XZero771679666304

Hmm. Bet that as it may, I'd still rather take a run at Sanchez or McCarthy than Jackson. I think they're better and you know Boras is going to be selling Jackson hard.

Where are you getting that number? I see 10 WAR over the last 4 years (3.9 of which came in 2009). He walks a lot, but doesn't K a ton, gives up a fair number of hits. He's a guy I wouldn't mind signing to a 4/40 - 4/48 type of deal, but I could see him getting 5-6 years at 15-18 per. 3.6 in 2009, 3.9 in 2010, 3.9 in 2011, 2.7 in 2012 = 14.1 http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1841&position=P and FIPs of 3.86, 3.55, 3.85 and xFIPs of 3.71, 3.73, and 3.79 the last 3 years. BR has his WAR as 3.9 in 2009, 1.7 in 2010, 2.8 in 2011 and 1.6 in 2012. Is the way Fangraphs and BR figure WAR that different?

Where are you getting that number? I see 10 WAR over the last 4 years (3.9 of which came in 2009). He walks a lot, but doesn't K a ton, gives up a fair number of hits. He's a guy I wouldn't mind signing to a 4/40 - 4/48 type of deal, but I could see him getting 5-6 years at 15-18 per.

I expect Sanchez to be too expensive, I'm not a huge McCarthy fan, and who? Brett? He'll be in AAA where he belongs, unless someone wants him in a trade. Derp: Edwin. Also too expensive. too expensive for what? For this front office's tastes. They've already hinted they'll be bargain-hunting on pitchers, so I'm not holding out much hope. My issue with Jackson isn't just his price, it's that I'm not convinced he's all that good. Couple that with Boras being his agent, and I think it's probably not worth the trouble. There are guys worth overpaying for, but I don't think Jackson is one of them.

I can't speak for Kyle, but I'm a little bit leery of Jackson. He's intriguing, but Scott Boras is going to milk way too much money out of some team for him, probably well more than he's worth. McCarthy and Sanchez are both more attractive targets, imo.

He's getting closer, and at this rate he'll get there well before his contract is up. He's a shell of the 6+ WAR player he used to be. Yeah there's a huge difference between being a 6+ WAR player and a tick above replacement. Almost a 6 win difference even. People love viewing players as on straight line inclines and declines. Castro barely improved this year, he's plateaued!! Rodriguez dropped 1.5 WAR, if this trend continues, he's really going to suck soon!! He was a 2 WAR player this year, which is moving towards the "just above replacement level" range, at least in my book. And don't be an idiot, ARod is 37, Castro is still a kid. Chances are pretty good that a 37 year old is probably going to continue to get worse after three straight years of decline. I don't expect him to drop 1.5 WAR off every year, but he doesn't have to in order to be just above replacement level. He's nearly there now. Over the past 3 years, the Yankees have paid him about 10MM per 1 WAR he has given them, and he is trending downward. His power is drying up fast, and he can't stay healthy. All things considered, I'll stick by my assertion that over the next five seasons, they'll be paying ARod to be a just above replacement level. Certainly nowhere near even being the area code of good enough to justify his salary.

He's getting closer, and at this rate he'll get there well before his contract is up. He's a shell of the 6+ WAR player he used to be.

I hadn't really looked at his season until the playoffs, but he's become a remarkably ordinary player. He's one more year of decline away from not even being a starter. Yep, it's a sexy contract that makes Sorianos look like a bargain. Only five more years of paying him like one of the top few players in the game to be a tick above replacement level.

No one said he would be cheap, but a "not cheap" package doesn't necessarily have to start with a #1 prospect. The ability of the Cubs to put together a package drops off quickly after that. Agreed, but what about something centered around Samardzija?? Shark has a NTC.

No one said he would be cheap, but a "not cheap" package doesn't necessarily have to start with a #1 prospect. The ability of the Cubs to put together a package drops off quickly after that. True, but I think a good package could still be cobbled together from the rest of our top 15.

No one said he would be cheap, but a "not cheap" package doesn't necessarily have to start with a #1 prospect.

Of course we have a package to get him. Honestly, with only one year of control, I doubt it'd be as brutal as your thinking it'll be. If we start with Baez, we could definitely get him. But I'm not sure we'd even have to. I agree. This isn't David Wright circa 2008, either (granted the new park has had a hand in that). I'm confident the Cubs could offer a package that didn't include Baez.

I like the A's, but I want the team that has the best chances of taking the Yankees out to advance. IMO, that team is Detroit. It's be sweet of the O's beat NY, but I am not holding my breath on that one.

And now Reds fans can go back to not giving a [expletive] about the Reds.

The whole thing is kind of funny. Besides, isn't cycling the most doped up sport on earth?

Sailors have a tendency to apply terminology related to ships to other aspects of life. A jib is a small triangular sail before the main sail on large ships and cutters. Many countries used different cuts and displayed their colors on the jib. When "cut of the jib" is applied to men, it means "your stylistic choices" . Treebeard/Tree/Treeman/Treymon has a way of making a point with whit, that cuts right to the heart of the matter. Many people here are crazy excited about "financial flexibility" and high draft picks when neither of those things mean anything if the Cubs are not trying to win at the major league level. I hope that helps. Well you sure took the wind of out his sails. Oh buoy, here come the puns knot again Yeah, this stuff is keel-ing me.

