TruffleShuffle

so fontenot has performed adequately and cedeno has gone in the toilet? i would never have guessed that from the comments during games.

http://www.faketeams.com/2008/7/1/562339/mlb-trade-rumors-peter-gam TRADE MARQUIS AND HILL Jim Hendry (on the phone): Hey Mark Shapiro, how's it going? I was hearing rumblings that C.C. Sabathia was on the market, and I wanted to present to you a marvelous offer! I have a pitcher named Rich Hill who's not making much money and posted an ERA under 4.00 last year! What's that? Well yes, he's currently not on the major league team. Where is he? Someone mentioned that he might be in Arizona right now... yes I believe it's true that he couldn't get out of the first inning at AAA and he has completely lost his command, but let me tell you, this kid will be a stud again. Okay, what else are we offering? Ever heard of a young man named JASON MARQUIS??? He's only 29 years old and has a bright future ahead of him. Okay yes, his ERA over the past three years is about 5.00, but he's been pretty unlucky.... well Mark, I guess you could say that having a good defense behind him has helped some.... yes the WHIP is about 1.50 but really that doesn't tell the whole story. He's a bargain at just $6.375 million this year! And he's signed through next year too! ... I'm not quite sure what his salary is next year, probably around $9-10 million or so... hello? Mark? Hello???

i need the all star break to get here so i can dump zimmerman.

That's up to .360/.520/.570 after last night. Looking at his splits, there's not a single one with OBP < .500. If he had enough PA's to make the league leaders (he's had 3 stints on the DL), he'd be 2nd in AVG, 1st in OBP and OPS, 4th in SLG. I don't care what he's hitting, the boy's got to work on his versatility ability before I'd even consider adding him to the major league bench. If he can't play CF or 2B, he's nothing to me. They need to do something with him. At 27-28, hes well past his prospect years. He might interest some team as a throw in in a trade, but he has little value as anything else, unless he's content as a career Tennesee Smokie. actually you have it backwards. there is probably no value in the trade market because the cubs haven't treated him like any sort of prospect, but he may have value to the cubs if they actually advance him beyond the level that he handled four years ago. and again, "well past his prospect years" is a silly way of thinking about things, given that there have been several players who came up and produced after being labeled "career minor leaguers"

so, i still think the worst-hitting position player in the majors is dane sardinha? what do you guys think?

.266/.326/.401 for Harris and .298/.335/.415 for Sanchez in their careers. Not great numbers, but they've been decent contributors at the ML level. As for Mr. Bonderman, when you closest comps---despite your talent level---is that of Jose Contreras, Adam Eaton, Bronson Arrojo, and Josh Fogg, you have really underachieved. So, maybe successful is a stretch for Sanchez/Harris, but you can't really considered Bonderman a "success", because he hasn't shown he is anything more then a #4. but the other guys are successful despite the fact that they're worse than at least 2/3 of the other guys who play their positions. my brain has exploded.

given the long-term contracts the cubs already have, i really don't want them getting involved with another 3 years and $35M of gil meche. he hasn't been good this year, either.

glad someone else is pissed off about this. by the way, .866 is a pretty damn good OPS for the southern league, especially from a 23 year old player. and it's not like he was some 5th year senior who was an undrafted free agent and has little to no upside; he was drafted in the third round. like lots of good players. their handling of him seems pretty idiotic, frankly.

what up w/welington castillo?

OH NO THE BAD LEE IS BACK

and jack cust was available to any team in baseball for a couple of years if they were willing to put him on their major league roster. he only had the #8 OPS+ in the AL last year. The Rule V draft is filled with guys who can't play and guys that can play at a high level...to me its just as big of a crap shoot as the regular draft, but you have to have to roster space in order to draft...maybe two or three teams a year can draft a guy and sit him on the bench for the entire year and not handcuff their 25 man roster. For me, I guess I'm just tired of seeing all these upstart, young, teams like the Marlins, Rays, Diamondbacks(remember last years sweep), Rockies(last years NL champ), etc...beat up on my Cubbies using "their" young and developed guys while we use our highly overpaid free agent guys. Obviously those teams know how to develop and push guys, and we don't...So give Kroger and Craig a chance, we just might stumble upon something good with them. Craig would be an old man on the Marlins, Rays, and Diamondbacks. He's neither young nor developed. Kroger on the other hand might be worth a shot in a platoon situation. again, this is because he hasn't been advanced by the cubs. he hit very well (.275/.363/.509/.872) in his FIRST crack at AA at age 23. since then the cubs have not moved him anywhere. why should he be punished and thrown in the non-prospect dustbin because of this? move him up to iowa - where he should've been about 3 years ago - and see if he can play at a high level there. the PECOTA numbers and his solid patience suggest that he could be a decent RH bat off the bench, so why not at least give this somewhat of a chance?

my head says lilly doesn't need to go for the CG SO, but my fantasy teams say yes

oh, was that what everyone did to get away from cubsGM? i missed out on this... i was at an altoona curve-binghamton mets game.

brian sabean is the GM of the team he roots for... that's punishment enough

stay in the dominican as long as you want, ARam (not really)

too much base clogging

while we're bitching about this sort of thing, matt craig is performing admirably against AA pitching for like the 15th consecutive year. his line coming into tonight: .351/.514/.550. iowa is calling.

the cards should just pick up mediocre pitchers off the trash heap... those are the guys who pitch well for them.

Going for the monster park in Oakland to the tiny park in SF obviously wasn't going to bode well for Zito. Everyone in the world knew it. except for brian sabean, apparently.

.241/.347/.402, which doesn't look all that great until you consider that the last two years he was at .194/.317/.346 and .148/.240/.272, and he is a 34 year old catcher. Maybe Mozeliak doesn't think a .215 BABIP over 350 AB is predictive. well it hasn't been such a bad predictor since his BABIP is a robust .237 this year. believe it or not, fat, slow catchers do not tend to have particularly high BABIPs late in their careers.

kyle lohse is going to win 20 games after basically not having a team until april. that is all kinds of awesome.

natalie coughlin's WR in the 100 back was broken in this morning's preliminary heats, so she got in and took the record back about two minutes later. i know there were some northwestern folks who were following a former swimmer there, matt grevers. he placed 2nd in this morning's 100 back prelims, but piersol and lochte are still favorites to finish top two. those guys finished 6th and 7th this morning, i think.

one word? pickles.

Isn't Mr. Wonderful from the Mets leading that vote? i'm not sure if this is sarcasm, but david wright is indeed pretty wonderful.