Backtobanks

It's possible that it's a myth, but why are you sure of it? At the time the deal was announced there was mention of how Zell wanted the payments to be structured so as to avoid taxes. The deal with Zell has nothing to do with operation of the team. To my knowledge there was no mention of always having to operate at a profit. It's an unsustainable way to run a sports franchise that would require selling off of players at the end of the year if revenue dipped below expenses for any given year. It's a ratchet that only tightens and leaves way too much outside of the control of the owners. Now I could see them wanting to reset the franchise and invest in infrastructure in both talent as well as the physical plant (Dominican Academy, Wrigley, etc.) and thus take away from the big club, but it seems to me it's next to impossible to rebuild in every sense and no incur short term debt. What they are doing makes sense given the state of the franchise, even if I don't like it. I see no reason to invent some sort of hard rule for a conscious decision by the owners. I could be wrong, but the alternative requires the Ricketts to be fools. Why would they purchase the team and then handcuff themselves in such a way? I totally agree with you about it being a myth. I'm sure Ricketts has an army of lawyers, tax specialists, and other financial experts that examined every aspect of the deal before they signed on the bottom line. As you posted, this is one of the most profitable teams in baseball.

Epstein has said lots of things over the past two years (i.e. "building on dual fronts", "every season is sacred", etc.). Do you not see how these things (your response and what you responded to) go hand in hand? Look who you are talking to. "Hey, Bum, you know nacho cheese isn't magically created in a machine??" But that magic Koolaide is.

Epstein has said lots of things over the past two years (i.e. "building on dual fronts", "every season is sacred", etc.).

It's hard to feel sorry for a billionaire who wasn't smart enough to understand how much debt he was taking on while spending tons of money on other things. As for the empty seats, as soon as they put together a roster of players that are worth watching, the seats will be filled again. holy [expletive]. you can't even remember the original point you were trying to make. It's hard to feel sorry for a billionaire who wasn't smart enough to understand how much debt he was taking on while spending tons of money on other things. As for the empty seats, as soon as they put together a roster of players that are worth watching, the seats will be filled again. Who said anything about feeling sorry for anybody? The point is that Ricketts seems to have money for whatever he wants to buy and we should stop using money as an excuse as to why this team is so bad. Theo has said that he will spend money when the time is right, so apparently there is money available whenever he decides the time is right. Finally, Ricketts and Theo are considered very bright, so they both know (or should have known) exactly what they walked into. Hopefully their plan will work.

It's hard to feel sorry for a billionaire who wasn't smart enough to understand how much debt he was taking on while spending tons of money on other things. As for the empty seats, as soon as they put together a roster of players that are worth watching, the seats will be filled again.

What exactly did he "tear down"? Jim Hendry's bloated, 71-win colossus? And what else was he (or anyone else) supposed to do "without a lot of money" upon inheriting a [expletive] roster worth over $125 million? I think most in baseball would acknowledge that rebuilding a terribly run organization (from the minors on up) with limited resources is a difficult thing to do. I also think that given those initial conditions/constraints, most would recognize that Theo and Co. have managed to leverage what resources they had in an efficient manner. If Theo fails, then apparently he didn't manage to leverage what resources they had in an efficient manner. As for the myth about the money, check out what they've spent on real estate, renovations, international signings, etc. He (and Ricketts) have chosen to spend money elsewhere and sit on a lot of it for future players (hopefully). If the plan works - great, but if it fails it's going to be a disaster.

This doesn't make sense to me. Theo had a very successful pre-Cubs career. If Andy MacPhail can find post-Cubs work, surely Theo can. It's not like he's had a lot of past Cubs success to measure up to. Baseball loves to recycle the same guys over and over again. Theo wouldn't be out of baseball unless he wanted to be. If he fails here, it certainly would limit his possibilities. Teams that are rebuilding or have budgetary constraints might think twice about hiring him. No, they wouldn't. If he fails here while tearing down a team and rebuilding it from scratch without the freedom to spend a lot of money, it most certainly would make a lot of teams think twice. His salary is huge and his resume would show success by making a very good team better while spending a ton of money while failing to develop a winner from scratch with limited funds. I'm sure he would interest the large market teams with deep pockets, but not too many others.

This doesn't make sense to me. Theo had a very successful pre-Cubs career. If Andy MacPhail can find post-Cubs work, surely Theo can. It's not like he's had a lot of past Cubs success to measure up to. Baseball loves to recycle the same guys over and over again. Theo wouldn't be out of baseball unless he wanted to be. If he fails here, it certainly would limit his possibilities. Teams that are rebuilding or have budgetary constraints might think twice about hiring him.

From MLBTR: •The Twins and Red Sox might be in the best position to acquire Giancarlo Stanton this offseason if the Marlins make him available since both teams have the organizational depth to make a blockbuster deal. A few teams like the Rangers have inquired about Stanton and were consistently told he wasn’t available, but Miami would have to listen if someone offered a handful of top prospects. “The Red Sox might be in a better position than the Twins because the Twins have to rely on their top players to come up and man several positions,” said one baseball exec. “The Red Sox have veteran players so their need to keep their best guys isn’t as severe. So if they can trade them off for a young player like Stanton, they wouldn’t have to fear about thinning out as a result.”

Of course he said that. The Cubs said variations of the same sentiment before this season and the last one. That means they're going to compete for the 1st draft choice.

The Cubs do need a disproportionate number of their prospects to succeed because they have so many holes to fill. You mention spending and trades to supplement the core, but who are you going to trade if your prospects don't succeed? How much are you going to spend on FAs to fill more than one glaring hole in your lineup? I'm not criticizing or condoning Theo's plan, just stating that his whole plan is based on a high percentage of prospects being successful enough to contribute or being productive enough to attract other teams in trades.

