Jump to content
North Side Baseball

XZero771679666304

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    14,655

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Profiles

Joomla Posts 1

Chicago Cubs Videos

Chicago Cubs Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

2026 Chicago Cubs Top Prospects Ranking

News

2023 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

Guides & Resources

2024 Chicago Cubs Draft Picks

The Chicago Cubs Players Project

2025 Chicago Cubs Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Chicago Cubs Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses

Blogs

Events

Forums

Store

Gallery

Everything posted by XZero771679666304

  1. XZero771679666304
    I really believe another SP is incoming. It's still quite early in the offseason.
  2. XZero771679666304
    Equal parts Indiana dominance and UNC being exposed (again).
  3. XZero771679666304
    Disappointing showing from NW as well.
  4. XZero771679666304
    I enjoy your offensive pace, but you don't defend worth a damn. But we defended fine against the bad teams. Isn't va tech bad? Pomeroy has them ranked 82, and Iowa 58. So it's a fairly bad loss. Not horrible, but a game Iowa could have been expected to win.
  5. XZero771679666304
    This sounds about right to me too. If that's all it took it should have been done already. My guess is they'd want one of Rizzo/Castro +2 of Baez/Soler/Almora as a bare minimum. I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like Rizzo/Samadzija/Soler. Soler and Almora can't be traded yet, unless I am mistaken. And I don't think the problem would be what the Marlins want, but rather what other teams would offer. Either way, nothing would be "done already" with so much time left for a bidding war to break out.
  6. XZero771679666304
    Hendry got fired because, as someone on another board very astutely put it, he never found a good replacement for himself in charge of the farm system. The Astros had nothing. The Cubs had a lot more than the apologists will ever, ever admit. We had next to nothing, less than you are willing to admit. Somewhere between where an abject apologist says the team was and where you do lies the truth. As far as young talent went, it was Starlin Castro and a cloud of question marks. And Hendry didn't get fired simply because he didn't find a replacement, he got fired because he ignored the farm. He didn't prioritize the draft, he didn't sell to stock the system even when the team was abysmal and he often dealt away talent in desperate attempts to salvage lost causes.
  7. XZero771679666304
    What does that have to do with this thread? I like the fact that Feldman has some bullpen potential if he doesn't cut it as a starter or we find five better ones at some point in the season. I think he'd play very well in a setup role. It says right there that they assured him that he'll be a permanent member of the rotation. Obviously, they can go back on that promise, but it just seems like an odd reply. I really think pushing Wood to the bullpen must or should be the plan. I assumed Feldman must have been assure a rotation slot, since I can't fathom why a guy taking a one year deal would compromise his future value by accepting the possibility of a bullpen role. And I feel like the FO is looking add one more SP, this time from the more talented pool.
  8. XZero771679666304
    Is there a single person here arguing otherwise? I'm not sure. I asked how long it should take to rebuild a big market team but no one replied. Toon made a statement that he hoped the Cubs could compete in 2015 but things would all have to go right for that to happen. I really didn't see anyone address that point. Instead, it seems that we're having a battle between things are going great vs. we've fallen off the organizational cliff. I think one more year of "young talent acquisition mode" should be enough. If the team isn't at least around competition in 2014 my patience will have run out.
  9. XZero771679666304
    Is there a single person here arguing otherwise? toonster is the only one I can think of.
  10. XZero771679666304
    You're doing a helluva job, Theo-ie. yes, he's either Randy Smith, or Branch Rickey; that you're framing these two opinions as the only possible conclusions speaks volumes about your inability to reason and use nuance What does the fact that you think playoff teams cost $200 million say about you? Playoff teams with 2-3 real cost controlled assets and 2 meh ones might. (Although you shouldn't count Rizzo, since we're talking about what Hendry left them to work with) Yeah, teams with good front offices don't have to spend $200MM to make the playoffs because they typically have done a good job of filling roster holes and stocking the cupboards with cheap yet effective talent to build around (what the Cubs have had next to none of for years because of a flawed organizational philosophy). But you don't get to that point quickly unless you do what Theo and Jed are doing. The "draft and develop well" road to organizational depth isn't a short one when you start nearly from zero, especially under the new CBA. The trying to plug 5-7 full time positions, 2-3 rotation slots and most of the bullpen with free agents approach to contention, even if done shrewdly, isn't the recipe for success, and it's why Hendry got fired. Of course Kyle continually refuses to acknowledge that there was practically nothing to build around, and I don't expect him to change his rhetoric now.
  11. XZero771679666304
    Well a big reason there is teams being able to draft and develop impact guys who compile high WAR for low initial costs. The Cubs don't have a whole lot of those, but are trying to get them. Guys like Starlin Castro, Darwin Barney, Jeff Samardzija, Welington Castillo? {b]that's 10 [expletive] wins! basically our whole entire foundation is essentially worth one [expletive] Mike Trout*![/b] ah...in the first few months of their tenure, Theo & co. should have shrewded their way into a good 30 extra wins; i see what you're saying *or 2.5 Jon Jays/David Freeses (who both outproduced the best player on our team last year) Truly, Hendry left a treasure trove for Theo and Jed to build upon. One star, a middle infielder whose value may or may not have been a defensive metric fluke, a pitcher with talent but no consistency (prior to 2012) and a decent catching prospect. And don't forget the coin flip of a top prospect and Javier Baez, who is years away. Never mind the total absence of minor league pitching talent, it isn't important in light of the aforementioned glut of talent. And of course we know Hendry would have made all the same trades to infuse the system with young talent (since he did such an admirable job of that in the past), so let's not give the FO credit for that.
