This isn't a bad alternative, and it may be better than overpaying for David Price, or any other free agent pitcher on a long-term deal. In addition, they have Lester on a long-term, and will probably have to do give Arrieta a deal starting at where some of these upper end guys end up this off-season. They may have decided to take a different approach than having 3 guys at 20+ plus for 5 years+.

Can't or want to?

If Fowler gets a big money deal, more power to him. I don't like having a leadoff man with 154 K's. There's enough strikeouts in the lineup as it is.

We got the best out of Dexter, Time to move on..but he's better than Span IMO.. Cubs ain't interested in Span though.

I refuse to listen to that awful show-station ...did Bruce admit he was full of shit n was played like a bitch by Guppys agent..and The Cubs were never interested in the guppy? He should apologize to the dumb Cub Fans for getting them misleading them.

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Smart money spent......let's see what is next!

Looks like I missed a doozy of a WCUB apologist WYC show.

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Elections have consequences.

But I'm sure it wasn't lame like when Pat Hughes did it.

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we have breaking news.

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Elections have consequences.

well, i'm sure pat hughes wasn't doing it in such a way to set up an instant defense of the current regime by lashing out at proverbial haters WHO DARE TO QUESTION THE PLAN!

despite all that stuff tho, i think this lackey signing is a very cromulent move for the cubs that i can't really see too much bigtime downside for (even if age catches up to him rather quickly and he reverts to being a 3.75-4.25 ERA pitcher it's not like you're hooked in for 4-5+ years at ~20mil+/yr, so you can just chalk it up to "win some lose many" and go on with your life.

it's just that ideally he'd be upgrading the dan haren role/slot/etc to join the 1-2 other new bigger-marquee pitchers who are somewhere between what lackey got and what lester got in terms of the !!!/$$$/etc. personally i wouldn't have done that david price deal (even if i'm basically just doing what i gotta do to get him for 3/93 and running the risk of having a ~30mil/yr sunk cost in the future in order to make sure i have that 3yr window of prime price for 93mil) tho i still think that's the kind of ballsy move (again, throwing 7/217 out there on the table and setting it up where if he's still DAVID FK'N PRICE he's likely gonna opt out after 3yrs) that the cubs could ideally make in order to upgrade the team by another notch or two.

seriously, even if price ended up exploding like dave dravecky within a year or two, i dont think having a ~31mil/yr sunk cost on the books for the next 7 years is going to completely destroy cubbie financies and actively prevent them from winning a world series. it's not like there's a salary cap in baseball and it's not like ricketts didnt pull off that brilliant business move where he managed to bring in theo/jed for #ThePlan for ~$5mil/yr to offset slashing payroll by like ~30-50+mil/yr perennially for 3-4 years in order to save him some serious $$$ while they set up all the new revenue streams @ wrigley.... and hey last i checked they're still getting more and more of those with the wrigley modernization AND ricketts is gonna get his triangle building + parking garage combo, right? dude's getting everything he wants and thensome and #ThePlan that they executed for both the baseball and business sides has worked out brilliantly, so i at least wanna see the cubs make some noise with some of these bigtime FA pitchers.....

i mean, at least get zimmerman FFS.... 5/110 is right in your wheelhouse and if you're sitting here on dec 4th with zimmermann and lackey joining arrieta and lester in the rotation you're sitting pretty damn pretty IMO. you could argue that you've basically got your 5 man starting rotation set (with hendricks/hammel/haren?/whoever's-name-starts-with-an-H at the #5) or you could shock the world and make a bigtime trade to get some sonny gray type ace (oakland is a wonderful trade partner cuz look at how cheap they let addison russell and josh donaldson go!) and then you'd have a rotation that could be spoken of in the same breath as the vaunted washington natinals rotation.

ah well c'est la vie. i'd better cease the TLDR while i'm only this far behind. i guess i'm kind of being an idiot cuz it's like a part of me wanted the cubs to go and get david price for the sake of the gesture/declaration-of-intent, but risking a 7/217 contract to david price is something that i personally wouldn't do, even if there's a pretty good chance you end up getting him for 3/93 which IMO would be a near-perfect deal for the cubs.

does anyone here want the cubs to be in on greinke? or to trade for a sonny gray? or to basically try to go out and get another pitcher who's even better with lester so basically your #3 is of a near/ace quality? i think the cubs doing that is a sign that they're backing up the pedantic "when it's time" talk that we heard years ago to help sell #ThePlan to a fanbase on the verge of consuming a few years of awful baseball.

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Finally, I can go back to hating John Lackey. All is right in my baseball world again.

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-- source

btw, all of ^^^^^^that^^^^^^ stuff i said (2 posts up) about spending big/$$$ "when it's time" is moot null and void if the cubs are saving up to offer a ~400-500mil megadeal of the millennium to mike trout if the angels are dumb enough to let him hit free agency.

if you only go making "value" signings like lackey for another year or 2 or 3 or whatever and in the end all the $$$ you save up ends up going to give trout 75mil/yr aka "whatever it takes" to get #27 here in chicago for the next 5-10+ years, then yeah i'm all for pinching every penny and robbing old ladies at the ATM and any other sorts of revenue streams you can come up with cuz i swear to god if the cubs go and get trout to play here in chicago every day for 5-10+ years i'll str8up go through the cubbinization ritual to officially declare myself a cubs fan. yeah i have mlb.tv so i can watch trout everyday anyways, but hey go get trout here and i'll officially sign the papers to convert myself to the Darkside and i'll fly the W and all that crap.



yeap, IMU really nailed that one =D

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The fact that he thinks people read these manifestos is cute.

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Kenny Williams fell for the banana in the tailpipe

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Elections have consequences.

This was still breaking news on Sunday night according to the Score

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

sini = SKIP in my book! I see the name....and scroll right past it.

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Proud to be UNVERIFIED.

I read them sometimes. There's occasionally a decent thought buried in there and I admire his commitment.

Trout is signed until 2020. Are you recommending the Cubs twiddle their thumbs for the next 5 years in the hopes of signing him for the 2021 season??

hilarious, Bryant filed a grievance due to service time...

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Against the players union for helping to set the rules that the Cubs played by?

A purposeless and perfunctory gesture. It's part of the CBA; there's literally nothing he can do.

Unless the arbitrator (if/when it ever gets there) uncovers emails from Theo saying "fuck this guy and his future, let's dick him over ha ha ha ha!" (minimum four "ha's"), there's no real way to 'prove' any lack of 'good faith'.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

right...it's the byproduct of choosing Boras...

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.