Aaron_Kennelly

The more I think about it, the more I think we don't even have to give that up. If the Marlins were to not come to agreement with the claiming team, then they either have to give him up for nothing or keep him on the 25-man roster the rest of the year, since he has no options remaining. They clearly don't want to keep him on the 25-man roster. So I am not sure what negotiating power they will have. Mainly I am not sure why they waited until August to do this. Today I learned that you can add a player back to the 25 man after DFA'ing him. Yeah, I am losing my mind with all of this. So their only options are trade him or lose him for nothing? So Vogelbach shouldn't be in play at all, if we win the claim...

The more I think about it, the more I think we don't even have to give that up. If the Marlins were to not come to agreement with the claiming team, then they either have to give him up for nothing or keep him on the 25-man roster the rest of the year, since he has no options remaining. They clearly don't want to keep him on the 25-man roster. So I am not sure what negotiating power they will have. Mainly I am not sure why they waited until August to do this.

Ok, now I am confused. Who is the cap expert here? ... because I sure thought he definitely had to pass through revocable trade waivers to be dealt, also.

Jacob Turner isn't getting traded for Gleyber Torres. Especially if we are the team that wins the claim on him and are the only team they can negotiate with... That's not how that works. They've got 7 days to put him thru waivers now. They'd much prefer to trade him prior to being forced to deal with the highest claiming team. Oh, ok. Well then pony up and get him. Still can't see it taking too terribly much since everyone knows what position they are in, having no other recourse but to trade him. If it's any top 15-20 guy in our system, then do it.

Vogelbach, Hannemann, Candelario: take your pick.

Maybe Law but everyone else had Soler out of the top 50 and they won't push him that high over two months of baseball. they have to catch up parks was still not that enthused about javy at this point last year then in like december he was suddenly the prospect chandler jarrell Yeah, on the top-ten part, I was kinda joking, but just kinda. If he isn't in people's top 20, though, then I will question their job performance.

Jacob Turner isn't getting traded for Gleyber Torres. Especially if we are the team that wins the claim on him and are the only team they can negotiate with...

So we are starting Not Javy and 8 Not Javis?

Isn't Turner a legit #2/#3 if we get him fixed? He's got better stuff than a back of the rotation starter. Sure, and so does Arrieta. I just meant guys that would be fighting for back-of-the-rotation spots. If we could fix him; that's a different story.

Anyone know what his velocity's been at?

Who wants to bet everyone forgets about Soler's lack of effort and his bad plate approach when ranking him in the top 10 this off-season?

Just when I was going to complain about how boring the farm is now...

I'm not sure I understand this on the Marlins' part. But, sure, I'll take him. Cutter + ground balls + Bosio = good things. And he's only 23? Wow, Marlins. We do have kind of a glut of back-of-the-rotation types. But, I like the types we are going after: Guys that are still controlled for about three years or so. Hope one or two pan out (Arrieta already has and then some) and let us bide our time while we acquire and develop more pitching. He certainly fits into that plan to a tee. I would love to DL Jaxon with a phantom injury. But, since I don't think that's probable, sure, Wada to the pen. Demote Blake or whomever; doesn't matter. Get it done.

Bryant, Alcantara, Baez, Soler, Russell. Javy scares the hell out of me. And, I agree that Alcantara could be the sneaky 5-win guy, that other teams' fans look and say, "Wow, He is worth five wins?" I feel like he's already starting out with a guaranteed 2+ wins from defense and base running. And his bat seems legit, right now, at least more so than I thought it would. If you asked me who had the best chance to be a 7-win player, then I go Javy, though. I am so interested to see him with the big boys, even though he frightens me.

