Nice, Ron. Thanks for the link and the story.
Tangent thought: Pitching is hard and crucial, and most of the free-agent discussion has focused on bringing in starting pitching. That makes a lot of sense.
But part of me feels like long-term and developmentally, I'm more concerned about finding hitting than pitching. Cubs-wise and league-wide, hitting has been doing down, down, down for years. Pitchers like Effross can become "‘a completely different pitcher’ with one major change. it can happen, it does happen. Pitchers can develop at weird times from weird sources. But that is SO much harder for hitters. Conjuring up good hitters is hard, and making some mechanics change that changes a guy into a completely different hitter, that just doesn't happen.
So for me, in terms of rebuilding, I'm really more prioritized on the bats. If we had a good lineup skeleton and the realistic prospect of a high-end offense, I think the chance to assemble competitive pitching will be there pretty quickly. (Chance and reality differ, obviously.). But getting a legit collection of good hitters, that's the more problematic challenge, I think.