ConstableRabbit

Girardi just doesn't seem like the type of guy Theo would hire. And if they did, why not just can Maddon now and put Girardi in. Sounds like a bunch of nothing to me. That was a joke.

Can we move this stupid argument to social/rants, please? Every time I see new posts in this thread I'm terrified that we've hired Joe Girardi or something.

First in the West baby. The ugliest painting in the museum!

Interesting wording. Doesn’t mention whether it was his.

*A. Weird horsefeathers

That tweet... doesn't make sense. Why is Angel calling and no one's answering?

You were expecting more from the guy rocking a caesar cut in 2018?

this is an extremely reductive line of thinking, but it’s the one i’m going with: given all we have constantly heard about how much the front office specifically loves schwarber and how good he is at all their weird brain tests and stuff, if they think it is time to trade him and aren’t scared about missing out on monster seasons, it is probably time to trade him and we shouldn’t be scared about missing out on monster seasons. part of me wonders if some of the over-the-top Schwarber love from the FA recently is as much about them knowing that he would ultimately be trade fodder if a Harper pursuit ever got real, so they needed to project this image of "oh we LOVE this guy. Would HATE to lose him" the entire time so it at least looked somewhat legitimate. Rather than it being December, us offering $400 million to Harper and then you suddenly have a bunch of "i guess we could move schwarber but the return would have to be ginormous because of his brain WAR" Now that's 4D chess I can get behind.

That was certainly an easier thing to do given the circumstances. The police investigated it and determined that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with a crime, and the accuser didn't come forward in any sort of public way. Just about every other major situation in since then across MLB and other sports has involved criminal charges, public evidence (e.g., photos or videos), public statements from accusers or a combination of the three. The Starlin case was similar to Jung Ho Kang's, which I admittedly forgot about until just now. Personally, I'm not placing too much faith in the Chicago police/justice system back in 2012 to look all that hard in taking down a Cubs player who, at the time, was looked at as a big part of the future of the franchise. Even just in "normal" sexual assault cases, too often charges or prosecution aren't pursued largely because if it comes down to what the victim says happens, then that's decided it's not enough. To me, this says it all what people's priorities were regarding an athlete accused of sexual assault 6 years ago: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-xpm-2012-04-20-chi-prosecutors-no-charges-for-starlin-castro-over-sex-assault-allegations-20120420-story.html Oh I agree: I have absolutely zero confidence in any authority figure in the City of Chicago. Was just saying that there was a lot less room for public uproar given the circumstances. That in addition to the fact that we tend to look at things with a more careful eye in 2018.

I was definitely way too willing to shrug that kind of thing off. That was certainly an easier thing to do given the circumstances. The police investigated it and determined that there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with a crime, and the accuser didn't come forward in any sort of public way. Just about every other major situation in since then across MLB and other sports has involved criminal charges, public evidence (e.g., photos or videos), public statements from accusers or a combination of the three. The Starlin case was similar to Jung Ho Kang's, which I admittedly forgot about until just now.

2015 David Ross would be an improvement. Vic isn't a good defensive catcher and also can't hit. It would be nice to have a backup C that's decent to good at one of those.

Season 4 was prob the best season. lmao this is what i was just going to say. look at us agreeing. i organically stopped watching after season 4 and i dont know a single person who enjoyed any of the other seasons in any kind of unironic way Hey, I agree too! I felt like I had to finish out the show and it just... never got good again.

2011 he had some shoulder thing and kept trying to play through it. Finally gave up and said he'd come back when he was 100 percent. Chipper Jones called him a baby so he came back and struggled all year. Bounced back the next year even though the swing was changed and then the next year the head shot happened. Yeah that’s true. It was pretty sad to see the top defensive OF in MLB hurt his shoulder and change his swing at age 21 only to have his production hover around replacement level for the next 4 seasons until the Cubs FO threw $180m his way.

Ah yes, all of the clear red flags and warning signs that the Cubs and all other teams willfully ignored that you and no one else noticed until he ended up being terrible, after the fact. I’d think it was a failure too if I believed that this FO and others saw serious, fatal flaws in a top FA and lined up to give him $180m+ with opt outs. I never said you can ignore all of the bad signings. Chatwood was a bad signing. Duensing was a bad signing. There are a lot of factors that go into evaluating a FO’s moves. Saying “wow that sucked and seems obvious now I can’t believe no one on Earth predicted that” or “lolz the Cubs signed him because he hit a big homer against us” is silly. dunno what to tell you man. the shoulder injury was well known and even in his cardinals season he didnt hit for any power. they obviously signed him because he was still young, had a pretty high floor given his defensive capabilities as long as he could be a slightly better than league average signing and they just went out and broke him. I don’t know what you should tell me either, but “I couldn’t predict it and neither could anyone else but this FO should have” isn’t it.

Yes, that’s a huge part of it. But the hindsight is 20-20/ends justify the means mentality is a very challenging and misleading standard. this is a tough pill for you to swallow for some reason. there were obvious warning signs about heyward that they either ignored or thought they could fix. they were wrong, it got worse, Heyward is now outside the timeframe where you can hope for improvement, and it was a $150 million mistake. that's not "hindsight is 20/20," which happens to be a strong take for a person arguing that you can't criticize a bad signing because if you ignore the bad ones, all their signings happen to be good ones. Ah yes, all of the clear red flags and warning signs that the Cubs and all other teams willfully ignored that you and no one else noticed until he ended up being terrible, after the fact. I’d think it was a failure too if I believed that this FO and others saw serious, fatal flaws in a top FA and lined up to give him $180m+ with opt outs. I never said you can ignore all of the bad signings. Chatwood was a bad signing. Duensing was a bad signing. There are a lot of factors that go into evaluating a FO’s moves. Saying “wow that sucked and seems obvious now I can’t believe no one on Earth predicted that” or “lolz the Cubs signed him because he hit a big homer against us” is silly.

