Amazing_Grace

It's pretty clear at this point Lou is dissatisfied with Izturis at short. I think the main impetus to "see what Fontenot" can do was to try to get a new supersub so he can put Theriot, who he obviously likes, at SS full time.

Maybe their organization preaches patience, OBP, and the importance of the walk. We shouldn't get too excited yet. Fontenot's been up for all of two weeks, Pie has hit well since his 2nd callup, and Theriot's been mired in a slump recently. None of these guys are superstar prospects. Still, they are a better option than Izturis, and definitely show how stupid it is to pay the likes of Neifi Perez 3M per year.

I'd love to trade for Saltalamacchia, but frankly, I don't know how much I'd give up for a guy who will, at best, play about 3/4 of my games. If the Braves have nobody at 1b, it makes more sense for them to move Saltalamacchia there then to trade for a non-prospect like Micah Hoffpaiurr. I think you'd have to trade one of Marshall, Pie, Hill to get Salt and I doubt it's worth that. If Zambrano would get us Saltalamacchia, I'd definitely think about it.

Barrett has a lot more value than either Jones or Izturis because of his contract situation and the position he plays. Izturis will be a FA at season's end and isn't blocking anyone of any consequence, so really he's sort of irrelevant to a fire sale. I do think there's probably going to be some team that is willing to take him as a utility man, such as Detroit with Perez last year. If Perez can be moved with a whole year left on his deal, then Izzy can be moved being a FA at year end. At this point, I'd use the Zambrano trade to foist Jones on someone with cash, like sending Z and Jones to the Yankees/Mets for a prospect, then a third team getting Jones while the Yanks/Mets eat Jones contract. Does anyone know if that catching prospect we got from Detroit last year for Perez figures to amount to anything? EDIT: Hey I'm finally over 1000 posts, and it only took me 3 years.

Yeah, I don't want to trade him because he can't play D or because he is a hot head. I want to trade him because this is a lost year, I don't want to sign him to an extension, and he still has some value. I just wish I could trust our GM to target the right kind of players in a fire sale. Yeah, with the ownership change, next year is most likely a rebuild year regardless. Resigning Barrett wouldn't make a tremendous amount of sense and if the season is lost and you can get something for him, do it.

Don't forget MB versus Lou after MB got picked off 2nd. They were definitely shouting at each other. Throw in the Oswalt incident and AJP, and there's more evidence of his hot headedness. Indeed, I remembered AJP, but had forgotten about the thing with Oswalt. I suppose we can live with a hot head catcher when he's got an OBP over .350, but when he's hitting as bad as he is now, it's a little harder to tolerate.

All comments to the media aside, this makes it seem Barrett is a real hot head. Being in two shouting matches in a month can't be just a coincidence. I'm actually somewhat looking forward to Blanco coming off the DL. Barrett should probably be traded while he still has some trade value left. He's not under contract past this season and is pretty cheap. The team that trades for him will probably have a real good shot at resigning him, since he's shot up a lot of his FA value with his awful play and public displays of idiocy. He also plays a position it's tough to find offense at. We probably should be able to get a B prospect for him. This season is looking more and more like an obvious fire sale situation. I'd say that if it hasn't turned around by the break, then Hendry should fall on his sword, trade away anyone making over 4M that can be traded, and give as much payroll room as he can to the next owner/GM.

