David

This poll occurred to me as I was looking for a thread to post the Ricketts radio appearance from yesterday in. Obviously, this is a pretty good time to be a Cubs fan, so I've got a pretty good guess as to how this poll will ultimately end up, but I'm wondering how people overall feel about ownership now after about 6 years. There's been plenty of (deserved) criticism of the Ricketts ownership (and support) on this board, and there have been several missteps (why the [expletive] was Hendry kept around so long? the renovation stuff was a clown show early on, etc.), but given how ecstatic we all are to be where we are now, with a kick ass young team beyond any of our wildest expectations, a kick ass front office, and soon to be kick ass facilities (some of which are already here), how does everybody feel about our creepy Ted Cruz lookalike overlord's tenure? Are you glad the Ricketts family owns the Cubs and are you satisfied with what they've done with the franchise over their first 6 years and the direction they are headed? P.S. Obviously, a lot of these improvements were long overdue and any ownership group would have pursued them, but it's still so nice to finally see them coming to fruition after decades worth of stagnation.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2016-zips-projections-pittsburgh-pirates/ http://cdn.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Pirates-Depth.png

Fully copping to stealing this post from GRB's Fat Strat, quotes and all... http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/mozeliak-says-cards-no-longer-looking-for-dynamic-signing/article_0fc30cae-22ef-594a-9561-a911b7019a9e.html Gordon -- not an option Upton -- might be an option if his market falls significantly

Jesse Rogers says we're targeting Lucroy, apparently.

Reviews look OK, but very few of them http://www.amazon.com/BiGR-Audio-xlmlbcc3-Headphones-Smartphones/dp/B00C1CBIUQ/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1449692386&sr=1-4&keywords=cubs+headphones EDIT - WHY ISNT THE LINK WORKING? http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81k0rXe-roL._SL1500_.jpg this is what they look like, since the link won't show up

Without knowing exactly how much we need to free up (which makes this tough, obviously), which of these scenarios would you prefer (so factoring in both who we are dumping and how much it frees up + how we have to replace them, if at all)? I'd operate under the assumption that these moves MIGHT return a little value, but will basically function as salary dumps without a significant 2016 impacting return. Pick a few guys if you want and explain below.

This'll make sneaky happy

Why wasn't there one of these already? So there's been talk of the Cubs being interested, possibly more interested than in Price. There was also that report that Greinke probably won't be back in LA because of a stance against guys with a certain amount of innings logged or something, but that's probably just posturing. Some of the rumors surrounding him are summarized pretty well at this link http://chicagocubsonline.com/archives/2015/11/cubs-reportedly-may-prefer-zack-greinke-over-david-price.php But my real reason for making this thread is how hilarious it is to picture Greinke in one of Rizzo's disco parties

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http://www.fangraphs.com/projections.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&type=steamer600&team=17&lg=all&players=0&sort=26,d someone with less laziness/more time (looking at you kyle) than me, figure out how this translates to projected wins for next year's team

Don't know what my opinion is. Not really one of our positions of need so it means a lot of other moving parts and I'd have to know what that all entails.

This was going to happen. Might as well start now, especially with FA starting tonight. As Gilby pointed out last night in that other thread: http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/buster-olney/insider/post?id=11545 http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/hot-stove-league-free-agents-trade-candidates-david-price-zack-greinke-cespedes-heyward-110615

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/14044275/mlb-future-power-rankings-heading-2015-free-agency It's good to be #1 because we get to read it for free. http://www.espn.com/i/infographics/20151104_mlbfpr/cubs.png

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/fangraphs-crowd-the-top-82-free-agents/ Some notables: Seems a tad light on Price...I figured he'd break $200M. I think Heyward will too.

http://nypost.com/2015/10/28/red-sox-emerge-as-crafty-contender-for-alex-gordon/

http://www.abload.de/img/11514-animated_gifchat8etf.gif Like we'd lose 6

http://i.imgur.com/yVToMi0.png This series will go a long way toward determining home field in the wild card game and will also be the weekend we clinch. Dong away, dongsmiths. And pitch us to victory, dong preventers.

Continue at link... http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/theo-epstein-cubs-playoffs-in-reach/ EDIT: Apparently Theo is ARCubsfan

Try not to lose to this sack of crap team again, jerks Especially this ugly idiot http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/mlb/players/full/5181.png&w=350&h=254 dong him into submission like you know you can and should

[tweet] [/tweet] Forgot to post it when it first came out a while back but here's his actual job title. Moratorium on hiring Boston guys is over.

So, I was getting all sappy and remembering Theo's comments about the payoff of following guys up through the minor league system for a few years and then suddenly seeing them be awesome in the big leagues and becoming a national story and all that. (I can't find the quotes, so if someone wants to help me out with that, that'd be cool.) But anyway, before I gave up, I was looking for the quotes in this thread viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61092&start=75&hilit=theo And I noticed we were all freaking out about it taking 5 years (holy [expletive], can you imagine two more years of irrelevance and terribleness?). This was mid 2012. We've had plenty of debate over Theo's time here as to whether we should've gone with this full tear down/rebuild or attempted to do both (which, IMO, presumably would involve, barring some really good luck, some sacrificing of the long term potential and *how* good you could be in x amount of time to at least some extent, in order to get good sooner...) So, basically, my question is if you were back in 2011 and we knew we could be THIS good with this many really talented young players with "only" 3 tanked seasons (one of which - last year - was actually sort of fun by the end) - rather than the five (or more) we were fearing + the understadable uncertainty of whether it'd work out -, would you take that deal? Now that we are where we are, was the tanking (and the fact that it took less of it than we feared) worth it to you, personally, in hindsight?

Just what have I happened upon here? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12505&p=252854&hilit=nomar#p252854

Yay! [tweet] [/tweet]

We've got a game in like 4 hours so somebody had to do it since sneaky and CT aren't stepping up to the plate. If we lose, #blameCT this stupid idiot http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/mlb/players/full/33618.png&w=350&h=254 faces off against this fine, albeit goofy looking, gent http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/mlb/players/full/6480.png&w=350&h=254