Sammy Sofa

BRANDON SAID WE NEED TO BE MORE LIKE REDDIT. SPREAD THE WORD.

[rhetorical]Why would the Cubs shop any of their young, cost-controlled hitters?[/rhetorical]

Twitter is awful for discussion. It's a mess to read. It's amazing as a place for consolidating a bunch of news sources and stuff like that, and getting links to articles, but when people try to argue or have discussions on there it's just a cluster [expletive] of unreadable Tweets one after another. After that you have, what? Facebook and Instagram comments? That's like a half step above news article/blog comments as the darkest underbelliest dumbest parts of the internet. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't really see any newer social media platforms that are better at doing what we do than this one. I prefer this, too. We're obviously in the minority. You can disagree with it all you want, but a ton of people basically abandoned this type of format for newer social platforms.

It's because it's much easier and quicker to read and post in discussions about anything via newer social media platforms instead of a dorky old message board. Those of us that are left here are just sad and waiting to die.

I'd rather marry Soler; he's much prettier, and I think I could talk him into opening up a bakery with me instead of ruining the game of baseball.

Same difference.

To be fair, I do really wish I could pee on most of the people that post here.

April 1 - Sept 30 (In pageviews): 2015: 4,642,176 2014: 4,880,690 2013: 4,717,368 2012: 5,458,785 2011: 4,033,182 2010: 5,523,874 2009: 8,592,523 2008: 11,162,870 2007: 12,132,332 2006: didn't have google analytics yet Fundamentally, a lot of people left during the bad years that haven't come back. There are just so many more options out there these days. Facebook and Twitter have sucked so much of the traffic from sites like mine in recent years. Could there be another reason you're not considering? Maybe there are posters that don't like the constant bickering or the way that threads have a tendency to break down into pissing matches. http://i.giphy.com/gnJgBlPgHtcnS.gif

Cespedes rules. Told you he was going to be beast.

"THE WRONG CUBAN SIGNED!!!" http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/Raymond-J.-Barry-in-JUSTIFIED-Episode-3.06-When-the-Guns-Come-Out-2-426x360.jpg

Many posters continually stated that "the cupboard was bare" and that Hendry depleted the organization of talent deeply and completely, so maybe you ought to get on them for hyperbole. My point in posting on this topic is all of the hyperbole about Hendry left nothing and Theo magically waved his magic wand and produced Rizzo, Russell, etc. This means absolutely nothing.

And the interesting thing is that I moved on from Hendry years ago, while many of you can't seem to stop bringing up his name. You're packed to the brim with dung from a boring, boring horse.

You keep throwing this out there like it's some kind of key rebuttal. It's not plus for the old GM when the new GM has to clean up their mess. If you read the post carefully, it's not a rebuttal about cleaning up the mess. It's a rebuttal to the notion that "cupboard was bare" mentality that was being passed around in these discussions. Well it wasn't literally empty, but there wasn't all that much either. He left the team in a pretty [expletive] spot, and saying that there was a non-zero number of assets left isn't the positive statement you seem to think it is. Hendry was pretty bad man. There was Baez, Castro, and enough to trade for Rizzo, Russell, Wood, Grimm, Ramirez, Hendricks, Villanueva, Torreyes, and Black. Theo deserves the credit for having a plan and trading players that didn't fit in his plan, but apparently those players were valuable enough to acquire the players listed above. It's staggering how you think this is some kind of plus for Hendry. Nobody takes over a team completely devoid of any value or assets, so stop [expletive] dwelling on the obvious hyperbole of a phrase like "the cupboard is bare." Nobody ever said Hendry was incapable of finding good or useful players, but selling off the remnants from his broken teams isn't some kind of positive legacy for him. That they had someone like Matt Garza to trade was the result of Hendry stupidly trading for him in the first place, not, "boy, that Jim Hendry sure was smart for landing Matt Garza!"

He straight up looks like a monster with that mask. Horrifying.

i love how he cites the ventura and matheny hirings as though those were analytics guys or something FJM should come back just for this alone.

Basically it always comes across as "don't forget about Hendry!" and all I want to say is, "well, I keep trying, but you're making it really hard to do so."

You keep throwing this out there like it's some kind of key rebuttal. It's not plus for the old GM when the new GM has to clean up their mess.

Before that he was known as the guy who would bring up crazy trade ideas that would routinely involve 3-5 teams to pull off.

Explain.

2003 was just some next level [expletive]. This season was a ton of fun, but because they never really got started in NLCS it still felt like they were just so far away from winning it all; as cool as it was beating the Pirates and Cardinals, it still just felt like it was at that "oh, that's nice!"-level. By the time everything went nuts in game 6 in 2003 it was like everything had shifted sideways into another dimension.

They're asking some people on my team to do some overnights in the next few months, and I just can't. I remember jumping at the opportunity to do overnights with the jobs I had in my 20's. And working until like 2-3 AM and then going out afterwards and not sleeping until the next night. Or the day after that. Or the night after that. Now I get tired just thinking about it. "Oh, I have to be up at 6 for work? OK, as long as I'm asleep by 4 I'll be fine." Now I'm just dead to the world regardless of when I went to sleep with something like that.

So what? The lengths of his previous contracts had nothing to do with how well he did as a pitcher. And before you jump to your usual position, no I'm not trying to defend it as somehow working out; it turned out to be a terrible signing. But at the time there was little indicate that the Cubs weren't likely to get relative value to the rather modest deal they signed him to. And off of that, what the hell accounts for the drastic difference in his season value between Fangraphs and BR for his 2013 and 2014 seasons? Fangraphs has him at a 2.0 WAR (and 0.5 in 2014) and BR has him at -1.3 (and -2.3 the next year). FG seems WAY off here. The point is that nobody was offering Jackson a contract that ran 4 years except the Cubs. We could have offered him 2 years at $13 million per year and he would have still signed with the Cubs. But they wanted to lock him up for longer based on his success to that point. Again, there was little reason to assume he was just going to topple off of a cliff and never recover, so why bother with only a 1 or 2-year deal? Everything to that point pointed it to being a reasonable deal. They were trying to help stabilize the starting rotation both that season and for the long term.

I'm temporarily working a couple overnight shifts a week until the end of the month; 9 PM-5:30 AM and I am just DEAD after doing it. I keep thinking back to just 10 years ago when it seemed like I would stay up like that all the damn time and I could just sleep it off no problem. I get home at little after 6 AM, feeling like death, pass out, and then I'm up again at noon with my body refusing to sleep no matter how tired I am. It's a real garbage situation.

So what? The lengths of his previous contracts had nothing to do with how well he did as a pitcher. And before you jump to your usual position, no I'm not trying to defend it as somehow working out; it turned out to be a terrible signing. But at the time there was little indicate that the Cubs weren't likely to get relative value to the rather modest deal they signed him to. And off of that, what the hell accounts for the drastic difference in his season value between Fangraphs and BR for his 2013 and 2014 seasons? Fangraphs has him at a 2.0 WAR (and 0.5 in 2014) and BR has him at -1.3 (and -2.3 the next year). FG seems WAY off here.

Christ. That really was Epstein-Hoyer's worst move to this point. Hasn't been a crippling move, but it's still hurting the team. I worked with a GF and now wife of one of the Nationals and nobody on their team could believe the Cubs spent that much money on him. Why?