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PTR may be responsible for most of it, but the front office quite explicitly said they left payroll on the table this year. well good for them! fortunately the $10-15m or whatever they didn't spend actually still exists, rather than being piled up and burned in a massive bonfire, so they now have the option of spending it in future years. I would not be so sure about that. That's generally not how businesses run themselves. That's true. But it was reported this spring that this was the first time that the Cubs have allowed their front office to roll over money from year to year, and the front office took advantage of that by not spending all their money this offseason.

That's dumb and by extension you're dumb, you dirty apologist. It's uncanny how the assessment of our chances in each year always goes down after the fact, when it makes things look better to retcon those chances. Okay, good talk. The first part was meant jokingly, of course. The second part is dead-on. Every year that's gone by, the state of the Oct. 2011 Cubs gets downgraded retroactively in order to justify what's happened since. Baseball is far too high-variance of a sport to pretend like Epstein couldn't have had the Cubs in position to have a chance by 2013, even if we stipulate 2012 was gone (which we really shouldn't, and weren't at the time). Every year, teams that projected to be in the middle of the pack before the season end up in the playoff hunt. Last year, one such team won the World Series. Epstein failed to give the Cubs that chance (and let's not pretend he didn't try. Edwin Jackson wasn't given $52m to be flipped). He just failed. When we were projecting the Cubs in October 2011, most people didn't expect the payroll to go down by 30-35 million a year. That's the key variable that changes everything. In 2011, the Cubs were a 71 win team. Their two position players who had above an .800 OPS were both 33 years old and free agents after the season. They had one starting young position player that was projected to take a leap. They had an elite reliever and an excellent starter in their prime, and another very good young starter coming off his first year. They had one other pitcher that had the potential to make a leap, and not very much impact talent beyond that coming from the minors. When they went into 2012, they had 72.6 million committed before arbitration for players like Garza and Soto. When they potentially had 50 million to spend after that, it would have been a very interesting free agency year. When that turned out to be 20-30 million and they still had to replace the key parts of the offense in Ramirez and Pena just to get back to where they were, that become much less so. There really wasn't a great path to relevance in 2012-2013. Not when you had a league average payroll where only mildly productive players are taking up close to 30% of it (Soriano and Marmol). Some young assets to balance them out but not enough, and not enough money anymore to spend their way out of trouble. If the Cubs payroll had kept growing slowly instead, the equation looks quite a bit different.

I was initially fully on Aiken's side, but the more I read suggests that the Astros weren't at fault here. Let's review the timeline. As the BP article suggests, the Astros select Aiken and Nix, and do so in a way that suggests that 1) they are very confident in signing them and 2) Marshall isn't given a high importance. They then announce verbal agreements with both that match up very well with that strategy. When Aiken goes into that MRI, in order for the Astros to be in the wrong they either had to be a) looking for something to use against him (which doesn't make sense with the clear strategy they were using and the relative unimportance they had shown Marshall), or 2) the doctor had to show this abnormality, declare it not a concern, and the team than hastily came up with this plan to play it up to try to gain leverage on talks that had already been completed rather amicably. It seems much more likely that the doctor brought it up because he thought it was a concern. I do think the Astros made a mistake here. The doctor should have known he was not with most of the medical community on this issue, and the Astros should have known that Aiken would not be happy once he confirmed this with other doctors. As the BP article demonstrates, they did underestimate Aiken's ability to bet on himself knowing that other teams would not be scared off by this issue and the PR problems they would get. If anybody's at fault, it's the MLB rules here. Not being able to get medical information beforehand combined with no ability to trade the selection gives teams very few options. The team is boxed into a corner and you then give them compensation, and it starts to seem to them like a way out of the situation which leads to things like this. I believe the doctor did have what he thinks is a legitimate concern here. Comparing this to the other similar case recently (the Saffold contract with the Oakland Raiders) it seems far more likely in that case that things were dirty than it does in this one.

I don't think Love even can sign an extension right now. He's only two years into his deal, and I think you have to be three years in to even have a chance of an extension. What he can do for security though is essentially opt in to his 4th year of his deal, which would give the team who trades for him at least two years.

