champaignchris
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Everything posted by champaignchris
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The number of very good pitchers who hit arbitration and don't end up making 40+ million is...substantial. Pitching is fleeting, take the money. So if Nola is the benchmark, what's a Hendricks extension look like? $3M signing bonus, $9M in '20, $12 M in '21, $12 M in '22, $15M option in '23 with a $4M buyout?
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How could be have possibly made less money by not signing this deal? Even if he got hurt. Time to strike on a Hendricks extension?
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Fangraphs have them at 88 wins, two games ahead of the Cardinals for the division lead, and with only the Dodgers (93) and Nationals (91) ahead of them in the NL. The failure to do anything this offseason is less about the Cubs being bad and more about them refusing to go over the top when the opportunity is clearly there.
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Poor Starlin... He doesn’t deserve this.
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Kyle Hendricks: Somehow Greg Maddux
champaignchris replied to Aaron_Kennelly's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
Lot of mentions of Game 6 against the Dodgers in 2016... Game 1 against Washington in 2017 was almost as good, and in some ways it was more the prototype of an ideal Hendricks start... weak ground ball after weak ground ball after weak ground ball. -
Up to now, this offseason had been like the bar scene in A Beautiful Mind where all the mathematicians decide that they’d all be better off not hitting on the hot chick and hitting on her plainer friends instead. Except in this version, they’ve all decided that they’d be even better off than that by not hitting on chicks at all.
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The current CBA is up after 2020. If the owners don’t make some concessions in the bargaining of the next CBA, there will be a strike.
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I just don’t understand... The Cubs have nearly $60M in contracts coming off the book next year between Hamels, Zobrist, Morrow (I’m assuming they’ll decline his option), Strop, Cishek and Kintzler. They could free up another ~$22M if they were to decline Rizzo’s or Quintana’s options. (Unlikely in the first case, maybe not so unlikely in the second.). Yeah, they have some increase with arbitration awards and whatnot, but they can easily get under the luxury tax next year even if they’re paying Harper or Machado $30-$40M a year. They’re going to be over the luxury tax this year anyway. It makes no sense that they can’t go after one of them this year. What are they going to do with all the money coming off the books next year? Are they seriously going to fall back to a $160-170M payroll? They think they’re going to spend all that money on Xander Bogaerts, Mad Bum, Garrett Cole and Dellin Betances? (I’d bet at least two of those never make it to free agency.) Or what? The frustrating thing is that up until this year Theo & Co have always been pretty up front about what their plans are and what they’re trying to do. Now I really have no clue.
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I bet she’s a Mets fan. Blech!
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Right. Baseball is excluded from the anti-trust laws. The logic is that if you want actual competitive baseball games, you have to have some restraints on competition at the business level. So you can’t hire other teams’ players away from them in the middle of the season, for example.
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All it would take is for Tom Ricketts to say, "Yes."
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Rivera is 5th all-time in Win Probability Added behind only Clemens, Lefty Grove, Maddux and Warren Spahn. WPA probably inflates relievers' value a bit, but still... And anyway, Rivera could have never pitched in the regular season at all and his 0.70 ERA over 141 IP in the post-season probably would have earned him a HoF spot.
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I think the rosiest outcome for Chatwood would be pitching relatively effectively for a month of Spring training such that he’s a reasonable trade target for a team that loses a starting pitcher for the year in March.
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Collusion requires some behind the scenes agreement. I don’t think there is that. It’s all right there in the CBA. The players got took at the negotiating table. The owners’s greed Is a given. The players’ representatives’ incompetence isn’t. I think the players are going to have to bite the bullet over the next couple years, but then they need to be way more militant next time around. If I were representing the owners, I’d be reading the tea leaves and beginning to work with the players’ union now.
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That must be why Rizzo isn’t going. Too jealous of watching the KB and Harper bromance Not our fault he doesn’t have any friends that are good baseball players.
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My general observations is that anyone who says they’re “from Chicago” doesn’t live within the city limits. Anyone who actually lives within the city limits will say they from “the (North/South/West) side of...” or actually specifies the neighborhood... Lincoln Park, Edgewater or whatever. There’s a similar dynamic in New York City where the actual city dwellers will specify the borough or neighborhood.
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Did I miss Craig Kimbrell signing? Or are we just assuming there’s no possible way?
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The front office having the rug pulled out from under them by ownership would make some sort of sense out of what we've seen (or not seen, rather) this off season. As has been said a number of times in this thread, there are several transactions the Cubs front office should obviously not have done if those transactions were going to prevent the team from pursuing Harper. And if Theo had the "all clear" to pursue Harper right up until early November, I can certainly see why ownership changing its mind at that late date would cause a rift. Is it time for the gorilla suit?
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This offseason is so weird. Obviously not done yet, but we’re only about 5 weeks to Spring Training. So what’s really going on? I see three options... 1. The front office is blowing smoke up the media’s ass, and they sign Harper and/or make some other “go for it” moves in the last few weeks before the Spring; or 2. There was some serious miscommunication between ownership and the front office regarding payroll (or maybe ownership changed its mind) which caused the front office to make moves under the assumption they’d be able to go after Harper and are now finding out that ownership is putting on the brakes; or 3. Something got seriously fucked up and the Cubs actually are under some unexpected financial constraints. Because the combination of moves leading into the offseason, plus the relatively light cost of first year luxury tax penalties, plus the numerous opportunities that will be coming up in the next two years to slash payroll, plus the relatively light free agent pool in 2020 means that nothing else makes sense.
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There’s an alternate universe where Steve Trout for Bob Tewksbury is considered one of the greatest trades in Cubs history.
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yeah, he's a piece of horsefeathers but his defenses perform. worth a look There’s a Saints connection with Pace, but I don’t know if Pace would call that a plus or minus considering how Williams’ Saints tenure ended.
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So he’ll be good after he leaves the Mets?
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Round 1: Eagles at Bears Sunday 3:40 on NBC
champaignchris replied to jersey cubs fan's topic in Other Sports
Seemed pretty obvious to me that the Bears wanted to play Philly in the playoffs. Otherwise......... I don’t think it had to do with Philly per se. More, beat the Vikings now so you don’t have to beat them later. -
Not really. I think we saw this year why Washington never wanted to go all-in on Cousins. He’s merely a pretty good quarterback. And Minnesota dumped a crap ton of money into him. No matter who’s the next OC, Minnesota is still going to have to try to succeed with an unremarkable quarterback. The really interesting job opening to me is Cleveland. All that young talent, what looks like the next great quarterback, and all that cap room... they’re positioned for a four or five year run as a Super Bowl caliber team if they spend their money right and hire the right coach.
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Ok. Sure. Why not.