All Quiet on the Cubs Front
These few weeks before spring training starts is about as dull as it gets around these parts. We're all still waiting on Cespedes, but with Jedstein and their cone of silence, it's not like we can expect many leaks. There's also the case of the musical 40-man roster chairs with the Cubs having to drop someone once they add Gerardo Concepcion. Vegas money should be on Andy Sonnastine with Marcus Mateo and his lack of options a strong second. And the issue of compensation for both Theo and Jed still looms with no foreseeable end in sight.
I've got my annual prospect list-mania post coming up for Monday which always includes my delusional top 16 which should be good for laugh. It doesn't appear our pal Arizona Phil put up a list this year unfortunately, so you'll have to get your prospect fix from the national guys.
Speaking of Arizona, I'm sure most of you know about "Boys of Spring", the site run by the spring training P.A. announcer Tim Sheridan. While we anxiously await Arizona Phil's wonderfully detailed posts from camp, that can hold you over with pretty pictures. From what I can encode from his posts so far, the following have showed up at Arizona: Justin Bour, Zeke DeVoss, Dustin Geiger, Josh Vitters, Jim Adduci, Matt Cerda, Tony Campana, Dave Sappelt, Jeff Samardzija, David DeJesus, Darwin Barney, Matt Garza, Dale Sveum and Dave McKay. I'm sure there are others, but those seem to be the ones mentioned. He did a little paraphrasing from a pep talk Sveum was giving the kids earlier last week.
- There will be no excuses for not doing something the right way.
- Theo Epstein is one of the smartest people he's ever been around, and that Theo will not accept mediocrity, not from himself, not from anyone.
- Making excuses is caused by your own insecurities and lack of preparation.
- So many games are won by one run and the Cubs will prepare and do all the little things the right way in order to be the team that wins those close games.
- He also told the guys they are being given the greatest opportunity in all of sports, to be the players who win it all after 103 years.
The words sound nice, let's see if he backs it up with some Soriano benching when he glides into 2nd base after a drive to right center that he gawked at.
Back to Cespedes, George Ofman whom rivals Phil Rogers in bad scoops, did tweet that someone has made a bigger offer for the Cuban outfielder than the Marlins and we obviously know the Cubs interest. Time will tell...
I leave you with these words from the Cubs Ivy League leader.
"I don't agree with the word 'rebuilding' ever," he said. "Because, for one thing, it denotes that you're building something that already existed, but that's not how baseball works. You're constantly growing and moving onto the next iteration of the club, so I think building is the appropriate [word] -- sure we're building in Chicago, but we went through some building phases here. The art of it is trying to do it in a way where nobody notices. When you're winning 95 games a year and getting into the playoffs, then people don't notice that we've integrated a lot of this talent and we've made a lot of short-term sacrifices for long-term stability. I think there were a lot of times when we were able to pull that off here [in Boston], there were a lot of times that we failed as well."
Until Monday...
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