Cubs Acquire Justin Wilson & Alex Avila for Candelario, Paredes & Cash

[We Got The Whole 9]

I know I'm not the most excited person about this trade, since We Got The Whole 9 has been beating this drum since before the season started. But, I'm pretty excited about it, mainly because Theo is showing he isn't horsefeathering around and also because the prospect cost was so low. Candelario blows. And Paredes is a fatass 18-year-old in A-ball. They can both kick rocks.

 

Wilson is really good. And he's under control for another year, too. Just a solid trade. I think it will look less boring when he comes in throwing gas in his new uniform.

I beat it for a few days and then I left it alone for a couple months... it was clearly chafing

[We Got The Whole 9]

On another forum this Dodgers fan says that if we don't sign Otani or if Oscar doesn't pan out, we are "boned"

 

Yep.

[Rob]

Between adding Wilson, Rondon pumping gas at 99 mph again (out of nowhere), Stropy being solid Strope (figuratively and literally) and even people like Grimm looking impressive yesterday when called upon. All that coupled with Davis and Montgomery and co. Does this make the Cubs bullpen best in baseball? top 3 bullpens?

 

Oh, and lackey didn't suck out loud and Hendricks and Arrietta were really, really good last start (and more than one start for Jake) - our pitching is going to be a juggernaut and come playoff time. wow, this is going to be a really, really fun rest of the year.

 

http://butt.holdings/hold-onto-your-butts.gif

 

Fangraphs projects us as the 3rd best.

 

Yankees: Chapman, Betances, Robertson, Kahnle, etc...

Dodgers: Jansen, Baez, Fields, Dayton, etc...

 

We have a lot of very good relievers, but Davis isn't quite on the level of a Chapman, Jansen, Miller, or Kimbrel.

[CubsWin]

Did the DFA of Brett Anderson open up a spot?

No, he was on 60-day DL.

Brett Anderson is not on the Cubs 40-man roster. He was DFA'd. It's unclear if he will clear waivers still.

[Little Slide Rooter]

The Cubs have mortgaged any chance they have at a long term dynasty over the past 2 seasons to go for wins now. I don't think they are doing the wrong thing, I think they could easily win 1 or 2 more World Series in this stretch. That doesn't change the fact that this is good for the Brewers long term. Anything they can do to make the team 3-6 years from now weaker helps our team. The 2020 Cubs aren't likely to be as good as the 2017 and each year after 2020 they will slip more and more.

 

Apparently, this guy underestimates the stupidity of the Brewers organization. These guys had Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Yovanni Gallardo, Ricky Weeks, JJ Hardy, and Cory Hart in like a 3 year time frame and still couldn't do anything with it. Whenever the Brewers think they have a window of contention, they try a little to hard to act like a big market team, and end up having that window abruptly slammed down on their hands.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Did the DFA of Brett Anderson open up a spot?

No, he was on 60-day DL.

Brett Anderson is not on the Cubs 40-man roster. He was DFA'd. It's unclear if he will clear waivers still.

http://i.imgur.com/OA0vaGe.gif

[David]

The Cubs have mortgaged any chance they have at a long term dynasty over the past 2 seasons to go for wins now. I don't think they are doing the wrong thing, I think they could easily win 1 or 2 more World Series in this stretch. That doesn't change the fact that this is good for the Brewers long term. Anything they can do to make the team 3-6 years from now weaker helps our team. The 2020 Cubs aren't likely to be as good as the 2017 and each year after 2020 they will slip more and more.

 

Apparently, this guy underestimates the stupidity of the Brewers organization. These guys had Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Yovanni Gallardo, Ricky Weeks, JJ Hardy, and Cory Hart in like a 3 year time frame and still couldn't do anything with it. Whenever the Brewers think they have a window of contention, they try a little to hard to act like a big market team, and end up having that window abruptly slammed down on their hands.

 

Different administrations, just saying.

 

Also, the guy you're quoting (and most of the people who agree with him) are the ones arguing against the Brewers trying to act like a big market team and instead want them to stay the course with their rebuild.

[bauermj]

Did the DFA of Brett Anderson open up a spot?

No, he was on 60-day DL.

Brett Anderson is not on the Cubs 40-man roster. He was DFA'd. It's unclear if he will clear waivers still.

