Amazing_Grace

Will it be for Houston? If it is that's bad news for the Cubs and everyone else in the central, or will he actually consider going back to Boston or NY like he did last year?

The Cards score more runs than the Cubs. Their rotation can afford to be worse than ours. Also, 2/5 of our rotation is composed of an injury riddled Miller/Prior and Jason Marquis. After losing Weaver and Suppan, their rotation will probably not match last year's, however, and the Cards haven't really added much on offense or pitching wise, other than the aforementioned Wilson. The Cubs should have a somewhat better starting rotation but the Cards should have a significantly better offense. Honestly, everyone in the central looks pretty mediocre at this point (save the Pirates, who still suck, and Houston, who will only have a shot if Clemens comes back again). I think everybody other than those two teams could win the division if things break their way. It will probably come down to who is healthier. I'm going to need some convincing that the Cardinals offense is even slightly better than the Cubs, never mind significantly better. Their approach to the rotation should be familiar, because it's what we've done the past few years with a different variable. Instead of "if these guys stay healthy" it's "if these young guys progress/if duncan can turn these guys around". They scored around 65 more runs than us last season, despite Edmonds being injured for a good part of the season. We've added Soriano and subtracted Pierre for an upgrade, but everything else has been kind of a lateral move. DeRosa may or may not be better than Todd Walker offensively. Izturis is no better than Cedeno or Perez offensively. If Lee stays healthy, we'll be better at 2 positions. We may make up some without Dusty giving all those ABs to the likes of Perez and Bynum. Our offense will be better than last year's, but last year's was terrible (ahead of only Pittsburgh), and St. Louis's offense was 6th in the NL. I think the Cubs move up, and finish maybe 8th or 10th in the NL, with St. Louis about where they were last year. If you go position by position though, it doesn't work out so well. The Cubs have Izturis while the Cardinals have Molina-that's a wash. DeRosa and Kennedy are probably about the same. That leaves Lee, Aramis, Soriano, Jones, Barrett, Murton vs Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, Duncan, Encarnacion (am I missing a Cardinal OF), Eckstein Pujols is easily the best on that list-but Encarnacion and Eckstein are worse than any of the Cubs hitters as well. I'd take those Cub 6 hitters vs the Cardinals 6. Looking at the individual numbers on paper, it doesn't look like the Cards should be that much better, but last year they were. The thing that saves Eckstein is that he's a leadoff man and it doesn't matter how crappy he is if he just gets on base for Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, which he does at a good clip (.351 career OBP). I just don't know if our offense is 60+ runs better than last year's. Really it's all just speculation at this point. If DeRosa, Jones, and Soriano equal their output from last season and Lee has another career year, then the Cubs could have an edge on offense. On the other hand, if those four guys hit for their career averages, then I think St. Louis should still have a decided edge. And no you listed the 3 OFers, Edmonds, Duncan, and Encarnacion. The Cubs should have a better rotation, though, and, as someone else mentioned, with Wainwright starting, their bullpen is weakened. I would say the Cubs could be better than the Cardinals overall or the Cardinals could be better. On paper, neither team seems to me to be obviously superior. They both have some question marks. Most of ours are on offense, and most of theirs are in the rotation. Man the central is weak. EDIT: And it's not like St. Louis was a dominant team last year either. They won a terrible division and got hot at the right time. Worst team to ever win a WS.

The Cards score more runs than the Cubs. Their rotation can afford to be worse than ours. Also, 2/5 of our rotation is composed of an injury riddled Miller/Prior and Jason Marquis. After losing Weaver and Suppan, their rotation will probably not match last year's, however, and the Cards haven't really added much on offense or pitching wise, other than the aforementioned Wilson. The Cubs should have a somewhat better starting rotation but the Cards should have a significantly better offense. Honestly, everyone in the central looks pretty mediocre at this point (save the Pirates, who still suck, and Houston, who will only have a shot if Clemens comes back again). I think everybody other than those two teams could win the division if things break their way. It will probably come down to who is healthier. I'm going to need some convincing that the Cardinals offense is even slightly better than the Cubs, never mind significantly better. Their approach to the rotation should be familiar, because it's what we've done the past few years with a different variable. Instead of "if these guys stay healthy" it's "if these young guys progress/if duncan can turn these guys around". They scored around 65 more runs than us last season, despite Edmonds being injured for a good part of the season. We've added Soriano and subtracted Pierre for an upgrade, but everything else has been kind of a lateral move. DeRosa may or may not be better than Todd Walker offensively. Izturis is no better than Cedeno or Perez offensively. If Lee stays healthy, we'll be better at 2 positions. We may make up some without Dusty giving all those ABs to the likes of Perez and Bynum. Our offense will be better than last year's, but last year's was terrible (ahead of only Pittsburgh), and St. Louis's offense was 6th in the NL. I think the Cubs move up, and finish maybe 8th or 10th in the NL, with St. Louis about where they were last year.

