Sammy Sofa

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6ifkomwmt1qzno5fo1_500.gif Excellent.

Some people were. Plenty weren't. I think even the biggest supporters of building "the right way" were pretty iffy on being a bad team in 2014. Right; even most of the people accepting that 2012 "had" to be terrible seemed to be talking like there would be clear improvement in 2013 on the path to them actually being competitive in 2014. Anyone saying they were expecting/fine with/welcoming 2-3 years of terrible baseball are either lying or masochists.

Some people were. Plenty weren't.

Come on. Hey, I just really, really hate that show.

Yeah, but: "by cracky."

I'm torn; who am I supposed to root for in this clash of the shitty titans?

The only weapon he had was money. Yeah, man, "only" money. And ditto what Jersey said to the rest of the nonsense.

The COMING season. The front page is smart enough to pretend like this monstrosity of a team ever got off the ground.

Depends if Ricketts continues to do a Frank McCourt impersonation Eh, we have 30 million in pending free agents who either haven't played an inning this year(Baker, Garza) or have not exactly provided difficult to replace production(Feldman, Marmol). They can likely add two 8 figure salaries, extend one of Rizzo or Samardzija, and take care of any other increases(the largest non-arbitration increase is 1 million, to Soler) without moving the total payroll at all. I'm worried he's going to drop it further. Me too. Honestly, my concern is more with the Ricketts than the FO in thinking that the former is in more over their heads than they were anticipating.

Daryle Ward will always be cool for that home run in Pittsburgh. Anyone that disagrees can go belly flop on a landmine.

Well, firing or retaining Sveum really won't make a difference in that regard.

Law didn't say what you said.

Yeah, as emphatic as that "nope" was it really doesn't stack up.

Well, yeah, they have to because they've basically created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right, a lot of the excitement stemmed from the idea that Theo was going to have all of the weapons of a big market team at his disposal. Some of what got in the way was just shitty "luck"/timing, like the new CBA. Pretty much everyone should have understood that what he took over in Boston and what he was getting in Chicago were very different situations, but the hope/expectation was that they wouldn't go careening face-first into the bottom while trying to right the ship, and that the Cubs as a whole are seemingly stuck in neutral outside of the draft and (hopefully) IFA for a variety of reasons is really, really frustrating and disappointing.

Sounds more like joyful acceptance at how badly it has been constructed, but denial of how ridiculous that stance is. Pretty much.

You don't think someone flat-out saying "hey, just ignore the team for couple more years and it'll be OK" isn't some kind of denial as to just how badly the ML team has been constructed and how that should be unacceptable?

Yep, this is my 2nd least favorite device of the fans of the process. "You'll feel sorry about this when we win the division in 2017!!!" Oh really, because I'm feeling pretty [expletive] about 2013 now. Because the Cubs will certainly win the division in 2017. And certainly the only path to winning the division in 2017 was tanking multiple seasons. And the current front office is certainly the only front office that could muster such a feat. It's just the denial process; you've got people convincing themselves this had to happen, you've got Backtobanks over there convinced that everything must have been planned ahead of time so that of course what's going on now is some kind of nefarious plan to...do something, I guess. The owners have made mistakes. The FO has made mistakes. The team is shittier because of it.

Effectively trashing the ML team (and that you'd willfully suggest that people should just shrug it off and ignore it for YEARS) isn't acceptable.

What "pass?" What changed is their effort to try and get city/state funding for the renovations. What, they weren't supposed to even try? I'm sure they were hoping they'd be able to work something out and their rhetoric reflected as such. Why are you so pissed at them saying they wanted to try and get outside funding? My "pass" is using some common sense and not sulking like a petulant child just because they gave trying to get public funding a shot and it didn't work out. And quit talking like you (or any of us) have any clue as to the detail of the Ricketts' money and what's tied up where and what's changed along the way. I'm annoyed with how things are going, so quit it with your tiresome board cop bull [expletive] where you think everyone is just slobbering all over the Ricketts and Theo and never thinking they do anything wrong. I'm not "pissed" about trying to get outside funding. My point is that Ricketts knew the state of the economy when he bought the team. He spent the money on the purchase, has invested tons more on real estate investments, has made a lot of profit in the last year, and the product on the field sucks. So your desire is...what? That they just come out and say "we don't have the money to spend big on the team?" That they bowed out of trying to buy the team in the first place? Costs for players fluctuate, costs for owning the team fluctuate, the money they have available fluctuates...that's what I'm talking about when I say things change. You keep talking about this like they're supposed to be able to map out all of their spending in perpetuity exactly.

You're so much more to us. And in our hearts.

Why didn't you bother to read the article?

Really siding with some winners here, gooney. NOT LIKE THE RICKETTS, AMIRITE??????

Because the Cubs have a very bad record in the 3+ years they've owned the team. Oh, good, as long as there was some thought put into it.

Why is this dumb thread even a thing?