Worst Moves of the Epstein Era

In Commentary And Analysis, Unobstructed Views by GW214 Comments

Since opening day is here (well, not here, but somewhere), it seems like an appropriate time to catalog the numerous failures of the Cubs under The Epstein Regime. Sure, no actual games have been played, but it’s never too early to make like mb and don your three wolves tee and start excoriating optimistic chumps. After all, future blogging historians will surely one day glorify the prescient among us who sagely pointed to the moment when the plane diverted its course towards the mountain. What’s that? …Well, sure. Most people don’t care, but there must be a core few that tirelessly track the forecasts of anonymous internet users… Nobody, you say?  Yeah, but still.

By way of reassuring readers regarding my temperament, none of these moves have put me into a full Ted Lilly-, Carlos Zambrano-, or H.L. Mencken-type fury. And objectively, these moves range probably range from “practically meaningless” to “that definitely only bothers you.” Nonetheless, annoying.

10. The bunting contest. How about a home run derby? When did that become out of the question?

9. Moving Samardzija to the rotation. Not likely to end well (and I needed ten of these).

8. The rise of the Regulartron. Yes, there is undoubtedly some money to be made here. But color me completely unconvinced that it outweighs the brand value of that time machine on the North Side. And nothing drives me crazier than the constant blather of these things.

7. Leaving WGN. Hasn’t happened yet, obviously. I am among those out-of-staters dreading paying for MLB Extra Innings because the Cubs left the sole remaining national affiliate in favor of a glorified SportsChannel/FoxsportsChicago/CSN. If they can work out a deal with the new NBC network or find another way around the regional restrictions, I will promptly redact, but there is a lot of downside here among casual fans in particular.

6. Trading Zambrano. Yeah, I know, the veterans were tired of him and that was the last straw and all the rest. But couldn’t we turn the page on The Hendry Era by getting rid of someone like oh, say:

5. Reed Johnson. No? OK, fine.

4. Caving on Theo’s compensation. I’m sure that some folks are completely enamored with Kurcz and Carpenter, but I’m not one of them. However, Bud was obviously reticent to step in here, due to the future consequences of his decision. Why not call his bluff? We know that Theo put on his lawyer pants and drew up a pretty good case, complete with the glaring absence of any precedent. What’s the worst that could happen? Losing “uberprospect” Josh Vitters? It would have been worth it on the off-chance that Bud decided to tell Lucchino and Co.: “You will take Michael Brenly and like it.”

3. Ryan Flaherty. There’s no space on the 40-man for a 25 year-old lefty-hitting middle infielder with some pop? Did all of Koyie Hill’s detached appendages require their own spot?

2. Sitting out free agency. A wise man once said, “The bottom line is you can’t go out and buy young players, there is no opportunity to do that anymore.” So, what exactly is the plan? It’s nice to say that the organization needs to rebuild from the ground up, but what does that really mean in practice? Developing homegrown talent takes years, especially if your current minor leaguers more or less stink, and your only hypothetical advantage is scouting and developing marginally better than everyone else. Sure, free agents are expensive. Thing is, they are likely to get more expensive as their supply dwindles due to teams increasingly coercing young talent to sign long-term deals. It’s not like the Cubs were reluctant to spend money this offseason, as they seem to have offered in the neighborhood of $100 million dollars for three Cubans (allegedly), a McDonalds, and a vocational high school in the Dominican Republic. It would have been nice to sign a few vets likely to still be contributors if and when the young talent starts coming up, instead of the Maholms and DeJesuses of the world.

1. Failure to put a specialized strategist on the bench. As far as I can tell, “smart” front offices around the majors swooned over Dale Sveum for his tendency to pore over spray charts. That’s all well and good, but is it so out of the question to put someone on the bench who is actually numerate? It’s not like no one has ever considered the effects of various individual strategies on seasonal basis. There would still be plenty of room for leader-of-men types that inspire confidence by instigating bean-ball wars. Theo and Co. had the capital to really take a chance here, and instead they went traditional with Sveum et al.; the bench remains sacrosanct and decidedly quant-free. What we did get was a voluminous manual full of corporate speak, to be read and digested by a group of functional illiterates. The Cubs Way indeed.

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  1. Suburban kid

    1. Failure to put a specialized strategist on the bench. As far as I can tell, “smart” front offices around the majors swooned over Dale Sveum for his tendency to pore over spray charts. That’s all well and good, but is it so out of the question to put someone on the bench who is actually numerate?

    You talkin’ bout the manager? Bench coach? A bench player with saberpowers?

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  2. josh

    You forgot “Getting discovered in a Starbucks by a guy in a red-hooded sweatshirt.” Clearly, that proves he’s no master strategist.

