jjgman21

enough of that crap already. you're gonna sit there and tell me that with Murton playing a majority of the time in left field, which he will, regardless of your pessimism (300 PAs of someone else? please.), there will not be a significant improvement over the .319 obp the Cubs got out of left field last year, then turn around and claim you're not pessimistic? get over yourself. the exact same thing can be said for short. just substitute "Cedeno," "shortstop," and ".307". yes, Ronny doesn't have a track record of high obp. of course his obp has been .403, .358, .400 in three different leagues in the past calendar year. you can attribute that to fluke or level of competition if you want. I tend to think carrying that success around with you from league to league is a sign that he learned to get on base, however it may be. but let's not assume or generalize what the Neifi effect will be. let's test with some numbers. let's say Perez gets 40% of the ABs at short. he won't, but let's just say. assume 650 PAs since short will probably bat at the bottom of the order. assume 400 PAs for Cedeno and a .330 obp. Perez would need a .275 obp in his PAs to get the ss obp down to last years level. that is what you seem to be invisioning. that is pessimistic....worst case scenerio type stuff. same assumption for Cedeno, but more realistic for Neifi. Perez get 25% of the PAs and his obp is his career average. that puts the ss obp at about .322, not the 20 point improvement I predicted above, only 15. realistically hope for from Murton? I thought any improvement from Murton was going to be marginal. I predict a drop off for Lee too, but expect Aram to easily make up for it by improving on the .343 the Cubs got out of thirdbase last year. what's lost in your point however is the well publicized adjustment that Lee made to the inside pitch, which most everybody attributes his improvement to. who knows though, as opposed to his early jump. maybe he'll suffer a case of amnesia and forget about that adjustment. and maybe you should take a freakin look at alot of your other sentiments instead of relying on this one rationally based points before concluding which way the scales shift on your pessimism/optimism balance. but I agree with your final number. .390-.395 sounds reasonable to me, as .375 for Aram should seem reasonable to you. I agree, but I really don't expect any decline, the reason being his numbers should have been far better than they were, but for his incredibly unlucky April. look at his BABIP and line drive numbers for April if you can find them. he crushed the ball all month with little to show for it. my fault. the original post by UMfan was about obp, but the language was edited out by NCCubbie nothing in life is a guaranty. all we can do is look at the information in front of us and make a prediction. as alluded to several times, you seem to take that information, and use it to consistently predict the worst possible thing, then label it "realistic." I don't think you are realistic about what is needed for a 90+ win team. without so stating, what you pine for is a 100-105 win team again, get over yourself. I made a post about how I think the obp issues have been addressed and team obp will improve. it was just an ordinary post, directed to noone in particular, but in reply to another post not made by you. you jumped into the thread and replied to me telling me how wrong I was. so who has the vendetta? in fact, when was the last time you let any post by me that might marginally be called optimistic pass without replying to the contrary? I guess I'm just supposed to let you have your say, and let said written word be treated as final. oh yeah, it's a message board, no I'm not. and to be honest, sometimes it's hard to tell you're a Cubs fan. but I admit, it's a great position you put yourself in. Cubs win the WS, and you're happy. Cubs don't win the WS, and you get to claim how right you were. way to go out on a limb in support of your team.

exactly my thought. tavarez's career path 9 years of insanity and mediocre/inconsistant performance 2 years of relative calm and outstanding to really good performance back to insanity before he even has a chance to become mediocre again.

