The Cubs Way/The Plan

[Farewell Friends]

What's the revisionist history? Bryant was Player of the Year, slugged .800, outhomered 80 percent of D1 teams and walked 1.5 times more than he struck out. It didn't take a lot of guts to make that pick.

[illiniguy]

What's the revisionist history? Bryant was Player of the Year, slugged .800, outhomered 80 percent of D1 teams and walked 1.5 times more than he struck out. It didn't take a lot of guts to make that pick.

Almost every prospect draft guy had Bryant behind both pitchers I mentioned. He wasn't a slam dunk at 2.

[obucard]

What's the revisionist history? Bryant was Player of the Year, slugged .800, outhomered 80 percent of D1 teams and walked 1.5 times more than he struck out. It didn't take a lot of guts to make that pick.

Almost every prospect draft guy had Bryant behind both pitchers I mentioned. He wasn't a slam dunk at 2.

But was he considered a slam dunk as a prospect?

[illiniguy]

What's the revisionist history? Bryant was Player of the Year, slugged .800, outhomered 80 percent of D1 teams and walked 1.5 times more than he struck out. It didn't take a lot of guts to make that pick.

Almost every prospect draft guy had Bryant behind both pitchers I mentioned. He wasn't a slam dunk at 2.

But was he considered a slam dunk as a prospect?

Yes, although there was questions if he could stick at 3rd and if he'd ever hit for much average. I'd say he's exceeded the expectations.

[Wally-Higgins]

What's the revisionist history? Bryant was Player of the Year, slugged .800, outhomered 80 percent of D1 teams and walked 1.5 times more than he struck out. It didn't take a lot of guts to make that pick.

It was pretty much a consensus leading up to the draft that Appel/Gray would go 1/2. Bryant was highly thought of, but not like he is now. Reports said he wouldn't stick at 3rd and might not make enough contact to maintain a serviceable batting average. Its worth noting here that the Astros, who amusingly tanked longer and harder than the Cubs, drafted a guy with a 5.00 career minor league ERA ahead of Bryant. You could say that this isn't impressive because the Cubs had an "F pitchers" philosophy in all of their top draft picks and so passing on Gray was natural. But, the Cubs' F pitchers philosophy is in and of itself impressive so that wouldn't get you far.

The real impressive one, speaking of the draft, is Kyle Schwarber. He was supposed to go somewhere between 10-16 in that draft, and they took him at 4. I had paid a lot of attention to who the Cubs might take with that pick and I don't ever remember hearing his name. For the record, only 3 players drafted after Schwarber in round 1 have made it to the majors yet. They mostly suck, whereas just reading Schwarber's name probably strikes a little bit of fear into your heart. OK, so, in 2012 they drafted Albert Almora when Addison Russell and Corey Seager were available. I would include Wacha on that list, but F pitchers. That wasn't so impressive.

The one thing that you might call unethical that they did during the 'tanking' was fill their roster out with players they knew wouldn't improve the team enough to accidentally end up competing, but were good enough to bring back good value in a trade at the deadline. Hammel, Feldman, Dejesus, Schierholtz come to mind but there were others, too. And while you may call that unethical, I call that smart. I like smart. And, other than that, they drafted and traded extremely well and had some success (and some failure) in the free agent market. It takes some real dedication to ignoring facts to call what the Cubs did unimpressive, or even to say that it is anything but very impressive. Also, I have some wise cracks about hacking and Astros if you were to come too hard on the unethical line.

and while I'm here, in response to the guy who said that he wants Theo to take on a real challenge in San Diego....actually, I want him to go to the Rockies when he's done in Chicago. How cool would that be to have someone crack the code to building a consistent winner in Colorado? Wait, did I say cool? I meant underwhelming and tainted by lack of immediate dominance.

[zac]

The level of jealousy and crying in this thread is ridiculous.

Its preposterous to expect a team to waste money to get to mediocrity when the entire cupboard was barren to start with. When Hendry was fired the team was an absolute mess. It was saddled with several bad contracts, had few talented controllable assets (Castro is an idiot who had a poor work ethic and attitude from day one), and had a completely barren farm system. He recognized almost every successful team was built around internal (non-FA) assets and went about the smartest and most efficient way in obtaining them.

[expletive] all you want, but the Cubs could not realistically contend for much of anything the first few years, regardless of how much money they spent. They would have been wasting money on mediocrity and hurting the team's outlook moving forward. Theo didn't intentionally tank, rather he didn't wast money on meaningless high dollar free agents. Instead, he identified "bargain" players that could be signed to attractive short term deals. If it was so easy then why was Theo the first GM to pull it off. He turned Garza, Dempster, Feldman, Cashner etc. into Russell, McKinney, Strop, Arrieta (a lot of luck in how that turned out but the Cardinals are no stranger to that) Rizzo, Hendricks, and Grimm. Two of his big FAs were FANTASTIC last year, while Heyward is still young enough to at least be useful. He's made some mistakes, like Edwin Jackson but they have been few and far between.

