At least you're understanding where I'm coming from.
Ok - fair enough.
All I've asked is for someone to show a realistic plan for success. No one's done it. Just bitching on top of bitching. The most valid argument I've heard is "Hey, we should've gotten fielder." Ok, but we didn't...Now what? Should we have given $250M/10 years to Cano? $20m/yr to Ellsbury or McCann? You can't just say "You've gotta get proven players to help." That part, I 100% agree with. But if you overpay for 3+ players, you get in the situation the Cubs are just coming out of (Sori, Zambrano, Aramis, etc) where you have a lot of dead weight making up 70% of the team's salary. You're completely handcuffed that way.
Whether people like to hear it or not, in order to have sustained success at the MLB level, you need a good farm system. The Cubs are getting there. It takes time. Not everyone is going to pan out. If we're lucky, half of them will...and that's if we're lucky....but you've gotta have some home-grown talent that performs @ the majors, as well as some tradeable assets in the farm.
Ask the Angels about that contract in two years.
You're welcome, sweetie. Been fun.
I've been in the "sign Tanaka if he's posted" and I would overpay in this instance as many know on here. One question I have is at what point do the Cubs actually start adding pieces to this puzzle?
If you trade Shark (which I am also in favor of), you have just removed another piece of the supposed core and more than likely replaced him with prospects. Now, if you sign Tanaka, the blow is lessened and if you don't, it is magnified for the short term, and the Cubs have pushed this derailed train back another year or two.
When does it stop?
Some on here seem to bank on Castro and Rizzo turning it around, but can a new coach really do that much? If you give those two young guys no veteran leadership and no help as far as a little power and protection, they will grow frustrated just as Shark has when they traded his cohorts away.
These are competitors, and all competitors hate losing. You can only ask them to be so patient, and the fans as well. The idea is to make your team attractive not only for your current players, but for future players and free agents as well. It is no secret why the Cardinals seem to get home town and free agent discounts on most players they acquire or extend.
By staying the course as the Cubs have, they have essentially forced themselves to overpay for players (see Anibal Sanchez and E-Jax) because if they use the Cubs as leverage and sign with another team, then you are forced to pay for pitchers you may have ordinarily taken a flyer on.
If you are competitive, Sanchez probably comes to the Cubs and E-Jax is somewhere else losing. Now the Cubs are probably somehow going to have to eat his salary and trade him off to a team for a low level prospect, and then complain that every dollar is spent. Again, when will it end?
If it were me, I throw all my efforts at Tanaka as plan A. Plan B is if he doesn't sign or isn't posted, I extend Wood and then I trade everybody on the team that has any chance of getting a prospect or a major league player in return to help the team move forward. That includes Shark, Barney, Russell, Jackson, and Schierholz. I see no point of adding 20 million to the payroll and this junky team to be a 95 loss team yet again.
At least by trading these guys away, I could understand the 100 plus losses that inevitably would happen, but in the end, I would get the #1 pick for sure in 2015, and probably some close to ready talent in return. In fact, I wouldn't be disappointed at all and would do backflips naked in my front yard if they signed Tanaka and extended Wood, and still traded all of those guys off. I think the Cubs would get to where they are going just as fast, if not faster.
