Hairyducked Idiot

Same as all along: The right time to trade him was in the spring of 2012. Holding on and hoping to get more value out of 48 starts to trade than 64 was a sucker's game from day one, and they got burned on the risk they were taking. It didn't make sense from a "only employing professional baseball players who are good at baseball" perspective. Major League playing time always has value. Significant value. Maybe even more value than money. Wasting half a season of it on a guy who is bad is always a wasted asset. I'm simply going to have to disagree with the idea that they haven't tried. I would call yours overly apologetic.

At the time they did that dumpster diving, wasn't it still somewhat of a new and uncharted territory they were exploring at the time? And now hasn't nearly every other GM had the opportunity to evaluate players differently because of the success they generated from that process, thereby watering down that pool of players? I'm not necessarily saying that Theo's secret of success can't still be successful, but when you aren't the only ones bidding on the dumpster players anymore, those guys are getting a lot more attention now than they were then, and thereby costing more and hampering their true value in dollars needed to spend to sign them. That's very probably the case. But that's the whole problem with being excited about having proven executives. The market inefficiencies that they built their success on are probably already gone, and there's no guarantee they can find new ones. "The ways that our front office used to get good at their last job are no longer available to them" is not a comfort to me. Which brings me to another setback: Their entire initial plan was built around something that the CBA took away before they could even get started on.

In what way is it unethical to use an offer from one club to try and get another club to offer more? It's unethical to lie, which in this case means either telling the Cubs you have a deal or telling them you will have a deal if they offer a certain amount. That appears to be what happened here.

It's not a simple binary "can sign FAs" or "can't sign FAs." You can make things harder or easier on yourself on a whole continuum. If they sign Edwin Jackson or I guess even Shawn Marcum to medium-term deals, I'll consider it a wash. But competing in 2014 is going to take an amazing effort from them starting pretty much yesterday, and every piece off the board makes the hurdle that much higher.

It's totally unethical. But until the supply of good pitching exceeds the demand, there's not much GMs can do about it.

I'm saying a significant number of things have happened in the last 18 months that negatively impact the organization's chances of winning the World Series in the future. I'm not sure whether it being part of their plan or not is relevant. Pretty much that entire wave of "near-ready useful parts" that we were supposed to have turned out to either suck or got shipped elsewhere for little or nothing. The most valuable trade chip in the organization was overplayed and lost probably half his value, maybe more, in Matt Garza. The 2011 draft class bats had a great showing, but a lot of the lower minors pitching got hurt or had setbacks. We proved we were capable of major scouting fails with the Concepcion debacle. We got destroyed every which way on the Ian Stewart trade both in foresight (Ian Stewart is awful) and hindsight (Colvin and LeMahieu aren't bad). In 1.5 offseasons, we've added precisely one significant long-term piece above A-ball. The dumpster diving skill seems to have left them. In that first year in Boston, Epstein and Co. famously picked up for scraps or nothing David Ortiz, Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Bronson Arroyo and Javy Lopez, and I'm probably missing a few. With the same effort this year (and even more opportunity because of the sorry state of the roster), we got Shawn Camp and Arodys Vizcaino. There's simply no way they can be completely happy with the way the last 18 months have gone. Sure, they piled up a lot of prospects. It's pretty much impossible not to when you throw the kind of resources they have at it. But a lot has gone wrong.

I vote for "making your team more attractive to free agents by not being terrible." The participation award is a little encouraging, but the fact that they failed is just as discouraging. They are clearly intelligent, but baseball is deeply competitive and it's not easy to overcome a lot of setbacks. And there's no denying there have been a ton of setbacks in the last 18 months.

Why FIP and not xFIP?

I don't know if I'd call Sanchez boring. He's a little above average in basically everything, which adds up to a pretty good pitcher.

The league average K/9 for SP is 7.1.

He's 28, doesn't walk very many people, strikes out more than average and gets a decent amount of ground balls.

Because our starting pitching for 2014 is Jeff Samardzija and Travis Wood, and the FA class in 2014 is horrible.

That's unfortunate, because the alternative was that they were trying on dual fronts and sucked at it.

Given the structure of his contract, it seems almost impossible for Soler's contract to be a bargain. I mean, he's still plenty worth having if he turns out to be a great hitter, but he won't be much of a bargain. I'd rather have Jackson at that price than Sanchez at 5/75. But really, I just want to make sure that the end answer isn't "nothing."

It'd be interesting. It'd mean Samardzija, Garza or Wood are traded, or we didn't really promise Baker and Feldman rotation spots. I'm thinking that Beliveau's DFA maybe says something about their plans for the rotation. Wood as long-man/6th starter/2nd LHP in the pen would be a good way to consolidate some roles in a bullpen that's already currently committed to Marmol/Fuji/Camp/Russell/Rondon I wondered about that too. I'm just not sure how easy it will be to coordinate the simultaneous roles, because 2nd lefty is frequently a short-stint guy, not a long man. Plus, I think it's almost safe to assume that 6th starter is just a permanent spot in our rotation next season.

You should be completely ashamed of yourself for thinking that it wasn't realistic.

Apparently, yes.

I can be mad at them for not putting on a team on the field that makes them appealing to free agents for reasons other than "We're the only place you can get a starting job."

It'd be interesting. It'd mean Samardzija, Garza or Wood are traded, or we didn't really promise Baker and Feldman rotation spots.

Until it's a prospect. We can lap the market on Concepcion or Soler, and that's just pure coolness.

"Closing in" leaks almost certainly came from the agent. But I still don't see his motivation for changing "closing in" to "done deal," but someone reported "done deal." So either the agent leaked something he has no motivation to leak, the reporter made it up, or it came from the Cubs.

So the Tigers have the agent on the phone, saying they have to match or he goes to the Cubs. They waffle. Then they see an unsourced media report saying they are already out. 1) It's a media report, so they don't really care. 2) They know it's not true, because the agent just told them they had a chance to match. Now they stop waffling and do the deal? Occam's Razor pretty much demands this came from the Cubs. Either directly or indirectly, i.e. they told another player's agent they had a deal with Sanchez and wouldn't be pursuing their client, and that agent leaked to the media.

The original report had to originated through the Cubs. They were the only ones who thought it was done on their end. There's no incentive for the agent to leak that it's done when he's going back to the Tigers saying it's not.

I hope that the agent at least paid for Theo's dinner or something. I'd hate to think our guy got used this hard and had to go Dutch.