southsider2k5

Just take guys in the trenches and rebuild from the inside out. The O line is really expensive and will need new blood once the cap problems get bad here in a few years.

I am surprised we have gotten the Merkin piece about how bad the Reds offer actually is to counter the Cincy narrative TBH.

That's my thought too. Unless he is hitting .350, pitch to him.

Let's be honest, the guys they got are filler for a good team

He also screams utility to super-utility guy to me.

Purdy is probably on the Mt Rushmore of smartest QBs in football Dude makes more out of a pretty mediocre bag of tools than just about any QB in the NFL. The top guys all have big arms, legs, or both. Purdy just sees the field in about 0.5 speed, while everyone else is running at 1.2. He makes it look easy. If Caleb gets a fraction of that football IQ, he is a half a billion dollar QB.

I mean specifically guys who were here both last year and this year. Thinking of the improvement in Williams and Odunze year of year as examples. Swift was borderline unplayable last year.

And now is the time for a guy like him to take up the OF, not when he hits the majors. If you KNOW there are guys in front of him, let him learn a new defensive position in the least stressful position possible, the minors.

For real. Run him out there for six weeks and see what happens. If he is Carlton Fisk out there, reevaluate before opening day.

I keep telling myself to think a couple of things. #1 it is obvious the dude didn't get coached AT ALL last year. Not only Caleb, but the entire team. It is uncanny how much improvement the Bears squeezed out of the exact same guys from year to year. #2, The Bears have seen a crazy amount of injuries this year. The WRs, secondary. and LB positions have just been decimated with injuries. For Williams specifically, about the time he seems to get chemistry going with someone, they get hurt. The improvements we saw over the season from Buden, Loveland, and Odunze, and Williams ability to find them make me think this will continue in the right direction. #3, get The Bears a real pass rush, and keep Caleb out of desperation time for every game, and this team is going to be unreal.

I am about 98% sure that they gave Caleb a directive this year that if he isn't 100% sure on a throw, throw it away, because anytime it is a 50/50 throw, it goes into the sideline.

I doubt him running around the OF would be good for all of the pulls he seems to get.

For me personally this would be awesome. Braden Fiske on the Rams Dline went through my high school.

Dude is a replacement level LF with minimal power who can't play defense. He is worth nothing. He's the guy who signs for a million or two when everything falls through.

I went back and looked it up. -0.2 fWAR in 3 seasons for basically $43 million, including that 0.2 last season, even while playing about 400 games in those 3 seasons. $43 million for a below replacement player. Sounds like a great justification for walking papers to me.

Which means they clearly signed him to keep him, because the market hasn't really changed.

Again, should that be worth 10 million dollars to Chris Getz, because from what we have been told, this is where the market has been for a year now.

But teams refuse to give value for the option, and have for a while now.

But wait, we can pick up his option again!

Which is exactly why repeating the cycle is such a waste.

Yet teams haven't valued him that way.

This is the first time I can recall making a case for Benny, post signing.

Essentially it is. They seem determined to get "value" for Robert, even though for years now they haven't agreed on what that "value" is. I think of it this way. Two months ago, you could have let Robert go for almost nothing. Then you obligated yourself to $20 million for him. Now, if we were willing to pay $10 million dollars we could supposedly have Chase Petty, a Comp Pick, and maybe another post TJS pitcher. If you remove Robert's name, essentially we would be paying $10 million for the two players and the draft pick. That's 12 years of pretty highly thought of pitchers, plus the 72nd pick in the draft (including the extra draft cap space of around $1.15m based on LY). So is that "value"? Isn't that about what we turned down in July, and not too far off of what Cincy offered a year ago? If that has been his worth for a year now, why did we bring him back knowing what his worth has been?

Which is what makes this song and dance so weird. What we know so far is that apparently no one was willing to put a decent return out there for Robert. We pick him up again on a one year option at 20 million, and again put a price tag much higher than his injury history and contract status valued him a few short months ago, and around we go again. Why? So we can get to July with him probably playing around 60% of the season, another stretch injured, and maybe a month where everything went right, so that teams can again value him as an injury riddled rental? We have done this for YEARS now. Why?

At the end of the day he is owed 2/30. Release him like a real big boy organization and move on.