Sammy Sofa

Delicious.

Passed ball, DeJesus on 3B.

Excellente.

Yeah, because they play in a dump that's a local landmark. To sit back and think they get "fleeced" because of $5 million dollars given the crappiness of the timing and the situation is beyond naive. Nobody should be congratulation the Ricketts on doing a good job, but it's hardly the calamity you so desperately want to portray it as.

So much terrible beer.

It's not an either/or option. It's mostly bad timing (much like the TV situation); the city and the state have no money. They were never going to get anything. Right, but governmental insolvency was an issue prior to him purchasing the team. So what? Nobody "took anybody to the cleaners;" you either have to fix your shithole stadium or let it fall down. It's not like they were "talked down" into doing something they don't want to do. If your issue is with them asking in the first place, fine. I agree, it was always a waste of time.

It's not an either/or option. It's mostly bad timing (much like the TV situation); the city and the state have no money. They were never going to get anything.

I cut off the majority of your post, but I think you equate payroll too much with success. As someone who has followed the Cubs, you should know that the previous regime's strategy of allocating most of the dollars to expensive major league talent while spending little on the farm system is not really a recipe for success. But that has been argued ad nauseum on this board, and probably isn't worth rehashing. This doesn't make any sense; just because some people don't know how to spend a big payroll doesn't mean having a big payroll is automatically a bad thing.

Ugh, Yahoo comment sections...able to make everything and anything into something horribly racist.

THERE'S A WHITE MAN TALKING, DAMMIT.

Everyone knows the hallmark of a legit poisoning is five people delivering a pizza.

No way, a bunch of guys totally poisoned the most popular athlete on the planet. Makes perfect sense.

Bummer. Surely the Cubs have a raincheck system? It's more that I don't know if I have free whatever date they settle on as a replacement.

You and your Weather Dominator win this round. Now pay for these tickets I couldn't use.

It's not binary. They aren't just either "taking a hit" or "not taking a hit." Part of their job is to try to spin the public relations of it all to try to minimize the damage to their revenue streams and standing with the fan base. Trying to tie the recent drop in payroll to the Wrigley expansion is part of that effort of spin control. I don't think that's their plan. I don't think there's been one single "plan" that unifies everything that's happened since Ricketts took over. The exact situation that we've arrived at is due to some combination of Ricketts' actions, Epstein's actions and circumstances beyond either's control, and while we can speculate on how much of the blame/credit goes into each of those three categories, we don't have enough information to say definitively and everyone's going to have their interpretation. My best guess? (long) Is my interpretation the only one? Of course not. None of us has followed Ricketts around with cameras and a microphone 24/7/365 for the last four years. But I read every quote, I follow every move, and I think this fits in with what we know and what he's said. I actually agree with a lot of this, but I disagree with your continued attempts to portray the Ricketts and Theo as automatically being on the same page money-wise. Sure, they're obviously not at the point that they're sniping at each other and they're going to support each other in the press, but as I've said before I could easily see Theo and co. jumping ship when their contracts are up if the bigger money picture doesn't improve. As much as you've joked/complained about Theo and Hoyer wanting to just play with prospects, I seriously doubt they came here with the idea that they wouldn't have big market money behind them. I have little doubt that the proposal that supposedly "blew Theo away" likely hinged on the talks of the renovations and city money new ad revenue streams and the eventual new TV deals and such. That's where I think any talk of "spin" can be valid, that they're trying to dress up how things haven't gone as they've hoped, but not along the lines of them trying to really hide anything. I mean, how can they? All of the hold ups are as public as can be. They're just trying to spin things as positively/optimistically as they can as opposed to trying to hide something.

Seriously. Though isn't he up for arbitration after next season? Too bad. Year after, that's why we endured the end of the LaHair era as long as we did. Rizzo's under team control through 2018. Alright, then I'm back in on the trade Rizzo idea.

The significant payroll drop came between 2011 and 2012, which means it predates the Cubs giving up on a public subsidy. The timeline doesn't add up at all for that explanation. It's just the Cubs' latest attempt to spin and deflect. Spin and deflect from what? It's not like they're tricking people into selling out the park or going nuts over these terrible teams. It's obvious they're already taking a hit and that'll just continue to get worse. What exactly are you accusing them of hiding? If their plan is to simply try and make as much money as possible while spending minimally then they're doing a piss poor job and seemingly are even more stupid than you seem to be implying.

Yes, this x100 Same here. Not even close.

Seriously. Though isn't he up for arbitration after next season? Too bad.

Give 'em Rizzo.

He certainly can be.

I didn't bring this up. But why the heck wouldn't you want to talk about it? Either way, it's probably the most important story in Cubs baseball of the decade. I'm happy to talk about it when it's actually news. Wailing and gnashing teeth about on a regular basis when there aren't any changes or news doesn't seem terribly meaningful.

Either one is a problem. Of course; I'm not happy about how shitty the team is. I'm just tired of this constant rehashing of...all of this, like there's some kind of big, nefarious conspiracy to hide the truth from Kyle. They either don't have the money or they don't want to spend it. Either scenario sucks, but that's what it is.

Because they either didn't want to spend that much or couldn't. See how easy this is?