Sammy Sofa

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.

Who was arguing for the team to just hold on to all of the older players and not trade any of them?

I agree with pretty much all of that; I was never arguing for keeping the vets like it was some kind of salvation from sucking. And yeah, I don't think they went into 2012 thinking they were going to compete, but I don't think they were expecting/shooting for losing 100+ games.

It's like now that he actually has (at least for the time being) that mythical "leadoff hitter" he's always wanted it broke his brain.

I don't know if any of that is directed at my points, but I was never arguing for the idea that they should cling to older players from the previous FO just for the desperate long shot of trying to compete. As soon as Hendry was out I was expecting most of the players on the major league team from his time would be gone, either via trade or simply not held on to. I just don't agree with the idea that they HAD to be terrible because they were dismantling the older team as if it were were blocking or hindering them from starting to rebuild, or as if taking the steps to rebuild were hinged on trading those players; the Cubs simply did not have enough valuable assets for that to be the case (plus I don't think the FO went out there both years with the intention of being this bad). Someone saying that they expected the Cubs to be bad for 2-3 years because they had to get rid of the old team is seemingly saying that they were bad in 2012 in large part because they got rid of Dempster and Marshall and Byrd and Soto, when that simply isn't the case. Yeah, Marshall would have certainly helped, but that bullpen was catastrophically bad and he couldn't have somehow carried it himself. Byrd and Soto had horrendous years, and Dempster was fantastic and the team still stunk. Same thing this year: the team was bad with or without Garza, Marmol and Soriano. Too many key players simply underperformed in both seasons; (I don't think) it wasn't some kind of intentional tank job or something that was the result of shedding older players. Just expecting that the Cubs were going to get rid of a ton of players from Hendry's time vs. expecting that the Cubs "needed" to be terrible for years because they were getting rid of those players; there seems like a clear difference in those opinions to me.

No, I said I'm REALLY mad.

Hey, it's very cool and awesome when imb gets all flustered and sputtery and starts insulting people over a baseball discussion, but not anyone else.

You want some of this, too? I'm way mad and emotional right now.

REALLY mad. Scary mad. I'm warning you just the once.

Yeah, I'm super pissed right now. SO mad. You better not mess with me, bro.

I'm using the term "fire sale" because when I asked Beer Kase to clarify what he meant by "unwinding the old team" he described what I consider to be a fire sale by listing a bunch of players who were traded. He didn't go on about players who had been released or not re-signed; he listed a bunch of trades. That's what I was responding to. Then you stumbled in like a jackass and decided you were going to be this week's jerkoff who can't stand to hear people bemoaning the woes of the Cubs despite the fact nobody was actually doing that and now you can't figure out a way to pull out that foot that's jammed so far inside of that [expletive] you call a mouth because you decided to randomly defend the dumbest post of the week like you actually give a [expletive].

To me a fire sale is trading off what valuable assets you have in a short timeframe, typically to avoid budget issues. The Cubs clearly have budget issues, but they didn't engage in a fire sale. What the Marlins have done is what I think a fire sale is. The Cubs didn't do that, and didn't have to do that on that scale to engage in their main avenues of rebuilding. Just dumping useless players for nothing or next to nothing isn't a fire sale to me; a fire sale is done with the idea of trading a bunch of guys quickly to help turn the team around because they'll bring a good return. I don't consider players being released or not signed as part of a fire sale; even if the FO had bizarrely inherited a good team you still would have seen a bunch of players released or not signed. That you hink I don't know players are released is asinine. Dumping Bobby Scales isn't the same as burning off your valuable assets via trade ASAP.

undoubtedly Hey, so be it. Moving 7 players over 2.5 seasons just doesn't strike me as a fire sale, especially when the return on 4 of them was practically nothing. And the whole "they had to get rid of the old guys before they could rebuild for some reason or other" is just ridiculous. NOTE: this isn't me saying they should have held on to anyone or that this is why they've sucked or God knows what else. Having Carlos Marmol on the team until he was traded wasn't preventing the FO from rebuilding.

Hey, I guess my concept of a fire sale or whatever the [expletive] an unwinding of the old team is has been completely wrong.

Of the top 15 pitchers in the system, more than half have come through trades. .... I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make here. Well, I think I was originally pointing out that you didn't know what your were talking about. Then, I was pointing out that you weren't acknowledging that you completely missed the point. I know they've gotten a bunch of their pitching prospects via trades. I also know it's been repeatedly stated here by multiple posters that until pretty recently the Cubs' pitching prospect selection was horrendous. And again, I never was arguing against trading older players; my point is that the Cubs didn't acquire those traded-for prospects via a fire sale of the "old team." Trading Dempster in 2012 and Garza in 2013 when they are at the end of their contracts isn't a fire sale. Isn't that obvious?

72 percent of 2012's cubs roster is no longer on the 40-man. if that doesn't count as a purge to you, well, i dont know what to say. This whole thing started because a guy said that he expected the team to be bad for years because they had to "unwind the old team" ie-they had to divest themselves of the major league players inherited by the current FO to move forward. The 2012 team was constructed by the current FO; claiming that moves made after 2012 are part of the "unwinding" of the previous regime's team makes about as much sense as when Beer Kase included players like DeJesus and Maholm as part of the "unwinding" despite having been signed by the current FO. Again, I'm not saying the Cubs shouldn't have moved on from older players, or saying that's the reason why they've been bad. Moving players or moving from them when the time is right is what we all want them to do; my issue is with the idea that the Cubs had to effectively burn things to the ground to move forward when that simply didn't happen. Trading those 7 (forgot that Marshall was traded by the current FO; definitely a good big move a la Dempster and Garza)players didn't free up anyone who was blocked, and only two of the trades really brought back anyone of real note. The main thrust of their rebuild has been through the draft and international FA signings and rearranging those 7trades over the last two years really wouldn't have had a ton of impact on that path. They simply didn't have a fire sale of valuable players from the previous regime because ultimately they really didn't have many.