$50 million more than the next biggest payroll, they should have good replacement guys..

Yawn.

Something like 7 pitchers on the DL. Still pretty amazing.

My homerism for Clayton and desire to see him MadBum the Dodgers to a championship makes it surprisingly easy for me to not hate the New York Yankees West. I will be happy with either a Cubs or Dodgers victory in this series.

Jake Arrieta - traded for when he wasn't good in Baltimore and currently in arbitration.

Kyle Hendricks - traded for and in his 2nd year.

Jason Hammel signed on a pennies deal.

Lackey on a 2 year deal for avg pay.

Lester is the only pitcher in the rotation that I would categorize as "bought."

Look at the list. This is the 1st year the Cubs payroll EVER was over $150 million. Take away Lester and Heyward, and it's the Royals if not a few million less.

Lackey was "bought," but there's nothing wrong with that. By this definition, Volquez was "bought" for the Royals last year too.

I love my some Clayton. That's the only thing I really like on the Dodgers.

Plus my hate of Cubs fans outweighs any like for their players.

Yes the Cubs recent Jewish President of Baseball Operations has nothing to do with their recent success. Nothing at all. Jewish.

Not to mention buying or renting Zobrist and Cueto.

I agree. I think the Cubs' roster construction was pitch perfect outside the signing of Heyward. If only Theo had consulted DJsLeftNut before making that signing, yikes.

Fair warning, I'm not exactly intelligent, but there's a small chance Maddon's desire to give the Cubs utter and complete defensive versatility might be clouding up their team a bit. I am a detached Royals' fan, so I may be talking out of my *** here, but in some ways this team is reminding me of the 8 deep 2007 Jayhawks. There was so much talent that Bill Self always tried to give everyone optimal rest and play the matchups as best as he could - but he later reflected by saying that this sometimes interfered with a player's rhythm and impacted the cohesiveness of the starting five. He said in some ways, losing Julian Wright gave the roster the clarity it needed for their 2008 title.

Uhhhhhhh...

The mother ****er owns like 3 of the top major newspaper companies. No money there

I'm a Royals diehard, but Cubs casual fan. Not going to lose sleep over this year's outcome, but this Cubs team and makeup is easy to root for as a group.

You realize that the Cubs used the Royals blueprint and developed the centerpieces of their roster just like we developed Gordo, Salvy, Hos, Moose, Duffy, Kelvin and Yordano, right?

Need moar 3's.