Sammy Sofa

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.

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 hope you're smothered by all of that sarcasm.

Agreed. I hate it too but it's true. This team is rebuilding and needs to restock. Yeah, it's impossible to do that unless you're the worst team in baseball.

I don't know why you'd word it like that, I'll happily continue to say that the Cubs aren't a 100 loss team. If anyone is convinced to the contrary I can make a sig bet or something if you think people are just blowing smoke with no conviction. More to the point, the Cubs have played about as poorly as they can play(very few guys playing above projection with plenty below, 4 games below pythagorean, horrible 1-run game numbers, etc), and they still have to play at less than a 70 win pace to beat the 100 loss stigma. If they completely gut the MLB roster by dealing Garza, Dempster, Soriano, and DeJesus, that's obviously a different story, but the team as currently constructed(or even without a player or two due to injury/trade) is better than 62 wins. Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup. Anyone screaming about how they know this is a 100-loss team is a simmering, succulent meatball. Right...a 99 or 95 loss team is MUCH better than a 100 loss team. Because that's clearly the point.

Eh, there's always something to enjoy when scumbags clash; someone has to lose.

Again, this isn't football or basketball.

James on the driiiiii-IIIIve.

I WILL END YOU.

I don't know why you'd word it like that, I'll happily continue to say that the Cubs aren't a 100 loss team. If anyone is convinced to the contrary I can make a sig bet or something if you think people are just blowing smoke with no conviction. More to the point, the Cubs have played about as poorly as they can play(very few guys playing above projection with plenty below, 4 games below pythagorean, horrible 1-run game numbers, etc), and they still have to play at less than a 70 win pace to beat the 100 loss stigma. If they completely gut the MLB roster by dealing Garza, Dempster, Soriano, and DeJesus, that's obviously a different story, but the team as currently constructed(or even without a player or two due to injury/trade) is better than 62 wins. Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup. Anyone screaming about how they know this is a 100-loss team is a simmering, succulent meatball.

Soriano vs. lefties this year: .186 .265 .442 .707

Camp's been their best reliever.

Lord, this bullpen is depressing.

I love this.

Knees still hobbled...still crazy expensive...still Alfonso Soriano...value not changing. If we're actually willing to pay 90% of his contract, I could see an AL team giving us SOMETHING of value back. Why? He's still Soriano, he's still old and still injured. Because a little more than half the teams in the league are getting less out of LF than they'd likely get from him, and some of those teams are actually trying to win games this year. And he's THIS close to being out for the year due to his knees. If the Cubs trade him it'll be effectively be just to trade him. They're not getting anything of value regardless of how much of the tab they pick up.

Knees still hobbled...still crazy expensive...still Alfonso Soriano...value not changing. If we're actually willing to pay 90% of his contract, I could see an AL team giving us SOMETHING of value back. Why? He's still Soriano, he's still old and still injured.