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Post by BDS on Aug 30, 2006 16:41:41 GMT -5
As of today, thanks to Pittsburgh's decisive three game sweep, I'm prepared to pronounce my beloved Cubbies as the official worst team in MLB for 2006. Their ability to continually lose in new and creative ways has astonished me all year, almost as much as the pitching staff's ability to injure themselves.
Wait 'till next year! Come on home, Joe Girardi, and go Cubs!
So am I the only fan on the boards, or is someone else suffering alongside me? Anyone?
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Post by Mark 138 on Aug 30, 2006 20:36:09 GMT -5
"Aw, come one, dude. We didn't have our horses. I can't go out on the field and play for em. My name ain't Les, it's not my mess. Go ask the GM about that business. I need more horses."
-Dusty Baker when confronted with BDS' remarks.
Personally, I hope Cub nation finally gets it's head out of the sand and starts demanding their team be more than "the loveable losers".
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Post by BDS on Aug 30, 2006 22:35:03 GMT -5
That impersonation was scary. Two or three more dudes in there and I'd have believed you were the real thing.  I will be so glad when it's October 2nd and they can hold their press conference to announce that Dusty and the Cubs have parted ways. He's done nothing but make excuses this year, which actually makes me more sick than the losing ever could by itself. At least the Trib seems to be trying. We've got one of the largest payrolls in the NL (#2 or 3, I think), so they've opened the purse strings. The organization's just got the wrong philosophy about how to build and run a baseball team. When you're giving Neifi Perez 2.5 million and your manager is publicly devaluing walks as "clogging the bases," there are some serious issues. All my ranting aside, I'm looking forward to this offseason more than any other in recent memory. I'm excited to see who replaces Dusty, and I'm interested to see just how much of the club they decide to blow up before going forward. Should be good stuff. |
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Post by floydthebarber on Aug 30, 2006 23:35:38 GMT -5
Not a Cubs fan...but what they need to do is trade Wood and Prior for some young (healthy) arms and players...and rebuild. Both those guys are vastly overpaid, and their long spells on the DL when they should be winning games for the Cubs as Staff Ace's is debilitating to the team. You just KNOW they're going down at some point...and when they do, you can just tell taht the Cubs are done. Wood has been hurt, what, 4 or 5 years in a row? All this because he struck out 20 when he was how old? Time to move on Cubs fans!
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Post by Pete on Aug 31, 2006 0:53:27 GMT -5
Unfortunately for the Cubs, it's now officially too late to be trading Wood and Prior. Their value is at their absolute lowest--the time to make a trade was last year or the year before. (Remember the rumored Prior-for-Tejada deal? Which team killed that?)
The Cubs organization is an utter train wreck, from MacPhail to Hendry to Dusty to the players. Before the season started, Hendry said that another 90-loss season would be "unacceptable" and would tolerate "no excuses." The Cubs are now on their way to possibly 100 losses, and excuses are all we've heard. "We didn't have the horses." Well, gee, if any hope of playoff contention rides on the arms of Prior and Wood, and if losing Derrek Lee turns you into the worst team in the NL, then I'd say you have a major problem in your roster construction.
For all the talk about how Dusty is a "player's manager," his teams have for 4 seasons now shown an appalling lack of fundamentals: bad baserunning, bad fielding, horrendous plate discipline (fun fact: the '04 Cubs led the NL in home runs and were 8th in runs scored--a bunch of solo homers does not an effective offense make), and idiotic feuds over stuff like Steve Stone daring to praise some Astros players on the air.
There is absolutely no accountability for anything on this team. The Oakland A's have had just as many injury problems than Chicago, if not more, and are currently running away with the AL West. What excuse do the Cubs have?
