Two-Gun Pete

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/dylan-cease/18525/stats?position=P Cease sucks at baseball right now. He may be good someday, but the window is open now. His BB/9IP, K/9IP, & HR/9IP all say that he sucks. He & Kopech should go fuck off in Charlotte, & find the strike zone. If they can find the strike zone later in 2021, they can rejoin the roster. But counting on a fucking walkathon like Cease to start the season is stoopid.

Maybe. But then we'll all get to treasure the sight of Cease walking the fucking yard every 5 days.

Under this salary cap? Sure, I suppose if you cut enough salary, the bears could fit Wentz into the roster. Of course, a Wentz-led team would probably be undermanned and underwhelming. And then Wentz would get hurt. Again.

Don't be dishonest. You're smarter than that. Comparing a guy with >1 year of control is not at all materially the same as a guy with 1 year or less of control. Lynn had >1 year of control, so he wasn't really as much of a rental as he is today, or in July.

For a rental? Yes, I'm inclined to believe that in a season like one with COVID-related financial restrictions, and a pending work stoppage, that rentals will be cheap.

Exactly right. This is/was stoopid. They could have had BOTH an innings eater NOW, and a rental later. This is dumb, IMO.

Its a question of STARTING your season-long stocking of the rotation with a rental in Lynn NOW, vs. Signing "innings eaters" now, then seeing what Lopez/Cease/Kopech can do during the season, then acquiring a rental during the TDL. Had they done the smart thing, and added Q early on in the offseason, I have no doubt he would have signed here. Oh well, we're stuck back in clown college now. Let's add control, just after having given it away.

My view was that the team you start the year with would be different than the team @ the TDL, which would be different than the team entering the playoffs. So, my view was to get reliable innings in FA during the offseason, then trade for a top-end rental @ the TDL. So, I'm not debating whether or not a Keuchel-like SP in Q (seriously, look at their projections) would be better than Lynn. I'm arguing that Q for just money NOW, + more assets NOW, + a TDL rental like Lynn would have been a better allocation of assets. And likely, less costly. Going from trading away control of assets, to trying to trade FOR controllable assets is a good way to spend more in cash and assets, while shortening a window. IOW, its fucking stoopid.

So let's get this straight: Instead of just signing a controllable SP like Q for JUST MONEY, they're going to trade MORE assets away for a controllable SP, after having traded away assets for a fat 34 year old rental. Do I have this correct? If so, it would appear that they're royally fucking up this offseason.

I just wonder if THIS roster, with THIS coaching staff, and THAT front office has a chance to win the super bowl. I also wonder if THIS team can win THIS super bowl. To me, I don't believe so. I believe the organization would be better off to fire everyone, and start the rebuild.

Yeah, you're probably right. It's better for the BEARS to win out, make their draft position shittier, all so that they can lose in the first round of the playoffs this year, AND keep the fucking geniuses in place that made this team such a juggernaut.

LOL, I have the exact opposite example of a client whose daughter wanted to go to Mizzou Journalism School. However, her parents were divorced, and the savings weren't in place for her to pay for it. She wanted to stoopidly squander tens of thousands of dollars, taking 100-level classes, while living in a dorm for a couple of years. According to This, she was looking at $23k/yr, at least until she got Missouri residency. Instead, she took additional AP level classes her senior year of high school, which cut into the entry level courses she needed. Then, she took more of the useless 100-level courses at a local juco. Between the AP classes and juco, she was able to finish all her prerequisites in one year, having spent some~$5k, all in; had she gone to Mizzou straight away, it could have been as much as $46k in debt, plus interest for the same outcome. She then transferred to Mizzou Journalism, graduated, and is now working up in Milwaukee. What sets her apart from her peers is that she has ~$40k less in debt, and can support herself, AND pay off her debt. She can go to grad school without worrying about being perma-poor. She can choose to start a business in the future, and provide value, opportunity, and innovation, if she wants. She can settle down, get married, start a family, and buy real estate, if she wants. Consigning our young to a lifetime of debt servitude aint worth a couple years in a dorm. The numbers simply don't lie. We as a society need to choose better, IMO.

Yeah, I see that this had already been covered before i got back to you. But, centuries before petty nobility member Karl Marx wrote that bullshit, rich Dutch businessmen from Amsterdam and Rotterdam paid a fuckton to have paintings done of them. Centuries before that, the Catholic Church paid a fuckton of money to have paintings and sculptures done for them. Centuries before that, Roman emperors did the same, and so did the ancient Egyptian pharaohs as well. So, aside from Marx having been a shit talker who never worked a day in his life, the rich have always supported the arts and music. To the bolded, what if youre self employed? Do you get screwed out of a free education, while sheeple who work in corporate America get theirs for free? What if you work for a non-profit that do not have the funding to pay for your education? While I agree with more equitable funding of education, I don't know that having "businesses pay for your education" will turn out at all as you envisioned.

