SouthSideRyan

Yeah, I'd prefer the guy with more power who is 4 years younger. At this rate, Tomas will probably get $70-80 million. That's way, way low. Based on Castillo's signing Tomas should break the $100 million mark. I think it's pretty funny that people are declaring this a horrendous overpay without seeing Castillo playing an inning of pro ball. How the hell does anyone know what he's capable of? The ones who can make the best guess are the scouts, and they're the ones who advised Boston to make this offer. They had competition, and they aren't a stupid bunch. I'm not devastated to lose out, but I'm not remotely convinced Boston made a mistake. I disagree with those saying offense shouldn't be a priority, because it's very likely all of our young hitters will take at least a couple of seasons before they emerge as plus offensive players, if they do at all, and it's absolutely essential the Cubs add a veteran everyday player who can should some of the offensive burden. It's fine to approach every FA situation by saying "I'm going to set a value at what I think the guy is worth, and not a penny more" until you get to the fact that you'll never end up signing a desirable FA that way. Sounds great as a rah-rah statement - in practice, it gets you nowhere. The market dictates what a player is worth, not one GMs abstract judgment. What needs to happen is for the FO to decide not what they think every FAs value is and not budge, but to decide which FAs are worth overpaying for and resolve not to miss out on them. It doesn't have to be a lot or the most expensive of them, but at some point it has to be somebody and until it is, you're a small-market team. I'd love to sell you stuff that you want. Real life as baseball fail

PTR would rather lose forever than have to associate with Sammy

Because manpower had nothing to do with the inability to keep the field dry. I thought I heard it was because it was rolled up improperly, which would seem pretty easy to connect to a short staffed group rolling it up. Beyond that, havin a full staff could've rectified the situation far more quickly than what they had out there

I'm not following TT, Wittenmeyer gets word shortly after an embarrassing inability to keep the field dry that the staff in charge of it has seen cutbacks so the Cubs won't have to pay for their health insurance. What's flimsy about it?

Nobody called the Ricketts out for being conservative. Eh, Sulley called him a conservative slumlord, but Vinestal did bring out my favorite tactic, "Keep politics out of the baseball talk!!!, BUT (politics talk)"

Damn, I thought TT used to do ownership approval polls too, but I guess it was just FO and Manager. Kyle did one in March 2013 (Link), and I did not expect it to be as favorable as it was. This was right after the one offseason we kinda tried, so I guess that would skew things.

Most of Bleacher Nation

Exterminators must've wanted health insurance.

Unless there's an Intl' draft the following year and nobody cares. If they switch to a draft prior to the end of the current CBA, I'm sure they'd take away picks. We're supposed to be good by then, bring it on.

Unless there's an Intl' draft the following year and nobody cares.

IMHO, Hendricks, Turner, Wada, and Doubront should be priorities. Arrieta or Wood should be given September off. Arrieta has nothing left to prove this season and Wood is what he is. Why are you artificially limiting Arrieta and Wood's innings? Presumably so we can get Dallas Beeler into that 5th starter spot.

That's because if you believe in the front office as talent evaluators, their signing/not-signing him is an indicator. There's a limit to that faith.

To be fair, some of the scouting reports I've read in recent days have cooled me off on him. I wouldn't be upset if we signed him for that amount of money, but I'm not upset we didn't, either. If we go into next spring without having spent money on something and have a $60M payroll, then I'll be upset. This is fair, there's just a limited number of players out there our FO would deem worthy, and with each one off the board we inch closer to the nightmare scenario you describe (see last offseason)

More likely a guy who can produce 1/3 of the results for 1/8 of the money What type of player do you think Castillo will be? What type of player do you think the FO think he'll be? Were they in on him up to 8M/year to be a 4th-5th OF? Way to avoid the question I'm not a professional talent evaluator. ("OBVIOUSLY" - sneaky) Something tells me nobody would be upset if we were actually the ones to sign him to the contract.

More likely a guy who can produce 1/3 of the results for 1/8 of the money What type of player do you think Castillo will be? What type of player do you think the FO think he'll be? Were they in on him up to 8M/year to be a 4th-5th OF? No, but I can understand the hesitation at giving him 70+ million if there's any concerns about his game translating(like there are statistically) and if his ceiling isn't much higher than a 2-3 win OF. Is that a 'drastic overpay' in that case? No. It's also not a sign of stinginess either. No one lack of signing is ever going to be a sign of stinginess. It's the 3 year pattern.

More likely a guy who can produce 1/3 of the results for 1/8 of the money What type of player do you think Castillo will be? What type of player do you think the FO think he'll be? Were they in on him up to 8M/year to be a 4th-5th OF?

More likely a guy who can produce 1/3 of the results for 1/8 of the money

Don't try to confuse us with your double negatives Mr. Green!!

Didn't anyone link him to Brett's financial piece???

As in freeing CC from the burden of his living existence?

Umm yeah, never done that.

Why the [expletive] did this happen?

Request that the bum be freed

Just dump it all in the Giants dugout.

Josh Hamilton Not even close to equivalent deals. Hamilton is at $23M/30/30 through 2017. Josh Hamilton doesn't suck though. As impossible as this sounds, he and EJax have very similar fWARs over the past two seasons. If the Angels sent enough money to bring the money closer to equivalent, I'd be in favor of that potential deal, though. It doesn't sound impossible, fWAR thinks Jackson is just really unlucky, rather than terrible.