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Post by BDS on Aug 31, 2006 6:56:35 GMT -5
Unfortunately for the Cubs, it's now officially too late to be trading Wood and Prior. Their value is at their absolute lowest--the time to make a trade was last year or the year before. (Remember the rumored Prior-for-Tejada deal? Which team killed that?) Agreed, there's no way to trade Prior and Wood now and get anything that remotely resembles value now. For the record, I still believe that Mark Prior's going to be a stud starter, he just needs time to recover from having his arm wrecked in 2003. Wood is done, though. They'll give him his $3 million buyout in the offseason, and if he's back, it will be on a low-base, incentive-laden deal to pitch out of the pen. And I actually believe it was the Orioles that nixed the Prior for Tejada deal. What I remember eventually filtering out about the proposal was that it was Prior, Cedeno, and a prospect for Tejada and Bedard, and the O's didn't want to let go of Bedard. What makes me more upset is that we probably could have had Abreu for Prior in the offseason. The Cubs organization is an utter train wreck, from MacPhail to Hendry to Dusty to the players. Before the season started, Hendry said that another 90-loss season would be "unacceptable" and would tolerate "no excuses." The Cubs are now on their way to possibly 100 losses, and excuses are all we've heard. "We didn't have the horses." Well, gee, if any hope of playoff contention rides on the arms of Prior and Wood, and if losing Derrek Lee turns you into the worst team in the NL, then I'd say you have a major problem in your roster construction. Hendry deserves just as much of the blame as Dusty does. This organization doesn't seem to value Sabermetrics at all. As of right now, their OBP .314, good for last in the NL and better than only Tampa Bay in all of MLB. Their OPS is .736, again only better than Tampa Bay. They've been out-homered in Wrigley Field of all places something like 100 to 60. They trade for Izturis, and justify it with nonsense like "he drives in runs with his glove." Ugh. For all the talk about how Dusty is a "player's manager," his teams have for 4 seasons now shown an appalling lack of fundamentals: bad baserunning, bad fielding, horrendous plate discipline (fun fact: the '04 Cubs led the NL in home runs and were 8th in runs scored--a bunch of solo homers does not an effective offense make), and idiotic feuds over stuff like Steve Stone daring to praise some Astros players on the air. Dusty's a good manager when he's a front-runner. When he's got a good team and things are going well, he's great. When he's faced with adversity and he's getting criticized, though, he goes into defensive mode and starts making excuses. There is absolutely no accountability for anything on this team. The Oakland A's have had just as many injury problems than Chicago, if not more, and are currently running away with the AL West. What excuse do the Cubs have? Horses, dude, horses.  |
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Post by BDS on Sept 6, 2006 17:03:15 GMT -5
Re: Neifi. Still sorry about that, Tigers Nation, by the way. Anyhoo, the Cubs are 2-14 since trading him. That's embarassing.
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Post by Trent Lawless on Sept 8, 2006 13:04:49 GMT -5
As a Pirates fan who has very little to cling to this year, or any other year, I provide the following stats from today, which I can only pray will hold up by season's end: NL Central ... Pittsburgh 57 84 .404 19.0 Chicago 56 84 .400 19.5 May the worst team lose!  |
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Post by BDS on Sept 8, 2006 13:51:59 GMT -5
All your foolish winning is doing is cheating you out of a better pick in the amateur draft! MUA-HA-HA-HA!
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Post by Pete on Sept 8, 2006 15:58:25 GMT -5
All your foolish winning is doing is cheating you out of a better pick in the amateur draft! MUA-HA-HA-HA! I know you're just being facetious, but it brings up an interesting (if depressing, for Cubs fans) point...do you realize the Cubs have not developed a single regular position player from within their own system since Mark Grace? Mark Grace...who was an All-Star when I was six. Since then, it's been nothing. Zip. Sosa, Alou, Barrett, Aramis...every single notable position player they've had for almost 20 years has come from somewhere else. That is an unbelievable streak of futility. Cubs fans have to hope that attendance plummets over the next year or two. The only possible way to get the Tribune to start giving a damn about winning and maybe holding some of its front-office types accountable for something is for them to be hit in the pocketbook, where it matters the most. |
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Post by Trent Lawless on Sept 8, 2006 16:00:47 GMT -5
Pete's right. And the Pirates like to hone their young talent until they get just good enough (if we're lucky) to be picked up by a major market team, but not great enough that they could take us to a pennant. So we're in the same boat, kinda.
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Post by Pete on Sept 8, 2006 17:32:13 GMT -5
Pete's right. And the Pirates like to hone their young talent until they get just good enough (if we're lucky) to be picked up by a major market team, but not great enough that they could take us to a pennant. So we're in the same boat, kinda. The Pirates, like the Cubs on occasion, have fleeced a number of quality teams in trades. I'm still ticked off about Brian Giles for Ricardo Rincon, and Bay-for-Giles looks like it's going to pay off, too. Difference is, as much as I think Kevin McClatchy's blatherings about being in a too-small market to compete are overblown, it *is* a legitimate issue with them. The Cubs are in the third-biggest city in America and control probably a good 75% of the baseball market, and that's being generous to the defending World Champs. The Pirates could easily find a way to compete if they had a GM who wasn't an imbecile, and an owner willing to pour money into minor league development and international scouting, rather than spending millions each year on a Joe Randa or Reggie Sanders so that they can "push" for 80 wins. Yeah, easier said than done...but the Pirates have more and better excuses than the Tribune Company. |
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Post by BDS on Sept 8, 2006 17:56:04 GMT -5
