WrigleyField 22

Tanking isn't going to happen in MLB because immediate impact players in the draft are so rare. This year there were two teams that tanked and I feel pretty comfortable saying those we're cost decisions and not draft decisions. An extra wild card should help create less mid season sell offs as well.

When looking at the payroll drop, I have a really hard time saying the FO just didn't try in 2012, (or was worse in 2012 than 2013). They spent FA money on Maholm and DeJesus and each were worth their contract. Pretty much everything else was crap for crap swaps in which our new crap did poorly but so did our old crap. (Well Colvin did out produce Stewart the first year but considering his below average replacement value this year, it's kind of a wash). They didn't do magically better at acquiring affordable talent in 2013. They did about the same value wise and then two of the assets they got in 2012 put up better years. So I really don't get this whole, "well things are looking better based on 2013 but things would have been so much better if they (hadn't punted/done better) in 2012" because they're the same strategy with pretty similar results, just different budget situations.

I'll be a bit greedy here in saying because of how strong this draft is, I don't want to lose the 2nd. I 'd much prefer getting Tanaka and trading for a bat. With the contract Ellsbury appears to be in line for, I just don 't want him. Somehow adding Cano would be cool, since it'd give us depth to trade from as far as our minor leaguers go. I like Choo, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend 90-100 mill on him and it's possible it takes that. But yet, evidently I'm OK with 8/200 on Cano. Well, this post makes no sense whatever. Sorry. Most of the players who would be in discussion for a guy like Stanton have more value than a 2nd round pick, even the complimentary pieces. Not that I wouldn't trade for a bat as well.

We're protected which was my main concern. Let's go lose that second rounder!

Why so you say LB? Granted Anderson and Williams are one year deals, but we're deeper than we've been in years, including with youth. Definitely agree on DL and CB though. I'm sure they'll do everything they can to bring bak Anderson too. Very true, and he is only 30 (in 3 days) too, so age wise he may be able to give a few more productive seasons as well, so even if you are worried with Briggs declining, we have him or Willisms as vet options. Even though neither would be prime Briggs, they can be three down backers- particularly Anderson. Anyways we're 3-0 so not sure why I'm even thinking so much about offseason plans. Go Bears. Murder Stafford!

Why so you say LB? Granted Anderson and Williams are one year deals, but we're deeper than we've been in years, including with youth. Definitely agree on DL and CB though. You can always use LB bodies though. Special teams takes up a few and given the body type that Emery covets, big fast freaks, LB is easy to take. Also, Briggs is 33 this season. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not on the Bears next season, and would be surprised if he is on the Bears in 2015. They may be deep today, but that depth is easily eroded. On the topic of LBs, are we going to give up on Shea as a DE and move him to LB? Does he still show any promise there? At best he's a two down LB in a 4-3. I'd keep him at DE - I think there's still hope. Would have been nice to still have Marinelli coaching him up.

Why so you say LB? Granted Anderson and Williams are one year deals, but we're deeper than we've been in years, including with youth. Definitely agree on DL and CB though. You can always use LB bodies though. Special teams takes up a few and given the body type that Emery covets, big fast freaks, LB is easy to take. Also, Briggs is 33 this season. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not on the Bears next season, and would be surprised if he is on the Bears in 2015. They may be deep today, but that depth is easily eroded. We'll it depends on what you feel about Greene and Bostic probably. I think you could probably pencil in Bostic to start next year and Greene by 2015. So you probably phaseout the vets slowly and if you drafted well you have at least 2/3 of your corps lined up for 2015, and maybe all 3 if Briggs is still playing at an acceptable level. It's impossible to keep depth with injuries and such, so I would never shy away from almost any position, but I don't look at LB and think, wow that's a position that has trouble in 2014, whereas I do see that with CB and DL. Part of that is position replacement value too. It's just easier to get by with replacement level FA at LB than at DL or DB. I'd even put a couple offensive positions ahead of LB like WR(we're basically using 3 right now) or interior line (notably C) . Looking at the LB depth it's a spot I'm reinforcing in later rounds and UDFA, not top 3, unless the talents just too good to pass up.

Why so you say LB? Granted Anderson and Williams are one year deals, but we're deeper than we've been in years, including with youth. Definitely agree on DL and CB though.

I mean non morons. There were a lot of people who knew Tebow sucked, because they weren't morons, but also thought Brian Kelly was doing something knew and revolutionary and nobody would be able to stop it. Depending on exactly was said, the lines seem fuzzy to me. If it was people talking about Philly revolutionizing the NFL, I'll just dump them in with the Tebow is a winner crew. If it's people talking about Chip Kelly successfully adapting his offense, it was too early after two weeks and too early after three weeks to make a final judgement and anyone doing otherwise us just jumping the gun.

What people are we talking about because a lot of people believed the Tebow hype because he knew how to win or whatever.

I think they expected this year's team to not be such a [expletive] sandwich, thus keeping attendance/revenues fairly steady. In the range of $20M or more off? And then in seeing that decide what exactly, keep slashing to turn around attendance?

The renovation was always a cost factored in and as of last off season a cost they knew they'd be picking up the tab for. Since that time many hurdles have been cleared getting them closer, so there should be more cost certainty, which could allow them to loosen a little bit more money or at the least is neutral. The odds of the cost projection going up are slim because based on their trust structure and debt we should really assume they would be conservative in their projections. But there's no way they were acting last off season like it was a cost that wasn't going to exist, so it's not a new cost, but one already built into our $105M payroll. But, even if you throw out the one and two year deals, Edwin Jackson's 12M for 4 years has to fall in line with renovation plans or they wouldn't have done it. If they were cash strapped, they should have let the payroll drop the extra 12M this year, but that still puts us at $92M worse case. As far as the payroll saving moves, if we still believe the payrolls are multi year budgets, with cost savings available to be re allocated, it's just as easy to say its a baseball decision to free up payroll for next year than a business decision to acquire cash. There's also the issue of revenues. Maybe they wildly projected too high on attendance and revenues, but they all seem like reasonably smart people who had to know attendance wasn't going to turn yet, right? And finally, we just saw a new/extended exclusive marketing/advertisement agreement reached -always a good sign for $$.