I've bugged his house... well, no not really. In all seriousness, I don't know with 100% certainty that Prior won't be 100%, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of money he isn't. Also, if by 100% you mean pitching without pain, then there may be a decent chance of that (still wouldn't bet on it). If you mean by 100% that he's capable of throwing a baseball across homeplate 50-100 times without his arm falling off , there's a chance of that. If you mean by 100% that it will be just as if these injuries never happened, then no, that's not something I can agree with. This is baseball, and it takes time for guys to come back from injury, and that's just a fact. He can rehab all this offseason but he won't be 100% his first start back. I don't expect Prior to be anything like the pitcher he was in 2003 or even 2005 because he's been hurt, badly, often, and it will take some time for him to return to form. I think it's best for him to take all the time he needs to get prepared, and I think a few starts in AAA without the pressure would be a good way to get back up to speed. If he's stays healthy, I think he'll get back to the Cubs in 07 and be able to give the Cubs a boost down the stretch, but I think it's unlikely that he's the #5 or any other number at this point.

The Cards score more runs than the Cubs. Their rotation can afford to be worse than ours. Also, 2/5 of our rotation is composed of an injury riddled Miller/Prior and Jason Marquis. After losing Weaver and Suppan, their rotation will probably not match last year's, however, and the Cards haven't really added much on offense or pitching wise, other than the aforementioned Wilson. The Cubs should have a somewhat better starting rotation but the Cards should have a significantly better offense. Honestly, everyone in the central looks pretty mediocre at this point (save the Pirates, who still suck, and Houston, who will only have a shot if Clemens comes back again). I think everybody other than those two teams could win the division if things break their way. It will probably come down to who is healthier.

Because when healthy he's a very good pitcher. But if he's healthy.. doesn't he already have a spot in the rotation.. why does he need to contend? because he needs to prove healthy. I'm confused. If he's pitching, doesn't that prove he's healthy? So why does he need to contend for a spot in the rotation if he can pitch? Guys coming back from injury are usually not as effective as they were before their injury, for several months or even a season or two. Some guys never get back to where they were before the injury. Prior has had several injuries causing him to miss parts of the last 3 seasons including most of 2004 and 2006. His 2005 was good but not as dominant as he was in 2003 before the first injury (the Giles collision). The few starts he made in 2006 were still worse, and revealed yet another injury. Even if he's "good as new" with regards to his health, which we all know won't be the case, we're still talking about a guy that hasn't pitched a full season since 2003. There will be, at the very least, a lot of rust to knock off. He has to compete for a spot because he will probably be pitching considerably worse than 2003 or 2005 simply due to not pitching regularly for a long time. If you have an ERA of 7.00 and a WHIP over 1.60 right now, it really doesn't matter how good you used to be. Assuming Prior's healthy enough to pitch at all, I see him starting the season and playing at least a couple months in AAA just so he can get his mechanics right again and get used to pitching regularly in an environment where there isn't a lot of pressure on him to be an ace pitcher right away.

