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I'm not naive enough to think that, "they should've re-signed everybody, kept the whole crew together...." The team's mostly been the same for the past several years, however they ascended in 2015, peaked in 2016, and then have been on a steady decline year-after-year ever since. Clearly the team hasn't been clicking, and something needed to be done. Keeping aging players that haven't met expectations, at least in terms of succeeding in the postseason, wasn't going to work. Trading the MLB talent for prospects was the right thing to do, but it sure as hell feels miserable. I checked the lineup card Friday, which is something I don't normally do because it's mostly been pretty predictable for years, because I was genuinely curious who was going to show up to play the game! I looked at the active roster and though, "who the hell are these guys?!?" I mean yeah I actually know who most of them are, but it feels like an empty shell of a team now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoCnwJm1iBo
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Aug 1, 2021 06:00
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 18:17 |
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beejay posted:This article pretty much says it all to me: https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/cubs-kris-bryant-anthony-rizzo-javier-baez-trade.html I'd read that as well as this article earlier today and it sums up my thoughts from my previous post. If any of us are upset with the loss of Rizzo/Baez/Kris or any of the other guys, well keep in mind that even with them the team was hovering around a losing record. Might as well trade them and get something in return rather than keep them for a couple more months and get nothing; you'd be kidding yourself if you thought they were miraculously going to put it together again and reach the postseason, considering the aforementioned decline over the past ~4 years. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to see any of them go (including Darvish/Caratini/Schwarber,) especially not basically everyone good at once, but let's be real, we've all been watching the same team. 
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Aug 2, 2021 02:10
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That was another thing; I thought that it was pretty intentional on the part of Hoyer that he picked thoughtful landing places for pretty much all of the guys. They generally all ended up in playoff races and in places that they'd actually like to be; Rizzo ended up in the NE where he has family, Baez ended up with Lindor which has literally been his dream, and Kimbrel & Tepera don't even have to relocate which I'm sure their families appreciate. (I actually don't mind the crosstown trades, even if it was for no other reason than the fact that it's the least stressful to the players themselves - for example Quintana, and if you really want to go back, Sosa and Santo.  )xbilkis posted:In my mind Hoyer went "gently caress pushing myself to find a good return that'll just benefit the rear end in a top hat owners that are making me trade my best players; I'll just mail it in and trade em to nice places" I mean, all of that can be true. The team got something out of the trades, the players got meaningful transfers, and ownership looks lovely for blowing it all up.  tinstaach posted:Maybe they'll all hit nasty slumps and want to come back to Chicago to reset things? It doesn't necessarily surprise me that the guys are rejuvenated and are playing better; they were clearly distracted and phoning it in towards the end, and were capable of performing much better than they had been. beejay posted:Lol if you think this team will be competitive again under Ricketts ownership except for maybe a lucky playoff appearance here and there followed by a swift cashing in of anything that gets them there. Well, don't misinterpret what I wrote. All I said was that they got some good prospects from the trades, not that that would guarantee they'd immediately be competitive again. But I wouldn't be so pessimistic, because if the ownership is only interested in making money (which by the way I don't think is totally true for Tom and Laura in particular) then it'd be in their interest to field a competitive team. Nobody wants to watch a tanking team, and fairweather fans (not that I have anything against them) are attracted to a winning team. Also, they ate quite a bit of money in the trades to get better prospects, which directly contradicts the "ownership is only interested in making money and not winning" mindset.... Kirios posted:Ah, yes...I remember the dark days of the Astros, where I paid attention to minor league scores far more than major league scores. Top 30 prospects for the organization? Child's play - I'd look at the top 120 and see how they were doing. Yeah, that's what it's been like to be a Cubs fan for most of the past century.... 
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Aug 2, 2021 08:15
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Popete posted:Obviously the team was committed to selling after they traded Darvish but even with him this year wouldn't have gone much different. I don't think the team would've been a serious postseason contender in the absence of the Darvish trade, but things definitely would've been different in that we'd have had a legit ace plus a reliable backup catcher in Caratini. Instead the rotation and catching situation have both been disasters. Niwrad posted:This team doesn't trade Cease and Eloy if they had been willing to take on Verlander's contract. I've said this before, but I'm still content with the Quintana trade. The Cubs got a few years of a serviceable, slightly above-average starting pitcher and payroll flexibility in exchange for a pair of players who weren't really going to be ready in their contention window. Cease has potential but hasn't been a particularly impressive starter (and neither has Alzolay, while I'm on the topic) and Eloy was another DH on an NL team, and he injured his dumb self in the field earlier this season (in other words, I'm saying he literally shouldn't be playing the field as he's a mediocre defender at best and is a liability to himself at worst.) One of you said that a better trade would've been those two guys for deGrom around 2017 when he was at his lowest value, but even then that's totally speculative, although I'd agree that'd have been a better trade if it was possible at all.
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Aug 3, 2021 06:05
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Niwrad posted:I get why the front office made the move and it wasn't necessarily wrong, but it was necessitated by the fact that ownership wasn't going to be a big player in free agency. They paid a big price to get someone who at the time was considered a value contract. (This is not all directed at you, Niwrad, I just got interested in the payroll stuff as I started writing this so I'm sharing it here.) I agree about the Quintana trade, but I do understand that they didn't want to spend a lot on FAs considering the payroll situation at the time. The team was at or above the CBT threshold for the past several years, and it doesn't matter how much money you have to spend on your team when every dollar you have to pay in penalty for being above the limit is essentially wasted as it doesn't make your team any better, to say nothing of the draft penalties. I'm not making excuses for billionaire team owners, but I get that they've figured out that spending tens of millions in penalties doesn't make sense as that's money that could buy actual talent, but instead is going directly into the shredder. For the hell of it I checked the Cubs' payroll on Cot's; the CB taxable value jumped from $112M in 2014 to $155M in '15 and then $206M in '16, which I believe was the first year they've paid the tax. Then it went $183M, $193M, $237M (!), $216M (in the shortened '20 season) and finally this season's $173M value is probably not current considering all the trades. As far as I understand, the '19 and '20 payrolls were also above the limit, although I don't remember how the penalty was handled for '20. While the team was under the limit for '17-'18, they were very close to it, and I'm not sure how aware some of you are of the penalties, which get severe, especially for consecutive offenses. There's a 20% tax on the overage amount for the 1st year alone, and an additional 12% tax if the overage is by $20M+; taxes of course increase with successive overages and increased overage amounts. So being ~$31M over in '19 cost the team an additional $10M, which went towards $0 of player talent (and resulted in another unceremonious postseason non-appearance.) If they'd brought in say an ace starter and another FA bat they could've easily added $50+M per year for those two guys and added $50-100M in taxes over the several years of those contracts. So yeah, it's one thing to say "gently caress it" and splurge like the Dodgers or Yankees or whatever, but then eventually you need to do a sell-off anyways to get back under the threshold and reset the tax.
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Aug 4, 2021 08:39
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 18:17 |
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Kirios posted:It really goes to show just how awful that Heyward contract is. Imagine the Cubs if that money was given for a reliable solid starter instead. Yeah, I don't like making GBS threads on Heyward (or athletes in general, they're humans too and they're trying their best - except there are some outliers like Bauer that deserve all the hate they get) but that contract definitely hurts the team, and I wouldn't blame any front office for shying away from similar deals in the immediate aftermath of getting burned by one like that. And there are plenty of other examples (e.g. Chris Davis) of guys having a monster season or two and then cashing in only to fall off a cliff for the rest of their careers. KDdidit posted:For years there were always the murmurs about once the TV deal was up they were really going to rake it in and get that sweet Dodgers TV $. I don't know if Crane Kenny and the business guys actually believed that, as even a dumb fan like me saw the writing on the wall that well would dry up by the time they got to end of the deal. They also bought all that property around the park in a sellers market so I don't doubt that hurt them financially. That being said, it doesn't give them an excuse to be cheap, but I think they made some equally bad financial decision off the field at least equal to the JHey contract. The fact that they tried to deploy Marquee in 2020, The Year That Shall Be Forgotten, didn't help things. R.D. Mangles posted:Lol https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/cubs/cubs-jed-hoyer-regrets-blaming-core-players-failed-extensions It does genuinely seem like the guys were/are interested in continuing to play for the Cubs, but intended to pursue free agency because why not? I do think it's weird that, even if they felt like they received low-ball offers, they wouldn't at least offer intentionally high-ball counter-offers, though. GoatSeeGuy posted:Quintana was valuable at the time of the deal based mostly on his contract- 200ish innings of 3.50 fip for 8-10 million is an absolute steal, and costs accordingly. Prospect hugging wasn’t as fierce as it is now and most people making GBS threads on the deal are enjoying the benefit of hindsight. He just turned into a pumpkin like Hayward and fell off a loving cliff. We really have to reiterate that Quintana was an MLB-ready starter that the team [at least thought they] needed then, in exchange for prospects who weren't going to be ready to help the team in their contention window. GoatSeeGuy posted:When the Red Sox won the World Series by blowing past the “don’t call it a salary cap“ luxury tax their total bill was all of $12 million. That’s the price you pay for not developing enough cheap stars, it’s not much of a price, but it is abundantly clear the Ricketts will not pay it. Depending on circumstances, I can buy the arguments about avoiding losing your draft position for overages, but the penalties in reality are tiny, even for multiple offenses unless you’re just gonna Steinbrenner it up. I didn't want to say it because I prefer not to poo poo on teams that aren't the Cardinals, but we don't really want to be like the Yankees (or Dodgers,) do we? I mean if you're fine with buying championships (or worse, spending the money and failing to do so) then so be it....
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Aug 5, 2021 10:33
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