Random Cubs Musings

[Sammy Sofa]

I'm going to write a beautiful piece called How I Stopped Thinking Positive and Came to Love the Meatball and give it to Tim to put on the front page. When guys end up being hack machines and getting hit by balls and other players and cars and the TV bubble bursts and Chicago goes bankrupt and takes the Cubs with them it will be seen as prophetic. The farm system simply is the one that thing that hasn't gone wrong...yet.

 

This is anti-logic and insanity and deep down inside of you you all know that it's true. Embrace the meatball and realize what we are trapped in.

[Guest]

I have no idea what the embrace the meatball thing is all about. That sounds terrible. Are you going to start hating Jay Cutler too?

[Aaron_Kennelly]

The Cubs have a ton of money to spend, and 3 elite prospects that are MLB ready by opening day or shortly thereafter for service time purposes. The 'holes' comment is not referring to 'don't spend here we got top o' the line production secured for the next decade', it's referring to the idea that something has to give. Rizzo, Castro, Bryant, Alcantara, Baez, and Soler will all* be needing MLB playing time very soon, with Russell soon behind. They'll either be occupying space on the MLB roster(in which case you won't want to spend a ton of money intentionally blocking them), or they'll be used as currency just like the ton of money would.

 

* I'm excluding Castillo here for simplicity, but adding him as a constant gets you to 7 positions on the field 'covered'. They won't all be superstars or even good, but they'll need playing time to sort that out. In which case it doesn't make a ton of sense to spend on Pablo Sandoval when they can better allocate that money elsewhere, like pitching, the point of the original comment.

 

Not to mention that we have a guy in Valbuena who has been worth about 1 win less than Sandoval in each of the last three years. While, at the same time, our only two starting pitchers that have been with us for longer than a year rank last and next-to-last in ERA of any qualified pitchers in the majors. Even not factoring in "holes," if we wanted to use our available funds to add the most value to the team, the most efficient way in doing so is by adding two starting pitchers.

[Sammy Sofa]

It's being all about hating the world until these dicks actually gives us something good. Then it's cool. But let us call them on their [expletive] in the meantime and be prepared to destroy them with a righteous fury if it fails.

[Guest]

I'm going to write a beautiful piece called How I Stopped Thinking Positive and Came to Love the Meatball and give it to Tim to put on the front page. When guys end up being hack machines and getting hit by balls and other players and cars and the TV bubble bursts and Chicago goes bankrupt and takes the Cubs with them it will be seen as prophetic. The farm system simply is the one that thing that hasn't gone wrong...yet.

 

This is anti-logic and insanity and deep down inside of you you all know that it's true. Embrace the meatball and realize what we are trapped in.

I'll post if it is well written.

[Sammy Sofa]

See? That new guy is pretty level-headed; I can revel in my big bowl of hate and the new guys can be the rational ones.

[Guest]

See? That new guy is pretty level-headed; I can revel in my big bowl of hate and the new guys can be the rational ones.

He hasn't given up persuading you yet.

[Sammy Sofa]

The only thing that will persuade me is the team not being terrible. I cannot possibly make it more clear than that. Until then this is brutal and if it was a somehow a test to be a fan "the right way" of baseball or whatever then I have failed miserably and have completely regressed back to the fan I was when I was 14.

[TruffleShuffle]

i don't really even understand what you're raging about. #ptr is the one who mandated the small market-esque payroll, not epstein/hoyer. given that good players are making $15-25m a year on the open market, it's simply not an option to pack the lineup with a bunch of free agent stars like the dodgers have done. even one contract like robinson cano's would represent a disproportionately high percentage of the club's total salary. so unless they are able to score hits on every mid-priced veteran on the market - and they've done pretty well with that, in addition to bargain basement players like bonifacio, coghlin, ruggiano, sweeney, etc - then the only option is to fill from within. when they took over in 2012, the farm system was generally garbage, and it takes time to rebuild it - especially when the big league club has precious few appealing assets to sell off.

