davell

I think that's really low for Javy. I mean if he put up a .200/.250/.500 line, that's an acceptable starter.....

of course i'm in full bitter angry cubs fan mode like everyone else, but color me extremely skeptical that this mega fox tv deal is going to go down like it's been rumored. Yea I'm sadly gonna have to put myself in the extremely skeptical camp as well. Just doesn't make much sense. I'm still hopeful, as Theo acts fairly confident it's on the way. But it may very well just be him convincing himself something has to go right at some point.

I fear MWV is right, and the 100 Million payroll was there for Tanaka(defrayed by marketing or some such nonsense?) and only Tanaka. If we get [expletive] on this TV deal, or we wind up applying it all to renovations, we're going to be bad for a very long time. Oh sweet Moses, I hope that's not true. Thats too bad to even laugh at. If we legitimately are stuck with an 80 mill payroll, its worse than I even thought. I'm going to keep convincing myself we decided to wait it out on Tanaka and missed the offseason solely because of it.

I wonder how much less the Cubs sold for, because of the type deal Zell required? Ricketts bought it as the only one willing to do it under those conditions. I guess the tax implications are making Zell more money on the back end than he did up front and Joe just looked at it as a low buy and didn't care about what ramifications it put on the team in the near term. Not that it would happen, but if you look at franchise values(understand it's not 100% accurate and in the end, a product is worth whatever someone's willing to pay) now versus what Ricketts paid for the Cubs back less than 5 years ago, it's conceivable he could sell and make a 40-50% profit, for literally doing nothing. The McCourt approach, if you will, just not as effective as Frank was at it. But the TV deal is on the horizon, the payroll is extremely low, the team is possibly the most profitable team in MLB, and the debt structure crap is halfway thru being dealt with. A new face could intervene and settle the rooftop [expletive], and the renovation plans are already approved. Just sell the [expletive] team. Please, take your money and run.

The Rangers had new ownership and they realized the easiest way to make money is to spend money on your product.

God, I keep forgetting how badly the Braves are screwed. 20-30 mill thru 2031.

I think they truly meant to tank year one. They had an older roster, a couple of bloated contracts, with not a lot of flexibility, and not a bunch to look forward to in the pipeline.(likely with a mandate to drop payroll a bit as it went down 25 mill) They also likely wanted an impact player in the draft and with the new CBA, saw it as a way to enhance that possibility. With the expected ability to start spending soon, I think it was looked at as logical, plus they had to put a bit of money into the Dominican complex, their computer system, a much larger FO, and maybe something else?(can't remember) But the drop of payroll in year 1 definitely had a bit to do with housekeeping things they felt they needed to upgrade. However, things turned south the following year, for whatever reason. Attendance dropped some, but payroll stayed around the same as the previous season. We had a relatively active offseason actually, one that made sense after the year one tank, in my mind. But, I would have thought there to be more money available than what there was, as Theo mentioned they spent every bit. After another shitty season though, where attendance dropped again, the new TV money infusion should have canceled it out. I really think there would have been more activity, if we had lost out on Tanaka earlier in the offseason. As it was, we hinged everything on going after him. Was that smart? In my opinion, no. If we knew we'd be capped at a certain number or if we knew we weren't his top rumored choice, I see no reason to wait around for the guy, even if he WAS the best fit longterm. That said, with payroll being capped at 100 mill or so, it doesn't exactly leave the FO with much room to make mistakes. Gun shy? Yeah, at least somewhat. Not to mention, it's not easy convincing bigtime guys to come into a losing situation. Like I said elsewhere, I think we'd have a better shot at getting TWO, than getting ONE bigtime guy. Hopefully we've seen enough progress that next year is when we make those moves. The payroll will be there anyway. So, to me, the FO gets some blame(not much) for missing out on guys they should have gotten. Ryu, Puig, and Cespedes(less important), not so much on Darvish and Tanaka, as I doubt they were equipped financially to get them. Darvish especially, considering the 50 mill upfront, that I doubt we had. But, they get plenty of leash here, because they're operating on a playing field thats different than they thought they would be operating on, at this time. It sucks, but there isn't the ability to make multiple big moves right now, which isn't their fault. Given the financial restraints, I think the FO has done well in giving us hope and they would have done more, if they had the money to do it. Which falls on the Ricketts and the business side of things much more than on themselves.

By the way, to clarify my thinking: With as many elite prospects as we have, I definitely expect 2 All Star types to emerge from within the group of 7 top 100 guys we have. Not necessarily between Javy, KB, and Almora alone. Going further, out of the 7, my guess is we wind up with 2 All Stars, 2 regulars, another guy that sticks on the roster, with 2 complete busts. In 4 years, I'll check back on this and brag or call myself a dumbass.

http://www.royalsreview.com/2011/2/14/1992424/success-and-failure-rates-of-top-mlb-prospects This is what I go back to and why with where our guys are ranked, we should wind up with damn good results.

I can't blame Zell, Ricketts signed the docs knowingly.

Go ahead and vote again, I changed it up, to include a few new options. It erased the votes.