Reinsdorf is one guy out of 30. The only chance Reinsdorf has to affect the sale is to convince Zell (who is invested in the Sox and presumably knows Jerry) not to for purely personal reasons (things like this are why MLB forbids people from having ownership stakes in two teams). Does anyone really know how much, if any, influence Reinsdorf has with Zell. Is it enough to convince Zell to forgo what is presumably a large amount of money if Cuban ends up high bidder? Would MLB sit by and watch if Reinsdorf tried to influence the sale of the other team in his city. If we're counting up influence in MLB, remember the Cubs may have MacPhail, who has influence with the commissioner and other owners, and is basically running for commissioner of baseball himself. It's certainly possible that Reinsdorf will somehow manage to keep the team from being sold to Cuban, but it certainly is premature to say "it ain't going to happen". Sorry Dude - Jay and I never premature anything. It just ain't going to happen. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/mariotti/index.html I'm not sure citing Jay Mariotti helps your argument any. Furthermore, it mentions the vote for Cuban's NBA ownership vote was 29-1, so Reinsdorf obviously wasn't very successful blocking his purchase. Now, if enough owners really dislike Cuban's antics, then they can block the sale, but I can't believe that Reinsdorf alone has enough influence to do much of anything. Do you think if any of the other 29 owners knew then what they know now about Mark Cuban they might have voted differently? At the time of the vote, Cuban was a relative unknown to the owners. Also, I bet there was not nearly as many investors interested in purchasing the Mavericks as there will be in purchasing the Cubs. The MLB owners can afford to be a lot more selective. Just because something would be great for the Cubs doesn't mean it's going to happen. Case in point - The last 100 years. Now that argument makes sense to me. I can certainly see baseball owners in general or Bud Selig being reluctant to deal with Cuban and his antics, particularly worried that he draws attention to the problems with ML umpires, but that's a different argument than saying one guy out of 30 owners is going to be able to block the sale of a ML team. There might be enough guys with concerns to block Cuban and there might not. It comes down to how many votes there are. I rather suspect that the Cubs are out of Cuban's, and most anyone else's, personal financial reach, and the Cubs will be bought by an ownership group led by someone like Colangelo who has MLB or other pro sports experience. I could see Cuban possibly heading such a group as well.

Got to go with 2004. On paper, that was the best team the Cubs have had that I can remember. The pitching staff was lights out top to bottom, or it would have been if Wood and Prior had been healthy. Wood,Prior,Zambrano,Clement was probably the best 1-4 in the league. The offense was not spectacular, but was good with Sosa, Alou, and Derrek Lee. Walker was an adequate 2b, and Barrett turned out to be a solid catcher. Patterson in CF and AGonz at SS were the weak link.

Last year, under Dusty, there were only 7 instances (4.4% of all starts) where the CUBS' starter threw more than 120 pitches, and none of these instances involved the pitchers you mentioned. starter avg P/G High Marshall 85.6 102 Guzman 87.4 101 R Hill 101.0 120 To further illustrate the point on patience........ year BBs P/PA 2005 419 3.61 2006 395 3.68 2007 499 3.72 I used straight linear extrapolation to come up with the 499 total for 2007 Just my opinion, but I'd be hard pressed to grade Pienella so highly as long as the team is underperforming their Pythagorean projection by such a large margin. Hmm. Well, he hasn't abused Zambrano either, but maybe that's because Zambrano hasn't pitched well enough to warrant it. I still believe Dusty would be abusing Hill and Marshall now that they're pitching well. I'd be curious to see what Hill's average pitches per game was after his second callup when he was pitching well. I'm in favor of a starter never throwing over 110 pitches in a regular season game, except in extreme cases. As for the other stuff, the stats say you're right. I was going off my perceptions. Thanks for the correction.

Reinsdorf is one guy out of 30. The only chance Reinsdorf has to affect the sale is to convince Zell (who is invested in the Sox and presumably knows Jerry) not to for purely personal reasons (things like this are why MLB forbids people from having ownership stakes in two teams). Does anyone really know how much, if any, influence Reinsdorf has with Zell. Is it enough to convince Zell to forgo what is presumably a large amount of money if Cuban ends up high bidder? Would MLB sit by and watch if Reinsdorf tried to influence the sale of the other team in his city. If we're counting up influence in MLB, remember the Cubs may have MacPhail, who has influence with the commissioner and other owners, and is basically running for commissioner of baseball himself. It's certainly possible that Reinsdorf will somehow manage to keep the team from being sold to Cuban, but it certainly is premature to say "it ain't going to happen". Sorry Dude - Jay and I never premature anything. It just ain't going to happen. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/mariotti/index.html I'm not sure citing Jay Mariotti helps your argument any. Furthermore, it mentions the vote for Cuban's NBA ownership vote was 29-1, so Reinsdorf obviously wasn't very successful blocking his purchase. Now, if enough owners really dislike Cuban's antics, then they can block the sale, but I can't believe that Reinsdorf alone has enough influence to do much of anything.

I've been making this point several times, but 2008 will have to be a rebuilding year because of the sale. The sale will take time, and the new owner will want to clean house and put his own personnel in. Zambrano likely won't be resigned and we can pretty much rule out any big FA signings. The best thing for this year would be to trade as much salary as we can and get some prospects some PT so hopefully we can see what we need to make a run in 2010.

