What sucks about Archer is Jim Hendry acquired him for a 33 year old and soon to be decrepit Mark DeRosa.

Then Hendry foolishly packaged him for Matt Garza in a desperate misguided attempt to prop up an aging/shitty roster.

Yup...he's having a down year but he will rebound next year.

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DID. NOT. HAPPEN.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, it did.

>you now remember when the cubs went something like 4-10 over a 2+ week span and cubs fans' true colors started to shine through, even if only for a few fleeting weeks

hey jay-peezy, do you happen to remember josh donaldson before he came JOSH FUCKING DONALDSON?

i remember picking him up one year in a deep fantasy baseball league because he was a nice little backup/depth C/1B who was hitting a modest ~.280 with negligible power at best when i grabbed him midseason; ultimately sacrificing avg for power, he finished 2012 @ .241/9/33 in 75 games. then the next season (2013) came around and he started off fairly hot, jumping out to a somewhat quick ~.290/8/24 by the end of may [really similar to jose bautista's #s circa june 1 2010]; however the general consensus was that JD was a "known unknown."

put it this way, circa mid-2013 i ended up pulling off a trade where the key players exchanged were my josh donaldson for her manny machado. i ended up having someone quit the league right there on the spot because "[i] ripped off paula by stealing manny machado from her" --- keep in mind that josh donaldson would go on to finish 2013 @ .301/24/93 while manny machado finished 2013 @ .284/14/73/6, went on to do .278/12/32/2 in 82 games in 2014 where he had some nasty injury that had people wondering if his career was over, or maybe just that he'd never be the same player again-- then he finally came back and had a monster breakout season in 2015, you know, just like josh donaldson's .297/41/123/6 in 2015 =) --- AHEM. so yeah, basically somebody ragequit my league because josh donaldson + friends wasn't enough to warrant getting pre-breakout manny machado; that's what people thought about him and his "potential" and/or "legitimacy" during the middle of his breakout season. pretty damning stuff, eh?

therefore, it was entirely possible (and technically even plausible) to think that JD (aka "The Don") was "just a guy" who was having some kind of hotstreak that could have meant anything ranging from the emergence of a [2010 Jose Bautista] type all the way down to Mark Canha v2.0 (put it this way, 2016 Mark Canha was so bad that he couldn't even fully-beat-out billy butler for everyday/ish 1B/DH duties b4 getting hurt/demoted/whatever; and this is a guy who was .254/16/70 in 124 games last year)

so yeah, i mean.... obviously hindsight is 20/20, but still you might remember when "matt clement is a HORSE!" evolved into "why the fuck did we trade away dontrelle willis?" or how about "why did rafael palmeiro have to bang sandberg's wife?" (at least mark grace will smoke to that! =) and of course we can top it all off with #SometimesYouJustGottaHaveErnieBroglio, amirite? there's so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns in the wacky-n-wonderful game of baseball that no matter how diligently you scout/analyze players, all of the mitigating factors (even the seemingly infinitesimal ones) end up converging in a big ol pile of !??!?$akij???? that can simply be called "a crapshoot" at the end of the day.

TLDR = you know there's a 40man roster for a reason, right? this ain't pokemon-- you ain't "gotta catch 'em all" cuz even if you did you wouldn't have enough room for them, so then you'd have to let other players go to accommodate everyone. of course this eventually leads to another JP thread ~5-10 years later where he bemoans letting go of the guys that the cubs had to let go of in order to keep the original batch of prospects that you can't let go of, you know what i'm saying? =D

>inb4 "i never said you gotta keep all of your prospects, only the good ones who are very-good/great players by their 4th or 5th year in MLB. duh."

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Sini,

Did you actually read my quote you highlighted?

I said I'm not blaming anyone,all teams have guys they let go........SHEESH!

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

You said acquired. Gotcha. Why does that suck?

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

The acquisition was awesome, what is unfortunate is giving him up in the misguided Garza deal. I guess my thought was it sucks because Hendry worked hard to make a shrewd deal and then blew it by giving up the player for almost nothing in return.

It's like working hard to earn a few hundred bucks and then making an unwise sports wager.

Christian Villanueva

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

That's how I knew that name. Good for him.

Josh Donaldson

Didn't see he had been mentioned already.

Marwin Gonzalez was a rule 5 pick away from the Cubs a bunch of years ago, it took a while, but he's a real nice player right now.

This was a looonnng time ago: 1980,but the one move that I never forgot was the Cubs dumping a young player named Miguel Dilone for cash. The Cubs picked him up from the Pirates late in '79. He batted .306 for the Cubs. The following season in 566 AB's he hit .341 with 61 SB's for the Indians. His career slid downhill after a few good seasons but he was still a decent player. Later in life he had an eye knocked out while practicing baseball with his son.

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

Tim Lincecum

Coming Soon:
Eloy
Gleybar

Also, Josh Hamilton (even though they only drafted him specifically to trade)

Ryan Flaherty

Do the Cubs have the most successful minor league system in the history of baseball?

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

When you look at their drafting after the first round and their drafting of pitchers, tre is definitely room for improvement.

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Go Cubs!!!!