SouthSideRyan
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Everything posted by SouthSideRyan
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That or when the Trib/Zell finally allowed him (or even forced him) to spend money there weren't great options on the market for the long term deals. It's been put out there that the trib was more behind signing Soriano than Hendry, or at least forced him to add some years/$$. In no way am I a Hendry apologist but I think part of the awful contracts was him being forced to spend money by ownership. For the 91st time, Hendry's FA contracts aren't what made him a shitty shitty GM
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The deal wasn't getting held up because of James [expletive] Loney anyway. It's not like the Red Sox actually want anything to do with him. He's terrible. -
Haha what?
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Isn't Crawford on the DL? I thought players on the DL couldn't be traded. Considering the Cubs just traded for Arodys Vizcaino less than a month ago, I'd say that source is wrong.
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They saw how profitable bankruptcy was for McCourt, and said why not us too?
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Yes, yes, and Nick Punto too.
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You're comparing NFL draft picks to MLB draft picks why exactly?
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Yes, and he just took the Mississippi St. WR coach job. His name isn't nearly weird enough to be an SEC assistant.
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Can they even afford him after picking up Cliff Lee?
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And then when that trade target is a FA a year or 2 later you let him walk rather than pay him 22M AAV? Because I want star players, and star players prefer to be paid in excessive amounts of money.
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You literally said one post ago that there will always be free agents to sign. In addition to the standard big money teams, we now have the Dodgers to compete with as they spend themselves into an even more hilarious 2nd bankruptcy in the FA market. Along with that every team, good/bad, poor/rich is extending their good players before they hit free agency. A year ago, the '13 FA class was loaded. Now it sucks. So when 2015 comes along and we're ready to take a shot at contending and there are a couple square pegs for our round holes in free agency what do we do? We overpay in the trade market and give up prospects in addition to the cash we'd pay a straight up free agent.
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If we all agree that those signings wouldn't put the Cubs into contention 2012, why does it have to be assumed that stuff like Marshall and Garza would be extended and Samardzija and Cashner would be tethered to the bullpen? Why couldn't they sign FAs AND build the farm system with trades?
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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3IRvH28k7Dk/TyF-P-d9TWI/AAAAAAAAJa8/ldrT5Mg84zY/s1600/why@.jpg
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If we only spend 25M on FAs, our ML payroll will have dropped ~20M and we won't have any 30M Soler contracts to hand out on the minor league level.
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This type of thinking is what got us here. Paying players in their 30s to take a terrible team to average or slightly below average would make it hard to ever build the consistently great team Theo is trying to achieve. It's interesting that just a few posts above this, you bash Jim Hendry. For the 90th [expletive] time, signing free agents is not why Jim Hendry was a terrible GM
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Why so, we can be bad instead of awful? And then mediocre instead of bad? The only way it prolongs the system building is not giving us the highest draft picks possible, so again be incredibly shitty or incredibly good, there's no value in the middle. Yep, like I said that's all I want, to smile and eat a [expletive] sandwich 76 win team.
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There's nothing wrong with passing on any one free agent, or even the group of big names from this past offseason. Darvish and Wilson were the only ones I even wanted out of that group (after we got Rizzo) and Darvish was a blind bid and Wilson seemed set on LA. The issue is whether we're going to keep passing the next couple of offseasons so we can build up our farm system.
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most had given up on Cashner as a starter due to all the injuries Marshall was a (great) middle reliever in his last arb year...when do guys like that get traded for a significant return? Brett Jackson i liked, you can add him to my earlier list Szczur wasn't a top-100 guy to anybody but BA; what would you realistically trade for a top-150ish prospect? what did we even trade Soto for again? I think it's disingenuous to say Szczur had no value because other ranking systems didn't have him high. You don't think there are scouts out there that loved him? We traded Soto for a shitty return after he had the worst 2/3 season of his career.
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As opposed to what? Simply bad? How does one progress from awful to great? Do we just skip over any sort of improvement and lose 100 games the next couple years then bam 95 win juggernaut?
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And can we stop acting like the anti-tank 2-3 years and get draft picks and amateur budget wanted to spend a billion dollars just to win 78 games this year? It's about gathering assets, and the easiest way to gather sure assets is to pay for them on the free agent market. Literally the only thing it would have cost us beyond the money is draft positioning, which goes back to my question to davell 4 pages ago whether he(and by extension those who agree with him) feel the only way to turn around a bad franchise is by being terrible for a few years. There's a difference between MacPhail era contending within the division and paying to make your team better today and in the future.
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(when i said he left them nothing, i assumed it was easily understood that meant nothing of value...he obviously left him some players with which to actually physically field a team, and not that he made off with all his players like some dastardly bandit) How can you argue that Cashner was nothing of value when he was traded for Rizzo? How can you argue that Marshall was nothing of value when he was traded for Wood/Torreyes/Sappelt? How about Brett Jackson? Matt Szczur? Geovany Soto? Jim Hendry was [expletive] horrendous at his job, but we weren't the Astros at the major league level and the White Sox in the minors.
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Would our farm system be any worse right now if we signed free agents this past offseason? Would our 2013 team be better?
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They'd probably say no. The Marlins absolutely would (or at least should). They weren't all that close, their season has been a disaster, and their signings disappointing. Adding those players was a transparent attempt to put butts in the new seats, and it didn't even succeed in that. I can't argue with the way the Angels went about things (though I still cringe at that Pujols contract, which is gonna look uglier in a couple years). This is because they had a pretty nice group of players on the roster already. Pujols and Wilson rounded out the team. Pujols and Wilson on the Cubs would have been band-aids on bullet wounds. And then the band-aids would fall off after 162 games. This team with Pujols and Wilson and even Cespedes would still be well under .500. And then MLB would fold.
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I think you have too much faith in 2 drafts/IFA periods to provide the basis of a contender. Our front office is probably the best in baseball, but even the best in baseball can have an off draft. It's not 2 though, if we're awful next year. We got plenty of upside out of this past sraft and about the only thing Hendry left us with was some some interesting lower level guys as well. Once you add those guys to go with 2 more high pick and money classes, the system should be rock solid, even with a miss or three. But a top 3 system combined with a 75 win major league team still kinda sucks. Your current plan is counting on a 15+ win jump in year 4.
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They'd probably say no. The Marlins absolutely would (or at least should). They weren't all that close, their season has been a disaster, and their signings disappointing. Adding those players was a transparent attempt to put butts in the new seats, and it didn't even succeed in that. I can't argue with the way the Angels went about things (though I still cringe at that Pujols contract, which is gonna look uglier in a couple years). This is because they had a pretty nice group of players on the roster already. Pujols and Wilson rounded out the team. Pujols and Wilson on the Cubs would have been band-aids on bullet wounds. And then the band-aids would fall off after 162 games.
