October 6, 2014

THE MESSENGER'S CLEAR MESSAGE

Lord Theo made his message clear last week on the State of the Cubs. (See previous post).
Now, minion GM Jed Hoyer was on the Kaplan radio show last week.

On trying to win via free agency: “Well I think if you look at the way baseball has evolved and become a younger man’s game, and look at the playoffs and the teams in the playoffs you can see it’s much less about (buying wins) than ever before. Look at the teams the last two nights with the Royals and Pirates. Those teams are built from within. The Giants have a big payroll but their talent is homegrown. You can’t do this through free agency anymore. It’s an out-of-date look at how to build a team now. … It’s an out-of-date philosophy on team building.”

On what pieces the Cubs are looking to add in free agency: “Theo said the other day that free agency is not for the faint of heart. You go into free agency knowing that 80 percent of players go to the team with the highest bid, and if there’s a lot of teams bidding, the bidding can get really high, and well beyond what you expect. No doubt there are a lot of risky investments in free agency. One of the things we think about as we build our team is we will have a lot of really young and inexpensive position players, so there’s a portfolio aspect of looking at your team. If you get a ton of value out of pre-arbitration players on offense, you can look at it and afford to go out and find some pitching if you don’t have that in the system. In general it’s rare to have no weakness in your farm system. It’s rare to cover every hole, so the area you want to pursue in free agency is to complete your team and figure out what you couldn’t do through the farm system and through the draft. You can complete those things in free agency, and that’s how we look at it.”

On if chairman Tom Ricketts will spend if there is an opportunity to make a splash: “No question. Tom has been so patient and so good to us as we’ve come to him and talked about our process and plan. He’s totally on board. The beauty of having an owner like this is he wants the team to be in the family forever, so let’s take the time to build it the right way so we can become one of those organizations everyone looks to. It’s clear they have a long vision in what they’re doing. When an owner has that vision, things almost always work out. Having patience in this business is almost always rewarded.”

On the criticism that the process is taking too long, and players like Javy Baez don’t look ready: “I think it’s expected. People put their Cubs hats on in the morning, and you’re a Cubs fan and you want to see the team win. When it’s not winning you get frustrated. That’s the nature of being a fan. We’re more likely to be patient than the fan base. And I think on the whole the fan base has been really patient. But not having people be critical of what we’re doing would be unusual.

“As far as Javy goes, we have all the faith in the world that Javy will make the adjustments, but I can guarantee almost all the guys we bring up will go through struggles, and their ability to work through those and make adjustments will impact whether they’re a big leaguer or not. At some point Jorge Soler will go through a slump, and when it happens people will question his swing or whatever is making him unsuccessful. … You can make a lot of really bad mistakes in this game by looking at 21- or 22-year-old players and determining after a short while they won’t make it and giving up on them. We believe in these guys and we’re gonna allow them some playing time and, potentially, some rough patches. Ricky (Renteria) is very patient with these guys. He knows these guys will struggle and he’s willing to go through that pain to get the reward at the other end. As far as Baez, it’s not the last time one of our guys will struggle, and that’s part of living with young players.”


>>>> Whoa, whoa whoa - - - MLB is a "young man's league?" "You can't build a team via free agency any more!"  You have to have homegrown talent. What a bulldozer full of crap: what teams are in the playoffs?  The Dodgers, Angels, Tigers - - - all spend huge dollars in free agents and take huge payroll risks. This is a clearer message than Theo's ramblings: THE CUBS ARE NOT SPENDING MONEY ON FREE AGENTS.

The Cubs value "pre-arbitration" players even in free agency which means FRINGE JOURNEYMEN like Valbuena, Ruggiano, Kalish, the types that got the team to a rousing last place finish. The reason: cost control. A first year arb player may get 25% of his FMV; a second year guy 50% and third year guy 75%. And you don't have to sign them long term and risk them getting injured on a year to year arb program.

If Ricketts wants to own the team "forever" then that really means he needs to save his money, cut down the debt and find more money sources besides baseball. So if he is "on board" with the plan to just get young players, then the plan is not to get old FA players = saving money. So much so, that the team is willing to let their prospects "go thorough rough patches" of pure suckage instead of winning with veterans.

Steve Rosenbloom is right: the Cubs keep talking down to fans as being stupid.