Backtobanks

The overwhelming majority of players for the Cubs over the decades love to play here. Nobody wants to leave - low expectations, great fans, big market opportunities to make extra money, etc.

Why would anyone give anything of significant value for Jackson at this point? Jackson might interest another team as part of a package deal.

From MLBTR: The Rockies will entertain trade possibilities for multiple position players, including Dexter Fowler and Michael Cuddyer, opposing executives and scouts tell Troy E. Renck of The Denver Post. How about a deal centered around Garza for Fowler + Matzek. That would open up the possibility of trading Brett Jackson in a package for another pitcher.

And then trade Garza, Shields, and Sanchez at the deadline to get more prospects and start all over again. :lol:

"Putting the best product on the field." :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I don't know defensively, but someone finally convinced him to go to a lighter bat this year.

Williams has some compromising photos of Reinsdorf hidden someplace.

That may kill our chances for the playoffs. :lol:

Except he's at least going to be used as a starter. Unfortunately our rotation is 60% is "revolving door of middle relievers ".

Just don't let Marmol listen in on the negotiations. :yahoo:

30 years? I guess you're counting his college days. Oh, so it's his managing 1 year of rookie ball and 1 year of low-A ball that you keep referring to when celebrating his illustrious coaching career. No he coached college ball, but I assumed Davell was talking about their accomplishments in the ML.

30 years? I guess you're counting his college days.

Apparently smarter than the owner that hired him. The owner fell for a guy that talked about sports (like posters) as opposed to someone who actually had experience in coaching, scouting, managing, and player development.

Yeah the reality is that we're posting on message boards and he's had a long-time career on many levels of baseball, but in you go ahead and keep believing that you're smarter than he is and he's just been lucky all of his life. So you think that Jim Hendry is definitely smarter than everyone else in the world because he's had that career? Or at least smarter than everyone posting on message boards and not working in baseball? He made some awful decisions, and a lot went wrong for him, but the fact is that there are 30 MLB GM jobs, and a ton of guys that would love to take them, and I'm not just talking about message board posters and radio callers here. Anyone who managed to hold down one of the the most sought after jobs in sports for as long as Hendry did suggests that he was clearly doing a lot of things right, though we might not know just what. AMEN to that.

Yeah the reality is that we're posting on message boards and he's had a long-time career on many levels of baseball, but in you go ahead and keep believing that you're smarter than he is and he's just been lucky all of his life. At least I understand that this message board is for entertainment purposes. It's a shame that you really believe that the fact that you post every 30 seconds somehow makes you smarter than the rest of the world.

Yeah it's great that all of us smart people can post on message boards while the not-so-smart can be special assistant to the GM of the most successful franchise in the history of team sports. Ah, the ever so solid "if they have the job, they must be better at it than the rest of the entire world" argument... made even stronger by the boys club hiring that goes on in professional sports. Well Hendry has had a job in baseball as a coach, scout, general manager, and special assistant to a general manager all of his adult life which puts him a few steps ahead of posters on a message board.

I never said that Theo wasn't a good hire. As for my bitching, I read post after post about Hendry from others before I respond. I don't have a problem about spending big now, but as I mentioned before Cespedes was there for the taking and Darvish was a possibility instead of sitting on the money. I accepted the complete dismantling for 2012, but I think completely tanking 2013 makes a turnaround difficult for 2014. In the end, none of us have any other choice but to hope that Theo's plan works. I'm just not as confident or patient as some of you probably because I've waited longer than most of you.

Yeah it's great that all of us smart people can post on message boards while the not-so-smart can be special assistant to the GM of the most successful franchise in the history of team sports.

I agree that Theo's track record has earned him complete control. Hendry did not have the same ability as Theo because he didn't inherit a consistent 89 win team. Theo's track record has no experience at taking a bad team and making them contenders. Theo's track record has no experience at selling off all assets and starting from scratch. As I've posted before, Theo will improve the system over the long haul, but I think the timeline is going to be much longer than anticipated. Two years of 90-105 losses isn't going to magically turn around without signing multiple FAs to fill all of the holes. As for jumping back into FA, yes starting with Cespedes and Darvish who are both young enough to plan for the future.

Wait. That's not fair. Perhaps the owners of the Cubs pushed Jimbo into signing the same contracts that Theo did. And what path did Theo put into place? He already had his core before he took over. It IS fair, because I won't even deny that Hendry may have had pressure to do those contracts. But he blamed Theo, therefore blaming Jimbo is fair game too. Theo's path was always build thru the system and add when it made sense to do so. Same thing he's starting out here doing. I listed reasons as to why Hendry was NOT a good GM and never did mention FA contracts. It's impossible for some of you to admit that Theo has any faults. Theo's record is that he took a team that averaged 89 wins per season for 5 years and turned it into a team that averaged 93 wins per season for the next 9 years. That is very impressive and he did it by drafting and developing young players and spending a ton of money on contracts. He now has complete autonomy to do and spend whatever he wants - something Hendry never had. I think he will improve the system and develop some young players, but if the Cubs win the WS it will be with a payroll that would make Hendry blush. The CBA and starting with 100 losses for a year or two will eventually make him get back into buying a winner. Are you saying Hendry never had complete autonomy on his decisions? It's hilarious you say others can't admit Theo has faults when you've decided Hendry can't be blamed for problems during his tenure. If you have read my posts you will see that I admitted that Hendry had faults and it was time to move on. Now that Theo has purged the organization of anything having to do with Hendry, I wonder how long it will take some posters to move on. Hendry never had complete autonomy like Theo has now. I'm still waiting for the Koolaide drinkers to admit that Theo has any faults or has ever made a mistake.

