illiniguy

This is kind of career suicide, no?

Bote hit a grand slam against the Nationals. Sweating one game is ridiculous. How about when the Cubs had a 1 run lead in the 14th inning against St. Louis and instead of using Pedro Strop, Maddon went to Luke Farrell. Dexter Fowler proceeded to walk him off. It's funny because now Farrell has been released, but Joe has to be quirky. Whatever team wins out will win the division.

So from what I have read, him being up these few games this year means his recovery year will count against his service time. Double ouch.

Put me down as a cubs and brewers fan. At 39, god when did that happen, I still think of you guys as an AL team. Still have a fielder and Braun autograph jersey in my basement with my cubs stuff. Never have hated you. The cardinals on the other hand are trash. Even in down years, like this year was, they just fire a manager and play .850 ball. Smdh.

No kidding, there’s been nothing said about a mechanical change or anything like that. If his care meter was just off, not putting in the work, lack of focus, whatever it was... then going to be tough to answer questions that will be coming about the change. Try again, first thing the cubs did was make a mechanical change.

I really think Gray would have thrived for you, still has his stuff and is vary familiar with your pitching coach. I think he's getting chewed up by the insanity that is New York.

Down years are just baseball though. Every single team can point to 4 or 5 guys having bad years. If you had told me Arcia was going to have a sub .600 OPS, Knebel was going to be a disaster, Davis and Nelson were going to mostly miss the season, the team would get nothing out of C and 2B etc I could say the same exact things. This has just been the Cubs being the Cubs, not any sort of particularly down season for them. I doubt there is a single team in baseball that can't point to the same things you just did. Also a lot of the guys you mentioned may just be the players they are showing this year. Contreras still has a 2.8 WAR. Hendricks has put up these peripherals for a while now. Quintana has been getting worse every year for like 5 years now by peripherals. It could be, although I think the pitching problems are Jim Hickey, but we can't do anything about Joe's boy.

I will add to this that, yes, the Chapman and Quintana moves (as well as several smaller ones) will be seen as losses very likely. The Chapman one was obviously motivated by desperation to win a World Series for the first time in over a century. So maybe there is an alternate where the Cubs make neither move, still win in 2016, and look like they may have a run of 12 division titles in 15 years and 5 World Series with Torres and Eloy also in their core. There might also be an alternate one where they lose the 2016 WS by not making that trade and maybe still 1 or even 0 later but have a very good regular season team for 10-15 years. Now, of course ideally you'd probably take Eloy, Cease, and Torres back among a few other shortsighted moves and just pray that you get 1 WS (or probably a lot more) if you're a Cubs fan but the Cubs may be able to buy several high profile players in 4-5 years anyways. That doesn't make up for those potential losses but it helps. There's obviously also the real life impact here. Ownership and Theo both probably want to win now given lifespan of ownership and career span of Theo. It's somewhat akin to Bears fans in thinking that Packers fans are going to take them down (let's not let this go down the path of Packers moves, they arguably took the patient/future road and that is what actually kinda burned them) but in the end, the Packers still had Rodgers. In the end, the Cubs still have Bryant/Rizzo/Baez/etc. for 5+ more years probably (yes, they have varying contract control and prime ages left) and the Cubs also still have way more resources even with $25 million/year lit on fire right now...but even if the Brewers do it right, they have to do everything right to be better than the Cubs...even 4 or 5 years from now. I definitely see some paths to the Cubs beginning to really crumble in 2 years and fully collapsing in 4 but I think realistically they've got 3-4 more good/great years and then a handful that they can patch together for 2-3 if they so choose. I dont't have any issue with the Chapman trade. They won the world series. in 2016 the cubs have to make that move. The Quintana trade was awful, yes. The trades this year for Murphy and Hamels are nothings. Don't get why anyone would think those hurt the Cubs going forward.