Thank god for national coverage...the regional coverage here suuuccks.

That's because the Packers would never lose if not for those bad calls. Honestly, if the Packers were half as good as their fans think (and I thought) they were, the Seattle and Indianapolis games wouldn't have been close. Certainly not close enough for a bad call or two to decide the games.

There are other ways to look at success other than financial. Great teams pay people for past performance. I always thought the bottom line was winning, but I guess not. Paying for past performance doesn't always equate to positive results. Many "great" teams also throw money away by paying for past performance without getting substantial returns. There's a difference between paying for past performance because you can reasonably expect similar production going forward, and there's paying for past performance because of the reputation of the player, even if there's little to no chance you'll get anything approximating that past performance over most of the contract (ARod's last deal, Pujols' deal, for example). I'm pretty sure Theo was referring to the latter and not the former. Obviously you're not going to pay a player for anything but past performance, but there's a difference between that and spending huge for an older player because of reputation earned in glory days they'll never repeat. Giving long term contracts to guys already in their decline phase isn't being committed to winning, it's being stupid. Because 25-26 year old stars don't come on the market, you're invariably going to take a bit of a hit later in contracts, but there are times where you're likely to take an absolute bath, and those are the ones that you have to pass on. I'm all for paying a little extra to secure players who are going to be key pieces for at least most of their contract, but I'm not a fan of paying a king's ransom for a player to be good for a couple years and then fade away, simply because he was great in his bygone prime.

Everything I read indicated no one in the media had any idea. There was a whole of of speculating, though. The fact that only one team bid near that and other teams like the Yankees (those cheapskates), the Blue Jays (one of, if not the supposed favorites), the Cubs (who outbid all but Texas) and others bid in the same range says a lot more about what the bid was expected to be than what you might have read from media pundits. What likely happened was that there was an expectation of the range among executives, and Texas just decided to blow it out of the water. It seems fairly certain that's what happened, given what we know now. The notion that Texas was the only team seriously interested is ridiculous, and that's what you'd have to believe if you think the Cubs' bid wasn't serious. Unless you just want to interpret things in the way that makes Theo and Jed look as bad as possible.

yeah, it's been reported that the cubs weren't given a chance to counter the last a's offer, but if that's what really happened, that's just poor negotiating leading up to that point. the a's shouldn't have ever been in a position where they could scare cespedes and his agent into believing this was going to be the last best offer and the cubs wouldn't match it. If that was the way it actually went down, Cespedes should have canned his agent immediately.

Yeah, I remember the Theo regime showing interest in him as well. Like I said, not really a criticism, just thinking again how nice it would've been if we'd have been able to work something out for him. The Darvish thing still annoys me, simply because everything pointed to $20 million not being enough (lots of rumors that 1-2 teams were willing to go as high as Daisuke money or higher) and everything also pointed to Darvish being a considerably better bet than Daisuke (or maybe any other Japanese pitcher that had previously come over here) to be really good. Still though, it was a blind bid, making it really hard to criticize not winning. I hated that we passed on Cespedes at the time and I hate it more now. That and, to a much lesser degree, passing on Wei-Yin Chen are the most frustrating non-moves so far. There was a lot of conjecture about what the Darvish bid would be, but in the end it turned out that you had Texas where they were and the Cubs leading everyone else bunched at a lower range (including the Jays, who were very interested and considered to be the favorites by many). This at least tells us that it almost certainly wasn't a "token" bid, and that Theo/Jed made what they believed to be a very competitive bid. That is unless you believe Texas was the only team that wanted him, which I sure don't. If the consensus was the the bidding was going to be in the 15-20MM range (which it seems the consensus among non-Texas execs was) it seems a stretch to have expected the Cubs to go to 50MM+. The Cespedes miss was much less forgivable. If you're the Chicago Cubs, you don't get outbid by the Oakland A's in an open process. Part of me wonders if they were given a chance to counter (given how aggressive they were in paying for the other Cubans.), but it seems unlikely Cespedes and his agent would neglect to ask the Cubs if they wanted to match or beat the A's offer. It was a bad miss.

I though there was some noise that Theo/Jed had contacted the Padres about Headley before the season, but that the demands were unreasonable. Word was that demands for him around the deadline this year were astronomical. I'd love to have had Headley, but it appears San Diego is loathe to let him go, and there wasn't a whole lot in the upper levels to tempt them with. The only two things that were missed out on that bother me at all are Cespedes and Darvish, and in light of the fact that the Cubs were the best of the non-Texas bidders (which indicates to me that Texas just went completely rogue with their bid), I don't blame them for Darvish. Cespedes smarts, though.

Don't even try and act like you didn't get a massive assist tonight. I'd bet even the players would admit as much (maybe not on the record). That was an awful, awful call.

It's a character building exercise. Or in your case, punishment for being an Iowa fan. But that was some horseshit, to be sure. One of the worst baseball calls I've ever seen, and one that will go down in infamy. And that's not just Cubs fan sour grapes, either. That [expletive] was utterly ridiculous.