 

He wasn't on the 40 man roster a month ago, either. He was on the 60-day DL, thus removed from the 40 man weeks ago. He was replaced by Seth Frankoff, so no the DFA did not clear space. Anderson will clear waivers if he hasn't already (who the hell will pick up the 1mil+ he is owed?) but it has no bearing on the 40 man roster.

[Splendid Splinter]

Between adding Wilson, Rondon pumping gas at 99 mph again (out of nowhere), Stropy being solid Strope (figuratively and literally) and even people like Grimm looking impressive yesterday when called upon. All that coupled with Davis and Montgomery and co. Does this make the Cubs bullpen best in baseball? top 3 bullpens?

 

Oh, and lackey didn't suck out loud and Hendricks and Arrietta were really, really good last start (and more than one start for Jake) - our pitching is going to be a juggernaut and come playoff time. wow, this is going to be a really, really fun rest of the year.

 

http://butt.holdings/hold-onto-your-butts.gif

 

Fangraphs projects us as the 3rd best.

 

Yankees: Chapman, Betances, Robertson, Kahnle, etc...

Dodgers: Jansen, Baez, Fields, Dayton, etc...

 

We have a lot of very good relievers, but Davis isn't quite on the level of a Chapman, Jansen, Miller, or Kimbrel.

 

You can certainly make an argument that he is on that level IMO. I had a conversation with a buddy of mine 2 weekend ago who thought Davis was just merely "good" and that Cubs will miss Chapman in the playoff if they get there this year and on and on about other Cubs stuff. He's from Texas who moved up here because of the windmills in this area and is a Rangers fan. I showed him Davis's stats the past 4 years as a RP and told him how Davis is on Rivera territory when it comes to playoffs (1 ER in 27 IP as a RP iirc). He didn't say another Cubs thing the rest of the night.

[ScrubMD]

Tbf, Brewers fans make a good point about the adverse long term effects of Cubs players hands being weighed down with multiple WS rings. Wrist injuries just waiting to happen, 2026 is Brewer time.

[Cubswin11]

man, fans of other teams in the division are going to be so pissed when some of our lower level players turn into legit prospects in a year or two.

And when we can blow past our limits in IFA in a year or two and Theo finds 1-3 more Eloy's, Torres', etc.

[JonJayCutler]

Nice to see the Cubs gut more of their minors. Next season theyll become the Brewers of 2009 and quickly wonder why they have to go sign guys like Suppan to maybe create a winning team again.

Maybe Theo is trying to win 1more WS before moving on to another franchise to try winning a WS. He doesnt need to plan long term anymore.

 

Lots of gems over at BF.net today, but this one takes the cake for me.

[Cubswin11]

John, remember that the Cubs' rebuild took a long time. We're far ahead of where they were at this stage of the rebuild, when they were starting a string of 100-loss seasons.

 

This might be my favorite one. I wrote about this in the other team game thread, but I don't get how they think they are far ahead of where we ever were on a rebuild. Sure they are winning a little more but they still don't have any superstars/all-stars. They don't have a Bryant or Rizzo anywhere, they have some pretty nice and solid players but almost all of them are closer to 3 WAR players than 5-7+ like Rizzo and Bryant are.

[Bobson Dugnutt]

man, fans of other teams in the division are going to be so pissed when some of our lower level players turn into legit prospects in a year or two.

And when we can blow past our limits in IFA in a year or two and Theo finds 1-3 more Eloy's, Torres', etc.

 

isn't that no longer an option under the new cba?

[Cubswin11]

man, fans of other teams in the division are going to be so pissed when some of our lower level players turn into legit prospects in a year or two.

And when we can blow past our limits in IFA in a year or two and Theo finds 1-3 more Eloy's, Torres', etc.

 

isn't that no longer an option under the new cba?

Yes and no. There are still limits, but you get your budget and can go over by x or y percent then be under spending limits for 2-3 years (like can only go $250k per signing) I think then it resets and you can go spend a lot again? (There's guys on here who know the rules better than me).

[Hunter]

So according to Brewers fans the Cubs did it wrong by planning a 5-6 year window? We should have planned a 10 year window like they are? I hated losing Torres, but hey we won a World Series so I don't care if it cost us our best prospect. Sometimes you have to go for it.