Just curious what changed between last offseason and now that makes people think payroll will plummet. Last year was a pretty small drop compared to the past few seasons (about 10m less than 2012 I think), yet they added at least $20M in year one payroll dollars. They could be sitting at $85M right now, instead of the roughly $105 they started at. I know one thing people may point to is the payroll saving decisions like Torreyes for essentially cash, DeJesus for cash, and Marmol and International slot for cash, but we have heard before that payrolls won't be done on an annual basis, it could just as easily be them deciding to cut costs from a sinking season to roll over to next year, and not based on some fear Ricketts is bleeding money and can't pay the water bill. Yes we can read comments from Theo that sound like they won't be spending, but there's also been rumors of the Cubs targeting the top 2 FA OF. So it doesn't take that much hoop jumping to chalk up Theo's comments to normal GM speak, tempering the market expectation a little. Now we're also much closer to certainty regarding the future renovations, which could help open the wallet a little. That's not to say the $105 should be enough and we can still complain it can be higher, but wisely spending $25-30M (just to maintain payroll) in FA could bring us to an 80 win team even if Rizzo and Castro continue to disappoint. So again our success will be tied mostly to development of young pieces. Hell even a half assed effort with payroll still dropping should leaving us in the mid-90s and not the 75-80M that's been tossed around.

Because Lovie almost hired him as OC but we ended up with Shea instead.

PBR is a great beer in the adjunct grain class. It wins taste competitions over and over. I can see why people might not like it, but if one is comparing it to the Budweisers of the world there is no equal. I think some people don't like it because of the perception of the people who drink it. Hipster got on the bandwagon because it is a cheap beer that tastes good and wasn't massively marketed. Agreed on all counts. Buyer just has to be beware in places where hipsters have driven up the cost. But if you can find it in a small town for some $1.50 pint special on tap its a good buy. Also I'll just take a moment to stick my neck out in support of Coors amongst the macro beers. I think most people have just had Coors light as its sold just about everywhere. Coors heavy though is starting to become easier to find and is my favorite amongst the big 3. Coors light? Nah.

That just doesn't seem accurate. I signed up several years ago and still am only about 68,000.

That's kind of a ridiculous assumption. His next employer doesn't get to draft him. It's not an assumption of what would actually happen if he left, but you can immediately cross off half the teams as being worse of from payroll standpoint. You probably never would've seen the [expletive] Reds coming in with a higher payroll than us coming either. It's not far-fetched to see the Braves, D-Backs, Mets, Mariners, and Orioles drop us down to 19th next season. Well not sure if any of those teams will look to expand payroll a lot due to revenue gains, but I really hope we've bottomed out and in the relative long term have more potential growth than most franchises. We'll find out opening day I guess.

I'd just deal with the hives and use their intensity as a modified BAC test.

That's kind of a ridiculous assumption. His next employer doesn't get to draft him. It's not an assumption of what would actually happen if he left, but you can immediately cross off half the teams as being worse of from payroll standpoint.

No I want them to spend whatever they can afford, but from an attractiveness standpoint and competitive standpoint, that's the measuring stick.

I'm most interested in using an inherent revenue advantage to position the team I care about to be in the best possible place to win, which is what the [expletive] the Dodgers are doing. The Cubs are doing something else, but I understand why that's the case. They are going to have to be much smarter than the Dodgers, Yankees, etc. of the baseball world given what seems to be their limitations. Edit: I don't care what the mean, median or mode is for teams spending money. The original statement was about Theo sticking around because of an above average payroll, so if he left for elsewhere he has a better chance of ending up worse off payroll wise. Even if you think the Cubs could do more, more teams aren't doing more than are- regardless of market size. Anyways if you really wanna get down to it, the most important thing is being the top payroll in your division. From a spending standpoint the Cardinals right now are much better off than Boston from a payroll perspective even though they have less to spend. Their spending just means a lot more when a huge segment of their competition to an automatic LDS bid spends less than average (as a mean) than the rest if the league. Then it's all a crap shoot anyways.

It's the same thing as household income. Median tells us a much better answer to the question I'm trying to answer. 9 times out of 10 I could ask a statistician what the average household income is he is gonna answer me in median without any prior clarifications because every reasonable person knows what the hell we are answering and why one answer sucks st answering the question and the other is better. And if I told you I have an above average income I'm not lying or misunderstanding my stats terms, just doing a better job of answering the basic question that was set forth to be answered.

I mean average is just part of the definition of mean. So even I was a weirdo who wanted to use the definitions of words in place of words themselves I'd say "the cubs don't have a payroll that is above the quotient if the sum of several quantities and the number of quantities), because it would be more clear.

Also in the discussion of baseball wins and using payroll as an input that correlates to wins I care much more about my position relative to the median than the mean. So in normal discussion it's perfectly reasonable to bring up payroll in terms of median and to use the term average to describe it. If it was a stats class the use if average just shouldn't fly at all because I have readily defined terms I could use.

Your mistake here is thinking average means what you think it means. No one is disputing the specific and unique definitions of mean, median, and mode. You seem to think average only is defined as mean, which just isn't the case (although probably the most frequent since its the easiest to calculate and most often used). Simply put if you we're trying to have a meaningful statistics discussion you wouldn't use average at all because its not a statistics term but an just a normal English word.