XZero771679666304

Smarter management teams won't let things get to that point, which is the developing trend. Cabrera is a bit of an exception because he got started so young, but lock up your own guys from their mid twenties through their mid thirties and you avoid having to give out the post-prime megadeals at all. Having to take it in the ass for the last 4-5 years of a huge deal to derive some value from the first 3-4 is going to become a price only desperate teams have to pay.

I largely agree. Do I wish the Cubs would shell out a bit more towards objectively productive free agents so I could at least get some short-term enjoyment out of this team? Yeah. But am I broken-hearted that we aren't locked into the deals that Bourn and Cano (as examples) received? No. As for Cabrera, ESPN is reporting that GM's and owners across baseball are pissed about the deal. I have to think most of that anger is centered in Anaheim, but if guys like Baez and Bryant turn out to be what we hope / think they will, it doesn't help us either. Really the deal is loco - the kind of thing that Steinbrenner would have done in his 80's heyday. I know that Miggy is a once in lifetime player -if he keeps this up he will finish as one of the Top 5 of all time. But if they want him to be productive (not great - just productive) until the end, he probably needs to be a nearly full-time DH by age 34, IMO. Turn him into Edgar Martinez. We're probably not going to see many more of these megadeals given to post prime players as more and more of the best young players are given semi-megadeals that take them into their mid-30s. For that reason, I don't think this is going to have a huge effect on the market, along with the fact that very few players will ever have quite the resume Cabrera does. Clearly this deal is going to be paying Miggy primarily for past production, and odds are he will play most of it out as a DH. Between he and Verlander, Detroit is going to have a lot of money tied up in post prime players.

The trade that gets Daniels fired. It may. That trade looked like a Cubs win at the time, when Ramirez wasn't yet a part of the deal and Olt was seen as potentially being irreparably damaged goods. Right now, it looks like an absolute fleecing. Now with the injuries the Rangers are dealing with, I'm betting Daniels is wishing he had that one back. And getting Hendricks and Villanueva for Dempster is looking better than it did at the time, too. Daniels would do well to stop doing business with Hoyer/Epstein. The fact that neither Dempster nor Garza were retained (not to mention that they didn't perform particularly well) and they didn't get any compensation has just got to be salt in the wound.

Where's Randall Simon when you need him

I don't like singles hitters who hit .250 in a good year and don't walk a lot Yeah, if Barney could at least pull his bb% up into the 10% range, that'd be something. But being a guy that doesn't hit for average, doesn't hit for power and doesn't walk really limits his value. Some of the peripherals indicate he might have suffered from bad luck last year, but he was down in 2012 from 2011, too. He was pretty close to neutral value last year, so even if he rebounds a bit, it's hard to justify keeping him in the regular lineup even over guys like Valbuena.

Sounds like that would be a nightmare for Kyle. Nah. I don't think he's that good either. I just think it'd be funny to spite the ridiculous people who think he's worse than Donnie Murphy because they arbitrarily decided that peripherals don't count anymore. Saying I'd rather he be gone right now than Murphy isn't the same as saying he's less valuable. The issue for me is that I don't see Barney's value increasing with his cost, making him harder to move as time goes on. I'd prefer to move him now, before that becomes more evident and no one wants to give anything for him.

Yeah, it's a very surprising move.

Barney has more value but my disdain is such that I still almost would have rather him gone. I agree. I think there is a strong probability that Barney's value continues to decline, and since there are a lot of better options either on the roster or in the pipeline, I'd rather see him gone sooner than later.

With the way Olt and Valbuena have played this spring, it seems like it was just a question of which of Murphy/Barney was going to go.

It seems like Edwards lost his command at about the same time his FB velo dipped a few mph (according to gameday). Not sure what to make of that, if anything. I really wish I could be watching this game.

He may be. I'll pack his bags and buy him a ticket out of town. I love his attitude and motor, but he isn't skilled and he isn't smart. Illinois could be pretty good next season, and the chances of that will be negatively correlated with the minutes Tracy gets, imo. If he transfers, that'd be swell.

