Amazing_Grace

Marshall has had 3 good starts after stinking all last season. I'll take Lilly. I think Marshall's ceiling is about where Ted Lilly already is at.

Hendry has been a bad GM for quite some time. The fact that everyone is just now realizing how bad he is, notwithstanding. He's gotten amazingly little out of the great farm system that he built up.

Holy outliers, Batman, the Cubs must be cursed.

QFT, the pen stinks, and Lou has made it worse by using two of the worst guys, Howry and Eyre, in critical situations all year.

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.

Or at least give a pregame warning and then toss Renteria. Yeah, Soriano gets hit and both teams get a warning, then Lilly hits Renteria and gets tossed. If that insult wasn't enough, they don't even say anything to Edgar for the forearm to Fontenot.

Total joke. The umps should just let the players settle it themselves. If they had, Marquis would have plunked Jones in the keister yesterday and this whole feud would be over by now.

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".

I agree. I would be very pleased with Cuban as an owner and I'd be shocked if the Cubs weren't he didn't markedly improve the organization within 2-3 years after he took over. He's pretty wealthy, but I still don't know if he has the kind of cash to buy what's probably the fourth or fifth most valuable team in the league. It's one thing to try to buy the Pirates. The Cubs will be in a whole other league financially. I think whoever buys the team will probably have to set up a coalition to do it. I wouldn't be upset with Colangelo either. He brought a WS to an expansion team, and that has to count for something. We could certainly do a lot worse. What I DON'T want is for the Cubs to be bought by some other media conglomerate (Fox, Disney, NBC, etc.) trying to milk the organization for cash and/or use the team as an advertising tool.

Murton ----> AAA :cry: I think Pagan would go down rather than Murton. I think this is the likeliest scenario.

Too many outfielders spoil the team? Fontenot isn't likely to set the world on fire or contend for rookie of the year, but he's inexpensive and no one will shed tears that he doesn't get enough PT because he's 27 at this point and can't really be called a 'prospect'. He's really a very similar player to Theriot . He had decent to good numbers his past couple years in the minors, has decent speed with little power, and has shown the ability to get on base at a respectable level. The Cubs are rumored to be trying to trade Jones yet worried that that will leave them without enough LH bats. Maybe "seeing what Fontenot can do" refers to whether he will be able to give us something offensively as a lefty off the bench. In all honesty, I hope this is Lou pushing Hendry, in a subtle way, to fix the mess he created by trading one of Jones/Floyd, preferably Jones. I wonder how much friction there is going to be between Lou and Jim before all is said and done. We've already seen Lou make some comments that seemed like thinly veiled criticisms of his GM (such as "get me someone that can catch the damn ball", etc.). I think it's going to get much worse before all is said and done if Hendry doesn't give Lou more or less what he wants. He signed here based on the stated intention that the Cubs were going to do "whatever it takes" to win a WS. I doubt he's going to want to here "well we just can't eat that much contract" or "Jones is getting paid so he's on the roster, the rest is your problem". If that's the case, kudos to Lou for calling Hendry to task on this one.

Maybe we could trade him for Mitre, Nolasco, and Pinto. :D That is the going rate for weak armed center fielders isn't it? Apparently if your name is Jim Hendry it is.

Maybe we could trade him for Mitre, Nolasco, and Pinto. :D I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Why is the natural conclusion so obvious to us yet the Cubs management never seem to get it. Hundley practically screamed DFA me and yet the Cubs took on 2 bad players, one of whom blocked their best positon prospect at the time. If you add up Hundley's 2 years and compare that with Karros and Grudz 1 year apiece salaries added up, the Cubs really didn't save much money. It ended up working out great, but that was only by pure dumb luck. No one could have reasonably predicted both Karros and Grudz would have rebounded to produce what they did. . Right. No one. Just dumb luck. Your line of thought can never be wrong under such scrutiny. Must be nice. Even if the trade works out for the better, it's just dumb luck. Nobody wins but your opinion. Too bad baseball isn't nearly that simple. I try to be consistent. If I think a trade is bad, I think it's bad based on the information available beforehand. The Hundley trade was not a good trade. It was a desperation trade so the Cubs wouldn't have to eat a contract and it ended up great. However, that's hindsight. What I'm saying is that looking at Karros and Grudz career stats, trends, and age, the most likely possibility was a continued decline, no better than Hundley. If they'd just released the guy, they could have been done with it and not had to take such a risk, and ended up spending about the same amount of money over the long term. In hindsight, the trade looks great, but it didn't look great when it was made and many people pointed that out. Maybe Hundley isn't the best comparison to make. I was just pointing out another instance when the Cubs had a situation where they should have just released a player, and didn't. I could just as easily point to Alf, Latroi, Rusch, etc. where we kept paying a guy to make the team worse rather than pay him to leave. Maybe the Cubs will turn rocks into gold again, but I wouldn't hold my breath. As long as Jones is taking ABs away from Murton with a sub .320 OBP, I'll want him out of Chicago at any cost.

