Hairyducked Idiot

The only signal I'm getting from the number of Samardzija stories is that reporters want to write Samardzija stories.

The two "woulda, coulda, shoulda" moves that have been available to us, that needed to happen were that([expletive] you Dempster) and Puig. Darvish

Yes, but only because I'm not at all sold on Watkins or Vitters.

If they ever get around to winning, they might get more slack.

I've got him at 6.

Yes. Everybody needs to stop paying any attention to them, forever.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to what our bullpen could look like in a few years. I'm picturing the 2015+ dynasty Cubs as having insane power, a quintet of useful but not amazing starting pitchers every year, and a lights-out bullpen made up of 95+ fastballs.

Who cares how many games they win in the regular season? I want them to build a team that can win in the playoffs. BOOM. Meatball one-upped!

We've saved money in the trades for Feldman, Garza, Hairston and Soriano so far. Anyone doing a decent job of tabbing it up and seeing where the projected MLB payroll for the year stands?

If there's any dropoff from Soriano to his replacements, I think it's probably fractional. Depending on which set of peripherals you believe in, we've been playing like a 78-82 win team all season that just happens to be on pace for 73 wins. After the selloff, I think we're closer to actually just being a 73-win team.

Maybe I'm just a reckless optimist, but I'm not convinced this team is all that much worse than it was before the sell-offs, especially when you consider how little Garza had been healthy enough to contribute. I think we should have a very good chance of avoiding 90 losses.

I thought if the signings were official, it's too late to add the space?

So we're getting a relatively recently drafted pitcher who touches 100mph, and salary relief, for a 37-year-old outfielder with a .287 OBP. Cool.

That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.

TT only felt like making three today. Nobody else was going to post anything interesting, so someone had to do something.

OK, if anyone accidentally clicks on this thread, I guess I'll post some random Cubs musings to make it slightly less a waste of a page and a half of posts. I really, really like what the Cubs have done over the last month or so. Arrieta, Strop, Grimm and maybe Neil Ramirez go a long, long way toward addressing what was our biggest hole for 2014, the lack of pitching depth. We should be able to get a couple of decent (i.e. not sub-replacement) relievers out of that bunch, and maybe even a fifth starter. That takes a ton of the pressure off of our upcoming offseason in terms of finding a volume of useful pitchers. Unless all those guys (and Hendricks, and Cabrera, and a few others) all turn out to be terrible, we should have a fairly decent team in 2014. Our pythagorean projection is right around 78-79 wins right now (right where a few of us optimists projected we'd be) and I'm fairly certain we can beat that projection by next spring. In 2012, one of the stories of the season was just how inexplicably awful we were at finding successful bargain-basement and mid-level guys. That was something the front office had been really good at in Boston. They went back to normal pretty solidly this year, getting solid contributions offensively from Schierholtz, Hairston (if his BABIP hadn't messed him up), Valbuena, Navarro, Ransom, Sweeney. I'm pretty sure we can repeat that success again next year. Losing Garza is going to sting, but we've got the money to replace him with someone in the same ballpark, presuming we can find such a pitcher available. It's not really going to be money so much as just limited supply that might keep us from getting a quality pitcher this offseason. What I'm hoping is that we go out and get an outfielder this offseason, someone the equivalent of Edwin Jackson in price and quality, as our big piece. Either a CFer and push DeJesus to LF, or pretend that DeJesus is a CFer for another season. Unless Lake's magic continues the rest of the year, you can give him a bench role with the plan to give him 300-400 PAs. We can mostly stand pat with the infield. Give Olt the 3b job unless he just continues to fall apart at Iowa, then trade Barney for what you can get and hand Valbuena the 2b job. Then go out and get the best mid-level SP you can, maybe one mildly expensive BP arm, and you've got yourself a team with pretty much the same budget as the last two seasons but a bit better. FA OF/DeJesus/Schierholtz (Lake, Random reserve OF) Olt/Castro/Valbuena/Rizzo (Watkins, Vitters) Castillo (some cheap vet) Samardzija/Jackson/Wood/FA SP/Arrieta Russell/Strop/Grimm/Hendricks/Cabrera/a billion different guys I think that should comfortably slot in to an 82-84 win projection so long as the bullpen is average, which I think is a reasonable hope. The bad news is that it looks like there will be three better teams in the division, but you just need to have one of them go the way of the 2013 Giants or Nationals and you've got yourself in the fringes of contention.

I want all the Cubs discussion. With all the navel gazing about how smart this place is, there's like four interesting baseball posts a day on average.

It's cute that you think I would leave one Cubs forum just because I find a new one. I'm everywhere.

Baez's HR/600 PAs pace: This season: 37 Just AA: 66

We have like two good posters. Maybe.

He might be awful. He put up a lower OPS in AAA than several players who have since turned out to be awful.

While in AA before he can legally drink.

PSD would be a better board than NSBB except they insist on calling prospects "specs." That puts them like tied with BCB and barely above Cubs.com.

Wait, you were moaning and complaining about trying to be a winning team with a .760 OPS and good defense in LF, but you are pining for a guy who plays bad defense and could barely OPS that in AA and AAA, because he might have some sort of vaguely defined ceiling? Cool. Carry on.

They're all adult men. They all play baseball. I don't know how much clearly the comparison can be.