Sammy Sofa

Yes, your expectations towards big ticket FA are unrealistic. I have zero interest in chasing this particular tail for the zillionth time, so I'll just end it here and pretend like you don't exist going forward.

Yes, we know that's your opinion. Let's just leave it in that box over there. FA "impact players" aren't these catch-all constructs that you can just mash into whatever you spot you want them on the team. It's a matter of both who is available and the needs/openings you have on the team. I really cannot understand why you don't see how hard it is to plan for all of those factors to line up to just right to justify spending big ticket FA money by the rather narrowly defined standards you've repeated ad nauseum.

Huh. That's actually a pretty good way of putting it.

To me the middle ground does include moving Marshall. For all the much vaunted talk of rebuilding the Cubs really haven't made any moves that had to have been done without the intention of competing in 2012, and yes, I include the Marshall deal in that. Trading for Rizzo really hurt that goal because he is good enough to not want to acquire somebody great for 1B, but not ready enough to really help the 2012 team. I'd still want them doing something like the trade for Rizzo even if they had sign Fielder. Blocked or not, he'd still be a valuable chip that could be spun off if necessary. Well, yeah, this is what I'm talking about when I sarcastically mention "the time to panic is past;" that's out of the realization that the Cubs simply don't have a ton (relatively speaking) of money freed up right now. Despite my hyperbole over guys like Fielder and Darvish and co., I have no problem with how the Cubs are spending their money right now. I just can't wait until they get to the point where they can be the Red Sox or even the Yankees of the Midwest.

You realize that's nearly impossible to predict and align, right? It's impossible to predict when you're one or two elite players away from being the sort of consistent 95-win team I described? Yes, that's the part that's very, very difficult to align. It's not a matter of, "welp, we've got our young core established...now bring on the plethora of under 30 elite free agents!" If you keep waiting for "synchronicity" you're not going to to have it most of the time.

Guys like Kuroda and Oswalt can be dealt. It's inevitable a team will be "saddled" with overpaid big ticket FA; it's unavoidable if you want to actually utilize them at any point. You have an unrealistic idea of big name FA being available lining up just right when a team has enough internal talent developing so as to avoid payroll bloat. That's not going to happen.

You realize that's nearly impossible to predict and align, right?

To me the middle ground does include moving Marshall. For all the much vaunted talk of rebuilding the Cubs really haven't made any moves that had to have been done without the intention of competing in 2012, and yes, I include the Marshall deal in that.

I wouldn't go that far. There were ways to make this team a fringe contender in 2012 without handing out bad contracts. Go on. Which free agent contracts did you wish the Cubs had handed out this offseason? Of the biggies, CJ Wilson's deal is the easiest to defend, but that price almost certainly wasn't available to the Cubs. Reyes? Fielder? Pujols? How did you get from what I said to "Rob wants to sign 'biggies'?" I was talking about spreading the money around on marginal upgrades and making a handful of smart, low-cost trades. Targeting Edwin Jackson and one of Kuroda / Oswalt would likely be better in the short term than Wood/Volstad/Wells. Trading for Alberto Callaspo would be better than Ian Stewart, and only cost marginally more. This wasn't a 71 win team last season. There was enough room in the payroll to add players to take us to a mid 80's win team. That doesn't always put you in the playoffs, but it gives you a shot. I get why the front office decided to target a future window instead of opting to make slower yearly gains. And I don't necessarily disagree. But let's not pretend it was the only option. Right. I made no secret about my desire to see the Cubs take advantage of the big name FA market this offseason, but I certainly didn't want to see them only spending money on big names. Hell, I didn't even see it as a necessity to spend on any of the big names (Pujols, Fielder and Darvish). What I was hoping for, however, was at least a middle ground like Rob is talking about, where they both look to take a shot at competing in a weakened division in 2012 AND build for the future. It's certainly not an unrealistic expectation given the resources available to the Cubs. Again, middle ground was perfectly realistic, but the middle ground is a place dave can't process.