From 04 to 05 perhaps? Even if Edmonds does decline, he'll still be among the elite for his position on the team, and better than any Cubs outfielder. Anyway, as for the other stuff, one thing to remember is it's not just OBP. The Cubs are still a team that doesn't walk, even if some of these guys get on more frequently than the ones they are replacing. But they have other offensive weaknesses as well. And the guys you list will not be playing 162 games next year. You can't compare the 2005 SS OBP with Ronny Cedeno alone, because Ronny will not play all season every game. Neifi will be a significant drag on the SS OBP, whether he's starting 20, 50 or 80 games at short. Likewise, Murton will not account for 650 PA from LF. Somebody else is going to get significant time out there, 100, 200, maybe 300? PA. And that person will most likely be a bad OBP guy. When you take into account likely changes in OBP for the 650-700+ or so PA from each position, CF is the only one that is almost a guarantee for significant improvement. SS and LF should increase a bit, but probably not by an enormous amount. Meanwhile, 2B could easily decline (.346 in 2005) as could 1B and C (positions where primary player is coming off career year). Overall, the team OBP should be a bit better, but not by a very wide margin. you often defend as being realistic, when I think this post makes pretty clear you are being quite pessimistic. the point about not playing 162 is well taken, but the basis of your argument seems to be the old "Dusty won't play the young guys" routine. Murton currently is second on the team in ST games played (Cedeno is first), and is close in ABs. he played everyday the last three weeks of last season, and he's done very well the entire time. I think it is about time to give up on the "Dusty's gonna give Mabry all of Murton's ABs" argument. it seems pretty clear to me that Murton is Dusty's everyday leftfielder. that being the case, it is pretty much absurd to say that Murton's ability to get on base, be it via walk or hit, will not far surpass the .319 opb of Cubs 2005 leftfielders. the argument is better served when talking about Neifi and Cedeno. of course this exchange is taking place when Cedeno, abysmal as he has been this ST, is still hitting far better than Neifi, is the starting shortstop in most ST games, and coming off a game which would make any gloveman fan very pleased (at least Pat Hughes was highly impressed with his D on saturday against the A's). maybe Cedeno will get subbed, but in all probability not enough to bring the OPB down to Neifi type levels. again, it is absurd to think there won't be significant improvement out of this position. furthermore, if you were talking about any other team with a core of a 27, 28, 29 year old, you would be saying how those are the years a player is in his prime. when talking about Cub players, you seem to leave out the career progression that each of these players has shown, and the fact that they are in the middle of their prime. sure, Lee may decline a bit, as might Barrett, but both are in the years that you typically would say "those are the years those players are in their prime" and thus predict continued performance at similar levels. in otherwords, I don't think there will be much of a dropoff for Barrett or Lee, and I think Aram will actually do better. Walker, sure, I can see a drop off. not as much as an improvement at SS, but a dropoff nonetheless. you seem to predict dropoffs from players in their primes, and I don't think I have ever seen you do that with a player that was not a Cub. and one quick aside about Edmonds, with his age and the dropoff from last year, and Murton's age and the progress he has shown, I would not be surprised one bit if Murton is the better player by the all-star break. re: this comment ...yes it is. my entire post, and the post I was responding to, was about obp. if you want to get caught up in whether the guy gets on base via walk or basehit, that's your perogative. I don't particularly care as long as the obp's are at the level expected. as for weaknesses, show me a team with less than a $200M payrol that doesn't have offensive weaknesses. perhaps that statement is a reflection of your unrealistic high expectations of what a team should be. Finally, even if you are correct in that the only position the Cubs will see improvement in obp is center, that's still a huge improvement considering that the Cubs leadoff hitters obp was .299 last year. in sum, the team opb was addressed (even if only by happenstance), and will be improved. any realistic assessment indicates that is and will be the case, unless your reality is "all things will turn out to be a disaster."

All too familiar. Win 10-0 one game, lose the next two games 2-1. did you guys even look to see if this is the case, because I see significant improvement. four positions will change from last year. just so happens those four positions were the biggest problem areas for obp. let's look at the Cubs obp from those positions in 2005 LF - .319 (this is deceptively high considering left fielder's not named Murton had a combined obp of around .300 last year) CF - .281 RF - .320 SS - .307 now let's look at the 2006 players over the past three years LF - .374 (A-ss)/.360ish (A-high)/.403(AA), .421 (AAA), .386 (Majors) CF - .361/.374/.326 RF - .333/.315/.319 SS - .295 (A-high)/.328 (AA)/.403 (AAA), .358 (Majors) so yes, I agree the Cubs have done nothing to improve their obp...at one position. the other three problem OBP positions from a year ago will see significant improvement. my minimal improvement predictions LF - +30 CF - +50 RF - scratch SS - +20 or are these nightmare predictions of the Cubs obp predicated on significant dropoffs from Aram, Lee, Walker, and Barrett? furthermore, I broke down all the HR numbers by these positions a couple of weeks ago, and based on minimal expectations of what Jones, Murton, Cedeno, and Pierre can do, the Cubs may lose about 10 HRs from those positions. as for other posters comments about not being able to say the Cubs offense will be good because there are too many "ifs".... if Eckstein has another career year if Rolen returns to form after two shoulder surgeries if Edmonds, at age 36, can maintain his numbers and avoid another dropoff (dropped .143 in OPS from 05 to 06) if Spivey can do anything if leftfield can do anything if Encarnacion has another career year if Molina suddenly learns to hit the baseball if Pujols doesn't miss any time due to his shoulder and foot problems..... the Cards offense will be great. you can say those kinds of things about any team. the Cubs have no more question marks than the team they are gunning for.

