Hairyducked Idiot

OK, MLB average BABIP is .294. If we normalize Baez's Daytona performance to .310, then he gets nine extra hits. At his MiLB ratios, that would be 6 single, 2 doubles and a triple. Add those to his stat line, replacing BIP outs, and you get 252/285/496. That's probably a very fair assessment of his performance. The raw talent and power are clearly there, but his approach problems are starting to catch up with him.

You can smooth out the BABIP and still have some disappointing numbers. The K and BB rates are problematic. I'm not advocating selling high or anything. Just think an eyebrow raised in concern isn't out of line.

I'd be getting real cranky right now if I didn't realize your history with these things. Maybe I'm trying to help?

What kind of sucks is that we're getting to the point where it's unsurprising. Between Daytona and AFL, that's about 200 PAs of suck since poking his head above the Midwest League.

What sort of season would it take for Ha to get back onto people's "could be a starter" radar?

The pickings are very, very slim for pitching. If it's not Price, Garza is probably one of the top ones left. It'd be very easy to get shut out entirely on good starting pitching, and very hard to imagine not only replacing/resigning Garza but also adding someone else on top of it. I'm guessing we'll get Garza's replacement (or Garza himself) and probably an Ellsbury-type outfielder to replace DeJesus and/or Soriano. That doesn't really make me think the 2014 Cubs are serious contenders. Maybe .500 with a slim chance, a tiny bit better than this year, if they don't Lillibridge any roster spots too hard. Mostly, the 2014 Cubs just look a ton like the 2013 Cubs to me.

I keep coming back to the season math. I know there's the "David Price trade" alternative viewpoint, but it sure looks like to me that 2014 won't be much better and that they are focusing on 2015 at the earliest. So that's three seasons thrown away in pursuit of this plan. We're being implicitly promised a Boston like run, something like the six playoff appearances in nine seasons he had there. But I'm not seeing why, with a division full of reasonably smart baseball men and a lack of the market inefficiencies he exploited on his last run, something like 4/9 or 5/9 might not be more likely. That just doesn't seem good enough to justify the three lost seasons. Of course, some think that those seasons were going to be lost either way. And it's possible that we'll get 7/9 or better. In which case, I'll tip my cap. But right now, it just doesn't look like we're headed that way.

It's worked out awesome for us. The relief pitcher wasn't chopped liver, but I'm perfectly glad to mark that as one in their column. I don't want to get into the semantics of the term, but I'm talking about the true freebies for the most part, or guys like Ortiz who massively overplayed their contract. When you go into that $5-7m range, sometimes you get Maholms and sometimes you get Bakers. They've done OK in that regard. Not great, but OK.

Eh, I'll disagree somewhat. I definitely wouldn't classify it as poor, thats for certain. Last year, the onky FA we signed to major league deals were DeJesus, Maholm, Wood, Soler, and Concepcion. DeJesus has been solid enough. Maholm was very solid and brought us back what could turn out to be an excellent return. Wood didn't pan out, but it really seemed he was forced down Theo's throat by Ricketts anyway. Soler looks the part right now and Concepcion was either a horrible mistake or we got unlucky with the mono thing.(likely both) This year, its too early to judge obviously. But you can go through each of them individually and understand why the move was made. I figure we'll get a very solid return on that 50 mill overall. But you are right, he's not picking up the 3 WAR for nothing types-Of course, when he did it a decade ago, it was basically him, Beane, maybe a couple of others and about 25 dumbasses he was competing against. Things have changed and other teams have gotten smarter and leveled the field somewhat. I still figure though, that when a new market inefficiency emerges, we'll be at the very top of teams that exploits it until the rest figure it out. Mostly agree. I don't have a huge problem with the way they've spent the money they've spent (other than the weird fascination with Cuban pitchers). They've just done a shockingly terrible job at picking up replacement-level or better players for the back 2/3rds of the roster. The 2004 Red Sox employed 16 negative bWAR players for a sum total of -3.7 WAR. The 2012 Cubs matched that with just Volstad and Mather. They ended up bleeding more than 15 wins from subreplacement players, and it wasn't only the late-season post-firesale callups (though in theory, those guys should average out to replacement level, too). The 2013 Cubs already have 14 such players for a combined -3.2 wins against replacement. So even if they don't have the David Ortiz/Bill Mueller/Bronson Arroyo/Mark Bellhorn magic anymore (about $7m or so in acquisition cost, 11.8 WAR between them in 2004), I'd like to think we could do better than we've done in the bargain bin. I'm less confident than you that they'll be able to find the next market inefficiency just because they were at the cutting edge of the last one, but that's based on nothing more than feelings on either side anyway.

I was mostly referring to last season. We'll see where it ends up this season.

Even if we give him a pass on not spending, they've done a fairly poor job on the cheap pickups, too. And it's not as if he wasn't allowed to spend a dime. We've got $50m in new free agents on this team. It's been nothing like his early Boston tenure, where he was scooping up 3-WAR players for free left and right.

Can it go lower? Garza, Marmol and Edwin Jackson's frontloading is $25m clearing up, besides the normal small contracts expiring. Plenty of room to add one Jackson-sized piece, fill out the roster, and shave another $15-20m.

I'd like to see some sort of assurance from Ricketts that the initial outlay for this won't effect the baseball budget in the immediately upcoming seasons. It's possible that he did say that today, I just haven't seen it yet.

Wasn't he supposed to be new and improved and strikeouty? He's struck out 3 of 52 batters he's faced.

You get cranky when I'm right.

I'm sure the rooftops can afford a good enough lawyer to come up with some sort of argument. Is a videoboard really an expansion or a new feature? I'm not saying they'll win. It's a hail mary, but worth a shot for them and something the Cubs probably want to avoid.

Both of those guys ended up getting fairly lucrative long-term deals. Better deals than the qualifying offer, at the very least. I'd have to assume Garza would think he can do better as well, even if not as good as it would be without the compensation.

The plan was to use the expansion to have money to increase revenues for the baseball team. Now those revenues are being cannibalized for five years to pay for the expansion itself. That's a long, long way from the $300m public subsidy they were looking for in the beginning.

Congratulations, Tom, on taking four years to convince the city to let you pay for a massive expansion of Wrigley Field under absurdly unfriendly terms compared to what you were originally asking for.

I don't except your logic here. Tim, you are awesome. I appreciate this site and you are clearly an accomplished and intelligent man. I am, admittedly, frequently wrong. Maybe you are just picking the wrong times. Maybe it's a small sample size and will regress to the mean in the coming seasons. But your record in correcting me is downright Lillibridgian at this point.

If we except all the times when they've been bad, they've been fine? Can't disagree.

Money *is* being spent. They committed almost $100 million this offseason, and almost $50m of it is being paid out this year.

I can't exactly put the owner on the hot seat.

They've got a .373 win percentage. It's horrific.

This team is about to be 65-109 under their watch. The fact that they aren't scrambling to save their jobs show that holding off accountability is exactly what they are doing.