Organizational Philosophy Discussion Thread

[SenorGato]

spending 120+mill to be average is not smart.

That's not how it works. When you spend that much it is usually on a quality talent. That quality talent will, by the will of Jah, be allowed to live and work for more than just one year for the Cubs. It's an extreme dramatization.

and that "strong" farm system you said we had when Theo came produced 101 losses... so theres that.

Also produced Garza (via trade), Castro (somewhat of a big deal), Barney, Soto at the time, Russell, Marmol, landed Rizzo with it's top pitching prospect...Those 101 losses were greatly facilitated by the FO's inactivity, arguably more so than the farm system's inability to pump out the sure fire HOFers Theo is guaranteed to put out.

[ZamboniCub]

the base of ur arguement is that the 2010 cubs where good... and that is incorrect.

[gaughan333]

As always, offseasons are too complicated to simply list players. Too many contingencies. If I sign a 1b early, that means I don't get Rizzo, but I can use Cashner for something else, maybe a trade. If I trade for Chase Headley, do I get to use his 7-win season or do I have to use his pre-season projections? If I keep Samardzija in the bullpen, do I take his fWAR or his bWAR out of the rotation and plug in a replacement?

As far as "fix," I would say "has at least a 25% chance to make the playoffs going into the season."

How exactly do you determine that a team has a 25% chance to make the playoffs. That is completely arbitrary and subjective.

I have an issue with the constant answer that an offseason is too complicated with too many moving parts, but the front office should have been able to figure it out.

[ZamboniCub]

is soriano still making 1/4 of our entire payroll? or does he not exsist? you guys act like 2005-2010 never happened

[KyleJRM]

From the FA thread.

Kyle, i just don't understand why you think spending would've worked when it hasn't for so long.

I feel like so many Cubs fans need a serious organizational history lesson.

The Cubs have precisely one period of high spending in their history, and it occurred in the mid to late 2000s. It resulted in the only back-to-back division titles in the team's history.

People act as if the Cubs have been drunken, big-market spendthrifts for the last 100 years. They haven't. They were one of the cheapest teams in the league under the Wrigleys, drifted directionless in the 80s, focused on the farm system in the 90s, and spent in the 00s.

You can site making the playoffs multiple times, but look what happened. We had highly paid players feeling like they had one (MAYBE two) chances to win it all and they completely crumbled. Our closest call came in '03 after we'd groomed (poorly) wood/prior/zambrano. They were the core & they fealt they had years to have a chance to win it all -- way less pressure, and we added to the core from the outside. The idea is to have wood/prior/zambrano type talent constantly being groomed, if people get hurt or a big free agent signing fizzles, we have people coming up. PLUS, EVERY prospect we ever brought up was under or poorly developed. The way they handled rizzo was PERFECT. BEST handling of a prospect i've EVER seen the cubs make.

As always. Everyone agrees that you need to build a strong organizational pipeline of amateur acquistion and development. The question is whether you need to use abusing the MLB roster as a shortcut to get there faster.

I agree 100% with how thoyer is handling the organization. I guess the doubters just won't understand until they see exactly how this works -- i know it just doesn't make sense to some people. But it's the smartest way to build an organization.

This is called "the illusion of asymmetric insight." You assume that I don't understand how this is supposed to work because I disagree with it. I understand it and reject it.

Maybe read "the bad guys won" which explains how the 80s mets were rebuilt their system the EXACT same way & had an unreal system going which would've sustained had they had any drug programs.

I'm a sports journalist (albeit I don't cover the majors). I went to school with sports journalists. I hang out with sports journalists in RL and online.

Let me tell you something: Sports journalists tell stories. They tell interesting stories. Any connection between the interesting stories we tell and the actual underlying causes to what happened is strictly coincidental.

[SenorGato]

is soriano still making 1/4 of our entire payroll? or does he not exsist? you guys act like 2005-2010 never happened

What does this even mean? What does the whole thing even mean?

[KyleJRM]

How exactly do you determine that a team has a 25% chance to make the playoffs. That is completely arbitrary and subjective.

You make projections about what you think will happen. That's what MLB teams and observers do every season. I'm not sure why you are so mystified by the idea.

I have an issue with the constant answer that an offseason is too complicated with too many moving parts, but the front office should have been able to figure it out.

That's their job. That is quite literally what they are paid to do. I'm not saying I can't put together an offseason, but it will inevitably involve assumptions that you will inevitably disagree with and argue that all the work I put into it is moot.

It'd probably get sunk anyway, because the Byrd, Soto and Garza debacles make it awfully hard to get to 87 wins, but you can get pretty close plugging in various WARs.

[ZamboniCub]

2010 cub roster is garbage. is what it means.

