XZero771679666304

The Cubs have won one postseason series in any of our lifetimes, including Fred. Two if you want to count the WC tiebreaker game in 1998. Today's game could be the Cardinals' 10th in the last decade. Oh, and they haven't lost 90+ since 1990, though their farm system mysteriously hasn't shriveled up and died as a result. You might be mixing up cause and effect; how many inexplicable seasons were fueled in large part by unexpected contributions from their farm system? How many times did the Cards make shrewd trades because they had the pieces to offer? St. Louis hasn't exactly been a big FA market player, with most of their high profile acquisitions and central figures (McGwire, Edmonds, Rolen, Holliday, Wainwright, Mulder, Walker, Kile, Renteria, etc. etc.) coming via trade. Most of their stars (Pujols, Molina, Morris) and the cavalcade of overachieving role players came directly from the system. St. Louis has won consistently in primarily because their maintenance of their farm system enabled it. They have been a very shewd franchise that has taken a measured approach, to great success.

http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/bloguploads/brony-spring-youdontsay.jpg 9.6 I'm dying here, that was [expletive] great.

I'm not sure what stability you are looking for but he was the most stable producer for the Cubs for nearly a decade. There's a lot less stable guys out there than Aramis. In 2009-2010, Ramirez missed nearly 120 games and was barely above replacement in 500 PAs in 2010. yeah, we're all well aware. In 2012 the Cubs spent about $7 on their roster and fielded garbage players all over the field. It wasn't much of a risk. Again, no one had any qualms about keeping him for 2012. The FO picked up their end of the option, and I think there was a decent chance he could have accepted it (and I wish he had). Giving him 3+ years was a different issue.

I'm not sure what stability you are looking for but he was the most stable producer for the Cubs for nearly a decade. There's a lot less stable guys out there than Aramis. He was great for quite a long time, but as TT pointed out, he's not far removed from 2.7 WAR over two years, is somewhat injury prone and isn't getting any younger. The fact was stable for 5-6 years primarily when he was in his 20s is immaterial when deciding what you would give him in his age 34-36 seasons, or at least it should be. I'm not thrilled he was let go, but it's not as if it was some egregious mistake made with no logic behind it.

Does Villanueva have a defensive skillset that would work at 2B? I wonder just how solid his range is. That "sporadic"/doubles power could be of no small value at 2B as opposed to 3B.

Given the dearth of 3B options going forward, I wouldn't have minded seeing ARam back, but I can't fault Theo/Jed for not wanting to commit to him for three years, either. He's not exactly the most stable player either, as TT pointed out. And that doesn't figure to improve with age. It sure sucked to see him have a nice year with Milwaukee, though.

Especially in hindsight. The miss annoyed me a bit at the time, but seeing how his first year has gone makes it much worse.

It's amazing how many highlight reels Jon Jay ends up on because he misreads a ball or takes a bad route and has to use his athleticism to bail himself out. He's a good CFer, but nearly all of his "web gem" type plays are him saving his own ass.

What a fiasco. All that meddling, and for what?

That's horse [expletive]. They made nearly every move with the future in mind and gave little consideration to winning games in 2012, but to say they sat down and willfully constructed the team with the their primary intent being that the 2012 Cubs lose as many games as possible is patently absurd. Your response to this tongue in cheek statement is patently absurd. Some people have made that claim seriously, so I took it at face value.

