Beckham just got his 2nd hit!!! Don't waste your time here....get outside and start looting and turning over cars with the rest of the Sox fans.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Its really too bad nobody got the chance to riot and loot in Green Bay because the Packers had the biggest choke ever.

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Yep. They are definitely in the team photo for worst team in baseball this year and I am completely good with that. They have a clear direction and are heading in that way. Anyone who was paying attention in the offseason knew this was coming this year. I will gladly take a couple awful years for a bright future.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I'm sure Theo and Hoyer will be able to find more future Hall of Famers like Rizzo regardless of where they draft.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Nice. But I have never called Rizzo a future Hall of Famer.

Obviously, nothing in baseball is a lock, but surely you would agree that the Cubs are in much better hands with a much better future today than they were one year ago?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Maybe they'll find another Beckham and rush him to the big leagues and then watch him struggle to get to the Mendoza line 3 years after his MLB debut...

My God does this team blow. Couldn't Theo have done a little better job of constructing this lineup? This Sveum isn't winning points with me with his weird moves and bizarre line-ups,either.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

If Soriano isn't benched today for his mental error last night (throwing to the wrong base and letting the batter take 2nd on a routine single to left), then I will question the Cubs' commitment to developing players. He is fucking brutal in every way...completely useless.

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I feel sorry for Len and Bob for having to suffer through this nothing year with a roster that couldn't get dismantled fast enough.

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In two months, we will be getting live updates from Iowa and that'd be great.

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Team Cutler.

I guess that's the thing. I'm not really sure of that. I don't think Theo Epstein is any different than a hundred other baseball guys. But he's brilliant at change management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management

Part of his change management strategy as it pertains to his customer base has been to convince them that, whatever happens, it's part of a larger plan that is quite deliberate. There's generally what we might call a "honeymoon" with any new regime in sports, but this goes far beyond the norm. He's actually convinced many- if not most- Cub fans that losing badly is not just necessary to his mission, but a sign that his plan is actually working. For that alone I think he is executive of the year.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

That's what he's doing, but it's nothing new. We can sit here for hours rattling off NFL and NHL teams that bottomed out to bounce back up, or NBA teams that have dragged players and fans through the purgatorial agony of Just Waitin' Out Bad Money To Clear Up Cap Space. The Bulls could've argued that groping around in the dark with Vinny Del Negro for two years was part of the big picture, if the Bulls required the heavy-handed public relations that the Cubs do, if anyone would've believed them in the first place.

The fundamental difference is that building through the baseball draft is the most time-consuming and unreliable grassroots rebuilding effort of the pro leagues. NFL draft picks can contribute in some form right away. NBA lottery picks can come full-formed. NHL first-rounders join the team immediately or take, at absolute most, two or three years. But doing it in baseball, to do what the Cubs have to do to have anything resembling a bona fide system, will take years upon years, and the scariest part of all is that it's still all such a crapshoot anyway. Theo has to sell waaay more than one year of it being this bad as The Grand Design, and quite honestly, I don't know if he can, or if anyone can. Now I get it. Now I get why Hendry mortgaged the future and built this Morganna-the-Kissing-Bandit top-heavy operation. Starting from scratch is scary.

EDIT: another thing that just crossed my mind is that "we're just tanking for draft picks" and "just gonna play out the string here till cap space frees up" are really pretty easy sells to all but the most degenerate NBA and NHL fans. You can take your foot off the gas for the winter leagues with relative ease and not feel a lot of agony or emptiness because they're not baseball. A six-month everyday deathmarch of "constructive badness" for some sketchy-ass "five-year plan," though? Every day, all summer long, trotting out a AAA team so that maybe we can compete in 2018? That is fucking bleak, man. Are we now Pittsburgh?

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I agree, and that's what makes the decision to keep playing Soriano so maddening (I see he's in the starting lineup today, batting cleanup). I could live with some bad baseball if I knew it was bad baseball stemming from young prospects who may or may not pan out. Soriano is a complete bust-out. We know he is never going to get any better. He is never going to work on any aspect of his game other than hitting fastballs. He is apparently never going to be disciplined for boneheaded plays. Why won't the Cubs just bite the bullet and send him packing? I can't imagine there is any argument to keeping him or playing him, considering where this team is at.

