This is the scenario the NBA avoided with their Jerry Colangelo putsch. They have it bad enough already with the perception of meaningless teams playing meaningless games; imagine if 12 or 14 teams went full retard like the 76ers all at once.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

The Royals made a bet that I’ll still maintain was likely to not work out more often than not, but it’s quite possible (and probably even likely) that they did a better job of anticipating the potential returns to their organization if it did work out. And that has to be part of the calculation when deciding whether to exchange future value for a short-term upgrade. Given the parity in MLB and the randomness involved in the postseason, perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to build a great team anymore, but to build a decent team as often as possible.

The Royals could have waited another year or two to push their chips in and really go for it, and they probably would have had better odds of the move working out when they did so. Instead, they went for for quantity in years of contention, and perhaps that’s the better model right now. Given what we know about the postseason, maybe it doesn’t pay to give up a couple of longshot years in order to move the needle a little bit more in your favor in the future.

I’ll still defend my position that the Royals overpaid for James Shields, and that there were other paths to try and reach this same goal that could have been pursued. I don’t think we should throw away logical conclusions when unexpected results occur, and I’m not going to start encouraging results-based analysis. I still don’t think the Royals are a great team, and I’m not sure I was wrong about their moves simply pushing them into mediocrity.

But I think there’s a pretty good chance that I’ve underestimated the positive returns on mediocrity in Major League Baseball. That isn’t a goal to be derided anymore. The sport rewards it, especially if a few things break your way. The Royals put themselves in a position to take advantage of a few lucky breaks. Their decision isn’t any smarter because it paid off, but perhaps the size of the payoff should cause us to reconsider the relative costs and benefits of a decent-but-not-great team going for it. While I think we’ve done a pretty decent job on the cost of side of things, perhaps we’ve underestimated the upside.

I’m sure Royals fans wouldn’t trade this run to get Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi back. And maybe I need to do a better job of accounting for the upside of outcomes like this one.

Given the parity in MLB and the randomness involved in the postseason, perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to build a great team anymore, but to build a decent team as often as possible.

The idea that the AL is a superior league at this point is a myth.

But as all that moved more and more into the mainstream and made actual ballgames such an unforgiving bitch to watch, I loved how the Royals came to prominence doing all the "wrong" things and catching this ever-more-sclerotic world of "lawyerball" napping. The game needed speed back.

I'll grant you that America may be selling the Cubs and Nationals somewhat short

I'm a big dumb shitlib baby

i have never seen anyone care about which league is better, the AL, or the NL, than cubs and sox fans. this has been the problem with the baseball section this year. people who are trying to come off as adults, sound like 4th graders at the lunch table.

this is why it was easier to like chicago baseball anywhere but chicago.

the "old timers" i know, many of them yankee fans, have never mocked the NL, or talked about an "inferior" league.

"lawyerball" .

the "old timers" i know, many of them yankee fans, have never mocked the NL, or talked about an "inferior" league.

the NFC and AFC would have been a bigger deal in the early days of the merger, because the AFC was a remnant of the AFL, which was the rival league of the NFL. it's been so long since then, that now the NFC and AFC are just distinctions by name. so you're right, in generations to come, the NL and AL will most likely go the same way.

except for chicago baseball fans.

It become more about being than understanding the game for a while now. By constantly deriding the dopey sportswriters and Hawk Harrelson as idiots (not an incorrect characterization) they painted themselves as the "smarter, better" alternative. Dave Cameron fucked up repeatedly for about 3 years in appraising the Royals chances...

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/royals-m ... e-in-2013/
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/5-things ... 14-season/
(bonus points for him already positioning Theo and his Really Smart Baseball as the rightful heirs to MLB's throne, he was a year early for a year early)
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/its-time ... s-shields/

Before finally submitting this weak-ass mea culpa before the Royals fell to the Giants in 2014.



A year later Dave Cameron was forced to make this post, and did it in the most weasily, annoying way possible:
(GUESS I CANT LINK MORE THAN 3 LINKS)

And that's about where we are. The numbers people have basically become exactly the cultish devotees of a rigid system that prioritizes winning "the right way" they used to mock, and now they are fully aware that if the Royals, or any of the nouveau-Royals working thier way up the AL ladder this season win over the Cubs (already being called the greatest team of all time) it'll be lethal to their credibility.

That doesn't even address the lack of integrity of the writers for these publications, who produce glowing pieces for teams who are currently reviewing their resumes. Each sees himself as a baseball executive who is currently only interning as a producer of analysis related to baseball.

There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.

So here are the facts.
Ricketts bought the cubs at the end of the 20099 season.

There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.

So here are the facts.
Ricketts bought the cubs at the end of the 20099 season.

In 2010 the cubs were the 3rd highest payroll in MLB at $146 and I think everyone can remember the large number of stupid contracts that went along with the team. In 2011 the Cubs were 6th in payroll. Theo and Jed cam in for the 2012 season and they dropped to 15th in payroll and stayed around therel and 2012 they dropped to 15th at $88 Million. They did drop to 23rd in payroll for one season in 2014 at 89 but have moved back to 13th and then 14th.

If you want to call this tanking, I guess that’s fine, but the other side of it is a change in management and letting a run of God-Awful contracts fun out. I would find it more disgraceful if it was a team like the Marlins, Padres, Brewers, and even Pirates where the sat in the cellar of baseball salaries and were awful for numerous years AFTER getting brand new ballparks.

I’ll never be a Cubs apologist but they re-built the organization and the team over a very short window of years…hardly what I’d call tanking. The bigger crimes is the teams that have ripped off their cities and continue to field a team of garbage.

Are you stoned or pissed off, or both, when you create these postings?

What this has to do with the Cubs is there is a wealth of ammunition feeding into the hype frenzy around the northsiders. The Cubs beat the shit out of the worst teams ever fielded in the history of baseball and generally look good doing it, so its not like there is a lack of evidence to draw out (however flawed it may be). And since Cubs fans are exactly the type who will religiously feed clicks into any organization that harbors their delusions, and Theo has already achieved sainthood in Cameron's world, these articles basically write themselves.

Then they get shared and disseminated amongst Cubs fans and we have the current situation. An average ballclub taking advantage of a shitty league being crowned in April.

It must also be why Las Vegas and a great deal of Baseball experts installed the Cubs as the favorites to win the World Series.