I think that's smoke up our butts and the decision will rest on the point alluded to above re: delaying free agency. your fifth starer will be Mr. Rich Hill.

will you stop being such a racist please.

I'd like to see this guy make the team over Grissom. I was wondering if Restovich's stumble tonight cost him any shot of getting the spot instead of Grissom. how bad was it? Compare

Boxscore now how do I make it so "boxscore" in blue is the link? Jones is cooling off

quick answer, well.

If the time comes to be sellers I really hope they have a fire sale and get back some good ready-to-contribute players for those guys. The new Cubs manager, Larry Derkier, will know how to build a team and manage a game. you want to see some starters abused? bring on Derk. I always hope for a fire sale when it doesn't look like the playoffs are withing reach, but Dusty and Hendry always think they are still in it until it is too late for that.

cubs add a run according to the line score on yahoo. anybody listening? help a brother out with some pbp?

He is but it's ST and still early. Relievers take some time to get zoned in, at least that's what I thought. If I am not mistaken, before today, I think he's given up one unearned run and maybe 5 baserunners in 7 or 8 appearances. him and eyre have been pretty much lights out all spring.

I really like the little bit of Marshall I saw in the first televised game of the spring, but that funky windup of his will lead to arm problems.

Lidge is outstanding and everyone knows it, and Qualls looks to be a very solid set up man, but the Astros need Gallo and Wheeler to again pitch way over their head. Springer is absolutely nothing special. and bring that Astacio kid and his 23 HRs allowed in 100 innings work on. in other words, there is a huge potential for a complete bullpen disaster in Houston, especially with replacing Clemens's 211 innings with bottom of the rotation garbola.

Let's hope the offense being down today is due to the split squad factor (wishful thinking, I know...) I'm pretty sure it's not wishful thinking - it's true. I'm pretty sure that our offense has been present the whole spring training. Plus offense isn't going to be present every single game. I think the split squad may have had something to do with it in the two games Sunday Pierre 0-3 Walker 0-2 (BB) , Hairston 1-3 (2B) Aram 2-2 Lee -- Jones 2-3 Murton 2-3 Barrett 0-3 Cedeno 1-2 (2B) that's a nice three turns through the lineup.

I can't stand the fact that the guy hitting .355/.419/.581/1.000 in 31 abs won't be able to win the job from the guy hitting .267/.313/.333/.646 with 30 abs. only ST, but Restovich has been a pleasant surprise.

Reyes with a rough outting today. 4 IP, 3 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 2 HR here comes Ponson, St. Louis. did you know he was fat?

I really have to question the veracity of that, because I know you are smarter than that. you saw improvement in a team that predictably scored 106 fewer runs and had a starting staff whose career ERA+ was around 125, 114, 100, 98, plus the chronically injured el duque with the major bullpen addition being Dustin Hermanson. amazing how 8 pitchers having career years, and a young fireballer finding the strikezone out of nowhere makes a GM look like a genius. Williams was not good. he was lucky. and again, I do agree he has done a nice job this year. but you are not taking the different circumstances of the organizations into account. in 2004, I wonder if the Maddux money were available to sweeten the offer to Tejada if Hendry would rather have done that. there's no way of telling really, but I don't know if you would even consider that when evaluating Hendry. didn't get it done. it was his fault. then there is 2005. here Jim, get rid of this contract for 21M to be paid to a player with slightly above league average production last year. good luck. why don't you go get creative and give yourself some payroll flexability. make sure you choose the right potential Cy Young award winner to trade away to build payroll flexability like Kenny Williams did. the fans won't mind, because Jermaine Dye and Dustin Hermanson types are available. handed an impossible situation, but it was his fault. I think you evaluate Williams and Jocketty in hindsite and evaluate Hendry through expectations without considering all the factors and making conclusions without sufficient available information this goes back to the Patterson discussion you are having. yes, Lee did much better than expected. how many players did worse than expected? just the entire outfield, short, and the entire bench. should've gotten creative. here's your trading chips Jim. what's that? half the minor league prospects with value are on the DL too? then it's just the deal you don't like, not the acquisition of Maddux? I thought it was a stupid move all together. never like it and again agree that he sucks when it comes to signing free agents. but I always felt he thought the roster was pretty set with Cruz as the fifth starter, then the Trib said, 'here's some extra dough, go get Maddux.' you seem to assume that the Trib said go get Maddux, and Hendry fell over himself to run out and pay too much money for too many years. and I agreed with you that the international scouting has fallen off, but I also think without the injuries you would barely notice the difference. maybe Stockstill moving on will help cure that problem. even if he doesn't, I'm really excited about this guy from the Blue Jays organization and what he does with the draft.