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  3. mb21

    Sitting out free agency.

    Considering the new CBA this is probably what bothers me the most. Either the Cubs get lucky and all of Jackson, Rizzo, McNutt and maybe even Samardzija pan out or the Cubs are going to be waiting several years before they’re seeing additional talent coming up through the system.

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  4. josh

    @ mb21:
    I rationalize this because neither of the two biggest options (Fielder and Pujols) were great matches. I might have liked to see them go for a pitcher, and maybe they did. I don’t think putting ridiculous money on either of those two guys would have sat well, not with me anyway.

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  5. mb21

    @ josh:
    Both were paid more money than I think they’re worth and I don’t want the Cubs to spend bad money just to acquire talent, but there were other free agents.

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  6. Rice Cube

    @ mb21:
    I guess they could have tried to get Mark Buehrle, CJ Wilson or Jose Reyes (or some others I didn’t even think of) but I’m guessing they all would prefer to go to a contender. The Cubs were likely in “no-man’s land” this past offseason.

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  7. mb21

    GBTS, do you have those alvin images you put together over the last year? I’m too lazy to look through the threads to find them, but I think they deserve a gallery.

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  8. Pezcore

    The biggest mistake of this off season will be handing out 37 Million to two teenage Cuban Baseball players, ruining Concepcion by sending him to AAA, and spending 27 Million on a player who has yet to play professionally.

    Maybe its media that has the Concepcion to AAA buzz, but he needs to start in the low minors first. I think the Soler signing is great at 10-15 Million. But 27.5 Million?

    The second biggest mistake will be putting Samardzjia in the rotation and not starting Wells. The Cubs aren’t going anywhere. The whole point of F7 Rotation is saving money. Chris Volstead (I believe) had two options left at the time of the deal. The Cubs can save some Major League Service time and delay his arby numbers a bit. Moving Wells to the bullpen is not the right way to do this. I’m for Samardzija getting a chance if only because his transformation has been ‘miraculous’ in ways numbers do not quite portray.

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  9. josh

    I don’t know. I can’t really get on board with this thread. Everyone’s going to have individual transactions that they don’t like or don’t get. We knew going in that this was a long-term rebuild.

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  10. Mercurial Outfielder

    Samardzjia’s transformation can be explained by one number: 14. This transformation has occurred over just 14 ST innings. I could take a 14-inning sample from any pitcher’s career and make it look like they’d “turned a corner.” This is all just an exercise in selective endpoints and confirmation bias.

    With that said, might as well throw him out there. The team will suck either way. I just want this over-reliance on a tiny sample to cease.

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  11. Berselius

    I know I’m being pedantic here, but I think there’s a big difference between “F7 to the rotation looks like a fucking stupid move” and “ZOMG Sveum/Thoyer made this decision based on 14 spring training innings”.

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  12. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Berselius:
    But if they’re seeing something different about him–and I readily grant they are, or seem to have–then they’re seeing it in this small ST sample. Because there’s little else in his body of work to suggest this level of success.

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  13. Suburban kid

    I like how the “Best of OV” thread is in the “Chicago Cubs” forum.

    92% of the discussion at OV is about OV,, yet there is no OV forum in the OV Forum.

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  14. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Berselius:
    I think it’s a stupid decision because I think it was made based on 14 innings. This team is going to suck. If they want to give F7 one last shot to earn his keep, fine by me. But stop with “transformation” talk. Just say he’s been working hard and you’re going to give him a chance to prove this ST success isn’t a fluke.

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  15. mb21

    @ Berselius:
    Yeah, they’re using the last 42 innings from last season and 14 spring training innings. Combine that with scouts who have been wrong about F7 all along and you get F7 ——> rotation.

    It’s not like walks were the only thing holding F7 back. The guy has given up 8.2 hits per 9 and almost all of that is in relief. He gave up 9 hits per 9 in the minors and most of that was starting. He struckout only 6.3 per 9 in the minors and 7.5 as a reliever at the big league level. Including HBP and discarding IBB he gave up 5.3 free passes per 9 last year in what was his breakout season. This is a guy who gives up too many hits, too many free passes, doesn’t keep the ball in the park well enough and doesn’t strike enough batters out.

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  16. mb21

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    People see a guy who is performing better than his career would indicate he would so they think something has changed. The same is true with Joe Mather who was only league average in the PCL each of the last 2 years. He’s nearly 30 years old, has sucked at the MLB level, but over 52 plate appearances he’s kicking ass.

    What bothers me the most is that one of the things Thoyer said at the convention was that decisions wouldn’t be made because of spring training yet here they are making decision after decision based on performance in spring training.

