XZero771679666304

I would've signed Ramirez and suffered the horrors of being without Pierce Johnson (who I like) And the team would still have sucked. Sign Ramirez and Fielder, and the team would have been better, but likely not competed. And that's assuming they kept guys like Marshall and Cashner. You would have lost a chunk of Fielder's (or whatever FA you want to substitute) prime (prime production being the only rationalization for paying the back end of contracts like that) and paid a premium for the end of Ramirez's career all for a gain of maybe 5 wins over 2011 (based on 2012 fWAR), which still leaves the team well short of contention. And thank god we stayed away from Pujols. The appearance of effort would have made people feel better, but it would have done nothing to improve the long term over what ended up happening. FTR, what has happened to Ramirez this year is exactly what those who felt re-signing him would be a mistake feared would happen. What he did last year would have been worth it had improbable gains been made all over the roster.

A big market team that was terrible for multiple years at the big league level that built itself back in large part because of the resulting stocking of the system is a worthless analogy to the Cubs situation? Just because the "intent to suck" wasn't there? Or because a couple of their homegrown players turned out to be HOF types (based on resumes built largely on performance that came after they had already returned to prominence)? The level of success that team achieved was unusual, but the circumstances that led to it were not. Building from within and the supplementing those homegrown players with trades and signings is what initially returned the Yankees to glory, the insane spending and HOF-caliber careers/peak performance that followed came further down the road (and kept them there). The Cubs do not need their kids to become Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera or 200MM payolls to replicate the path to sustained success that the Yankees followed. What their FO intended to do from 1989-1992 doesn't change what actually transpired. They sucked, they drafted well, and rebuilt responsibly.

why aren't we a decent team? because we didn't sign Prince Fielder If only...

No. They flat-sucked for 7 years, then they're working on their second losing season out of three when their window was supposed to be open. That would not be awesome. When the role models for your franchise's plan have broken .500 once in nine seasons, maybe it's time to take a step back and have some perspective. hey guess what we're the rays with a lot more money, frigging sweet. you have to keep couching your "examples" with situations that aren't analogous, it's worthless. What's worthless is full seasons of crappy major league baseball, and the Cubs are in their 4th consecutive, two of which will be on these guys' collective watch. It remains to be seen if they will have the Rays success. I would have assumed they could have been the Rays with more money at the outset, but what they've put on the field so far has put serious questions into whether they can actually pull it off. A good front office should be able to draft and develop quality players without having to tank for the top of the draft, and/or wait for their third season to compete. Extremely highly compensated front office supergroups should be able to do it with relative ease. These guys have been handed an easy job, just stock the farm and don't worry about results at the major league level. That's simple. I look at it this way: the job is "build the franchise into a perennial power in the way you deem best, and don't worry about the immediate big league results". It may well be that large payrolls won't be available in the short term. No one is going to tolerate many years and years of this, and only the most alarmist and reactionary would believe that is/was ever the plan. And again, the new CBA has made it much more difficult to make substantial gains for the system while stocking the big league team, which has almost certainly affected how Theo/Jed have approached things (along with the presumed payroll restrictions).

My influence is often underestimated, but I'm not responsible for the Nationals' sucking in the post-Montreal era. If the argument is that the Cubs needed to expedite the rebuilding process because they were so terrible that they were starting with nothing, wouldn't going back to the beginning of the Nats' sucking be the logical starting point? No, going back to where they were in the process of really bottoming out and there was a regime (and total philosophy) change would be the logical starting point for evaluating how they've gotten to where they are (and for comparison to the Cubs situation). Clearly.

I would have said Rizzo last year, but FF has really surprised me this year. This year Freeman has been the beneficiary of a high babip, has walked less than Rizzo, and struck out more. Meanwhile Rizzo has been relatively unlucky. Even so, Freeman has only been about half a win better.

I'm sure he wasn't. But that's what happened. That's what happened because you did it. And it's disingenuous at best.

No. They flat-sucked for 7 years, then they're working on their second losing season out of three when their window was supposed to be open. That would not be awesome. When the role models for your franchise's plan have broken .500 once in nine seasons, maybe it's time to take a step back and have some perspective. I don't think you can evaluate the current state of the Nationals going back any further than the day Bowden stepped out and Rizzo stepped in. And again, don't tell me you wouldn't have been thrilled if the Cubs and Nats switched positions prior to this season.

