Sammy Sofa

Still wouldn't make you happy if we missed out one one single guy Whoa, hey, put away the big guns, man. That's really hurtful.

800 kajillion dollars.

Me either. I think stafford is going to have a great day. Bears are 9-1 in their last 10 games against the Lions, and 7-1 with Stafford as the starting QB. Should have lost one of those on one play Peanut wasn't on Calvin. And that was with a pass rush. And no Reggie Bush. The Bears are going to leave messy farts all over the Lions. 41-13.

neely, do you ever get the feeling that you're too smart for this place? If so, run with that.

The FO ought to always listen to offers on anyone. If someone is going to overpay in a big way, trade him. Yeah, but that's not very likely right now. Trading guys like him or Rizzo is especially foolish given they had down years and they're so young, so it's not like another bad season has them teetering precariously close to the post-30 time of death.

Someone, please, take the [expletive] shot.

Post-'94, is this the longest stretch where the game hasn't had any labor issues in, like, a really, really long time?

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrizzo with the RBI single off of Liriano...me like.

Well, but that speaks to the larger issue of how things are really working against them in terms of timing; yeah, they have money to spend, but it's on a really shitty FA class. I'm excited about the other stuff, but I have a feeling the spending is going to be pretty anti-climactic largely out of necessity (mainly a repeat of the kind of spending they did going in to 2013). Definitely can be useful, but this is really coming down to Castro and Rizzo bouncing back and the farm starting to pay off.

Somewhere Ryan Theriot starts to stir...

They definitely "tried" this year. Were they putting out a team likely to win the division and kick a ton of ass? Of course not, but given what they had to work with I think they did a good job of putting together a team that on paper should have been hovering around .500 for a good chunk of the season. Obviously it didn't work out that way due to some key players really underperforming, but to talk about this season like they set out there shooting for another disastrous run is pretty disingenuous.

But they didn't, so it's impressive under these conditions. Being able to focus on the farm system isn't a guarantee that the people in charge can actually succeed at making a good farm system. Like I said, there's still a lot to prove, but within the context of what's been done so far I find it relatively impressive.

http://i.qkme.me/3qqihm.jpg

Given the lack of an actual dual mandate, and the fact that most other teams actually try to be good at the major league level, I really don't think it is that impressive. A fair amount of the big names were already here, most notably Vogelbach and Baez. The most refined blue chipper they have is only here because they were allowed to take a dive in 2012. They have thrown much more money at the farm than other teams in recent years and have been the most active in terms of trading veterans for prospects. I really don't think that making a farm system climb the rankings while focusing exclusively on the farm and abandoning the major league team is all that difficult. We just disagree on this; I don't see it as nothing. It's not nothing, but it's like focusing on only half of your job. Of course you would do better at it. It's becoming more and more clear that it's largely been a matter of necessity given the Ricketts' financial liabilities.

Given the lack of an actual dual mandate, and the fact that most other teams actually try to be good at the major league level, I really don't think it is that impressive. A fair amount of the big names were already here, most notably Vogelbach and Baez. The most refined blue chipper they have is only here because they were allowed to take a dive in 2012. They have thrown much more money at the farm than other teams in recent years and have been the most active in terms of trading veterans for prospects. I really don't think that making a farm system climb the rankings while focusing exclusively on the farm and abandoning the major league team is all that difficult. We just disagree on this; I don't see it as nothing.

When they actually make it work, they'll get some credit. But they haven't yet, so they get exactly the same amount of credit as Da Bum. Look, I'm as negative as you can get about this, but turning the farm system around like they have is hardly nothing. I've been very clear that until it actually starts paying off via big trades or players breaking out there's still a lot to prove, but it's not like they've just been throwing darts at lists of players and just accumulating bodies. The system is being ranked and looked at as it is now because of the really good job they've done so far, and that's not easy.

Well re-signing Aramis and signing Wilson wasn't even possible under Ricketts's payroll. Right. So what was the point of "sign Aramis and CJ Wilson and animal Sanchez might have come here" that you posted like 7 minutes ago? That the reason the team needed to be torn down had nothing to do with the way to rebuild a team and everything to do with Tom Ricketts being the 28th-29th best owner in baseball? Man, I don't even know how we got on the "should they have competed in 2012 or not" nonsense, but this at least touches on the main thing I've been trying to say since this mess started; the idea that they "needed" to trade the old team before moving forward is just a strawman of an idea. Most of those guys were either trending horribly in the wrong direction or were at the end of their deals; they likely would be gone in some fashion within a similar timeframe regardless of who was in charge and you weren't going to save much money in doing so. Marshall's trade sticks out from that (the Cashner move is a whole other thing), and maybe Garza's, but even there you're talking about a player that the FO had actually tried to extend prior to actually trading him. The rest were just old or fizzling out players that weren't preventing them from doing the key things they need to do; draft and draft well. The teams have just stunk just because players didn't play well and they didn't have a lot of money available to them, not because they were trying to burn off Hendry's stank.

It'd have been hard. I wish we had a front office willing to try hard things. Come on; trying to rebuild largely via drafting and international FA signings and mostly [expletive] trades is hardly "easy." You're talking about like it's some kind of safe path to building a better team. It's the easiest thing in the world to try to do it that way. Put Da Bum in the GM's chair, tell him to try to lose as many games as possible and give an inordinately large percentage of the budget to amateur acquisitions, and he'll give you a top-5 farm system within a few years. It's hard to actually convert that into a good team, but since they haven't actually done that yet, they don't get credit for it yet. We'll see. By those standards giving da Bum $150 million and telling him to put together a baseball team is easy. But, hey, look at that; whether or not you can actually make it work is the hard part.

Nope. Domino's carryout special.

It'd have been hard. I wish we had a front office willing to try hard things. Come on; trying to rebuild largely via drafting and international FA signings and mostly shitty trades is hardly "easy." You're talking about like it's some kind of safe path to building a better team.

That is such a terrible opinion. Not really; he's glossing over a lot of the details, but it's looking more and more like the Cubs didn't have a ton of options given the Ricketts'..."interesting" juggling of the money.

Ricketts already trapped Theo and co. with his web of lies; I don't know if he'd be able to do it again.

uhh, no one? When has anyone even debated that You just said: ...seemingly as if some people had been advocating the former. I guess I just took it the wrong way. Im saying that was the two options the front office faced. You can suck with your old, expensive, bad roster and lose 100 games and get nowhere or you can suck with a bunch of fill ins, trade the old guys for whatever you can get, lose 100 games but be making incremental progress. I don't think it was even an option; they had financial restraints and nobody in their right mind would want the former.

uhh, no one? When has anyone even debated that You just said: ...seemingly as if some people had been advocating the former. I guess I just took it the wrong way.