2014 MLB transactions

[Hairyducked Idiot]

But if it makes you feel better to use phrasing like "taking a dive" and treating the 2012 season the same as 2015 and beyond, knock yourself out.

 

1) If it makes you feel better to pretend they didn't take a dive, knock yourself out.

2) I already made the point that you can go ahead and pretend 2012 didn't happen in order to appease the apologists that don't care about winning. And the comparison still doesn't look good.

 

 

I have way too much respect for Theo Epstein to pretend like by 2013, he couldn't have had the Cubs with a decent chance to be competitive. It's hard to fathom why TT's opinion of him would be so low as to pretend otherwise.

[Guest]

The Cubs with a ~100 million budget had zero chance of making the playoffs in 2012

 

That's dumb and by extension you're dumb, you dirty apologist.

 

It's uncanny how the assessment of our chances in each year always goes down after the fact, when it makes things look better to retcon those chances.

 

Okay, good talk.

[Derwood]

Yes, they've sucked (historically sucked) the last 3 years, but that doesn't mean you have to win 100 games the next 3 years to "balance" anything out. That's stupid.

 

They need to make the playoffs enough to end their tenure having done so a reasonable percentage of the time.

 

Jim Hendry made it 3 times out of 9. Epstein's got some work to do to beat that.

 

Ok, I slightly misunderstood your point. I thought you meant "they" were the Cubs, not that "they" were Theo/Jed. My bad

[jersey cubs fan]

Yes, they've sucked (historically sucked) the last 3 years, but that doesn't mean you have to win 100 games the next 3 years to "balance" anything out. That's stupid.

 

I didn't say they had to win 100 games for three straight years.

 

But you absolutely have to consider the horrible job they have done in the first three years fielding a major league baseball team when all is said and done. This losing counts. If they win the next three years you can't claim they built a consistent winner when it took 3 years of excessive losing to get there. It will take a very long time of major success to justify what has happened to date. Maybe they do it. Maybe they don't.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The Cubs with a ~100 million budget had zero chance of making the playoffs in 2012

 

That's dumb and by extension you're dumb, you dirty apologist.

 

It's uncanny how the assessment of our chances in each year always goes down after the fact, when it makes things look better to retcon those chances.

 

Okay, good talk.

 

The first part was meant jokingly, of course.

 

The second part is dead-on. Every year that's gone by, the state of the Oct. 2011 Cubs gets downgraded retroactively in order to justify what's happened since.

 

Baseball is far too high-variance of a sport to pretend like Epstein couldn't have had the Cubs in position to have a chance by 2013, even if we stipulate 2012 was gone (which we really shouldn't, and weren't at the time). Every year, teams that projected to be in the middle of the pack before the season end up in the playoff hunt. Last year, one such team won the World Series.

 

Epstein failed to give the Cubs that chance (and let's not pretend he didn't try. Edwin Jackson wasn't given $52m to be flipped). He just failed.

[Derwood]

Yes, they've sucked (historically sucked) the last 3 years, but that doesn't mean you have to win 100 games the next 3 years to "balance" anything out. That's stupid.

 

I didn't say they had to win 100 games for three straight years.

 

But you absolutely have to consider the horrible job they have done in the first three years fielding a major league baseball team when all is said and done. This losing counts. If they win the next three years you can't claim they built a consistent winner when it took 3 years of excessive losing to get there. It will take a very long time of major success to justify what has happened to date. Maybe they do it. Maybe they don't.

 

historically, why does the losing matter? The Yankees missed the playoffs for 12 or 13 straight seasons in the 80's/90's before they hit the Jeter years....did that losing "matter" in the long run?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

historically, why does the losing matter? The Yankees missed the playoffs for 12 or 13 straight seasons in the 80's/90's before they hit the Jeter years....did that losing "matter" in the long run?

 

It mattered to the seven front offices that got fired in that stretch, I imagine.

[Derwood]

historically, why does the losing matter? The Yankees missed the playoffs for 12 or 13 straight seasons in the 80's/90's before they hit the Jeter years....did that losing "matter" in the long run?

 

It mattered to the seven front offices that got fired in that stretch, I imagine.

 

The seven front offices no one remembers because the team won a bunch of World Series? Those front offices?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

historically, why does the losing matter? The Yankees missed the playoffs for 12 or 13 straight seasons in the 80's/90's before they hit the Jeter years....did that losing "matter" in the long run?

 

It mattered to the seven front offices that got fired in that stretch, I imagine.

 

The seven front offices no one remembers because the team won a bunch of World Series? Those front offices?

 

So let's fire this one and get one step closer to our Brian Cashman?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Yes, if we match the greatest run baseball has seen in half a century, then it turns out that these years were probably worth it.

 

That's like saying if Mike Olt hits like Barry Bonds for the next two years, then this three months didn't matter.

[Derwood]

Yes, if we match the greatest run baseball has seen in half a century, then it turns out that these years were probably worth it.

 

That's like saying if Mike Olt hits like Barry Bonds for the next two years, then this three months didn't matter.