rather than Pena, I'd rather the Cubs try to swoop in on some of that Craig Wilson action. if you're the Pirates, with all those good young lefties, who do you prefer, Clement and his big contract, or another prospect and some bullpen help? I think a smart platoon of Wilson and Jones gives the Cubs a .900 OPS out of right.

sort of back on topic...I simply cannot believe that so many posters advocated getting Burnett when Wood and Prior were already a part of the rotation. could you imagine this place if Hendry signed Burnett and this was the third shutdown out of the big 4?

So what you're telling me is that a pitcher with a great ERA, great peripherals, but who does not have a great W-L record is not only not "clutch," but he isn't successful? I don't see the logic. So, if we can we should try to trade for Bartolo Colon over Johan Santana? I mean Colon had 20 wins so he was a "success," Santana only dominates him in every other category but just wasn't as clutch as Colon. Next I'll be hearing how he "doesn't know how to win!!!!!11111" And about how he couldn't rouse his teammates to hit the ball (you know, the other half of winning a game), meaning no one likes him, he's a cancer, he's not clutch, and again...doesn't know how to win or create a winning atmosphere. I love this talk so much. Come on now, your late to the conversation, we have already established that I am an idiot :) People were ripping me because I mentioned his record and they turned around and said it doesnt matter at all, well I do happen to think it does matter...to each their own opinion I guess. haven't read the whole thread, but can't anyone explain the concepts without being a condscending jerk to the new guy? BW we've been told all our lives that wins for pitcher are important and it really seems like it is important, but it really is not. pitchers tend to have alot of wins when they are good pitchers, so it often is a convenient measuring stick, but wins have little to do with how good a pitcher is. same can be said of rbi and runs scored. those are really team stats that only reflect tangentially on the players ability. the best way to see this phenomena is not to look at crappy players having good stats, but to look at how often players who are really good don't have good numbers in these catagories, and that happens all the time. being a Cub fan, you have seen it over and over with the Win totals of Zambrano and Wood, and to a lesser extent, Prior. the most brazen example is Roger Clemens last year. 32 starts of 1.87 ERA, and he only "won" 13 games. on the rbi side, contemplate this. if Derrick Lee batted in the eight hole, and performed the exact same in ave/obp/slg, he probably would have had more rbi than he did in the three hole, because the 1 and 2 hole hitters were on base so rarely. his obp plus slg was probably 200 points above Carlos Lee, but Derrick trailed him in RBI. those rbi totals reflect more on Brady Clark, Corey Patterson, and Neifi Perez than the Lees.

