Sammy Sofa

Dammit, I had no idea Kemp was injured AGAIN.

Again, the new rules probably change this line of thinking to a significant degree. Not really. The spending constraints hinder pretty much all of the top spots, and the difference between them isn't very significant.

That first trip to the NBA Finals sure put the 1991 Bulls, 1994 Rockets, 1999 Spurs, 2004 Pistons, 2006 Heat (first Finals for Wade) and 2008 Celtics at a disadvantage. Didn't magically give the Celtics an advantage when they went back in 2010. That's some WSR-level isht right there, Soul.

Still a step up from crediting @TheKapman.

Okay, give me a few minutes to check with them. *a few minutes pass* They say they'll go to 46. Can you beat that? if I tell you I'll do 48, but it requires you to sign right now, will you? *breaks character* And there you have it. You have to draw a line at what you think the player is worth. You can't just say "We'll go over whatever anyone else bids." It doesn't work as a matter of practice. I really don't care what the Cubs spend. If the Ricketts OK it, that's fine by me.

Sure.

Who is "blind to the FO" here and how? What did you expect them to do this year? For example: I think they "failed" in that they tried to sign Cespedes and Darvish and didn't. That said, having either or both guys this season wouldn't really make a big difference to this point. What do YOU think they failed at?

The one out of breath dude wants Vitters up here now. It's pretty hilarious.

Colvin's basically Soriano in how drastically streaky he is, and how those hot streaks just inflate his overall numbers.

Over the last 4 weeks going in to today's game; I always just call 4 weeks "a month." http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=colvity01&year=2012&t=b#total

A TERRIBLE MISTAKE WAS MADE TRADING THE 0.0 WAR PLAYER FOR THE -0.1 ONE!!!!!

FYI, "lately" = 3 games and 11 PA. The last 2 weeks: .188 .188 .563 .750 The last month: .229 .245 .458 .703

I still have issues with the idea that the only two options were: awful now and great later or mediocre now and mediocre later I'm not convinced we couldn't have built a better product today by adding assets that would help us be better in the short term without hurting us long term (Cespedes, keep Z, put together a better than awful bench, etc). I have full confidence the Theo regime will make this organization and team great in time, but I think it's misleading to assume the previously mentioned were the only two options we had. I totally agree. It gets back to the idea that whatever Theo does has to be the right way. NO IT DOESN'T. This is seriously the stupidest tangent you've ever gone on, and that's impressive. You've for some reason built up this inane idea that people don't given Hendry enough credit, so that's mutated into how everyone blindly loves the new FO. What is even your point in all of this? You don't want Theo can co. running the Cubs?

Amen! Signs you done fucked up.

I still think it's a good idea to try guys like that since some will work out. However, this season shows that you shouldn't try to build a full team of buy low guys. Yeah, buy low guys are typically going to be complimentary/surprise/happy accident pieces at best.

The thing is, I'd have to assume that other teams in on him have this same thought, Yankees and Dodgers have both been known to throw money around. Oh man, the Braves are so sneaky even you forgot to mention them.

$40 million seems like too much unless we have an incredible scouting read on him that says he's getting close to MLB ready. You are really cutting away at the risk:reward ratios at that point. Last year of uncapped spending with a ton of money unspent from this year. I personally don't care if they spend 40M. It looks like that money is just going to go unspent if they don't get Soler. I doubt it just disappears into the ether or Tom Ricketts' pockets. Or at least I hope not. There have to be better opportunities. If $40 million doesn't make you blink, what would? $41 million.

Too early to tell. Maybe you could declare Volstad a bust.

This is about where I was in the offseason. I advocated some combo of Pujols/Cespedes/Darvish in an effort to add impact talent (or potential impact talent in Cespedes/Darvish) to a roster bereft of it. My thought was that we could possibly fight for right around .500 this season (75-81 wins probably) with the outside possibility of contention if the Central were really bad. Then we'd be set up to start seriously contending in 2013 since we'd only need minor tweaks rather than what we have now, which is still a need to add impact talent to the roster. I could be remembering wrong, but I don't recall anybody strongly advocating the idea of the Cubs definitely contending in 2012. There were scenarios given where it could be a possibility, but certainly nobody proposed it as a certainty or even a necessary goal. Of course not. It was pretty much all hinged on either talking about proposed signings or ideas as to who would break out/rebound, etc.. I can't think of a single person here who thought it was likely or certain, but there was plenty of discussion as to a number of ways people thought it COULD happen. The closest you got to meatballs declaring it a 100+-loss team were the people confident that they could win, like, around 10 games more than last season. Hardly two sides of the same coin.

$40 million seems like too much unless we have an incredible scouting read on him that says he's getting close to MLB ready. You are really cutting away at the risk:reward ratios at that point. Holy [expletive], they have to spend money at some point, Kyle.

COULD, you monumental spaz, not WOULD. Yes, the board was filled in the offseason with people talking about how they thought the team COULD contend for a variety of reasons.

Don't denigrate meatball. You don't know it works, you beefy blob of meat. And yeah, pointing out the histrionics of people declaring in April, May or even June that they know a team is a lock to lose 100 or more games is the opposite of juicy meatballin'.

God, I hope so. Like Tryp said, it's a huge loss if they miss out on him.

Nobody should have been predicting 100 losses, that's silly. Now the people in the "Add Pujols/Fielder and Lee/Darvish and this team is a contender in the crappy NLC" camp? I'd say it's pretty safe now to tweak them. Fortunately, people more meatbally than that are running the Cubs now. Ah, another fine davearm2 WHOOOOOSH-moment. Please show me a single person who wanted to sign any of them because they thought THIS year was the priority. I don't care enough to go back months and find a bunch of quotes. But there were quite a few people that thought the Cubs could be contenders this year, and they voiced that opinion repeatedly during the height of the hot stove season. If you can't recall that, or choose not to, then that's on you. Ugh, you. The majority of the board thought the Cubs COULD compete this year, with or without big FA signings. The people saying they could/should have been signing big names weren't saying it with any sense of "OMG, THEY HAVE TO COMPETE IN 2012 OR ELSE!!!" The idea/hope was that they'd be big players both playing for now and the long term, as a big market team ideally should be able to do. The only way you could "tweak" that is if you want to believe that the desire for such signings meant winning in 2012 was considered a major priority/necessity by those posters as opposed to a desire to see the Cubs shooting for both short term and long term success (since, y'know, signing FA's doesn't preclude them from good drafting/scouting/trading). So, in short, there's no quotes for you to find. There's nobody here who wanted big name FA's signed only because they wanted the Cubs to win in 2012.

Man, you are the worst.