I know you're just being facetious, but it brings up an interesting (if depressing, for Cubs fans) point...do you realize the Cubs have not developed a single regular position player from within their own system since Mark Grace? Mark Grace...who was an All-Star when I was six. Since then, it's been nothing. Zip. Sosa, Alou, Barrett, Aramis...every single notable position player they've had for almost 20 years has come from somewhere else. That is an unbelievable streak of futility. Well, we do have Ronny Cedeno playing right now, who's home grown. And Corey Patterson was home grown, it's just that Dusty and his staff ruined him as a hitter and he was subsequently ran out of town on rails. But yeah, that's been a glaring weakness of our farm system. What's so frustrating about it is that when Jim Hendry was developing it (when MacPhail was GM), he overloaded it on arms specifically so we could trade those arms to pick up the position prospects that we needed. Thus far, that strategy hasn't worked too well for us. We've got Felix Pie who will likely be up in September of next year, if not before. He's a more talented version of Corey Patterson. Good power, great speed, great defense and throwing arm, needs to work on plate discipline. We've also got Eric Patterson, Corey's brother, who's coming up at second and looks to be a pretty good prospect. Other than those two, though, it's just pitchers left for the forseeable future when you're talking about home grown minor leaguers. Cubs fans have to hope that attendance plummets over the next year or two. The only possible way to get the Tribune to start giving a damn about winning and maybe holding some of its front-office types accountable for something is for them to be hit in the pocketbook, where it matters the most. As much as I like to blame the Tribune Company, because it was their fault for years, it's just not their fault any more. The Cubs have a $95 million dollar payroll, good for 3rd in the NL and 7th in MLB, and all an MLB owner can really do is provide his (its) management staff with the money to put together a good team, and the Trib's done that. Barring the Yankees and Red Sox, which is really another conversation entirely, the Cubs are no more than $8 million in payroll from any other MLB team. The problem is with the incompetent manner in which the money has been spent. We can't spend an extra $3 million per year to get Rafael Furcal, who our GM publicly identified as his #1 priority in the offseason, but we spent $5 mil collectively per year for contracts for Neifi Freaking Perez and Glendon Freaking Rusch? Are you kidding me? Dump those two losers, replace them with minor leaguers making the minimum who would be minimal downgrades, if downgrades at all, and the money they paid would have gotten us Furcal. We overpay for mediocre bench players and marginal starters, but we refuse to spend the money to get the big free agents that might make a difference. We passed on Vlad Guerrero, we passed on Carlos Beltran, and we let ourselves get beat on Furcal. The organization's philosophy as a whole seems to be lacking, as well. During the Hendry/Baker era, they've steadfastly refused to acknowledge any sort of modern statistical analysis, instead clinging to old-fashioned ideas of what makes a good team. Baker talks about how he doesn't like walks because they "clog the bases." That's retarded, plain and simple. Jim Hendry talks about bringing up batting average with runners in scoring position as being a more important stat, which is likewise dumb. The Phillies lead the NL in runs scored and runners stranded - more baserunners equals more runs, but our GM and manager don't or refuse to realize this. I have two hopes for this to get better, and two hopes alone. The first is Mark Cuban. The Trib is in fairly bad financial straits, at least they were the last time I checked, and Cuban's said in the past that he'd be interested in buying the team if they were up for sale. This is just a pipe dream for me, though. My other hope is that Hendry's been making the horrible moves he has because he's been giving Baker the kind of players he's wanted ... his "proven" veterans like Perez and Rusch. Baker's going to be out the door on October 2nd (and replaced by Joe Girardi, God willing), and hopefully Baker's influence was such that once he's gone, Hendry will start making smart baseball moves again. He's done it in the past (Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Garciaparra), and I'm hoping that he remembers how to do it again. I need to go drink now. |
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Post by BDS on Sept 8, 2006 17:58:28 GMT -5
Pete's right. And the Pirates like to hone their young talent until they get just good enough (if we're lucky) to be picked up by a major market team, but not great enough that they could take us to a pennant. So we're in the same boat, kinda. I still feel bad about Ramirez, by the way. You guys got the shaft on that deal. |
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Post by BDS on Sept 22, 2006 8:49:56 GMT -5
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Post by blueraider1 on Sept 22, 2006 8:54:46 GMT -5
relax bds they probably wont sell the cubs
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Post by BDS on Sept 22, 2006 9:01:44 GMT -5
relax bds they probably wont sell the cubs No, I WANT them to sell the Cubs. I'd much prefer the organization being ran by an individual, or group of individuals, who were baseball fans and really cared about winning the World Series rather than by a monolithic corporation who only cared about winning as it related to the bottom line. The best thing that could happen to Cubdom, in my opinion, is a sale of the Chicago Cubs. This could be the best offseason ever. |
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Post by Trent Lawless on Sept 22, 2006 12:36:48 GMT -5
It's a hope we've had in Pittsburgh from time to time, too. More for a GM who knows where first base is, as a start.
Good luck to you.
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Post by BDS on Sept 22, 2006 13:16:24 GMT -5
Pittsburgh native Mark Cuban has actually offered to buy the Pirates, but he was told they weren't for sale. Hopefully his quest for a team takes him to the Northside.
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Post by sickman on Sept 22, 2006 23:46:50 GMT -5
Wish I would have seen this thread when it started. I'm a die-hard BDS.
And I agree; cant wait for this offseason to see what happens.
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