And they helped lead the Sox to a World Series, he also signed Iguchi, Dye, etc. I'm sorry, the White Sox have less resources and went into last off-season w/less talent and yet Williams has been able to improve his club while the Cubs have regressed. you say you are being fair, but then you don't give Hendry the benefit of the doubt that you do Williams and Jocketty I'm sorry, but we both know that if the Cubs went into the season with the same team on paper that the white sox did, you would scream bloody murder. you give him credit for signing Dye AFTER Dye had his most productive season in five years. will you give Hendry credit if Jones rebounds? or will you chalk it up to a fluke. Pods for Carlos Lee? you really think that's a great move? if so, how can you rationally turn around and bitch about the Cubs getting Pierre, who was being shopped, and not Wilkerson, a trade that came out of the blue? El Duque and Contreras? please. the white sox got fluke performance and a flukish number of wins for the number of runs they scored and prevented, and you want to give credit to Kenny Williams. now I agree that Williams has done a nice job this offseason, but if you saw the White Sox getting career years out of virtually the entire pitching staff and going on to the world series with the team they brought north last year, well then you're just a flat out lier. now let's talk about injuries. I think the argument that Hendry somehow failed because of his acquiring and holding onto injury prone players is absurd. you ever heard of plantar fascitis? Pujols has it. it's a chronic condition, can strike at any time, and can sideline a baseball player for weeks at a time. hasn't hurt the Cards yet, though, but at some point Pujols will spend time on the DL because of it. now knowing this is the case, isn't Jocketty an idiot for relying on him to be a huge part of the offense? of course not, because when he's around he's a fricken stud, as are our pitchers who have missed time, as Nomar would have been. not a big risk for the Cardinals though, right? how about a pitcher rumored to have a degenerative hip and coming off a bad second half, another pitcher two years removed from labrum surgery, and another coming off of an offseason shoulder scope? not enough, how about throwing in that the closer was on the DL in 96, missed most of 97 and 98, and missed 2.5 months of 2003. not enough risk? well throw in that the rightfielder never played a full season in his career, nor has the leftfielder, and both are getting really old. shortstop? well he missed a month the year before last. what about prancer out there in center? only one trip to the DL since coming to town. oh, 8 seperate trips to the DL since entering pro ball, including missing half of 89, half of 91, and nearly all of 99. and did I mention that the superstar thirdbaseman has chronically bad knees? Jocketty is such an idiot, right? no, he's great according to you. same situation, same results? no, different results, so what's the deal? you want to put it on Hendry, when Hendry actually had a far better backup plan, but the fact is the Cubs needed to use more of the backup plan, the backup plan didn't perform nearly as well as should have been expected, while the backup plan for the "great" GM went better than he ever could have imagined. doesn't seem to me you are giving fair treatment at all. you are evaluating alot of things in hindsite. also, I don't think counting on Nomar's career 137ish career OPS+ to replace Alou's 128 OPS+ from 2004 was too out of the question, nor was counting on Burnitz to replace Sosa's 110 OPS+, nor was counting on Hollandworth/Dubois to replace the 2004 shortstop production. again, you're not evaluating fairly, you're evaluating with offhand assumptions about what you think a player can and will do and ignoring facts that are inconvenient. you "don't buy" that the Trib ponied up extra cash for Maddux, but you have no evidence to the contrary, when there is evidence that was the case. did you expect Hendry to say "no, I don't want a Cy Young award winner for fifth starter?" you say that the Cubs have greater resources than those teams, which is somewhat true, but Hendry does not get vastly more resources than the White Sox and the Cardinals. finally, I agree more resources have to go back into international development. the fact that the Cubs haven't I think is some evidence that the expenditures on baseball operations probably haven't gone up significantly. Hendry's just putting more into payroll that player development. but to counter what you say about injuries not impacting the farm system, I will quote our founder from a different thread... Tim wrote and that doesn't mention that more of those players were also injured, as have many others. NSBB 2003 top 30 prospect list includes these names Nic Jackson Angel Guzman Luke Hagerty Ryu Brownlie Steve Smyth Billy Petrick Scott Chaisson Aaron Krawiec Alfredo Francisco Carmen Pignatiello Jason Wylie you say you are evaluating Hendry fairly, that he is responsible for the system falling off, then imply injuries have had little to do with the system falling off? come on.

it's not exactly a true comparison considering the innings, but let's look at the numbers Clement ERA+ 2003 - 103 2004 - 123 Rusch as a starter 2004 - 130ish 2005 - 99ish. what a creative solution. because as I mention above, that decision appears to have been taken out of Hendry's hands and made by the higher ups. Jenks was a psycho released by the Angels. the Sox had the option to pick him up before the Cubs did. for all we know, the Cubs would have picked him up if he got to them. Politte was signed in 2004, after a 83 ERA+ year with the Blue Jays. Hermanson was a career suckwad who had a career year with the White Sox. so let me get this strait...Williams gets credit for finding these two diamond in the rough, but Hendry doesn't get credit for taking a chance on Rusch? Carpenter - the same way the Cubs got Dempster and Wade Miller. Calero - the same way the Cubs got Todd Van Poppel and Joe Borowski. let me get this straight. Duncan gets credit for these moves, but Hendry doesn't get credit for taking chances on those players? by fleecing Billy Beane. so Schuerholz gets credit for that, but Hendry doesn't get credit for doing the same in the Barrett-Miller deal the same way Hendry got Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez I agree the farm system needs to get back to where it was, but the Cubs farm system has deteriorated due to injury as much as anything else. the system was built on pitching, and the many of those pitchers have gone down to injury. that being said, should the players that have been injured come back to form, the Cubs farm system is alot better than it has been credit for in the publications. agreed. and a word on a couple other players mentioned in a different post Wilkerson and Bradley - I mentioned before how it is difficult to swing a deal when the other party is insane. how do you strike a reasonable deal with a GM who highly values Soriano? as for Bradley, all indications were tthe Cubs went after him hard and offered a better package than the A's, and it is widely speculated that Coletti won't trade with the Cubs due to spite.

