Words by Alan Cerenil (@snobworthy)
Sports Illustrated recently came out with their win projections for the upcoming baseball season and they projected the Cubs to win 66 games and the White Sox to win 67 games. Yikes! The projections from Sports Illustrated are not the end all be all, but they do represent a not-so-bright view that many baseball analysts, commenters, and media types have on the teams that call Chicago home. To put it nicely, the Cubs and White Sox are not going to be very good this season. If the projections are off by five, or even ten games, it’s still going to be a miserable season for both teams and their fans. Despite the bleak outlook for the Cubs and Sox for this season; the future might tell another story. There is reason for optimism on one side of town and reason for despair for the other side of town.
Nothing the Cubs do on the field this season really matters in the long-term. That may seem like a bold statement but it’s absolutely true. There might be two or three players on the opening day roster that will still be on the team when the Cubs are ready to contend in 2014 or 2015. The Cubs future lies within their young players in the minor leagues. Maybe the only reason to watch the team is to see how wunderkind Starlin Castro develops. He was a all-star in his sophomore year last season, and has the ability to be a MVP type player if he continues his offensive progression and improves on defense.
The Cubs offseason approach was to find bargains on players coming off bad years, such as David DeJesus and Ian Stewart, and to try to attain to most team friendly assets they possibly can in acquiring players such as Chris Volstad, Travis Wood, and more. If the Cubs do stumble into a competitive season and in a division chase, I would suspect they will sell high on their productive players and get back valuable prospects in return — instead of being fooled into believing they could actually make the playoffs.
In fact, the Cubs best acquisition or acquisitions won’t see one minute of play this season. Their best acquisitions came when they hired Theo Epstein away from the Boston Red Sox last November to be President of Baseball Operations. Theo promptly hired Jed Hoyer as General Manager, and Jason McLeod to head the scouting department. Get familiar with the names Theo, Jed, and Jason because those three are responsible for the turn around of the team. They represent some of the best and brightest minds in baseball.
A lot of work has to be done to make the Cubs into a championship level team but they are finally on the right path. The Cubs have a front office staff that’s playing the game in its modern form, not the way it was played in the past. In previous years the Cubs hardly relied on statistical analysis to run their team. Instead they ran the team like mom and pop store, relying solely on old school ways of thought, ignoring the statistical revolution that was taking place within baseball.
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All those wrigley bars were right except for Smart bar. that is the least douchy club/bar in Chicago. Bunch of old school house heads in a shitty ass basement listening and dancing to some dirty beats.