TruffleShuffle

let's not forget robinson chirinos, he's 1-1 with a walk in his major league debut. fuckin hendry.

yeah given how low the bar is for 3b offense right now, and since it looks like he's now still good, the option for next year actually might be worth picking up (really it's only for a $14m salary, since the buyout is $2m). plus if the cubs suck come next june or july, he might fetch a good return.

it was bonus demands. his line for his junior year was .427/.547/.772/1.319. I think that was the year before. He broke his ankle his junior year and missed most of the season. http://www.theacc.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/030301aaa.html i think you're right... wonder why baseball cube lists that monster year as his 2001 stats? anyway, he only fell to 5th overall and i know the cubs were always going to draft prior and the twins were also going for mauer. i know that the phillies definitely passed on teixeira because of his bonus demands (having recently been burned by j.d. drew)... tampa picked brazelton #3 and they were probably just being cheap.

i'm not sure we can give vitters much credit for not swinging as he's being walked intentionally.

3 times in the last decade the cubs have gone from being truly terrible to contending for the division, but yeah let's just write off next year.

it was bonus demands. his line for his junior year was .427/.547/.772/1.319.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2000.shtml -> http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2001.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2002.shtml -> http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2003.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2006.shtml -> http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/2007.shtml

that's fine if that is your position, but you're never going to get any good relief pitchers to come pitch for you... well maybe the guys who are coming off injury or terrible years and are looking to prove something, but not the guys who have been consistently good for a few years. like say sean marshall keeps pitching this way and reaches UFA... if the cubs offer him a one year deal he'll laugh at them and sign with someone for 3-4 years. i agree with most of your post though. i think his main problem with signing middle relievers is that he's not signing guys with good peripherals or track records, he's signing guys like eyre who had one good year, or a guy like grabow who has a decent ERA but a lousy WHIP. i was fine with the howry signing, and he was very solid for two years before turning into a pumpkin. remlinger was kind of stupid if for no reason than he was 36 years old, and you don't sign 36 year old middle relievers to a deal that takes them through their age 39 season. especially when your manager is too stupid to recognize that he has reverse splits and shouldn't be used as a [expletive] loogy.

i was posting on this board regularly back then, and i'm pretty sure that absolutely nobody was upset about not keeping josh hamilton.

Hes also 25, plays OF, has 18 HR and a .477 SLG. If the plan is to let Aramis walk after this year, Id be very happy to get him. i wouldn't. he'd be a terrible corner outfielder and he strikes me as a guy who will get worse as pitchers around the league see him more and exploit his lack of discipline. basically his glove could play as average at 1B, but i'd rather go after pujols or fielder than settle for a guy like trumbo there.

yeah a first baseman with an OBP just barely over .300, let's get our hands on him!!!

except that hasn't been happening. at all. like not even close. http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/draft/2010/08/bonus-expenditures-2008-10/ biggest spenders in the draft from 2008-10 - the pirates. followed by a big market team (red sox), then the next seven teams on the list are nationals, orioles, royals, indians, rays, blue jays and rangers. meanwhile here are the bottom six teams: cubs, mets, marlins, phillies, braves, white sox. now i get that the teams toward the bottom tend to be drafting later, but still, the pirates, royals and rays are three notable small market teams that have been consistently going above slot money to draft hard-to-sign players. the mets, phillies, braves and white sox are kind of noted for rarely going above slot. same with international free agency - the a's outbid everyone for ynoa, the pirates outbid everyone for luis heredia, the twins bought miguel sano, the rangers have been spending gobs of money in latin america, etc. smart small to mid-market teams have seen what the rays did and are copying their blueprint. so really, the "best interests of baseball" argument would be a complete joke if selig ever tried to use it with respect to draft spending or international free agency. the system, as it is right now, works. teams that don't value amateur talent don't spend big bucks. teams that do value it do. and besides, it's not like selig is overturning these above-slot deals, he just lets the paperwork stew for a while, sends a nasty letter or e-mail to the offending team, then approves the signing. if he tried to overturn a deal like the one that samardzija got, MLB would be sued immediately. how exactly are his actions, as you put it, "not letting the teams with superior financial resources drive the bidding up for draftees"???

that was if you count each player's LOB collectively. the team LOB was 17 for the game.

halladay should have to pitch lefthanded to give us a chance.

hahaha check out this entry on jay's wikipedia page: great wikipedia contribution 'reid'

i think you mean the hot box.

Does the defense just give up for, let's say, Kevin Correia? His ERA and ERA+ are both lower than league average this year. He has the 2nd best K/BB on the team. He has the lowest LD% among Pirates starters. He has the best IFFB% on the team. His GB% and HR/FB% is better than Karstens. Yet somehow his BABIP is 50 points higher than Karstens. How do you explain McDonald's .313 BABIP and Morton's .318 BABIP? They have the same defense out there as Maholm and Karstens. morton's LD% is high and he's an extreme ground ball pitcher, so his higher babip isn't really surprising.

Once a week? Dude, quit dissecting everything. You're looking at such a small sample and making premature assumptions. I say we only have a thread at the end of every season, where we discuss which players we were really proud of, and which players we were kinda proud of. But we can't draw any conclusions, cuz their career isn't over. also don't put down a guy who hit .260 as a 24 year old in peoria. just because he was a 35th round draft pick out of some school you've never heard of in kentucky doesn't mean he's not a real prospect!

I'll bet 100 million dollars he will not be the Astros GM in 2012 according to wikipedia he's from houston. that's the only reason they'd have any shot, i think. that being said, he's gotta be a hot commodity and if he wants to move on from tampa, one would think there are higher-profile positions that will be open. not to mention that the astros are a bad team with a moribund farm system.

ok lock it up, from now on we just do a minor league thread each wednesday and talk about what kind of week our prospects just had. that's only for position players though - pitchers we will discuss on the second thursday of each month.

agreed on the pirates needing to find more starters who can miss more bats. and they also need pedro alvarez to turn into the guy everyone thought he'd turn into, a middle of the lineup masher.

let's hope not! i want the #1 pick.

this is terrible in so many ways. quade looks like a lunatic serial killer (well even moreso than usual)

liria and lopez got crushed for peoria (so did giansanti, but he's an outfielder so who cares) willengton cruz pitched very well: 5.2 ip, 4 h, 1 er, 0 bb, 8 k, 1 hr. brett jackson was 0-3 with a walk and 2 K's for iowa. flaherty was 0-4 and lemahieu was 2-4. dave bush went 2.1 ip, 5 h, 1 er, 2 bb, 3 k, 1 hbp. rusin pitched well in relief, giving up just 1 run on 4 hits in 4 innings (the run came from a home run by hot prospect j.r. towles)

set back as in he will now be injured for another month, or the breeze was so strong that it will now take him a month longer to reach his destination?