Cubswin11

They controlled him for 2 more years and his underlying numbers aren’t anything special but he’s only 26 and it’s not a deal that’s gonna cripple payroll. Plus it’s hard to attract SPs there, seems reasonable enough to keep him, both sides seem to come out fine. He never was going to get a mega deal but $50 mil is generational money and the Rockies get some rotation stability/trade asset at some point maybe. Plus he made $3 mil this year in Arb. Next two years in Arb figure he would’ve gotten ~$15 mil total. So it really could be looked at as a 3 year, ~$35 mil extension.

Oh the US will be favored, as they should be, assuming this rough core is the same and healthy. But being able to add some of the other international guys I mentioned above to the Euros (sure I am forgetting a guy or three) certainly helps their team and I’d expect a more competitive event. The Euros by themselves aren’t that strong right now and have guys not fulfilling promises on the young side (Hatton, Fleetwood, Fitzpatrick, Pieters, Wallace, etc), Rory kinda stalling out the last few years and also have guys aging out (Poulter, Sergio, Casey, Westwood from this team and Rose and Stenson not even making it). 1 year is a long time from now too for the US, DJ isn’t that young anymore, Koepka and Cantlay have had injury issues and aren’t that young, Bryson may do some dumb Bryson stuff, Spieth is high variance, etc. I’d expect Burns and Zalatoris to be on the team next time, maybe Homa and maybe Wolff and Rickie if they figure things out, which it seems like they’re on the right track. But yeah, they certainly still have the best players and younger core with JT, Scheffler, Finau, Morikawa, Xander, Berger. DJ is old, fine. He just went 5-0 and is the #2 ranked player in the world. He was awesome this week and he’s still damn near best in the world. But like I said, 1-2 years is a long time for golf with the fickle game it is and the US will, should, be favored in the next Presidents and Ryder Cup barring a bunch of injuries or performance fall off. They have too much talent and better younger guys right now. But it wouldn’t be crazy for a 38-40 year old DJ to fall off some here in the next 2 years, other guys have had some injury issues, performance variance gaps etc. There’s a lot of non-Europe worldwide talent right now that will be added to the Presidents Cup team and I think adding them makes the next President Cup interesting. With factoring in everything.

I was out there yesterday and it was awesome. What a horsefeathering ass kicking by the USA. The Euros don’t really have a chance to beat this USA team for a while on talent alone. Next President’s Cup should be good though since that’s US vs The World and The world gets to add the likes of Ancer, Niemann, Im, Cam Smith, Louis, Hideki, Ortiz, etc. The Internationals had that same team and lost in 2019. The International team is formidable, but I don’t see them winning on US soil in 2022. Oh the US will be favored, as they should be, assuming this rough core is the same and healthy. But being able to add some of the other international guys I mentioned above to the Euros (sure I am forgetting a guy or three) certainly helps their team and I’d expect a more competitive event. The Euros by themselves aren’t that strong right now and have guys not fulfilling promises on the young side (Hatton, Fleetwood, Fitzpatrick, Pieters, Wallace, etc), Rory kinda stalling out the last few years and also have guys aging out (Poulter, Sergio, Casey, Westwood from this team and Rose and Stenson not even making it). 1 year is a long time from now too for the US, DJ isn’t that young anymore, Koepka and Cantlay have had injury issues and aren’t that young, Bryson may do some dumb Bryson stuff, Spieth is high variance, etc. I’d expect Burns and Zalatoris to be on the team next time, maybe Homa and maybe Wolff and Rickie if they figure things out, which it seems like they’re on the right track. But yeah, they certainly still have the best players and younger core with JT, Scheffler, Finau, Morikawa, Xander, Berger.

I was out there yesterday and it was awesome. What a horsefeathering ass kicking by the USA. The Euros don’t really have a chance to beat this USA team for a while on talent alone. Next President’s Cup should be good though since that’s US vs The World and The world gets to add the likes of Ancer, Niemann, Im, Cam Smith, Louis, Hideki, Ortiz, etc.

Great tank sweep vs the twins

I think it’s way too early to claim that. They have so much money to spend even if they run a “cheap” payroll. If 1-2 of these guys actually remain a thing to some level and they hit on the spending/trades they could easily be back to a division competing team. It really shouldn’t be that hard to build a team that can compete for the division without trading any major prospect pieces with the money they have and ancillary prospects to add a bit as well. They also are starting to amass the prospects to go make a major trade (Soto) if they go that route. They have money to spend, but they don't plan on spending according to all of the articles that I've read. They just have too many holes and weaknesses to fill to compete next year. I think we're looking at a much improved team in 2023 and a competitive team in 2024. Next year will be spent finding out whether Wisdom, Ortega, and Schwindel are for real, whether Hoerner/Madrigal is their middle infield for the future, whether Steele and/or Thompson can be a rotation piece, whether Happ is really fixed or not, etc. They have to spend something, even just running a cheap ass Brewers payroll gives them like $80 mil. There’s paths to building a team through FA, a trade or two and 1-2 of these guys remaining being a thing to a degree. They just aren’t going to run out a $40 mil payroll and keep this current roster next year. I’m not betting on them being good next year as of today but think there’s a reasonable path with not spending up to the $180-200 mil mark/not giving out any 9 figure deals to being a competitive division team.