 

Losing minor league players when there isn't a roster spot, to improve the MLB team, is how you get it done. Especially when we can field the same position players for the next 3-4 years. Grabbing a 4.5 WAR pitcher for multiple seasons also seems like a no brainer. The Brewers fans also seem to forget we have a lot more money to play with than they do.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Maybe my favorite part of this attitude is the implicit assumption that the Brewers farm system is going to pay huge dividends for them. They have Brinson, who should be useful at the least and has star potential. After that it's a slew of solid pitching prospects but none with super high ceilings, and a bunch of position players with ceiling that can't hit. They had 4 guys in BA's midseason Top 100. They are basically bragging on a farm system that's the equivalent of what the Cubs had right before Happ's promotion.

[sneakypower]

Nice to see the Cubs gut more of their minors. Next season theyll become the Brewers of 2009 and quickly wonder why they have to go sign guys like Suppan to maybe create a winning team again.

Maybe Theo is trying to win 1more WS before moving on to another franchise to try winning a WS. He doesnt need to plan long term anymore.

 

Lots of gems over at BF.net today, but this one takes the cake for me.

other than Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Xander Bogaerts, Dustin Pedroia, Travis Shaw, Andrew Miller, Manny Margot, Christian Vazquez, Matt Barnes, Jose Iglesias it's hard to think of any impactful players he left Boston with at the end there who are currently making any type of impact

 

or more succinctly, their best player was drafted and developed by Theo, lol

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Okay I lied, my new favorite thing about the Brewer attitude is the idea that 3 years from now everyone on the Cubs will be old and/or expensive and they'll have no farm system to replenish with. They say this immediately after the Cubs traded Eloy, Cease, Candelario, and Paredes. The only one of those guys who had played a professional game 3 years ago is Candelario, and he was en route to a .667 OPS between A- and A+.

[Gmoney08]

More of a general Brewers musing, what do you think Theo would have done if in like 2013 he randomly found the Cubs 5.5 games up in the division at the all star break.

 

I'm thinking he would have stuck to the plan and done exactly what the Brewers are doing with their fringe acquisitions because eventually Emilio Bonifacio and Scott Feldman were going to come back to earth, but a 5.5 game division lead is pretty big at the ASB, it would be tempting to go for it to some degree.

 

I think we saw this in 2015 a bit when a lot of people wanted to trade for Tyson Ross or Danny Salazar and Theo didnt want to get rid of his core prospects.

[BigSlick]

I wonder if a trade like this is a signal towards approaching the playoffs with every starter on a very short leash and letting a super powerful good bullpen handle roughly half or a majority of each game. A lot of teams were starting to move in that direction over the past couple years, and the Indians wanted to leverage their two best relievers that way last year (and, uh, lost) but maybe thats the plan as far as any sort of "magic sauce" (that I agree doesn't exist, there's just way too much variance for anything to make a huge dent in a handful of games) in the playoffs.

[Gmoney08]

Okay I lied, my new favorite thing about the Brewer attitude is the idea that 3 years from now everyone on the Cubs will be old and/or expensive and they'll have no farm system to replenish with. They say this immediately after the Cubs traded Eloy, Cease, Candelario, and Paredes. The only one of those guys who had played a professional game 3 years ago is Candelario, and he was en route to a .667 OPS between A- and A+.

 

Didnt that Theo guy have a good farm in Boston?

Oh right Theo was always losing 100 games in Boston to get good prospect.. thats the only way its done. We are screwed.

[David]

man, fans of other teams in the division are going to be so pissed when some of our lower level players turn into legit prospects in a year or two.

 

nah they'll just be happy when we trade them for good players and sign bryce harper

[ScrubMD]

man, fans of other teams in the division are going to be so pissed when some of our lower level players turn into legit prospects in a year or two.

 

nah they'll just be happy when we trade them for good players and sign bryce harper

 

Harper's contract is going to make it harder for them to extend Ademan and Amaya in 2029 or whatever. Plus Harper leading them to more 100 win seasons is going to tank their draft position for years. Theo doesn't even realize that he's gutting the future.

[ScrubMD]

I love imagining the 3D chess board in their minds as they celebrate the Cubs no longer having Candelario (who was never going to play for the Cubs and also isn't very good) and Paredes (who would be blocked until 2022 by a 23yo SS who has already been worth 10 WAR, and also was just replaced on the SB roster by a better SS prospect). It's all coming together!