Sammy Sofa

To be fair, Gomes sucks as a baseball player. He owns a career 2.3 WAR. He's had 2 good seasons spread apart by six crappy seasons. He's likely to suck next year. And let's not forget that prior to sucking in 2006, Neifi had a 2.1 WAR in 2005. Prior to sucking in 2013, Gomes had a 1.6 WAR in 2012. :hello: He has good career numbers against LH pitchers, hence the talk of signing him for a platoon.

You know what else was awesome about the A's? Cespedes.

Yeah, I remember reading that posted several times on the board. That's why I was so surprised he ended up on the bench this year.

i couldn't shake this exact thought as i was reading through all of the praise here That, plus the repeated dogging of Soriano. He'd at least praise him from time to time, but seemingly did it begrudgingly and couldn't wait to get back to trashing him. like how he spent such considerable effort praising his improvement in defensive performance, and each time it would sound like his statements were ending with three elipses rather than a period, like he was about to triumph the comic insult dog him. but really, he was just validating his own previous criticisms of Soriano's "effort" Yeah, those compliments couldn't have been more telegraphed and backhanded. Everything was with this "can you believe that this hopeless bum is actually managing to not [expletive] up?"-tone to it.

Theriot was trending in the right direction, but there's not much there to expect anything but a middling placeholder at best? Better than Kozma? Sure, but that's hardly an accomplishment. The point is that teams stumbling on paltry minor leaguers having relatively small sample sizes of amazing play is hardly unique to the Cardinals. I sincerely doubt Kozma will pull it off for a sustained season, and will likely trend into irrelevancy as Theriot did. I honestly think some people do. Or at the very least can't resist tediously trotting out an exceedingly tedious meme at every possible opportunity. But yes, I couldn't agree more with the former part. The Cardinals put themselves in a position to win consistently, even if it is just winning a crappy division. When you do that you get to capitalize on these none-flukey "flukes".

i couldn't shake this exact thought as i was reading through all of the praise here That, plus the repeated dogging of Soriano. He'd at least praise him from time to time, but seemingly did it begrudgingly and couldn't wait to get back to trashing him.

OH, GOD, NO. It'll be fine, unless there's just a horrible mismatch. Some of the time there was another color guy in the booth was downright painful (remember Dave Campbell?). Having to listen to [expletive] like that all year would be well worth griping about. When the team is actually good they go back to dead fat drunk and smarmy douche again and I wouldn't care.

Ryan Theriot, he of the lofty .692 OPS in the minors, put up a .934 OPS for the Cubs in 159 PA in 2006. Kozma has put up a .952 OPS in 82 PA. These things happen often in baseball; it's not really freakish at all. The difference between the two is that one organization can consistently put out a competitive team, even if it is only one that can take advantage of a weak division (much like the team the Cardinals are playing right now, who ended up with 6 more wins above their pythag despite losing their closer and Melky...man, they must be inhumanly lucky!). But yeah, whatever, sorcery, pixie dust, just dumb luck, blah-blah-blah. Put yourself in a position to compete and you put yourself in a position to be able to actually take advantge of having the Ryan Theriots and the Kozmas of the world.

OH, GOD, NO.

The timing is just too perfect for them to not either get someone like Sutcliffe or to usher in the Kerry Wood: latest retired Cubs fixture-era. Terrible team, looks to be another crappy year; why not placate the meatballs a bit with a fan favorite?

So I guess this is the "front office news?" Bummer. If they ever let Len get away I may weep.

I hope he is.

I'll be perfectly happy with actual improvement (not, "we won 8 more games, yay!"). I'm not convinced we'll see much significant along those lines. I hope I'm wrong

Nope, what people are saying is that pre-emptively lowering the prices leads them to believe the front office is shooting to make it 290 in 3 years. Yuuuuuuuuuuup.

That's not true. They've were -5 pythagorean wins, they had 17 wins worth of sub-replacement players, and they have $60-75 million to spend if they want to. They could contend if they felt like it was a priority. But what is there to spend it on? The only way I see them contending in 2013 is if they sign 2 of the better SP on the market, Upton, trade for a 3B (Wright) and sign/trade for another 2-3 relievers. Even then it'd be iffy. Cincy and St. Louis probably aren't going away, and the Brewers probably aren't going to be that bad, either. There would be a chance, but as David put it, it'd be a puncher's chance at best. But the point is that 2013 being approached as a likely lost season shouldn't be surprising, and very modest ticket price drop isn't indicative of anything that wasn't already perfectly clear. Who cares if it's "iffy?" It's not like they were only adding those pieces for next season and couldn't keep building/changing going forward. I prefer "iffy" than "crap hole."