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level. The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money. The signings and trades will come, probably soon. But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial. It's not immaterial if your ML team only needs to fill 1-2 holes as opposed to a team that has 5-6 holes to fill. The Cubs need a high percentage of their top prospects to make it, while it was a luxury for the Red Sox to have prospects make it. The FO has put all of their faith, time, and money into the ml system with the thought that it will pay off somewhere in the future. The Red Sox really did work on "dual fronts" by having a very good team and a strong farm system.

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level.

With the great improvement in the farm system, we had better hope that quite a few of them reach their expectation level. If 2 or 3 of our top 5 prospects don't pan out, we could be in serious trouble for quite awhile.

Why wouldn't you let the pitcher (after 112 pitches and behind 3-0) take that at bat? After all the next hitter is only your best hitter right now.

If you're asking me, I don't go by predictions (and projections). Obviously with names being floated in trade rumors and holes to fill in the offseason, I would imagine there will be some different names on the roster by the beginning of the season. Right, but the team is still mostly going to be the same. We're not talking about trades that are dismantling the team. And that first sentence should somehow be tattooed onto you. The team will mostly be the same, but we've heard rumors (not that they will happen) of Samardzija, Schierholtz, Dejesus, etc. After trading Garza, Feldman, and Soriano, trading two of the names I mentioned might be described as "dismantling the team".

If you're asking me, I don't go by predictions (and projections). Obviously with names being floated in trade rumors and holes to fill in the offseason, I would imagine there will be some different names on the roster by the beginning of the season.

This is simply incorrect. No matter what "actually counts," studying peripherals such as pythagorean wins is more predictive of the future. Projecting based off of that will be more accurate than projecting off of actual wins. You're missing the point. I'm not talking about predicting, I'm talking about results. If next year's team is predicted (or projected) to win 81 games and they win 74, they're not a .500 team and won't be in the playoff hunt. Again it's fun and interesting to see or talk about the predictions or projections, but the only discussion would involve why they underperformed compared to the predictions. Ummm the conversation is about projecting how many games this team might win next year you loon Maybe your conversation is about projecting how many games the Cubs will win next year, but I'm pointing out that the bottom line is what they actually win (in any year) is all that counts and to continually talk about a team's pythagorean record during a year doesn't mean much. After a cursory "the team is underperforming (or overperforming) compared to projections", what else is there to say? As for 2014, it's pretty hard to project when you don't even know who's going to be on the roster yet.

This is simply incorrect. No matter what "actually counts," studying peripherals such as pythagorean wins is more predictive of the future. Projecting based off of that will be more accurate than projecting off of actual wins. You're missing the point. I'm not talking about predicting, I'm talking about results. If next year's team is predicted (or projected) to win 81 games and they win 74, they're not a .500 team and won't be in the playoff hunt. Again it's fun and interesting to see or talk about the predictions or projections, but the only discussion would involve why they underperformed compared to the predictions.

Gonzalez is the White Sox guy. The Tribune always had the beat writers change teams at midseason, but this is pretty late in the season to switch.

Which team is more likely to have a good season is getting into projections rather than actual records. At this point in your scenario, both teams are actually 1-2. Obviously using the pythagorean method, the first team is more likely to have a better season. While you're playing fast and loose with statistics, small sample sizes, and projections, do you really think that team 2 will only win 9% of the games (their pythagorean win ratio) during the whole season? Of course not. Obviously in that tiny of a sample size, a million variables come into play. The margin of error is so high. Even after 162, there is still margin of error on both Pythagorean records and actual records. Neither records a team's talent level accurately, although obviously the margin is much smaller than the microscopic 3 game sample. I personally don't agree with throwing out either number when coming up with projections. The Pythagorean record is a very good allocation of the things that translate into wins (runs scored/runs allowed), but at the same time we don't know exactly why a team overperforms/underperforms it. A projection that ends up somewhere between the two records (before taking into account changes in the roster) would probably be the most reasonable approach IMO. Using actual records is a good starting point for a projection, but I don't know why that wouldn't be amended using the data we have that might suggest a team is better or worse than their record. To get back to the beginning of the discussion, I'm not sure why you would want to throw out the Cubs Pythagorean record when making a projection for next year. It's an important data point even though it definitely still has error in it. While it's fun and interesting to project and predict what might happen, the bottom line is that the actual W-L record is all that counts. If you're a 70 win team that projects to be a 78 win team, you still have to gain 11 actual wins, not 3, to be .500. With the CBA, money being tight, and more teams locking up young stars, it's making it much harder to gain 8-10 wins in a season.

Which team is more likely to have a good season is getting into projections rather than actual records. At this point in your scenario, both teams are actually 1-2. Obviously using the pythagorean method, the first team is more likely to have a better season. While you're playing fast and loose with statistics, small sample sizes, and projections, do you really think that team 2 will only win 9% of the games (their pythagorean win ratio) during the whole season?

This is kind of backwards. It's pretty good at telling you whether a team is overperforming or underperforming in terms of W/L... it's not all that effective on its own at telling you anything about what the weaknesses of your team are. The run differential compared to where your team ranks in runs scored and/or runs allowed would allow you to see which area (offense or pitching) needs improvement. or you could just look at how many runs they've scored and allowed Which kind of gets back to my initial point of looking at what's happening on the field instead of fantasy projections of what the team is doing.

This is kind of backwards. It's pretty good at telling you whether a team is overperforming or underperforming in terms of W/L... it's not all that effective on its own at telling you anything about what the weaknesses of your team are. The run differential compared to where your team ranks in runs scored and/or runs allowed would allow you to see which area (offense or pitching) needs improvement.

I don't know how valuable Barney would be on the bench. I would rather have a bench guy who could hit more than basically being a defensive replacement. Some team that is looking for a solid defensive IF might want him in a trade