jumbo

Those look like...favorable estimates. Montero and Schwarber specifically.

in addition to spelling his name wrong, his face looks like a bunch of mashed potatoes lol

Hey! That's awesome! Congrats! Thanks, about three months and change left to go, pretty surreal Awesome news. I forget....is this your first? and only if my morning ritual of standing in the front of the microwave for 15-20 minutes works We just had our fourth (and final) a week ago Saturday. It's a ton of fun. Enjoy it

I hate to bring this thread back, but I had a dream last night that Rizzo killed himself. In my dream I thought, no way, this can't be true, and woke myself up, pulled out my phone to verify it was just a dream but it was true. I tried to go back to sleep in my dream by thinking of if they'd call up Vogelbach, and if they did, if they would compare his body to Schwarber, then thought the would move Schwarber to first, Coghlan back to LF, and call up Baez. All the while I thought it would end their season and was trying to figure out why he would do it when the team was ready to go to the playoffs. I got back to sleep in my dream and when I actually woke up I had to look it up to make sure Rizzo was ok, but it made me think that it was karma for all the comments about the drunk driving Cardinals.

I think that was old video

His son is sporting quite the neck tattoo

Left game after fouling ball off knee and now on DL, presumably as a result. Dang, how did I not notice that.

And because he made headlines by getting pummeled by Nolan Ryan

What do we do in CF? Jason Heyward + Tyson Ross trade (let's say Baez & Castro without much else coming back) + Howie Kendrick at 2B Man, I like the way you think, but there's no way they sign Heyward and Kendrick AND a starting pitcher, sadly. But I like that dream. That's why he said to trade for Ross. Daniel Murphy would be another good option. Very similar to Kendrick stat wise, but can play 1B, 3B, LF, too. Kind of a reverse Coghlan position wise with a little less offensive upside. Murphy and Kendrick are both making $8MM this year, and will likely cost about the same.

What happened to McKinney?

What do we do in CF? Jason Heyward + Tyson Ross trade (let's say Baez & Castro without much else coming back) + Howie Kendrick at 2B

What are the odds the Bears can get a decent return on Willie Young? He's not 100% coming off surgery, but he was very good last season and should have a lot of value to a 4-3 team. He doesn't seem to fit into the defense and seems like he would have more value to another team. 4th round pick seem realistic?

Haven't we been stuck with him for at least 3 preseasons now? It's not worth mentioning because it's routine. To be fair, Sam Rosen does suck donkey balls

Chase Utley 2b 2 years/$27M (2014-15), plus 2016-18 options 2 years/$27M (2014-15), plus 2016-18 options signed extension with Philadelphia 8/8/13 14:$15M, 15:$10M, 16-18:$15M vesting options ($2M buyout for 2016) 2015 salary increases by $5M to $15M with 15 days or less on disabled list with knee injury in 2014 (met 9/14) [highlight=yellow]options guaranteed with 500 plate appearance in previous season if option does not vest, it becomes a club option valued between $5M & $11M, based on days on disabled list in previous season[/highlight]award bonuses, including $50,000 for All-Star selection full no-trade protection

How likely is it that Maddon had to play Castro until after the trade deadline for the sake of not torpedoing his trade value? Once past the break Castro is on a relatively hot streak, but as it starts to wear off Maddon says, forget it, Russell to SS. Does he have to get Theo's permission to bench Castro pre-trade deadline?

Not sure, but I know a report came out in the last few days that they were going to have him play a bunch of different positions. Presumably 2B, SS and 3B. Anything beyond that would be overkill right now. What are the odds that Baez gets the Zobrist super sub role? I wouldn't worry about him taking up LF, but what about center or right? Mayne not enough range/fly ball tracking for CF? Not enough arm for RF?

