squally1313

He's probably slightly better than Schwarber and he's getting significantly less money. It's a perfectly cromulent move all on its own. God, I want to call out the word 'significantly' there, but....you're probably right. This all sucks.

He's fine, whatever, I'm already resigned to paying attention to Javy/Happ/Kyle/Contreras/Rizzo and then seeing what former awesome Cub is coming to town. It's bothering me a lot how they went out and found essentially a Schwarber clone to save a rounding error on the books. Just...keep the Cubs legend who clearly wanted to stay here.

Appreciation for him has definitely increased lately for me. In 2015 it was Jake, and in 2016 Hendricks won the ERA title and had the NLCS start and pitched pretty well in game 7, and still the first thing I see when I think Lester game 7 is the ball bouncing off Ross' head. But looking at the dumpster pile of a rotation we have now, it's pretty incredible what he did those 2 years, every 5th day, while pretty clearly taking leadership of the team from day one. Gutting his way through the 2017 playoffs with a 1.88 ERA he in no way deserved, and then pulling out a vintage start in the one game playoff in 2018. Legend, and hope he finds his way back to the organization (and hopefully it's a post-Ricketts era).

Journalistic integrity prevents mention of children by name without parental permission. Was trying to think of a political dark money donation joke, but yours is a lot more succinct/better.

Or it lets them wait to see if the catching market develops in the regular season to flip romine or contreras without having to throw Amaya to the wolves. Ie our entire strategy from 2011-2014

Even setting aside those who don’t think the Cubs should remotely care about payroll, yes they absolutely should have done that. Reasonable people can disagree! I guess we can reevaluate whether it was worth it in 2031. How is your life as a cubs fan better without bryce on the team

Yeah, again, small sample size, but you've got Ian Mitchell and Adam Boqvist, supposedly the future of your defense, barely seeing the ice the last stretch of the 3rd period, and (I believe) not getting any ice time in overtime. Which, yes, it's game 4 of the regular season against Florida, but if you aren't going to give them that time, what are we even doing here. And then of course you have Duncan Keith allowing a cross ice pass that should have easily been broken up to set up the game winner and not looking anywhere close to upset about it. So you have an overmatched coach chasing a victory by giving ice time to veterans who clearly don't care over the youngsters who need crucial ice time if they're going to develop into anything. It's not a good situation and I'm not really sure what happens that will make it better. Trade Kane and Keith at the deadline for whatever you can get and force Colliton to live and (almost always) die with the kids.

Yeah I'll be happy to look back on this as an overreaction, but I don't think people have caught on to just how historically bad this season is going to be. Crawford and Lehner covered up a ton of flaws the last couple years, and even then all that got us was a 12th place finish in the conference. With Dach out for the season, Toews out indefinitely (and mysteriously), and Kane/Keith very likely totally checked out, especially in light of Colliton's extension, it's going to be very, very ugly. I'm usually not one to dwell on the meatball, 'play with passion' aspects of sports, but going to need to see even a semblance of a spark before I stop betting the other team puck line every game.

Shots fired!!! I don't see those as shots fired at all. Schwarber is all class, he's not going to take shots at the Cubs. Unfortunately

That's not at all what I took from that, but also I could be missing some weird layer of your sarcasm, so....

Prior to Schwarber/Darvish, would you agree they were the favorites to win the division next year? Because if so, at that point there's not really a lot you can possibly do to 'significantly increase' your odds of winning a title. That's not to say we can't be frustrated that the Ricketts more or less pocketed 5 years of historic success and the associated profits, then took one bad year (that was bad for everyone) and decided to tear it down. We just traded our best pitcher for a different version of Cubs era John Lackey and four dudes who won't sniff Wrigley for 4 years. How long do you think a team with the Cubs resources should need to rebuild? Point taken. I think I'm the oddity that didn't think with Schwarber and Darvish we were good enough to win the division. I see it as being a crapshoot between the Cardinals, Cubs, and Brewers in 2021. I get the profits point, but you can show a profit and have poor cash flow. My guess is the cash flow hasn't been great because of all the investment they have done in the area. None of that really matters to me to be honest. I just don't think the team is good enough to win a World Series and I don't think we would have been good enough unless we invested heavily in the likes of Trevor Bauer and then completely remade our lineup so we don' rely as much on the long ball. If you expected Javy, Bryant, and Rizzo to all have bounce back years I could be on board. I think their are serious flaws in all of their games and the league has learned them. We are seeing the evolution of pitching against the three true outcomes and I think you will see teams readjust their approach again. But...we just won the division. And it certainly wasn't Jon Lester leading us there. Sure, you need to fill innings, and find someone who can replace Jeffress' mirage of a season, etc. but those would be minor fixes (like, say, just bringing those dudes back, or getting younger, also dirt cheap versions of those players). And, since you mentioned bounce back years from Javy/KB/Rizz...that just kinda proves my point. We won in spite of them being ass, and you can't point me to a single thing those other teams have done to improve their rosters. As far as profits, cash flows, whatever...I get that I'm oversimplifying it, but I also get that the Ricketts could start the process tomorrow on realizing that gigantic unrealized gain of team appreciation they're sitting on, and have zero problem in the midst of pandemic finding a willing buyer to more than solve all their problems. But they won't, because they know that continuing to own the Cubs will be incredibly profitable for them (and would remain that way with Darvish/Schwarber on the books, with a Bauer contract, etc).

