UMFan83

Fields is throwing to WRs like Adams who won’t be on the team. It’s frustrating. And 3 check downs in the first 2 drives for Fields which isn’t necessarily bad but reminds of how a bad offensive coach can ruin Fields

Such a Bears offensive drive, no fault of Fields This whole game is stupid and reminding me why I don’t watch the preseason in any sport lol

This is driving me nuts, the Dolphins have had like 18 plays, the Bears 6. Fields better be in next series

This Ogletree thing is fascinating. May be the only good thing Robert Quinn has ever done for the Bears. He was all over the place on that drive

Can’t say I’ve ever been more excited for a preseason game

Though I'd prefer that Ricketts sell to someone with deeper pockets, I cant get behind the hate for him. Without Ricketts, there's no Theo, the catalyst to the greatest stretch of Cubs baseball of our lifetime, and perhaps the most thrilling 3 innings in baseball history (need I elaborate?) Granted, they've been dropping the ball ever since, but I think I'm at peace with it. :roll:

It’s almost like trading away all your good veteran players hurts the morale and performance of your team

Reminder that this team traded the pick the the Bears used on Justin Fields: https://streamable.com/onpnx5

He was also a 28/29/30 year old scraping together half-assed rebound seasons after back to back 1 WAR seasons. He's already 32 years old and will just be getting worse as time goes by. But last year was arguably the best year of his career. Only 50 games, but definitely not a 'half assed rebound season', especially coming off two 2 win seasons. Maybe he's broken, but also maybe these career minor league dudes just suck and it's better to shoot for another Heyward rebound. I don't think that we cannot take literally anything away from the 2020 season for anyone. Like for instance, from April 19, 2018 to June 30, 2018 Heyward recorded a 50 game stretch where he his .314/.363/.481/.844. Still finished with a .731 OPS for the season. I get that we cant assume that he would drop off in 2020 and comparing his entire 2020 with a cherry picked best 50 game stretch in another season is not totally fair, but its still a small sample that jumps out as an outlier from the rest of this Cubs career. He also had the highest BABIP as a Cub, and his average EV was at 2016 levels (though his LD% was much higher than any other season in his career).

Bottom number is 2021 not 2019. In Las Vegas but still good numbers. Guessing his age is why he is so lowly regarded?

That sounds bad

Has their ever been a brothers battery before?

They certainly flipped that rivalry around

The team's payroll rank for those 3 years was 9th, 14th, and 19th, for an easy to calculate average of 14th. That equates to a ~125-130 million payroll in 2021, the White Sox, Twins, and Braves are all right there if you want a mental image. This is the crux of what I'm getting at, I'm not even saying the ideology is 100% wrong but when you actually put specifics to it you don't have to write off the immediate future the way the team did in 2012. Things might be much worse than they ought to be(and also might not, see my post above), but that doesn't mean catastrophic things for the next 3 years. I almost said a low midmarket team but small market team sounded cooler and didnt think anyone would call me out on it. :D I just can't remember ever seeing a bad team become a good team in 2 years with ~80% of the team being acquired during the interim. Yes teams often bring up prospects, but how many current prospects do you see being a part of the 2023 team? What does the Cubs projected payroll look like after arb raises? $60m? I just can't see Jed spending $65-70m this offseason to get the payroll up to that $125-$130 level. Maybe I'm wrong, as that could be like 3-4 players these days.

One is that it doesn't make much sense for them. They just invested a zillion dollars into Wrigleyville and the gameday experience, and while the Cubs have a high base of support there's a demonstrable difference in that potential revenue when the team is good or not good. Attendance has varied from 400k-600k/year depending on the relative badness or goodness of the team in the Ricketts era, and that's stated attendance which is going to underrate the real revenue impact of people who don't bother to use tickets when the team is bad, and further compounded by having so much revenue generated from Wrigleyville outside ticket sales. Moreover, this type of FUD is rarely specific or taken to its logical conclusion. If cost controls uber alles were the best profit maximizing lever to pull, then wouldn't the Ricketts want to drop the payroll to the bottom of the league? Even the most pessimistic folks don't seem to think(or say out loud) that the Cubs are about to become the Marlins, so they seem to intuitively understand there is a level of spending that is necessary for the overall moneymaking venture. But I rarely(ever?) hear what folks think or fear that level is, so it's impossible to speak to how likely that outcome is, or if accurate how damaging that would be to the original conversation about the Cubs' competitive timeline, which grinds that conversation to a halt. No they wouldnt go as far as to drop to the lowest payroll in the league. Tom is very image conscious and seems to take criticisms personally. No amount of profit is worth being an all-time villain, and I'm not sure the league would allow them to continue owning the team if they ran out a $20m payroll every year. My belief is that they are willing to spend to a point, but if you try to cross that point, winning becomes secondary to profits. Even if they have to bail on a 6+ year window halfway through, forcing the team to sign Descalso and wait to see how long Zobrist is going to be gone from the team before signing Kimbrel. Did Theo and Jed overextend their line of credit in 2018? Did the Ricketts family allow them some temporary flexibility to get out of the mess they built? No, they werent allowed to make any moves until they cleared payroll and it mostly stayed that way as the Cubs looked less and less like a championship contender in 2019 and 2020. Don't forget that to get that window open we purposely lost for 3+ years with a payroll resembling a small market team.

