline, we were at almost exactly $110 million in actual commitments, including what we are paying for Zambrano. It's actually less than that because of Wood's retirement and some deadline deals, Add in the draft, IFAs and the new front office personnel, and there's still about $30 million missing.

[CubColtPacer]

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million.

 

Depends on how you spread out the money. The Cubs committed around 40 million in IFA money this year. How much is being put on this year's budget versus other years is completely unknown. How much of the 8 million investment in the Dominican Academy is on this year's budget is unknown. They've fired quite a few people and expanded the front office at the same time. That's going to cost a little extra. They've made quite a few technology improvements throughout the system, which is going to add some initial cost.

 

Basically the only two things we know for sure are payroll+draft. Those two are somewhere in the 118-120 million range combined. Do the others add up to 40 million extra? Probably not, but there's enough there that it easily could depending on the accounting of it.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

We're gonna sign free agents! Hell we signed free agents last offseason. And we've shed even more salary once this offseason is over. There's little space to shift that money unless you think it will go to Wrigley Field. And we have no reason to believe Ricketts will just pocket the money.

 

I'm still wondering where all the money went this year. The 2011 Cubs spent around $160 million between the big leagues, the draft and IFAs. Add up this year's payroll, draft, IFA, organizational changes and infrastructure, and I'm still coming up way short of $160 million.

 

Depends on how you spread out the money. The Cubs committed around 40 million in IFA money this year. How much is being put on this year's budget versus other years is completely unknown. How much of the 8 million investment in the Dominican Academy is on this year's budget is unknown. They've fired quite a few people and expanded the front office at the same time. That's going to cost a little extra. They've made quite a few technology improvements throughout the system, which is going to add some initial cost.

 

Basically the only two things we know for sure are payroll+draft. Those two are somewhere in the 118-120 million range combined. Do the others add up to 40 million extra? Probably not, but there's enough there that it easily could depending on the accounting of it.

 

It would be very, very unusual for a business to count against the budget money that they aren't actually spending this year, such as IFA contracts. Soler didn't get a $30 million bonus. He got a long-term, escalating deal.

 

The hiring/firing of minor personnel and technology improvements are a drop in the bucket. Those are several orders of magnitude short of being more than a blip in this discussion.

[Theo]

They are stashing the cash away because they realize they no leverage and are going to take a beating on stadium renovations.

[C.C.]

 

If we don't sign any free agents I can't see us being any better next year. We might even be worse.

 

If we take the same approach as last year, this team is Astros-level bad in 2013.

 

No.

 

Explain.

[WrigleyField 22]

If we only spend 25M on FAs, our ML payroll will have dropped ~20M and we won't have any 30M Soler contracts to hand out on the minor league level.

Some additional cost in raises, agressively pursuing any over 23 IFA, and additional small pieces like Reed Johnsons and we should be close. Maybe down a bit just from lost revenue after our shitty season.

 

Plus i think our restricted IFA budget will grow (everyone was equal this year and we'll have one of the hightest next year.)

 

 

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