Backtobanks

While Theo takes his time to analyze everything, 4 days ago he probably could have traded Garza and Marshall to the Reds for Boxberger, Grandal, Wood, and Alonso.

If this is the first of "trading off our assets", I guess we can assume Fielder won't be a Cub. Starting to feel like the Cubs of the 1950s when the only drama was whether they could escape the cellar.

The Yankees always had Marshall on their radar. I guess it's too late to speculate what we might get from them.

I find this kind of thinking insane. Expensive free agents are expensive because they are really good and help teams win games. As a big market team, the Cubs can afford them and should employ them. There is no reason for this rebuiliding to be some multi-year task where we are forced to live with the garbage that is currently on the roster just because some people get off on the supposed purity of building solely from within. Signing good expensive free agents does nothing to prevent you from building up a farm system. Throwing away seasons is inexcusable. Where did he mention throwing away seasons? Why are you so hell bent that management is throwing away 2012 because we haven't signed a big name? Look at the roster as it stands now (without signing a big FA) and tell me management isn't throwing away 2012. True, but that's largely because Hendry was a failed GM for a decade before this season. Theo is not. I do not like what they have done (or failed to do) so far, but I do believe he can still turn this into a winning organization. There's no doubt Theo can turn this into a winning organization, but the question is when will it happen. If he's going to take 3 more years, then let me be the first to say Theo is a failure. Hendry wasn't the best GM, but he did get 3 postseason appearances and might have had more without tons of injuries.

I'm amazed at the number of people that are still caught up in the Theo hype. Quit blaming Ricketts, Wrigley field, or whatever. There's money to be spent and Ricketts turned all baseball decisions over to Theo. The buck stops on Theo's desk. It's starting to look like he's already working on getting his new contract because he's going to be close to a decent team when it's ready to be renewed. So far the 2012 Cubs look to be a 70 win team with the Cards and Brewers losing their power bats. So we trade all of our tradable assets this year for prospects and push our next winning back for 2 more years (assuming that all our our prospects become stars which isn't likely). For all of you that don't want to overpay for some overpriced FA, just realize that Theo is going to have to make Soriano-type contract offers to FAs next year. My expectations of Theo were that he would field a decent team in 2012 followed by a consistent contender in 2013 and beyond. There would be 1000 pages ripping Hendry if he did this little by now.

Well it looks like we're not going to add any stars this offseason which means we have to add 4 next offseason in addition to filling the new holes we will have by then.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-your-morning-phil-yankees-cespedes-hamilton-20111220,0,5791888.story So we now know that Theo's plan is to suck for 2 more years and then be a factor in the NL Central race. I suppose we can look forward to a WS Championship by 2025.

So your goal is trying to win in 2020 (maybe)?

For a small market team rebuilding for 2015 it would be a successful offseason. I expect the Cubs to contend by 2013 which means you had better sign/trade for a few impact players this offseason. Don't forget that there are plenty of minor league top 40 prospects who don't make it in the ML.

From MLBTR (The Newberg Report): And here’s the bigger point: Texas could trade Matt Harrison, Ramirez, Moreland, Leonys Martin, and Jordan Akins to the Cubs for Garza and Sean Marshall and survive it both at the big league level and on the farm.

I don't know some of these prospects from other teams as well as some of you, but trading Garza ought to get us a few prospects without questions being raised about them.

Can't blame him with St. Louis and Milwaukee getting weaker. And quite possibly the Cubs. I'm sure Jocketty is afraid of our 70 win juggernaut. Didn't Latos have decreased velocity last year after having a big innings jump in 2009? Overall, he seems like a perfect candidate to get Dusty'd. With the Brewers, Cards, and Cubs (possibly) all weaker and the Pirates and Astros playing as usual, the Reds should have an easy time in the NL Central. That's why I'm hoping our FO hasn't kissed off 2012 while looking long term. The Reds are good, but they still have Dusty.

Can't blame him with St. Louis and Milwaukee getting weaker. And quite possibly the Cubs.

Alonso can't be any worse than Blanks in LF. I think they move Guzman and Blanks and keep Alonso, though flipping Alonso might be beneficial while his perceived value is high I don't know how bad Blanks is in LF, but Alonso is terrible in the OF.

Actually it's pretty easy to predict 2012 for the Cubs, especially if they don't sign a FA or 2 or make a pretty big trade pretty soon.

It's fine that we are going to be kept in the dark as long as there will be some desired players appearing out of nowhere, but you must admit he must keep his plans pretty secret because the speculation is that the Cubs are headed for a terrible season.

The problem is, if we make no attempt to improve the team substantially this year and just sign pointless filler, it makes it much, much harder to put anything more than a mediocre team on the field for 2013. Sure, multiple elite pitchers set to hit the market next year actually could and we might be able to sign two of them, and we might be able to find a better than mediocre first base option next offseason, and might be able to acquire said player at a reasonable cost, but all of that happening just right is really slim. Thus, if we put off making the team noticeably better this year, we delay the point in time that we actually become a good team again by at least a season and maybe more if things don't break just right for us in FA/trades. That could be Theo/Hoyer's plan, but I would hope they were smarter than that. I've been posting about the "dumpster diving" approach of Theo and Jed, but everybody has been so enamored by the brillance of Theo that nobody is listening. I had high expectations for the new FO to build a winner in a reasonable amount of time. If they're looking for 2015, then they are failures in my book. My expectations were a solid season in 2012 (especially with Pujols and possibly Fielder out of the division) and a consistent contender starting in 2013.

And that would be... Somebody needs to tell Jed that there's money to spend.

Let me get this straight: Ricketts buys a valuable piece of property and Theo buys a mansion while Jed is looking at Varitek, Wakefield, Barton, Scott, etc. Something is wrong with this picture.

yep

I feel really old, but unfortunately it has nothing to do with Angel Guzman turning 30. :lol:

He did show a lot of potential for the little bit of pitching we got out of him between injuries.

Theo just cancelled the Jeff Stevens for Bryce Harper trade out of respect for your opinion. :lol:

You will notice that Alonzo has been the target of many of my trade proposals. I think he's a younger (and thinner) Fielder. A top ten prospect instead of Heisey would be fine, but I agree with TT that Leake isn't a front end starter but a solid rotation guy for many years. Instead of prospects (from other rumors about a Garza trade), we would be getting at least 2 young players that could help starting next year. Of course, the only down side is that Garza would be in our division.

Garza to the Reds for Alonzo, Leake, and Heisey.