You say that like there haven't been any major injuries to big time players over the last three seasons. If the Cubs suffer the league average type and amount of injuries over that span, they certainly make the playoffs in '04 and possibly some of the other years, too. Its difficult to say. Having Sosa deteriorate so quickly made it hard. Hendry had to rebuild on the fly. Before Hendry, as Sosa went, so went the Cubs. Now, the team has several good hitters. That's improvement. That's results. Wins and losses are not the only way to judge a GM. In fact, they're not even a good way to judge a GM. Look, Hendry has signed guys that I hate. He has failed to provide a good bench, got bit taking gambles on some players like Nomar, failed to go the extra mile on Beltran, made a dumb trade for Pierre, failed to do what it took to get the Cubs in the playoffs in '04 and waited a year or two too long to stop counting on Kerry Wood. The list goes on. He's made plenty of mistakes. I list them often. But I also list his accomplishments. You make a good point about wins and losses not being the only way to evaluate a general manager. Again, I don't think he is much better or worse than other GM's in the players he's signed and traded for. He's done some good, Barrett and Ramirez in particualar, and Lee to a somewhat lesser extent. He's done some bad, Jacque Jones, Neifi Perez, Juan Pierre. He's had some things that should have been good backfire because of injury, like Nomar. If that were the bottom line, I'd be fine with Hendry as GM, but it isn't. He has repeatedly and consistently ignored the value of OBP on both sides of the ball, while overvaluing speed, SBs, and RISP AVG (which isn't useful at all because there isn't any evidence that the stat is related to anything other than the hitter's non RISP AVG). He refuses to recognize the problem, even though last year's team was middle of the pack in batting average, and 21st in slugging, but 29th in OBP and 28th in runs scored. This is not a new pattern, but one that has been clear and present during Hendry's term. He also continues to hand out contracts and extensions that take players into their mid to late 30's making 10M+ dollars. That's fine if he knows the payroll will stay as high as it is, or go up, but if he doesn't know that, it's a mistake. Do you at least agree that it's a flawed approach to not focus on OBP and SLG as the primary offensive stats, and look at WHIP and OBP against for pitchers? EDIT: and I didn't even go into how he could have put a stop to the overworking of our pitchers but let Dusty get his way.

No, having 3 guys a little past their prime is not too many. However, those three players will make in excess of 40 million dollars combined, which leaves fewer dollars to get good players in their primes at other positions. This season, everyone is pretty much in their prime, so if we're only looking at this year and not down the road, then I guess you could say the Cubs have changed their ways over the short term. They certainly don't have anyone as glaringly over the hill as Alou, McGriff, or Gaetti, but Soriano will quite possibly be making 18M to put up numbers comaparable to the above 3 before his contract is up. Most teams other than the Yankees are going to have some Gaetti types. Those guys don't make nearly as much cash as the 28-32 year olds though. I think that the real problem comes from handing out contracts that last too long and ending up stuck with decline phase players making in excess of 10M per season (contract backloading is not a problem unique to the Cubs, but one all of baseball seems to share) and being forced by finances to go very old or very young at most of the other positions and then hoping that someone will exceed expectations. The Lee and Lilly contracts are far from the worst the Cubs have done, and they should be in their prime for around half the contract and if they decline slowly, the deals aren't too bad. The Soriano contract is awful. We're paying for at least 3 years of decline in exchange for 5 of prime Soriano. I ask myself if the Cubs management has demonstrated that they understand ballplayers' numbers begin to decline as they reach 32-35 years old? That's what "have they changed their ways" means to me. The contracts they handed out this offseason (Lee was last year) suggest they still do not understand that. A lot of things depend on who the Cubs are eventually sold to and whether that person is willing to let payroll stay at current levels or increase some. If the new Cubs owner is committed to winning and willing to take a smaller profit in the short term in order to win, the Cubs should be able to get some other contributors if some highly paid vets decline, and as you said, there should be no issue. If the new Cubs owner wants to cut payroll, then well, we're the Baltimore Orioles of the late 90's and early 00's, stuck with big contracts that we can't get rid of and no money to fill holes elsewhere. EDIT: Another thing stopgap veterans are indicative of is that the organization is failing to produce MLB players at those positions. This has been true of the Cubs and position players for as long as I can remember.