I agree that all of that would be an improvement, but I just don't see how that's potentially putting them at 90 wins. 90 wins sounds like Baez and Bryant showing up and kicking ass, the Cubs trading for at least one fantastic starting pitcher and re-singing Shark and Castro and Rizzo not just bouncing back but improving...at least. That's a lot that has to go really right. It's not that I don't think they won't get to that point along those lines, but I don't think 2015 is the year it's likely to happen. I think there's going to be growing pains/busts. I posted a couple scenarios above, one being the lowest degree of optimistic, and the other being an "everything goes right" scenario. I think 85-90 wins would be somewhere in between those two.

If Baez and Bryant come up and are simply decent, Rizzo and Castro approximate their 2012 rates and the FO is allowed to add a couple SP and Shark re-signs, I can see 80-85. I think you're selling short just how bad the offense is potentially going to be this year plus how iffy the starting rotation is. Baez and Bryant simply being OK and Castro and Rizzo only managing to be their old selves doesn't seem like much to drag this mess up past .500. Shark staying and adding a couple front end SP would do a lot. The bullpen cost us a lot of games and the looks to be well improved already. Castro and Rizzo going back to their 2012 rates would be no small improvement, and potentially replacing Barney's bat with Baez would make a difference. The OF is a hot mess, but that's where I expect Bryant to end up, which will at least marginally improve that. The offense this year does have to potential to be awful, but it also has the potential to be decent. We'll see how it shakes out.

Yeah, this is a huge year. Not so much for W/L, but huge for assessing and setting up the core of the team. It's going to be quite interesting.

If Baez and Bryant come up and are simply decent, Rizzo and Castro approximate their 2012 rates and the FO is allowed to add a couple SP and Shark re-signs, I can see 80-85. Everything going right would be Castro and Rizzo not only rebounding but progressing, Baez and Bryant not only being on the roster but being 3+ WAR players, Olt being a 3+ WAR player, Shark re-signing and improving, signing two of the top FA pitchers, Castillo progressing, Hendricks making the team and being a 2 WAR pitcher, the bullpen breaking right and maybe even Soler finding his way onto the team in the second half and contributing. Somewhere in between is something that would could at least hope for without being crazy people.

Intuitively, I agree, but I seem to recall TT posting something a while back at least semi-debunking that line of thinking. Of course this [expletive] game can somehow show that going from 65 wins to 85+ wins at the drop of a hat and sustaining it is somehow realistic. Go [expletive] yourself, baseball. I don't think it's how you'd want to draw up a plan, but it can absolutely work out that way. If the Rickettses find some money, I think we could see it happen here really soon. I think it's pretty easy to imagine a realistic (only somewhat optimistic) scenario in which the Cubs win 70-75 games this year and jump to 85-90 next year.

I think that last season, Castro's (and Rizzo's, to a lesser degree) regression threw a wrench into the works of progression a bit. It was going to be bad, but I don't think too many people thought it was going to be quite as bad as it was. Tanking can only be justified so long as the odds of being in contention are sufficiently long. Of course adding players helps those odds, but financial constraints (along with limited appealing FA options) hamper your ability to do that. But if things go even decently this year, and guys like Baez and perhaps Bryant find their ways onto the big league roster (even moreso if Castro and Rizzo rebound, or Olt becomes even an approximation of a thing), justifying a tank (or even passive approach) to 2015 becomes nearly impossible. It's not something that just go on forever, unless your FO is just grossly incompetent (see the Pirates for most of the past 20 years). And finishing at .500 in and of itself isn't detrimental to the plan, but what you have to do to get there might be. If you have to give a guy or three you only sort of want a bad contract to get you to that point, that is absolutely detrimental for a number of reasons. The only thing that has really stuck in my craw is not more aggressively pursuing guys who fit the bill of being long term assets who figure to be cost effective for most or all of the duration of a contract (young, good players like Tanaka, Darvish, etc.). My intuition is that these are guys the FO really wanted, and that they just weren't given enough money by ownership. I'm not freaking out yet, but I am growing increasingly antsy about the financial situation.

