Hairyducked Idiot

Nothing that they didn't buy with lost seasons. Well, maybe Travis Wood.

The revisionist history is on your end, I'm afraid. Every year that goes by, the "inherited" portion seems to get worse. You can tell that the organization is better because the team is worse, there's been no significant progress made on the stadium and attendance is projected to be down 800k (using the team's internal projections of 2.3m for 2014).

Oh, and James McDonald definitely has a major-league deal, which is weird.

Laurence Holmes? Yeah, that's who it was.

"Have you had a problem in your career with people misconstruing your positive attitude for weakness?" Suck up harder, WSCR guy whose name I can't remember.

Lake's position is not set in stone, but he will get lots of at-bats. Valbuena and Murphy expected to get most of the time at third early in the season. Did not seem to be pushing Olt at all.

Don't know, he's seated for the press conference. He reminds me of every junior college baseball coach in history.

I think Renteria thinks Castro's name is Starling.

Who's Morale? He's the guy watching Half Baked.

It's like the Cubs' version of Godwin's Law. Whenever someone starts to make good points that maybe Emperor Epstein is only partially clothed, Hendry gets brought up as a deflection.

Was that not expected? I honestly couldn't remember if that was a mild surprise or not.

Grimm is "in camp as a reliever."

A frequently controversial subject among sportswriters: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/index.php/topic,98847.0.html

Arrieta felt some shoulder tightness over the winter and is not going to start with the rest of the pitchers.

It was needed to keep us from falling further behind. I don't doubt that you can draw a line between the decay of the organization and the neglect that began with MacPhail having half a foot out the door. I'm glad that's getting fixed now. But that doesn't justify the different mistakes they are making. Instead of neglecting non-Wrigley facilities, they're neglecting the MLB team. Instead of patchworking Wrigley Field, they're botching the renovation project for almost five years now. This ownership may be screwing things up in different ways than the Tribune did, but they're still screwing it up.

I'm not going to deny that we needed all this modernizing. But when you get to "and that's going to lead to sustained success" that's where you lose me. They haven't shown me anything that says they can pull off sustained success with this team. First, there's the little problem of losing a bunch of years in a row at the beginning not really being sustained success. But even putting that aside, all they've managed to do to date on the baseball side is put together a pile of young players that is arguably the third-best in the division. I still don't know why I should like the 2017 Cubs more than I like the 2017 Cardinals or Pirates (and while the Reds face some challenges, I don't think they should be ruled out of the conversation entirely). The whole plan seems to be "once we get things going, even if it takes us longer than we hoped, it'll be a non-stop express train to awesometown because we're just that good," and I don't see it. This is the still the front office that hired Dale Sveum, paid Gerardo Concepcion and broke Starlin Castro. It's the front office that punted on an entire offseason, not being able to find anything productive long-term to do. Once the goals are finally a bit loftier than moving up the prospect lists, these are the kinds of mistakes that are going to stop them from running off three or four division titles in a row. And that's just on the baseball side, which is the more competent of the two halves of the operation. I don't know if or when we'll ever see an end to the business side's bunglings.

I'm not saying I loved the Tribune ownership, but I don't think I'd call it a nightmare. They produced more success than Ricketts has.

How about the previous ownership that left this organization in the state it was in (and with all of the hindrances it had) when it was sold? The fact that Zell directed them to spend a ton on payroll for the last 3-4 years while they sold the team doesn't absolve them of all their prior terribleness. But, seriously? Look around baseball. When the Tribune sold the team, the Cubs were a year removed from a top-10 farm system, were drawing 3.2m fans, and had come off three consecutive winning seasons. I long for that sort of terribleness.

I'm not sure what a nightmare owner is if it's not what's happened since Ricketts took over. I guess he could have kept Hendry.

That they want to make sure they have the revenue generators in place before flushing $500 million down the toilet? If this renovation isn't going to make the team money, what's the point of it? Preventing them from losing money when Wrigley Field collapses into a pile of rubble. If it cost that much to keep the thing from collapsing, the better options (from a business perspective) would probably be (1) sell the team, or (2) continue the patchwork repairs until it somebody offers you a good deal for a new stadium. It doesn't cost that much to keep it from collapsing into a pile of rubble. It costs that much to prevent it from collapsing into a pile of rubble, modernizing the facilities to keep it from being a competitive disadvantage, expanding the revenue-generating portions, and doing some significant real-estate development outside the park. The Cubs aren't spending $500m on Wrigley Field, though they like to spin it that way.

That they want to make sure they have the revenue generators in place before flushing $500 million down the toilet? If this renovation isn't going to make the team money, what's the point of it? Preventing them from losing money when Wrigley Field collapses into a pile of rubble.

Do I care a lot? No. But no matter how obvious it is that the front office made a minor screwup (or perhaps was forced into a bad decision by a sudden need to trim payroll), there's always some pushback that it wasn't *really* a screwup at all. And not just DeJesus. The Cubs had an awful lot of flippable veterans that were supposedly signed almost entirely for their flippability that they couldn't move on July 31. It felt like they were just demanding too much and were surprised when the market didn't move for them.

wait, what? Who left the 40 man today? Raley and Marshall were both claimed on waivers.

Closers are going to be incredibly OP. They completely dominate four of the five categories.

This is gonna be just like Dave Sappelt (indistinguishable from Soriano!) where I refuse to give up on the AAA slash line until he's like 28.