I think ideally a team would have a good balance of older, younger, and middle players on your team. The most important parts of the teams, the guys that must do well for team success, should be players in or around their prime years, supplemented by the past prime vets and unproven young players. Older players are more apt to get injured and tend to make a decent salary. Young players are cheap and can put up decent production, but tend to be inconsistent with long slumps as they continue to learn and develop. Players in their prime are likely to be more consistent producers and less likely to get injured, but are more expensive than veterans or prospects. Obviously, unless you're the Yankees, you can't have a superstar in his prime at every position. The mistake that past Cubs teams have made was that they continued to count on older players that were well past their prime to play major roles on the team. They also failed to grasp when certain players (Sosa) would begin to decline and handed out multi-year contracts that kept players way past their prime playing days making money that they were no longer worth. Have the Cubs changed their ways? I don't think so. Soriano will be 38 when his contract expires. Barring a WS win in the next 2 or 3 years, we'll all be cursing that contract long before we're rid of it. Lilly is signed through 2010, when he'll be 35. Derrek Lee is 31, and also signed through 2010, when he'll also be 35. Granted, these guys certainly aren't past their prime NOW, but they probably will be before their contract ends.

This is something I can certainly agree with. With the money we've spent, if we don't make the playoffs, it should be considered a failure, and it should cost Hendry his job. You can't have a top 10 payroll in MLB and miss the playoffs every year. If that happens, then obviously your GM has gotten more or less what he wanted, and he still lost. The payroll has gone up every year since 2003 and the Cubs have not made the playoffs a second time during that period. Falling back on the injuries excuse won't work forever. At some point, you have to show some results.

I think the real issue with Hendry is not how he negotiates with individual players or how he handles free agent signings and trades. Hendry's record signing FA's and trading is not much different than most GMs. There's some very good, and some very bad. I think the real issue is how he chooses to build a team and the problems inherent with that philosophy. The stats he looks at when evaluating players are laughable (RISP AVG for hitters, are there ANY pitching stats he mentions), and the ones he ignores are perhaps the most important to actually winning baseball games. He makes the same mistake on both sides of the ball, undervaluing the walk. Our pitchers walk too many people (WHIP) and our hitters don't take enough walks (OBP). The Cubs will have to get better in these two areas in order to be a consistently better team. Will they be better this year in those areas? Maybe, but it isn't because Hendry saw the light and changed what he was doing. If we do get better, it will be mainly because we stayed healthy and spent a ton of money in the FA market this offseason. Now, when I said the Cubs record got worse every season under Hendry, that was wrong. I still maintain, however, the Cubs organization has gotten consistently worse. When he leaves, he'll most likely leave the Cubs in a worse state than when he started.

Well I stand corrected about the record getting worse every year. Thanks for the correction. Sometimes I tend to get ahead of myself. I had forgotten he took over in 02 and not 03 so I was thinking we made the playoffs in his first year then got worse after. Hendry's offensive philosophy still stinks and if he shoudn't have signed Floyd if there was any chance of him taking Murton's playing time.

Mark this post down for best crow-eating candidate of the year so far. Where did Hendry say he was benching Murton for Floyd? If someone mused in an article that the Cubs weren't going to resign Aramis, would you believe him, too? Oh wait, that already happened on this board. Never mind. Bad example. If some guy writes an article in which he thinks the Cubs will let Zambrano walk, would you mark it down as a done deal and bash Hendry for it before it actually happened? Oy... Yes, you're right. Hendry is the guy who forced Todd Walker and Nomar Garciaparra to get injured so that Neifi Perez and Tony Womack could get all those at bats because he loves those guys soooooo much. And it was really the leprechaun that hides under Hendry's desk who pulled off the deals for Lee, Ramirez, Garciaparra and Murton without giving up much of anything. Those were just classic leprechaun-under-Jim-Hendry's-desk moves, weren't they. If we could get that leprechaun to be the Cubs GM... You're not going to convince me Hendry is a good GM, because he isn't. The Cubs record has gotten worse every year he's been here, and had he not gotten an extra 20 million to spend this offseason, the team would be just as bad off or worse off than we were at the start of last year. His baseball philosophy is wrong. He doesn't understand the importance of OBP and patience at the plate. Now, it may be that it was really Dusty and not Jim that decided to go with Hollandsworth over Dubois, Bynum over Theriot, Perez over Todd Walker (who should have played every day). Piniella may actually use a very different philosophy and play Murton over Floyd. If so, I'm wrong and I'll be glad that I was. But, given their track record, I'm not holding my breath. It does seem odd that a bench player gets a vesting option based on PAs.

