Cubs News & Notes – 12/1/16: CBA Slam Dunk, Cubs Will be Better Next Year, White Sox Trade Hopes

Photo of Jon Ferlise Jon FerliseDecember 1, 2016

I have to admit, I’m in a bit of a funk today. I was trolling the internet and found myself on the Chicago Cubs Twitter account where they had Tweeted a bunch of wonderful GIFs in celebration of Javier Baez’ birthday today. As I watched them all in amazement, as if I was seeing the plays for the first time, it hit me – I miss cheering at the top of my lungs for the Cubs. I do. I miss that feeling I get when the Cubs do incredible things that make your head spin. Spring Training cannot come soon enough. Until then, we’ll talk about how much we love the Cubs right here, everyday.

  • If you’re anything like me, you’re probably glad to hear the owners and players came to consensus on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement late last night. These are things that are vitally important to the game but they’re also things that most fans just want to have be done. Well, it’s done and now we can move on. One change that I was very happy to see was the World Series home field advantage will no longer be decided by the All-Star game. That makes me happy because it was probably one of the most irrelevant ways to decide home field advantage there could be. I mean, why not just flip a coin?
  • As for the rest of the CBA, here are a few more changes. All in all, there weren’t that many big changes but we haven’t yet seen the actual complete final agreement or, for that matter, the Memorandum of Understanding. I hesitate to jump to conclusions based on hearsay but, at this point, it’s all we have.
    • Luxury tax threshold will rise from current level of $189 million to around $215 million over the next five years. The penalties for exceeding the threshold have stiffened for those teams that are above a certain excessive amount.
    • There will be 25 man roster. This is obviously maintaining status quo where the rumor was the active roster may be raised to 26 players.
    • No international draft but there will be a hard cap of $5-6 million per team per year.
    • Qualifying offer draft pick compensation has been decreased to lower round draft picks dependent on where teams fall within the luxury tax threshold.
    • The 15-day disabled list now turns into the 10-day disabled list.
    • New international player signing age has been increased to 25 years old.
  • There was an interesting article on ESPN.com that gave all sorts of explanations and support based on historical performances for why the Cubs won’t win as many games in 2017 as they did in 2016. I’m being nice when I call it interesting, it’s actually nonsense if you ask me. You see, I believe, whole-heartedly, that the Cubs will not just be better next year, they’ll be much better. Why? The Cubs went 12-14 in July. That won’t happen next year. This team just proved to themselves that they really are as good as they thought they were. They will be more confident next year and they will not be worse. I’ll save my predictions for Opening Day but, suffice it to say, I won’t have the Cubs winning less than 105 games next year.
  •  Despite previous reports, the Chicago White Sox GM Rick Hahn issued a statement to clarify their position on making trades with the Cubs. Evidently, they would not dismiss a trade with any team that would possibly improve their team. I guess that’s good to know but I’m not sure why you even make that statement. If they want to deal Sale to the Cubs then they should. I certainly don’t think the Cubs would care who they’re making a trade with, although Theo and team do have a knack for pulling off trades that make the other team look silly (see trades for Addison Russell, Jake Arrieta and Kyle Hendricks). So maybe Hahn was just saying ‘hey, please don’t make me look silly.’ Who knows.

Photo of Jon Ferlise Jon FerliseDecember 1, 2016
Back to top button