Having the money to go after the manager you want, build a top notch organization (staffing), and sign anybody you really want is useful. But there are few teams that have EVER drafted as successfully with their high draft picks (there have been several times), retool as well via trades, and orchestrate moves as deftly as Epstein.

Everybody talks about the "Cardinal way" but let's be real: the Cardinals had a LOT of things go their way for the better part of a decade. Albert Pujuls, who could have been drafted by anyone, turned into one of the greatest players of our generation. They drafted a HOF catcher in the 4th round. They had several players that sucked before they StL, became All-Stars out of nowhere, and sucked when they left. Guys like Lance Berkman, after years of decline, came and had career years. Chris Carpenter becomes a Cy Young pitcher. Guys like Bo Hart, who were nothings in the minors, have career professional years with the big club. While the organization deserves a lot of credit of some of these moves, I'm sure they'll be the first to admit they would have been THRILLED if Berkman hit 270-280 with a 350/450 slash line or if Hart simply wasn't a black hole when called up.

Just like Theo would be the first to admit he wasn't sure Rizzo would develop like he has, or that Bryant would improve at the rate that he's seen. It's a lot of luck, but other clubs have had the opportunities to leverage certain advantages and few have been able to compare to, let alone beat, Epstein in several categories.

The best thing about Theo is that he admits from his mistakes and tries to learn from them. He is far and away the best GM/Operations guru in the game and the lack of credit he gets in this thread is a joke. Regardless of your fandom.





Theo was a mastermind in rebuilding the farm system; he recognized the value in trading valuable short-term contracts ([expletive] all you want but he's by far the best in the business at this), got the most from his high profile draft picks, and smartly utilized his international FA dollars. When considering the mess he walked into the speed at which he accomplished this was incredible

[zac]

People also tend to forget the Cubs were actually competitive in the first half of those seasons. But smartly, being as they weren't real contenders, they sold off their best assets to the highest bidder, as any smart team should have done.

Moreover it's harder to be a "model franchise" and exploit advantages the lesser franchises couldn't identify. The Twins were competitive for many years by spending a lot of their money on drafting and development. Billy Beane exploited poorly understood metrics to build some of his Oakland teams. But now EVERYONE has an analytics department and there are few idiots like Bowden et al running teams. IMO it makes Theo's feats even more impressive.

[Farewell Friends]

I've seen nothing to suggest the Cubs saw something in Bryant the Astros did not. The Astros drafted on need instead of taking the best available player. When the biggest knock on Bryant is that he might move to the outfield and "only" have a 50 hit tool to go with his 70 power, then he's the best pick, no hindsight needed.

[dmarx114]

The level of jealousy and crying in this thread is ridiculous.

Its preposterous to expect a team to waste money to get to mediocrity when the entire cupboard was barren to start with. When Hendry was fired the team was an absolute mess. It was saddled with several bad contracts, had few talented controllable assets (Castro is an idiot who had a poor work ethic and attitude from day one), and had a completely barren farm system. He recognized almost every successful team was built around internal (non-FA) assets and went about the smartest and most efficient way in obtaining them.

[expletive] all you want, but the Cubs could not realistically contend for much of anything the first few years, regardless of how much money they spent. They would have been wasting money on mediocrity and hurting the team's outlook moving forward. Theo didn't intentionally tank, rather he didn't wast money on meaningless high dollar free agents. Instead, he identified "bargain" players that could be signed to attractive short term deals. If it was so easy then why was Theo the first GM to pull it off. He turned Garza, Dempster, Feldman, Cashner etc. into Russell, McKinney, Strop, Arrieta (a lot of luck in how that turned out but the Cardinals are no stranger to that) Rizzo, Hendricks, and Grimm. Two of his big FAs were FANTASTIC last year, while Heyward is still young enough to at least be useful. He's made some mistakes, like Edwin Jackson but they have been few and far between.

Having the money to go after the manager you want, build a top notch organization (staffing), and sign anybody you really want is useful. But there are few teams that have EVER drafted as successfully with their high draft picks (there have been several times), retool as well via trades, and orchestrate moves as deftly as Epstein.

