Bote McBoteface

That's great. We have 3. And Starlin Castro. And Matt Garza. And a lot more money. And really smart people making decisions for us. But yea, we need to aspire to be the A's so we can win 76 games instead of 72. My summer will be so much more enjoyable then. No we need to aspire to win 78-80 instead of 65. I think you guys are greatly overestimating a team with a rather large loss in power, and a marginal defensive upgrade overall. Keep harping on your arbitrary win totals and ignoring the points being made. What point was being made again? that the A's have been mediocre? Fine its better than losing 90 games. And they have less of a budget, and have kept rebuilding all the while. The cubs have a much larger budget. All Im saying is that if they can rebuild and somehow field a decent team so can we. And now I believe you are the one who needs to acknowledge points being made. WTF Theo's been our GM for 4 months and we still haven't won anything :O!!!

Ah, come on now. WHO figured this would be a good idea? Anything regarding a player potentially on the cubs 25 man roster should be worthy of its own thread. The last thread on page 1 hasn't been posted in for two weeks, we'll live. So Jason Jaramillo, Trever Miller, Matt Tolbert, Alfredo Amezaga, Joe Mather, Edger Gonzalez, and Bobby Scales each should have had their own thread? Yeah. That or make a minor cub's move thread instead of throwing them in with the rest of the league.

Because he at one time was a pretty good prospect, and to me this seems like it means the Indians have lost faith in him. If he were to come here and put up a decent half season we could spin him for much more than we gave up when we bring up Rizzo. Or, his BR page says he plays LF. No clue how well, but it gives us an option if we do dump Soriano. He's been injured and has really only had a half season of healthy playtime in the majors.

The Indians signed Casey Kotchman. Wonder if we could get LaPorta for a decent price.

Anything regarding a player potentially on the cubs 25 man roster should be worthy of its own thread. The last thread on page 1 hasn't been posted in for two weeks, we'll live. So Jason Jaramillo, Trever Miller, Matt Tolbert, Alfredo Amezaga, Joe Mather, Edger Gonzalez, and Bobby Scales each should have had their own thread? Yeah. That or make a minor cub's move thread instead of throwing them in with the rest of the league.

Anything regarding a player potentially on the cubs 25 man roster should be worthy of its own thread. The last thread on page 1 hasn't been posted in for two weeks, we'll live.

I don't know why that is. Other than Ian Stewart none of the Theo Epstein pickups have a well above average upside. Plus there are no pitching prospects waiting to be promoted who have ace potential (or anything close to it). To make matters worse Brett Jackson is the only positional prospect who will be seen in the big leagues this year that has a realistic chance to make a significant impact. And that's without mentioning his high strikeout levels. I have a very hard time believing Jackson can have sustained success in the Majors without cutting back on his K's. Granted players like Adam Dunn have done it before, but cases like his are far from the norm. Our lousy teams back in the early 2000's were much more easy to be excited about. Cruz, Prior, Choi, Patterson and others were being promoted at the time with a massive amount of hype attached to them. So am I excited about Theo acquiring a bunch of back of the rotation innings eaters, a corner outfielder with a career OPS below 800, and a farm system known more for depth than having players with real star potential? Not really. Nor do I think we should automatically believe in everything Theo does. Granted its easy to mock the Crawford signing now, but I can honestly say I thought it was a massive overpay at the time. We're talking about a corner outfielder who doesn't take walks and doesn't have massive power. Not exactly a player I would jump to give 142 million dollars to. I would have prefered raiding Atlanta to fill our GM and farm director roles. They constantly are drafting dominant young starting pitching without the benefit of picking in the top five. Really? You've watched this organization try to patchwork together a competitor each offseason for the past decade with piss poor results and you don't see why one might be excited for an actual long term plan? You're upset that we didn't raid the front office of a less successful team?

Awesome. Of all potential 90 loss seasons, I'm looking forward to this one the most.

It feels strange to sit here with full confidence that our front office will get it done, even with the Marlins trolling us.

I'd like to quickly express my frustration that the Yoenis Cespedes thread got closed and hope that a mod sees it and comes to their sen.....re-opens it.

Wow. Yeah, I prefer Rizzo.

I can't remember the last time a fat, poor defensive first baseman saw the best player on the planet get a 10 year deal and decided that he had to have one too.

in AND of itself.

Oh, I see, we're just waiting for god to decide when. I get it now.

Why would anybody complain about Starlin Castro groping them?

That's stupid. Hendry did stuff like 7.5 million for Grabow. This is trading a reliever for a 25 year old pitcher with several years of team control, and we're getting two prospects that haven't even been identified yet. P.S. When was the last time we acquired a pitcher and didn't pass him off as another version of Randy Wells?

Somebody ban that guy

I'm pretty surprised by this, too. Maybe Fukudome told him to stay away and the Cubs have been informed that he doesn't want to play for them? This guy seems perfect for us and I'd be really puzzled if we didn't put in a substantial bid for him. The dude seems like a real huge douche, though.

I'd drop 3 mil or so for Bazooka Joe without even looking at the stats.

Maybe we need to get him to stop smoking so much pot. Lazy pothead is too lazy to get off his stoned ass and work out. I'm surprised he's had any success at all. This makes him the first person to ever smoke pot and have some success in life. Too bad the pot held him back from being great. I'm stoned.

I'm sad that with all these changes, they didn't add the ability to trade draft picks.

I've been out of touch for a while, but when did .8 divided by 1 become .2?

I guess it worked.

Why would you pay Aramis like a very good hitting 3B (which is how other teams will view him) and then reduce his value by moving him to 1B, all the while reducing Castro's value by moving him to 3B? Because he's a pretty bad third baseman.

Has Aramis Ramirez to first base been discussed yet? I don't know how much of a liability he'd be, but if he could handle it then it might make sense. Maybe move Castro to third while we're at it, everybody says that's where he'll end up anyway. Then Barney can move to short. Now we have a hole at 2nd to fill via trade or free agency. Clint Barmes, Jamey Carroll, Mark Ellis, Bill Hall, Aaron Hill, Omar Infante, Kelly Johnson, Jose Lopez, and Brandon Phillips are the current 2nd base Free agents, according to MLBTR. I'd certainly love to have Brandon Phillips just for the fun anti-cardinals quotes.