[KyleJRM]

is soriano still making 1/4 of our entire payroll? or does he not exsist? you guys act like 2005-2010 never happened

If you could lop off the last year or two of his contract, I'd do the Soriano deal all over again. He's been a darn useful player.

Of course 2005-2010 happened. And some terrible things happened in the organization during that time. But not what you think. The problem for the organization during that time wasn't the big-money signings. It was the drafting and development.

From 2005-2010, our 1st round draft picks were: Mark Pawelek, Tyler Colvin, Josh Donaldson, Josh Vitters, Ryan Flaherty, Andrew Cashner, Brett Jackson, Josh Vitters.

That's a horrific pile of awful. As someone eloquently put it on this board recently, Jim Hendry's failure was that he never found a good replacement for himself to put in charge of the farm system.

If the Cubs had drafted and developed well, the big contracts wouldn't have seemed to have hurt them so much. You can afford a Zito when you develop your own Poseys.

[KyleJRM]

2010 cub roster is garbage. is what it means.

You are aware of what year Epstein and Co. took over, correct? It wasn't 2010.

[gaughan333]

You make projections about what you think will happen. That's what MLB teams and observers do every season. I'm not sure why you are so mystified by the idea.



That's their job. That is quite literally what they are paid to do. I'm not saying I can't put together an offseason, but it will inevitably involve assumptions that you will inevitably disagree with and argue that all the work I put into it is moot.

It'd probably get sunk anyway, because the Byrd, Soto and Garza debacles make it awfully hard to get to 87 wins, but you can get pretty close plugging in various WARs.

It's their job, but that doesn't mean that they can just make it happen. You act as if they went out of there way to make sure they would be awful from the start. They put in offers on darvish, cespedes, and fielder. They just got outbid on all of those players. (The A's gave that contract to Cespedes, I don't know if that is technically outbid)

[gaughan333]

If you could lop off the last year or two of his contract, I'd do the Soriano deal all over again. He's been a darn useful player.

Of course 2005-2010 happened. And some terrible things happened in the organization during that time. But not what you think. The problem for the organization during that time wasn't the big-money signings. It was the drafting and development.

From 2005-2010, our 1st round draft picks were: Mark Pawelek, Tyler Colvin, Josh Donaldson, Josh Vitters, Ryan Flaherty, Andrew Cashner, Brett Jackson, Josh Vitters.

That's a horrific pile of awful. As someone eloquently put it on this board recently, Jim Hendry's failure was that he never found a good replacement for himself to put in charge of the farm system.

If the Cubs had drafted and developed well, the big contracts wouldn't have seemed to have hurt them so much. You can afford a Zito when you develop your own Poseys.

And have lincecum, cain, bumgarner, wheeler, and sandoval

[terencem]

Guys, just accept that Kyle's bar for "good team" is 71 wins before Theo took over (the 2011 Cubs) and 82 wins or so after Theo took over.

[KyleJRM]

It's their job, but that doesn't mean that they can just make it happen. You act as if they went out of there way to make sure they would be awful from the start. They put in offers on darvish, cespedes, and fielder. They just got outbid on all of those players. (The A's gave that contract to Cespedes, I don't know if that is technically outbid)

Ah, the "put in offers" argument.

1) We have no idea what they did or didn't do. GMs lie. It is very much in their interest to lie. Information about budgets and player offers is valuable to their opponents, and they don't want to leak more than they have to. The only thing we know about any of those players is the actual contracts they signed. Anything else could just as easily be misinformation as truth.

The Cubs get judged on what they do and do not do. Not on what someone is willing to let a reporter anonymously report.

Bryan LaHair was promised a shot at the job very early in the offseason, and Ian Stewart was installed as the starting 3b just as early. Those aren't the moves of a front office trying to win.

Now, I don't think they were trying to be as bad as possible. I just think they weren't trying to win, and in a highly competitive universe like MLB, those are functionally equivalent.

Yes, we won 61 games. We also:

Had a bullpen that was 7 wins worse than average according to WPA
Fielded 7 negative WAR worth of sub-replacement position players
Fielded 6 negative WAR worth of sub-replacement starting pitchers.

In theory, without spending *any* money, a competent front office should have been able to improve us by 13 wins by fielding replacement level players for those positions. Spend $10 million to make the bullpen average instead of awful, and you've got yourself another 7 wins. We're almost up to .500 without even really trying to add good players.

[KyleJRM]

Guys, just accept that Kyle's bar for "good team" is 71 wins before Theo took over (the 2011 Cubs) and 82 wins or so after Theo took over.

This is lazy, binary thinking. Teams do not have to be "good" or "bad." Baseball is like a bell curve. The vast majority of teams are lumped around the middle. The post-2011 Cubs weren't good, but they were in that lump around the middle and had the resources to become good.