Everybody talks about the "Cardinal way" but let's be real: the Cardinals had a LOT of things go their way for the better part of a decade. Albert Pujuls, who could have been drafted by anyone, turned into one of the greatest players of our generation. They drafted a HOF catcher in the 4th round. They had several players that sucked before they StL, became All-Stars out of nowhere, and sucked when they left. Guys like Lance Berkman, after years of decline, came and had career years. Chris Carpenter becomes a Cy Young pitcher. Guys like Bo Hart, who were nothings in the minors, have career professional years with the big club. While the organization deserves a lot of credit of some of these moves, I'm sure they'll be the first to admit they would have been THRILLED if Berkman hit 270-280 with a 350/450 slash line or if Hart simply wasn't a black hole when called up.

Just like Theo would be the first to admit he wasn't sure Rizzo would develop like he has, or that Bryant would improve at the rate that he's seen. It's a lot of luck, but other clubs have had the opportunities to leverage certain advantages and few have been able to compare to, let alone beat, Epstein in several categories.

The best thing about Theo is that he admits from his mistakes and tries to learn from them. He is far and away the best GM/Operations guru in the game and the lack of credit he gets in this thread is a joke. Regardless of your fandom.





Theo was a mastermind in rebuilding the farm system; he recognized the value in trading valuable short-term contracts ([expletive] all you want but he's by far the best in the business at this), got the most from his high profile draft picks, and smartly utilized his international FA dollars. When considering the mess he walked into the speed at which he accomplished this was incredible

Just gotta add that Jocketty deserves a lot of credit for signing Carpenter, fully knowing he would miss the first season. I don't consider that signing luck.

Pujols was lucky.

[go birds]

The level of jealousy and crying in this thread is ridiculous.

Its preposterous to expect a team to waste money to get to mediocrity when the entire cupboard was barren to start with. When Hendry was fired the team was an absolute mess. It was saddled with several bad contracts, had few talented controllable assets (Castro is an idiot who had a poor work ethic and attitude from day one), and had a completely barren farm system. He recognized almost every successful team was built around internal (non-FA) assets and went about the smartest and most efficient way in obtaining them.

[expletive] all you want, but the Cubs could not realistically contend for much of anything the first few years, regardless of how much money they spent. They would have been wasting money on mediocrity and hurting the team's outlook moving forward. Theo didn't intentionally tank, rather he didn't wast money on meaningless high dollar free agents. Instead, he identified "bargain" players that could be signed to attractive short term deals. If it was so easy then why was Theo the first GM to pull it off. He turned Garza, Dempster, Feldman, Cashner etc. into Russell, McKinney, Strop, Arrieta (a lot of luck in how that turned out but the Cardinals are no stranger to that) Rizzo, Hendricks, and Grimm. Two of his big FAs were FANTASTIC last year, while Heyward is still young enough to at least be useful. He's made some mistakes, like Edwin Jackson but they have been few and far between.

Having the money to go after the manager you want, build a top notch organization (staffing), and sign anybody you really want is useful. But there are few teams that have EVER drafted as successfully with their high draft picks (there have been several times), retool as well via trades, and orchestrate moves as deftly as Epstein.

Everybody talks about the "Cardinal way" but let's be real: the Cardinals had a LOT of things go their way for the better part of a decade. Albert Pujuls, who could have been drafted by anyone, turned into one of the greatest players of our generation. They drafted a HOF catcher in the 4th round. They had several players that sucked before they StL, became All-Stars out of nowhere, and sucked when they left. Guys like Lance Berkman, after years of decline, came and had career years. Chris Carpenter becomes a Cy Young pitcher. Guys like Bo Hart, who were nothings in the minors, have career professional years with the big club. While the organization deserves a lot of credit of some of these moves, I'm sure they'll be the first to admit they would have been THRILLED if Berkman hit 270-280 with a 350/450 slash line or if Hart simply wasn't a black hole when called up.

Just like Theo would be the first to admit he wasn't sure Rizzo would develop like he has, or that Bryant would improve at the rate that he's seen. It's a lot of luck, but other clubs have had the opportunities to leverage certain advantages and few have been able to compare to, let alone beat, Epstein in several categories.

The best thing about Theo is that he admits from his mistakes and tries to learn from them. He is far and away the best GM/Operations guru in the game and the lack of credit he gets in this thread is a joke. Regardless of your fandom.





Theo was a mastermind in rebuilding the farm system; he recognized the value in trading valuable short-term contracts ([expletive] all you want but he's by far the best in the business at this), got the most from his high profile draft picks, and smartly utilized his international FA dollars. When considering the mess he walked into the speed at which he accomplished this was incredible

do i need to remind you that youre on a cardinals message board?

also, no one here talks about the "Cardinal Way", just as an FYI.