Corey Patterson traded to Balt. (per Levine)

[Connor McConnor]

I think I'm more upset about the Cubs organization completely missing on their evaluation of Corey. Wasn't he another untouchable "five-tool player"? Their development, or lack thereof, of position players is scary.

 

I'm happy the Cubs got anything for Patterson. And if he succeeds in Baltimore, more power to him, cause it sure wasn't going to happen with the Cubs.

 

Excellent point. Fans are not supposed to know any better....but Hendry and his bunch get paid well to know legitmate talent when they see it.

 

Patterson was going to be a superstar....5 tools....on and on......you never heard a "maybe" out of any Cubs people with regards to Corey. Choi, Hill, Patterson,......were going to be the future of this team. Not only are they NOT the future....they are barely major leaguers.

 

Prior is the latest "can't miss".....and he's not exactly rock solid at this point. Will he be next?

 

This team has proven that it cannot develop its own position players. It can't do it!

 

Egads it's painful to be a Cub fan.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Well, since the season ended there has be NO demand for Corey, he got what he could. Why do you think demand would have increased for a completely undiscipled ball player? You feel there was value to get, but I'm not sure why.

I'm sure this conversation will happen again when Walker is launched for nothing. There is NO demand for these players. Please show me where there is any demand for either player other than just assumptions.

 

It is sorely evident that you, along with others, are choosing not to comprehend certain components of this discussion.

I think we comprehend the matter just fine. Please try to show us slow learners where all this demand for Patterson and Walker is coming from.

 

There is no demand for Patterson, that's exactly the point. It's almost impossible for Patterson to be worth less than he is now. If you keep him, which you can because there isn't anyone that needs that roster spot, then he either raises his trade value or you can get the same deal later.

[CardsFanInChiTown]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

[Guest]

I'd really like to see Corey blast Dusty and/or the Cubs organization on his way out. He seems like too much of a stand up guy to do that though.

 

After last year, Corey has nothing to stand on. Would look like lots of sour grapes.

Fine, I'll settle for any current or former Cub blasting Dusty.

 

I have a feeling Walker will.

 

That's a given. I can't wait to hear what Walker has to say on his way out of town. :twisted:

 

I'll take the flipside. I could care less about what Walker has to say. He's a malcontent that will have played for 6 different teams over 7 seasons when he's dealt - that tells me enough.

Even allowing (hypothetically speaking, of course) that Walker has some personality issues I still don't see why you'd be eager to see him ridden out of town on a rail. As the Cubs team is currently constructed he's probably our third-best offensive player, particularly after you consider Barrett will only play in 75% of our games. I don't believe any clubhouse issues could possibly offset the offensive difference between Walker starting full time and an 80/20 Neifi/Hairston platoon.

 

Besides, using the fact that Walker has played for six teams over seven seasons as proof that he's a clubhouse cancer is specious reasoning. Reggie Sanders played for seven different teams in seven years and I don't see anyone claiming he's the devil incarnate.

Edited January 10, 2006 by Anonymous

[CubfaninCA]

There's been lots of complaining about overpaying for mediocrity. Corey wasn't even good enough to be considered mediocre last year. Hairston is an adequate backup.

[Mark_R]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

Good for him. I'd be glad he's doing well.

[CUBZ99]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I will say, good for Corey. I would have loved to see him develop into the player that they thought he was going to be when they drafted him.

[Tim]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

[CardsFanInChiTown]

It is sorely evident that you, along with others, are choosing not to comprehend certain components of this discussion.

 

I understand your "let's wait and see if he can get more" argument. I guess my question is how much do you think Hendry could have gotten?

 

I think part of his argument is that the Cubs paint themselves into the corner where everybody knows they HAVE to deal certain players and brings down their value even more. I agree that this is a problem and the Sosa deal was pretty much a sham.

 

Regardless, even without that knowledge, I don't think they could have gotten much more than they did. He's not making 350 K anymore.

 

At a risk of sounding like a troll I think Wrigley fan's painted Hendry into a corner.

[CheeseHead Cubs Fan]

Ok, for all you "bothered" by the trade and saying this whole situation is a mess... Think about it this way. How would you feel about trading for Corey type player, someone coming off his worst year ever, spending time in AAA and admitting he got in a rut and never got out. Has already had major knee surgery and showed no patience at the plate. Someone who struck out at an alarming rate and rarely walks.

 

What would you give for this player?

 

Oh, by the way...who cares what he would do in ST or the early part of the year. Once a player hits bottom (value) it's very tough to convince other GM's they should open the cubboards and let you have the pick of quality talent.

[CubfaninCA]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

Good for him. I'd be glad he's doing well.

 

Ditto. The kid needs a change of scenery. The last thing he needs are a bunch of fans anxiously waiting to boo him.

[Mark_R]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

And why is Von Joshua (a well respected hitting figure here) saying Corey has regressed as a hitter?

[CardsFanInChiTown]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

He was mentally fried and the fan's were all over him. Did you check out his body language? Did you go to a game in the 2nd half? It was horrible.

