Amazing_Grace

The field currently is crowned in a way that makes parts of the playing surface impossible to see from the Cubs' dugout. I assume they're going to correct that, as well as install modern drainage systems and perhaps a snow removal grid. If that's true, isn't it because the field is uneven and the high places block view of the lower, rather than because the field is too 'high'. Shouldn't the height make no difference as long as it's not too high to physically see over the edge of the dugout? And I would think adding all that stuff you mentioned would make the field higher and not lower. What am I missing?

I think it would depend on what you can get, whether you trade him or not. Lee is a great player, but 1b is not a difficult position to find players for. If we could get two ML ready prospects or a stud SS, then I'd be all for it. At some point, you have to think about the future and what positions are easiest to fill from the FA pool. SS will be rough, but respectable 1b are more common. I'd do Lee for ARod or even Lee/Guzman for ARod if Alex would agree not to opt out of his contract this offseason, and if I was convinced he could still play SS. I'd also consider a deal of Lee for Hughes+prospects. You have to get somebody that's a top prospect or a great player or there's no point in trading him.

Umm because he sucks? Maybe Lou is playing Theriot because hes younger and feels that maybe Theriot could get better, where as we/he knows what he has in Izturis. Is Theriot younger? I thought both were 27. Izturis does undeniably suck at this point. If they could ship him out for a minor league scrub, I'd probably do it just to get rid of his salary and open up roster space. Does he have another year on his contract, and is it a team option? It's really kind of irrelevant as neither is particularly good. Izturis has been in the majors long enough that if he was going to figure it out, he would have. Theriot is 27 and never was a prospect to be anything other than a utility man. The fact he's playing just reflects the fact that the manager thinks he's a better option than Izturis (which he probably still is). Neither of these guys is going to be a very good everyday SS.

I don't understand why they'd have to lower the field by 1 foot to ensure an even playing surface. I would think they'd be tearing up what's there, smoothing out the underneath by putting in new dirt or rocks or whatever it is they use and then putting the dirt and grass back over the top. Why does the field need to be lowered?

It seems pretty clear Lou dislikes Izturis for some reason. Theriot's been starting most of the games despite hitting quite badly as of late. I'm not entirely convinced Izturis is better than Theriot on defense anymore. Ryan looks a lot quicker to me, though his arm is clearly not great. Theriot and Fontenot seem awfully quick together turning the DP.

Perhaps the people who were saying that before aren't the same people who are asking about sending him down now. I've only seen one person suggest sending him down. Plus the people who were calling for him to play everyday just didn't want to see Izturis in the lineup. Truth is there's not a player in the entire organization who should be playing short everday. Their OPS is close to even now, so I don't know which you play. I guess Izturis's defense is better, but I certainly haven't seen anything spectacular out of him. Really, neither one was ever a good bet to be a long-term solution at SS, but there was more hope for Ryan since he didn't have several seasons of MLB ABs to prove that he stunk as Izturis did. The reason I wanted Theriot played over Izturis earlier in the year is so we could see if he was capable of being an everyday player. So far, it looks like he isn't, but at least we gave it a shot. We haven't lost anything playing Theriot because Izturis is just as bad.

I don't know if you can really label Theriot as a guy that tore up AAA pitching. Cedeno, on the other hand, has a career OPS over .930 in 365 at-bats at AAA. As for Cedeno's patience, he hasn't drawn a walk in awhile (at least 10 games), but he continues to hit the ball. At this point, they might as well get rid of Izturis and give Cedeno a shot. Plus, he's still only 24. Well I was looking at his BB/K ratio and his IsoD which are both good at Iowa in 2007. I think patience is going to make or break Cedeno at the major league level just like it did Patterson. If he swings at everything the way he did in 06, he's never going to amount to anything more than Neifi Perez 2. If he learns to lay off bad balls, he ought to be a pretty solid major leaguer, but there's a lot of guys we could say that about.

Any updates on this? I listened and the guy they had on there claimed the Cubs have been forbidden to take on more salary because of the impending sale. So basically the opposite of everything we have read. So, who knows? =D> =D> =D> =D> If that's true it really limits the amount of damage Hendry can do. He won't be able to trade for impact players unless he moves the likes of Jones, Howry, Dempster, and Eyre.

I'm sure he's probably disappointed, but it's probably better for his career to pitch somewhere he can start and get plenty of innings. I'm sure he'll be called back in September anyway, maybe earlier depending on what trades go down.

Ditto, most of the players from that team are still here and making the same stupid mistakes and are complaining they don't like Lou because he doesn't give them a pass on it.

