CubsWin

i don't know if this stuff really happens, but my fear is that the cubs have been putting stuff out there to make it look like they were totally in, and the local guys are getting the numbers right because they have better sources. As far as the amount of money reportedly being offered, it should be noted that Arguello qualified it as pure industry speculation when he passed it along. Don't know the source of that rumor, that could've come from someone inside the Cubs or anywhere else. As far as the non-specific reports of the Cubs making a large, competitive bid or the "watch out for the Cubs" comments, those came from non-Cubs employees, reportedly from AL teams, at the owner's meetings (per Jayson Stark) and sources inside MLB (per Levine). I don't see why those guys would have any interest in doing free PR work for the Cubs. It may have been informed comments or just speculative opinion, but it wasn't the Cubs trying to make themselves look good.

Friday, 5pm eastern time. That would be 10am on the 25th in Japan.

They are being unnecessarily cheap and he is making excuses for it because he's apparently completely fine with it. It's called context Wow. Condescend much? I get that you think they are being unnecessarily cheap, but he doesn't. So you are putting words in his mouth and then criticizing him for it. Never mind, it's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo not important. That said, I agree with you. They have the money, they just aren't spending it.

You totally missed the point The point being that you are totally cool with the ownership for being unnecessarily cheap. :roll: :roll: :roll: What Cub fan would be happy that the owner of their favorite team is being cheap and unnecessarily so on top it? Give me a break. The one that just posted a bunch of bs excuses for the cubs being so cheep just above here. I read it. I disagree with his reasoning, but nowhere does he say that ownership is being unnecessarily cheap. He believes they're being cheap out of necessity, the exact opposite.

Balaguert as well. yep I don't get the Hannemann sucks thing. What's your reasoning? I just don't think he's very good. Didnt like the draft pick. He couldn't stay healthy late this summer, which isnt good for a guy who's already in dire need of game action. He'll be 23 in April... Every positive writeup on him has been based on projection, and i'm not really feeling it. I dont think he belongs anywhere near the top 25 in a system as deep as ours. I've got Dunston and Balaguert ahead of him in my rankings. Okay. It just seemed weird to me to have formulated such a strong opinion about him without having a lot of data to go on. Seems like the reasoning boils down to you think he was drafted too early.

You totally missed the point The point being that you are totally cool with the ownership for being unnecessarily cheap. :roll: :roll: :roll: What Cub fan would be happy that the owner of their favorite team is being cheap and unnecessarily so on top it? Give me a break.

Balaguert as well. yep I don't get the Hannemann sucks thing. What's your reasoning?

The whole point of letting Ramirez and Pena go (and getting Pierce Johnson and Paul Blackburn with those picks), trading Soriano for 5 million dollars, not biting on big name FAs in their 30s who are really good players that could help in the short term, building the farm with picks and prospects from trading short term assets Dempster, Garza, Maholm & Feldman and maintaining payroll flexibility is precisely so that when a player like Tanaka comes along they can overspend to get him. Everything Theo & Co. have done over the last two seasons was so that they would be in position to do this. Overspending is not my concern. Not getting him is.

Oh, must've missed it. Tough to read in between lines you never saw. So...what did he say? Do I gotta do it all for you? http://northsidebaseball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3028475#p3028475 Yes, apparently. Yes you do... Last ten pages: Oh my God, what if the Cubs get him. Boners. You're weird. No, you're weird. Race war!!! And boners. Don't know how I missed it...

3 hours from now, local news will be done and the opening night of the convention will be complete, so clock's tickin' Kyle...

Oh, must've missed it. Tough to read in between lines you never saw. So...what did he say? Do I gotta do it all for you? http://northsidebaseball.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3028475#p3028475 Yes, apparently. Yes you do...

Oh, must've missed it. Tough to read in between lines you never saw. So...what did he say?

Isn't today the day that some sort of seismic Cubs news was supposed to break? Kyle?

Edwards' numbers are just too good for it to be anyone else. I looked at Alcantara because he's the same age but one level higher, but there just wasn't anything special about his production. Good across the board, but no one thing stood out. With C.J., every stat is special. Unheralded draft pick. Never even recruited for a college. Played on a local sandlot team. Rail thin. Comes out of nowhere. I don't know how he's done what he's done, but he's done it.

Thank you for that. Maybe Casey Close sets the deadline for final offers and the Yankees have the highest bid. But with a minute and 16 seconds left, the Cubs come in and match it. But realizing they need to do more, 17 seconds later, they up the offer and the clock runs out before the Yankees know what hit them.

What I want to know is why are they playing rock, paper, scissors in the snow?

I wonder how the Kershaw extension affects the Dodgers interest in Tanaka and Tanaka's in the Dodgers? Also, this from Jayson Stark at the owner's meetings a couple hours ago...