I like that the top 3, even the low end "realistic projection" is Baez, First division all-star. Bryant first-division player, Almora above average player. And the potential grade is Perennial all-star for Baez, all-star for Bryant, and first-division/all-star for Almora. And people worry about bust rates. I think "bust" for one of these guys is, maybe one just ends up being an average ball-player. Think we have at-least 2 multi year all-stars on our hands here. that is not how prospects work Do you disagree? It IS how things work when you have a great player development program. Which we've finally got. At least if they carry over what they did for Boston.

#5 in revenue and #1 in profit Where is this information coming from? From Crane Kenney.

BUT THERE ARE EXPENSES TO RUN A BALLCLUB THAT COST MONEY

I voted 90/10 by the way. Given what I think are extreme financial limitations, I do still fault the FO for not at least getting one of Puig, Ryu, or Cespedes. I doubt we truly had the ability to get Darvish or Tanaka. My other fault of the FO is if you're taking the max penalty on the IFA class from this past year, go further than you did. Should have spent on another 3-4 high profile guys as well. My issues with the Ricketts are well documented.

If you're laying blame, who does it fall on?

I put that in the renovation thread too. It kind of encompasses everything.

I swear Tom's pitch to Papa was "It doesn't matter how bad we suck, the people always show up! Even I can't [expletive] that up."

“Any of the stories you hear about the financial side, we understand that cold,” Ricketts said. “We know where we are and we know it’s not limiting the team. And we know over time it’s going to get stronger. I think one of the things we also have to deal with is we have a lot of kind of extraordinary expenses other teams don’t have. “We’re the highest-taxed team in baseball. We have to deal with the fact that we have people across the street that sell our product and fight against us for ticket sales. We also have fairly old television contracts. “Anyone that follows the business of the game knows that the teams that are spending the most are all the teams that have just gotten brand-new TV contracts. So we still have a very, very strong baseball budget. It’s not limiting us.” http://www.csnchicago.com/cubs/tanaka-fallout-cubs-facing-long-term-questions-about-future

No one here thinks Lake doesn't have the ability to put up a solid season in the majors. He does, hell, he's kind of done it already. Where people see value in North's posts, are that he got lucky in doing it, without much hope of turning that luck into actual skill. I think he's got a relatively decent shot at putting up a 2 WAR season in 2014. But if he does, I want to see him dealt, because the odds show he's not likely to do it often.

Well, it was more like "2/3 starter", which for Parks means anywhere between Matt Cain and Chris Rusin. Huh? Parks is not easy to get "3" out of, it's a legit complement, coming from him. A guy like Rusin would get, at best, a "fringe 5" or something of that sort. He's got both PJ and CJ in his overall top 100, it just shows the actual scarcity of finding TOR SP. Parks isn't the only one who does it, but the way he and other prospecting folk distort subjective comparisons like #x starter lead to people getting the wrong impression. Because they're willing to give #1 starter distinction to about 5-10 players in baseball, it leads to very different perception from what most people think when he says 3 starter. Rusin was an exaggeration to prove the point that the way they use those labels is so arbitrary that it's become nearly useless. Unless Parks changed it to accomodate Bradley, I thought Parks was of the mindset that he won't put a "1" label on anyone. That it's earned after reaching the majors. [expletive], disregard that. I see you were talking about the majors, with the 5-10 figure.

Check the Rizzo thread, David posted his thoughts on him somewhere in it. Maybe even re-posted it recently, if I remember correctly.

The excellent poster at PSD, that comes here on occasion. He's the guy that proved Junior Lake sucks. He also didn't prove Jnior Lake sucks. Correct. He proved Junior Lake does.

The excellent poster at PSD, that comes here on occasion. He's the guy that proved Junior Lake sucks.

Pardon my ignorance, but I'm unfamiliar with what North said of Olt. And I'm a big fan of legit hope. Here's the entirety of what North mentioned on PSD. I've been more optimistic about Olt, a cautious optimism, that he can be an average player. He struggled a lot in AAA with Texas, but he didn't struggle as much in Iowa. In Round Rock, his contact % was 61.8% (yikes). In Iowa, it was a much better 73%. I'll take a 73% contact with above average power. In that sample size, although small, it was .3% less than what it has in AA when he had his success. Olt also struck out swinging 25% of the time in RR; he struck out 15.8% of the time in Iowa swinging. Again, this is similar to his success prior to a known eye condition. He made more contact, he struck out less swinging, and these were all significant differences, not subtle ones. As far as the power goes, he basically hit the same amount of outfield fly balls as he did in RR (where he had moderate power even with the eye problems). There's hesitancy in this recorded data (a lot of hesitancy), remember, but the amount of balls hit in the air in total are similar (LD+FB). The HR/FB%, if I had to guess, would've eventually normalized in Iowa. So, as far as Olt's projection, I'm not convinced he sucks yet. I love his glove; I always have. And, if anything, I think something like this could be feasible: .220 BA, 22 HRs, 29 2Bs, 1 3B, 61 BB (11% BB), 5 ROE, 4 HBP in 550 PAs. This qualifies for a .324 wOBA with a 107 wRC+. I used a desired league wOBA of .315. You can use whatever fielding scoring system you want, but I'm confident he'll save runs at 3rd base. That's going to make him a really valuable player if he can hit .220.