Oh, for God's sake. Better not try until they can guarantee a playoff spot. I'd prefer they spend money and make the team more watchable, but .500 is not contention, unless you have a really generous definition of "striking distance". The second wild card team in 2013 was 18 games over, and while some teams might regress (Pirates), others may take a step forward (Nats). I can't realistically envision a scenario in which 81-81 gets you close to the postseason in 2014. All I am saying is that if price you pay for being simply average-below average (with only a very outside chance of contention) rather than bad is a chance at a top prospect, you can't totally condemn the FO for taking the high draft pick. I don't much care for it, but I can understand the logic and reconcile with the reality of a bad season. If you have limited resources (and I am in the camp that believes that ownership is being stingy, for whatever reason you choose to believe), the smart play is to play it safe and favor the long term. Having said that, we're getting to [expletive] or get off the pot time. Trying to keep the team on the fringes of contention in 2012 would have been almost undeniably detrimental to long term goals, and to a lesser degree the same was true in 2013. 2014 is the last season I can be on board with this. If some significant moves to add front line talent (especially pitching) during or after this season, I am going to be really perturbed, to say the least.

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability". I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season. yes i would much prefer to win 81 games than 65. i like watching baseball, and if the cubs aren't a miserable sack of [expletive], i get to keep doing that for the whole season instead of willing myself to forget they exist by the second week of june. No [expletive]. It also completely ignores that if they're an 81 win team, there's a good chance you're in contention for something late into the summer. At this point, in this division, hovering around .500 is keeping yourself in contention for fourth place. I guess that's something.

One of the reasons I gave up pitching when I was in HS was almost getting my head taken off twice, that latter of which took the cap off of my head and left an abrasion on my temple. I needed my brain intact more than I needed to be a mediocre HS pitcher, and I didn't need to take a liner flush to realize that.

It's really not that complex and the context is very much understood. The Cubs knew they could get away with losing a lot for multiple years because of the inherited brand value established over the years and instead of trying to build up the farm system while trying to succeed at the major league level, they chose to focus their efforts entirely on the farm system. Some people think that was the only way to do it and are totally cool with it. Others don't think that. There's a lot of grey area. Some people don't think it was the only way to do it, and aren't totally cool with it, but understand the logic and can live with it. One does not either have to be in love with it or loathe it. I am of the opinion that there was very little chance that the Cubs could have contended the past couple years, even with aggressive spending, and I understand the decision not to spend resources on a lost cause. As I alluded to earlier, I don't think overspending in FA to try and add a few wins and be "respectable" while not contending is a particularly worthwhile endeavor. I don't care at all for the MLB team being awful, but non-contention is non-contention, and I take no more pleasure in being mediocre rather than bad. What does not sit well with me, however, is missing on young long term assets like Tanaka, and I personally think the blame for that lies with ownership, not the FO.

Not the least bit surprised at OSU losing.

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability". I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season. yes i would much prefer to win 81 games than 65. i like watching baseball, and if the cubs aren't a miserable sack of [expletive], i get to keep doing that for the whole season instead of willing myself to forget they exist by the second week of june. I'll always find/create/rationalize a reason to watch, but every year that the Cubs aren't contending kind of feels the same to me. Last year was rough because we didn't even have good individual performances to watch, but even in the worst seasons there is usually a somewhat compelling reason for me to tune in. Now the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty close, and I just don't really care if the Cubs go 81-81 or 71-91 in 2014, nor do I think 5-10 games either way portends anything substantial for the future.

Would going .500 feel substantially better to you than losing 90 games? Because at the end of the day, it wouldn't feel much different to me. Non-contention sucks, and that dissatisfaction is not assuaged by the pretense of "respectability". I think the Cubs are a year or two from contention, and whether we lose 80 or 90 games this year doesn't make one iota of difference, imo. I am a lot more excited about the team than I was, say, in the second half of the 2011 season.

Better video: http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v31593793/cinkc-chapman-struck-by-liner-leaves-on-stretcher Well, higher quality, anyway. That was an ugly sight.