Fair enough. You see less desire. That's certainly understandable. When I look at it, I see an effort to build a team that would've won more games if players hadn't regressed, under-performed or sustained key injuries. But since they got off to such a poor start that even when they started playing better they still wouldn't be competitive, Theo & Co. didn't care about the cosmetics of the situation (i.e. the final numbers at the end of the year) and sold at the deadline. This from the Trib about 11 months ago... Theo has been quite upfront about wanting to avoid the meaningless middle during this rebuild. Either playoffs or bottom ten. From the same article... Anyone has the right to look at the rosters they put together and say they had no chance of making the playoffs. I don't necessarily disagree. But there was a lot of under-performance, regression and some key injuries on last year's squad. And then, the stated policy to sell off the pieces that were performing made the final numbers all the worse. Last year, the Cubs got off to a terrible start. 18-30 thru May 25th. On that day, Castro was hitting .265/.296/.368. Barney had gone .207/.295/.345. Soriano had hit 4 HRs and gone .262/.291/.395. Fujikawa had been injured. Garza didn't return from his injury until 4 days earlier. Marmol was having the worst year of his career. From May 26th to July 2nd when they traded Scott Feldman in a IFA money related deal, they go 17-16. From July 3rd to July 22nd when Garza was traded, they go 9-7. That's 26-23 in almost a two month span. But their terrible start had buried them. Overall, on the day they traded Garza, they were 9 games under .500 and 15.5 games back. Looking at it in context, for me, an effort was made that if things went well, they would make a run. They certainly could've given themselves a much better chance by going against their stated value-based signings philosophy and signing some big name FAs. But I don't think that's what people are wishing they did.

As far as the Cubs FO approach to this rebuild, it seems like, agree with it or not, they are following the plan they've said they would from the beginning. Gain financial flexibility on the major league level and spend wisely on pieces that can add value now and in the long term or in the short term on short term contracts. On the organizational side, increase and improve the scouting and development team and their technology and empower those guys to go about improving the talent base of the franchise acquiring as much impact talent as possible. To my eyes, this is exactly what they've done. It's worked out better on the organizational side, hitting on both their 1st round picks, developing many of the more raw talents that they inherited and adding more high-ranking talent in what seem like, at the moment, to be smart long term trades. They successfully won the bidding for several key IFAs in Soler, Jimenez, Torres and others. The 1st wave of that young, controllable, impact talent should arrive in the 3rd year of the rebuild. It has definitely not worked as well on the major league side. The bullpens they've gone to war with have been bad. The FO is responsible. They've had regression from many of their young "core" players. The FO is responsible and have addressed that. We'll see if Renteria will improve that situation. Epstein's apparent adherence to value-based signings, be they long or short term, has led to very few meaningful signings. The frustration many fans have with this is deserved and understandable, but with the FO's stated plan, the lack of big money FA signings of players their 30s should not be surprising. The main FA they were able to persuade to come to a rebuilding team, Edwin Jackson, performed poorly last season. According to reports, it is very likely that Anibal Sanchez had no intention of signing with the Cubs. As far as missing out on other possible FAs, Epstein's long-term vision and value-based philosophy is partially responsible for the lack of impact talent added via free agency. Many of the short term signings have been very good but were flipped for long term assets and led to even more disappointing results at the big league level. All in all, after two years of a rather complete overhaul of an unhealthy franchise, I see a lot of progress. The results at the major league level haven't turned out they way they would have liked, but even if they had, they still would've been less than a .500 team. In a rebuild, I'm okay with that. In year 3, I want to see progress at the major league level. Sometimes, people seem to read my personal statement of what I'm okay with as if they're supposed to agree with it, and if they don't, they're somehow less than. That's ridiculous. No matter how nuanced or not nuanced your argument is, you have the right to feel however you feel. This is a discussion board. Let's discuss.

As far as which factors might influence Tanaka's decision, I think it's nearly impossible for us to know without a strong statement from Tanaka or his agent. Speculate away, but without that, it's all just speculation.

http://img.pandawhale.com/74343-Tombstone-well-bye-gif-hji0.gif That's [expletive] perfect. Awesome.

10 or 11 more days at the longest before news breaks on who is the favorite. He's got to be signed and have passed a physical by January 24th, 5pm eastern.

Wow. I never even thought that much less tried to insinuate it. Let's keep it to baseball matters and steer away from the personal, agreed?

That's quite possibly true. It's oversimplifying it, though. It would have taken a lot more than just spending money to get that line-up and rotation. We'd have to assume that Theo & Jed wanted Bourn and Bourn wanted to play for the Cubs. We'll never know for sure but here's what Jed said after he signed with Cleveland. We know they wanted Anibal, but Anibal might have wanted to play for a team closer to contending which is what he eventually chose, and his agent may have been using the Cubs desire to sign him to drive the price up for the Tigers. And once the Tigers hit their ceiling, their final offer, his agent would jump on it and close the deal. According to reports leading up to his signing with the Tigers that appears to be exactly what happened. Of course, the big assumption is that Tanaka will simply sign with whoever offers him the most money and other factors won't matter. That may indeed happen. (I hope it does if it's the Cubs.) But right now, we can only speculate. We'd also have to assume the Cubs scouts and front office evaluated Stanton's health and tools to a point where they'd give up whom you suggest and, more importantly, that the Marlins would have taken it considering Stanton's low cost and ability to be the cornerstone they need to build on. All quite possible, but not sure things. After all, it didn't happen. And it wouldn't have been because of money concerns, so either it was never imagined or they did consider it and one side or both didn't want to do it. But yes, spending more money would most likely have resulted in a better team last year and this year. I don't think anyone would deny that. The question is who would the Cubs have been able to get with their money and would acquiring those players be a wise allocation of resources considering the goal of winning one or multiple championships?

If it's true they don't have the money to make a strong offer, then I agree. Otherwise, what may sound like excuse making to some could actually be the lack of whitewashing the complexities of the business and a lack of angry pessimism.