Benching Murton for Floyd...sigh. Classic Jim Hendry move. We shouldn't be surprised because we've all seen this before. Did anyone really believe Dusty was solely to blame for all the Neifi Perez, Tony Womack, Todd Hollandsworth, Freddy Bynum, at bats? The organizational philosophy that says you take a high OBP, low power, cheap and young guy and bench him for a washed out vet that has a slightly higher batting average, hits 5 more HR, and has only about a 20 to 30% chance of putting up a better OPS than said young player because the veteran is left handed is... well, a sucky philosophy. I hope this means that he's trading Jones. If not, we get stuck with another washed out old player to block the ONE good position player this org has developed in the past decade. I look at this season as a win-win though. If the Cubs win and make the playoffs, that's great. If they don't, we can be rid of Captain Baseball Cliche Hendry once and for all.

Isn't 1 year at 3M pretty typical for a veteran fourth outfielder and pinch hitter.

I assume you're referring to my post, so I'll respond. I didn't say it was scientifically proven that overworking those particular pitchers "caused" their injuries, but it's hard for me to believe that a guy throwing 120+ pitches every outing isn't putting more stress on his arm than a guy that throws 100 or 90 pitches. I believe that overworking pitchers increases the likelihood of injury and I suspect that Prior and Wood's overuse contributed to some of their injury problems, though admittedly, I can't scientifically prove that.

Blech and double blech. If we thought the Trib was a money grubbing cheapskate corporation... If Murdoch or Murdock or however you spell his name buys the Trib, I fully expect we'll be back to 85M payrolls within 3-4 seasons.

That scenario makes by far more sense than any other I have heard coming from Hendry's general direction. Therefore, it probably isn't even on his radar.

Me too. I just can not imagine a manager saying this about a player and a player that may be playing for him this year. What's so hard to believe? Did you listen to the audio provided by the radio station? The exchange in Amazing_Grace's sig actually happened. I transcribed that verbatim from the audio link. He says some other stuff where I put the ... but I had to leave some out because my sig is too long. Root for me to get a full-time job so I can buy premium :-P I guess it's possible the interview was a fake, but if it is, they did a very solid job of it.

The recent failure of the farm system can be blamed on John Stocksill. Hendry hasn't been a very good GM, but he built one of the best farm systems in the game, and was clearly a terrific scouting director. There's plenty of blame to go around either way. GMs are responsible for the big league club and the farm system. If they hire the wrong people at either level, they have to take some of the blame. Hendry didn't overwork Prior and Wood himself, but he hired the man that did. Also, Hendry only took over as GM in 2002 but the best farm system in the game he had built ended up producing good pitchers and nobody worth a dip anywhere else. It's a mixed bag. The pitching talent in the system has been very good, and is still OK as we have some legit prospects in Veal, Gallagher and several B-prospects like Marshall, Mateo, Marmol, Guzman, Ryu. The position player talent has been average at best and is terrible at the moment. In hindsight, it seems what Hendry looks for in pitchers works pretty well, but what he looks for in hitters is betraying him, and it's not really changed since he was scouting director. I'll give him credit for taking a god-awful minor league system in the mid-90's and making it respectable, but let's step back and realize that very few Cub non-pitchers have actually stuck in the bigs since then.

You have to judge a GM by how a team performs throughout his tenure. What else speaks louder or more accurately than results? During Hendry's tenure, the team had its best year during his first season and has gotten worse every year since. Like every GM, Hendry has had some successes. Lee, Ramirez, Barrett, Murton, and Zambrano have worked OK. The Nomar trade was good. The Ramirez trade was great. The Cubs farm system has developed and drafted some good and some great pitchers. However, he's also had some failures. Nomar in 2005, CPatt, Juan Pierre, Dusty Baker. He failed to recognize and have backup plans for a lot of injury prone guys, Wood, Prior, Nomar. Moreover, just about every single Cubs position prospect brought up in the past 8 years has been a bust. Almost all were drafted and/or developed with Hendry as either GM or director of scouting. That's a pretty scathing indictment. The farm system has gotten markedly worse under Jim's tenure, partially because of prospects given up in trades and some notable draft failures (Brownlie, Harvey). It all boils down to the organization gets better or worse. Under Hendry, the Cubs have gotten worse overall from top to bottom, period. I don't know if Hendry deserves to be below Bowden or Friedman (Tampa Bay has developed good players and still managed to suck mightily and get very little in trades), but he is in the bottom 1/3 of baseball GM's in my book, no doubt.

