imb

I feel that way about Starling, Gray and Jed Bradley. Worst case, Starling ends up being Chris Lubanksi (obviously his transformation is weird, but they were similar prospects coming out), Gray is a reliever and Bradley never gets a second pitch.

Mostly lack of upside. He's got 5 tools, but none of them profile as plus. And unless his defense improves, he'll probably be relegated to a corner spot. He's just kinda underwhelming for a first rounder. Edit: That's not to say he's a particularly bad pick or anything... just not the franchise changer we all find ourselves hoping for. I get so addicted to draft stuff in all sports that I could probably talk myself into just about anyone. Let's pretend the Cubs have the third pick, and Cole and Rendon are off the board. Who's your top 5?

I'm wary of the Gray to the pen stuff, even though I guess that could be teams trying to scare other people off. I'm probably just higher on Jungmann because I know more about him since he's a big 12 guy. I also like Springer for the same reasons I like Mahtook, though less so cause of the swing concerns. I'm a sucker for that type of OF, especially now that impact OF bats in the majors are so scarce.

If Gray and Barnes are the top two pitchers left, I'd rather take Mahtook. He's probably my favorite bat if you take rendon off the list. Edit: If the top 8 goes that way, I'd wany Mahtook or Jungmann. I'd be cool with either.

It would take a while a long time to do it this way, but the best way to involve the community would be to take nominations for a top 30 list. Cap it at say 60 names. Then start a poll where people pick their top 10 choices. Once you figure out the top 10 vote getters, you ask everybody to rank those 10 in order of their preference. Once that is tabulated, you have your top 10 picks. Then you have another poll of the remaining 50 to get your next 10. I'd prefer it to be drawn out anyway. As bad as the cubs are, I think it should probably end the day before college football starts.

That would be fun, I'm not sure how you could do it though. I don't it would be as fun if you assigned one person to each spot like a fantasy draft.

A real shame for you because it was good stuff.

Just to clarify, you think game threads are short because of sporcle? Uhh, no. Is that what you really took from that (rhetorical question, I know it's not)? I really don't get what you are saying. You seem to be refuting the notion that the board has struggled because of the Cubs struggles and placing the blame mostly on the decision to try out a couple failed side projects. No, I'm not. I'm saying it's a combo. Pretend to not get it again though so I can say it a few more times.

Oh yeah.

Just to clarify, you think game threads are short because of sporcle? Uhh, no. Is that what you really took from that (rhetorical question, I know it's not)?

If the top 8 goes like that, who would you rather take? Murton never had a season even approaching what Mahtook did this year, and he had the advantage of not using the weaker bats that college guys used this year. I'm not an ESPN insider. I saw just the top 5. Who does Law have going 6-7-8? Starling is one, obviously. Starling, Archie Bradley, Joe Ross.

Right, so what's the problem with Mahtook?

It's not that message board was neglected, it's that the effort to draw traffic when the team couldn't do it on its own was misplaced. There's always going to be a flow of people coming and going, but people need a reason to stay. Maybe there's no way to do it if the team isn't exciting, but I do know that sporcle and the ducross brothers are not going to keep interest high. That's the reason we have three page game threads where it's just Fred posting walls of stats. Not because erik's an idiot or people are mean.

I actually really like Mahtook. What am I missing, what's not to like? If the top 8 falls like that I'd be ecstatic that we take a guy like mahtook instead of lindor or something like that. Well, I personally have never seen him projected to go higher than like 16. What I've read about him is that he recently showed some unexpected power but is mostly just an athletic CF with contact issues. He seems like a pretty low-ceiling, safe, up-the-middle Wilken vanilla pick. .383/.496/.709 41/32 BB/KK 29 steals and 14 homers in a year where college power was way down. Wouldn't he immediately jump into our top 3?

If the top 8 goes like that, who would you rather take? Murton never had a season even approaching what Mahtook did this year, and he had the advantage of not using the weaker bats that college guys used this year.

It's a combo, I think. The site got popular because the team was exciting. The site got monetized, in part because of the need to cover the traffic but also because the opportunity presented itself. When the popularity of the team waned, the focus was placed on poor (in my opinion) attempts to cover the costs. Maybe there was no way to do it, I don't know, but I think a better option would have been to give people a good reason to be here, instead of the parade of front page articles, ducross bros, etc. I know the idea was that this stuff would give people a reason to click on the front page, but honestly, it should have taken one email from the ducross guys to realize that no one was going to give a [expletive] about what they had to say. Did anyone really think that Meph was going to be able to write stuff that would draw traffic? Or that people were going to be breathlessly awaiting the next Roast article? I think that if you had taken all the effort is all these half-assed ideas and instead, fully fleshed out ONE quality idea and stuck with it, it would have been better in the long run.