QFT, next to landing a ML ready prospect at SS or starting pitcher, the next best use for Zambrano would be to foist Jones on someone. Izturis not so much since we can just decline his option at season's end.

aha, and I got it right without even looking at this post.

Hmmmm. Hollandsworth and Burnitz are both out of baseball soooo.. Patterson has to be one of them. The other one must be either Pierre or Sarge Jr.

Yeah, this still stupefies me. How did we get decent low-minors prospects for BOTH Todd Walker and Neifi Perez (NEIFI freaking PEREZ), and yet the only thing we could get out of Maddux was an overpaid no-hit SS that used to be great on defense before a series of injuries.

Also true. He's failed so many times in so many ways it's become hard to keep track of them all. There was also the Pierre trade.... EDIT: And does anyone else think like I do, that all that complaining about playing time we heard about in the media was mostly Jones.

Folks really, really need to start getting their heads around this. Murton's fate with the Cubs was sealed the day Soriano signed. If that's really the case and Murton is so bad in right that he'll never be an everyday player there, then the Cubs should be looking to trade for a passable right handed RF or an offensive SS upgrade so they can use the Theriot/Fontenot platoon at 2b and play DeRosa in RF. I highly highly doubt Floyd can stay healthy and perform at his current level the whole year, and Jones isn't going to cut it if the team wants to contend.

Other than some very questionable decisions about bullpen usage, I've been pleased with Lou. He's definitely giving his young guys a chance to succeed. Dusty would never have played Theriot, and wouldn't have wanted to give Fontenot a try. He'd be playing Jones in RF every single day against LH and RH pitching. Murton would probably have even fewer ABs than he does. Also, he'd be keeping Rich Hill, Angel Guzman, and Sean Marshall out there till the 8th inning with pitch counts in the 110s and 120s. He's not coddled his players the way Dusty did and he's not making stupid excuses in the media about the weather or day games or any of that other crap. The team is showing a lot more patience this season, with mostly the same guys on the team. That has to be largely attributable to coaching. To turn a team from worst to first is a tall order, and his GM hasn't exactly given him a great roster to work with. All in all, I would give Piniella a solid B this season. For me to give him an A, he'd have to do even more to shake up the team and get bad hitters out of the lineup, like sitting Jones and using a Theriot/Fontenot platoon at short, and he'd have to manage his bullpen better.

Why are they moving a guy that has value at 2b to LF, where he'll have much less, if any value?

What's a better trade off? 1) Keep sending the same hack out there and falling even further under .500 in hopes that the hack increases his trade value. 2) Eat the salary, dump the hack and put a better hitter in his spot in the order, increasing the chances of winning more games than you lose. I've always been under the impression that baseball is played to win games, not to improve someone's trade value. This is correct. Hendry screwed the pooch when he failed to deal Jones this offseason because he wanted more than others were offering and was (stupidly) afraid of not having enough LH bats in the lineup. It's time to cut the crap. These kinds of decisions are what distinguishes teams that really want to win from teams that just talk about wanting to win. It's time to get Jones out of the lineup. Whether Lou does it or Hendry does it, someone needs to get Jones out of this lineup.

Renteria will be paid way more than he's worth. He's old and declining. No thanks. Tejada's contract looks like a bargain now based on some recent ones. I doubt Baltimore looks to trade him unless he demands it and makes a fuss. I doubt the Cubs will pursue ARod unless they can get someone to take all or most of the Jones, Dempster, and one of Howry/Eyre contracts. That would free up about 12M. If the Cubs also didn't resign Z, they would have 23M to spend. If all that happened, they could pursue ARod but probably have to go cheap at other positions, since they would still have to pick up a catcher (Barrett won't be here much longer). Add to all this the ownership transition and I don't think this has a prayer in heck unless ARod really and truly wants to come play for Piniella and is willing to take a major paycut or hold up the Yankees, demanding they either trade him and pay part of his remaining 3 years or he opts out, they get nothing, and Boston gets the chance to sign him (they'll likely be looking for a 3b and a SS). Eckstein was the guy I wanted the Cubs to go after when they resigned Nomar. They could certainly do worse, but Eckstein is now 32 and signing him to anything longer than a 2 year deal would be a bad idea. The best option among the three you mentioned would be to swing a trade with the Angels for Aybar. Short of that, I don't see a better option than just gambling one of Theriot/Fontenot can be adequate at SS.

