ctcf

I'd expect him to have more power than Kruk, though. Kinda surprising the most HR he had in a year was 21.

John Kruk? Do you not know who he is?

Baez is batting .403 so far in August.

He got it on a 3-1 count, too.

christ on a cracker

holy [expletive]

Villaneuva with his 10th double in August. His power has been a lot better than I expected it to be this year.

Far more disappointed about Lim. Hope it's not serious. Seriously. I've been pretty pleased with the idea of a pen including Rosscup, Russel, Parker, Lim, Fujikawa, Strop and an addition or two.

This

YOU'RE SO RIGHT. I'd also feel so much better about theo world serious champion Epstein if this 70 win cubs team had a competent bullpen for no reason If this team had an average bullpen, we would have been buyers at the deadline. What would we have bought? Matt garza????? Scott Feldman!??? Who got moved that would have done any [expletive] good at all and at what cost? This is fantastic.

Has Arrieta looked as good as his numbers today?

I wouldn't be that hard on yourself, man.

You forgot Anibal Sanchez, Liriano & Puig. Heck, just replace Jackson with Sanchez, Baker with Liriano and Soler with Puig. There's less than $10M additional cash outlay, no additional impact from a prospect/organization perspective and the team is significantly better. Add a competent bullpen and that team is very, very competitive. Sanchez is a weird case, though. They seemed like they were pretty damn close and, given the money, Sanchez just wanted to stick with Detroit and have an immediate shot at a WS. As for Puig, who the hell knows there? It seemed like the Dodgers were the only team that were really that high on the guy. The initial reports on him were definitely mixed at best. Liriano, I try not to think about because I'd like to avoid crying myself to sleep.

But again, even with the budgetary restraints out of the picture, it wouldn't have been easy to make a sustainable, quality team. Just look at some of the "impact" FA's of the last few years: Albert Pujols: Signed essentially for the rest of our combined lives, put up a .767 OPS this year and is already seemingly heading into injury and decline. Josh Hamilton: Drug/alcohol addled injury prone OF, signed for 5/133 and has a .690 OPS this year. I'm sure that'll end well. Prince Fielder: Signed also for the rest of our lives, many here were opposed due to his body (I wasn't and now feel dumb). Probably the best performer out of the bunch and only out-OPSing Anthony Rizzo by .028 this year. CJ Wilson: Arguably a solid sign at 5/77. Has 2 WAR (or 2.8, going by FG) this year. Also seemed deadset on hanging out in SOCAL. Michael Bourn: JK, you guys BJ Upton: I tried to look at his stats but my eyes started crying blood. Yu Darvish: Probably the biggest missed opportunity, although I will only fault them so much for missing out in a bidding process, especially if Papa Joe is being a douche. Cespedes: Perhaps another missed opportunity, although there have been conflicting reports to just how close they were. Also, after being absolutely amazeballs last year, he has a lower OPS than Soriano this season. I just don't see how spending tons of money on guys like those (with the exception of Yu and maybe Yoennis) would have helped build a long term successful team.

They've done that with the system, and its awesome, but now its time to get the wheels in motion. Ticket prices are up, attendance is down, it's time to compete. I'm tired of the excuses. This needs to be a much more competitive team next year. It should be, but we as fans need to see it. And also, it's not our job to present detailed plans. It's theirs. As others have said, add a piece like Ellsbury/Choo, add another pitcher, overhaul the bullpen (as kyle has mentioned, this might not be that hard, especially with the internal options we have that haven't even hit the bigs yet), and go from there. But they need to do it. Not even asking for a detailed plan. There's also only so much they could do. They didn't have a lot of valuable assets to work with at the time, so it's not like they could have gone out and pulled a Blue Jays/Marlins type deal. The free agent market has been, to put it mildly, [expletive] the last few seasons. I don't really see how they could have drastically improved the team these last few years through throwing money around. I'll absolutely be upset if they cry poor this off-season and don't go out and sign anyone, but as of right now, through this season, I don't see how they could have produced a winner given the resources and restrictions they inherited. OK. I think we're after different things here. I dont have a problem with the process up to now. I will have a problem if they punt on 2014 and turn their gaze to contending in 2015. Ah, OK. That I think is pretty fair. Granted I'd still note that even though this year's FA crop is a bit better, there's also only going to be so much they can do. It's [expletive] like when Jersey sits there saying they did a poor job because they didn't make the wasteland that was the team they inherited more competitive in three years that just strikes me as short-sided and stupid.

They've done that with the system, and its awesome, but now its time to get the wheels in motion. Ticket prices are up, attendance is down, it's time to compete. I'm tired of the excuses. This needs to be a much more competitive team next year. It should be, but we as fans need to see it. And also, it's not our job to present detailed plans. It's theirs. As others have said, add a piece like Ellsbury/Choo, add another pitcher, overhaul the bullpen (as kyle has mentioned, this might not be that hard, especially with the internal options we have that haven't even hit the bigs yet), and go from there. But they need to do it. Not even asking for a detailed plan. There's also only so much they could do. They didn't have a lot of valuable assets to work with at the time, so it's not like they could have gone out and pulled a Blue Jays/Marlins type deal. The free agent market has been, to put it mildly, shitty the last few seasons. I don't really see how they could have drastically improved the team these last few years through throwing money around. I'll absolutely be upset if they cry poor this off-season and don't go out and sign anyone, but as of right now, through this season, I don't see how they could have produced a winner given the resources and restrictions they inherited.

Seriously I'd love to hear the list of free agents the last two years that would have radically improved this team.

If you pour all your efforts into that farm system while most other teams are actually trying to keep fans interested in their big league team it is not at all hard to make that system good. Again, what would you have done differently?

You guys keep pounding sand about how they're restricted or being cheap and essentially not doing a very good job, and yet when you continually fail to present a plan for how they could have done a better job (seeing as they have, in less than two full seasons, brought a bottom third farm system into one of the top 3 in the majors), it's really kinda hard to take your complaints that seriously.

It might be, but that would have to only be by choice. Because it could open next year if they wanted to try and open it. How do you think they should do that? Actually try this year and stop crying poor. Do stuff along the lines of what was said above. No, I mean specifics. It's easy to pound your fist with "they aren't even trying!" rhetoric, that doesn't make it true. Exactly. I think they could be competitive next year, especially if they can swing another solid short term pitcher like they have the last two years and a Choo/Elsbury type, but there's also just not going to be that much out there worth signing. I could even see them taking a shot at Cruz if he could be had for an affordable price. That said, it also wouldn't really make any sense to try and sign an infielder this year either as they have such ridiculous amounts of premium talent about to come up for those positions. It's not unreasonable to think that, assuming they're still Cubs, Baez, Bryant, Alcantara, and one of Almora/Soler could be up in 2015, not to mention a Johnson/Edwards/Vizcaino

I still view 2015 as the opening of their window for competing for/in the playoffs.

I don't know if this was talked about earlier, but the Jesse Rogers article about how Bryant should be the starting 3B on opening day next season is pretty embarrassing. He seems like a nice dude, but man he doesn't seem to know much about baseball yet.

This is just getting ridiculous. Vogelbach is also 1-2 with a BB.

hahahaha these are strange new times. Seriously though, this has to be a better system now than the early 2000's

So with that, Vogelbach finishes his first game at Daytona 2-3 with a HR and K. Not bad, kid. Rivero went 1.1 with 1 H and 1 K.