I agree with all of this. IMB! didn't say that they were dumb, but that they tried to be the smartest guys in the room with the signing, which I fundamentally disagree with. They weren't trying to outsmart anyone; they were trying to sign one of the best and mostly highly coveted FAs of the offseason, who ended up being horrible. The entire point of having a smart front office is to avoid signing highly coveted FAs who turn out to be horrible. Yes, that’s a huge part of it. But the hindsight is 20-20/ends justify the means mentality is a very challenging and misleading standard.

It was actually: "OMG it was so obvious Heyward was going to suck I can't believe that our supposedly smart FO signed him trying to out-smart themselves" "Our FO has made a lot of good moves and also weren't unique in wanting to sign Heyward, who was the most coveted FA of the 2015 offseason" "Signing a guy who ended up being bad is proof that the FO was dumb" Something can be a good idea at the time and not work out. This isn't something that was hotly debated at the time a la Chatwood. Nobody is saying anything is proof that they're dumb or a bad FO. And it looks like it should have been more debated, at least internally by the professionals who ideally know better; again, it wasn't some great secret what kind of health/injury issues he was going to be dealing with, nor that so much of his value was tied up in his defense. They likely thought that they, like a lot of the other teams that wanted him, figured he was still young enough to unlock the flashes of great offense he had shown to that point. It doesn't mean they were dumb; it just means they were willing and able to make the same mistakes as other FO's in that case. In hindsight, I wish they HAD been smarter than everyone else, us included, when it came to Heyward. Instead they weighed the risks and it didn't work out. I agree with all of this. IMB! didn't say that they were dumb, but that they tried to be the smartest guys in the room with the signing, which I fundamentally disagree with. They weren't trying to outsmart anyone; they were trying to sign one of the best and mostly highly coveted FAs of the offseason, who ended up being horrible.

It was actually: "OMG it was so obvious Heyward was going to suck I can't believe that our supposedly smart FO signed him trying to out-smart themselves" "Our FO has made a lot of good moves and also weren't unique in wanting to sign Heyward, who was the most coveted FA of the 2015 offseason" "Signing a guy who ended up being bad is proof that the FO was dumb" Something can be a good idea at the time and not work out. This isn't something that was hotly debated at the time a la Chatwood. It's circular. Our front office is great because they never make bad moves, and they never make bad moves because how bad can it be if a great front office thought it was a good idea? It's not just our FO that thought Heyward was good. Everyone thought he was good. If I thought our FO only made good moves I'd be defending the Chatwood or Duensing signings. It's a different worldview. Because so much is out of the FO's control, evaluating success based on outcomes (a totality of things inside and outside of FO's control) is less precise than evaluating based on things in the FO's control. Someone who the entire world thought was an awesome FA and was fighting amongst themselves to sign falling flat on his face isn't a great example of "damn the FO is so stupid for signing him."

It was actually: "OMG it was so obvious Heyward was going to suck I can't believe that our supposedly smart FO signed him trying to out-smart themselves" "Our FO has made a lot of good moves and also weren't unique in wanting to sign Heyward, who was the most coveted FA of the 2015 offseason" "Signing a guy who ended up being bad is proof that the FO was dumb" Something can be a good idea at the time and not work out. This isn't something that was hotly debated at the time a la Chatwood.

This is the process vs. results debate again. They weren't pulling a "smartest guys in the room" move -- they were aggressively pursuing a good free agent that other front offices (successful ones, by the way) also thought was a good free agent. This wasn't some market inefficiency/spin rate/4D chess thing: it just didn't work out and it sucks. the idea is that the cubs guys we expect to be smarter than people like me who were like hell yeah jason heyward! But they weren't, they were in fact dumber because they were the ones who actually gave money to the guy who can't slug more than 375 without a flukey high average. We have loads of data points that indicate that the Cubs FO is one of the smartest in baseball, yet your argument equates to

Cubs get: a lifetime supply of Siberian ash Siberian wood mill gets: Addison Russell, Tommy La Stella

Again, he had multiple offers and he reportedly had offers higher than what he signed for with the Cubs. This wasn't some random shot in the dark -- several teams were trying to land him and willing to pay a lot of money. yeah dude, we know. the question is how did a smart group of dudes likes theo and his associates fall into the trap of offering $150 million to a broken down wreck. This is the process vs. results debate again. They weren't pulling a "smartest guys in the room" move -- they were aggressively pursuing a good free agent that other front offices (successful ones, by the way) also thought was a good free agent. This wasn't some market inefficiency/spin rate/4D chess thing: it just didn't work out and it sucks.

And, for reference, Osuna’s was 75. Think that was the most egregious because there was video evidence.

Probably hard. But if the wild card game counts (I assume it does) he’s missing 28 games next season, not 40. Would be eligible to come back in the beginning of May.

The whole signing looks worse and worse for the FO as time goes on. Like, it's not like any of this stuff was any kind of secret, yet they seemingly went all in on him more just to spite the Cardinals as opposed to actually signing someone who looked like they were going to be a reliably valuable baseball player. they were just doing the smartest guys in the room stuff again. Heyward was a high floor guy because of the defense and the lack of Ks. his body was borked and he still hit .290 so "hey, if we can get the swing straight he'll be a GG defender who walks doesnt K and hits for power again. the shoulder can't be too bad, he hit .290!" but he just literally can't swing anymore. Again, he had multiple offers and he reportedly had offers higher than what he signed for with the Cubs. This wasn't some random shot in the dark -- several teams were trying to land him and willing to pay a lot of money.