Go back to read the 2011 archives. All the people here, now proclaiming that they had zero chance whatsoever not to suck, had some pretty good plans. Despite the painting of this is a monolithic plan they've had since the beginning, the Cubs have gone through several different plans under this regime. In 2011-12 offseason, they seemed to be pretty content with tanking. They could have gotten much better results with some simple tweaks (replacing what they took out of the bullpen when they removed Marshall and Samardzija, picking anyone besides for the love of god Ian Stewart for 3b) and not making some very bizarre roster decisions early in the year (Volstad over Wood, Clevenger over Castillo). They should have taken the season seriously. But if they weren't going to, then they needed to trade Garza that offseason. He was coming off a career year in which he relied heavily on breaking balls, and that's never a good long-term bet. Compare that with the A's selling Gio Gonzalez (who was under more control but an inferior pitcher) that offseason and setting themselves up for their turnaround. In the 2012-13 offseason, they absolutely did try to win, and failed. They gave out a lot of free agent contracts, and other than the bizarre decision to let Sveum give a job to his good friend Lillibridge, they seemed to mostly be trying to fill out the roster credibly with an eye toward giving themselves a chance that year and setting a foundation for 2014. Unfortunately, they got some bad luck and it turned out several of their multi-year bets went wrong. Which is on them. Edwin Jackson being the biggest, of course. So in the 2013-14 offseason, they changed plans yet again, and that was when there started being rumors and published reports that they'd pushed their plans back and started re-targetting for 2016. They then decided they had so little regard for the upcoming season that they didn't care if waiting for an admitted long-shot in Tanaka meant probably blowing off the entire offseason and the 2014 season with it. And that's exactly what happened. So in summary, a better plan would have been to try every year instead of just one of the three, and even the year they had the right plan, their execution was subpar. Better decisions needed to be made. But trying to paint this losing as something they've been planning all along and something they had no choice but to do is wrong on both accounts. I think the only plan that was wrong was the 2012-2013 off-season plan. The Jackson signing was stupid. We were in too big of a hole to dig out of, at that time. I would have rather have signed Liriano to the Maholm-like contract he signed (except with the two years both guaranteed). I didn't want any contract given out to be for more than two years. And I believe Jackson's was the only one, so they were only marginally trying to win; we were still kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel for free agents. But, if you can sign Liriano, then you can pull the ole' July flip for something when things turn sour. Maybe try the same with a hitter on a short deal, also. You can still attempt to be decent, but knowing that you probably won't be. Then the Lillibridge thing wouldn't have bothered me at all. Try to pick up a package like the Arrieta/Strop one -- although, admittedly not expecting the revelation that is Arrieta. Then maybe you go into this past off-season and hand out a few four-year deals on free agents in a higher echelon. I think the main problem was that they made that slight push a year early. This year was a correction on a mistimed push for improvement. The 2012-13 off-season was bungled, though, I agree, but for different reasons.

So what would your plan have been? Assuming you have this old, deteriorating roster with a few nice young guys -- none of whom are really superstar caliber -- and a pretty lousy farm? And you are working with an owner that is strapped for cash. And you are saddled with Soriano's albatross of a contract hanging around your neck for three years. And the prospects that do come up suck, for the most part. Spend on a couple of average veterans like Edwin Jackson? Waste money on a guy like Darvish, who would languish on a 75-80 win team for three years? Money that you might not even have access to spend anyway? Try to hit it big later in the draft... and still wait three years anyway? How does that team get better without trading away assets, getting younger, and waiting it out? The only way you could conceivably get better is by winning a bunch of trades. And Theo has done pretty good on the trade front, in my belief.

There are still a lot more holes to be punched. Get back to work.

It would appear to me that those teams were already in the midst of rebuilding and had much younger rosters and didn't have any Soriano contracts, and I believe one had an MVP, and a couple had 6-8 win guys come up from the minors, and one (the Indians) was kind of a fluky playoff team, where everything came together for that one year. I'm not sure it's best to compare their situations to ours. But if that makes us feel better about criticizing our front office, then so be it.