I agree with looking in house to fill the void, but why would we bring in a different minor leaguer to fill the void before Pie gets there when Pie is the best CF option in our minor league system? If we're looking in house we should just put Pie ot there to begin with. That way it'll still be really cheap, and we're just cutting out the middle man of the 3-4 months before he's called up. Seriously, what will 3 months of extra minor league ball do for his game that he hasn't already learned? You also got to think that once he is called up he'll be under a new hitting coach with probably much different philosophy than our minor league hitting coaches that he'll have to adapt to. I just think we should bring him in at the start of the season and be done with the issue. That seems like the most logical thing to me. I believe the two most likely possibilities for them not wanting to start off with Pie opening day are 1.) they want to delay his FA/Arbi clock 1 year in order to save money down the road (next year and the year after could both be tight budget-wise) and 2.) they fear that he'll start slow in the early months, cold weather, whatever and worry there will be too much pressure on him if he's hitting around .250 with the team struggling and they'll create a situation (maybe Lou gets frustrated, maybe the fans start booing, maybe he starts pressing and makes it worse) where his cheap years are wasted as he's yanked up and down between AAA and the Cubs like CPatt

I agree with whoever said "hope is the absence of planning." Hendry "hopes" Soriano will accept multiple position swaps just like he did in Washington. Hendry "hopes" Pie will become an above average ML outfielder in his first season of play. Hendry "hopes" he can trade Jacque Jones for something other than ABC gum. Hendry "hopes" that Rothschild had nothing to do with the pitching injuries and it was all Baker. Hendry "hopes" Rothschild can really correct Marquis's problems after 2 of baseball's best pitching coaches each failed to do so. Now, he should have told Soriano before he was signed that the position we really needed this year was a CF but he might have to move back to a corner next year. He should have not signed Marquis period. He should have realized Izturis stinks and considered actually upgrading at SS so we could live with a marginal and uncertain (offensively) CF. He should have offered Jones the chance to start in CF (perhaps he did and we didn't hear about it, but at this point I think Hendry is about as stubborn as Bush so I'm betting he didn't). He should have traded Pie (plus some of the likes of Mateo, Marshall, etc.) the very instant it became apparent Soriano wouldn't sign if he had to switch positions and acquired either A.) a pitcher better, and hopefully cheaper, than Marquis or B.) a youngish CF or OF who could definitely fill the void this year, rather than maybe sometime around midseason if all goes well. And, of course, he should have swallowed his pride and realized that when you lose, it's probably because, actually, you were wrong about some of the assumptions you made or conclusions you drew when you started, changed his philosophy, and looked at something other than HR, AVG, SB, and RISP AVG to evaluate players. He did none of this, so instead of a plan, we once again have to hope that one or more of several unlikely events occurs in order for us to have a good to great season. And yet, he's managed to lock up most of our payroll through 2009 without reupping Zambrano yet, guaranteeing that his wrongheadedness will haunt us for year to come. Kudos Jim

He also has said that Alfonso won't be asked to shift positions during his Cubs career. The only way for both to be true is for one to play RF and one to play CF. Which way makes more sense to you? Was it during his cubs career or during any given season? I thought the statement made was a bit ambiguous about that at the time. They did seem a bit vague. If Soriano is willing to play CF for half a season or a full season then move it would be best for the Cubs, but the comments made it seem like he didn't want to be jerked from position to position like he was in Washington. If he's not willing to move positions, then we should just put him in RF and sign someone to play CF for a year (or trade for A. Jones maybe).

He also has said that Alfonso won't be asked to shift positions during his Cubs career. The only way for both to be true is for one to play RF and one to play CF. Which way makes more sense to you?