Minimum 37

gah

don't swing jake russell's got this

gameday wasn't lying, huh? Unbelievable

100% agree. I'd rather add LaStella than Utley. I'd rather add Baez than LaStella. Plus I don't want to give up what it takes to get Utley, unless it's Concepcion or something equivalent

This is reasonable/fair. I think fans are ready to credit Theo for this team because they believe the plan he has been executing is starting to produce results. It's hard not to speculate that things are on the upswing and the team is destined for repeated playoff appearances. Obviously how the future plays out answers the question. Out of curiosity, rather than just say "let's see what the results are to judge Theo," how many playoff appearances do you expect for the Cubs from 2016-2020? I know you could say, I'm not going to guess at numbers, but based on what you'e seen and your overall impression what is your answer? To answer your question, I think 3 out of 5 is a good over/under. I think the upswing thing is the appeal of narrative. We love to explain our sports teams in terms of stories, and the "We were bad, then we were patient, then we got better, then we got great" is an easy story to understand. Getting better, or more importantly getting great, for 2016 and 2017 looks pretty tough to me. Not impossible. It's pretty easy to see how it could happen. All you need is a couple of breakout offensive seasons from our ubertalents and the top half of the pitching staff to stay healthy. But I think the downside is real too: On offense, the only guy who is young enough to make me really sure he'll be noticeably better in 2016 is Russell. The rest are in that iffy range of just barely pre-prime where the median of the curve is not much improvement left at all. For the pitching, I think the question is just how often are you going to get 150+ healthy, productive innings from your top 4? It's not something that's going to happen every year. And we're going to need it to, because there is just stone cold nothing coming up the pipe. The first wave of pitching prospects was supposed to be ready by now, and it's looking like a pretty substantial bust. In the meantime, the Cubs have been one of the most overachieving teams in the league by Pythagorean Wins, and there's two *really* good teams in the division that have pretty good cases to still be pretty good next year. The narrative says the Cubs are betting on the future in 2016. We've seen what betting on the future looks like this year: it's a messy, unpredictable affair. Sometimes it shows up as Kris Bryant playing at a 5-fWAR pace, and sometimes it's thinking you've got the middle infield settled with double redundancy only to have three of your four highly talented young guys become sub-replacement simultaneously. I think three is a very fair response. I'm somewhat of an optimist, so I'll be truly disappointed if we don't take the over on that. It's easy to ignore the downside risk. I agree that Russell is by far the most encouraging player this year as far as future breakouts go. Soler hasn't shown the discipline he was reported to have had. Castro is not the perennial all star he once was and may be jettisoned. Bryant, Schwarber, Rizzo at least appear to have rock solid futures (positional concerns notwithstanding). Baez is not the high risk high reward example that everyone thinks he is, there is much more downside risk with his contact issues. But the big four/five/six are a pretty terrific core to build around. As far as the pitching staff goes, I'm less concerned than you are. Yes, there will be injuries and unexpected failures in the pitching staff, but many teams don't have a good option at four or five. I think free agency has always been the plan for short term starting pitching, despite the draft strategy. Lester, Arrieta, Hammel, Hendricks are pretty solid for 1-4 for the next few years. Even with injuries, the FO has shown pretty good ability to identify plug & play starting pitching, and I think they'll make a significant addition this offseason to bolster the depth so that only a #5 is needed to be added down the line. Bullpens are such a crapshoot that I am comfortable sticking with Strop, Grimm, Ramirez, Rondon and adding to them with a solid FA piece and then whatever may come from Black, Edwards, Rivero, Rosscup, Johnson, Paniagua, etc to fill out the group, along with whatever retreads they pick up year to year. It may seem like success seems to come to easily, but I'm just not going to sweat the 6th and 7th guys in the bullpen, fifth starter, twelfth and thirteenth bench options. The bulk of a successful team is there and anyone could fill in around that.

I'm intrigued by Bryan Robinson's hyperbolic oxygen chamber

This is reasonable/fair. I think fans are ready to credit Theo for this team because they believe the plan he has been executing is starting to produce results. It's hard not to speculate that things are on the upswing and the team is destined for repeated playoff appearances. Obviously how the future plays out answers the question. Out of curiosity, rather than just say "let's see what the results are to judge Theo," how many playoff appearances do you expect for the Cubs from 2016-2020? I know you could say, I'm not going to guess at numbers, but based on what you'e seen and your overall impression what is your answer?

Nastier than what Strop was throwing...