It was pretty bad -- most had them 20-22 if I recall, and I know BA was higher, but they still had them as middling. Our top guys (outside of an 18-year-old, just drafted Baez, who surely wasn't going to make a difference in the majors for awhile) were Jackson, Szczur, McNutt, Lake, and Vitters. And they all turned out to suck, so good luck turning a bad team around quickly with prospects who end up being terrible at baseball, when you are also being sapped of cash flow to build the major league roster through free agency. It's not just that the farm system was bad; it's that the farm system gave us nothing once they did come up. If some of those guys had contributed, then maybe Theo sees the urgency in adding parts around them. Part of the reason the farm system didn't have that much about to graduate is because there was a decent chunk of young talent already on the team, like Castro and Samardzija. I'll point out again that three teams were lower than us in the farm system rankings at either the beginning or end of 2011, were below .500 in 2011, and have since made the playoffs with a payroll of less than $100m. It isn't some magically hard thing to do. Which three teams are they? I am assuming 1.) They also had some young talent already at the major league level. 2.) They didn't have as many bad players being paid exorbitant sums of money. 3.) They had more success from guys that came up from the minors. 4.) Their payroll wasn't slashed because of a change in ownership. 5.) They probably spent some on veteran free agents, and some of those signings are probably going to be a hindrance to them soon. 6.) They probably don't look to have as bright of a future as we do, anyway.

It was pretty bad -- most had them 20-22 if I recall, and I know BA was higher, but they still had them as middling. Our top guys (outside of an 18-year-old, just drafted Baez, who surely wasn't going to make a difference in the majors for awhile) were Jackson, Szczur, McNutt, Lake, and Vitters. And they all turned out to suck, so good luck turning a bad team around quickly with prospects who end up being terrible at baseball, when you are also being sapped of cash flow to build the major league roster through free agency. It's not just that the farm system was bad; it's that the farm system gave us nothing once they did come up. If some of those guys had contributed, then maybe Theo sees the urgency in adding parts around them.

You're still not making sense. The Cardinals have a good, young team that they didn't need top draft picks to get because they had success in the past? Edit: misread what you said But whether it should have been said or not, it was: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=mlb&id=7147793 A good front office could/should/would have built this team on both fronts. They would have fixed the crappy organizational infrastructure and used the emerging farm system (which wasn't as bad as many would have you believe now) simultaneous to improving the MLB roster. We'd have an above-average team and an above-average farm system right now, and that would be real sustained success. Not losing a bunch and then hopefully winning a bunch later. Ok. That I agree with you on 100%; I just don't think that was possible given what they were handed. I think it is now, though, and not doing so from now on would leave me with no choice but to be extremely critical.

Let me be more clear, I think the "dual fronts" idea is totally reasonable and makes sense if you are in St. Louis or Boston's position. And it is why they are continually awesome. I just think it was stupid for us to say that, given where our organization was: Terrible major league roster, terrible farm, too many old-school people in prominent positions, a new owner, the new owner being broke, little influence in Latin America, our stadium and local government holding us hostage and depriving us of new revenue streams. We just were in no position to have success on dual fronts, and I think we are now.

That makes no sense. So St. Louis put together their current awesome pile of young talent without top draft picks because they used to have Pujols when he was awesome? No, St. Louis is different because even though guys like Wong and Taveras and Shelby Miller have all been meh, they don't need to rely on them as much because they have had sustained success. When Theo took over, we had neither sustained success nor a good farm. So it's kinda hard to turn that around without focusing on either the success part or the farm part -- unless you believe in the "dual fronts" thing. Which is total [expletive] and never should have been said by anyone in our organization.

Also, the key qualifier there, being that teams like St. Louis and Boston that have sustained success and don't need top-5 picks to continue that success, is that they have had sustained success. When you already have superstars in place, it becomes less needed to add superstars through the farm. We didn't have that. I hope that once we get better, then we won't rely on the farm as much. And if we are relying on prospects in five years like now, then something will have went terribly wrong.

When did I say we needed them? I just think it is easier to rely upon them being successful, which is true. And I would rather take the more reliable more towards building a farm, if the alternative is to just win 75-80 games.