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Giving up 2 weeks into the season, for shame. Once they start playing Clevenger everyday this team is going to really start sizzling.

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Byrd gets a start, goes O-3 and once again gets pulled in favor of Reed Mantle. He will have to be on fire for months to get back to being anything the Cubs can trade and for that reason I favor him just being on fire in general.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Shark back to sucking ass. And, Sveum needs to LaHair to 4th in the lineup. The guy is the second best hitter on the team, put him where he belongs.

If Clevenger and Johnson replaced Soto and Byrd in the everyday lineup,doesn't that increase the Cubs chance of possibly scoring a few more runs per game???

Dale has been hell so far as Cubs manager.

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

That's exactly why you can't just replace Soriano with some guy who is 99% likely to be a stiff and just say "Soriano ain't helping us, might as well". Fans are paying for tickets. And they aren't paying AAA prices. It's easy for the guy who never or rarely goes to a game (and when he does is probably on someone else's dime), to say "BLOW IT UP! PLAY THOSE KIDS!!!!!!!" But some guys are spending $30,000 for four box seats and they really don't want to watch a complete shitshow. At least Soriano will crack one onto Waveland once in awhile.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Soriano is not that all that bad when you just look at his stats. It's when you look at his contract that he looks terrible in comparison to the mvp caliber stats those kind of $$ should produce. He will hit over .25O, with 25 hrs and have 85 rbi if he stays healthy and gets a years worth of ab's. You can do a whole lot worse than that. His contract should produce .3OO 4O and 11O and a ring.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

I agree. It's almost certain the next Cub leftfielder won't be close to as good as Soriano but people can't wait to run him out of town. But baseball is a funny game. The Sox got rid of two top corner outfielders and replaced them with a stiff and a decent guy and won a World Series.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

Soriano adds zero value to this team. I agree his potential replacement may be even worse.

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Swaimer is committed to giving Byrd 1OO ab's before he gets dealt with.....he is only at 4O right now.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

I can guarantee that not one Cub fan who bought tickets to a game this year, bought one specifically to watch Soriano play. Therefore, no one gives a shit if they are "getting there moneys worth" if he doesn't play.

How many games do you pay for each season? I've never said anyone bought tickets to specifically watch Soriano. But someone has to buy the tickets when they suck. I'm betting a whole lot that that isn't you or anyone else who spouts off bullshit about "stick some A ball guy in there, what difference does it make?" You have to have players that people will pay to see.

It's real easy for you to take a couple years off and then return if and when they're good in 2015. Then you'll be complaining that you can't get a ticket and how the regular guy is "priced out" or "it's too much for the family of four". Same thing for the radio guys who never pay to see a game in their lives. What the fuck do they care if some AA douchebag is at every position? It didn't cost them anything. They can show up to work the next day and talk about how bad the team is. Tee hee. But somebody invested disposable income to see these turds.

Anyway you slice it, Alfonso Soriano is a big league ballplayer and he's had a far better career than most big league ballplayers. Most people would rather pay to watch him than some dope who will be out of baseball in two years.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

You are wrong. Soriano playing does not validate the ticket prices. No one is paying tickets to see the Cubs win shit this year. They are either paying for tickets because they enjoy going to baseball games or to see if the new guys or prospects are any good. Maybe in a year or two, you could make this argument. But not this year.

And FYI, Soriano is a dope who will be out of baseball in two years. The guy would not start on any other team in the league. At best, he would be a DH on a bad AL team.

If Brett Jackson had Soriano's stats this year with the big league club he would be rookie of the year. Don't let the hate for his awful contract cloud the fact that he provides a good part of the offensive production of this team.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Alfonso Soriano sucks shit. Nobody should want to pay to see that.

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Is the zero broken on your keyboard? That seems like an important key to lose.

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Favorite keyboard keys! Light em up Chicago!

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Team Cutler.

Soriano has been horrible this season so far. Byrd is taking a lot of flack, but Soriano has made Adam Dunn look like an MVP so far.