treebird

Yeah right, like Theo has $600 in his budget right now. ricketts didn't want this no-food thing to happen again so he lifted the last 300 bucks out of petty cash and bought a crate of easy mac. which was a great plan until he found out the utility company actually can shut off your water if you stop paying the bill, so now he is stuck eating uncooked macaroni with a side of cheese dust at every meal.

Whichever choice has the most dollar signs is the one ESPN will choose, integrity be damned. i wish this was how money actually worked YOU HAVE THREE JOB OFFERS, WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE $11,000 a year $$$67,000 a year $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$9,999,999,999,999 a year

i'm catching up with the game on mlbtv. do we ever get an answer for what the hell is up with castro's helmet?

the only way backloading is bad is if you are doing it because you can't actually afford the contract you are signing and will have no ability to pay the increased salary down the road. in those cases, the solution is to just not sign players to contracts that are hopelessly too large. that is basically never the situation though (excepting the marlins), so just always backload. even if you just pretend that the salary is frontloaded and put the extra money in a cd every season you're coming out ahead.

And that team is the Rays. I still can't comprehend this whole trade scenario. cubs place dejesus on waivers nationals and rays claim him nationals' claim is the one that goes through because they are a national league team cubs could just say "okay here you go" but instead try to work out trade nationals say "we don't really care about this guy why would we give you something for him" cubs say "could you just spot us like 15 bucks in cash considerations, ricketts is out of ramen and we really don't know how he's going to make it until the first of the month and his food stamps reset" nationals say okay, make the deal, immediately put dejesus on waivers again rays claim him again and no one else does (or at least no one in the national league and no one with a lesser record in the al, which leaves basically no one)

YES

castro-rizzo-lake 1-2-3 for the rest of the season is fine with me

Olt now? I've not nearly given up on him, but I't put the chances of him threatening Rizzo's job at about zero. If Bryant gets moved off of 3B it'll be to the OF, where there's an actual need. If Vogelbach is OPSing 1.000 in AA or AAA late next year and Rizzo has somehow gotten worse, then we can start seriously talking about the possibility of him taking Anthony's job. Listen, Rizzo has been worth 2-3 fWAR over the past 365 days. He's just turned 24 and he's going through some growing pains. Even if he doesn't improve one bit from this day forward (which I find incredibly unlikely), he's still an positive asset at 1B. You obviously dislike Rizzo for some reason, and it's affecting your judgement. i generally agree with you, but i have no interest at all in a rizzo that doesn't improve from where he is right now.

i kind of think the international signing spree was a mistake if the result is that money has to come directly back out of the major league payroll. those guys have such a low rate of return and hell, even if things go amazingly well we'll see one of those guys in, what, 2019? signings like that should be a nice bonus, not something done at the expense of the real team.

fth is that [expletive]?

vomit

i hope this is a very real player we're getting back. or that dejesus has always wanted visit the air and space museum and will be returning to the cubs as his own ptbnl before next season.

the fake rally is often the only point in the game where the cubs' offense does anything at all. if anything, it's the one highlight of most games.

not what you're talking about, but i like this throw a lot (and features michael barrett!)

awwwwesome

9.7

New York City. definitely my favorite option

Can't be an actual on field ump though, since these guys would never overrule one another and risk showing up a colleague. good point. baseball is pretty slow and most of the calls are really easy and there's not usually that many games on at once. you take one league and i'll take the other.

And then the Cubs network. Although I for one would be kind of shocked if pay TV is still going in its current form by that point. yeah, it's pretty apparent we're going to miss the boat on real tv money by a wide margin. we should probably turn our rooting interests to the idea that maybe the cubs' attendance and tv deal will be so pitiful that the next cba has provisions allowing us to get revenue sharing money.

CORRECT OPINIONS ON ALL THESE ISSUES ONE robot home plate umpires asap TWO no challenges on other calls, just have a fifth umpire watching replays overrule when necessary THREE having the pitcher bat is fun and the small amount of strategy it adds to the game is as well, but FOUR it is a competitive disadvantage for national league teams to let pitchers bat while american league teams have the dh. since it seems unlikely the al will lose the dh anytime soon and i root for an nl team, we need the designated hitter in both leagues.

maybe someday this guy will be as good as a guy who maybe someday will be good!

i like those guys a lot, but don't you have to sort of just think this franchise is in serious trouble? there's just no way all of the top guys pan out, and even from the top four, aren't you realistically doing well if you get a very good (though non-star) player and a couple acceptable starters out of that group? I've said something similar before, but to expand a bit, the near term Cubs will rise or fall with Castro, Rizzo, Samardzija, Baez, and maybe Bryant/Soler. If they aren't getting star level production from several of those guys, then their chances of being a great team go way down. How that colors your opinion of the Front Office is a bit of a different question. Personally, I think that if Castro and Samardzija aren't ending up more than complementary guys, that truly underscores the atrocious level of talent in the organization when Theo and Jed took over. They can also take at least some responsibility for player development, because that's what we were relying on them to fix along with better talent selection, but in terms of the whole picture, Castro and Samardzija flat-lining puts a cherry on top of Hendry's crap sundae more than indicts them for relying on those players while adding pieces around them. that is a really good expansion and i agree with all of that. well put.

i like those guys a lot, but don't you have to sort of just think this franchise is in serious trouble? there's just no way all of the top guys pan out, and even from the top four, aren't you realistically doing well if you get a very good (though non-star) player and a couple acceptable starters out of that group?

one of my friends just texted saying that he despises castro and that he is the worst ss in the major leagues. i don't have the game on. what did starlin do?

cardinals about to rally and then a line drive off the pitcher turns into a groundout. ONLY THE CUBS