Backtobanks

The Cubs are, in reality, a financial asset. Like stock in a company or a piece of real estate. The Cubs are a company and Wrigley Field is the store where they sell the product. You can purchase it live, on TV, the internet or the radio. We use sabermetrics to determine wins over replacement. What this measures is the performance of one player relative to other players at his position, correct? How is that different than the market share of a product? The performance of a team is determined by the market share of it's mix of 25 products. One way to maximize value is to have inexpensive products that out perform the market which allows for increased investment in products which can dominate their product category. The Cubs are not like a piece of real estate because Ricketts has poured tons of money into real estate while cutting money from the Cubs.

Yes, wave after wave. Instead of sorting through other teams garbage, we will have our own. They will be cheaper and better. Mathis anyone? We can sort through our own garbage instead of other teams garbage? :lol:

Before you criticize "salary dumps", what do you think it's going to be if we go after Price, Stanton, etc.

Hell, there are kids still in HS that are as old as the Cubs" top prospects.

:yahoo: Can you make us a 5 team trade involving the rooftop owners, Seattle Slew, the where's the beef lady, a pack of 1988 Score Baseball cards, and a bottle of Yoohoo? It'd make more sense than your response to this, I guess you're having a rough day. I'll explain Plaid suggested we bribe Tunney and Treymon commented that we don't have the money until we do revenue generating things first. I thought it was pretty funny.

:yahoo:

Right now it doesn't look like we should expect a "winning team" next year, so I don't think we can talk about a "turnaround for the major league team" just yet.

If you are looking at the numbers he's putting up as your criteria, Murphy and Lake are the only Cubs we need to worry about. :lol:

It's very possible that they hired bad coaches and then told them what they should be teaching.

Well their "organizational philosophy" includes hiring coaches that look like they've been detrimental to Castro, Rizzo, and Barney.

Wouldn't it make sense to front load the deal given the projected payroll for the next couple of years is relatively low? Why would that make sense? They don't have much space the next couple years, but do have theoretical space in 3-5 years. 17.5 is quite a bit of money for Choo when he's 34 years old and 35 years old. I was thinking of the 25+ million they might have to pay when they try to trade him after the 2015 season.

Maybe the FO ought to handle FO stuff and let the players, coaches, and manager handle handle the "on the field" stuff.

Wouldn't it make sense to front load the deal given the projected payroll for the next couple of years is relatively low? Why would that make sense? They don't have much space the next couple years, but do have theoretical space in 3-5 years. 17.5 is quite a bit of money for Choo when he's 34 years old and 35 years old.

As long as you use the qualifier "some" , you're safe.

Here's a short list of guys the Nationals should be trading for to keep other teams from getting them: Michael Bowden Kevin Gregg Blake Parker Carlos Villanueva Donnie Murphy Cody Ransom Logan Watkins Brian Bogusevic Cole Gillespie Darnell McDonald I have no doubt left out more than a few names. The problem is that the Cubs might resign them next year. :lol:

Well dejesus isnt a 12 win player. I doubt the FO is looking at 2014 as a year where they expect to win over 85 or so games. They're probably looking at 2014 as a nice step to average before hoping to take the leap into contention in 2015. That's looking like it could be a pretty huge leap. At some point they need to start adding players that they think can stick around and fill holes for the future. Bargain hunting and dumpster diving for another year and then expecting all the top prospects to hit their potential and acquiring (trades or FAs) stars in 2015 to turn into a 90 win team isn't very realistic.

that's quite a remarkable insight, where did you find this out? I'm speculating. Although Epstein has said specifically he didn't expect spending to be as cramped as it has been. So I can only assume that something that Ricketts thought was true when he was schmoozing Epstein turned out not to be true. I don't see any possible way how any reasonably intelligent businessman could assume he was going to get $300 million from a government entity during the heart of the financial crisis. Apparently the Wall Street Journal didn't get the memo that there was a financial crisis.

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.