 

How many of our current core prospects are in the system due to the major league team sucking?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Yes, if we match the greatest run baseball has seen in half a century, then it turns out that these years were probably worth it.

 

That's like saying if Mike Olt hits like Barry Bonds for the next two years, then this three months didn't matter.

 

How many of our current core prospects are in the system due to the major league team sucking?

 

Five? Everyone but Soler and Alcantara

[weis21]

Losing sucks. I think everyone can agree with that.

 

I, personally, believe it was simply a matter of finances. I have a hard time imagining Theo et al sat on a significant amount of money instead of signing "bigger name" free agents to help the team the past few years (Jackson as the obvious exception - which was of course a bad move). Whether they knew the circumstances coming into the job or not, it seems obvious the FO didn't have the resources to go out and spend a lot of money to help the MLB team while concurrently replenishing the farm system. His early comments of "dual fronts" and "every season is precious" indicate, to me at least, that he would have preferred that method of rebuilding.

 

Maybe they could have added one or two names to make them somewhat more competitive. But, I think the net effect would have been essentially negligible. So, they chose the less desirable route for the short-term for the much brighter outlook in the long-term. If - and hopefully when - many of these upper-level prospects come up and produce, they aren't saddled with any contracts. They'll have the option to add the pieces to build around them soon (or even extend some of the young players as they've done with Rizzo/Castro).

 

The last few years have really sucked to be a Cubs fan. And there will always be people that will disagree whether or not it was "worth it". But, I think everyone can agree that they've done a good job of setting up the franchise for the chance to be extremely competitive for a long, long time.

[CubColtPacer]

The Cubs with a ~100 million budget had zero chance of making the playoffs in 2012

 

That's dumb and by extension you're dumb, you dirty apologist.

 

It's uncanny how the assessment of our chances in each year always goes down after the fact, when it makes things look better to retcon those chances.

 

Okay, good talk.

 

The first part was meant jokingly, of course.

 

The second part is dead-on. Every year that's gone by, the state of the Oct. 2011 Cubs gets downgraded retroactively in order to justify what's happened since.

 

Baseball is far too high-variance of a sport to pretend like Epstein couldn't have had the Cubs in position to have a chance by 2013, even if we stipulate 2012 was gone (which we really shouldn't, and weren't at the time). Every year, teams that projected to be in the middle of the pack before the season end up in the playoff hunt. Last year, one such team won the World Series.

 

Epstein failed to give the Cubs that chance (and let's not pretend he didn't try. Edwin Jackson wasn't given $52m to be flipped). He just failed.

 

When we were projecting the Cubs in October 2011, most people didn't expect the payroll to go down by 30-35 million a year. That's the key variable that changes everything.

 

In 2011, the Cubs were a 71 win team. Their two position players who had above an .800 OPS were both 33 years old and free agents after the season. They had one starting young position player that was projected to take a leap. They had an elite reliever and an excellent starter in their prime, and another very good young starter coming off his first year. They had one other pitcher that had the potential to make a leap, and not very much impact talent beyond that coming from the minors.

 

When they went into 2012, they had 72.6 million committed before arbitration for players like Garza and Soto. When they potentially had 50 million to spend after that, it would have been a very interesting free agency year. When that turned out to be 20-30 million and they still had to replace the key parts of the offense in Ramirez and Pena just to get back to where they were, that become much less so.

 

There really wasn't a great path to relevance in 2012-2013. Not when you had a league average payroll where only mildly productive players are taking up close to 30% of it (Soriano and Marmol). Some young assets to balance them out but not enough, and not enough money anymore to spend their way out of trouble. If the Cubs payroll had kept growing slowly instead, the equation looks quite a bit different.

[Guest]

I've yet to see a compelling argument that it's at all reasonable for the Cubs to have been a playoff caliber team prior to this year. They took over a team that obviously was not playoff caliber, and started in a new CBA that has made the acquisition of the talent far more difficult (and in some cases expensive) than in the past. The 2012 team had half their budget already tied up in Soriano, Dempster, and Zambrano and was coming off a 90 loss season with 5 position player starters at least 33 years old. More importantly though, there hasn't been any internal help. What's the last Cubs prospect to put up multiple league average seasons, with the team or not? I count Soto and Randy Wells, the latter having washed out by Theo's arrival and the former becoming a backup due to performance/injuries the year after. It's simply not a reasonable expectation once the hope of Hendry-era payrolls went away.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

When we were projecting the Cubs in October 2011, most people didn't expect the payroll to go down by 30-35 million a year. That's the key variable that changes everything.

 

A very large portion of that MLB payroll decrease has been voluntary.

 

In 2011, the Cubs were a 71 win team. Their two position players who had above an .800 OPS were both 33 years old and free agents after the season. They had one starting young position player that was projected to take a leap. They had an elite reliever and an excellent starter in their prime, and another very good young starter coming off his first year. They had one other pitcher that had the potential to make a leap, and not very much impact talent beyond that coming from the minors.

 

Not a great start, but not the worst ever either. Enough for an allegedly brilliant executive to go to work on, unless he's maybe been harboring fantasies of doing a total rebuild and was more interested in finding a team that would let him do it than objectively looking at the needs of the organization.