Sure. Back before the great recession, lenders gave out NINA Loans (no documented income, no documented assets) that were negative amortization, and interest only. In other words, shitty/no underwriting. I know; back then I originated loans, but left the industry before the recession. Since then, there arent any NINA mortgages any more. For residential real estate, you gotta produce some proof of income, and some proof of assets for the overwhelming majority of mortgages. Also, compare the Case Shiller Index to the rate of inflation in college costs. The former is relatively level, while the latter have climbed grotesquely. Go ahead & check how much college costs have gone up since ~2005, compared to the case skillet index. One has gone up, without any correction. The other (real estate) still hasn't gotten back to the levels it was at back then. Ya know what ARE a type of "NINA LOAN?" Student loans. Pretty much everyone who wants one can get one, and pretty much as much as they want. Even if you'll NEVER be able to pay them off, you can get as much as you want. And this is part of the reason why college costs are out of control, while student/parent debt continues to rise faster than most other types of debt.

FFS, the G supports homebuying/builders/real estate types through their support of all sorts of mortgage programs, and by buying some MBS. But, the mortgages are underwritten. (i.e. tied to valuation, & to the borrowers ability to repay.) And, they can be relieved through bankruptcy. What's resulted from underwriting & relievability is that not EVERYONE who can fog a mirror gets a mortgage. And, the price of residential real estate hasn't escalated out of control over the course of decades. If they did the same with student loans, the cost of college would moderate. Fewer students/families would be buried in debt, IMO.

Dude, come up with a better line of reasoning than this. You feign outrage at a ~$10k or so bit of relief, while yawn at millions of free cash to Kanye. I mean, reconcile that, or accept being a hypocrite.

Yawn. We pick winners and losers all the time in this society. For example, the (permanent) corporate tax cuts in 2017, coupled with the trillion dollar deficits gave cash to the todays rich, while fucking over future taxpayers, by means of piles of debt. We continue to mint pennies, at a loss, all to succor a few miner interests, rather than doing away with them. I'm talking about allowing those who made shitty bets on their education to use the courts, just as your president did to find some relief. AND/or, for those who are terminally overburdened, to be given some measure of relief by allowing some debt to be forgiven/written off. Why not forgive some student loans, just as PPP loans for Kanye west and other billionaires were forgiven? Some named recipients But yeah, according to you, some schmuck who borrowed student loans is a greater sin than Kanye West getting free money, right? And that aside, if you get the red ass over student loan forgiveness, then means-test it. Or limit it to bachelor's degrees. Or limit it after a certain period of time/amount paid out. It ain't that hard to work this out. Because again, the courts haven't helped out student borrowers, and the overwhelming majority of student borrowers have paid more back than Ice Cube or Kanye did for their PPP loans.

Ya know, usually I roll my eyes when I see your posts over here. BUT, college education's inflationary pressures are indeed tied to the easy money associated with student debt. Student loans are the only loans [to my knowledge] that are: 1. Not tied to the value of the item you're purchasing [i.e. your potential future earnings]. A year of tuition is $14,904 at SIU, whether you stoopidly pursue a degree in English, or a degree in Electrical Engineering. 2. Not tied to your future ability to repay. Again, you can borrow the SAME AMOUNT, whether you major in Art History, Recreation, Business Analytics, Nursing, or Civil Engineering. 3. Not able to be discharged through the courts, if one makes a bad bet, based on teenaged stupidity. 4. Not really subject to very much underwriting, given the previous 3 items in this list The first two items speak to luring a stoopid child into a lifetime of debt servitude. The last two items speaks to lenders giving up loans like a $10 whore, without any worry about the ability to repay, or the consequences to the borrower or to society as a whole. On balance, the pricing structure of a college education is all fucked up. If future borrowers knew they could discharge their loans through a bankruptcy, maybe lenders would demand some reasonable sort of underwriting. Which would then tend to make the REAL majors that can lead to a REAL middle-class lifestyle properly priced, while worthless piece of shit majors that help grocery stores and starbucks in their recruitment more properly priced as well. Then, there's this 19th Century relic of having to "go away to school," which was borne out of having centers of learned men being the only place you could learn anything. Nowadays? Not so much. Greg can learn real information about the real world, if he used the google machine. So can Gen Z-types, whether they're in their mommy's house, or away in Carbondale. To me, extending loans to a child, so that (s)he can live in a dorm [$10K+/year @ SIU, so a total of an ADDITIONAL ~$40K of debt before interest] doesn't make any fucking sense, either. Why do we allow borrowers to borrow money to live in a dorm at all? And, seeing the vomit-inducing contract just given out to Bielema (sp?) as the new highest-paid state of Illinois employee, don't get me started. U of C, Loyola, and UIC all seem to do just fine without a college football program. But that's a whole other irritant to me as a taxpayer in a broke state with tons of shitty sports programs that waste taxpayers' and students' dollars. So, TL;DR: Children are enticed to borrow money. SOME borrow TOO MUCH money, relative to what they get. Lenders don't bother with underwriting. Schools get away with charging whatever they want. I agree with you. The pricing structure of a degree is all fucked up.