 

wailing and gnashing of teeth toward the front office due to three non-contending seasons seems pretty dumb, given the condition of the organization when they took over, and the payroll constraints that we now know they're under.

[seanimal]

well now that you've made your horrible point could you please shut the [expletive] up?

[Sammy Sofa]

They're going to have to ban me to silence my blazing ax of truth.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

i don't really even understand what you're raging about. #ptr is the one who mandated the small market-esque payroll, not epstein/hoyer.

 

PTR may be responsible for most of it, but the front office quite explicitly said they left payroll on the table this year.

[Guest]

They're going to have to ban me to silence my blazing ax of truth.

 

Annnnnd you've gone full-Kyle

[Sammy Sofa]

They're going to have to ban me to silence my blazing ax of truth.

 

Annnnnd you've gone full-Kyle

 

Long time ago.

[Guest]

No, Kyle thinks he's being logical. Mojo at least admits that he's going full meatball because he thinks it's easier to live that way.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

No, Kyle thinks he's being logical. Mojo at least admits that he's going full meatball because he thinks it's easier to live that way.

 

Kyle *is* being logical.

 

Unrelated: Have you guys ever looked back at old threads and noticed that the smart posters and dumb posters end up being right pretty much the same amount of the time?

[TruffleShuffle]

i don't really even understand what you're raging about. #ptr is the one who mandated the small market-esque payroll, not epstein/hoyer.

 

PTR may be responsible for most of it, but the front office quite explicitly said they left payroll on the table this year.

 

well good for them! fortunately the $10-15m or whatever they didn't spend actually still exists, rather than being piled up and burned in a massive bonfire, so they now have the option of spending it in future years.

[Guest]

No, Kyle thinks he's being logical. Mojo at least admits that he's going full meatball because he thinks it's easier to live that way.

Kyle is extremely logical if you buy into the assumptions he bases his logic upon. The conclusions are completely logical after that.

[Sammy Sofa]

No, Kyle thinks he's being logical. Mojo at least admits that he's going full meatball because he thinks it's easier to live that way.

 

This is true.

 

I spent the last week on vacation in the wilds of northern Wisconsin and in the evenings we sat around the mighty fire, stinking of the wilderness and drinking shitty beers and smoking fine cigars and the meatball talk flowed and for the first time ever I didn't even bother trying to argue against any of it...and it felt good. It felt like peace.

 

Tim, this is some of the good stuff you can get in with on the ground floor. I'm gonna crank it up to Whitman-levels in a second.

[TruffleShuffle]

here's a good measuring stick - if sulley is being more rational about you than the rebuild, it might be time to step back and re-evaluate your life.

[Guest]

here's a good measuring stick - if sulley is being more rational about you than the rebuild, it might be time to step back and re-evaluate your life.

 

http://i.imgur.com/j74SykU.gif

[Splendid Splinter]

here's a good measuring stick - if sulley is being more rational about you than the rebuild, it might be time to step back and re-evaluate your life.

 

 

 

http://25.media.tumblr.com/5ca907646597998aed98a8eb0c81b36e/tumblr_mjzjly5m5J1r2op6ko1_500.gif

 

[Sammy Sofa]

Truffle, you are the best.

[TruffleShuffle]

here's a good measuring stick - if sulley is being more rational about you than the rebuild, it might be time to step back and re-evaluate your life.

 

http://i.imgur.com/j74SykU.gif

 

that was weird. perhaps a unique form of dyslexia??

[jersey cubs fan]

i don't really even understand what you're raging about. #ptr is the one who mandated the small market-esque payroll, not epstein/hoyer.

 

PTR may be responsible for most of it, but the front office quite explicitly said they left payroll on the table this year.

 

well good for them! fortunately the $10-15m or whatever they didn't spend actually still exists, rather than being piled up and burned in a massive bonfire, so they now have the option of spending it in future years.

 

I would not be so sure about that. That's generally not how businesses run themselves.