My opinion of Ed Lynch just went way up. I think he and Hendry were pretty equally bad as GMs. They both hired idiot former players to manage (Baker and Baylor). They both built the same piecemeal teams hoping over-the-hill vets would return to their glory days. They both got lucky once, and each time it was mainly due to the offensive production of a single player, Sosa, a tremendous contribution from a rookie pitcher, and some overachieving veterans. The 98 team had a lot better offense and the 03 team had better pitching, but neither were, in my opinion a particularly well put together team. The 03 team was better because at the end of the day, great pitching wins more games than great hitting.

Sunny, I'm pretty sure that use of the term "albatross" is usually restricted to situations where a player is a problem for a team because: 1) the team gets almost no production out of the player (sometimes this is evaluated against salary rather than absolute production vs. league average) 2) the player is highly paid 3) the player's contract is long-term 4) the player is essentially untradable Normal usage of the term, at least in the analytical baseball community, seems to require all four of those conditions, so that an albatross player is one who sucks, will suck for a long time, and must be expected to continue dragging the team down for several seasons to come. Obviously, the term is not precisely defined. Reasonable people might disagree about what constitutes "almost no production" or "highly paid," although it's clear that "highly paid" must mean "highly paid relative to other major league baseball players of comparable skill" or "highly paid relative to the baseball talent market" or even "highly paid relative to an idealized model of the baseball talent market," and emphatically not "highly paid relative to your average blue collar worker." A standard exception to these requirements is somebody who has met the criteria for several consecutive years immediately prior to this one, but is now in the last year of his contract. Obviously, to use the term albatross correctly, it is neccessary to show that the player's low production resulted from conditions that can be expected to persist into the future; one-time injuries, bad luck, and other external factors need to be removed from the equation. Often it is neccesary to look at available levels of replacement talent as well. I didn't begin this post to take issue with your classification of Barrett as an albatross, but it is interesting to compare the Barrett situation with the definition of albatross that I have proposed. It would be possible to argue against your assessment of Barrett on the basis that Barrett has been unlucky or, alternately, on the basis that two months of poor production, even if genuinely bad, are not enough to make it reasonable to expect him to suck for the indefinite future. More obviously, and more relevantly for the definition of the term albatross, Barrett has not sucked in the past, and as an upcoming free agent would never have been in a position to become a long-term problem for the team. I'll leave it to others to draw the conclusions. =D> I love reading your posts. Please post more.

Yeah, their GM is arguably stupider than ours. He traded Kearns. He's going to trade Dunn. He signed nearly every old washed up reliever this past offseason, and has taken a club with a lot of young talent and frittered it away with not much to show for it.

The Cubs farm system has done a great job of drafting and developing pitchers. How many solid major leaguers have come from the Cubs. Heck, 3/5 of the Marlins starting rotation were developed partially by the Cubs (though Nolasco is hurt atm). Jon Garland was a Cubs product also. In terms of relievers, there's Kyle Farnsworth, Todd Wellemeyer, Renyel Pinto, Juan Cruz, and Jae Kuk Ryu all on ML rosters. Throw in the number of current Cub pitchers that came out of our system, and you can really see how well our organization has done. We have 3/5 of our rotation home grown, despite losing Prior and Wood to injuries, and another guy (Guzman) possibly to step in.

Agree, and least of all the Cubs with the future of the team up in the air. I don't want Griffey because I have a feeling we'd have to give up one of Marshall/Hill to get him and I don't think he's worth either, so I hope he stands firm on his foolish demand.

Well, he'd probably welcome a move to just about anywhere other than Cinci. If I were him, I'd ask to be traded to the Yankees or Boston so I can maybe get into the World Series before I retire.

Ronny Cedeno says hi. Bring him up and start him regularly. That would work if you sent down Theriot. I'd rather see Izturis gone though. Cedeno seems to have found his offense at Iowa again, and is showing good patience. If that translates into the majors, that's great, but we've seen Ronny for over a year in MLB and you wonder if he's not the same as Theriot, a guy that's just good enough to tear up AAA pitching but not good enough to hit everyday against MLB pitching. Only way to find out is to bring him up and play him. I hope the Cubs will be smart or desperate enough to try it.

If the transition is that late, then I agree with goony. Still, I wonder how much damage even Hendry can do when the team is in transition and everything is up in the air. I don't think we'll see anymore 136M or even 44M or 21M contracts handed out. The worst thing he can do is trade what remains of the farm system, and if that's going to happen, it will likely happen during this season anyway. 2008 is going to be a throw away year. The best we can hope for is that Hendry hasn't traded Soto,Pie,Cedeno,Veal,Gallagher,Patterson, and Marshall. If we have most of these guys back, we'll at least have some young players to throw out there and rebuild with. I still think the Cubs should be sellers this season, but I would be surprised, nay, shocked, if Hendry puts the needs of the organization before his own job and legacy. I'd be mildly surprised if he even recognizes that this team, as currently constructed, is a .500 club at best.

