okay pick apart my terminology but you knew exactly what I meant. it means we are probably going to attempt to be competitive faster than some thought. teams dont typically trade away their best asset for 2 major leaguers when they're doing total and complete rebuilds. not to mention they did keep hendricks and willson. I honestly have no idea why you think that. They traded away everybody and will stink next year. They got what they could get to field a team. How does one witness this trading deadline and think it’s just a retooling? They gutted the roster and have garbage left. I used the word retool because I had just read a fangraphs article saying there were reasons to think the cubs were looking at more of a retool than a full on rebuild. like I said, you can say that retool is a bad word, but the rest of what I said is perfectly reasonable. they have way more in place at this moment than they did when theo took over. with a weak nl central and their lack of big contracts, they SHOULD be looking at being competitive by 2023.