[Mark_R]

 

At a risk of sounding like a troll I think Wrigley fan's painted Hendry into a corner.

 

I'm not gonna disagree at all, but lets end this before it starts because it will become forty pages on whether its ok to boo or not.

[FergieJ31]

How long do we have to give Corey to "raise" his trade value then?

 

If we don't have upgrade the OF, then people complain (and rightfully so) that adjustments weren't made to better the miserable oh five team. I don't see the improvements coming while he's in Chicago, so he's a semi expensive unproductive everyday player, or he's an expensive bench player who can't raise his value anyway. And if Corey has a bad April and the fans are just riding his ass, what do you do?

 

Let him be a backup OF. He's security if Pierre gets hurt, then if he gets hot you can spin him at the deadline. Like USS brought up, we hardly got anything for him, so it's not a huge deal if that deal isn't there next offseason, and there's a decent likelihood it will be.

 

Keeping Corey would have been an inhuman, not to mention a media fiasco.

 

I agree 100%. I was half-hoping the Cubs would either (a) keep CPatt as a $3M AAA player or (b) trade him for some other team's underachieving "talent" who also needs a change of scenery, or © make CPatt the last piece of a larger trade for an impact bat.

 

That said, I don't have a big problem with this trade as long as the Cubs aren't paying Corey's salary (did I miss something or has this fact been reported yet??) I actually like the upside of this Spears kid from what I've read about him ... scrappy players tend to fly under the radar.

[CUBZ99]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

Isn't it possible that Patterson, could benefit from a change of scenery in the similar fashion Barrett did? With Barrett, did the Cubs hitting instructors get the credit for turning him into one of the better offensive catchers? Same could be said about Derrek Lee and Ramirez.

[CardsFanInChiTown]

 

At a risk of sounding like a troll I think Wrigley fan's painted Hendry into a corner.

 

I'm not gonna disagree at all, but lets end this before it starts because it will become forty pages on whether its ok to boo or not.

 

 

:shock:

 

:-#

[Tim]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

Good for him. I'd be glad he's doing well.

That's not what I meant and you know it! If you are now saying that he has no chance of regaining his skills, what will you say if he has a decent season?

[Tim]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

And why is Von Joshua (a well respected hitting figure here) saying Corey has regressed as a hitter?

Egads. I never said that Von said that. I said that it is a possibility and we have no idea about a lot of information happening behind the scenes.

[JC]

 

As an expert negotiator, i'm sure you are aware that making statements such as yours, indicates your lack of any basis for your opinion. Instead you try to play the game of belittling people that disagree with your viewpoint.

 

How did I belittle you? Because I said you don't get it? Well, you don't. that isn't belittling you. That is pointing out that you are missing the point, either intentionally or unintentionally. If you want to cry about it, go ahead. The rest of your post is just bullocks and makes no sense. As I said earlier, we really don't have anything to discuss.

[Jon]

The general tone of your comments is about how others let Corey down. When does Corey take responsibility for his wildness at the plate? Coaches can talk until they're blue in the face (and I think that's exactly what they did) but if the player is unable or unwilling to make adjustments no real change will occur. Let's not fool ourselves. Corey Patterson has never been a disciplined hitter. In his one 'good' year (2003) he had a .329 OBP with .839 OPS which is not impressive. Corey was far too content being a hacker and quite frankly, he was misguided; He fashioned himself as a middle of the lineup run producer but he has yet to make the kind of concerted effort needed to be a real offensive threat. That is no one's fault but his own.

 

I also disagree that the Cubs haven't learned from rushing Corey to the Major Leagues. Pie will be spending an additional year (or more) in the minors for just this reason.

But he did make adjustments. That was the problem. They were completely the wrong ones to make. He fashioned himself a middle of the lineup run producer because that's the kind of player he is, yet the Cubs decided to ignore what his talents with the bat actually were. If or when he progresses to a point nearing his ceiling, the middle of the lineup is exactly where he was going to be. He led the Lugnuts in 2Bs, 3Bs, and HRs and the Diamond Jaxx in 2Bs and HRs right before making his big league debut at the age of 20. That's a middle of the order hitter.

 

Corey had a ways to go before getting there. Contact and strike recognition were his main problems and he had to really work on that. Everyone knew it wasn't going to be easy for him and yet they decided to pile it on by trying to change his whole game. It ruined his season.

 

And Pie was going to be up last season at the age of 20 if not for his ankle injury. Hendry already confirmed that.

 

 

Patterson's Minor League numbers are not necessarily representative of the type of player he can become in the MLs. One thing is for sure, he has never shown the kind of discipline necessary to be considered a contact hitter. Major League pitchers make adjustments on hitters. Corey was not able to tailor his swing to counterbalance the changes others were making against him. Were the Cubs suppose to allow him to continue swinging wildly in the middle of the lineup when more effective options were available? Absolutely not!