Eh, I guess I don't acknowledge the nuance in the way you guys use "retool" and "rebuild". To me thats corporate speak to sell us on revamping the team. In 2014 we weren't "rebuilding" either, we were acquiring long term assets! It becomes a rebuild if you have bad luck or do a bad job and everything takes long than it's supposed to. I think the Cubs should be able to be Yankees like competitive very soon, so I am not seeing the difference. It's a pretty easy distinction IMO. The Cubs from 2012-2014 were rebuilding. They completely gutted the team, lost as many games as they could, established a new identify, etc. Retooling is keeping the same core in place and trying to use trades to better the team in the long term while in the short term having a couple down years. The Yankees in 2016 is the most extreme lightest retool ever but its a good example. The 2016 Yankees were a decent team, but not a contender. They knew Teixeira and ARod were retiring and had guys like Judge/Severino/Sanchez coming up. They traded away two valuable relievers and got several good prospects back. In 2017 they were in the ALCS. That's a retool in the purest sense of the word but obviously there is a lot of grey area between the 2016 yankees and the 2012 Cubs.

It's nuts, I remember when the Bears had that big losing streak during the season thinking how mad I was at the flukish 5-1 start preventing us from finishing with a top 2 pick which is the only way to get Lawrence or Fields. Those top 2 were pretty locked in through the season. How he somehow dropped to 11 is beyond my comprehension

i assumed today was an off day. The Cubs have been virtually not competitive in any of their last 6 games

And there's a reason we're talking about the dominant LA and NY teams and Boston. They are big market clubs with every resource and advantage at their disposal that 85% of baseball does not have. The Cubs are the dominant big market team in Chicago and we've had to make player acquisition decisions based on things like how long Zobrist is going to be dealing with that thing with his wife? and when fans can attend games again? Does being a dominant big market team guarantee near consistent success? No. But it should be the aim of a team like the Cubs, and fans should have that expectation. Maybe it's a little unfair to put group Chicago in with New York whose metro population is more than double Chicago's or even LA who has about 50% more people. Chicago is much closer to Dallas/Houston than NY. But it is bigger and historically we have not used that to our advantage.

I'd argue that all 3 of those teams did some kind of rebuild to get where they are. Which period during the Yankees 28 year streak of finishing over .500 were they rebuilding? Yes there were some years where they clearly werent as dominant, and there was at least 1 year where they were sellers at the deadline but that will happen to everyone but the Dodgers. They retooled yet but never rebuilt. The Red Sox have had some down years so I partially retract because with the Cubs we're hoping for a 2 year playoff drought (21 and 22) and then back to relevancy (could definitely be longer but that's what everyone seems to be hoping). They have made big selling trades but always seem to spring back up after 1-2 years. So maybe the Cubs are more of their model. But they've only had 2 years since the early 90s where they've been truly a bad team like the Cubs are right now and will possibly be next year. Not saying that winning 78 games is any sort of big success but its not the depths the Cubs dealt with between 2010-2014 or what we have now. The avoidance of having a truly terrible pointless baseball team is the lowest bar to clear when you are gauging sustained success.

There's little doubt that better days are ahead. What I do doubt is they will ever try for sustained success. They'll be happy to take 4-5 year swings and restart. Is that not true for every team? With the possible exception of the Dodgers, I don't think many teams are consistently sustaining success. Dodgers are a bit of an outlier with their ownership and TV deal Not many big market teams trade all of their biggest stars and reboot. The Yankees and Red Sox have had their share of struggles but neither has undertaken a full gut and rebuild of their teams. The Astros blossomed a year before us and are still among the best teams in baseball. In my mind it all comes down to strong farm and development for sustained success. If you can't figure that out your stars eventually get old or overpaid and there's no one to replace them. It's not even about trading chips anymore either as teams horde their top guys more and more. The Cubs failed to practice the dual fronts approach that they preached, and were not drafting/developing well enough to avoid what happened 2 weeks ago.

Right? I know how we got here but its still strange that the organization is in this shape 5 years after being the crown jewel of the sport.

Forgot about the 10/5. Was going to say he might move in a situation where we take an even worse contract (more years or more AAV). Do buyouts happen a lot in baseball? He's a great clubhouse presence and his defense is still solid (I think) so its not the worst thing in the world to have him as an extra OF on the roster as long as its clear he is not an everyday or even platoon starter for the next team that attempts to contend. This is a pretty dire statement, but considering we're on the hook for his contract regardless, and given the lack of any other options, if the goal is competitive in 2022, isn't it prudent to see if he can figure out how to be 2020 Heyward again? I dunno. His situation is opposite of Happ's. Prior to last season he had 2100 PAs of mostly below average hitting for the Cubs (.711 OPS). Do we trust that or the 181 PAs from a shortened season that had a lot of strange outliers across the league? If we somehow unlock 2020 Heyward next year, and the Cubs intend to compete in 2023, that gives us 1 year to "enjoy" this Heyward before he's a FA. So in my mind the chances of actually unlocking 2020 are not worth the limited benefit. If there's no obvious outfielder to develop? Sure knock yourself out.

This was still a joint practice with the Dolphins right? Carving up an opposing D like that even if its behind closed doors in a practice is awesome to hear.

Is this something that could really happen? I was hoping (more like wishing) they could move him at the deadline. Even if they had to eat 90% of the contract I would have been happy with it. He's at full 10/5, I highly doubt the places that would trade for him and that he'd go to intersect at all... especially considering I have a feeling the places he'd accept a trade to is pretty close to 0 if not 0. Forgot about the 10/5. Was going to say he might move in a situation where we take an even worse contract (more years or more AAV). Do buyouts happen a lot in baseball? He's a great clubhouse presence and his defense is still solid (I think) so its not the worst thing in the world to have him as an extra OF on the roster as long as its clear he is not an everyday or even platoon starter for the next team that attempts to contend.