WrigleyField 22

Why do you care about Boozers contract. It's not hindering the Bulls.

Is there any reason I should be that excited about Girardi?

6 games over pythag, 2 dominant pen arms, but yeah, still seems off Just eyeballing it, the difference between us and them is Cano over Barney at 2B and the best closer ever.

Wait, did that team really win 85 games. What am I missing?

Never done fantasy hockey but I'll throw my hat in the ring.

So... It's our fault were losers but we can't play with a manager who is a loser, so he's collateral damage for our failings and/or strategy to suck. Ok. So he was probably always a placeholder.

Well I remember Bosio being pretty close to Sveum, and it seemed Sveum had to convince him to come on. So I wouldn't be surprised if he leaves . Still, it's a managers job to assemble a staff (maybe their most important job responsibility honestly) , so if the new guy can't get someone to do an adequate job to replace the staff, we hired the wrong guy. Rowson has to be gone too, considering Castro's decline, right?

Baseball adds two playoff spots: Incentive to tank increases. Sorry I'm not seeing it and since the new CBA I'm not seeing some huge increase in bottom dweller sell offs. There do seem to be a few more buyers though.

If that's it for the signings, it doesn't matter what we do for this season because the same amount isn't getting us [expletive] on MLB players. But since we're presumably fielding a team for the next 5 years after next, that's okay.

What was Darvish's total contract? I'm thinking 100/6 total for Tanaka sounds okay. 55mil for the bid and 45/6 for the contract? Is that reasonable?

Ricketts had to rack up a lot of airline miles flying to Florida to convince Mesa to do so. Business class isn't cheap.

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.