Sammy Sofa

Too late. Dave Matthews already dropped the bro-bomb there and it cannot be undone.

I'm glad you've come around on this. It's really disheartening to watch. do you not remember people booing the [expletive] out of jeff blauser and steve buechele? Todd Hundley too. And no, no one booed them. They were booing the brown guys standing next to them. Yes, thank you! I really cannot thank you enough for backing me up in all of this! It's a noble cause we're fighting for, and by God, we'll fix things one of these days!

I'm glad you've come around on this. It's really disheartening to watch. do you not remember people booing the [expletive] out of jeff blauser and steve buechele? No. Stop lying. Steve Buechele was a saint.

Exactly. Soul seems to be saying that since the Ricketts didn't do the exact same thing the first offseason they owned the team and had overspent on whoever the best FA was after last season (I assume it was Dunn, right?), then that's evidence of them planning on not dishing out any big contracts anytime soon. FTH?

Smart people here wanted to trade Marmol well before this.

What's going on is that he refuses to throw anything else. An offspeed pitch (even a great one like Marmol's) needs a decent fastball to be completely effective. The frustrating part is that Marmol HAS a very good fastball. Had, apparently. YES. NICE JOB, MARSHALL.

I'm glad you've come around on this. It's really disheartening to watch.

Finish this, Marshall.

It's because it's all he's throwing.

His fastball might as well be gone if he's not blowing this guy away.

Alright, that was pretty smooth, Quade.

Gah, come on.

HOLY [expletive], NICE DEFENSE.

I'm much more concerned about the physical breakdown.

Why couldn't this be the case? Why do we have to become the Pirates for the next ten years just because we won't take on another huge, lengthy deal while our lower levels are brought up to speed? I don't understand why my theory -- wrong as it may be -- would necessarily mean that this team is heading for a disaster. There's no guarantee signing a guy like Fielder would do anything other than fill a few more seats while the team still languishes around the .500 mark anyway. And once you are realizing production from your lower levels on a more regular basis, that puts you in a better position to make saner forays into the free agent market, rather than feeling like you need to throw insane amounts of cash at a guy like Soriano because you have nothing else to go with. And yet again you conflate signing Fielder with signing Soriano. Please stop that. And yes, avoiding big name FA's will mean the team languishes in mediocrity or worse for at least the better part of a decade. The Cubs don't have any prospects on the horizon that project to be much more than decent everyday starters at best. Guys like that can obviously be very useful, but they're not enough to put a team over the top. The Cubs are going to have to wisely mix developing talent with smart signings, and yes, some of those signings are going to have to be big contracts. The Cubs not spending simply doesn't equal good business sense.

Awesome outing by Demp today. Of course, Garza was awesome yesterday, too. Then...the disheartening.

And here we go.

You were making a joke, right? I was talking about Kenny Williams.

Pretty much. The Cubs will be garbage for at least most of the next decade if they go that route. Really doesn't jive with how savvy the Ricketts are as businessmen/women. If Ricketts really wants Joe Cowleys prophecy to come true and have Chicago become the White Sox town, then he should definitely go this route. Nah, they're pretty screwed, too. Especially if Kenny is left in charge.

Pretty much. The Cubs will be garbage for at least most of the next decade if they go that route. Really doesn't jive with how savvy the Ricketts are as businessmen/women.

I just traded Byrd and Dempster and an amazing pitching prospect I created for McCutchen in MLB: The Show 2010. McCutchen is now out for he rest of the year with an ACL something or other and Byrd is leading the NL in BA and all CF in OPS, HR and RBI. DAMN YOU, THE PIRATES.

There's already a ton in the stands for every game (and infesting Wrigleyville every [expletive] weekend). Just hire one of them.

And, of course, it'll be on the side of his neck. Can anyone confirm whether or not he already has a barbed-wire or tribal pattern tattoo somewhere on one of his arms?

I'm sure he's talking about the cubs' insistence on not going after one of the best hitters in the game entering the prime of his career. i mean, it's just common sense to see why any team would be averse to that. There's been a focus on the lower levels of the franchise, with time & investment in our facilities for Spring Training and in recruiting. And the contracts Hendry has been given license to sign have been shorter term deals (like Pena, for example). I don't buy that it's all because we have bad contracts on the books. Someone with a ton of money to spend and willingness to go nuts with it would eat the cost and move on. The fact that Ricketts hasn't tells me that he isn't going to stand for being locked in like that -- at least not easily or quickly. And it tells me he really doesn't have unlimited funds to work with anyway. More Soriano-type deals would just put us back in the same hole we've been in, that Ricketts now has to clean up. It doesn't make any sense to me to go through all this only to jump right back in again. He's enduring quite a bit of pain to clear our books of the bad ink. There have been empty seats, a real sense of apathy that hasn't been around this franchise for awhile. My read on this is that he's doing it because he has a plan to go in a different direction. That's what makes the most sense to me. Again, maybe I'm wrong. Probably. Not spending money just means this team is going to be horrible for the foreseeable future, which would just increase the "apathy" and empty seats. The Ricketts have only owned the team for a season and a half, and in that time pretty much only Adam Dunn was someone you could argue was a big name FA that the Cubs could/should have made a splash with. Bemoaning them not spending their way to victory otherwise in that short window of time is believing in a fantasy world of good FA that simply did not exist. You may not "buy" that much of the holding course action isn't due to letting contracts expire, but it's the one that makes the most sense. Pena got a short term contract because you have two huge 1B FA options potentially available after this season, plus Pena is old and coming off of a crappy season. Singing him to a short deal was just smart and what we should want the Cubs to do more of when necessary/prudent, yet you're talking like they should have signed him to a longer deal and couldn't instead of choosing not to. You're also seemingly equating signing Pujols or Fielder to signing Soriano, which is absurd. If you want a big name player you have to overpay. Always. There's a difference, however, between drastically overpaying for a player like Soriano and overpaying for someone like Fielder or Pujols. In short, it seems like you like to fearmonger these sorts of things so you can complain about them when so far the evidence simply isn't there. Yes, for all we know the Ricketts ARE horrible owners and they totally screw the pooch during this offseason...but we don't know yet. And the way things are shaping up they certainly have some huge opportunities to show us what they've got. But until then, your "evidence" for them not being willing to sign someone like Fielder or Pujols is pretty flimsy.

Who? I see two of the best hitters in the game available in free agency, and the youngest will turn 28 early next season. But sabermetric measures, that's toward the tail end of his prime. There are other schools of thought that think players typically peak between ages 28 and 32.