 

I wish several of our smartest posters from 2012 would come back to argue with the 2014 versions of themselves. Yes, I know we have more information now, but there's a lot of retconning going on as well.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I've yet to see a compelling argument that it's at all reasonable for the Cubs to have been a playoff caliber team prior to this year.

 

Huh. I really thought I had you ready to flip back, too.

 

and started in a new CBA that has made the acquisition of the talent far more difficult (and in some cases expensive) than in the past.

 

You are vastly overstating the degree to which the new CBA changed anything. It was some minor tweaks, and actually saved teams quite a bit of money on the amateur side.

 

What's the last Cubs prospect to put up multiple league average seasons, with the team or not? I count Soto and Randy Wells, the latter having washed out by Theo's arrival and the former becoming a backup due to performance/injuries the year after. It's simply not a reasonable expectation once the hope of Hendry-era payrolls went away.

 

Huh? What? Both of these guys arrived after Soto and Wells:

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=4579&position=SS

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3254&position=P

 

Tyler Colvin's 2010 and 2012 probably qualify, too.

 

 

 

Yes, the Cubs were in a bit of a donut hole in the minor leagues. They had just graduated a couple of interesting MLB pieces (Castro, Samardzija) and had a bunch of interesting guys in the low minors (Baez, Alcantara, for example).

 

They had some older MLB pieces as well that still had some useful years left in them, and we had some guys about to graduate that would be useful on the back half of a roster (LeMahieu's having an interesting year, I noticed the other day). In order to bridge the gap from the low minors and the fruits of a hopefully revamped farm system, we were going to have to add MLB talent.

 

Yes, near-ready MiLB players who would be MLB starters was the organization's weak point. But it had other strengths, more than enough to justify not going the Astros' route.

 

The alternative would be to lose for years and years, and right around late 2011 we were all pretty united that this was a terrible idea, and that a guy like Epstein would *never* just give up and focus on building an all-HG lineup four years down the road.

 

It was only after it happened that some decided "well, it was fated to happen all along." A below-average situation has been retconned into total hopelessness.

[SouthSideRyan]

Yes, if we match the greatest run baseball has seen in half a century, then it turns out that these years were probably worth it.

 

That's like saying if Mike Olt hits like Barry Bonds for the next two years, then this three months didn't matter.

 

How many of our current core prospects are in the system due to the major league team sucking?

 

Five? Everyone but Soler and Alcantara

 

Unless you're talking about sucking brought about by this PLAN, and to the depths they sucked. Then it's Kris Bryant, and whoever we draft next year.

[dew1679666265]

When we were projecting the Cubs in October 2011, most people didn't expect the payroll to go down by 30-35 million a year. That's the key variable that changes everything.

 

A very large portion of that MLB payroll decrease has been voluntary.

 

I think this is the key question. Is the massive payroll drop due to Theo not caring about winning in the short term and wanting a completely home grown team, or is it that Ricketts simply didn't/doesn't have any money and we had to dip below $100 million in payroll whether we liked it or not?

 

The former situation means we could have won if Theo had put forth the effort to do so, the latter means there was no possibility that we could have contended regardless of how smart Theo is.

[weis21]

I think this is the key question. Is the massive payroll drop due to Theo not caring about winning in the short term and wanting a completely home grown team, or is it that Ricketts simply didn't/doesn't have any money and we had to dip below $100 million in payroll whether we liked it or not?

 

The former situation means we could have won if Theo had put forth the effort to do so, the latter means there was no possibility that we could have contended regardless of how smart Theo is.

Yeah, this is what I was saying a few posts up. I mean I guess it's possible they were purposely cheap in an effort to make an "all homegrown" team. But I don't really think that is what they preferred. It certainly seems like their hands were tied in that regard.

[rawaction]

I think this is the key question. Is the massive payroll drop due to Theo not caring about winning in the short term and wanting a completely home grown team, or is it that Ricketts simply didn't/doesn't have any money and we had to dip below $100 million in payroll whether we liked it or not?

 

The former situation means we could have won if Theo had put forth the effort to do so, the latter means there was no possibility that we could have contended regardless of how smart Theo is.

Yeah, this is what I was saying a few posts up. I mean I guess it's possible they were purposely cheap in an effort to make an "all homegrown" team. But I don't really think that is what they preferred. It certainly seems like their hands were tied in that regard.

 

There's no way this was voluntary.

[davell]

If voluntary means they had no choice, then yes, it went down voluntarily.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I don't caaaaaare if it was voluntary or not.

 

Billy Beane doesn't need $130m payrolls to put together the best team in baseball.

[weis21]

I think he meant the opposite. There is no way the FO was voluntarily this frugal the past few years.

[weis21]

I don't caaaaaare if it was voluntary or not.

 

Billy Beane doesn't need $130m payrolls to put together the best team in baseball.

The Cubs won't either at this rate. They just couldn't build that type of team overnight.

 

But they certainly won't be this cheap always, so it's kind of moot.