I thought it was Theo's unwillingness to make Schwarber part of the Verlander deal is ultimately what killed it.

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Verlander had an injury the Tigers misdiagnosed in 2015, he missed part of that season...but he came back in 2016, pitched every start. Verlander finished 2016 2nd in Cy Young voting, made the All-Star team and was top 10 in MVP voting.

Verlander's 2017 pre-trade numbers with the Tigers were skewed by a few games early in the season when he got shelled by the Indians.

Verlander's 2017 pre-trade 2nd half of season numbers for the Tigers weren't that different from what he did post-trade with the Astros:



Verlander was traded on September 1st. So all of his August starts = pre-trade with the Tigers. September and after = post-trade with the Astros.

I think the Verlander discussion in this thread pretty much illustrates that the Quintana deal was the biggest mistake that Theo made.

If you look at what Houston gave Detroit for Verlander, it isn't close to what the Cubs gave the Sox for Quintana. So there is little question that the Cubs could have given Detroit the Quintana trade package and the deal is done.

Quintana, by any objective standard has been a worse pitcher with the Cubs than the Sox. Quintana had 4 consecutive years of 200 IP with the White Sox. He has never reached that mark since the trade and he has pitched fewer innings each year. All of the following statistics have gotten worse since the trade: ERA, FIP, WHIP, HR/9, BB/9. He has improved his K rate, but hasn't gained anything as a pitcher. He also moved to a league where he faced a zero in the lineup at least two times through.

So obviously if there was a choice between the two, it was a tremendous error in judgement. The real problem is that it wasn't a binary choice in that the Cubs still could have acquired Verlander after the Quintana trade. I think this is where the Q trade gets even worse. It would have to have been hard as a GM to essentially trade away your two biggest minor league prospects in an effort to solve your SP issues, only to have to make ANOTHER deal 30 days later to address the same SP issues. It just looks terrible optically to make that second deal after burning the prospects in the first deal, and it also would have been hard to psychologically (I would think) to square that also.

So not only did the Q deal end up sour because of his significant regression, but it likely contributed to Theo's decision to pass on Verlander.

Also, with a healthy Verlander you probably don't sign Darvish (although if he pitches like he did the second half of the year, that's a really good contract), and you definitely don't have to spend 20MM on Hamels. That Q trade just had a series of cascading impacts that were awful (Darvish performance pending).

That makes more sense than the Cubs front-office/scouts thought Verlander's few bad starts early in 2017 meant the runner up for the Cy Young the previous season who was dealing throughout July/August was washed.

Surprised the Red Sox and Yanks didn't even appear to try for Verlander. Maybe the Red Sox decided Porcello and Price met their quota for Dombrowski pitchers from Detroit. Yanks might've felt fat with starting pitching at the time. But you can never have too many arms, as the Astros seem to realize. Although there's the whole keeping a potential post-season rival from improving their rotation that might play into those AL teams' calculus.

Verlander almost didn't sign-off on the trade to Houston, he was holding out to land in Chicago with the Cubs:



or maybe Kate's preference? I think she's from West Michigan, prolly as many Cub fans as Tiger fans in those towns along the lake.

Should have fired Maddon in the offseason.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

He doesn't have enough elite players.

There are a lot of bad moves there, but trading an exceptional young player like Glyber Torres was the worst. I said at the time that he and Baez should be the middle infield of the future and that I would rather see them trade Russell, because Torres was going to hit for more power and has the better arm. All for a few months rental of a jackass. They could have gotten Papelbon or another closer and tried to win it without trading away such an outstanding prospect. Jimenez and Cease for a guy I said was no better than a 3rd or 4th starter made no sense either. 2 solid prospects for a guy who has a couple decent stretches in a season, along with stretches of ineptitude, was really stupid. Sustained success can only be achieved if you are able to replenish with young talent from a good farm system. Trading away the best talent from that system for rentals and mediocre players is not a good business model for a baseball executive to use. Soler going to KC made sense to me, as they had a couple extra outfielders at the time and Soler seemed to get injured a lot and was not a real good outfielder. They should have kept Wade Davis though. That was the mistake there. but they thought Edwards was going to develop into a closer and let Davis sign with Colorado. Could have kept him and given him the money they are now paying Kimbrel and had a far better closer.

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Go Cubs!!!!

The Cubs were talking with Detroit for months, Theo wouldn't give in on Schwarber.. The Sox had no interest in Schwarber.. The Q deal was surprising, most everybody assumed Verlander was the guy we were getting.

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Actually, Theo himself said that Schwarber was the first name Hahn brought up and Theo said no.

I agree and said so a year ago. if they were not going to extend him, there was no good reason to keep him around. They had decided they were not going to extend him, because of issues with the way he abused the bullpen. Going so far as to ignore policy that he not ever use Morrow in more than 2 straight games and of course Maddon ignored that and used him in 2 straight, and he has not pitched again since. Using Strop for 2 innings and then sending him up to bat, with the intention of using him in yet another inning.....and he pulled a hamstring. Using Cishek so often last year he has become a shadow of what he was and can no longer be trusted. He ruins bullpens and they recognized it, yet did not want to face the public backlash and fire him, so they let him go out and manage this year as a lame duck. If you have no intention to have him manage the team after this season, because he doesn't follow instruction and mismanages the bullpen, be proactive and make a move, BEFORE wasting a season where the team might have done much better.

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Go Cubs!!!!

They essentially did fire him.

Both sides played nice all year but the lack of an extension after the kind of production he had in his first four years spoke volumes. They were never going to give him another contract but he also wasn't going to quit and miss that big pay day.

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

I don't think we'll ever know who really held up the Detroit deal, but it's a fair point to assume it was Schwarber....which is idiotic.

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that's a contrast btw Dombrowski and Theo's models of doing trades. Dombrowski's willing to trade any and all prospects, but in return requires top-shelf players with either non-expiring deals or willing to extend with his club. I guess if you're going to do deals, what's another player/prospect on the pile? if it lands you the player you want/need. Theo tries to play it like he's trading used electronics at a swap meet and not give up too much in a deal; but then ends up getting middling players in return while still emptying out his farm system.

1. The Chapman deal was a GOOD DEAL. We have been over this so many times it reminds me of the 6th Amendment. Chapman won or saved 6 of the 11 Cubs post season wins in 2016. Also Papelbon was so shitty with a (contending) 2016 Nationals team that they cut him in August and he never threw another pitch in the majors again.

2. Do you not realize that Wade Davis sucks? He was by far the WORST closer in MLB in 2019, and wasn't anything great in 2018.