squally1313

You understand the chances of Morel even getting to Wrigley would decrease significantly if Javy was still a Cub right? Sorry, I wasn't very clear. Javy is the most exciting player I've ever seen, he is our household's favorite player, he was integral to winning the WS and I wanted them to extend him. I like Morel. He's cool. Now it's Willson, who I also have strong feelings about. Yes, I might like watching Campusano or whoever in a couple of years but I'd rather stop logjamming guys at South Bend/Myrtle Beach and just go ahead and make another push with the last great player of the most legendary cubs team of all time. I will not stand for the Kyle Hendricks erasure. Look, the issue isn't that Campusano might manage to produce a cheaper WAR/$ over the next 5 years or whatever. I'm trying to make the best of a shitty situation. The Cubs as an organization and revenue producing company should not really have any budget constraints compared to the rest of the league. It's [expletive] that they do. But they do, and all indications are that they will. Signing a 30 year old catcher putting up career numbers in a walk year to a long term deal, serious money deal is going to, unfortunately, limit what we can do elsewhere. If we were fans of another team, I'd be all for trading for him and throwing him in the middle of a pennant race, but I wouldn't want to sign him to a 5 year deal. (but also, selfishly and three beers deep, go get a horsefeathering haul for him and then bring him back in December on some hometown discount)

You understand the chances of Morel even getting to Wrigley would decrease significantly if Javy was still a Cub right?

To play devils advocate: If the team wins, the fans will be there. We're now 6 years removed from the WS team. It sucks that it played out this way but, as a comparison, here are key members of the 2016 team that were on the roster in 2014: Rizzo (breakout season in 2014) Baez (hit .169, spent most of 2015 in the minors) Coghlan (traded from Oakland in 2016) Arrieta (breakout 2014) Hendricks (called up down the stretch, pitched great) Rondon Strop Grimm That's 8 guys (and stretching it a lot on Coghlan and Grimm) that were on the team just 2 years before the 2016 team. This is a bad team right now, it's been a bad team for a whole calendar year. Yes, a lot of that is self inflicted, which is garbage, but the fans (which are already showing up) will be selling the place out as soon as the record flips, regardless of the players on the field. Agreed, success (both individual and team) is always going to be the biggest driver. No one bemoaned losing the connection to the success of 2016 when Almora or Russell was kicked to the curb, or got contemplative about the business of baseball when they moved on from Quintana or Chatwood. People are dying to not look at Heyward in a Cubs uni anymore, it's always gonna come down to the belief that they can continue to be successful and play a part in the team continuing to be successful. That said, I think the front office(and I say front office because I believe the org's current state is about 90% front office driven and 10% ownership) really could stand to do what it takes to avoid this circumstance with *all* of the next round of players. Reward Nico with an extension that buys out some FA years, plant a flag on Morel with a longer term deal, or show faith in Steele or Thompson with guaranteed money. There's value in not being on the 6 year treadmill with every young player who lands at your feet, and while there is risk involved(e.g. no one is putting Bote's name on the roster in pen), it's a useful and ultimately small thing they can do to signal their intent even if the bigger statements of intent like large FA deals are (sometimes justifiably) not the best choice for the moment. Don't disagree on those points, but just to piggyback off your post my earlier one, I do think what we've seen the last couple years is at least a little bit a result of the path they decided to take back in the early 2010s, which was essentially purge the entire organization and start from the ground up. The end result of that being that you had a core that was largely the same age and the same contract status. The disappointment is that the 'waves and waves' just ended up being one pretty incredible first wave, and they weren't able to supplement enough (although you could argue that they were playing meaningful baseball in October for 5 out of 6 years from 2015-2020, so...). Looking at the current roster, I don't see that being the case in terms of how this turns into the next great Cubs team. There's talent at every level, there's money to be spent this offseason and the next one based on expiring contracts...they should be able to space this thing out a little bit better.