-Losing a bidding war, ostensibly, to the Oakland freakin' A's for Yoenis Cespedes. Not sure about you, but I'd love for the Cubs to have a twenty-six year old outfield that in his first year in the majors/American baseball had a 136 OPS+ and a WAR of 3.4 (baseball reference)/3.1 (fangraphs) (both of which were dragged down by defense). But, hey, something about a fourth year? -Not making a push for Edwin Jackson (who just recently turned twenty-nine years old). Prior to this year, he had WARs of 1.3, 3.6, 3.9, and 3.9, and this year a WAR of 2.7 (fangraphs) (always pitching at least 183 innings per year). Jackson signed a one-year, $11 million contract. This offseason, he's nearly certain to get a multi-year deal. (Hey, maybe he wouldn't have signed with the Cubs, and maybe the Cubs kicked the tires behind the scenes, so, admittedly, there's some conjecture.) I think you'll find certain posters -- he says, patting himself on the back -- wondered at the time why Jackson wasn't more in-demand. Either of those players would have helped this year and in the coming years and neither would have broken the proverbial bank. But the front office, instead, chose to be awful. Yeah, Cespedes and Darvish are the two players that I would really like to have seen obtained. I believe they made what they believed to be a competitive bid for Darvish, but I have a hard time with not giving Cespedes 4 years or offering 6/60 or something, unless Theo/Jed weren't given a chance to counter. But make no mistake, this would still have been an awful team regardless.

They were a much better fit for a guy tring to build value on a 1-year deal than the Cubs were.

That's horse [expletive]. They made nearly every move with the future in mind and gave little consideration to winning games in 2012, but to say they sat down and willfully constructed the team with the their primary intent being that the 2012 Cubs lose as many games as possible is patently absurd. For one thing, if they wanted to guarantee a massive loss total, they could have done it better. They would have traded off all of their more highly salable assets (Garza, Marmol) before the season started. The would not have signed Maholm or DeJesus, either. They could have left Rizzo in Iowa all year. There are a number of things they could easily have done (or not done) from the start to ensure an even more massive loss total. But they didn't have to. The team was in a compromised state as it was, so by simply making the best long term decisions, they all but guaranteed a fairly awful finish. And even then, I don't think they thought it would have be this bad. I don't think they anticipated Stewart flaming out and being on the DL most of the year, or Soto stinking, Garza getting injured, Wood being ineffective and then retiring, Volstad being a total disaster, etc (though they almost certainly didn't expect Soriano or Shark's years, either). The bottom line is that writing off 2012 as a casualty of the process =/= willfully constructing the worst possible roster, especially when they didn't remotely construct the worst possible roster they realistically could have. This was an "audition" year (especially for the bullpen, which seems perfectly reasonable to me), where a bunch of guys who may or may not have future value were evaluated. If things had broken even a bit better for some of them, this could realistically have been a 75 win team. As bad as it turned out, it could have been much worse, if that had been the intent from day 1.

They look like brothers.

I think we all have a pretty strong grasp on why this team is where it is.

No one is going to tolerate this thing going beyond next year. And I don't think they'll have to. Are they even going to be that bad next year? I'm pretty sure we'll sign 2 of those 2nd tier starters... which will make for a pretty nice rotation after Shark and Garza. And I think we'll give BJ Upton a serious look, given the fact that he's relatively young and in his prime, should provide more value than he'll cost, and plays one of our 2 complete black hole positions. It's up to the front office if we're this bad again. I mean, it's hard to be *this* bad, but we could be close to as bad. All they have to do is give Brett Jackson CF and ignore the bullpen again. Then dump what's left of the rotation at the trade deadline. They can definitely improve the team for next year without compromising the long term, and I expect them to. I don't think they can turn it into a winning team without getting stupid, but there's no reason for another 100-loss abomination. I think by addressing the rotation, CF and maybe the pen, The Cubs could win 75 games next year. The FA market for position players is just too barren to expect much help there. I expect them to add an older player or two with an eye to flipping them at the deadline, but there are a handful of nice long term options as well. I have a hard time seeing them hand the CF job to BJax, given the red flags. It might not be Upton (though I hope it is), but I would be surprised if a CF or two aren't brought in. Either way, this offseason will go a long way in determining whether the goodwill many of us have for the new regime continues, or if more of us start getting restless. They've nearly cleared the decks and stocked the lower levels of the system, but it's going to be time to add some good talent that is MLB ready or close to it.

No one is going to tolerate this thing going beyond next year. And I don't think they'll have to.

