Quote:Theo Epstein has an open checkbook to sign players.  Anyone of us could drain a farm system to sign a reliever only to see him return to his original team at the end of the year.  It worked for the Cubs immediate season but don't tell me this is analytics.

 

The Yankees received a four-player package, headlined by top shortstop prospect Gleyber Torres, in exchange for Chapman

Quote:The Cubs’ new plan under Epstein started with ditching easy mediocrity for purposeful sucking: a complete rebuild, what we like to uncharitably describe as “tanking” — except that a data-driven approach to winning makes it clear that there are powerful incentives to losing 95 games instead of 85 games.


<p class="" style="font-family:'medium-content-serif-font', Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;font-size:21px;">Everyone on the Cubs team that Epstein inherited with any present value was sent packing, both to bring in prospects and to make the 2012 and 2013 teams worse on the field, giving the Cubs not only higher draft picks, but a larger draft budget under a new CBA that strictly limited how much teams could spend on amateur players. Those trades brought in guys like Travis Wood and Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks, while also ensuring that the Cubs would lose 197 games over a two-year span — their most ever — earning them top-five draft picks that they used on Kris Bryant and Kyle Schwarber.

<p class="" style="font-family:'medium-content-serif-font', Georgia, Cambria, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;font-size:21px;">The Cubs focused on drafting and developing hitters over pitchers because the data makes clear that young hitters are a much safer bet to develop: All you need to remember is that before the Cubs selected Bryant no. 2 overall in 2013, the Astros used the no. 1 pick on … Mark Appel. Along with nailing their draft picks for Bryant and Schwarber, they traded a pitcher (Andrew Cashner) for a hitter (Anthony Rizzo), and capped off the rebuilding process by trading a pair of starting pitchers (Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel) for a top shortstop prospect named Addison Russell.