I haven't watched a full game since 2019. There's basically no more emotional investment into this team anymore. I still watch games all the time, but I understand the sentiment and I know several people who used to follow the Cubs very closely and have basically stopped watching them entirely over the past few years. There is risk involved in operating the team like an analytical sports simulation, which can be contradictory to maintaining a fan base over the long term. There is a point where the "smart" business move might not be the best thing for the long term health of the franchise. Do you really want to sever one of the last links to the 2016 championship team (Contreras), while creating yet another giant hole to fill? How can you expect to build a loyal fan base if the organization fails to reciprocate that loyalty to both the fans and players? Maybe this new rebuild works and we have another 3-4 year playoff run, but then what? Then it's time to trade Davis, PCA, Amaya, etc. and start over again. We can't expect the team to re-sign everyone all the time, but there are times when re-signing a player might be the right thing to do even though the computer says otherwise. Contreras is the exact type of player that the team should be looking to keep around and bridge the gap to the proverbial "next great Cubs team", yet somehow that idea has never seriously been entertained. It's one thing to rebuild and be smart about spending money, but this team shouldn't be operating like the Tampa Bay Rays. To play devils advocate: If the team wins, the fans will be there. We're now 6 years removed from the WS team. It sucks that it played out this way but, as a comparison, here are key members of the 2016 team that were on the roster in 2014: Rizzo (breakout season in 2014) Baez (hit .169, spent most of 2015 in the minors) Coghlan (traded from Oakland in 2016) Arrieta (breakout 2014) Hendricks (called up down the stretch, pitched great) Rondon Strop Grimm That's 8 guys (and stretching it a lot on Coghlan and Grimm) that were on the team just 2 years before the 2016 team. This is a bad team right now, it's been a bad team for a whole calendar year. Yes, a lot of that is self inflicted, which is garbage, but the fans (which are already showing up) will be selling the place out as soon as the record flips, regardless of the players on the field.

It would be really funny if he didn't get traded at this point.

Yeah I don't really disagree with anything you're saying but...I love Willson and Kyle Hendricks and kinda Happ (who has seemingly done great things for players behind the scenes) and I would enjoy loving Hoerner and Morel and Seiya and maybe even Steele/Thompson down the road, not to mention the 37 teenagers we have in the minors. I love Wrigley, even if it's in large part for nostalgic reasons at this point (the area around it is very tough, but once you make it in the bleachers...). I love baseball. I don't know. They suck. But most of what I like is probably eventually owned by someone shitty once you get far enough up the chain. See the Coachella owners making huge donations to pro life republicans. It's a terrible system and we should do what we can do improve it, but still think I should enjoy some of these things.

Is there any chance someone like the Rays or Indians makes the trade for Soto and then flips him for 80% of the prospect haul in the offseason?

He's got Sofa breathing down his neck in the race to 100k, can't slack off too much.

Just put like a 9 second timer on there and let them throw 20 pitches over 3 minutes for each round. Or give them 4 minutes if you want to bake in bad pitches. Agree that it's impossible to actually appreciate anything besides someone hitting four or five in a row, and even then you're just seeing the swing and not really tracking where it ends up.

I have not watched more than a few hours of the Cubs this year, but there is a definite irony to people coming into the literal game thread on the message board about the team playing to be like 'lol what are you guys doing here'. It's incredibly easy to just...not make those comments, especially here of all places.

Feel like people said the same thing about Panarin

That is not at all what I expected that dude to look like.

I didn't mention Contreras because I don't have high hopes he'll be on the team on opening day 2023. If anything, he's the Shark of this current team, to painfully stretch the analogy. Suzuki, who I admittedly forgot about, has had about a month of star performance, a month of garbage performance, and 6 weeks of injuries. Jury is definitely still out. I'm fine with Rodon. Maybe we hit the lottery with Steele/Thompson/Kilian, but that shouldn't keep you from spending the money you have on the best pitcher out there.

