Hairyducked Idiot

was he ever a candidate? He spent most of his career trying to be.

Someone just shoved the layoff letter in his hand and he's reading it on the air.

I can't see them putting him back on the air. Gotta hurt his ability to get another job too Nope, just came back from commercial break and is still going off. "We're still professional enough to do our live reads." "I guess that's what we're calling ourselves for the rest of the year."

Oh man, I caught the end of it.

Andy MacPhail weeps.

After reading some of the arguments that really lay out how badly pitchers age anymore, I think I'm taking half a foot off the Lester bandwagon. I'll still be happy if we sign him, but pitchers seem to be hitting a wall at 32/33 anymore.

http://nesn.com/2014/11/report-jonny-gomes-drawing-legitimate-interest-from-cubs-four-others/ Don't we already have Ryan Sweeney under guaranteed contract to be a mascot?

WTF does that mean Day games, I assume

If we're going to be slaves to the stupid success cycle thing and only care about wins that get you to the playoffs, we're like right there in the sweet spot right now.

We're going to the @#@ playoffs!

Only 3 NL teams in the top 13. Has the Cubs six games out of the playoffs.

The roster I'd build with what we have right now with patented WAG projection system. Bryant* (1.5)/Alcantara (1.5)/Soler (2.0) [Coghlan, Ruggiano 2.0] Valbuena (2.0)/Castro (2.5)/Baez (1.0)/Rizzo (5.0) [La Stella, Watkins 0.5] Castillo (1.5) [baker (-0.5)] Arrieta (4.0)/Hendricks (1.5)/Wood (1.0)/Wada (1.0)/Turner (0.5) [All Kind of Guys 1.0] Rondon/Ramirez/Grimm/Rivero/Wright/Rosscup/IowaShuttle (4.0) Total WAR: 32 Projected record: 80-82 All the usual caveats apply. Replacement level is 48 wins. Projections tend to be conservative because of bust rate (i.e. a 90% chance of getting 5.5 wins from Rizzo and a 10% chance you get a castrophic injury or something leads to a 5.0 projection). You could fidget with every single spot by a win or so in either direction and get wildly different results, it's all just WAGging. I've been doing these for a few offseasons now and this is easily the hardest to project. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Bryant triple his projection. Baez could come in anywhere from -2 to +5 and it wouldn't shock me. That's a few more wins than I thought I'd get to going into it. There's some actual good things on the roster, like Anthony Rizzo and the bullpen. And there's some really low-hanging fruit to be plucked this offseason. It's easy to see why a pitcher or two is such a focus, it makes a huge difference on the projections. And we *really* need a catcher.

They were planning on a routine dinner with Lester when they got the word from Brett Anderson's agent and couldn't wait to celebrate.

Sometimes the best moves are the ones you don't make.

Per chance? Easy. Per chance relative to difficulty of chance? We're waiting for full Field F/X.

I'm not sure I want Theo faced with a choice that might lead to him deciding not to bother trying to compete for the division in 2015.

I swear to god if the Cubs lose out on Lester to the [expletive] Cardinals I will lose my [expletive] mind. Jokes on them. We could get like Brett Anderson or something.

The Marlins are going to have a higher payroll this year than the Cubs aren't they? We got outspent by the Brewers last year. There's not much shame left.

Nor is quantifying runs as cut and dried defensively as it is offensively. I've wondered how much run saving defense is dependent on chances. Like, is the ball distributed enough across the diamond that each position is going to have roughly the same chances or can you randomly "save" a bunch more runs one year just because 40 more balls got hit your way than the previous year? Whereas with hitting you're guaranteed to get a chance 11% of the time. Basically can good defense be mitigated just because the ball is hit to you less based on randomness... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk This is definitely an effect. It's part of why you have some defensive valuations fluctuate wildly from year to year. It's the constant give/take of designing defensive stats. If you try to normalize for chances, then you aren't really measuring the impact in any given year. If you don't, then you aren't really predictively measuring ability.

If we miss on Lester, there's still Scherzer and trades. I'm not going to go ballistic on the front office until they *actually* strike out on the offseason, not when they are in an 0-2 hole or whatever. But it's still stupid when fans try to convince us that it's a good thing they struck out or whatever.

101, 96, 89 has left some doubt as to their ability to put together a good baseball team using the non-spending methods you describe. oh god shut the [expletive] up I know, right? I really don't want to hear any more about how it's no big deal if we don't use our resources to get the best ballplayers we can. no, seriously, shut the [expletive] up loser I mean, it's not their *fault* they were losing, because nobody can build a winner with the financial restrictions they've faced. You have to be able to spend to put together a winner.

Oh man, Fangraphs came up with some never-before-used tweak to their methodology that claims $/WAR predicted the exact contract of a recent signee?

101, 96, 89 has left some doubt as to their ability to put together a good baseball team using the non-spending methods you describe. oh god shut the [expletive] up I know, right? I really don't want to hear any more about how it's no big deal if we don't use our resources to get the best ballplayers we can.

101, 96, 89 has left some doubt as to their ability to put together a good baseball team using the non-spending methods you describe.

This may be one of the dumbest things you've ever said. There a tons of Hawks fans who are my age (38) that have loved them since the early to mid '90s with Chelios and Roenick etc. Yeah. I'm not sure how that math works. I'm 32. I discovered hockey when I was 8. Sure, I got the Final run my first year, but I sat through Eric Daze, Jocelyn Thibeault, the ABC line, Adrian Aucoin and whatever other late 90s/early 2000s Hawks I have to reference to prove my cred.