Picking up Izturis option would be a disaster. Ronny Cedeno may be worse than Izturis, but is he 4.5M dollars worse? The current regime (I don't know about Piniella, he seems to want to play whoever is hot) will never accept someone like Theriot or Fontenot as an everyday SS, but maybe someone with intelligence will buy the team. Neither will be great on either side of the ball, but they'll be cheap.

Ugh, This looks terrible. There's so much wrong I hardly know where to begin. I guess I'll start by saying how bad it is to use counting stats. RBIs and runs are so profoundly affected by the other hitters in the lineup. Every player on a team that scores a lot of runs will look better and the players on low scoring teams will look worse. Singles get counted no fewer than 4 times in the 10 factors they listed. Once for OBP, hits, BA, and total batted bases. A walk gets counted once, in OBP. I don't believe a single is four times more valuable than a walk, but what do you expect from the organization that employs the likes of John Kruk, Joe Morgan, Dusty Baker, and Tim McCarver. What does batting bases accumulated mean? Is that what it sounds like? If so, why not divide by ABs to get a rate stat, SLG, or better still use ISoP so you're not counting singles again. What is the point of using both BA and hits. One is calculated from the other. BA=hits/ABs, hits=BA x ABs, ABs= hits/BA. The two are intimately related here... Why not just cut the crap, admit you place more value on guys with more ABs, and just count ABs as a factor by itself (which is what they're doing mathematically anyway by counting hits twice and BA once). Net steals is better than raw steals; at least the times a player was caught count against him. It's still not as good as a rate stat like SB% however. In their system, a player who steals 40 bases and is caught 20 times has 20 net steals, but a player that steals 25 bases and is caught just 5 times has the same 20 net steals. Which player would you rather have? Is a player's defensive value really being determined solely by his team's record? I hope that's a misprint or I'm interpreting that wrong. If it's really just guys on better teams get a higher rating, then that would make Nomar Garciaparra and Carlos Delgado both better first basemen than Derrek Lee. Ah yes, counting wins 20% for pitchers. That stat says as much about the bullpen, defense, and the offense as it does about the pitcher. Why is K/BB a factor for relievers and and total K's is the factor for starters? Are walks somehow magically made worse when the reliever comes into the game? Why no WHIP? At least they got BA against in there as well as bases allowed, which counts walks and extra bases. The bullpen stats are plainly another way to overvalue the closer. 90% of relievers will never even come in for a save situation, but how does that fact make them worse pitchers. Does anyone here believe Ryan Dempster is really a better reliever than Michael Wuertz. Counting wins for relievers, is, of course, no better than counting them for starters, and arguably worse since they will often have a chance to lose games by losing the lead and seldom have a chance to win them by being lucky enough to be pitching when the offense, something they have no control over, takes the lead. Finally, there are no park adjustment factors. All the stats they use can be profoundly affected by the dimensions of the ballpark, and the weather, etc. I pray that this doesn't gain any traction. What a bunch of meaningless crap. EDIT: And what does runs produced even mean? Are they counting hits, runs, and RBIs again or what?

Theriot is not very good defensively at SS and cant handle it over the long haul (arm and range). That said, he is an excellent sub. I would love to see DeRosa shopped and have Fontenot, Izturis, and Theriot switching out in the middle. DeRosa with JJ or MM might bring an upgrade in the pen or bring us the decent catcher we sorely need. Yes, by all means, let's shop the guy with the .800 OPS and 4th highest OBP on the team (among guys with over 100 ABs), who by the way is making just about 4M per season for a bullpen arm or a 2nd no-hit all glove catcher to go with Blanco. i agree with AG. The bat that Theriot brings for as cheap as he is, is infinitely more valuable than the supposed great defense of Izturis (who's defense i find merely average at this point in his career). I think Izturis is the one that should be shopped here, as made obvious by the fact that well, he sucks. psst, you know hes talking about Derosa, right? :wink: I was also being very sarcastic :twisted: