2014 Roster Discussion

[SouthSideRyan]

I mean maybe it's all Theospeak and none of it means anything. I'd feel a lot better if it was some hack journalist that wrote the piece rather than Mooney. I just don't get how you can shrug off the Jackson quote. I'll have to do some digging, but I feel like similar quotes were made prior to last offseason and we wound up with Edwin Jackson and a rock.

[davell]

It doesn't make sense business-wise to throw another 70ish win on paper team out there next year, with the TV rights being renegotiated. Having good ratings and attendance will both help with that and with advertisers on ad space as well. I'm going to blindly assume Ricketts isn't an absolute [expletive], when it comes to this. And I'm going to look at the current state of the team(70ish wins and around 70 mill in payroll) and figure that keeping the payroll even close to this years 100 mill will give Theo plenty of room to make this an 80ish win type team heading into 2014. The quotes about "not multiples" and "multidimensional ways" supersede Theo's talk on Edwin's deal, as I don't suspect him to come out and just say "we're open for serious business" at any point ever.

[Guest]

I'll have to do some digging, but I feel like similar quotes were made prior to last offseason and we wound up with Edwin Jackson and a rock.

 

This is actually one of the reasons I'm not super upset about it. You joke, but that rock is actually a good bit of money spread across several players(Feldman, Fujikawa, Schierholtz, Baker, Villanueva, Stewart) where this offseason there's a lot less need for those types of role players. Taking your own post from this thread about the holes that'll need filling(and I don't disagree), we'll want a SP, an OF, and bench filler. Going big for one of those 2 needs with the money available last year(35 million was spent on the above names, and a similar number coming free this offseason by my count) seems perfectly doable even if you want to round down a bit.

[Guest]

in other news, vitters is officially moving to lf.

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/_/id/19956/former-no-1-pick-vitters-moves-to-the-of

[Sammy Sofa]

Maybe all of the complaints would be curtailed if the bad news stopped being such a regular thing. It's not like they're occurring in a vacuum. If some prefer to jump through hopes to make it not seem as bad, fine; I don't. It looks like they're in a pretty bad situation right now.

[Guest]

Bad news in this case being Theo telling reporters some cliches about Free Agency not being a magic bullet. "How else are we supposed to react?" is not really a compelling argument.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Describing these are mere cliches is a bit of head-burying, especially given how it syncs up with many other legitimate fears about the offseason.

[Sammy Sofa]

Bad news in this case being Theo telling reporters some cliches about Free Agency not being a magic bullet. "How else are we supposed to react?" is not really a compelling argument.

 

Well, the key thing here is that you obviously disagree that Theo or anyone else is saying that the Cubs don't have a lot of money to play with. You think it's just FA cliches, but a lot of us think there's a lot pointing to things being much more limited for the time being.

 

People react negatively to bad news.

[Guest]

Bad news in this case being Theo telling reporters some cliches about Free Agency not being a magic bullet. "How else are we supposed to react?" is not really a compelling argument.

 

Well, the key thing here is that you obviously disagree that Theo or anyone else is saying that the Cubs don't have a lot of money to play with. You think it's just FA cliches, but a lot of us think there's a lot pointing to things being much more limited for the time being.

 

People react negatively to bad news.

 

Personally, while I'm wary of the payroll dipping further from this year's number, I have too many reasons to think that it won't be taking a huge hit until I actually see that happen. Others don't have to agree, but can we agree it's not an obvious point?

 

Yes, you have to take that a very narrow way(especially in light of all the other quotes) to get to "well we probably can't afford to spend at Edwin Jackson levels this offseason". That doesn't mean it's objectively wrong, but it does mean that maybe the 4 millionth rendition of "no see this is the process now lol" is probably a bit much.

[Sammy Sofa]

Yes, and...? I just said you clearly disagree with many of us.

[Guest]

I'm not saying we have to agree, I'm saying that taking every bit of news you think fits that view and immediately getting a sequence of posts like:

 

at least we can delete the tanaka thread now (or move it to "Real Team Discussions").

 

Who would have thunk that the glorious happenings of the Cubs being sold and Hendry being fired (and replaced by Theo Epstein, no less) would have actually been the path to Baseball Hell.

 

You guys just don't appreciate the plan. Exchanging money for useful MLB players is something Hendry would have done. We're going in a different direction now.

 

is obnoxious. It's tantamount to Aramis Fan's game thread freakouts at the slightest sign of bad news, whether justified or not.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

And the next time we get six prospects on a list somewhere, we'll get three posts talking about how bright the future is. Same difference.

[Sammy Sofa]

Look, AF talks about games like he expects bad things to happen; I'm really have no desire to do that with the Cubs and I don't do that. I respond negatively to bad news when it's posted, and unfortunately most of the news about the Cubs that isn't prospect-related hasn't been very good (or worse) for a while.

 

In other words: "[expletive]! This is a dark [expletive] period!"

[davell]

If there isn't legitimate progress made at the big league level this offseason, I can 't wait to hear the Ricketts panel at the Cubs Convention.

[imb]

itt a bunch of eriks, happy to wallow in misery

[Sammy Sofa]

Who is possibly happy about this? Even the doomiest of doom boners isn't going to take pleasure from the nebulous financial position the Cubs are in. I get that people are excited over the farm, but the list of negative things hindering or potentially hindering the Cubs is pretty [expletive] long at this point for the next few years unless those prospects really hit it big.

[CubColtPacer]

Who is possibly happy about this? Even the doomiest of doom boners isn't going to take pleasure from the nebulous financial position the Cubs are in. I get that people are excited over the farm, but the list of negative things hindering or potentially hindering the Cubs is pretty [expletive] long at this point for the next few years unless those prospects really hit it big.

 

The financial situation should get quite a bit better after just 1 more year. Let's say the worst case scenario happens and the payroll goes down to 75 million next year (presumably to pay for the renovations). In 2015 the new WGN contract kicks in, and the construction on some of the revenue generating things should be done. Plus the Cubs won't have nearly the dead money they have just in Soriano after next year. That's a lot of extra potential payroll that should be available after just 1 more year.

 

Will the Cubs be able to truly explode the payroll until the CSN contract is up and the renovations are done? Probably not, and that's not good. But things will start getting a lot better than they are currently pretty soon.

[Boris]

Another season of futility. Bah.

[Sammy Sofa]

Who is possibly happy about this? Even the doomiest of doom boners isn't going to take pleasure from the nebulous financial position the Cubs are in. I get that people are excited over the farm, but the list of negative things hindering or potentially hindering the Cubs is pretty [expletive] long at this point for the next few years unless those prospects really hit it big.

 

The financial situation should get quite a bit better after just 1 more year. Let's say the worst case scenario happens and the payroll goes down to 75 million next year (presumably to pay for the renovations). In 2015 the new WGN contract kicks in, and the construction on some of the revenue generating things should be done. Plus the Cubs won't have nearly the dead money they have just in Soriano after next year. That's a lot of extra potential payroll that should be available after just 1 more year.

 

Potentially. I'm not all that optimistic about the new WGN deal bringing in a ton more money. Sure, the Cubs will get more, but WGN knows it's just a stay of execution until the Comcast deal is up a few years later, so I can't imagine they're going to suddenly start paying a ton. Neither side really has a ton of leverage to really take advantage of anyone.

[davell]

I thought I read somewhere that they're trying to get an extra 500,000 per game out of WGN. Not sure how much leverage they'd have to try and get a new deal with CSN right now for the entire thing(my guess is extremely little), so I imagine we're stuck going this route until 2019. Which sucks.

[Sammy Sofa]

I thought I read somewhere that they're trying to get an extra 500,000 per game out of WGN. Not sure how much leverage they'd have to try and get a new deal with CSN right now for the entire thing(my guess is extremely little), so I imagine we're stuck going this route until 2019. Which sucks.

 

Plus I really have no idea how the timeframe is going to play out with the spending for all of the renovations and construction and so on. The new WGN money and ad revenue will be great, but I've really given up trying to figure out what the Ricketts actually can or can't spend.

[Guest]

I'm confused as to why there's no motivation for Comcast, WGN or another station(the local Fox or ABC affiliate has been mentioned, can't remember which) to bid on the WGN rights this year, but when the Comcast/total rights come up then they'll be yelling "shut up and take my money". It's a valuable asset that's currently paying way under market value, so they don't have to get everything they dreamed to make a difference. Half of that 500k per game is something like 15-20 million a year in incremental revenue.

[Sammy Sofa]

Right, but again, the Ricketts' financial status in regards to what is available to the team seems really up in the air. Until all of the renovations and such are sorted out I'm not going to pretend like we can just pencil in what money is going to the team.

[davell]

They're bleeding Wrigley dry as it is, with concerts and anything else they can already. I think we're stuck in team sucks= low attendance= no payroll increases hell until the major league team becomes relatively decent, increasing attendance along the way. The revenue money will help once this happens, in my mind. Until then, I think the revenue money helps fund the actual renovations. The extra attendance and the bump in all things that come with that, coupled with the TV deal is where the eventual payroll bump comes from. My honest guess is Theo doesn't see the Red Sox level payrolls until the CSN portion of the TV deal is redone. This sounds awful, but as long as a few of our stud minor leaguers are making minimum salaries, we'll be able to spend on a few impact types to go with them. The 180ish mill payroll probably won't come until we're 2-3 years into extensions of Javy, Bryant, and whoever else we've kept around at that point. I honestly do think we've got enough inventory and a smart enough FO to become long term playoff contenders by 2015, even if we're stuck with a 100ish mill type payroll, in spite of Ricketts lack of help.

[Guest]

Right, but again, the Ricketts' financial status in regards to what is available to the team seems really up in the air. Until all of the renovations and such are sorted out I'm not going to pretend like we can just pencil in what money is going to the team.

 

I can't begrudge you that line of thinking, it's just really difficult for me to think that Ricketts is going to 1) cut payroll 20% 2) not funnel any revenues from renovations or TV deals back into the team and as a result, 3) put together a product that's sure to continue draining millions in attendance and concession opportunities. Especially since he hasn't done any of those things yet, and he'll need to do all of them for the Cubs to be handcuffed to the extent you're saying here(considering those revenues, the money coming free with Soriano, the fact that there aren't many/any huge raises upcoming, etc).