Sammy Sofa

The Cubs bad contracts after this season being Alfonso Soriano. or whatever other inevitable bad free agent contracts happen. and they will. also, garza, marshall, marmol (if kept), a first baseman, a third baseman, will all get more expensive. the zambrano/dempster money will be replaced. top of the page. meh That's fine. As the team gets better and they get further away from the sale and they start developing more internal talent and, hopefully, expanded revenue they'll have the money to take the hits when everything doesn't go their way FA-wise.

Wow, first time the WBC won't be the most loathsome people at their protests?

Welcome to the board! Just FYI, siding with me is not going to help your reputation around here. I think both Pujols and Fielder are going to end up working out badly for whatever team signs them, unless, like you said, the deals end up being shorter in duration than I anticipate. The notion that the Cubs can afford to absorb a bad contract strikes me as an exceedingly poor reason to take one on, yet that's what I keep hearing. Because it's an ongoing game and you stagger the decline in production with one player by offsetting it, ideally, with other FA signings, trades and player development. Look at the Phillies and the Red Sox and the Yankees: all three teams have contracts where they will be or are now overpaying for the production they are getting in return. It's essentially impossible to avoid if you're looking to bolster your team via impact FA signings. All of you that want these magical players and contracts that somehow bypass this are expecting things that just don't happen often enough. And 2-4 years? This is what we're worried that the Cubs would get in terms of quality production from Pujols or Fielder? Somewhere here thinks it's likely they could only get TWO years of worthwhile production from these guys? Come the [expletive] on. It's like people were traumatized by the Soriano signing and the limitations of the sale and think the Cubs must tread some fragile line of financial ability going forward. Seriously, if the Cubs can indeed absorb unproductive years like the Phillies, Red Sox and Yankees why would anyone here not want them to do that? It's not like it will prevent them still signing other FA and building from within. This is a team with huge resources and they easily take the hit while still being able to be productive and build a winning team. Neither contract would cripple this team; not even close.

Holy Shecky Greene.

A well-run Cubs team can easily take the hit of a player being overpaid in the final years of his deal. Just because they can doesn't mean they should. Yeah, it kinda does. Agreed. Yup. The Cubs should be the Yankees/Red Sox of the Midwest. Wanting or expecting them to play the relative pauper when they don't need to is ridiculous. They have the resources to take chances most other teams can't and to bring in players other teams can't and to eat financial costs other teams can't while still being able to sign impact FA. They don't have to tiptoe around looking for the perfect FA signing or the perfect confluence of events like they have to squeeze blood from a stone.

The part that I find most odd is where people are acting like he's the judge, jury and executioner in state college, knows everything that happens in the town, calls all the shots. Look he's enormously popular there, but he's always been a football coach. He never got involved in local politics, generally stayed out of administrative matters and let them handle it when players got in trouble. The idea that he would have known everything about the Sandusky investigations/cover-ups is probably not accurate. If it turns out that he knew about the 1998 investigation, did the bare minimum in 2002 and knew that the whole thing was being swept under the rug, I'll be quite disappointed, but I'm not willing to make all those assumptions. This is obviously not some kind of isolated set of occurrences. This was something going on for a long time and involving a significant number of people. If you're going to pretend like he didn't know about it beyond "something inappropriate happened once or twice" for FIFTEEN YEARS then you're in some serious denial.

You need let go of what Pujols has done in the past, and focus on what he's going to do in the future. If you sign him for 9 years, and he's elite for 4 of those but only good -- and vastly overpaid -- for the other 5, it's a bad deal. The absence of an immediately-available better option doesn't justify jumping into a bad deal. A well-run Cubs team can easily take the hit of a player being overpaid in the final years of his deal.

I think I just gave some convincing reasoning right there. I'm not sure what "evidence" you expect to see compared to Maddux; you're talking about a bench coach vs. a pitching coach. What is the "evidence" he wouldn't be a good choice besides his lack of managing experience? Hell, by the standards you've set forth, how do any of the first time manager candidates possibly stack up to Maddux?

For me it's that Martinez has been the bench coach for four years for who I think is easily the best manager in baseball, and one of the best run franchises when it comes to producing both talent and teams that succeed. That's more than enough for me to want to give him a shot. I'd love to see him or Maddux get the job, but wanting Martinez shouldn't strike you as "troublesome" at all.

Why?

Paterno gave up the choice/right/whatever to retire with dignity by allowing this to continue happening.

Bold added by me for emphasis. Before the investigation you are talking about, Paterno had an opportunity to pass the information along to his immediate supervisor. What Paterno testified to describing was significantly euphamized from what McQueary testified to seeing. "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy" is, i suppose, less serious than "anal sex with a young boy" but it's still quite obviously a crime. why did curley fart around for a week and a half waiting to interview mcqueary? and curley was the one who claimed that mcqueary reported to him that they were "horsing around." from either paterno's account ("fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy") or mcqueary's account ("anal sex with a boy"), curley had the information that mandated he go to police. even if paterno was embarrassed to say "anal sex with a boy" in front of curley or the jury, he still knew that what happened was bad and he did pass that along to curley. Who cares? The creep was still allowed on campus and nothing was done. I don't care if Paterno notified anyone using elaborately made charts and computer simulations; nothing happened afterwards and he went along with it. He should be fired today.