Well, it isn't as if the Cubs have a better option at the moment. Theriot is still *slightly* better than Izturis, but really those are the only 2 choices we have at SS. Moving Fontenot there would really be an experiment as I don't think he's ever played there in his minor league career. I don't think the pieces the Cubs have in their system will be enough to salvage the offense this season, and probably next season as well. It's going to take a trade for an impact bat at SS or RF, and I doubt the Cubs can clear enough salary to make room for someone without pretty well guaranteeing themselves the loss of Zambrano to FA. EDIT: And what has happened to Theriot could just as easily happen to Fontenot. He comes up, starts out hot, then they figure out how to pitch him, and he ends up looking very bad.

Yeah-his OPS is third worst among all qualified players (Omar Visquel and Jason Kendall are the only worse right now). Unfortunately, two Cubs are in the bottom 15-Jacque Jones and Ryan Theriot. Izturis must not have qualified.

We don't need him to be a savior. We need him to play good defense and provide average-above average offense for his position. As far as upgrade, he obviously isn't offensively. But as far as a use of the team's resources he may be. We would be upgrading by a decent amount defensively, paying less than $1M to fill both catcher spots and getting much younger. He won't have a 3-year stretch offensively like Barrett has had, but I think he's capable of putting up an .800 OPS in his best year(s) which combined with his defense and price tag, could make him a great value. It could, if that were realistic, but besides this season, in which he has under 200 ABs, he has never put up an OPS of .800 in the minors. In fact, before this year, his highest OPS was .756 in AA last year. I just hope he can put up a decent .700 OPS, which is more than any of our other catchers are likely to do. Now wait. He's been at Iowa since 2005. Did you not realize that or did you just forget to type the third A. On another note, his IsoD has been good to very good all three seasons that he has been at Iowa. He's had over a .350 OBP each year at Iowa, even the first when he hit just .253. Also, he had close to 300 ABs each season at Iowa, so it's safe to say he knows how to draw walks. Sorry, I meant to say two years ago. He had a somewhat lower OPS in the low .700's last year in AAA. And I don't care what his IsoD is if his overall numbers are still mediocre. He hasn't shown much power or ability to hit for average until this season (under 200 ABs). Walks are not the end all and be all of offensive production. If his IsoD was so good it made up for the rest of his offensive numbers great, but it hasn't been. Well, no one's saying the guy is the second coming of Johnny Bench. He is young and has the potential to get better, while with retreads like Blanco, there is no upside at all. He might turn out to be a cheap hitter with an OPS around .750 who plays good defense. That's good enough for an 8 hitting catcher if it allows the Cubs to address other areas of weakness like SS, RF. Last time I checked, OBP is one of the most important offensive stats. Now, it's not the only stat that is important, but you can't just ignore it either. A player with a high IsoD is a more patient hitter, and his OBP is likely to be less dependent upon his BA. He's also likely to be more patient and take more pitches, making the pitcher work harder. In short, he'd be a difficult out. Now, if he can duplicate his minor league numbers from any of his 3 seasons (05-07) in Iowa, he certainly won't be an automatic out or a black hole in the lineup as some Cub hitters recently have been.

We could do a lot worse in terms of contracts and talent than to pick up Milton Bradley. It would be a low-risk, high possible reward type signing. At worst, you get a better 4th OF than Pagan. At best, you fill the gaping hole in RF. That said, the Cubs won't do it. It would be way too intelligent for Hendry.

I'd consider getting rid of Soriano and his ridiculous contract. That doesn't mean I don't like Alfonso or his play this year, I just think its ridiculous to be paying him $15 million when hes 38. There is no team out there that's going to take on Soriano's contract. We're stuck with him. just like we're stuck with Marquis. Since that complete game shutout his ERA is around 5.35. Real Marquis isn't fun. I have to wonder. Is anyone surprised Marquis didn't continue on his Cy Young pace? I'm not. Oh, I'm positively stunned. Usually Jim Hendry's moves work out swimmingly. rofl..and just think, we're 7 games under .500 with him pitching great for the first 2 months.

Ok, it seems the Rangers are interested. The question is... why? Jones should be traded for anyone whose contract expires at season's end, no matter how bad, and I suspect all that is keeping a trade from happening is Hendry trying to find some way he won't have to eat any salary this and next year.

I'd consider getting rid of Soriano and his ridiculous contract. That doesn't mean I don't like Alfonso or his play this year, I just think its ridiculous to be paying him $15 million when hes 38. There is no team out there that's going to take on Soriano's contract. We're stuck with him. just like we're stuck with Marquis. Since that complete game shutout his ERA is around 5.35. Real Marquis isn't fun. I have to wonder. Is anyone surprised Marquis didn't continue on his Cy Young pace? I'm not.