OK. So, if a grown man, who claims to be a billionaire, and a business guru, and a real estate genius makes an idiotic bet on an Atlantic City Casino, we as a society ABSOLUTELY MUST allow the courts to relieve him of the debts he/his business incurred. BUT, if a stupid, naive, 17 or 18 year old makes a bad bet on what sort of education to pursue, then FUCK THEM, they made their own bed, and they have to fucking pay up? Am I reading what society thinks correctly here? Is ONE wealth redistribution to the rich, but not the other? Do middle income types not pay additional vigorish when they borrow, while rich lucky sperm fucks who rip off the system get off scot-free? I'm not picking at you, and yes, you did the right thing to pay off your debts; Your reward was that you didn't have to undergo bankruptcy and the wasted years waiting to be allowed to be a borrower again. You did good. Better, even, than some schmuck who inherited MILLIONS, and then made moronic bets on how to run a casino. But we're asking inexperienced teenagers to make bets on themselves, in a world that requires an education to "move up."

OK, I know this wasn't your intention in posting this, and I really don't mean to pick on you. But, whenever I read shit like the bolded, I think, "OK, Boomer." Fucking working full-time in the summer and part-time the rest of the year MIGHT, just MIGHT get you through a year or so of Moraine Valley or College of DuPage. The world has changed, and not for the better for today's generation. When you post shit like the bolded, it makes you sound as out of touch as geezing geezers who complain about how candy or The Tribune used to be a nickel.

On the one hand, I'm of the belief that once someone makes a mistake, and makes amends, (s)he should be forgiven, and life should go on. After all, who among us hasn't fucked up in life? [Yes, I recognize that there are varying degrees of fucking up, and that this ideal I hold can be tested any number of ways.] That said, I hold certain folks among us to a higher degree of responsibility than others. In THIS case, a fabulously wealthy senior citizen, who has the resources to be driven wherever-the-fuck he wants, AND has already fucked up in life should fucking know better. Were he a young man, or too poor to get home any other way, or had never fucked up before, I might be more leniently-minded. So, I do think that TLR should have known better, AND had the cash and/or credit to afford a limo, AND had the name recognition to get a ride anytime of day or night, AND in the day and age of Uber, there is no fucking way this should have happened. At a minimum, he should have been let go, but even better, he shouldn't have even been given the chance to re-offend, while managing an MLB team. This just sucks.

Yeah, the one or two fat fucks that that were able to stay effective means that EVERY fat fuck stays effective as he ages. AMIRITE?

Yeah, I doubt that this org, which fucked up the development of other SP prospects, had the foresight to do as you suggested here. Dunning going into 2019 was just coming off 62 IP at AA; in March of that year, he had TJ surgery. Meanwhile, other SP prospects either failed to develop (Fulmer), got injured/failed to develop (Rodon), are on their way to failing (Lopez), or are less promising now than going into 2019 (Cease/Kopech). So even if this org had a pump & dump scheme for Dunning planned going into 2019, it makes little-to-no sense now. Dunning was only called up in 2020 because of the ineffectiveness of the SPs ahead of him. Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is probably true: there was no pump & dump scheme planned for Dunning by this org. They simply stupidly overpaid for a rental, full stop.

Copy/pasted from another thread: Big Pitching FAs next year Young Dylan Bundy Stroman Gausman Syndegaard McCullers Eduardo Rodriguez Vets Kershaw Greinke Scherzer Add in Lynn, and that's 10 possible rentals that could've been gotten for much less at the TDL. I fully get that Lynn has been great, and may well be great again in his age 34 season. But why in God's name spend an asset to have the right to pay Lynn? Why not make a couple of SP signings (for money ONLY) during the offseason, and then re-evaluate at the TDL? Maybe Cease gets his shit sorted, or Kopech picks his head up. If not, maybe you go grab Scherzer to finish the job, or even Wheeler. Winning the WS requires getting to the playoffs, as healthy as possible, and being the hottest team once you're there. It doesn't require that you have the best record over 162. To me, the health part means having depth; the "hottest team" part means making the best moves at the TDL. Oh well, GM TLR has spoken, I guess. I hope Lynn's doughy 34 year old body holds up.

Yeah, this was definitely a tank loss. The 2021 and 2022 BEARS will be worse because of this tank loss.