Absolutely ludicrous. You're stupidly conflating the desire to see the Cubs rebuild AND compete with the made-up idea that there's anyone here that thinks the Cubs didn't and don't have to rebuild. There's not a single person here that's going to argue against the general approach that Theo and co. seem to be taking with bolstering the team and farm system with cheap, young talent/reclamation projects, and to continue with that plan. The disappointment stems from seeing a huge major market club apparently not willing or, more worryingly, able to also take advantage of the financial resources they should have available to them. It was hoped that it's not, as you so desperately want everything to be, an either/or situation.

I'm making up your stance that the Cubs should go hard after Dunn, Fielder, Pujols, Wilson etc etc? That's rich. Way to stand behind your (millions of endlessly repeated) words. :lol: Yeah, I supported signing any of those players (plus Darvish and the Cubans, though I guess that doesn't fit with your "past their prime" manifesto. Of course, neither do Wilson and Fielder. And wanting Dunn was from when Dunn didn't suck and the Cubs had a completely different FO and approach. But hey, why let common sense stop you this far along?) if the Cubs had the money to do so. You've moronically twisted that to try and make it sound like I only want the Cubs to sign "past their prime" veterans as the only solution to make the team better. That's almost as stupid as your laughable argument about the necessity of suck. Please, explain why the Cubs couldn't have traded for Rizzo or moved Marshall if they had, say, signed Fielder and Wilson. And if they had the money for those guys, why couldn't they still have signed DeJesus or Maholm on the cheap deals they got? Why wouldn't they have been able to trade Zambrano for Volstad? Why wouldn't they have been able to trade for Stewart? Explain for all of us which moves this offseason prove the necessity of effectively tanking 2012 (added bonus: explain why you think I didn't want any of these moves to happen)? Unless your argument is that the necessity is based out of an asusmption of a lack of available money then you've got yourself quite the hole to dig yourself out of. No, dave, the only necessity of suck is the necessity of all of your posts to suck, and suck hard.

Ugh, you're the worst. You're such a broken down CPU it's not even funny anymore. What would you like to make up next?

Try not to be too davearm2, davearm2; I'm happy that they're building for the long term, but I'm not going to be a schmuck and pretend like all of the horrible baseball in the meantime until the promised land is reached is a good thing. It's like trying to lose 30 pounds; the end result is fantastic if successful but the journey getting there [expletive] suuuuuuuuuucks.

The time to panic is long past. Cespedes is nowhere near making or breaking this crapbucket of a team.

Nobody's panicking. My post was in response to FNDomination basically saying that the Cubs should let themselves be outbid by the Marlins.

Sweet, it's totally as easy to rebuild from being a 60-win team as it is being a, say, 77-win team.

I voted for just above last year, more because that's what I'm hoping for than what I expect, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were worse. They'd only have to lose 9 more games than they did last year to lose 100 next season, hence why I was "putting words in your mouth" because apparently you think such a possibility is "ridiculous." Sniping at people making picks where they lose 100 games as being "experts" and saying it's ridiculous just smacks of protesting way too much over a crappy team.

Man, the Cubs are totally going to win that not spending money trophy.

Where you derisively talked about "experts" and said it was ridiculous to think they could lose 100 games next year. Why do you think that's such a ridiculous guess?

No, it's really not.

So you think it's ridiculous that a team that's a mess like this could lose 10 more games than they did last year? I don't think that'll be happening, but your scoffing like the Cubs are some kind of sleeper pick to ideally do more than just win a few more games than last year at best seems a bit forced.

Well, yeah; he doesn't keep those things like he keeps his fish. D'uh.

BEHOLD! The fish tanks! And the home run thing! And Jose Reyes' barely holding together legs! And Jeff Loria eating a pile of babies!

The steam escaping the bodies of the dead animals he's surrounded by.

I really like the cut of the jib of this collection of scrappy young go-getters. OH GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE PLEASE SKIP TO THE HAPPY ENDING