  12. XZero771679666304
    Sure they do. Not primarily with big-name free agents, sure, but this is where the whole $/WAR analysis has gotten way out of control. It wouldn't have cost $35 million to put out a league average bullpen last year, but our bullpen cost us 7 wins against the average bullpen. It wouldn't have cost us $20 million to find a decent 3b last season, but our 3b was four wins below average. Only if you are really bad at your job. Draft well, develop well. That's all the attention the farm should need. Smart teams don't need to take the course Theo and Jed have to get the farm system into the shape it needs to be. I think you're grossly and willfully underestimating just how dire the farm system was. And you're not getting 20-30 WAR via a few bargain signings. That's preposterous.
  13. XZero771679666304
    No primarily with free agents, they don't. If you're going to "quick fix" a team with no MLB-ready (or near MLB-ready) impact talent and only 1-2 real talents on the big league roster, you're going to pay, and pay through the nose. Turning the 2012 (and 2013, to a slightly lesser extent) Cubs into a contender would have meant essentially ignoring the farm, which is what Hendry would have done and what got us in the mess to begin with. Good front offices keep their rosters supplemented with cheap sources of WAR (and trade bait) from the farm so they don't have to pay a premium at every most positions. This is what the Hendry regime was abysmal at doing, and largely why Theo and Jed have taken the course they have.
  14. XZero771679666304
    How about signing a guy like McCarthy and pushing Wood to the pen until one of or both Baker and Feldman are traded? That would seem to be the most efficacious plan.
  15. XZero771679666304
    November 2011, I don't think you found many people on here who could imagine throwing away 2 years either. I think most sensible people could. I could, given the state of affairs. I couldn't imagine throwing four years away, and I still can't.
  16. XZero771679666304
    I certainly think that a lost 2012 with a wave of deadline selling was what the FO envisioned as the likely scenario. Having said that, with the roster that left camp (especially the rotation), it was within the realm of possibility that the team could have been in or around contention. Had that been the case, do we still think they would have scrapped the whole thing? It's irrelevant at this point and all of this argument is conjecture anyway, but I still don't see how there was a total commitment to losing in 2012, given the way they operated in the offseason (imo, the plan that would have maximized return while ensuring a lost season would have been to deal Garza, Dempster and Marmol prior to the season, given what they knew at the time). I think they took a bit of a gamble, hoping their potentially salable assets would perform well, but that the team as a whole wouldn't, so they could justify the sale. And with the exception of Garza getting hurt, it did (though Garza's value isn't going to be anywhere near where it was pre-2012, so that turned out to be a pretty big snafu).
  17. XZero771679666304
    Neither are anything to crow about. I bet the illini announcers made complete asses of themselves by getting excited about the comeback. No, only the KU honks get excited about beating lesser competition, jeez. But seriously, I don't know, since I deleted it from the DVR without having watched it after I caught a glimpse of the score on FB. But it was probably a BTN crew, so it might not have been so bad.
  18. XZero771679666304
    Whichever one involves being Iowa Well, there's definitely that
  19. XZero771679666304
    Neither are anything to crow about.
  20. XZero771679666304
    I often wonder how the people who are ready to cast Josh Vitters and Brett Jackson into the fiery depths of hell after having struggling through their first big league stints felt when we acquired Rizzo. Brett Jackson's struggles and Rizzo's 2011 struggles show some key differences.
  21. XZero771679666304
    There's been a bunch of whining, but I've yet to see someone present an alternate scenario (a realistic one) where the Cubs compete in 2012 and still add a bunch of young premium talent.
  22. XZero771679666304
    "Extremely little" until it's time to drool over Castro, Baez, etc. And what else? One great ML asset and one in the low minors. Oh, and Shark. Other than that, it was a wasteland. Love the "etc.", as if there was anything else of note. He left something, but it was pretty [expletive] far from a foundation. It speaks volumes of Hendry's regime that nearly all of our top prospects have been added in the past 12 months.
  23. XZero771679666304
    Good news for Butler then. Since we won the maui and I'm assuming you'll win your tourney, I'm excited for our matchup this year Ha
  24. XZero771679666304
    The shooting will cool off soon, and you'll want to kill them. They will surely cool off to some extent, but I do think they can continue to shoot a high percentage on a regular basis if they keep getting the same quality of shots. They seem to be playing a more well-rounded game than they did the past few seasons. When they needed to start taking the ball to the basket tonight, they did. I'd like to see a little more in the way of a post game from Egwu, though. And the defense has been very good. I really like the new aggressive, uptempo game, and I think the depth will allow the Illini to wear some teams down. But as much as I like all the threes, I'd also like to see Paul remember he can really slash and score, too.
  25. XZero771679666304
    That was my first thought.
×
×
  • Create New...