We didn’t need a banging garbage can to see this coming. Carlos Correa and the San Francisco Giants have agreed to a 13-year, $350 million deal with a full no-trade clause giving the free-agent shortstop and admitted baseball cheater an $8 million/year pay-cut from last season with the small-market Minnesota Twins. Sucks getting old, doesn’t it?
Plenty of teams, including the Cubs, had expressed interest in Correa and for good reason. But who cares what those reasons were now that the Cubs aren’t getting him? Nico Hoerner, for the time being, is still the Cubs’ shortstop, and Dansby Swanson is still on the Cubs’ radar for moving Nico over to 2B and bolstering this Cubs roster offensively and defensively. Feel free to get your hopes up that the Cubs will do anything significant to improve the team before the season begins or, for that matter, that the team will somehow be in a position at the trade deadline other than the one with which the past two seasons have made Cubs fans uncomfortably familiar: massive sellers. Who knows? Maybe Cody Bellinger can have that rebound season he’s been waiting for, return to MVP form, and the Cubs can trade him for a nice prospect haul in July. That should give much-needed momentum to the Cubs’ “Maybe the year after next” marketing campaign.
For now, I’ll be resigning myself to the likelihood that this team has little intention to improve by leaps and/or bounds instead of by baby steps or being dragged against their will. The big news for today is that the Cubs decided not to sign a player who would do anything to win baseball games, because doing anything to win baseball games isn’t something this franchise believes in anymore.
Comments
Feels like if they signed both Swanson and Rodon, that would at least show a strategy of going all in on run prevention. But I don’t expect them to land either, and I hope the team’s revenues from gate, concessions, and streaming crater this year.
PerkinsQuote Reply
Perkins,
It would make sense to do this because if they’re going to give up draft picks, might as well go all in this time, he said with the faintest vestiges of hope.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Perkins,
It’s possible I completely misheard this one Jed quote, but it sure sounded like he said they wanted to become a team who outslugs the opposition. He said he saw the value in being a team that just puts up a shit ton of runs. Again, I mishear stuff all the time and maybe there’s wisdom in being a team that just makes it impossible to score. I’ve got no problem with that approach. But he sure made it sound like that was not what they were trying to become, a team that can win a 1-0 or 3 to 1 ball game with regularity.
andcountingQuote Reply
andcounting,
“You said a team can’t win if it doesn’t score.”
“Yes. The other team can’t win if it doesn’t score.”
I should give this the full Steamed Hams treatment, but I’m a lazy lazy man.
PerkinsQuote Reply
andcounting,
As currently constructed, the Cubs have a competent pitching infrastructure even at the major league level, but not being able to score more than zero runs a game is going to make it difficult for them to win, even if they do get a Dansby Swanson, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Since it’s the end of the year and the Cubs have disappointed me (to date) yet again, I was pondering a silly parody of A Christmas Carol/Scrooged where Tom Ricketts is the title character and is beset by the Ghosts of Baseball Past, Present, and Future. I’ll have to workshop this but it might be fun to dust off my amateur Photoshop skills.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Perkins,
(dying laughing)
andcountingQuote Reply
*Hamilton*
It must be nice, it must be nice
To have Steve Cohen on your side
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Nolan Arenado has to be hitting his head against a desk right now.
PerkinsQuote Reply
Rice Cube,
If you do, make sure to replace Jacob Marley with Philip Wrigley. I don’t know what acts in life would have doomed him to actual hell, but he was notoriously better at marketing than at building a winning baseball franchise. If there is one person in history responsible for making us all Cubs fans, it’s probably him, as it was his idea and passion to make baseball freely available over the airwaves to the disgust of his fellow team owners.
The interesting thing is, it was an ongoing pattern in the business career of his father to give free premiums away with what he sold and discovering that it was the free shit everyone wound up wanting more than the main thing he was selling, which is kind of a perfect analogy of how Cubs fans end up wanting the nostalgic whimsy (and occasional bobbleheads) that comes with watching Cubs baseball more than they want to see winning baseball. And, ironically, once the Cubs finally became a winning franchise, they a) stopped making ANY telecasts free to anyone, b) shipped every player anyone loved out of town, completely destroying any sense of nostalgia for the actual players on the team, and c) also stopped winning.
andcountingQuote Reply
andcounting,
I appreciate the notes, I was actually thinking of using Scott Boras but definitely still workshopping while waiting for whatever the Cubs do next (if anything) to see if they can change my mind
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Jed’s plan all along was to blind opposing batters with the Aurora Borealis.
berseliusQuote Reply
berselius,
Control of the solar wind: It’s the new market inefficiency.
berseliusQuote Reply
At this time of day, at this time of year, in this part of the country, localized entirely within Wrigley Field?
PerkinsQuote Reply
While storyboarding the Humbug Cubsmas, I thought I’d rant too, so slightly newer shit –> http://www.obstructedview.net/is-there-a-plan/
Rice CubeQuote Reply