you don't replace position by position like you suggest. you replace production in the lineup as a whole. between 2004 and 2005 three positions changed, Right, Left and Short. the theory was to replace Alou, Sosa, and a mixed bag of crap with Nomar replacing Alou's production and Burnitz and Hollandworth/Dubois replacing Sosa and the mixed bag of crap. it should have worked out, but for Nomar's injury. there has been lot's of talk on this board about how the Cubs need another "impact bat" in the middle of the order. while I am not exactly sure what "impact bat" means, for the purposes of this argument, let's assume that means an .800 OPS. do you know how many players in all of baseball had an .800 OPS and over 400 plate appearances last year? 82. that's it. that averages out to about 2.7 per team. the Cubs had 4 of them. this year, they should easily have 5 (Lee, Aram, 2nd base, Barrett, Murton) and with a little luck could have a 6th (Jones and a righty platoon. not counting on it, but it is possible). will the Cardinals have 5 or 6 players in the lineup with .800 OPS? not even close. they will have 3. Astros? they will have to count on the near 40 crowd and/or Jason Lane to have more than 3. the Braves? they need to depend on Francour playing way over his head to have four positions over .800. that leaves two positions in the lineup, CF and shortstop, on which the Cubs offensive production can also improve. those moves were made by replacing a horrendous OBP at both positions with players that should be considerably better. seems to me that alot of the people who have been whining for years that the Cubs improve their OBP got exactly what they wished for, and are now whining that the Cubs don't have another "impact bat" even though they have more "impact bats" than most teams in the national league.

I think something to keep in mind when criticizing Hendry for the minor league depth and payroll not resulting in the roster or results on the field we would all like, is that he built the minor leagues and got the Trib to open up their wallet. the Cubs wouldn't have had the minor league system they do, or the payroll they have without Hendry. in the 15 years or so before Hendry took over scouting, the Cubs had maybe 10 draft picks that turned into even marginal major leaguers. their international scouting was nonexistant. since Hendry took over the draft and into his GM years, the draft has netted Wood, Adam Everett (not signed), Justin Speier, Kyle Lohse, Garland, Scott Downs, Wuertz, Patterson, Ohman, Hinske, Hill, Wellemeyer, Willis, Leicester, Dubois, Prior, Andy Sisco, Brendan Harris, Mitre, Khalil Green (not signed), with several others on the way. that's not mentioning the international players the Cubs organization has funneled to the major leagues. in other words, the system we were so proud of was built by Hendry. in addition, part of being a GM is how you relate to the owner. Hendry became assistant GM in 2001 and took over as full time GM in July 2002. let's look at rank in team payroll and how it compared with the league leaders. 1999 - 10/63% 2000 - 12/67% 2001 - 15/58% 2002 - 12/70 (I used % of 2nd highest because this is when the Yankees disparity became ridiculous) 2003 - 11/75 (of 3rd highest, the Mets were absurd too) 2004 - 7/90 (of 3rd highest, the RedSox get absurd) 2005 - 9/86 (of 3rd, Yankees and RedSox way ahead) source http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/totalpayroll.aspx?year=2005 Hendry took over when the Trib was squeezing the team, and got them to reverse that trend and open the bank book. in other words, Hendry is the one responsible for the increased payroll. Furthermore, the past two years when the Cubs really moved up in the payroll standings, the Cubs had to pay 16M for a 110 OPS+ rightfielder in 2004 and 17M for a 94 OPS+ rightfielder in 2005, neither of which he was responsible for. the other transaction that has most handstrapped the organization, Maddux, is also a decision widely believed to have not been in his hands. if you really want to look at things in the macro, Jim Hendry is the main reason there is hope and are at least considered competitive. in all probability Jim Hendry is the main reason this very website exists. sure, I can't stand alot of his moves, especially hiring and sticking with Baker and over paying for spare parts, but the days of hoping for .500 and counting on 4 players to have career years in order to do it are in the past, because of Jim Hendry. now, much has to go wrong in order to finish below .500. I for one take comfort that he is GM, especially with the Steve Phillips of the world waiting to step in, because if you think the Trib would hire a stathead with Andy MacPhail, who isn't going anywhere, as President, you're nuts.