Between 70 and 75 is usually what I've seen quoted lately. Of course, those are mostly based on average run scoring tables. Teams that run the majority of time in smart situations (with poor hitters due up, when they need 1 run, with runners on 1st and 2nd, etc.) can lower that break even percentage by another decent bit.

Not exactly what I was saying, but the Cavs have a lot to work from that has value if not a huge headliner(Waiters, Thompson, Bennett, a bunch of future firsts). In the worst case scenario you can certainly take your shot without Love this year and have him join in the fun next year, my point is that the Minnesota isn't going to get a player as valuable as Wiggins from anyone else, so having him be the sticking point doesn't mean as much(especially if there's smoke to the rumor that Love would be interested in an extension w/ LeBron in Cleveland). Minnesota thinks they can get Klay Thompson and Barnes out of a deal (and they may ultimately be right). The problem for Cleveland if even if Wiggins today is more valuable than Klay, if you don't include him the rest of their assets don't come anywhere close. Wiggins becomes the sticking point even if he's the most valuable player Minnesota could get because the dropoff is pretty big after that.

The next first round pick Brooklyn could have offered would have been the 2020 one because of the picks Boston has already.

This post of mine from last year details when top 5 hitters over the last several drafts (2005-2012) have made it to the majors: viewtopic.php?p=2964509#p2964509 The only players to make it up the year after they were drafted for more than 20 PA were Zimmerman and Zunino. The only other player to not spend at least some time in the minors two years after they drafted was Gordon. The normal timetable for somebody like Bryant would be somewhere between a September callup this year and a June callup next year. Gordon, Longoria, and Wieters are good examples of hitters who hit very well in the minors and yet none of them were up before the end of their first full professional season.

The fact that they signed McRoberts for the exact amount of money as the MLE and Granger for what looks like the BAE suggests that the Heat are not planning to go under the cap at all. That's the end of the Heat's free agency money except for minimum salary guys or of course trades.

I can wait an extra three weeks to keep him an extra year. Or we could pay to have him that extra year rather than potentially cost us games in a year where we can't afford to throw away our slim margin for competition. If he's any good at all, you just paid like $20m for 15 games of him. Nobody does that. If you think there's any chance of doing that, just bring him up now to get extra time to adjust. If they only keep him down until late April, he'll be a Super 2. The Cubs will have that extra year of team control, but they're just creating a 4th year of arbitration by delaying free agency a year. Is 4th year of arbitration money and 1st year of free agency money that big of difference? The money really changes if they kept him down close to half the season next year, but I doubt they'll do that.

Force Houston to match and spend the money; consolation prize if they don't. That would force the Bulls to amnesty Boozer and then tie up more than half of their cap space for three days while Houston decides. That might be worth it for a chance to get Parsons, but it's not without risk for the Bulls as well.

From a team perspective, that's too bad if they wouldn't be considered. That team is absolutely stacked in that scenario. They would be better than any of the Miami versions we've seen over the last four years. They would be extremely talented, fit very well, and be incredibly deep as well. Of course, I could see them passing because of ownership concerns. That team might end up being one of the more expensive ones in basketball history to keep together, and their owner sold draft picks in the past to save cash.

Potentially, we have a road of Belgium, Argentina, Netherlands, Germany/Brazil. That's as bad as it gets. Couldn't it be argued that Belgium would be the 2nd weakest group winner though? It seems like the four favorites have been separated nicely into each quadrant of the bracket. And the teams who are on the edge of that (France, Chile, Columbia) are all on the other side of the bracket. I'd put Belgium right behind those seven. Everybody who isn't one of those eight teams is going to have a really hard road if seeds hold since they're spread out so nicely.

Any offense the US can bring in? Germany scoring means little right now for the tiebreakers (unless they score multiple times). The US scoring once gets them way out of the danger zone even if Germany scores.

It's a weird loop hole that's entirely related to the fact that we only signed him to a 2 year deal on his first contract, so we didn't get full bird rights. And the provision allows you to match anyways even though you wouldn't technically have the cap space or exceptions to do so. I think there would probably be better solutions though, like allow a QO system on the third year of any rookie deal, allowing a team to get that third year and bird rights. Then again, perhaps the Bulls should have pushed harder for that third year on the first contract. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I'm talking specifically about how the cap hit counts one way for the signing team and another for the matching team. There's absolutely no reason to allow it to work like that. But agree, Bulls should have fought harder for a 3rd year. But all indications are that Asik really only wanted a 2 year deal so he could cash in on a larger payday sooner. How else would you structure it though? It's not fair to the Rockets to be forced to have 5/5/15 structure when they have cap space to sign him to a normal contract. The Bulls couldn't have a 8/8/8 structure without Bird rights. It's a strange rule, but it's one the league specifically put in to help the team potentially losing the player. It was designed to help players stay with teams, while before they had no chance of staying.