Yeah. The idiot, sanctimonious pricks who run it ruined keeping it purely stats/performances a long time ago. Treat it as a museum/narrative/history of the game thing at this point, it being some benchmark of career performance has long passed.

Fangraphs thinks 2022 is going to be another lost year for the Cubs. I think it’s way too early to claim that. They have so much money to spend even if they run a “cheap” payroll. If 1-2 of these guys actually remain a thing to some level and they hit on the spending/trades they could easily be back to a division competing team. It really shouldn’t be that hard to build a team that can compete for the division without trading any major prospect pieces with the money they have and ancillary prospects to add a bit as well. They also are starting to amass the prospects to go make a major trade (Soto) if they go that route.

Yeah he seems like an intriguing target

lol, what a salty and stupid fat horsefeathers

So sending out a tweet = caring about on field product, even though they’re at .500 and out of the playoffs, but his personality that is pretty public can’t leave us to believe he’s pretty hands on?

the guy who constructed the team is complaining about the structure of the team we're allllll trying to find the guy who did this was he more involved in constructing the team than a typical owner? You know who Stevie Cohen is, right? He’s literally a sociopath billionaire that ran a hedge fund who should be in jail for endless securities frauds. Guessing a guy like that, who tweets like one of us has input on the roster construction of the team he owns.

The Vaunted run differential has taken a beating the last two days

For the people who think a full on strip down and tank for multiple years is coming, where do you think payroll ends up then? Because nothing historically points to them spending less then ~$150 mil or so and that gives them nearly ~$100 mil to spend this offseason. TT is right, I think they’ve done the calculus that they need to be around there to maximize the other profit centers they’ve invested in around the team. Becoming the Marlins, Royals, Cleveland, Brewers, etc isn’t happening.

While this is mostly true they’ve still ran $200+ mil payrolls a few times and always have ran mid-high $100 mil payrolls for the most part. The idea/hope is they won’t turn to running Brewers/Royals type $80 mil payrolls, that obviously is a problem and unacceptable. But assuming they’ll run a $150-180 mil payroll again this offseason there are tons of possibilities and a pretty easy track to get back to being competing again, that also doesn’t necessarily including giving out and huge 9 figure deals to players.

All these teams that are alleged pillars for sustained success literally have 60-70 win seasons within the last few years was my point. They’ve all had down/selling years. I know we’re all pissed at the Cubs and where they are now but the spot they’re in isn’t unique. They very well could be back to a 80-90 win team next year with the flexibility they have and have a pretty damn good prospect foundation, much like the teams referenced who have had down years in the past few years matched with success. By all accounts the returns on the trades we made were very good and the system was already trending up. I’ll wait until the offseason to see what kind of spending/trades they make to pass judgment on if they really are going full tank again or maintaining some kind of success/competitiveness. They have close to $100 mil to spend on the cheap side if they’re trying at all and still able to run a lower payroll than they have in a long time. The Cubs are on pace for as many 90 loss seasons as 90 win seasons over the past decade. We're talking different stratospheres of rebuilding and sustained success here. Choosing the endpoints can let you make any argument you want, but since 2014 (not quite a decade) they haven’t lost 90 games and have more seasons over 90 wins than not. They’ve had pretty good sustained success since 2015. There’s a clear path to be back to being a successful team next year that doesn’t take an amount money they’ve never spent before + the prospect capital they have to make moves. If they can maneuver enough this offseason there’s a way to keep a pretty competitive team, for the most part, since 2015 going pretty strong in to the 2020s here. But maybe they literally won’t spend anything and suck and not try and Jed is bad at his job and we’re stuck in a 60-70 win cycle for a while. Who knows. I’m willing to wait until the offseason to decide.

Are we really questioning the bonafides of Boston's qualification of sustained success? All these teams that are alleged pillars for sustained success literally have 60-70 win seasons within the last few years was my point. They’ve all had down/selling years. I know we’re all pissed at the Cubs and where they are now but the spot they’re in isn’t unique. They very well could be back to a 80-90 win team next year with the flexibility they have and have a pretty damn good prospect foundation, much like the teams referenced who have had down years in the past few years matched with success. By all accounts the returns on the trades we made were very good and the system was already trending up. I’ll wait until the offseason to see what kind of spending/trades they make to pass judgment on if they really are going full tank again or maintaining some kind of success/competitiveness. They have close to $100 mil to spend on the cheap side if they’re trying at all and still able to run a lower payroll than they have in a long time.