I think that they will have similar net production (Freeman might hit for better average, Rizzo may take more walks), with comparable power numbers for both.

We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects. am i wrong or wouldn't that be like, awesome? Absolutely.

We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects. You would have been overjoyed to have been the Nationals with slightly worse prospects prior to this season, and don't try and say you wouldn't have. There are no guarantees on the field, and the Nationals are an example of that. And IMB's point is right on, that yours only holds an ounce of water if the assumption is that the Cubs are going to be thrifty in the long term, which seems unlikely at best.

It's pretty ignorant to characterize the fan's desire to see his team win games as meatballish. It's meatballish to prefer marginal and mostly symbolic gains in w/l to substantive improvements to the overall franchise. The assumption many have made is that the team could have been returned squarely to competition in short order from where it was when Theo took over, which is a position that is, imo, pretty ignorant.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. The point was that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. Not even the Yankees were exempt from this. No one is expecting the Cubs to become the Yankees, but the approach should be the same. And the guys I mentioned were merely very good before they were HOFers, and that was enough. And it was a few years on from when the Yanks re-emerged that they started "breaking the league" with their spending. That Yankees run was probably something that will not be replicated, by anyone. But its genesis was not in insane spending, it was in player development. Even when the Yankees were not yet running away with the payroll leaderboard, they were merely playing leapfrog with Baltimore. It's also not at all true that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. That may be the preferred method for some. That is the safe and more cost effective method. But it is also the much more time consuming and loss running up method. The only teams that have to build from within first are the truly poor ones or the rich ones who choose to be run excessively conservatively. No team wins with consistency without significant contribution from within. Say what you will about how you get to the point where you consistently get those contributions, but the necessity of them isn't an arguable point. If you try to build exclusively from without, you either fail or find only inconsistent success (again, see Hendry). Every consistently great franchise maintains a good farm system. I understand the position that gains should be made on both sides in equal measure, but I don't think that approach would have made the big league team good (not better, but actually good) any more quickly. I think that the team is in a position where it could very well get much better in rapid fashion because of the resources that have been brought in during the last 18 months or so. Of course much of that depends on how tightly Ricketts is holding the purse strings, which is actually pretty unclear at this point.

But it did come about (at least in part) because of the Yankees being dreadful at the major league level. For the purposes of identifying the reasons the Yankees reemerged so quickly and trying to replicate it (at least the pattern if not the level of success), the intent isn't really that important. Say what you will, but the Cubs' abandonment of the 2012 season seriously expedited the farm system rebuild, which is crucial to long term success. If the FO had half halfheartedly tried to compete last year it almost certainly would have slowed the overall process down. It sucked, but in the end I prefer pragmatism to the feeble pretense of "trying" to return a moribund team to competition immediately to satisfy the meatballish sensibilities of the common fan. Whether it will prove to have been the most efficacious path remains to be seen. I'm pretty satisfied with the job the FO has done to this point, but this coming offseason is going to mark an important crossroads, imo.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. The point was that you have to build from within before you can successfully build from without. Not even the Yankees were exempt from this. No one is expecting the Cubs to become the Yankees, but the approach should be the same. And the guys I mentioned were merely very good before they were HOFers, and that was enough. And it was a few years on from when the Yanks re-emerged that they started "breaking the league" with their spending. That Yankees run was probably something that will not be replicated, by anyone. But its genesis was not in insane spending, it was in player development.