I always get accused of bringing Hendry's name into these discussions and being a Hendry apologist, but many of you can't seem to discuss anything without bringing up Hendry As I've pointed out many times before that the situation was completely different because ownership gave Hendry the money and told him to buy a winning team. Theo has been given complete autonomy to spend money or cut payroll as he pleases. As for bloated contracts on a underperforming team, you might look at $262 million in contracts that the Red Sox are sending to the Dodgers and guess who negotiated those deals. BOY GENIUS!!!!!!!!! And you know what? That's not even a given. Lucchino wanted to compete so badly, they veered off the path Theo had put into place previously. Theo surely had something to do with signing those guys, but where he's learned and isn't making the same mistake twice, good ole Jimbo wouldn't have a single issue with giving Pujols 250 mill and probably a big name pitcher as well and we'd be right back to being a longterm 75 win team that needed a lot to go right to even sniff the playoffs. Wait. That's not fair. Perhaps the owners of the Cubs pushed Jimbo into signing the same contracts that Theo did. And what path did Theo put into place? He already had his core before he took over. It IS fair, because I won't even deny that Hendry may have had pressure to do those contracts. But he blamed Theo, therefore blaming Jimbo is fair game too. Theo's path was always build thru the system and add when it made sense to do so. Same thing he's starting out here doing. I listed reasons as to why Hendry was NOT a good GM and never did mention FA contracts. It's impossible for some of you to admit that Theo has any faults. Theo's record is that he took a team that averaged 89 wins per season for 5 years and turned it into a team that averaged 93 wins per season for the next 9 years. That is very impressive and he did it by drafting and developing young players and spending a ton of money on contracts. He now has complete autonomy to do and spend whatever he wants - something Hendry never had. I think he will improve the system and develop some young players, but if the Cubs win the WS it will be with a payroll that would make Hendry blush. The CBA and starting with 100 losses for a year or two will eventually make him get back into buying a winner.

That or when the Trib/Zell finally allowed him (or even forced him) to spend money there weren't great options on the market for the long term deals. It's been put out there that the trib was more behind signing Soriano than Hendry, or at least forced him to add some years/$$. In no way am I a Hendry apologist but I think part of the awful contracts was him being forced to spend money by ownership. I always get accused of bringing Hendry's name into these discussions and being a Hendry apologist, but many of you can't seem to discuss anything without bringing up Hendry As I've pointed out many times before that the situation was completely different because ownership gave Hendry the money and told him to buy a winning team. Theo has been given complete autonomy to spend money or cut payroll as he pleases. As for bloated contracts on a underperforming team, you might look at $262 million in contracts that the Red Sox are sending to the Dodgers and guess who negotiated those deals.

Even though the Cubs are probably going to lose 100 games this year, I bet Theo is glad he got out when he did. That's an even bigger mess than the one he took on in Chicago. It will be interesting to see which team becomes competitive first, though Theo has a 1-year head start.

like this? http://espn.go.com/mlb/freeagents/_/type/dollars Let's try some trivia to test some assumptions. If we were picking out the ideal FA target, I think most would agree that the player would still be in their prime, and would sign a multi-year deal to give the team some control, but wouldn't sign for an insane length to hamper future flexibility. So here's a question, in the last 6 years, how many free agents under the age of 30 have signed multi-year contracts? How many when you exclude international signings? None because most players don't get to free agency until they're 29 or 30 years old unless they're international signings.

Who is saying that? I firmly in the "add if it helps but doesn't hinder the long term product" camp. In that mindset, adding Darvish/Cespedes would have made sense, but Pujols/Fielder would not have. At all. And I think the evidence indicates that Theo and Jed made legitimate plays for the former pair. I'd like to see more wins as much as anyone, but I'm not going to delude myself into the belief that with a few sensible additions the Cubs could have been good this year or next. You can say that comparing WAR and the like to gauge how many wins the team might or might not have had is silly, but it is at least grounded in some logic. WAR does provide some idea. Adding a couple superstar players isn't going to have a magical transformative effect. This isn't the NBA. In order to have fielded a team that was at all competitive, we'd have had to keep guys like Marshall, Cashner (given the state of the bullpen going into the season) and Ramirez, on top of adding 2-3 top tier FAs. You can go on all day about how the team could have been decent and the same system gains could have been made at the same time, but it doesn't make it true. Everything that I have read makes it sound like Cespedes wanted to play for the Cubs and the FO refused to shorten the deal. The bidding process on Darvish was expected to be in the $48-$51 million range and speculation is that the FO bid under $20 million. So how are those "legitimate plays"?