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.