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level. The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money. The signings and trades will come, probably soon. But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial. It's not immaterial if your ML team only needs to fill 1-2 holes as opposed to a team that has 5-6 holes to fill. The Cubs need a high percentage of their top prospects to make it, while it was a luxury for the Red Sox to have prospects make it. The FO has put all of their faith, time, and money into the ml system with the thought that it will pay off somewhere in the future. The Red Sox really did work on "dual fronts" by having a very good team and a strong farm system. Because they were already good when Theo took over there. The Cubs were not. Trying to do the dual fronts thing from where the Cubs were in 2011 (bad big league team, bad farm system) would have resulted in just as protracted a wait, if not longer, because one comes at the expense of the other. The cost of that trade off is mitigated when both are already good, but to get to that point one is more vital than the other. Like I said, you need the foundation laid before you build the house, and Theo and Jed have done nothing short of spectacular (though imperfect) work in building up the farm in a relatively short period of time. And the Cubs absolutely do not need a disproportionately high number of prospects to pan out to get where they want to go. That line of thought would be on the assumption that were never going to spend or make significant trades. They just need a few of them to work out, enough to constitute a core to supplement. Every successful MLB team relies on certain level of contribution from their farm to win with consistency. A good example of where the Cubs are (hopefully) could be the Yankees of the mid-1990s. They were objectively terrible at the big league level for the first half of the decade, but out of those bad years came Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera, etc., who they then built around with shrewd signings and trade acquisitions. They did not have a disproportionately high number of their prospects work out (in fact many of their top kids flamed out), but enough did. If you add just 2-3 of the Cubs' top 10 to the existing roster, suddenly you're quite close, close enough that just a few decent acquisitions (or a couple really good ones) puts the team in a very good place. That's how the Yankees did it (Before they turned into the Evil Empire), that's how Epstein's Sox did it, that's how the Cardinals have done it, how the consistently great franchises do it. Once you get that machine up and running, then it fuels itself. It's becoming clearer by the day that Jim Hendry and predecessors did not, that they tried to build their house on metaphorical sand and is why we are enduring what we are.

The problem is that the success of the team has been put squarely on the prospects (as players and future trade chips), which is why we're putting up with inferior product at the ML level. Comparing them to the Red Sox prospects from a few years ago isn't relevant because the Red Sox weren't a 70 win team at the ML level. The late 2000s Red Sox weren't a 70 win team because they had been competently run for years, even during the previous regime, and Theo was fortunate enough to inherit a good major league team. The same cannot be said for the Cubs and their situation. You can't build a house on sand, and what is happening now is the laying of a foundation the Cubs haven't had in years (a process which has been expedited to a significant degree). Trying to construct a winning MLB team without the ability to significantly supplement the roster with quality players from within is at best hit or miss (see Jim Hendry's results) and at worst a complete waste of time and money. The signings and trades will come, probably soon. But in a discussion about what the success rate of top prospects is, the state of the major league team is immaterial.

At a quick glance, his examples are a bunch of guys who performed similarly and mostly hadn't hit their ceilings at his age... They performed similarly in that they effectively put up the same line for multiple seasons when they were "on?" Look, I'm not trying to argue that I think he sucks or anything; I WANT to be convinced that he's likely to get better, or at the very least be more consistent. I've adjusted my expectations down for Castro from where they were in 2010/11, but I still see a brighter future for him than where he is at now. He's never going to hit for the same power, but I think he could have a similar career trajectory (hitting-wise) as a guy like Adrian Beltre. He came up young, had initial success, regressed for a few years before breaking back out (if you consider his re-regression to be a product of being in Safeco in the middle of an bad lineup). He's never have a 10 WAR season like Beltre, but I can easily see Castro settling in as a consistent 4-5 WAR player.

Yeah, the Sox are in pretty dire shape. They have a few good starters, but their offense is old and bad and there is nothing on the farm to draw from or deal for help. It used to be that they always seemed to have help coming up from the minors, but that's a dry well right now. What they need is a purge/rebuild, though I hope they try and avoid it because that will prolong their mediocrity. I thought Hahn was smart, but maybe last season's improbable success has clouded their perception of where the franchise is. I think they are at least 2-3 years away from competition.

but...they have a much higher payroll ??? Imagine how much worse the Marlins would be if they spent another 70 million. If last year is any indication, they wouldn't be much better.

I really think the power is in there somewhere. I think a future ISO of .200+ is realistic.

I've been pretty indifferent about Dale's tenure thus far, but his bullpen management has been suspect and running EJax back out there after the rain delay is fresh in my mind, so I'm going with "No" for the first time.

There are a number of those here already. You're special...you have a certain vexatious panache.

It's not the popular opinion, but I chose ban Kyle by default because I have no desire to see any of those four return. Da Bum was a superior village idiot, but that position has been filled nonetheless. I'm not sure we need more than one. To be clear, I don't actually want to see Kyle banned, though my opinion on that wavers often.