Not many big market teams trade all of their biggest stars and reboot. The Yankees and Red Sox have had their share of struggles but neither has undertaken a full gut and rebuild of their teams. The Astros blossomed a year before us and are still among the best teams in baseball. In my mind it all comes down to strong farm and development for sustained success. If you can't figure that out your stars eventually get old or overpaid and there's no one to replace them. It's not even about trading chips anymore either as teams horde their top guys more and more. The Cubs failed to practice the dual fronts approach that they preached, and were not drafting/developing well enough to avoid what happened 2 weeks ago. Theo succeeded in winning the WS but failed in building a consistently good team. Some bad luck with the regression but ultimately a failure. Teams like Oakland and Tampa Bay are consistently good without full rebuilds and basically no resources. The cubs are very poorly managed. The As have as many sub 80 win seasons (3,including two sub 70 win seasons) since 2015 as they have seasons over 80 wins. The Rays have 4, 80 win or less seasons since 2014. The Red Sox had a few seasons of wins in the 60s and 70s in the 2010s as well including trading Mookie horsefeathering Betts.

Hopefully Steele looks good. It’s big to have at least 1 of him or Adbert turn in to some sort of rotation piece.

He would’ve killed himself going against the brick walls by now. And we’ve had similar heaters of Nick, Happ and Schwarbs going nuts before of similar players who end up being not overly valuable.

Maybe he’ll be a 2-3 win player some day over a 162 game season if he plays 150 games hes going to be worth more than that He’s going to really have to hit because he’s a drain defensively or as a DH. Plus at this point he’s proven he can’t stay healthy as a position player, which becomes a skill at some point. Other than his power his other offensive skills don’t really jump off the chart. I’d be shocked if his peak is more than 3.5-4 WAR, which is plenty good but not a star, and I’d bet he’s more 1.5-2.5 type most years with injures and just not a great offensive profile. To date he’s a .276/.319/.534 hitter with a ~5% walk rate and ~26% K rate and ~70% contact rate. That’s not overly special when the offense really needs to carry you and you’ve shown you can’t stay healthy. He’s probably a version of Castellanos as a very good outcome for him at this point, which, again is a fine outcome. However outside of this year Nick has never topped 3 WAR and has been able to stay healthier and probably is the better athlete since he came up a 3B (albeit a terrible one but had more positional versatility going down the value chart) while everyone knew Eloy coming up was always a fringe OF’er and DH was his destiny.

Maybe he’ll be a 2-3 win player some day over a 162 game season

You’re getting a significant prospect(s) with taking Hosmer back and also maybe getting the Padres to pay it down a bit. He also only has $59 million left over the next 4 years starting in 2022. $20 mil next year and $13 a year the 3 years after. I horsefeathering hate Hosmer and think his game sucks but I’m still doing a Hosmer + prospect(s) deal with $59 mil contact at most over bringing Rizzo back at more money.

I’m cool with keeping Howard 2 for reasons laid out but using that same logic I don’t get how you can have Christian Hernandez in the 20s in the same rankings.

If we are going to at least halfway try this offseason without doing any 9 figure deals/trading top prospects I wouldn’t mind the following; - Sign one of Nick or Conforto of LF - Trade Bote and Happ for whatever - Do the Hosmer trade and get Hassell back plus other stuff and maybe send Bote or Happ if they want them - Sign Mark Canha for OF/1B/utility - Sign a RHH OF like a Marisnick and a backup C - Maybe sign a backup IF/utility guy like a Freddy Galvis or Asdrubal, this could also be a Jared Young type internally Pitching wise - Sign Jon Gray, there’s still big time ace potential and I wouldn’t mind overpaying - Sign a second tier FA like a Bundy, Desclafani, Eduardo Rodriquez, etc - Sign 1-2 vet RPs, preferably 1 with some closing experience who isn’t completely washed. But I generally trust we have the internal infrastructure we don’t need to go nuts here - Do a reclamation project type SP deal or two like a Trevor Williams. That would give us a 1. Willy C 2. Hosmer 1B 3. Madrigal 2B 4. Nico SS 5. Wisdom 3B 6. Nick/Conforto LF 7. Ortega CF 8. Canha RF 9. Backup C 10. RHH CF 11. Heyward OF 12. FA IF/Jared Young/Alcantara 13. Deichman/minor league guy 14-18. Hendricks, Gray, FA SP, Adbert, Steele/internal/reclamation 19-26. Bullpen