I know this is a bleed post but, the Ricketts family gave millions of dollars to re-elect Trump. I have no time for PTR posts. I don't see the relevance of the amount of money they donated or how much we perceive them to have matters. Do you think the team could have won a title as currently constructed without adding Trevor Bauer and a few other pieces at an extra 50-70 mil a year for the next 3-5 years? I personally do not. If you are not significantly increasing your odds of winning a title why spend the money and if you are significantly increasing your odds will the odds still be that much higher in years 2-5 of the contracts? If the answer is no I do not see a reason why to invest that money and why as a fan I'd want that. All you would be doing is pushing out the inevitable by a year but making the rebuild even harder. You invest heavily in FA when you have a young core under team control. It is a proven model that works. Prior to Schwarber/Darvish, would you agree they were the favorites to win the division next year? Because if so, at that point there's not really a lot you can possibly do to 'significantly increase' your odds of winning a title. That's not to say we can't be frustrated that the Ricketts more or less pocketed 5 years of historic success and the associated profits, then took one bad year (that was bad for everyone) and decided to tear it down. We just traded our best pitcher for a different version of Cubs era John Lackey and four dudes who won't sniff Wrigley for 4 years. How long do you think a team with the Cubs resources should need to rebuild?

To be clear I was kidding because Contreras is fun and good at baseball and we should prioritize having those kinds of players on our team.

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)

Was that actually the pitch though? We signed him in the middle of February, and from what I recall it was more along the lines of 'well, you weren't in the plans, but the price is finally low enough that we aren't going to pass this up'. I love Yu and don't want him going anywhere, but this wasn't some Lester type recruitment.

Possibly, but two years of Wil Myers, even if cheap, isn't overly valuable to us after trading one of the best pitchers in baseball. I look at any offensive acquisitions as an attempt to change the dynamic of the offense to be more contact oriented. Myers seems to fit that profile, even though its very likely that last year was more of a SSS fluke (im sure someone here will do the research if this trade actually happens). I probably believe way too much in the pitch factory crap, but it seems to have yielded some great results, so while I know we can't replace Yu with it I do believe we can cobble together a solid rotation. Maybe I'm way wrong, but in terms of building for the future while cutting spending and still trying to be quasi-competitive you're gonna have to take some risks, and this seems like the best place to get unexpected results. Wil Myers has a 27% K rate (more than the Cubs team rate) and is projected for 30% this year.

I could be wrong, but I'd imagine the Padres are going to pay a decent amount of it. Possibly, but two years of Wil Myers, even if cheap, isn't overly valuable to us after trading one of the best pitchers in baseball. Replacing Kyle Schwarber with worse, older Kyle Schwarber just so we could dump our best pitcher is certainly making me consider just how much I enjoy sitting in the bleachers. Seems like if you've won 56% of your games the last 3 years and the rest of the division is openly broadcasting that they aren't trying, you'd want to focus on the couple minor moves it would take to make you comfortable favorites. But hey, what do I know.

An example of how corporations/companies think. Union Pacific railroad made $300 million one year and $250 million the next year. When they started negotiations with the union, they said that they would have to make cuts because they "lost" $50 million. Starting off in public accounting and we’d have firm wide meetings at the beginning of the fiscal year showing targets of 12% profit growth from the year before. At the end of the year we’d only be at 9%, and that would be used as justification for less than ideal bonus/raise packages.

Alright I'll bite. Oversimplifying? Sure. But the players and the businesses both received less revenue than expected (and contractually guaranteed) while maintaining a certain level of fixed expenses. Where is the 'massive misunderstanding'? Happ is comparing players taking a reduced salary (there are no "fixed" expenses there) against a business where there are massive fixed expenses for stadiums, front office personnel, coaches, minor league operations, scouting, etc. All this said, I'm for the players getting a much bigger percentage of the sport's revenues. Screw the billionaire owners. But it doesn't help to have a union representative showing a basic lack of understanding of the difference in finances for individuals vs businesses. But doesn't Happ/the players have fixed expenses too? Obviously a different scale, but you establish a lifestyle based on projected or contractually guaranteed income amounts. Player X only got 37% of the income he was projected to receive in 2020, but his costs stayed relatively the same...mortgages, etc.

Alright I'll bite. Oversimplifying? Sure. But the players and the businesses both received less revenue than expected (and contractually guaranteed) while maintaining a certain level of fixed expenses. Where is the 'massive misunderstanding'?

No Mountain time or West coast games for the Hawks is just fine with me. Could see it getting a little monotonous, but never really had that feeling with the baseball schedule so I'm sure it'll be fine.

God that's bleak.

I always kinda figured that if they were going to lose the 'Braves' name, it was going to be because of the Chop. I think I recall the team trying to move away from it, and then people doing it at the games just to be spiteful. Hopefully that dies out, and yeah, don't think the name is overly offensive on its own.

That's amazing. How'd you get it? Shorter par 5, driver/hybrid got me to about 50 yards, then one hop and hit the pin and went straight down. Was hitting over a bunker with a raised lip, so actually didn't see it go in, but heard the pin and then the people on the green let me know. Didn't quite get me into double digits, but I'll take the 102.

First eagle ever yesterday (and I have like, 5 career birdies). Pretty awesome timing doing it during the (assumed) last round of the year.