Portugal could get to 4 points with a win just like Ghana could, and so the goal differential tiebreaker has to be figured out with a Portugal win as well. It's just that most are focused on Ghana right now because Ghana's goal differential is only two behind the US while Portugal's is five behind.

From someone who is fairly inexperienced with soccer, I was wondering how much stoppage time would have been appropriate for the events of that 2nd half? IIRC, there were at least two injuries, two goals, four substitutions, and a card. Is that something that normally would get only 3-4 minutes?

538 has the US's chances moving up from 64 percent to 76 percent after the draw.

I would argue that 2004-2005 Detroit was legitimately good. Defending champions who took six or less games to win each of their playoff series before playing San Antonio. They only had 54 wins that regular season, but they had the effects of the Brawl to deal with as well, and of course that's the exact same number of games that Miami won this year. Miami was still probably better, but it's closer than it appears on first glance.

So he raves about The Cubs picks after the first 3 rounds, hates the Schwarber pick, but doesn't acknowledge that the two are related? My thoughts exactly. I don't think it's the fact that they went under slot that bothered him. It's that he didn't even have Schwarber rated as a good underslot player at 4. He had him as the 26th best player which would have been a slot value of 1.87 million, and Scwarber ended up signing for a slot value between the 8th and 9th selection.

Memphis's draft pick only comes to Cleveland next year if it's between 6-14. It could easily not be Cleveland's until 2017. Miami's pick isn't that valuable unless they break the team up this year, and Cleveland's own pick would get a lot worse if they acquired Love (plus Chicago can swap picks with Cleveland next year if Cleveland gets out of the lottery). Waiters and Thompson are assets with quite a bit of baggage. I don't think that package would interest Minnesota. There's no great asset there for them to hang their hat on. I could see a Cleveland deal with Love, but only involving the #1.

I don't see how the logistics work out for a Carmelo/Love pairing. Rose at 18.86 million Noah at 12.2 million Love at 15.72 milllion If you put Carmelo at 20 million (which would already be a small discount) that is already 66.78 million for the four of them, which is over the cap. Even if Carmelo signs for a little less than that, even roster charges for minimum salary players will knock that up about 4 million more so you would need Carmelo to sign for around 12-13 million to make it work (and that's assuming you completely gut the rest of the team). So it doesn't look like you can do the Love trade first and then sign Carmelo. If the Bulls do it the other way by signing Carmelo first, the Bulls have to somehow open enough room for Carmelo while leaving salaries that can match with Love. The combination of cap holds and players the Bulls already signed seem to make that scenario impossible. I don't see any way to make the numbers work out (once again dependent on what Carmelo wants, but he would have to sign for a pretty low salary to make it work out).

and there he goes Wayne, Hilton, Rogers, Moncrief - good mix of veterans, speed and upside. And Hakeem Nicks. Surprised that the Colts took a reveiver with their other needs, although they probably will need one after next year. It makes me wonder how high they had Moncrief on their board and if they decided they just couldn't pass on him anymore.

Hendricks is going to be an interesting case. Most people like him fall apart in the higher levels, but he hasn't at all. He has a 3.07 ERA or better at every level His K/BB ratio is 3.68 or better at every level His HR rate at 3 of the 4 levels is 0.2 or lower (0.7 at high A) His highest H/9 at any level is 8.5 Are there really many good comps for this? Not very good stuff, dominates statistically at every level he's at. The Cubs should give him a long look IMO.

Yup. When you combine his struggles recently with the Hawks tactics (pack the paint on defense, spread the floor wildly on offense) there's no reason for him to be on the floor. Many Pacer fans just want him benched entirely for game 7. If (a big if) the Pacers make it past the Hawks, Hibbert becomes much more important in the next series, but in this series he's a detriment.