    If they want F7 to start, they need to justify it. To do that they need to show he’s more deserving of a spot than Randy Wells and that can’t be done. As long as that fact remains, F7 has no business starting for the Cubs. One thing being ignored in the whole F7 rotation talk is that the value Wells has not only to the Cubs, but in a trade declines significantly once he’s bumped to the rotation. Wells doesn’t have a lot of value, but he deserves better than this IMO.

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  17. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Berselius:
    Yeah, I get all that. I just don’t see how any of it cashes out into JefF7 as an SP. I guess what I’m really objecting to is the pretense that this is a reasoned decision, instead of the team taking one last flier on a guy they spent a lot money on, before they consign him to the scrap heap of RPs.

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  18. mb21

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I’d like to know how people would honestly feel about this decision if Hendry were still running the team. I remember last year when Quade and/or Hendry said that F7 was moving to the bullpen full time every fan wondered why it took so damn long to figure out what everybody already knew. Obviously we’ll never know, but I’d bet good money if Hendry were the GM and Quade the manager this decision would be mocked by nearly every Cubs fan around. It would be used as yet another example of why Hendry had to go.

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  19. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:
    I agree with most of this. I guess the Mather thing doesn’t bother me because most teams use ST to sort out their bench. Yeah, it’s silly to rely on small samples, but the reality is that the bench guys won’t matter much, and if they do, well then your season is fucked anyway because you lost someone important. So if that’s a failing, it’s certainly not one unique to the Cubs.

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  20. Mercurial Outfielder

    Could F7 close? Because if he can, why not trade Marmol at damn near peak value and use F7 in that role?

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  21. Berselius

    @ mb21:

    I feel better about it with Hendry because the feeling would be that Hendry was doing it while ignoring the statistical stuff that says it’s a dumb move, while the current org is doing it despite the shitty stats.

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  22. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ mb21:
    I think people would treat it a lot like they did the Colvin experiment, i.e. as Hendry trying to redeem another of his questionable draft picks.

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  23. Berselius

    They also kept Samardzija around before spring training even started. His contract was up, they could have non-tendered him and no one would have complained.

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  24. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ Berselius:
    So they must have had someone telling them good things about him before this. Still doesn’t make me think well of the decision or the basis on which it appears to have been made.

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  25. Berselius

    I’m not upset at all about the possiblity of Joe Mather making the roster. It’s tough to get worked up over one replacement level player making the roster over another one. I like Mather because of his handedness and positional flexibility, but meh

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  26. Rice Cube

    @ Berselius:
    I wonder if there was a possibility that there were some other teams interested in F7 that forced them to retain him at a higher-than-minimum pricetag. In the grand scheme of baseball the $2.4MM isn’t that big of a deal, and if he truly does suck after this season, release…lesson learned even though it should’ve been learned a while ago.

    The other thing is that F7 started working out in Arizona after Thanksgiving up until now, so there were probably scouts and trainers there checking up on him. That’s another 4+ months of blackbox information we as fans aren’t privy to. He could still be complete shit and the scouts don’t want to believe it, but if he’s turned a corner, it wasn’t an expensive Barry Zito gamble and it paid off.

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  27. WaLi

    @ mb21:
    Is there a way to set up a poll? I would like to grab what everyone mentions (with a link to the discussion) and make an uOV poll or something.

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  28. mb21

    @ WaLi:
    Unfortunately there isn’t one that you have access to, but I’d be more than happy to set one up and send you the necessary piece of code to add to a post. If you’re ready for the poll to be set up, or when you are, send me an email at dmick89 [at] gmail.com with the question and answers.

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  29. Suburban kid

    @ GW:
    I know this has been discussed before, but surely stats aren’t something that can easily be used on an AB-by-AB or pitch-by-pitch basis. That’s what managers and bench coaches are doing during games, calling signs to the 3B coach on offense and calling pitches to the catcher on defense. I know they pick PHs and RPs based on matchups and what-not, but that’s not the kind of stats you’re talkin’ bout. Using an overall stats-based strategy seems to be an organizational strategy to be deployed over entire seasons. The GM can do this. I realize it can do this more easily with a manager who is on-board, but I’m not sure it’s the manager who is the key player here.

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  30. Author
    GW

    Pezcore wrote:

    The biggest mistake of this off season will be handing out 37 Million to two teenage Cuban Baseball players, ruining Concepcion by sending him to AAA, and spending 27 Million on a player who has yet to play professionally.

    It does seem an overreaction to the new CBA. The chances of those two being long-term producers are slim. And if Soler is worth $27M, why is Cespedes only worth $36?