06 - Evan Longoria (SS, Tampa) 05 - Jeff Clement (C, Mariners) 04 - Philip Humber (P, Mets) 03 - Kyle Sleeth (P, Tigers) 02 - Chris Gruler (P, Reds) 01 - Dewon Brazelton (P, Tampa) 00 - Luis Montanez (SS, COBS) 99 - Eric Munson (C-1B, Tigers) 98 - Corey Patterson (OF, COBS) 97 - Troy Glaus (3B, Anaheim) Wow, the Cubs did great with their last two #3 choices. One guy that never made the majors and one guy that could barely hit .250 in the majors.

Fixed. ROFL

What statistics I've seen suggest that batting order is not important so long as the team's best hitters hit near the beginning of the order. That means over the course of a game and a season, those players get more ABs. Good players getting more ABs is good. I wouldn't complain if Lee was batting 2nd either. As long as he gets the good hitters at the top of the order, I'm not going to complain. If Pie continues to hit well and get on base well, hitting him 2nd is no problem. If he cools down, Murton is a good choice for that spot, and Theriot or DeRosa would be OK. I wouldn't even complain if he batted Lee 2nd. Soriano singles, Lee doubles, Soriano scores, sounds fine to me too. Incidentally, I love solo homers. I love 2-run, 3-run, and 4-run homers more, but there's nothing wrong with a leadoff HR in a game. The only time Soriano is going to "leadoff" is likely to be the first inning anyway, and I'd argue that a HR at that point is great because of the psychological effect on both teams. What I don't love is putting crappy hitters in the 1 and 2 spots because "you gotta have speed" or "you gotta get your power hitters down in the order so they have more RBIs". We have a fairly large sample size that shows Soriano hits best in the leadoff spot. We can debate the reason why and whether that "should" be true all day long, but it doesn't change the fact. The stats say Soriano should be hitting leadoff.

Why is the natural conclusion so obvious to us yet the Cubs management never seem to get it. Hundley practically screamed DFA me and yet the Cubs took on 2 bad players, one of whom blocked their best positon prospect at the time. If you add up Hundley's 2 years and compare that with Karros and Grudz 1 year apiece salaries added up, the Cubs really didn't save much money. It ended up working out great, but that was only by pure dumb luck. No one could have reasonably predicted both Karros and Grudz would have rebounded to produce what they did. Look at Eyre. He's been far far worse than Jones AND he makes less money and the Cubs haven't DFAed him yet. I think this team is run by a bunch of morons using stupid business logic. After all, the Trib. was run so poorly they had to sell their company to avoid bankruptcy, why should we expect intelligent decisions out of the people they choose to manage their baseball team. I expect Piniella is ready to pull his hair out by now. I think he probably would have cut Eyre at least a long time ago had it been his decision.

I'm not sure why. He practically was begging the Cubs for a job in Februrary, and he wasn't signed by them then-if they weren't going to sign him then, it would be very unlikely for them to do it now with Pie supposed to stay up with the major league club for good. Link? http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/rumors/post/Finley-considering-options;_ylt=AhKSKY81mLb30I_3.hC_74gV0bYF?urn=mlb,24645 That's not the best link, but it's the first one I could find. Finley made it no secret that he was looking for the Cubs to give him a call, and he waited a long time before signing with Colorado (I believe somewhere at the end of February or so). The Cubs didn't call in all that time-I doubt they will have changed their minds now that Pie has made it to the majors maybe even slightly faster than projected. This last sentence says it all: Some teams just know what personnel to acquire and relinquish for a quality product on the field. I wonder if we could sell Jones as a CF to the fish and pick up 4 of the 6M on next year's deal? Jones is bad, but he's not at the level of Steve Finley just yet.

