jersey cubs fan

it's still on?

Florida Man

does everybody have the yips?

he giveth, and he giveth back

big wood dong

Having confidence in their ability to figure out a way to find pitching makes sense to me, but not being worried at all reeks of the similar overconfidence some people have in all the prospects.

Hey, WGN, there is not currently a man on second base. He was thrown out stealing. Lose the yellow dot.

sweaty fat man alert

sure, send Rizzo, why not?

veteran pitchers figured out how to not get traded from the cubs

I'm pretty sure all those losses and all those losing seasons were real and will remain in the record books. They are not just a figment of my imagination. It would be neat if they were, but also kind of scary. They're there, but they're over, It is July 25th and the Cubs have a .410 W%. Again, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

What does a bandwagon have to do with anything? There's instantly going to be no stink is my point. If the team is popular, winning, making money, etc., who is sniffing up this metaphorical stink? Damage to fan psyche? Again, this only matters in debates (like the one the past few pages) about how the FO's or ownership's tenure ultimately gets perceived, but why do we really care about that? Well, the point is you seem to be assuming that at the first sign of good times there is no risk and the wins will continue for a very long time. I think winning big early with a young team is a great sign that they will be able to win big for a number of years, but it is by far not a guarantee. It's entirely possible that we see big strides next year and an 82 win season, followed by back to back 90s, and then right back to 80. The stink of the past half decade will not have disappeared if that is the case.

I'm pretty sure all those losses and all those losing seasons were real and will remain in the record books. They are not just a figment of my imagination. It would be neat if they were, but also kind of scary.

What does a bandwagon have to do with anything?

Quotable Kyle

Being set-up to become awesome and being awesome are very different. It's going to take a hell of a lot of winning to wash the stink off regardless.

I didn't say they had to win 100 games for three straight years. But you absolutely have to consider the horrible job they have done in the first three years fielding a major league baseball team when all is said and done. This losing counts. If they win the next three years you can't claim they built a consistent winner when it took 3 years of excessive losing to get there. It will take a very long time of major success to justify what has happened to date. Maybe they do it. Maybe they don't.

1) If it makes you feel better to pretend they didn't take a dive, knock yourself out. 2) I already made the point that you can go ahead and pretend 2012 didn't happen in order to appease the apologists that don't care about winning. And the comparison still doesn't look good.

That's the dirty little secret of The Plan. Unless they go on an unparalleled run in the current MLB environment, they aren't going to win enough to make up for the hole they've put themselves in. Why do they have to balance anything out? Just wine nought toget into the post-season crap shoot every year. Fun fact: the Cubs have something like the fifth or sixth best historical winning percentage in MLB The issue is the phrase "every year". They've already spent a lot of time not winning enough to get into the "crap shoot" any year. You can't take a dive and focus exclusively on the farm system while losing an inordinate number of games and then claim you've won consistently. These years happened.

Yes. But I get the sense half of you wouldn't trade the Astros for the Angels right now. I honestly don't think you would. Even if PTR is broke and they [expletive] up the future TV rights, there's enough young talent already here to go on a Tampa type run, never breaking 100 mill in payroll. that's what we're hoping/shooting for? Five 90 win seasons over seven seasons is good; however, I do not think that is good enough to justify the prolonged dive these guys took. Even if that does begin next season, and you ignore 2012, that would mean five 90 win seasons over nine years. You would need a couple of those to be 100 win type juggernauts to start to justify the garbage time.

What does that mean? I don't think anyone here is giving an opinion. No, they are casting judgement about what they know about actual doctor's opinions.

There seems to be a lot of medical opinion experts on board here.

This makes absolutely no sense.

The way the system is set-up, the big market teams are making the most money by far thanks to their local TV deals. The comp draft pick is a relatively minor bone to throw to the poors so they will keep playing along with a system rigged heavily to profit the biggest organizations. i'm struggling to understand how the example of getting local broadcast money equates to a "system rigged" in some sense, it's a debate between the haves and the have-more's and #whocares, but if i'm a spender, i'm not particularly inclined to let the non-spenders benefit disproportionately, which i think they are. and not necessarily because of the "competitive balance pick", though that did set off my rant MLB is structured in a way that the owners of the biggest teams have benefited far more, and are in position to benefit far more for the foreseeable future, than the smaller markets. A decade ago there was a strong push to try and spread the profits but in the end all they did was share a little bit and give them a relatively minor thing, the comp draft pick. The big owners don't care about the comp pick. It is meaningless in the grand scheme of their earning hundreds of millions of dollars while the schmoes try and turn relatively minimal profits. It is appeasement so as to keep those schmoes, and some middle market teams on the side of the big guys. You are making a much bigger deal out of the comp pick than any owner. They aren't getting screwed.