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  31. Author
    GW

    Suburban kid wrote:

    I know they pick PHs and RPs based on matchups and what-not, but that’s not the kind of stats you’re talkin’ bout

    sure they are.

    the bottom line is that managers hired first and foremost for their ability to lead and inspire. i’m not discounting the importance of that. however, i think there are a myriad of decisions throughout the game that cost fractions of runs that could amount to a couple of wins per season, if properly executed. take a look at some of those running threads on managerial decisions that mgl does periodically. the guy’s an asshole, but he has a pretty good grasp on microstrategies and their outcomes.

    the idea that in-game strategy decisions should be restricted to those who played the game is ludicrous.

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  32. WenningtonsGorillaCock

    Berselius wrote:

    Somehow I missed the rule in the MLB bylaws where teams have to explain in excruciating detail every roster move to their fans.

    Homer: Show me where in the rule book it says that a human can’t participate in Robot Wars!
    Guy: It’s the first rule!

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  33. Mish

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I think that’s a week old. I have some thoughts on it, but now I’m confused as to whether to post it here or in the forums. (dying laughing)

    Also mb, is it possible to add the macros to the forums?

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  34. Author
    GW

    @ josh:

    the individual decisions are bothersome, but its the direction of the “long-term rebuild” that worries me the most. theo seems to have been caught completely off guard by the new cba, and his response to this point has been: “well, we will just scout better.”

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  35. Author
    GW

    I liked the theo hire because I had confidence that he would be able to read the market correctly, adjust his strategy accordingly, and not be married to ideas like “long-term rebuilds” if, for example, the ability to buy young players was completely removed. maybe he will, i dunno.

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  36. jtsunami

    Mercurial Outfielder wrote:

    My problem is the transformation talk isn’t coming from fans watching spring training baseball. It’s apparently coming from scouts who relay it back to columnists, etc. (like Keith Law).

    It’s not out the questions that there is such a thing as transformation and that Samardzija “transformed”. Hamilton transformed from a drug addict to an all world baseball player. Jose Bautista transformed from a replacement level player to an MVP candidate. Even players like Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter “transformed”.

    The thing that irks me is that the idea of Samardzija transforming is completely dismissed. It’s not even a sample size issue. If a player looks or plays different, he’s transformed form what he used to be.

    You don’t need a 100 game sample size to see that Soto lost 15 pounds. You don’t need a 100 game sample size to see that Byrd’s face is healed or that Troy Glaus’ cataracks surgery worked.

    All that most (like me) Samardzija “supporters” are saying is that take a wait and see approach. Don’t immediately say it’s failed before it’s started. It’s annoying to read the wrath of you guys toward him day in and day out. I’ve become a regular reader for the insight and different topics that are talked about daily. It’s been all “Samardzija sucks” for two straight weeks.

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  37. Suburban kid

    GW wrote:

    Manager would be nice, but the team that ultimately does this will probably start with a bench coach.

    GW wrote:

    the idea that in-game strategy decisions should be restricted to those who played the game is ludicrous.

    So are you looking to promote someone from mom’s basement to the dugout?

    Or finding a manager who may or may not have played the game who is willing/capable to immerse himself in data and data-driven decision-making?

    I can see it in a bench coach, maybe. I can definitely see it in a GM who has a staff of people, some of whom only do data. But the manager has so much other stuff to contend with 24/7 in babysitting millionaires, doing the beat writers’ jobs for them, monitoring the health of 25 guys on a daily basis, while constantly traveling around the country — I just can’t see them having the bandwidth to absorb enough stats-based baseball theory to the level where they can deploy it at will.

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  38. Author
    GW

    jtsunami wrote:

    It’s been all “Samardzija sucks” for two straight weeks.

    It’s just reactionary. The blogosphere seems to have accepted his transformation as a given, and guys like doog have taken it a step further and said, in essence, “no, he really didn’t even suck before, you are just misreading the stats.” not to pick on him, but that seems to be the gist of his argument. as such, it’s nice to have the counterpoint provided here.

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  39. Author
    GW

    Suburban kid wrote:

    But the manager has so much other stuff to contend with 24/7 in babysitting millionaires, doing the beat writers’ jobs for them, monitoring the health of 25 guys on a daily basis, while constantly traveling around the country — I just can’t see them having the bandwidth to absorb enough stats-based baseball theory to the level where they can deploy it at will.

    i agree, and i’ll add that he probably wasn’t all that intelligent to begin with. all these are reasons to have a devoted strategist in game. their are probably 500 guys around the country with advanced degrees in quantitative fields who would gladly give up porn for the rest of their lives to be given a shot as bench coach. hell, start them out in the minors if you need to evaluate them first.

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  40. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ jtsunami:
    You’re not giving an argument for F7’s move to rotation, so much as running an equivocation on “transformation.” But I digress.