I don't. Ricketts was spouting a meatballier version of the "building the right way" rhetoric before Theo and co. were hired.

Well, now I'm confused. How am I accusing "everyone else" of being "unreasonable" if I changed my mind to agree with them? The first report said he "reaches 88-89," which presumably means he's not working there consistently, and I think that's plenty to write off a 21-year-old as a fringe prospect. Subsequent reports had him throwing a bit harder, and CaliforniaRaisin called them to my attention. I conceded that my original post was wrong and that he and others were right. You asked me if that was sarcasm, and I said it wasn't. After that, I can't figure out if this is one of those times I'm supposed to feel bad for being a contrarian who disagrees with everyone and tries to start trouble by arguing with everyone who disagrees, or if this is one of those times I'm supposed to feel bad for being a flip-flopper who changed his mind after another poster convinced me with their argument. http://shutupsitdown.ytmnd.com/

I think it had to be expected. Why? They don't have a history of lowering prices after a crappy season, Except when they did something similar last offseason? http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2011/10/15/2491812/2012-cubs-ticket-prices-announced No, the Cubs don't have a longstanding history of lowering prices after a bad season. What we have is a short term history of the new-ish owners doing it seemingly in anticipation of a bad season, and now doing it again. Huzzah.

I don't think so. I just think it's hard to justify raising prices for a team that finished with 100 losses. This is a very modest cut and I don't think this will effect Epstein & Co. rebuilding plans at all. It's not like their only options were to raise or lower them; I was expecting/hoping they'd leave them at their current level. I don't really see the "very, very bad sign". We knew they weren't trying to win in 2013. I guess if you thought they'd spend a ton this winter this could change your opinion. But they are selling a bad product and customers aren't as willing to spend to consume it, so they lowered the price incrementally. It's probably nothing more than a PR move, so they can't get criticized for raising prices and not trying. I wasn't expecting a spending spree; my point is basically your final sentence. They're not even going to try.

I don't think so. I just think it's hard to justify raising prices for a team that finished with 100 losses. This is a very modest cut and I don't think this will effect Epstein & Co. rebuilding plans at all. It's not like their only options were to raise or lower them; I was expecting/hoping they'd leave them at their current level.

I think it had to be expected. Why? They don't have a history of lowering prices after a crappy season, and if their intention is to actually try and field a team that has a shot of not being terrible you'd think they wouldn't have to worry about luring in people. This smacks of expectations that they're going to suck again.

This is potentially a very, very bad sign.

Cardinals were 20th in defensive efficiency and 19th in bullpen K% this year. Yep. They also brought up Trevor Rosenthal, Shelby Miller, Traded for Mujica and moved Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn to the bullpen. They've committed 2 errors in these playoffs. They have the best obp in the playoffs. 1 of those things (the most important) is reflective of the season, 1 of them is a not unexpected outcome due to roster moves and one you can call a fluke but it's not exactly breaking new baseball ground to have a team have lucky timing with their defensive competency. Never mind, Kyle. You're right. It keeps happening because it's all luck. 9 playoff berths in 13 seasons is just sheer luck. That's sound. 1) Errors for measuring defense. 2) Citing postseason results to prove that postseason results are not a SSS fluke 3) Moving the goalposts between regular-season performance and playoff performance. Nope. You maybe wanted to read somewhere in my post that I claimed all of the Cardinals regular season performances were definitely predictive of their postseason success. But I didn't. In fact I qualified it pretty clearly with the sentence, "Get in, and have those three things happen." I understand though, you want to find an argument where there is none, or as you put it, "move the goal posts." Maybe you're bored, maybe you think your favorite team's lack of success compared to another person's favorite team's success somehow reflects on you so you have to devalue it somehow? Most likely you are that particularly common brand of internet personality that reads an angle into every interaction you have that can allow you to intellectually jerk yourself off to prove your own intelligence to yourself. My point is that every successful MLB team has things go right for them in the postseason and the fallacy that it ONLY happens to the Cardinals is annoying, pathetic and pointless. You shouldn't get so worked up about it. They aren't doing this to piss you off, you know and when you scream "PIXIE DUST" at the top of your lungs to anyone who listen, you only empower the dumb on my side of the fence to laugh and say, "NUH-UH DUMMY, IT'S OUR SUPERIOR CULTURE, NOT LUCK! WE DO IT RIGHT SO GOOD THINGS HAPPEN." which is, of course, equally stupid. I love you, wolfy.

Christ, I can't believe he's been there since 2008. I completely forgot it had been that long.

Apparently tearing down people you know is OK.