I am willing to wager that if given equal playing time Jones will be a better hitter than Pagan. Not that it gives me goosebumps to see Jones playing. It's not hard to be a better hitter than Pagan. Who really IS the tallest midget?

Remember, Floyd got that money from the Cubs. He wasn't talking to anybody else. I'm not sure a utility OF is really more in demand than a utility IF. It's probably possible to deal him, but Jim has been looking to move him for several months, and there's been very little action. I think they will have to almost eat the entire contract, or take back a similar contract, to move him. Well, 4M out of 6M is eating most of the contract. I really can't believe Jones CAN'T be moved at all, because I can't believe he wouldn't be immediately signed if he was a FA this offseason to a 1 or 2 year deal worth about 3-4M per, what he's worth. The Cubs aren't the only team with a stupid GM; they just happen to be the richest. I think the problem is and has been that Hendry WON'T eat that much contract and/or accept basically nothing in return, because he still overvalues Jones and thinks he should get something of value back. I'm not saying Jones is likely to be moved. The more time passes, the more I suspect he won't, but it's not because he's untradeable. It's because the Cubs won't do what's necessary to get the job done (what else is new).

He could be traded if the Cubs ate most of the contract for this year and next. If the Cubs pay 4 of the 6M then he's a 2M dollar outfielder with the ability to play all three outfield positions (though none particularly well) who hits left handed. He would make a fine fourth outfielder or the left half of a platoon. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Hendry is willing (because he's an idiot) or able (what with the impending sale of the team) to eat that much contract. When you see the interest that a guy like Jose Cruz got this offseason, a better version of the versatile 4th OF, I'm not sure there is much of a market for such a player. Teams paid dearly for starters who could log innings and leadoff/CF types. The market for mediocre corner OF is not so hot. I didn't say it was hot.. but 2M is not a lot of money for a guy that might put up a .750 plus OPS and a better than .800 OPS if used only against righties. Floyd got 3M plus incentives and he's a similar hitter to Jones only he can't play CF, is worse defensively at all positions, and is injury prone. I think the Cubs could move Jones if they were willing to eat contract. Heck, we got Detroit to pick up Perez's whole deal and he was owed 3M this season. A decent hitting LH outfielder has to be worth somewhat more than a utility IF.

He could be traded if the Cubs ate most of the contract for this year and next. If the Cubs pay 4 of the 6M then he's a 2M dollar outfielder with the ability to play all three outfield positions (though none particularly well) who hits left handed. He would make a fine fourth outfielder or the left half of a platoon. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Hendry is willing (because he's an idiot) or able (what with the impending sale of the team) to eat that much contract.

So you think we should trade Jones at any cost as well?

I don't buy that Lou's demeanor is causing the team to play badly. I think the fact that he's willing to sit veteran players in favor of younger guys when it's best for the team has upset a couple guys (Izturis, Floyd, and especially Jones). I think it's causing some of those guys to press because they're afraid they won't get another multimillions contract if they aren't playing (they're right, they won't, and they shouldn't have gotten the one they have anyway). I've long suspected that Soriano was pushing behind the scenes to get Pie on the team ever since the stories about them being buddies in ST. Since we presumably will have Soriano and Pie on the team a long while, this is not a bad thing. If Soriano can get Jones out of the lineup that way, he'll have accomplished by accident something (benching a veteran) that really no Cubs manager or GM has been willing to do since well... I can't remember. If Z rebounds and starts pitching well, rattling off 3-4 very good starts before the deadline, he absolutely should be traded. If he doesn't, it's a tough call. You still have to see what you can get, but you have to at least entertain the possibility that he'll continue to pitch badly enough down the stretch that his contract demands will get into a comfortable area.