    Look, I’m not denying that JefF7 has figured some things out and may be able to up his game. What I’m denying is that we have any reliable data that points to this conclusion–and we have a lot of peripheral stats from his supposedly “good” relief appearances at the end of last season that seem to belie the claims of improvement being proffered here and elsewhere. We’re obviously not privy to what the scouts are saying, and that’s a massive gap between what the team knows and what we know. So I acknowledge that it’s quite possible F7 has improved; but given his peripherals, it doesn’t seem likely.

    Finally, Hamilton didn’t figure anything out besides the fact that he needed to put down the crack pipe. He was widely acknowledged as a can’t-miss guy from the minute he was drafted number one overall by TB. But I grant that a guy “figuring it out” happens. Maybe it’s happened with F7. But that’s going to have to be proven over the course of the season, because the most reliable data set we have now says that F7 is a pretty mediocre pitcher.

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  41. Mish

    @ Berselius:
    [spoiler]Being 7 months removed from finishing the books, I’d have to say the Iron Born are the ones I think about the most. All those characters are fascinating, and Theon’s character arc is incredible IMO. Really excited to see how Pyke/Balon/Asha (Yara)/Damphair are portrayed in Season 2. And especially excited to see Victarion and Euron Crow’s Eye in S3.[/spoiler]

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  42. Mish

    @ Rice Cube:
    Yeah I’m aware of the Ras and his “immortality”, but I am skeptical of them pulling that hear.

    On a side note, there was an advanced screening last week of TDKR and apparently the audience gave it a standing ovation at the end. Let’s hope it’s that good.

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  43. Berselius

    @ Mish:

    [spoiler title=”Minor Game of Thrones spoilers”]
    I completely disagree. The Ironborn fucking bore me to tears, for the most part (dying laughing). Pretty much my only favorite part is Theon in book two, just because it’s so easy to laugh at what a fucking idiot he is at every turn.[/spoiler]

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  44. josh

    @ GW:
    Small sample size, right? You could say the same thing about standing pat, or about signing Prince Fielder to more money than some team’s total payrolls. If this off-season was an overreaction, maybe by next off-season he will have prepared. If he got off on the wrong foot with some people, that doesn’t meant it’s a wash. If I had polled everyone here on whether the first season would be punted 3 months ago, 100% of people would have said “yes.” I guess I don’t see why all the hand-wringing about it now. Let Sveum play F7. If Concepcion was an overreaction, then the Cubs are one of the few teams that can take the hit, wash their hands, and move on. I just see this as a deep-down we all really wanted a WS at any cost in the first season type of reaction.

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  45. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ josh:
    Yeah, the Cubs have enough money to make mistakes on guys like Concepcion or Soler, and I’d rather they make those mistakes with high-upside guys than with overpriced vets.

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  46. Mish

    @ Berselius:
    [spoiler]Haha well then. They still fall behind someone like Jaime for me, but I really enjoy Theon/Victarion. I think both are legit dark horses for the Iron Throne.[/spoiler]

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  47. Mish

    [spoiler]I will admit I did not enjoy the Ironborn chapters when I was actually reading the book; I just keep reading analyses over at various sites (westeros.org, wic.net, towerofthehand.com), and they’ve spilled some really good ink on them (Theon specifically), which is why that interest has heightened. Part of it is also likey due to GRRM releasing a Theon chapter f[/spoiler]

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  48. Berselius

    @ Mish:

    [spoiler title=”spoil that shit, Mish”]
    I’m not a big fan of their plotlines, but I won’t deny that one of my major negatives on the Iron Islands storyline(s) is blaming it in part for all the plot bloat in the series. The same goes for Brienne wandering the wilderness in book 4, despite the fact that I’m generally a Brienne fan[/spoiler]

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  49. Rice Cube

    Carlos Zambrano is pitching today. Getting knocked around by the Astros but only one run given up so far thanks to good defense behind him and a nice pickoff play. Five walks, too. Ewww.

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  50. mb21

    jtsunami wrote:

    The thing that irks me is that the idea of Samardzija transforming is completely dismissed. It’s not even a sample size issue. If a player looks or plays different, he’s transformed form what he used to be.

    I don’t dismiss it at all. I’ve said that it’s entirely possible, but I don’t believe I need to say that with every comment I make on the matter.

    You mention Hamilton and Bautista. Which scout saw that? I don’t remember anyone talking about Bautista as if he had become a really good hitter before the fact. I definitely know that scouts weren’t talking about Hamilton in that way other than the typical “he’s always had potential” line.

    Let me put it this way: I don’t believe that scouts can accurately predict or project which players have changed and which ones haven’t. I don’t have any evidence that is true, but there’s also no evidence that they can do so. Every year there’s a player who out-performs expectations and every year the scouts talk about how something is different. Every year this player is paid more than he’s worth and every year he regresses.

    I believe scouts do many things well, but i don’t believe this is one of them. I’ll put it another way too: those who believe the amateur draft is a crapshoot (I think that’s most people, but definitely not me) can’t possibly believe that a scout can tell whether or not F7 has transformed.

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  51. mb21

    GW wrote:

    and guys like doog have taken it a step further and said, in essence, “no, he really didn’t even suck before, you are just misreading the stats.”

    Who? I don’t think I’ve read this.

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  52. mb21

    josh wrote:

    I just see this as a deep-down we all really wanted a WS at any cost in the first season type of reaction.

    Actually, my reaction is all about good decision making. I should add there are several things this front office has done that I really like. There are several I don’t much like. Basically, it’s the same as any other front office. Some things make the fans happy and some don’t.

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  53. Mish

    @ Berselius:
    Haha sorry about that. I went back and spoilered previous comments.

    [spoiler]I don’t really disagree with you on any points, and I was reading through those Ironborn chapters (and the Brienne ones you mentioned), I labored through them as well. I just find analyzing their character arcs after the fact has been fun for me. There was a lot of bloat in the latter books, including the Martell’s (specifically the Captain of the Guard or whover).[/spoiler]

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  54. josh

    @ mb21:
    That’s shockingly high. And a lot of people said the Ricketts overpaid for the Cubs!

    I was thinking the other day: I wonder if the Cubs insistence on playing as many day games as they do lowers their value on the TV market. Their most common home timeslot is a time when many people are at work and thus can’t watch TV. I don’t bother with CSN because I feel like the number of times I could watch a game wouldn’t justify the cost. I can’t be alone in that, but then again, I’m not a huge TV fan.

    That’s beside the fact that many players over the years have asserted that playing so many day games when virtually everyone switched over to virtually all night games hurts the team over the course of the season.

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  55. WaLi

    Re: ASOIAF. I’ve never had to wait on a book in a series to finish before. I started reading the books a little before ADWD came out and finished AFFC shortly after I got ADWD in the mail (Amazon pre-order). Followed shit on Tower of the Hand for a while, but haven’t checked up on it in probably 5 months. It sucks waiting for the next book to come out, especially since he hasn’t really started writing it yet (Yeah he released a few chapter which I haven’t read yet, but I think those are items he already wrote before that didn’t make ADWD). It’s frustrating and will be even more frustrating if he doesn’t finish. Luckily Season 2 is coming out on TV. I don’t know if I could have made it the 5 years between ASOS and AFFC and then another 7 for ADWD though.
    I don’t think I’ll start another series that is unfinished again because I’m an impatient motherfucker (dying laughing)

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  56. Berselius

    @ Mish:

    [spoiler]Yeah, the Dorne stuff was mostly dull too. I’d like to think that the scene at the end of AFFC where Doran Martell is pushing pieces around a cyvasse board while he tells his daughter about the long con he’s been playing on the rest of the seven kingdoms is a nod to the fact that some of those chapters are just Martin pushing the pieces around so shit could happen down the road[/spoiler]

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  57. Aisle424

    josh wrote:

    Their most common home timeslot is a time when many people are at work and thus can’t watch TV

    That’s actually not true. This year there are 55 night and weekend home games. That leaves only 26 weekday afternoon games out of 162 game schedule. Throw in one or two road weekday games if you want, but those are pretty damn rare.

    While it may be a factor, the BIGGEST factor right now is that they are locked into deals made when the Trib was trying to profit off the Cubs as much as possible on the non-baseball side by keeping their broadcast package artificially low (while then turning around and charging market price for advertising time). The Trib did some good things to move the Cubs past the Wrigley ownership, but they held back on the baseball side so they could use it to make money on the broadcast side.

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  58. Mish

    @ Berselius:
    [spoiler title=”Don’t read if you haven’t read A Dance with Dragons”]I agree with that. It’s setting up the beginning of the end, I hope. Two of the new characters that I do love from aDWD are Lord Connington and Prince Aegon.[/spoiler]

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  59. josh

    @ Aisle424:
    All right, so I exaggerated, I guess it just feels like they are always one when I’m trying to work. That said, it still seems like that’s higher than the average team, but maybe not enough to totally devalue the team.

    So when you say they are locked into deals, you mean the TV deals?

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  60. WaLi

    @ Mish:
    [spoiler name=”GOT”]Yeah I like those two the most from ADWD. Agree with B’s comments about the bloat regarding ironborn and Brienne.[/spoiler]

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  61. Author
    GW

    josh wrote:

    If I had polled everyone here on whether the first season would be punted 3 months ago, 100% of people would have said “yes.” I guess I don’t see why all the hand-wringing about it now.

    3 months ago was after the new cba and after it became clear that they actually were punting, so this is probably correct, but it is meaningless, imo

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  62. Mercurial Outfielder

    Today’s lineup:
    Speedy CF
    Crappy 2B
    Throwy SS
    Breaky LF
    Notrammy 3B
    Pudgy C
    Retready 1B
    Grindy RF
    Spelly P

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  63. Berselius

    (dying laughing), this morning’s Mariners-Giants game was blacked out in the Bay Area. And no local tv networks were covering it (dying laughing) (dying laughing)

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  64. Author
    GW

    josh wrote:

    If this off-season was an overreaction, maybe by next off-season he will have prepared.

    yes, maybe, but the new cba has changed the landscape rapidly. young players are going to have less leverage, and will be more apt to sign undermarket extensions. as a result, each year’s free agent crop is going to dwindle. the cubs seem to have gone the marginals wins/dollar route while at the same time throwing around quite a bit of money in other areas

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  65. Author
    GW

    @ josh:

    many, but there were definitely a few of us after the cba was ratified that looked around and said, “the plan that theo has preached just got a lot more difficult to execute. might be time to rethink things.”

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  66. josh

    @ GW:
    I don’t think that we can fully evaluate the impacts of the CBA until we see a draft or two first. It’s theoretical at this point. Will young players hold out for more money, forcing teams to decide “This year and not next year” v. hedging bets on weaker players, or will players tend more to cede to the allotted amounts and give up on the big dollars? I just don’t think any of us can say for sure what the impacts will be, and I further would wager that the guys who have dedicated their lives to knowing these rules have a better idea of what to expect than we do, or that they’ll be better able to adjust. Not saying it’ll be smooth, but I’m saying it’s too early to judge how Theo’s reaction rates compared to other GM’s. He doesn’t have to be a perfect GM or make all the perfect choices for the team to be able to win.

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  67. Aisle424

    josh wrote:

    So when you say they are locked into deals, you mean the TV deals

    Radio too.

    if I recall correctly, Comcast is through 2019, WGN TV is through 2014. I can not find anything about the WGN Radio contract. It must be getting studied by top men.

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  68. bubblesdachimp

    KLaw had nice things to say about castro in his top ten players in 2017 article. Castro was 8

    We know Castro is an extremely gifted hitter with the potential to win the batting-average title (please, it doesn’t make a player the “batting champion” any more than frying an egg makes you Top Chef) and the potential for a 50 doubles/20 homers peak. And we know he’d probably be a solid-average defender at third or at second if he had to move off short, which, while not a lock, is at least a possibility after a year and a half of below-average defense. As long as he stays in the infield, his bat is going to keep him in the upper echelon of big leaguers, and while he’s not any kind of a runner, he’s athletic enough that he might become a fringe-average (or better) defender at short, at which point he’ll supplant Derek Jeter as the “player whose glove is most overrated because of his bat.”

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  69. josh

    @ GW:
    Yeah, fly on the wall, right? I’d love to know what they’re really saying, but it’s not like the guy’s going to detail his plans for us schmucks.

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  70. Mercurial Outfielder

    I’m thinking that no member of the Ricketts family speak on baseball subjects, ever.

    “I don’t think it’s meaningful to describe a year as rebuilding or reloading or any of that,” Ricketts said. “If you get the right players on the team and they all stay healthy and they play hard, a team can go from 70 wins to 90. It happens pretty frequently.”

    Yes, all you need is a couple of 10 WAR players, which are readily available. OTOH, Sveum is not much better:

    Cubs manager Dale Sveum insisted he isn’t aware of any predictions, and isn’t really concerned.

    “I don’t really know what they are,” he said. “Predictions and odds and all that stuff are what they are. Hot starts, teams that get people doing things in the right spots, change a whole lot of things during the course of a season.

    “The bottom line is when you have starting pitching like we (have), we can do a lot of things if the other (players) live up to half of their expectations.”

    “We have a nice starting staff,” Sveum said, declining to name the last two starters. “(If they pitch) a lot of innings and stay healthy, in our division, if we get timely hitting and our two corner guys (Ian Stewart and Bryan LaHair) just live up to their capabilities … we have a chance of scoring runs.”

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  71. EnricoPallazzo

    @ mb21: what blows my mind the most is that the winning bidders had previously bid $1.4b (or $1.6b or something). So that got declined and it was such a can’t-miss deal that they said “fuck it” and scrounged up another $600m? i could be wrong about the details here but to me that suggests that $2b may in fact be an undervaluation.

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  72. josh

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Ricketts talks out of his ass quite frequently. I wonder what the biggest variance has been from a projection, though. I’m guessing the biggest absolute variance was on the losing side, but it would be mildly interesting to know which team has been the biggest surprise in the last few years.

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  73. mb21

    GW wrote:

    many, but there were definitely a few of us after the cba was ratified that looked around and said, “the plan that theo has preached just got a lot more difficult to execute. might be time to rethink things.”

    I was one who didn’t think it would matter much, but the more I thought about the more I realized the other people were right.

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  74. mb21

    @ josh:
    http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/god_and_500/

    Suppose that God herself came to you and told you that she was going to do something devious: for the 2011 baseball season, every team would have 25 players of identical talent, with all 30 teams being equals. That no player would learn from each plate appearance, and no player would get hurt. That no player will even interact on the most basic level with each other, and if they did, it would be indistinguishable from any other interaction. No player would even age, having been frozen in time. All the games would be played in the same city, at the same time, in 15 identical ballparks, domed, and staffed by identical groundskeepers and HVAC guys. This is the most controlled science experiment ever: nothing can possibly ever change.

    And after each team plays 162 games, you will get ten teams winning between 78 and 84 games, with ten winning fewer than 78 and 10 winning more than 84. All that would happen based purely on the only thing that differentiates each of the thirty teams and 750 ballplayers: luck.

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  75. josh

    @ mb21:
    Right, that’s one element, and that may well account for the White Sox winning 20 more than projected. You have to some calls go your way, you have to get lucky, all that stuff. But the fact that players do learn from having multiple plate appearances or do get injured means that some of the luck involved comes down to when you play a team at a give time. Over the season, you expect that to average out, but there are rare instances when a team stays lucky. I’m not counting on that at all, btw, I was just curious which teams “beat” their projections by the kind of margin Ricketts mentioned. My guess is that it’s rare, not common as he thinks. Still, entertainining. Sometimes examining the black swan events is fun.

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  76. mb21

    @ josh:
    I would include calls going one way as lucky. Anything the team doesn’t have control over would be luck in my opinion. That also includes when you play a team and so forth.

    If you take teams with different talent levels you get a larger spread than you would if all teams were equal. I think 1 standard deviation in wins for a projection is about 10.

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  77. Rice Cube

    @ mb21:
    Really? Didn’t he pass a physical with the Boston doctors before they agreed to it? If I were the Cubs I’d just say “too bad, should’ve done your homework” (dying laughing)

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  78. mb21

    Dale Sveum wrote:

    “The bottom line is when you have starting pitching like we (have), we can do a lot of things if the other (players) live up to half of their expectations.”

    I agree. Instead of winning 70 they’d win 35 and set an MLB record for worst team ever.

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  79. ACT

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    There are some psychological/motivational reasons for this. It’s much easier to tell someone who is struggling in ST that he needs to spend more time in the minors for a tune-up than it is to tell someone who is performing exceptionally well.

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  80. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ josh:

    It’s crazy how many things broke the White Sox way that year. That’s the only chance you have of beating a projection by 20 games.

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  81. ACT

    I know it’s early, but so far, I thinking Felix Hernandez is in the lead for the Cy Young award and the MVP is a tight race between Suzuki and Ackley. ROY goes to Cespedes. Thoughts?

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  82. Berselius

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:

    Brooks baseball might have something on him. Two of the parks in ST are equipped with PFX, though I have no idea if he started in any of them. I know Harry’s been classifying pitches of players who pitch in them each day this spring.

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  83. Rice Cube

    @ Berselius:
    Are we talking about F7’s repertoire? I recall he had a start with a Pitchf/x enabled and I saw a slider, a changeup, a cutter and the regular fastball, but nothing registered as a sinker per se. I could also be pulling that out of my ass but it seems so real.

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  84. Suburban kid

    In my video game, F7 throws a 4-seamer, a 2-seamer (which may be considered a sinker I think), a slider, a splitter and a change. Video games are always 100% realistic.

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  85. Rodrigo Ramirez

    I know it’s what fans do, but we are analyzing Theo a little too early to make any concrete judgements.

    Look at Ricketts after year one. We wanted him burned at the stake. But after seeing his plan a few years later I think most of us can agree he’s on the right track.

    Just my .02

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  86. Author
    GW

    @ Rodrigo Ramirez:

    OK, but if hypothetically Ricketts had cleaned house as soon as he arrived (mid to post 2009), at the very least we could have avoided the debacle that was the hayden simpson draft, and quite possibly had another year of big spending in the draft. The fact that he took his sweet ass time to evaluate things had consequences.

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