Hardly a disaster year, they have had a pretty average season for injuries. This site tracks how much each team has been hit by injuries and it lists the Brewers as the 8th most affected and the Cubs as one of the healthiest teams overall at 26th. https://www.rosterresource.com/mlb-disabled-list-tracker/ A disaster year doesn't just mean injuries. It also means underperformance by several of the guys that have regressed a bit. Rizzo, Contreras, Hendricks, Russell(although maybe this is him)Quintana, and Bryant all were having down years. Yet, they have weathered the storm well enough and are probably the favorites in the NL. It's not picture perfect, but I will take it.

That is four hitters...nice, but not a powerhouse core. Heck that core isn't even helping their offense be great right now. They just went and got another hitter because they have struggled offensively. Darvish just ended a terrible year with an injury, Lester is getting really old, Hendricks doesn't appear to be super special anymore, Jose Quintana doesn't seem to be the ace the were hoping for...quite far from it. Their rotation is an ticking time bomb, ready to blow up. Next year it will technically be led by 35 year old Jon Lester. I am waiting for a 2018 Nationals type disappointment in the next few years. The Cubs have had a disaster season with injuries and missed Bryant for most of the year. Yet they are 3rd in runs scored and 8 out of being the top scoring team in the National League, so yes. I guess that core does make them a power house. Their pitching is poopy and they have the best record in the NL. There is no sense pretending like a recent streak is the real story of the Cubs offense.

I sure hope not - I hope he's around for all 7 and the Cubs wind up paying through their teeth for a guy with chronic shoulder problems. For all the love the young Cub position players get, reality this year is that aside from Baez this season (A Jim Hendry draft pick), the rest of them aren't proving to be special. Heck Kris Bryant's 2018 shell has a better season-long OPS than all of them aside from Baez. It's nice having them around to offset some of the stupid contracts currently on Cub books, but as these youngish, slightly above average position players start getting expensive, the assumption that they'll all be Cubs longterm is going to quickly prove foolish. So you don't think Kris Bryant is a good baseball player? Do your family a favor and don't start betting.

Oh yeah, that 1 year the Yankees missed the playoffs really taught them. EDIT: I guess they missed the playoffs in '14/'15 as well, but they're back. Well, that's a pretty important "EDIT". They played exactly 1 playoff game in 4 seasons as a direct result of trying to but a title every year, and they have even more resources than the Cubs. Nobody's suggesting big markets don't have a huge advantage, but I'm very confident the Cubs are going to regret a lot of their recent moves soon. The Murphy deal isn't as bad as I expected (I'm surprised nobody else claimed him, assuming they knew the Nats were asking so little) so maybe it was a weird time to say so, but I firmly believe it. If I liked gambling, I'd bet pretty good money on the Brewers having a better record than the Cubs over the next 7 years or so. Yep, trading away this bum was the straw that broke the Cubs back. Without Kris Bryant they are having a better year than the Brewers. He gonna miss the next 7 as well?

Id say getting Kyle Hendricks and Carl Edwards for Ryan Dempster, Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner, and Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman were ok trades...... Oh and Addison Russell for Jeff Samardzija. You had me until Russell for Samardzija. Not sure which of those two has been worse overall. Both have been below average. If only there was a stat that gave you that information on player value..... Like for example Addison Russell has been worth 12.4 WAR in 3 and a half seasons. Meanwhile in 11 years, Shark has been worth 12.2. Russell has made the league minimum, while Shark has earned $100,000,000 since the trade. Yes, it's a real toss up who has been more valuable....

Id say getting Kyle Hendricks and Carl Edwards for Ryan Dempster, Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner, and Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman were ok trades...... Oh and Addison Russell for Jeff Samardzija. Which is why I said he did a much better job rebuilding them. Those were all rebuilding sell moves. Well to be fair, there really aren't a lot of moves he can make right now. The offense is good and very young.

Id say getting Kyle Hendricks and Carl Edwards for Ryan Dempster, Anthony Rizzo for Andrew Cashner, and Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop for Scott Feldman were ok trades...... Oh and Addison Russell for Jeff Samardzija.

Lol, while he has had some missteps of late, he's still going to have a team that wins 90 games a year from now until 2021, with a World Series title and 3 Championship Series, thus far. He's still pretty good.