Here is what I do know: It sucks to watch the Cubs losing 85 games nearly as much as it does to watch them lose 100. If one promises even a marginal gain over the other, I'm not sure why you wouldn't take it. I'm not going to openly root to lose out loud like a twonk or take "pleasure" in losing, but the top-3 draft pick makes the pill a little easier to swallow. I also know that if I were to draw up a plan to maxmize wins next year (given the projected FA offerings), that plan almost certainly not totally jive for what I think would maximize wins in the long term. Sometimes you can optimize for the short and long terms with the same plan, but quite often you can't. Quite often moves you might make to win immediately are contraindicated by long term sense. And when your best short term plans promise only an outside chance of any meaningful improvement (contention), I'm not sure why you would sacrifice your long term interests. As for the "high pressure environment" argument: the difference to me is that 20 years ago, not only were there no expections for the short term, there were not expectations for the long term. The franchise was moribund, no one was expecting anything, ever. You could ride out a 6-year deal with no expectation ever being under any real pressure. Now, there is recent memory of being good, recent memory of having expectations, recently high payrolls and a new, high profile front office and the scrutiny that comes with it. I think the expectation, not just from some of us, but around the game, is that the Cubs are a couple of years from ramping it up and becoming a perennial power. Now 10+ years an the past, we mave have had fond hope that such a thing might happen, but that it would have almost had to have been by some bizarre confleunce of circumstances, but no real hope the franchise was going to get serious about winning. As a fan, you showed up or tuned in with only the hope you might see a great individual performance from Sandberg, Sosa or whoever, and you really didn't think about the future, not seriously anyway. I think the bottom line here is that while this year and next year are a low pressure environment, but that won't last, and everyone knows it. This isn't a low expectation culture, it's a short grace period. If this were the same culture it was 15 years ago, Jim Hendry would still be GM, and no one would question why. There might be low expectations for next year just as their might have been low expectations for any given year from the 1970-2000, but that's as far as the similarities go.

No one wants the team to be terrible. No one is enjoying this, it's brutal. But if you're going to suffer, you might as well get something out of it. Ventured outside of NSBB lately? You'll find in most places Cubs fans hang out, there is much cheering for the team finally being willing to be awful, because good players cost money and that's what Hendry would have done, or something. Obviously they're doing so because they actually prefer it to winning. Or maybe it's because they're smart enough to know that losing 100 really isn't that much more demoralizing than losing 85-90, and losing 100 might actually make a tangible positive difference next year and beyond.

No one wants the team to be terrible. No one is enjoying this, it's brutal. But if you're going to suffer, you might as well get something out of it.

2.9 million people are showing up for a team everybody knew was going to suck from Day 1 and has managed to underperform. People are willingly accepting management of one of the most valuable franchises in the game deliberately taking a multi-year dive. Don't pretend low expectations aren't a thing. 1. 2.9 million people didn't show up, thought they might have paid. After this, you can bet 2.9 million won't pay next year. 2. Some people are accepting what is going on only because they expect a long run of strong contention to shortly follow. The atmosphere pre-2003 was that of low expectations simply becuase it was accepted the Cubs could not or would not win, and that the Cubs losing was somehow the natural order of things. The reasons and rationalizations behind low expectations for 2013 and, say, 1993 are not remotely the same. Context does matter.

The "low expectations" thing ended years ago. The atmosphere is tangibly different than it was a decade ago and there's really no debating it. And people outside of Chicago believe a ton of stupid and inaccurate things about the Cubs, so why does their opinion on this matter hold any weight now?

You can't really get mad about having the game spoiled when you're: 1) Going to be mingling with so many people and traversing an airport after a Monday night game 2) Wearing team gear, thus inviting comments Thinking you could make it home without seeing/hearing any spoilers would be a fool's hope. Being disappointed is one thing, getting angry is ridiculous. And "great game by the Bears tonight" is pretty innocuous as far as spoilers go. It'd make me look forward to watching it even more.

That works out well, because CF and SP are two of our biggest holes. Which is why I said I'd buy at those two positions.

Did you mean to say inference? I suppose I did.