I feel like that would put the team to roughly where it was in 2007 (when the team added Soriano and Lilly), which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does not feel like something that would be sustainable for more than 2-3 years. I don't know, maybe a WS ring and three straight NLCS appearances made me unrealistic, but I just don't get the warm fuzzies when I think about this current group. I think it's a combination of a couple things: 1. Lot of ways to skin a cat. May be conflating this conversation with the 'Win in 2023' one, but if that's what you're talking about, trying to compare this to something like 2014 isn't exactly apples to apples. At this point in the season, the team basically had Rizzo and Arrieta having breakout seasons, Hendricks showing up late in the year and looking like a potential piece, and then Shark having a good year that we turned into Russell (and Hammel), who was still a couple years away. The rest of the roster was putrid, as reflected in the 73-89 record. Now, you could argue that we don't have a Rizzo/Arrieta at this point, or if we do they're about to be shipped out in the next few weeks. But, to channel Don Draper, that's what the money is for. I think you could argue this current roster could end up showing up a few more complementary players (Hoerner, Madrigal if he figures it out again, Happ if he stays, Steele/Thompson) than what you were looking at going into 2015. And also worth noting that 2015's team won like 97 games, which is not a requirement, and brings me to my next point. 2. You don't need to be the Dodgers to win a World Series. I wish we were, and I know if you look at the Dodgers or Yankees (though I don't think we'll ever spend that much) or Astros to an extent it seems pretty hopeless. But we could be the Braves. Definitely could be the Nats. Could probably be the Red Sox. 40% of the teams make the playoffs. I wish there was a stronger correlation between best team over seven months and World Series champion, but there hasn't been, and it just got weaker with the new rules. Find a way to 90 wins by 2024 and I'll be fine.

This is so horsefeathering embarrassing.

I get your point on the injuries, but also the main reason (or at least a main reason) no one expected us to compete is probably pretty related to the fact that those four pitchers have put up 1.7 fWAR in 193 innings so far this year. If these are our top 4 pitchers, health wasn't going to be the deciding factor on whether we were good or not.

I weirdly don't disagree with most of this, but it's disingenuous to throw in the big market/zero payroll part because DFAing him, as far as I understand, wouldn't save them any money, outside of some team bizarrely (understatement) deciding to pick him up and taking on a small part of it. I think that's actually where the frustration comes in, that it seems like they're just going with sunk cost fallacy here. And obviously Ross' answer there didn't help.

Nitpicking a little bit here, but it's not like they found an extra $200m lying around that they were previously hoarding and decided to distribute it out to the top players because of Liv. I think the goal here is for these new tournaments to become pretty big draws in terms of TV revenue and whatever else, even if they do have to figure out how they want to go up against football in the fall (smaller fields might allow them to have everything wrapped up by early afternoon?). I assume based on those big numbers above that they are making money on most of these tournaments. If the Tour itself has to come closer to breaking even for a couple months as an incentive to get these guys to stay, probably makes sense on their end.

Morton, in case anyone else was confused too.

Yes, which is also like...better than the alternative? Might as well have them steer hard into the real terrible performances, drive off fans, wake up the front office, etc. And really, it's going to get worse. Miley won't be here, Steele/Thompson/Kilian are all going to be on an innings limit, whatever effective pieces are left of the pen are going to get shipped out, and that's just on the (already terrible) pitching side.

I know this is all so stupid and dangerous. But it’s also fun as hell, like…going to six flags or something. Musah looks incredible.

Are you guys telling me I'm going to have to learn the difference between Thompson and Steele?

I simmed 20 times. The highest the Cubs drafted was 2 to the lowest was 10, the mode was 6 and the median was 7. Sounds like a perfect spot for an 18 year old with bad hips! ETA 2027 here we come.

I crack up at the "reports" that the Cubs will be in on Judge, Correa, Turner, etc. I guess these sports reporters don't remember who owns the Cubs. Can any of those guys pitch, because that's what this team needs. If you paired this lineup with the best pitching staff in the league, do you actually think they would be a good team? The team has holes everywhere. To be clear, the 17th best offensive team per fWAR and the best pitching staff in the league would be a good team. At this point, I don't really have any idea how to build a pitching staff, but we're about 500 innings short of a good starting rotation currently. Hope on Kilian, sign a couple bats that create logjams for our offensive prospects, trade them for pitchers who have already shown success, profit?

Eh, Gomes and Higgins gets you through this (lost) year...Gomes is a pretty safe bet to put up mediocre production next year if nothing else falls into your lap, so that gives you almost two years to sort it out. It's been a relative luxury having him, but a lot of contenders just plug in veterans at that spot.