Bryants Disco Ball

With Ross in the final year of his contract, it made sense if they already knew they weren’t likely to extend him. If you have the manager you want most available right now, you get him rather than letting Ross go next year and having a lesser candidate as a replacement. Sort of like signing a big money free agent a year earlier than you planned because the following year’s free agent group is underwhelming.

Was just looking at our payroll, Spotrac and and Fangraphs shows Hendricks has a vesting option for next year for $16 mil. Anyone what know what that is as it’s not listed the benchmarks and if it’s easily attainable? If it looks like it’s pretty easy to hit there could maybe be a contract rework and add 1-2 years so save maybe $2-5 mil in LT money. Hendricks option vests with a Top 3 Cy Young finish. I’d love for that to happen, but clearly not likely. Pretty sure it was a top 3 finish only in 2020, not any other season.

Without looking it up because of laziness, there has to be a great chance the Cubs have a better combined winning percentage against the Cardinals and Brewers than the Pirates and Reds this season.

Perfectly said, Sofa. I was waaaay late to the party in realizing that most owners treat their teams as a business instead of a passion project. It's ridiculous that I didn't think about it that way for years. But now that I do, it's robbed me of my love of the Cubs and mostly sports in general. I'm not wasting my hobby time on the Ricketts family and certainly won't support them for being shitty at all aspects of life.

You lost me at Trump cutting a check for charity instead of stealing from it.

I don't have a problem with not going after guys like Correa or any guys with the QO. But I do have an issue with the payroll being this low for this big market team. I think it should be at $200 million, at least. And if you have to give out a few really big one-year contracts to do it and keep the powder dry for future years, that's cool. But go sign Nelson Cruz to be the DH for one year. Go see if Kris Bryant will take a 1-year, $40 million contract or offer Rizzo $22 million for one year even though he's a douche. Yes, maybe it doesn't make sense, but neither does having this type of payroll.

Is the payroll really only at $135 million, or are the numbers I'm looking at way off? Because if it's even close to that, it's horsefeathering embarrassing.

I get individually they might be good players, but it's rather uninspiring to bring back guys that really didn't make a difference in the past few years in terms of making the Cubs a true contender. Hell, the Cubs sucked with KB, Rizzo and Baez. Getting back only one won't do horsefeathers. I also haven't been paying attention and don't know what I'm talking about.

How big of a damn lead did the Brewers have that the Cardinals could end the season on a 22-game winning streak, including winning seven against the Brewers, and still have been eliminated for the division title a week before the season ended? Geez.

Does Alex Lange really hurt, though?

The VBs simply have to maintain first for 68 games/2.5 months with a still crap offense and alot of the meat on their pitching staff entering uncharted territory. What could go wrong?! Looking back, is there a chance the VBs not only maintained their winning percentage but actually increased? It doesn't seem like they lose many games .

If the Cubs would have just gone with this lineup all season they might have actually won the Central. Instead a Rizzo-KB-Javy lineup kept scoring one or two runs every game. Tank VanSchwindel was the guy they always needed. ETA: Schwindel.

Just for fun I just looked at the MLB draft from 2013 to 2018 and I can't tell the difference between the fifth pick and the 12th pick. I hardly recognize any of the names in either slot and don't recognize any of them as All-Stars. However, I can't name that many baseball players these days so maybe one of them is an MVP.

My gawd this Frank guy is who Kris Bryant and all the others were supposed to be.

Wait. Some old(er) guy named Patrick Wisdom has more dongs than Kris Bryant this year and he didn't even start horsefeathering playing until the end of May?

Sometimes I look at Javy's batting average and I think maybe he wasn't as bad as I thought, only to realize it's his OBP and that I really don't think we should care if he or any of those guys come back.

I'm sure I'm drunk even though I don't drink, but I'm starting to think maybe that old core kind of sucked. Some weird ass Frank Schindell dude is better than all of them.

Or, it could be the fact that nobody cares what Kevin PIllar has to say. These are terrible takes. Three players made the thumbs down sign and one of the most prominent baseball reporters out there calls out the two minorities but doesn't mention the white guy. That's bad for a number of reasons but the main one is a racial bias. That doesn't mean Olney had a malicious intent in what he tweeted or is some horrible racist. But the difference in how minorities are described vs how whites are described in sports is most definitely a thing and affects how people view minorities in sports and in life. So while this one tweet might seem innocent, it's actually yet another data point in a larger issue with how we speak about minorities in this country. Olney should know better and should have done better. All he had to do was include Pillar in the tweet. I get why Baez was mentioned first. While Lindor is the better player, he's set contractually. Baez is a FA while Pillar has a player option for next year, and Baez is the better player and younger player. But you can't just ignore the third player here. If Pillar was, say, a back end reliever who has gone up and down this year and hasn't pitched much, it would make a bit more sense (though he should still be mentioned). But Pillar is a regular for the Mets. He's played 97 games and had 269 PA's. Just because he's worse doesn't mean you don't have to mention him. I must confess that I didn't read the tweet in its entirety and was focused on the "this is going to cost Javy" in free agency and didn't even see that he wrote Lindor should have an explanation ready, too. You are totally right that if you include Lindor you also should mention Pillar. Also, Pillar should be bashed for giving that gesture since he somehow has an even worse OBP than Javy. No wonder this team sucks.

Yeah, Squally is probably being just as dramatic as Buster now.

Just not smart business. Granted he's already probably got eff you money so who cares, but it wasn't a great look and certainly doesn't help him at all. ETA: The good news for him is that people have attention spans of about 15 minutes these days, so it's possible nobody will even remember by today.

If the Cubs had kept all their players, it looks like they wouldn't have been able to make up many games on first place any way. Turns out, the division really was decided in early July.

Sammy was everything to me when it came to baseball in the late 1990s. I would cheer for a home run over a win during some of those years because we sucked. But I will admit that over the years I've sort of soured on him. I don't like that he lies about not taking steroids. I don't like that most teammates seemed to hate him. I don't like that I get Starlin Castro vibes, that something just isn't right about him. It's probably because he was accused of beating his first wife. I don't think Sosa's accomplishments should be totally ignored, but I'm not sure I care how much he is celebrated these days.

I haven't looked, but I swear the Brewers haven't played two good teams in a row since sometime in May. I'm sure that is wrong, but it sure seems like they are always playing the Rockies, Pirates, Cubs and D-Backs and when they play a good team immediately play a bad one.

I feel bad for ever being excited for him returning. Him being a crappy pitcher isn't even the worst thing about him.

Brewers still have to make the playoffs first, you [expletive]. There's like 50 games left.