imb

thanks tax cuts and jobs act

while i find much of the HoF debate stuff really tiring - i never in a million years would have guessed harold baines would have gotten in

deadspin hire me you cowards

he's dead

Yu seems like a very strong candidate to become the 2019 guy who gets our hopes up early then falls apart and is injured just before the playoff push

jesus christ it would be great if "sports reporting" was more about the reporting and less about being used to propagate leverage for the stupid front offices.

Do you think... do you... uhhh how do I put this

it's not only that billy bob is wrong, it's that he's usually proven wrong within hours.

Good as gone

im gonna be so pissed if we spend money on pollock

we fucked rizzo over so bad

Bryant is going to hit FA as a more traditional late 20s corner guy that you realllly dont have to resign

Cubs will have Harper signed by this time next week

if you wanna do wishful thinking, just pretend that we have the budget for harper and he wants to be here, but we're trying to move other pieces so we can sign both he and machado. harper wants to be here strongly enough that he's delaying his signing and the terms of his contract until we're further along with machado.

it's a useless hypothetical yeah sure, if the offense was bad and people were injured in april and may and then everyone was healthy and the offense was good at the end of the year we'd all be feeling a little bit better. the context matters - it wasn't like the offense fell apart and there was no explanation for it. If the context is just Chili and the death march killing the offense from August on it makes you feel a lot better about where we are at. you sound really desperate

Way harsh. horsefeathering autocorrect. Anyways, this is a dumb hypothetical but it would be interesting to me to see the sentiment surrounding the team currently if the season was flipped. What if the bad 2 months of offense happened to start the year through May then from June to the finish we were the great offense but we still ended up with the same results of 95 wins and a WC loss. Like would be in love with where this team was going because of the hot finish? Because the offense was really, really good for a longer stretch than it was bad last year. The bad offense is more recent though and sticks in our minds. I still think we are closer to the really good up to August offense than whatever the hell the last 2 months were moving forward in to this year. Idk, just an interesting way to look at it to try and find a more favorable view of things. it's a useless hypothetical yeah sure, if the offense was bad and people were injured in april and may and then everyone was healthy and the offense was good at the end of the year we'd all be feeling a little bit better. the context matters - it wasn't like the offense fell apart and there was no explanation for it.

any person who can name 31 cubs minor league players belongs in federal prison

Probably somewhere in the middle. With the team going through stretches of looking like both teams and ending up winning 90+ games. fans in every sport make this mistake every year. it almost always looks like this "hey we should be fine, we're bringing back the same roster we had last year that was very good." *other teams improve* *injured guys are more injured* *other guys get injured* *weird declines happen suddenly or due to injury* "horsefeathers we're a .500 team now"

freakin hilarious brett, really owned them! the addition of a 6-WAR first baseman is so cardinal lol. DORKS.

the problem is there's no scenario where the offense improves outside of trades/FA acquisitions that's ok if everyone matches their 2018 production, but if Bryant and Contreras don't bounce back you really HAVE to have Baez maintain his numbers because you can't count on Zobrist to play a full season at the same level. All of a sudden a top-5 ish offense becomes a top 10-ish offense. We good defensed (and good Hamelsed) our way into a solid rotation, but Lester was lucky all year and Hamels is just as likely to be a 4.50 ERA guy as he is to do what he did last year. With Darvish a total question mark and Quintana unreliable, it's reasonable to expect the rotation to be a real mess. You want to project Lester to be better this year than last year? Good luck to you. Hendricks is one of the best Cubs pitchers of my lifetime but we have always been waiting on the other shoe to drop with him. Any loss of movement or control and who knows what he looks like. And he's the only one in the rotation we can remotely count on! The bullpen is Carl (last seen looking like 50 Cent throwing the opening pitch,) Stop (who has outlived the use by date of 99.9 percent of middle relievers,) Monty (might have to be in the rotation) and ????? Any reliever who can get an out without dying is going to be out of gas by June. there are scenarios where everyone is healthy and unbroken and we win our division There are many more scenarios where some combination of unhealth and regression happens and the results are really ugly. Knowing what we know about our roster given the age and regression and injury history of the keystone guys, are we more likely to be first-half cubs, or second-half cubs (OPS below .700 in Aug/Sept)

by yards per play Old Miss was 7th in the nation OU (highest of all time) Bama Clemson Memphis (sure i guess) Georgia West Virginia Old Miss UCF Ohio Utah State pretty solid group they're a part of (yes i did the old miss thing on purpose because it used to make OMC so mad)

Yeah.... Schwarber likely won't be as plus a defender, i dont know wtf is going on in CF but if you have confidence in Almora/Happ that's your burden. Heyward is obviously washed. Rizzo is out of the prime phase. Zobrist is 45. Javy likely won't be a 5-WAR guy ever again. Bryant is an unknown. Contreras can't catch and lost the ability to hit. lester regressed, Hendricks seems like a guy who will just go to horsefeathers out of nowhere so youre kinda always waiting on other shoe to drop. quintana is trash. Darvish might have to pitch left handed. Hamels is probably a 4.50 era guy this year. Yeah should be great

lol "signals a breakout" is a pretty optimistic take on his almost unplayable 2018

We don’t have money for Harper are you crazy *goves $:1 million to Hamels and Britton*

it's crazy to me that in a span of like 4 years i went from - screw the players over in FA so ownership has more money to spend on other players and can pass savings on to fans to - screw the billionaire owners the players are the product, if revenue is that high the players deserve the money to - no one deserves to be rich and i dont care how many dongs someone hits you shouldn't pay anyone $40 million a year to do anything while people are starving and living in poverty im probably like 2 years from not watching sports anymore