CaliforniaRaisin

I hope Brian Kelly was happy the family got to see that up close.

Uhh, how worried should we be that Skrine has missed 3 games now with a concussion?

We might have shifted from blowout loss to merely heartbreaking end-of-game loss.

Trask should’ve opted out the moment Pitts and Toney did.

I wonder if there’s a veteran catcher out there with a long, storied career who could mentor Amaya for a season. Perhaps even has a ton of experience in the NL central and could pass along that expertise as well. (At this point, might as well right? Burn it all down) We don't need a veteran catcher to mentor Amaya, we need somebody to teach him how to hit ML pitching. He's not a great hitter down in the low minors. Not a great hitter? He had a 114 wRC+ in 2018 in South Bend and 122 in 2019 in Myrtle Beach.

https://twitter.com/cubsrelated/status/1344326005276622849?s=21 Maybe wait the few months to sell off all your big league team before firing your scouts, you cheap bastards.

I still trust them to develop bats decently. They have also traded away Eloy, Gleyber, Jeimer, and Jorge (maybe forgetting someone) but they largely developed those guys outside of the main core. Plus developed Vic, Nico and Bote in the last 2-4 years. And there’s enough bats the prospect guys seem to like it seems like they’re doing a decent job (you don’t hear prospect guys say they like Brennan Davis as an example but don’t like he’s in the Cubs hands). Strumpf and Amaya seem close to being something at the ML level too. All those guys you mentioned were either IFAs, drafted by another team (Vic), a 1st round pick (Nico) or in Bote's case, virtually the only player drafted after the 1st round under Theo that has produced any positive WAR. But in that case maybe the issue is identifying talent in the draft rather than developing that talent. Or its just a weird anomaly that the Cubs have had above average success developing IFAs, 1st round picks and other team's draft picks while having extremely below average success developing draft picks taken after the 1st round. List of (I think) every player to accumulate major league WAR with the Cubs that was taken after round 1: 2011: 14 - Maples (-0.6) 16 - Raul Lopez (0.2) 2012: 2 - Underwood (0.0) 18 - Bote (3.3) 2013: 2 - Zastryzny (0.2) 2014: 3 - Zagunis (-0.1) 7 - Norwood (-0.2) 2015: None 2016: 4 - Tyson Miller (0.0) 2017-2020: None Excluding Bote, the rest of the Cubs non-1st round draft picks since 2011 have yielded a combined -0.5 WAR for the Cubs. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. This is "look at this mildly interesting stat I uncovered all by myself" more than anything. Well, we shouldn't have to worry then since 3 of the 4 Teenagers are IFAs. At least anecdotally, in the capped draft era, not many teams do too well after the first few rounds. (Also, the 2011 draft was Jim Hendry's last so take that -0.4 WAR off Theo's ledger.)

Don’t think these have been updated overall since the draft but here are where the teenagers slot in: 10. Reginald Preciado 11. Owen Cassie 16. Ismael Mena 17. Yeison Santana

It's a few things: - Signing bonuses aren't always linear. They're agreed to when kids are 14/15, and finalized at 16. Sometimes the $1M 14 year old develops a little better than the $3M one. So while the huge money kids are almost always still the top kids in the class, the order can get fudged a bit in that intervening period - When going from amateur to professional ball, you change to an almost entirely new ecosystem of scouts. That's how you get like Nico Hoerner going from being a 40th-ish ranked draft prospect to a top 100 overall guy after 6 weeks in short season ball - In this case specifically, the only place they've been seen since March was the instructional league in October. Longenhagen lives near there, so luckily he has actually seen 3/4 of these guys in the last few months. So while I typically value Keith Law's or Jim Callis' opinion more, I think Eric's opinion holds much more weight currently In a chat a week ago, Longenhagen suggested Preciado had passed up Robert Puason. Puason was thought of as the top IFA prospect in the 7/2/19 class until around the time he turned 15 and even after Jasson Dominguez passed him, he was considered the 2nd best prospect and tied for the highest bonus paid in that class.

Sigh

I'm not so sure about that because it's just too risky a haul. 4 guys in rookie ball, only one of whom has played professionally. Of the guys they acquired, two were rated around Kevin Made from the 2019 IFA class and a third was the 180th rated draft prospect from the 2020 draft by BA. In 3-4 years, if even 2 haven't flamed out by AA, we're lucky. Prospects are obviously not a sure thing but going this route just added so much unnecessary risk.

Jed is in over his head

So no Padre top 10 prospects pre-Snell trade.

Jed horsefeathering sucks

End of the rotation? Right now he's our #2 in the rotation. End of the rotation on a good team.

Somehow Mitch is still the worst of these three QBs playing for a playoff spot.

Really good deal for a 25-year old who can play shortstop.

I hear ya. FWIW Goff claims he hurt it in the 3rd and it didn’t affect his throwing later in the game. Since the Rams won’t have clinched anything by kickoff, he has every reason in the world to try to play and the rams have every reason to win. The bears need to keep the game close so that the Rams have no incentive to look at the scoreboard and take their foot off the gas. It's questionable how good Goff is when healthy. When injured? Yikes. Hopefully McVay has a good game plan.

Hunt is a popular breakout candidate: With Mejía and Zunino at the bigs, I can’t imagine the seats will allocate the resources to acquire another catcher (especially at Contreras’ cost).

Traded for some slap dick prospects: Probably kills the chances the Cubs trade a catcher to Tampa.

Goff broke his thumb so the Bears will have to do the impossible of beating the Packers to make the playoffs.

Packers fan relish it even more.

I know the first half was annoying but I’m laughing at multiple posts in here pretending Mike Glennon is competent.

For our sake, I hope the rumors of Carter and 4 for 2 (Wiseman) weren’t true. Unless Williams is better. I turned the game on in time to watch the Pacers go on a 21-0 run.

that was the first season i followed sports/the bears and, while i remembered narrowly missing the playoffs, i forgot about that whole scenario That was my first year as a fan too. The Bears have made the playoffs 5 times in my 25 years as a fan. Yeesh.