Balta1701

So how unprofessional does the organization have to be to not only have one loose cannon, but to keep letting him talk to the media when there are other options who can at least spread useless BS quotes? This should literally cost them tons of money.

None of those are currently clearly worse than us and you'd get a debate where to put each of them in a list of the worst. Putting us somewhere within them is fair. I also note one team is missing and think you need to run sprints as punishment for forgetting them.

I don't believe so.

Just remember - they sold a lot of ticket packages to people who believed they were going to get Machado. That'll spread it out over 2 years..

At the very least this will make everything worse. Had he kept his mouth shut the Harper stuff might have gone away on page 7 or whatever of the sports section, but this will be an excellent reminder for the last few surviving fans not to show their faces in that ballpark this year.

"Just think, we've come in 4th place 5 straight seasons, but in the bidding for Machado we were at least in 3rd place maybe even second!"

Remember how I kept saying they thought they were bidding against themselves, doing Machado a favor, and that no one else was close? Kenny literally says it.

Now this will be fun. It's a shame that Thanos is being portrayed as wanting less life. It's a shame that Chicago winters are being portrayed as cold. Everyone play along, pick the most obvious thing you can and describe how it's a true shame that it's being portrayed as true!

1. Maybe they're dumb enough to believe that. I dunno, they're pretty dumb. 2. Personally, I think they just were dumb enough to believe that these guys would only take $200 million deals and anything beyond that was bidding against themselves, so they were cocky and thought this would be easy.

And ownership protects them, for whatever reason. Whether it's money, or that they're yes-men, or that they've made sure to surround themselves with yes-men to avoid accountability...whatever it is, there is no failure too big for this ownership.

"Don't be mad at ownership for not signing these guys, your organization just sucks"

Unfortunately, the same person who is making the spending decisions is also the person willing to keep Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams on in their roles. You're arguing for JR not selling - that argument also means you're ok with many more years of Rick Hahn. So here's a choice for you then - you get a new ownership group who has more spending constraints, but you get rid of this inept front office staff and clean house top to bottom. You ok with that?

The fact that they did the party bus alonso and jay moves and just expected Machado to take a huge discount because of it definitely shows that the effort wasn't serious.

Really? What did our clown say?

So we're unwilling to spend right now, but if they sold the team, they might be equally unwilling to spend when appropriate? Am I reading this right or have we even given up on the idea that things could get worse if they sell and now just arguing that it doesn't matter because the franchise is doomed?

A handful of people had hope, one or two people kept saying they were "heading towards the open door" or "under the radar", but yeah it was always remote.

Had Rick Hahn done his job y'all could have taunted me. Hold that against him.

IMO - they really believed it, they just really thought these guys were going to be available at around $200 million and it would be easy, so why not be cocky.

The fact that Jerry is a bad owner is why he employs a bad GM.

At the very least, none of those guys are worth more today than when they were drafted.

Hell that description works for Semien for Samardzija too.

Palka has at least 1 option remaining.

Most losses in baseball by >10 since he took over.

The other part of the plan moving forward literally requires the pitching staff to develop into an elite unit. They acquired a ton of starting pitchers. They acquired a ton of relievers. They acquired so many that, prior to the appearance of Eloy, people were asking if that was all they were going to acquire. That pitching staff has to develop into an elite unit - if it doesn't, then since they won't pay for premium offensive players, then this team will go no where.

I think Colome + Nova last year is pretty close to the WAR from Frazier or Samardzija (remember for Samardzija there's that weird thing where in 2015 the defense was so bad that the algorithms couldn't figure out how to handle it, so for all the pitchers the rWAR and fWAR are very different).