jersey cubs fan

When I read the tweet that’s exactly what I thought too, I think Prior had the same thing.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nl-central-preview-who-will-play-spoiler-to-the-brewers/ More about the fact that they didn’t lose any quality free agents, they were already gone.

Not the first Pollock on the south side

I can't get over the decision to keep Nagy and Pace following 2020. It was so obvious at that time that it needed to be done, setting up Pace and Nagy to go for it one more time almost literally against all odds (hardest schedule, no QB, aging roster, OL problems, lack of weapons). Drafting Fields made no sense with those guys doing what they were doing. I'll stop here, cuz this is a bad cycle I get into! Sounds familiar. The stars never align. At some point something has to happen to improve the team in spite of the conditions not being right. Because there's always going to be something that makes our situation less than ideal. Every team that isn't successful can look back and talk about stars not aligning and conditions not being right, until they are. The Rams had their coach and defense but not the QB they needed, until they got it. The Bengals and Bills had nothing but a series of failure and disappointment until they got their QB. The Cowboys seemingly go into every season with an elite something, but haven't come close to putting it all together. It's not about timing and conditions. It's just getting the job done.

I don't get why people are so excited about this. Why would anybody want more umpire involvement? They signal safe or out and we all understand what's going on. I don't need to hear some Hochuli wannabe overexplaining the simplest sport there is.

suzuki dong

I suppose it's possible. Nagy said all the right things about Trubisky to get the job but then turned into a complete douche toward him. Would really make me question everything about Poles and Eberflus as talent evaluators. Trying to picture how this would play out. 2022 disaster season, everybody raises questions about Fields and team positions themselves to draft a QB in 2023. This is a very unproven coaching staff though, and a bad start to 2023 is going to put a lot of them on shaky ground. Maybe Eberflus survives, but Getsy would quickly be on the hot seat. They are going to have a tough time recruiting quality OCs to replace him, so they pretty much have to hit on that 2023 QB from the outset, and odds are they won't be able to. Purposefully taking a dive with Fields is just a disaster waiting to happen for all these guys. Nagy took the job with a thin resume, and he wasn't exactly in heavy demand. Poles was supposedly a hot commodity. I can't imagine a situation where you take the job where you have a QB perceived by ownership and the fan base as a stud, and would then feel confident destroying any chance of him succeeding all so you can take a guy in a couple years. A 3-13 debut followed up by another sub .500 record with the next QB, after giving away Fields for pennies on the dollar is going to cause an uproar. However confident you are in the leash ownership has given you, you have to know that Emery/Trestman went down in a ball of fire after just 2 years, and only one of them was sub .500. Pace was given time to rebuild from that mess, but Nagy was fired after his first sub .500 season. The Bears are desperate for longterm stability, but they do not hesitate from cutting bait if things are bad. They've be much better off doing the best they can with Fields, getting the most out of him, and then if that fails, you try again with your guy in 2025.

I can't differentiate between half those names so I don't have a preference, but why is that too many? Aren't they expanding rosters to 28? 14 pitchers is more than enough. If your entire position player identity is about versatility over ability you might as well use 14.

I'm not that down on the guy. I think they are being reckless with how they are treating their quarterback, but they've got a long way to go before assuming this guy is as bad as Nagy was. If Fields wasn't on the team, I'd be completely fine with what they have/haven't done. If this was completely about repositioning for 2024 then fine. But it's not.

Did you mean to link something? Definitely did mean to lol I don't understanding how this is supposed to be helpful to Bears fans. Beane was brought in to a team that was effectively run by the head coach who was hired months before him, coming on board after the draft. They played and were above .500 the first year with a team put together before Beane got involved. They then drafted their quarterback of the future the following season and had the luxury of not really needing to see anything about of him in year 1. Poles took over this team from day 1 this offseason with the QB already in place. And contrary to that thread, they don't have 4 years to make a couple runs without having to pay Fields. They have to decide on the 5th year option after year 3, and the longer you wait to sign them to a real extension, the more prohibitively expensive it will be. You can't put Fields in a position to get destroyed with no weapons (people keep giving examples of QBs who succeeded with poor offensive lines, but those examples all had pro bowl caliber skill players and many all pros) while expecting him to take the huge year 2 leap (Eberflus's words). They don't have the luxury of blowing off Fields in 2022. And as others have pointed out, if all you do is save your cap space for a rainy day you will get caught overspending once that day comes. The fact that the Bills managed to draft and develop what may be the best QB in the league says nothing about the Bears ability to take advantage of Fields' abilities.