I actually really like Mahtook. What am I missing, what's not to like? If the top 8 falls like that I'd be ecstatic that we take a guy like mahtook instead of lindor or something like that.

First off I won poster of the decade straight up and that can never be taken away from me. Secondly, I really didn't mean to paint tim as this like, capitalistic jackass figure. It always stuns me how much server costs are, so I'm sure it was a necessary evil. But once that line was crossed, I guess there was no turning back.

I really dont think this issue has as much to do with the "mean people vs. stupid people" debate as people think. The site's genesis luckily coincided with huge national interest in the team. It was started because cubs.com was full of idiots and there was no place to actually discuss the cubs without all the meathead [expletive]. The popularity boomed and it was still basically cubs.com, this place or [expletive] desipio, so of course people were flocking here. And there was a lot of interest in stuff like the convention, and Q&As, etc, not necessarily because those things were insanely cool, but also because we were all just excited about the position the cubs were in. Even the awful 2005 and 2006 seasons were met with lots of interest, because you were just switching positive interest for negative interest. Instead of OH MAN PRIOR, WOOD, ZAMBRANO, PATTERSON, SOSA it was FIRE DUSTY, IS PRIOR HEALTHY, stuff like that. The cubs were bad, but people were still interested. They were just riding the downslope of the rollercoaster. But somewhere during the four-year stretch, tim realized he could make money off the site. You can't blame him for that. I mean, people were paying $50 a year, and the only difference was the ability to change avatars and usernames. Remember the beginning of the premium service? It was basically "look, we can't actually offer you anything yet, but it's coming, so will you please support the site." And people did. Hell I wanted to, but I was broke and in college. But some did. Do you think they were doing it because of all the sweet avatars they could switch to? Of course not, it was more because they were excited about talking about the team. But eventually that money dried up, and it was too late to go back. The site had been profitable and it needed to be in the future. It was like the peter principle of websites. The hits had to be driven to the front page instead of the message board. So we got FRONT PAGE ARTICLES from (no offense, seriously) Andy, who I dont even think lives in illinois, meph, a sociopath idiot and roast, who was an usher and couldnt even watch the games he was at. What are we supposed to learn from them? There was no accountability or editing, the articles were poor, no one looked at them and they just stopped. So we got stuff like the ducross bros, who were basically cubs.com posters with a microphone. They were the type of people everyone made fun of in the insiders forum and we're supposed to be excited about their podcasts? So they stopped, and we got B-Squared, and they were actually good! But again, there was no accountability and they stopped posting podcasts all the time. Am I supposed to check the front page breathlessly every day for 2 weeks on the off chance they're going to post something? No one is going to do that. So, money can't be made here, there has to be another way. So we end up with second city hoops (failed), the bears board (failed), some all-encompassing chicago sports forum, where people without credentials or ability watch the games on tv and then post stuff worse than what you would get from just going to espn.com (failed. Did anyone think this would work?) Let's not forget SPORCLE. The site got monetized and sterilized, the money went away and instead of getting back to the basics (a good place to talk about the cubs) the misplaced effort went toward making money. The end.

2. Totally agree on Springer. A HS who might perhaps have a contact problem eventually, that's one thing. Going for a guy who's certain to have a contract problem and be a K-king, that's another. MIght as well just trade for billy rowell

cant afford rehab assignments when you're fighting for a playoff spot to keep your job

*presses reset*

He's saying that there was a time when nsbb worked hard at being a presence, which is obviously hard to do consistently. For a time a lot of work went into going to the conventions, Q&As, ST updates, things like that. But the energy level dropped and all of a sudden we started getting half-assed front page articles, the [expletive] ducross brothers and that sporcle [expletive] instead.

the site started out small, then blew up when the cubs got on a little run and people realized that cubs.com sucked. so tim and co. tried to monetize and overly legislate the place, it got stale and when the cubs fell apart, interest just sort of faded away. When interest is high, people are more willing to shell out cash and check out a new site, but the cubs suck and this place is totally sterile, so what would be the point of coming here unless you already have an established reason to do so? If you want to talk about the cubs, there are dozens of places better suited for it than a website with an absentee creator starting and abandoning 4 or 5 new ideas a year and a 500-1 social to cubs post ratio.

thanks buddy… see Vinestal, there are still some friendly posters here after all, keep the faith you broke my boy's heart