Not the article, but here's the guy's Wiki bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Gricar

What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

I'm still hung over. Jay missed quite a few passes last night from where I was sitting. He had some open guys for potential big gains that he just missed. He played well overall though. Man I love beating the kiddie rapist supporting eagles. There was a stretch in the 2nd quarter where he was really really off and looked horrible. He got better though. It looked like he was getting frustrated with Hester and Sanzenbuckeye dropping catchable balls 2 plays in a row. Yeah, for as many bad throws as he had he had seemingly an equal number of great ones that the Bears' receivers just muffed.

I'd like to think I would have gone right up to him and stopped it while in progress, but in reality I think most of us would have turned and ran out of complete confusion/revulsion. I understand having his first contact going to his father. But at that point, he and his father should have gotten law enforcement involved immediately. Yeah, I can't really blame the grad student for reacting as he did because, quite honestly, I have zero clue how I'd react to seeing something so shocking and horrible and out of nowhere. I'd like to think I'd have stopped it, but I really just don't know. We don't have to deal with these types of things in our everyday lives, and we react to such shocks in weird ways if we are confronted with them. It is, however, shady that nothing happened once he talked to his dad, like Jersey said. Once you have the time to process this you need to tell someone who can do something.

Well, trading Zambrano under Hendry was largely moot. They weren't going to trade him after 2012 with the way he bounced back and they weren't going to trade him during 2011 with his value completely rock bottom regardless of whether Hendry was fired or not. Soriano, on the other hand, I think is a different situation. I highly doubt the Ricketts would have stopped him from trading him if he could have. I also don't think the Ricketts and the FO will just move these guys to move them. The OP's idea that it's necessary to to dump these guys "no matter what it takes" doesn't really ring true. Obviously, if there's a deal there to be made to benefit the Cubs they'll do it, but trading them just to trade them and eating the cost regardless of what it is isn't automatically productive.

I don't think it matters. Ricketts has probably told Theo and Jed to do whatever they need to do to make this team a contender. If it means eating 75% of a contract, they probably have the ability to do it. Furthermore, this probably means Soriano's days are very numbered. You're talking like they have to get rid of Zambrano and Soriano to contend. Meaning if Theo and Jed feel Z and Sori need to go, they can do what they need to do to make it happen. That wasn't the case with Hendry?

Yes, 6 years is definitely ideal for both. Personally, I wouldn't lose much sleep going up to 8 with both, but ideally that would be accomplished mostly somehow through options and/or incentives. Above 8 I'd really, really prefer not to do, but I think they have to walk away with one of them signed.

I don't think it matters. Ricketts has probably told Theo and Jed to do whatever they need to do to make this team a contender. If it means eating 75% of a contract, they probably have the ability to do it. Furthermore, this probably means Soriano's days are very numbered. You're talking like they have to get rid of Zambrano and Soriano to contend.

Nobody who is arguing signing him for 8 or more years is doing so thinking he's going to be some kind of powerhouse at age 40 and up. They're talking about paying for that if that's what it takes to get him for his remaining good years. I understand the reservations about that, but, again, we're talking about a team that shouldn't have much of a problem eating such a contract by that point and still having $100-$120 million (or more) to spend on the rest of the team.

OK, for one, it shouldn't have to take a "while," especially for a team with the resources the Cubs have. Two, it's not a "great or bust" proposition. They are just 2-3 players away from at least being good.

None of us has any idea where this team will be next year, so forming any judgements about Kemp or anyone else is premature. None of us has any idea where the team will be in any of the years going forward, so a big market team with money passing on true impact FA out of the hope that the stars align so that they can sign them (if they're available) only once they've developed good players internally seems shortsighted and foolhardy at best. This highlights the main flaw with your approach in all of this; that you want to wait until things are just right/perfect to sign a big FA, yet rarely do you things lines up that way. Most of the time you're making trades or signing or drafting guessing/projecting/hoping how things will play out down the road as well as in the immediate future. Just because things don't look like a sure thing right away doesn't make it a bad investment. Never said it was, obviously. But it is an integral part of making a consistently winning team, especially for a team with money like the Cubs. They have the luxury of building their teams both from inside and nabbing big impact FA, so it's stupid for them to play the miser and wait only until "the time is right" to sign a FA simply because they won't immediately be favorites in the next season. You're signing players like that for the long haul and not just the next year; yet you keep talking about this like things go bust if they shell out for someone like Pujols or Fielder and don't have a winning season in 2012.

So who should the Cubs be signing to a long term contract besides Fielder or Pujols before next season? Or does davearm2 think the Cubs shouldn't be signing anyone to a long term contract right now? OK, then what about after next season? No impact players on the horizon from the farm system, so I guess you wouldn't want to be signing someone like Kemp if he's a FA, too. So you just keep trudging along, avoiding big contracts until the perfect confluence of internal impact players and big name FA lines up and...oh no! The best FA available that offseason is 2014's version of Alfonso Soriano! Guess we have to wait until next year! Maybe!

Peppers deserves some props, too.