The 3rd wave of free agency is done and they have nothing. Being explicit about not trying to acquire any players for your completely alone on an island 2nd year QB does not make it a good plan.

because they haven't acquired any good players.

look on the bright side, this indicates Poles has good taste in free agents and values them appropriately on the other hand this roster is hot garbage and the odds that Fields survives year 2 as a Bear are dangerously close to coming off the board.

How about a capable offensive starter somewhere?

http://i.imgur.com/u6bvHEU.gif

Bates still seems like a swing IOL guy at best. Think they need a solid swing T and then maybe a cut candidate at G before the draft. That would allow them to focus on one big OL draft pick, but with position versatility Jenkins, Whitehair, Patrick, Bates, Please tell me there's a RT named Mann available in the draft

makes sense for a moment til you reason that instead of Schwarber Darvish Bryant doing nice things sometimes, you just have a couple new guys to provide a few compelling moments on a kinda dog horsefeathers team in actuality you get to May and you're sick to death watching Andrelton Simmons pop out so you steadily tune out for the remainder of it i steadily tuned out the last 2-3 years too though with all those guys doing good stuff occasionally. The death row beat is a more enjoyable and uplifting experience than following the cubs.

NSBB has a minor league forum? viewforum.php?f=2

Are people saying dreaming on the farm system is pointless or pointing out that it is pathetic that we're back to this so soon? Over half the Ricketts' ownership era has been about dreaming on the farm system.

You're projecting everything to go right to get to what 85 wins at most. My brain is struggling to compute that you think they will likely suck but have talent. Even the perennial dwellers have talent just not enough, including the Cubs I’m not arguing they will be good, they probably are a 70 something win team. But things could break right and your premise that there’s absolutely no MLB talent is wrong. Especially on the pitching side. It's a major league baseball team, of course there is a talent. Jim Hendry's teams had talent too. Your collection of talent is measured against other talented major league teams and the other teams have a lot more talent than the Cubs. Pointing out a professional sports organization has talented personnel is pointless.

I have to admit I'm pretty downtrodden about this team from ownership to the state of the farm but it would take something like we seen in 2001 but there's no Sosa or Lieber as far as a sub-par talented team pretending to contend. You're disillusioned about the state of the farm? Is it not a very deep farm with very few high end pieces? This isn't some top 5 system or anything, and if you are a rich team that sucks you better have a high end farm system. Maybe disillusioned is a strong word, but when you have to hang your hat on the farm part of your organization, it should be better that what the Cubs have.

I don't blame you for feeling this way but there's a lot of interesting storylines to this season despite a likelihood of being a little worse than mediocre. 1. Is Suzuki actually a superstar? 2. Brennen Davis call up watch. 3. Is 2021 Schwindel a thing? What if he is? 4. To a lesser extent, same thing but Wisdom. 5. How good is Nick Madrigal? If he can sustain last year he's a valuable piece. 6. Killian call up watch. 7. Not about the big league squad but I'm really excited to see how all these prospects on the precipice of top 100 status do. 8. Nelson Velazquez watch. Maybe a thing? 9. Stroman doing his thing. I'm as disgusted as anybody with this payroll BS and the fact that they passed on a really good player at one of the biggest positions of need in the lineup, but there is a lot I'm looking forward to seeing this year. None of those strikethrough notes are uniquely interesting storylines a Cubs fan should care about. They are mundane things all teams have every year, completely interchangeable storylines. The others aren't particularly relevant to watching the Cubs over the course of a regular season. It's a completely boring team with a couple interesting names that may or may not be a part of the team the next time this team is worth paying attention to.

Payroll in the Ricketts era pre-Theo was 3rd, 4th, and 6th. Incompetence is not tanking. c'mon that was grandfathered in, their total spend in the 10-11 offseason was less than $28M If you intentionally keep Jim Hendry employed at GM, you be tanking.

I love tacos because they taste good and would also love rotten eggs if they tasted like tacos.