 

Yes, Pie would have been called up last year. The Cubs season was already over so there was no reason not to give him a look. That doesn't necessarily mean they would have considered him to start CF in 2006. Pie, like Patterson has some strikeout issues to overcome.

The fact that he hasn't shown the kind of discipline necessary to be considered a contact hitter is exactly why you don't try to turn him into a slappy leadoff hitter. Rather, you stay with his skills and try to turn him into a power hitter that can make better contact. The mechanical adjustments to make him a leadoff hitter were quite different from the adjustments needed to increase his contact while maintaining his power. And more than anything else, his main focus probably needed to be on strike zone recognition. You can't expect a guy to drastically improve in strike zone recognition when he has a new swing, new approach, and new objective at the plate that's different from anything else he's done in his entire baseball career.

 

And if the ankle injury never occured, Hendry intended to bring up Pie well before the Diamond Jaxx season even ended. I believe there was talk of him coming up before the Southern League playoffs if he recovered in time.

[Tim]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

He was mentally fried and the fan's were all over him. Did you check out his body language? Did you go to a game in the 2nd half? It was horrible.

I think you can take it as a given that I do watch Cubs baseball since I run a site devoted to them.

 

Why do people even ask this question of someone who is a big enough fan to participate on these forums? Did you watch any Cards games last year?

[CubfaninCA]

How long do we have to give Corey to "raise" his trade value then?

 

If we don't have upgrade the OF, then people complain (and rightfully so) that adjustments weren't made to better the miserable oh five team. I don't see the improvements coming while he's in Chicago, so he's a semi expensive unproductive everyday player, or he's an expensive bench player who can't raise his value anyway. And if Corey has a bad April and the fans are just riding his ass, what do you do?

 

Let him be a backup OF. He's security if Pierre gets hurt, then if he gets hot you can spin him at the deadline. Like USS brought up, we hardly got anything for him, so it's not a huge deal if that deal isn't there next offseason, and there's a decent likelihood it will be.

 

Keeping Corey would have been an inhuman, not to mention a media fiasco.

 

I agree 100%. I was half-hoping the Cubs would either (a) keep CPatt as a $3M AAA player or (b) trade him for some other team's underachieving "talent" who also needs a change of scenery, or © make CPatt the last piece of a larger trade for an impact bat.

 

That said, I don't have a big problem with this trade as long as the Cubs aren't paying Corey's salary (did I miss something or has this fact been reported yet??) I actually like the upside of this Spears kid from what I've read about him ... scrappy players tend to fly under the radar.

 

Spears sounds like the type of guy people around here have been pining for. Someone w/ plate discipline is a nice change.

[Tim]

How long do we have to give Corey to "raise" his trade value then?

 

If we don't have upgrade the OF, then people complain (and rightfully so) that adjustments weren't made to better the miserable oh five team. I don't see the improvements coming while he's in Chicago, so he's a semi expensive unproductive everyday player, or he's an expensive bench player who can't raise his value anyway. And if Corey has a bad April and the fans are just riding his ass, what do you do?

 

Let him be a backup OF. He's security if Pierre gets hurt, then if he gets hot you can spin him at the deadline. Like USS brought up, we hardly got anything for him, so it's not a huge deal if that deal isn't there next offseason, and there's a decent likelihood it will be.

 

Keeping Corey would have been an inhuman, not to mention a media fiasco.

 

I agree 100%. I was half-hoping the Cubs would either (a) keep CPatt as a $3M AAA player or (b) trade him for some other team's underachieving "talent" who also needs a change of scenery, or © make CPatt the last piece of a larger trade for an impact bat.

 

That said, I don't have a big problem with this trade as long as the Cubs aren't paying Corey's salary (did I miss something or has this fact been reported yet??) I actually like the upside of this Spears kid from what I've read about him ... scrappy players tend to fly under the radar.

 

Spears sounds like the type of guy people around here have been pining for. Someone w/ plate discipline is a nice change.

Describing someone with Spears K/BB ratio as having plate discipline is a bit of a stretch. 36 BB, 82 K in 442 AB.

 

Ryan Therioit has plate discipline. Spears .... meh.

Edited January 10, 2006 by Tim

[CardsFanInChiTown]

For all those people who think that Corey has no chance of recovering value, the team has very little blame in his development and the onus for his bad play rests entirely with Corey I pose this question:

 

What will you say if he has a decent season in Baltimore?

 

I would say he has a chance to be decent in Baltimore but not in Chicago.

And why is that?

 

He was mentally fried and the fan's were all over him. Did you check out his body language? Did you go to a game in the 2nd half? It was horrible.

I think you can take it as a given that I do watch Cubs baseball since I run a site devoted to them.

 

Why do people even ask this question of someone who is a big enough fan to participate on these forums? Did you watch any Cards games last year?

 

Woah, sorry that's not what I meant, on TV the boos didn't seem as extreme. Truth be told I didn't go to one game at Bush last year.

Edited January 10, 2006 by CardsFanInChiTown